Page 19 of Broken Country

“You won’t leave me?” Gabriel says, on our last night together.

It’s late or very early, a ghostly light beginning to edge around the velvet curtains in his bedroom.

I am half-asleep, lost in that pleasurable haze where dreams and reality bleed into one another.

“Beth?”

“Mmm?”

“Promise you won’t leave me.”

“As if.”

“Then promise.”

“Are you actually serious?” I open my eyes.

He nods. “Very.”

“You first,” I say, and he laughs.

“So competitive. Even when you’re asleep.”

He promises, then I do, and it doesn’t mean anything, not really, it’s just silly talk, the kind of thing lovers say, but it feels, for a moment, before I drift back to sleep, as if our future is written.

1968

The men are out on the farm and I am spending the morning at home trying to finish some of the endless chores I set for myself.

Busyness is the only thing that helps. People spoke to me of meditation after Bobby died, I was lent library books on Buddhism and the ancient art of yoga. And I thought,Really, you think a few minutes of intense breathing will modify my pain?In the agonizing first months when I still saw Bobby everywhere and nowhere, I could not even read. I’d taken solace in books for my entire life. As a child I’d become so absorbed in my favorite stories, the characters sometimes felt more vivid to me than my friends. Even as an adult, I could still lose myself in fictional worlds, feeling the wrench when I was forced to return to real life. And, quite suddenly, I didn’t have the heart or the mental capacity for any of it. I could not listen to the radio. I could not manage a conversation with anyone other than my own family and, even then, only at the most cursory level. But what I could do was work, really hard. It was my father-in-law, David, who put me back to work on the farm, understanding hard physical labor, twelve-hour stretches of it, was a necessary outlet for my grief. I can do everything the men do, milk cows, herd sheep, mend fences, heft hay bales. Me and Frank and Jimmy, the hardest workers you’ll ever come across.

When the doorbell rings, I am kneeling on a sill furiously shining a window with newspaper and white vinegar. It is annoying to get down and answer the door but I do it—country people usually do. We live a more courteous life than town folk, or so I have always imagined: We greet each other, we lend things, we share useful information.

What I am not expecting when I throw open the door is to find Gabriel on the other side of it.

“Hi,” I say, attempting to sound nonchalant though my heartbeat tells a different story.

“Am I interrupting?”

“Not at all. Would you like to come in?”

Country manners, ingrained and inescapable.

Gabriel looks around him with open curiosity when he comes into the room, and I wonder what he sees. It is a classic farmhouse kitchen, I suppose. A huge oak table that belonged to Frank’s grandparents and has endured three generations of eating and laughter and arguments. An assortment of dining chairs, some I have painted, others in dark old wood. The huge fireplace at one end of the room which always draws admiration—it feels medieval as if it should have huge black cauldrons dangling in front of it. The dresser with the pretty blue-and-gold china we inherited from Frank’s parents and rarely use. A framed picture of pressed wildflowers, the same ones I gave Frank on the bus all those years ago, now fading beneath its glass. And, blown up to poster size, a picture of Bobby on his third birthday, chin smeared with chocolate, eyes crinkled in his trademark grin.

I watch Gabriel taking him in.

“Your son? Beth, he’s you exactly.”

“People say that.” If my voice is too crisp, I can’t help it. “Was there something you wanted?”

He hesitates, thrown, perhaps, by my directness.

“I’m horribly behind on my deadline and I’ve realized I need someone to look after Leo for a couple of hours eachday. A paid job, I mean. Picking him up after school and keeping him busy while I write. Would you consider it?”

“I have a job. I run the farm with Frank and Jimmy.”

“The thing is, he adores you. It would only be a couple of hours. You quite often spend that with him now. The only difference is that I’d pay you.”

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