Ramona Ausubel - Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty

She thought then of efficiency, which was a word her third-grade teacher had often used. The old woman had valued this thing above other things, commented on how well or badly the world was managing at it.

Once, Cricket had taken note of the concept and decided to leave her bookbag in the car, so she would not have to remember it in the morning. But the next day the teacher had sent home a note: Cricket did not do her homework . She had explained to her father the reason, that she was being as efficient as possible, and her father had both patted her and scolded her and Cricket had not known whether she was smart or dumb. That night she had decided to sleep in her clothes so that she would not have to get dressed in the morning, and when she had woken up, she had begun to think up a system. She called it Efficient Life. The main idea was to do each type of thing all at the same time rather than switching around: eat all the butter for the year at once, all the peas, all the rice, all the toast. One week is egg week and you eat eggs until you can’t stand to anymore. Then it’s time for bread. School should be twenty-four hours a day for however many weeks and then you take a long break. One month you do nothing but swim. One month you do nothing but dig.

Her own empty house now made her think of the downstairs of all the houses quiet and empty at night while the families slept upstairs, and she thought of the poor, whom she had only ever seen once, on Thanksgiving years ago when her mother had taken them all to the soup kitchen where they had tied kerchiefs around their heads and sawed at turkey carcasses for two hours until their palms had been blistered and their clothes meaty. The poor had come by in a line like a dirty river and the volunteers put a slop of cranberry next to a slop of stuffing on their white, white plates, and the poor had looked grateful, but not as grateful as Cricket thought they might have. She had looked forward to this day, to being charitable, but now the poor had just walked on down the line and sometimes even turned down one offering or another.

No gravy for me.

I can’t stand sweet potatoes.

Stuffing looks like it’s already been digested.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Cricket had said to one old woman with teeth like chinks of pearl in her head. Her father had said it to her at many dinners before while she rearranged the peas on her plate.

Mother had smacked her on the cheek. “They aren’t beggars,” she had said. Cricket had apologized but she was confused. Weren’t they, though?

Anyway, now she had an idea that the poor could live in the downstairs of the houses while the other people slept upstairs. The owners would never even notice. The poor would have to get used to being awake at night, but that seemed like a small enough task. Father would be proud.

—

The three orphans ate their soup without slurping, even though no one was there to notice. They were still very hungry afterward and ate bread and butter, but they did not enjoy it because these were their reserves and they were being depleted.

They went to the living room and turned on the television. The newsman in his maroon jacket and fat tie came on to tell them that Mao Tse-tung was dead and five white journalists were killed in rioting in Cape Town and it was flooding in Mississippi. They showed a picture of a house floating away and another of a lot of men in overalls building a wall out of bags of sand. M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I , all the children said in their heads. They wished their state had a little song you sang every time you thought of it.

How long had it been? Cricket looked at the watch she had been given for her tenth birthday. One hour. One more small hour, of one more small day. There was so much time left to fill. It was a darkness, dragging at the children. If only Maggie was there, they thought. Mother and Father, yes, maybe, but Maggie, for sure. No one should have to be an orphan and dogless too. Cricket imagined gathering around the warm, furry body, petting and handfulling the extra folds of skin. The heat of her. The encouraging repetition of her breathing.

The children lay down in a huddle on the floor. They felt very tired. The house sounds ticked along, as if it were not a small lonesome island. The children fell asleep in the dusking dark, alone on the earth.

* * *

THE TROUBLE WITH CHICAGO had always been history and now it was the future too. The whole point of Fern’s endeavor was away , not home . The city approached on the horizon, skyscrapers looking out over the wind-howled flatness of the prairies and lake. Fern had sprouted here; all the strange fruit bearing up across her life was planted in this land. Outside the car the corn should have been a city itself, stalking and spawning and smelling the way it did, but it was fall and someone had just razed it for the winter. Miles of chopped-down, miles of spiny want.

“This portion of the trip is not helping your mood,” Mac said.

“I grew up over that way. And Edgar’s parents are probably switching out the wicker furniture and summer décor accents for a lot of gourds and leaf garlands. No doubt there is one last pitcher of fresh lemonade on the counter and a cleaning staff of ten.”

“We should confront this, get it out of your head.”

“We should keep driving.”

But, Mac reasoned, they were hungry and the food would be so much better here. All through pizza and soda Mac nibbed at Fern about her family, about coming up against the past so she could move on. He had once read a book on the subject. It was a question of killing off your demons by facing them down.

“It sounds dramatic,” Fern said.

“This is serious. You’ll never be free. Let’s start with Edgar. What does he do for a living?”

“He hasn’t had to earn a living.”

“Oh?”

“Steel. It’s the family business. Only Edgar doesn’t believe in it. It’s complicated.”

“He doesn’t believe in what?”

“Industry. Making money on the backs of poor people who work in factories and mines and get paid hardly anything. Money in general.” She waited for Mac to scoff but he didn’t. “That doesn’t sound stupid to you? Hating money? Hating one’s good fortune?”

“Of course not. We all need enough of the stuff and sometimes there’s fun to be had, but it’s not exactly a new idea, that money doesn’t buy happiness.”

“Except everyone secretly believes that it would for them . Everyone wants a chance to try.”

“And you? Do you hate money?”

“Not as much as Edgar does. I hate that other people don’t have enough but if I was going to fight for something it might be for other people’s lives to be more like mine than mine to be more like theirs. I wish money didn’t exist but that doesn’t mean I want to be hungry and cold.”

“What about your parents?”

“They just died. Last winter.”

“Both of them? I’m sorry.”

“Both of them.” She did not elaborate on the unusual double death. “And they turned out to have spent everything. My childhood home will be sold to pay the taxes. Which is why I think we have to move back here and why Edgar might have to become a steel man, which is why he kissed Glory Jefferson and why he thought I was going to screw John Jefferson and why I’m in this car with you.”

The giant let this list hang in the air. “Wow. Okay. Do you have siblings?”

She did not say that in addition to escaping and punishing her husband, the other reason she was in this car was that the giant reminded her of her brother. Fern pictured Ben, tender and strange, always more inclined to speak with birds than people. She thought of the shadow of him behind her in high school while she laughed with the pretty girls and boys. She thought of him in the expensive, ivy-crawled institution, looking more like a university than a mental hospital. If Fern ever wanted to make herself cry, she thought of Ben alone in that room, the quiet pressing him flat to the bed after a day of electroshock treatments.