The Patron Saint of Liars (30 page)

Sissy wanted to sit next to Rose on the bus. It was funny how I could always tell what she was thinking. I don't know if it was just because she was mine or if all kids were easy to figure out. She was trying to get in line right behind her, but then at the last minute Rose stepped back to wait for Sister Evangeline and help her on. Sissy sat down next to me and then kneeled on her seat, peering back to watch Rose.

"Can we go swimming later?" she asked her mother.

"You don't go swimming after a funeral," Rose said. "Turn around and sit down."

"Then I can't see you."

"So you can't see me," Rose said. "I'm not going anywhere. Sit."

Sissy sat down and swung her legs back and forth. I figured she was wishing she was behind Rose now so she could kick the back of her seat. That was the kind of thing Sissy loved to do to drive Rose crazy. Sissy didn't seem to care if the attention she got from her mother was good or bad, as long as Rose knew she was there.

"I hate this," Sissy said, but I didn't know what she meant: hated the funeral or death or her mother or having to ride home on a bus. She picked up my arm and arranged it over her shoulder until she was comfortable. "I wouldn't ever want to be buried," she said.

"I know what you mean."

"What if she wakes up later? What if they're wrong about her being dead."

"They weren't wrong," I said. "I saw her. I made sure they didn't make a mistake."

"Everybody makes mistakes," Sissy said.

The lawyer who called was from Owensboro. There wasn't a lawyer in Habit, which was fine by me. He said I should come up and talk to him about June Clatterbuck's will.

"What about it?" I said.

"You've been left an inheritance," the man said.

Wills depressed me, more than funerals even. The idea of dividing things up once a person was dead gave me a weird sort of chill.

"Come tomorrow," the lawyer said. "You and your wife should both come."

"I can't go to Owensboro," Rose said when I told her. "Who'll make lunch?"

"I'm sure somebody could do it."

"No," she said. "Whatever it is, you can take care of it. It was good of June to think of us, but I don't see any sense in both of us taking the day off to go sign papers."

"It might be good for us, taking an afternoon off. We never do get up to Owensboro anymore."

The truth is, Rose and I never went anywhere anymore. Rose never went anywhere. She cooked seven days a week, three meals a day. She didn't get sick or take vacations, she didn't even miss breakfast every now and then. She always had a couple of girls to help her, chopping things or washing dishes, but it was her kitchen now. Sister Evangeline stayed with her all day, but mostly in an old armchair I'd moved in from the card room. She'd sit and shell peas and talk to Rose. Sometimes she'd tell her what she'd like to have for supper, or she'd make a banana pudding just to keep her hand in things. Mother Corinne avoided the kitchen whenever possible, coming only rarely to complain about something. She still gave the grocery money to Sister Evangeline, who gave it to Rose. I knew it worried Mother Corinne, how much they needed Rose to do things now. She was always hoping the bishop would send her another sister who would take things over in the kitchen, somebody she could scare into doing what she wanted, but nuns were hard to find. Girls didn't sign up the way they used to and the ones that were already around were getting old.

I used to tell Rose all the time that I thought she was crazy, she should take some time for herself.

"I must be doing what I want," she said. "God knows, they're not paying me for it."

"But you need to do other things. Why not go back to California? Visit your family. You've never gone back out there."

Rose turned away from me. I was breaking our agreement, saying things like that. We didn't talk about things that came before Habit. Sometimes I wanted to know. It's one thing for us to not have known much about one another when we got married, but it had been ten years. In a way, I thought nobody knew more about Rose than me. I knew every mood she had and how long it would last. I knew how she moved and where she went and when she wanted to be left alone. But as time went by, I started to wish I knew the rest of it, too. Sometimes I thought I'd even be willing to tell her what had happened to me, tell her everything, if it would have made her talk to me. It wouldn't have. I doubt Rose really cared about what I'd done before.

