alive,” Grandma exclaimed when it came time to blow out the candles. “Jeremy, help me blow these out!” I did.
It was a pretty cake, and we served it with “slices” of sherbet that Susan and Mom had made to look like watermelon wedges by freezing layers of sherbet in a bowl: lime for the shell, a thin layer of lemon, then watermelon speckled with chocolate chips.
In the living room, we sat around while Grandma opened her presents. We had secretly arranged for everybody to bring a funny “seventy” present. We gave her a soup mix made with seventy pinto beans, seventy navy beans, seventy lentils, seventy black-eyed peas, and so forth. Linda gave her a necklace made with seventy paper clips strung together. Each present made Grandma laugh more than the one before it, and she said that this was the best birthday she could remember. “I don’t ever recollect having received such hilarious presents,” she told us. “And, Linda, I’m thankful for the paper clips because I’m almost out . . .”
Finally, people headed outside to go see the ducks. Mom was finishing clearing the table. I was on the back porch, pulling on my rubber boots. Grandma had lingered in the kitchen. Everyone else was already outside.
Grandma offered to help Mom.
“I’ve got it in hand, Mildred. I’m not going to let you clear dishes at your own birthday party.”
“Now, that was a fine meal—you put out a fine spread for us—and what with that cake and the ice cream that you and Susan . . . It’s all sitting well—my stomach is having a good day. Been so touchy lately. I’m just really happy to have everybody here today, and all the planning and work you did . . . I appreciate it all.”
“You’re more than welcome.”
“And we’re all having a good time. Least I am!”
Outside, it had become overcast. We all walked down the hill to the pond, which had shrunk during the summer. The exposed shores were soft and stank of rot. Algae rimmed the water. It had become difficult to tell the baby ducks from the adults. They had grown up. I gave Grandma a full commentary: the saga of how one duck—given to me less than two years ago—had become forty ducks. How they nested anywhere and everywhere—in an old tire, on a pile of bricks, in a stump—and how we hunted down their eggs as a form of population control.
A little later, back at the barn, Elizabeth got out the horses, and a few of us rode them around while the older folks watched us and talked. Midafternoon, they got in their cars and left, all of them at once, and the five of us stood there at the end of the sidewalk, waving, and then we stopped. Our family. It had been a long morning getting ready, and it had been a good party, but now it was over. It went by fast.
the second part
In the Dark
As Grandma sat with the heating pad, she closed her eyes. Not because she was tired, but because it contained quiet comfort. It was a pause. She had been busy all afternoon with the usual town-Friday routine—groceries, hairdo, practicing organ at church—and the day had felt crowded to her, and pressed on her still. Also, there was the rest of the month to think about, the long climb toward Christmas: the shopping trip to Kansas City next week, the Neighborhood Club party here in only six days, Extension Club, Sewing Club, decorating and cleaning to do, wrapping presents, cooking, all of the cards to be written, the Cantata at the church. Finally, Christmas itself—the family here.
After a while with her eyes shut, she began to breathe more slowly. When the clock struck the half hour, she noted it but didn’t feel rushed by it. Grandpa was still outside doing the chores. She heard the furnace cycle off and opened her eyes in time to see the sun suddenly coming through the low clouds. Those dull clouds had been overhead since dawn, but now the sun was below them, and she swiveled her easy chair to face the window directly—the south window in the living room. For a moment she looked right into the sun, and she remembered another sunset just like this, from another December.
Mother called for Mildred to fetch her coat and come into the kitchen. The day was cool but not cold. When she got to the kitchen, she watched Mother put two rolls—steaming from the oven—onto a tea towel and fold them up as if they were a gift. She handed the bundle to Mildred, then scooped a wad of butter into a tin cup and gave this to her, too. In the bottom of the cup, there was already jam.
“You know where Daddy’s cutting up that tree?” Mother said.
“Yes.”
“Here it’s coming close to dark and I think it’s taking him longer than he reckoned. So take these to him to keep him going until supper. Just go through the pasture and the gate should be open. All right?”
“The big gate?”
“That’s right.”
Outside, Mildred walked back past the barn and let herself into the pasture. The cattle were clustered by the doorway, and they watched her cross their field as if she were a creature they had never seen before. In her pocket, she could feel the warmth of the bread.
She passed on across the big pasture. The grass was still green there, and she thought about how it hadn’t snowed yet this year. When she was in the middle of the pasture, she looked up at the sky, and the clouds seemed lower than they had all day. There had been no sun today, and she figured that if the clouds kept getting lower, tomorrow there would be no clouds at all, just a terrible fog.
The gate was open, like Mother had said, and she went through and followed the hedgerow all the way down to where it bent around the corner. There, lying in the grass, was the old bur oak that had been blown down last week. The ground had been wet and a wind had torn up the tree, roots and all. It had been one of the only trees on the whole farm.
“Daddy?” she called.
He wasn’t there. His tools weren’t there.
Many of the tree’s branches had been sawed off and there was sawdust scattered about, and a pyramid of cut wood was stacked to the side. She walked around the tree and looked down into the brushy draw but there was nothing to be seen and as she turned back to the tree the sun came underneath the clouds and stunned her because it was so bright. She blinked and looked away.
She found a low branch on the fallen oak that was just right for sitting, and she looked back toward the house across the fields. The sun had brushed the land in a golden tone, and as she watched, the color deepened slowly and steadily until finally it burned like the last glow of a piece of coal, and only then did she realize the sun was setting—was nearly gone, in fact—and she didn’t know how long she’d sat there.
Suddenly, there was Trixie, their dog, trotting through the last light, coming to her. Trixie, the good collie. Trixie walked up to Mildred and sniffed—she could smell the bread—and then sat down and waited.
It got dark. Mildred looked at her wet shoes but it was even hard to see them. She pushed her hair from her face. She liked the darkness and being alone here with Trixie, but she also felt too far from where she was supposed to be and she didn’t understand how it had become night so fast. She had walked clear to the other side of the farm and was closer to Bryson, in fact, than to her own house. She thought of the schoolhouse not far away, which would be empty right now, and of her teacher, Mrs. Clay, and of her slate, and of the way her coat smelled when she put it on after school: it smelled like home. But when she put the coat on in the morning at home, it smelled like school. As if it knew where it was going.
Trixie stood up and looked into the night. She heard something. Then, after a little bit, Daddy said Mildred’s name and came walking from the direction of the house. She couldn’t see his face, but she could see the outline of his head—the tilt of it—and that was enough. He carried her home, and she could hear Trixie following them, and she didn’t know how Daddy could see in the dark, but he could.
It was not the kind of memory that she had carried around for years and worn out with remembering and re-remembering so many times that it