The Painted Table(32)

Saffee sighs. “April, that’s not what they’re fighting about.”

“Really?”

“Aren’t you listening? Mother’s accusing Daddy of looking at some woman today when they drove to the grocery store.”

“So what’s wrong with Daddy looking at someone?” April asks.

“Nothing. Unless she’s pretty.”

During summertime treks to the grocery store, Saffee notices with discomfort how men of the town ogle her mother’s curvaceous torso. It seems Joann knows it too and doesn’t mind. Doesn’t mind at all. But even the thought of Nels ogling another woman, that’s a different matter.

In the kitchen, Nels yells, “Joann! I tol’ you, I din’t even see no woman!”

“Sure, Nels, sure,” she retorts. “And you never see me either, do you? To me you are cold, withdrawn. You know all I want is—”

“Be quiet, Joann. Keep yer voice down.” Their steps retreat again.

From a greater distance, Joann is heard to shout, “My own mother was deprived of her baby too, Nels. Are you aware of what happened to her because of it, Nels? Are you . . . ?”

“Stop,” April whines.

Saffee slips into a practiced state of detached loneliness, locking others out, locking herself in. In this place, she is able to endure the din. Then, without warning, she is thrust from her hazy bubble to a heightened sense of awareness. She hears another voice, prominent, yet at the same time quiet and comforting. It enters not through her ears but is present deep within.

Watch . . . Listen . . . Learn. Your life will be different. Watch . . . Listen . . . Learn.

Her eyes widen. The moment and the voice are freeze-framed to be remembered all of her life.

Somewhere, probably in sermons, she’s heard that God speaks in a still, small voice. Could this be? She takes a deep, uneven breath.

The kitchen door bursts open, spilling harsh light onto the stairway and rudely jolting Saffee back into the tension of the moment. Nels’s footsteps are quick.

“Move over,” he orders, thumping past them down the steps into the basement. They see him stride in the direction of his workbench.

Guns. Beyond the workbench are his hunting rifles. Saffee springs to her feet and races up the steps to the kitchen. “Mother! Mother! Stop arguing!” she screams.

April spurts past them and disappears down the bedroom hall.

White-faced and trembling, Saffee slumps against a wall. “He’s getting a gun! This is your fault; why are you always fighting?”

Joann lurches to the stairway railing. Her rashness melts to a whimper. “No, Nels,” she calls. “No. I didn’t mean it. Everything’s okay; don’t be mad. Come up, honey. It’s okay.”

Nels comes up the steps looking puzzled at her change of tone. This woman he loves so deeply bewilders and frustrates him so. There is not a gun but a wrench in his hand. “Gotta take the P-trap off to get the ring,” he says gruffly, striding into the kitchen.

Weak with relief, Saffee realizes how out of character it would be for her father to reach for a gun in anger. Countless ensnaring arguments with Joann must sadden him, madden him, make him yearn for peace. “Your mother is never happy unless she’s mad about something,” he has more than once lamented to his girls.

Saffee trudges to the bedroom and shuts the door. April is face-down on their bed, crying. In keeping with the crummy evening, it would be fitting to say something ugly to April, such as, “Shut up, crybaby.” But she doesn’t. Instead, she jerks the curtains over the dark windows, hiding icy patterns traced with frost, and lies down on her back beside her.

She stares at the dark ceiling for a long time, wondering about the quiet, straightforward words that were birthed inside her on the steps. Watch. Listen. Learn. Your life will be different. She strains to hear more, eyes and ears searching the darkness, but there is nothing.

From Mr. Mason she learned that people have value. That she has value. This simple but profound revelation is changing her thinking. And now a voice—God’s voice?—seems to confirm Mr. Mason’s view. But how could she be worthy of personal words from God? And what is she to do with them?

Three imperatives. Watch, Listen, Learn. Maybe she is to recognize some sort of lessons in the unsatisfactory life around her. What is she to learn from her parents’ volatile behavior? That parents can scare the bejeebers out of children? Perhaps if one realizes that all people have value, one doesn’t carry on so. What with youth’s way of taking life as it comes, and no other life to personally compare it to, up to now it has seemed she’s had little recourse but to conform to her parents’ model. But the words promise change, not conformity. What was it that Mr. Mason said one day about conformity? She struggles to recall a somewhat disgusting image. Oh yes. “Dead fish flow with the stream,” he had said. Perhaps she is not destined to flow in her parents’ stream.