So I drove on up to Owensboro the next morning by myself and found the lawyer's office, three doors down from the justice's office where we'd been married. I wondered if it was still the same guy. I thought about stepping inside to see, but then didn't. I wore my suit, just like I had to June's funeral.

"Mr. Abbott," the lawyer said, and shook my hand. He was a young fellow with dark, combed-back hair and glasses. "Will your wife not be joining us?" he asked me.

"Not today."

"That's too bad. This is good news. It's nice to have everyone together when the news is good. Were you aware of the fact that June Clatterbuck owned a good deal of property in Habit?"

"All the land at Saint Elizabeth's," I said.

"That's correct. The Catholic Church owns the structure of Saint Elizabeth's, but the land itself, her personal home, a barn, that was all hers."

"That's right," I said.

"She's left that to you and your wife, Mr. Abbott. The land and the house."

I shook my head. "That couldn't be right. There must be other Clatterbucks."

"Two nieces in Indiana. Some money has gone to them, but the property is yours."

I sat there for a minute and pulled at the cuffs of my shirt. "Then it was supposed to go to the church. They always wanted that land, acted like it was theirs all along."

"Well," the lawyer said, "that wasn't what Miss Clatterbuck wanted. We spoke about this on several occasions. The fact is, the church is on very weak grounds, so to speak. Water rights, access rights, those all belonged to Miss Clatterbuck and now to you. With a certain amount of effort and money, I don't think it would be impossible to get rid of them."

I put up both of my hands. I didn't want to hear it. "That's not what anyone wants."

He seemed relieved. "Fine then, all the better. It will take some time to draw up the papers, but no one's contesting this decision. Miss Clatterbuck had discussed this with her nieces before her death."

"It looks like she told everybody except us."

"I don't think she wanted to say anything," he told me. "People can be like that about wills."

I signed a few papers and shook his hand again before I left. I was planning on having a sandwich before I drove back, but now it seemed best to just get on home.

"Rose," I said, "come outside. I need to talk to you."

"How did it all go?" Sister Evangeline said. She smiled at me with her lips pressed tight together, like she could barely keep from laughing out loud, and I knew all of the sudden that she knew. I smiled and shook my head at her.

"Come in here and tell me what happened," Rose said. "I want to watch the soup."

"The soup can watch itself," Sister Evangeline said. "You made him drive up to Owensboro alone, now at least take a minute to talk to him."

Rose sighed and took the spoon out of the pot and set it on a saucer. "It's like living with your mother," she said.

"That's right," Sister said.

Rose came outside and closed the door. It wasn't too hot that day and everything was green on the count of good rains all spring. "What is it?" she said.

"I want to take a little walk."

"Then go on," she said.

"A walk with you."

"In your suit? Go home and change first."

"Sissy isn't home from school yet?"

"She's in a play, she won't be home till four. What is this, anyway? Was there a problem at the lawyer's?"

"Don't you want to know what she left us?"

"I hate to ask," Rose said.

I thought how in a way we could be alike, both thinking it was bad luck to want anything from a will. "Come on," I said. I took her hand and she let me take it. Rose knew when to give in on things. I didn't ask her for very much at all, so maybe she just decided this once she'd go along on my walk. We went past our house, down through the back pasture, where the stories say the spring used to be. I remembered one night when me and Rose walked down there, the first time I took her to meet Miss June. I remembered another time when I found her in the snow, half out of her head, and took her home with me.

"It's pretty here," I said, stopping in the middle of the field. It was good land. I'd always thought it would be good for horses.

Rose shaded her eyes and looked around. Maybe she was thinking of things that had happened out there, too. "Same as ever."

I sat down in the grass in my suit. I felt a little guilty, because right at that moment I wasn't feeling bad about June's death. I was happy for what I'd been given. "This is ours," I said to Rose.

"What is?"

"All this." I waved my hand out in front of me. "June left us the property. Everything underneath Saint Elizabeth's. Everything you're looking at in all directions."

Rose looked at me. You just don't see Rose looking surprised. She never cared enough to look surprised about things. "She left it to us?"

