Free The Solace of Leaving Early by Haven Kimmel Page B

they’re never deeply hurt.”
    Amos said nothing, but thought: good luck.
    “And how are you, actually?”
    “I’m fine, AnnaLee.” Amos took a drink of wine, looked away.
    “You don’t seem fine. There’s no reason for you to be fine.”
    “I,” he began, “well, the children are coming on Friday, right? That’s a reason to pull oneself together. This is also my job.”
    AnnaLee’s eyes filled with tears, but she blinked against them.
    “It appears,” Amos continued, “that the aunt—Gail? correct?—has had some sort of breakdown, and feels unfit to keep them. A breakdown of the religious variety. Or at least the symptoms involve sacramental symbols. Father Leo called me; I probably shouldn’t say more than that.”
    “No. It’s okay—I already know.”
    Amos laughed. These
towns
. They simply smoked with gossip.
    “I don’t understand,” AnnaLee said, “how Beulah will care for them, as frail as she is.”
    “Beulah’s all they have. There’s no other family—well, there’s Jack’s mother, but she has Alzheimer’s and is in a nursing home—and the only option is to make them wards of the state. Gail was the godmother of both girls. Beulah won’t allow them to be taken away from her, and rightly so.” Amos lifted his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’ll just have to take care of them—I—the church will have to step in. I don’t know anything about children, AnnaLee. I mean to say I know more about small engine repair than I know about children. I’m scared out of my wits. Their damage? Their hearts? How to educate them? I know
a lot
about old people, but . . .” Amos swallowed hard, and didn’t dare go on. He watched AnnaLee lean forward as if she wanted to take his hand—he could almost hear what she wanted to say, that she knew something about children, and would help him—but she seemed to think better of it, and sat back.
    “I’ve been thinking about something tonight, Anna. Do you ever feel like you’re home? Because I never have that feeling, which led me to wonder about place, the pull of a particular geography or lifestyle, do you know what I mean? Like Haddington, for instance. There must be a million people, maybe a few million people right this minute, living in cities, or in those wretched, isolated suburbs, who dream of a place like this, these streets and alleys, the way we wander around so freely and know each other and can get from place to place without a car. And the county fair—the parade—all that, the fresh produce and honey all summer. They think they would love to live in this town.”
    “And? But?”
    “But. But you can’t ever live in the place you dream about, the town you long for. You can’t go there, and I don’t mean like Thomas Wolfe or whatever, I mean the moment you become conscious of your desire, and then fulfill it, it evaporates. Like think of that bluegrass band that plays at the fair every year.”
    “The Kitchen Band.”
    “Now someone from outside would look at that, at those rustic people, some of them playing washboards or brooms, I don’t understand what they’re doing, plunked down in the middle of a county fair, and they’d see something wonderful, something to be devoutly wished for. But if they moved here and were part of this community, they’d begin to see that band ironically, because really there’s no other way to see it, right?”
    “Irony is our best hope, yes.”
    “And the moment you see something ironically, you’re neither in it nor is it in you. You don’t belong to the town and nothing in the town belongs to you. One is either perfectly present and entirely innocent of one’s own contentment (which is remarkably like not being content) or one is aware, and thus distanced, and no longer at home or happy. Am I wrong?”
    AnnaLee stood and picked up her basket. “I’ll have to think about it. But you’ll stay, right? You’re not going to flee because your vision is ironic? Because I