she sat in the sun, looking at the exposed surface of the half grapefruit, halved. It was glistening full of clear pink juice.
“If you could take a picture of health, wouldn’t it look like that?”
she asked Henry.
“If I say yes, do we have to go on a grapefruit diet?”
She laughed. “No, I was just wondering how many years we have, to feel really well, and have all our marbles….”
“Are you hoping for a lot? Or for quick oblivion?”
“A lot. My parents have never been really happy, and now they’re starting to die.”
“I think your father is happy.”
72 / Beth Gutcheon
“He’s content, because he has a talent for it. But it hasn’t been a happy marriage. It hasn’t been the kind of marriage where you bring out the best in each other….”
She told him about her father’s phone call. Henry said he would call the hospital in Ellsworth in the morning, and make sure everything needful was being done. Rue thanked him.
“So how many Sunday mornings do we have together, before we need diapers and everything?”
Henry looked thoughtful and then said, “Eighteen hundred and twenty.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Rue squeezed grapefruit juice onto her spoon and drank it. “It’s nice to have a doctor in the house who knows these things. Did you subtract the Sundays when you go duck hunting?”
“Oh…seventeen hundred and eighty-five, then.”
“I hope that will be enough.”
“I’m worried we’ll run out of this good jam before then.”
“There will be Sundays when we’ll be downstairs cooking pancakes for our grandchildren.”
“The little nippers. And they’ll get butter on the funny papers….”
“And knock over the maple syrup.”
“And we’ll get to poke them and play with them as long as it’s fun, and then we’ll make Georgia take them away.”
“You’ll have to fix that log swing in the back before they get here.”
“I will.”
Henry reached across Rue to co-opt the magazine section. Rue poured out hot tea and put on her glasses.
I t was two weeks later, mid-October, when a sharp-shinned hawk appeared on campus and began eating the little birds that Catherine Trainer cherished to the point of fetishism. She noticed the hawk at once, circling high in the sky and then turning sharply to dive. She almost screamed as she saw it intercept and stick its sharp talons into some helpless little oriole. She fancied it was an oriole; it was really too far away to see. Perhaps it was a robin. At first she thought the hawk would go away. Sharp-shinned hawks were growing rarer, and they usually hunted in forests, not in open areas.
It did not go away, however. Soon the population of local song-birds and doves was frightened into silence. Even the escaped pair of African gray parrots that usually lived in the school’s live oaks disappeared, although they were themselves too large and well armed for the hawk to eat. Catherine Trainer was beginning to feel overwrought at the situation. What if the hawk ate her lazuli bunting? That is, if it was a lazuli bunting, and if it ever came back? What if she had waited three weeks for another glimpse of the tiny technicolor handful of feathers, with its loud sweet jumble of chips and pits , and it chose this moment to return to her, and the hawk ate it?
That was what was going on in Catherine’s life the day Lyndie Sale showed up at school with a broken arm.
Lyndie came into class as the bell was ringing. She had a yellowish bruise on her cheekbone, and she looked unkempt. Her hair needed a good brushing, and her clothes were the same she had worn the day before, looking as if she might have slept in them.
Lyndie took her seat in the back of the room.
“We are having a pop quiz this morning,” Catherine announced, and everyone groaned. Catherine had found a copy of a test she had given on California missions several years before, and decided it 74 / Beth Gutcheon
would be interesting to spring it on them. Not to mention
“If you could take a picture of health, wouldn’t it look like that?”
she asked Henry.
“If I say yes, do we have to go on a grapefruit diet?”
She laughed. “No, I was just wondering how many years we have, to feel really well, and have all our marbles….”
“Are you hoping for a lot? Or for quick oblivion?”
“A lot. My parents have never been really happy, and now they’re starting to die.”
“I think your father is happy.”
72 / Beth Gutcheon
“He’s content, because he has a talent for it. But it hasn’t been a happy marriage. It hasn’t been the kind of marriage where you bring out the best in each other….”
She told him about her father’s phone call. Henry said he would call the hospital in Ellsworth in the morning, and make sure everything needful was being done. Rue thanked him.
“So how many Sunday mornings do we have together, before we need diapers and everything?”
Henry looked thoughtful and then said, “Eighteen hundred and twenty.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Rue squeezed grapefruit juice onto her spoon and drank it. “It’s nice to have a doctor in the house who knows these things. Did you subtract the Sundays when you go duck hunting?”
“Oh…seventeen hundred and eighty-five, then.”
“I hope that will be enough.”
“I’m worried we’ll run out of this good jam before then.”
“There will be Sundays when we’ll be downstairs cooking pancakes for our grandchildren.”
“The little nippers. And they’ll get butter on the funny papers….”
“And knock over the maple syrup.”
“And we’ll get to poke them and play with them as long as it’s fun, and then we’ll make Georgia take them away.”
“You’ll have to fix that log swing in the back before they get here.”
“I will.”
Henry reached across Rue to co-opt the magazine section. Rue poured out hot tea and put on her glasses.
I t was two weeks later, mid-October, when a sharp-shinned hawk appeared on campus and began eating the little birds that Catherine Trainer cherished to the point of fetishism. She noticed the hawk at once, circling high in the sky and then turning sharply to dive. She almost screamed as she saw it intercept and stick its sharp talons into some helpless little oriole. She fancied it was an oriole; it was really too far away to see. Perhaps it was a robin. At first she thought the hawk would go away. Sharp-shinned hawks were growing rarer, and they usually hunted in forests, not in open areas.
It did not go away, however. Soon the population of local song-birds and doves was frightened into silence. Even the escaped pair of African gray parrots that usually lived in the school’s live oaks disappeared, although they were themselves too large and well armed for the hawk to eat. Catherine Trainer was beginning to feel overwrought at the situation. What if the hawk ate her lazuli bunting? That is, if it was a lazuli bunting, and if it ever came back? What if she had waited three weeks for another glimpse of the tiny technicolor handful of feathers, with its loud sweet jumble of chips and pits , and it chose this moment to return to her, and the hawk ate it?
That was what was going on in Catherine’s life the day Lyndie Sale showed up at school with a broken arm.
Lyndie came into class as the bell was ringing. She had a yellowish bruise on her cheekbone, and she looked unkempt. Her hair needed a good brushing, and her clothes were the same she had worn the day before, looking as if she might have slept in them.
Lyndie took her seat in the back of the room.
“We are having a pop quiz this morning,” Catherine announced, and everyone groaned. Catherine had found a copy of a test she had given on California missions several years before, and decided it 74 / Beth Gutcheon
would be interesting to spring it on them. Not to mention
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