"All of it. Her house, too."

Rose sat down next to me and picked at the grass for a minute. "My God," she said, and shook her head. We sat there for a while, with our arms crossed over our knees, and watched the land to see if it had changed somehow.

"I came here almost eleven years ago," Rose said, staring straight out in front of her. "I was going to be here six months."

"I was going to be here three days," I said. "And that's been more than thirty-five years."

We were quiet for a while, just taking it all in, and then Rose said, "They ought to put up a sign, warning people."

Rose went back to the kitchen to work, but I just couldn't settle down. I wanted to walk over every inch of the land and look at it again. Thirty-five years I had been tending to the trees and pulling the ivy out of the flower beds. I watched fields sit empty so many good summers and thought they should have let me put out corn or soy like I asked but Mother Corinne said I shouldn't take the time away from work. In the fall every maple on the south hill would turn red and in the winter the drive would still need shoveling, but it would all be different now.

I was fifty-five years old when June died, and in those fifty-five years I had owned nothing, not the house that I lived in or the truck that I used for hauling. I can't say that I ever thought about it too much, at least not the way other men do. When I was growing up, I always thought about the things I wanted in terms of what Cecilia and I would have together. Then she died and my whole notion of the world went with her. I just never thought about things like that anymore. If I gave my life over to working on my own land or somebody else's, it didn't really make a difference to me. By the time I got married and Sissy was born, I was set in my ways. I never thought about getting something for them.

But having it fall to me the way it did changed things. I just kept looking at the ground, the same dirt and the same tough grass, but no one could tell me to get off of it now. I wasn't beholden to anyone, not Mother Corinne or the church. It was no one's kindness that was letting me stay on. I could get old and not worry. I could die and Rose and Sissy wouldn't have to worry.

I went over to June's house and went inside. It felt strange, not knocking. The last time I'd been there was the day she died. I took a hard look around, made note of how much sun came in and how tight the window casements were sealed. I ran a finger over the rose-covered wallpaper in the hall. I studied the light fixtures. There was a bedroom downstairs that had been June's and two more large bedrooms upstairs. I'd never been upstairs before, and I had to bend my head down to keep from hitting it on the low sloping ceiling over the staircase. Both of the rooms were made up real pretty, like June was expecting someone to come and stay, but I didn't remember her having guests. I sat down on the edge of the bed and folded my hands. I thought about waking up here every morning from now on and I put my feet up on the bed and stretched out. It was just starting to get dark outside. The girls would be coming off the porch of Saint Elizabeth's pretty soon and in for Rose's dinner. None of them knew that all they had been looking at belonged to the cook. This would be a good room for me and Rose. Sissy could be right across the hall. When she got older and wanted more privacy she could move into the bedroom downstairs, and after she grew up and got married and I got too old to climb the stairs, I could move into that bedroom.

I walked back down and looked at the kitchen. It was plenty big enough. I could make new cabinets and tear up the linoleum on the floor, make it someplace Rose would want to be. Then every once in a while we'd eat dinner at home, the three of us. I stopped and read a note taped to the refrigerator. "Milk, tomatoes, Cheerios, corn meal," it said. I pulled it off, folded it, and slipped it inside my suit pocket.

I headed back to Saint Elizabeth's in the dark and went inside through the kitchen door. Rose was sitting by herself at the table with her feet propped up on a chair. She was staring out the window at the dark. It wasn't often that a person got to see Rose sitting still, and I watched her for a while.

"Where's Sissy?" I said finally.

She looked up at me, almost like she'd been waiting for me. "She's eating with them tonight," she said, and tilted her head toward the dining room.

"You getting used to all this?"

"It's a lot to think about," Rose said.

"You bet."

"Look at you," she said. "You're still in your suit."

"I went over to June's and looked around. I'm thinking we should move over there. It's a lot bigger. I figured I could pack up all her personal stuff and send it to her nieces. I don't know. The lawyer could tell us what to do."