I worked for a while before I said anything, organizing numbers into coherent columns, separating his debits from his assets, adding everything up. My father sat behind me on a stool, watching over my shoulder. They'd already eaten dinner, and he was drinking now, whiskey out of a juice glass. The study door was open, and through it we could hear my mother washing dishes in the kitchen. When I finally put down my pencil and turned around to face my father, he smiled at me. He was a large, heavyset man, with a good-sized paunch, and blond, balding hair. His eyes were pale blue, small in his face. They leaked little strings of tears when he drank too much.
'Well?' he asked.
'They're going to foreclose you,' I said. 'I don't imagine they'll give you much past the end of the year.'
I could tell that he'd been expecting me to say this -- he had to have known, the bank must've been threatening him for months, but I think he'd been hoping I'd find some loophole, something he was too uneducated, too unfamiliar with the intricacies of accounting, to see for himself. He got up from his stool, went over to the door, and shut it. Then he sat back down.
'What can we do?' he asked.
I lifted my hands into the air. 'I don't think we can do anything. It's too late.'
My father considered that, frowning. 'You're telling me you did all that adding and subtracting, and you still can't figure out a way to help us?'
'You owe a lot of people money, Dad. There's no way you can pay them all back, and when you don't, they'll take the farm.'
'They aren't going to take the farm.'
'Have you talked with the bank? Haven't they--'
'Banks.' My father snorted. 'You think I'm going to give up this place to a bank?'
It was then that I realized he was drunk -- not seriously drunk, just enough so that he could feel the alcohol running warmly through his veins, like a soporific, deadening his perceptions, enervating his reactions.
'You don't have a choice,' I said, but he waved me aside.
'I got plenty of choices,' he said. He stood up, set his glass down on the stool. 'All you're looking at is those numbers, but that's not half the story.'
'Dad,' I started, 'you're going to have to--'
He shook his head, cutting me off. 'I don't have to do anything.'
I fell silent.
'I'm going to bed,' he said. 'I was just staying up because I thought you'd be able to figure out how to get them off my back.'
I followed him from the room, trying to think of something to say. There were things they'd have to be considering now, not the least of which was finding someplace new to live, but I couldn't imagine a way to bring this up. He was my father; it seemed like I could only insult him by offering advice.
My mother was still out in the kitchen. The dishes were all done now, and she was cleaning one of the counters. I think she must've been waiting for us to finish, because she dropped her sponge and came right over when we emerged. My father went straight past her, heading toward the stairs, and I started to follow him.
'No, Hank,' my mother whispered, stopping me. 'He'll be all right. He just needs some sleep.'
She took me by the elbow, pulled me off toward the front door. She was small, but strong, too, and when she wanted you to do something, she let you know. Right now, she wanted me to go home.
We talked for a moment in the entranceway before I left. It was drizzling out, cold. My mother turned on the porch light, and it made everything look shiny.
'You know?' I asked her.
She nodded.
'Have you talked about what you're going to do?'
'We'll manage,' she said quietly.
Her composure, coupled with my father's denial, was giving me a panicky feeling in my chest. It didn't seem like they had any understanding for the magnitude of their trouble. 'But this is bad, Mom,' I said. 'We're going to have to--'
'It'll be all right, Hank. We'll weather it through.'
'Sarah and I can give you a few thousand. We could maybe take out a loan, too. I can talk to somebody down at the bank.'
My mother shook her head. 'Your father and I are going to have to make a few sacrifices is all. But we can do that. You don't have to worry.' She smiled, turned her cheek toward me for a kiss.
I kissed her, and she opened up the screen door. I could see that she didn't want to talk about it, that she wasn't going to let me help. She was sending me away.
'Careful of the rain,' she said. 'It'll make the pavement slick.'
I ran through the drizzle to my car. As I climbed inside, the porch light flicked off behind me.
I called my father the next morning, from my office. I wanted him to come into town and go to the bank with me, so that we could have a talk with the manager, but he refused. He thanked me for my concern, then told me that if he wanted my help, he'd ask for it. Otherwise I should assume he had everything under control. Having said that, he hung up the phone.
That was the last I ever spoke to him. Two days later, he was dead.
SARAH turned off the shower, and -- as if to fill the sudden silence -- a voice whispered in my head:
It was New Year's Day, which meant that Jacob and I had let a year pass without visiting the graves. I considered this, debating its importance. It seemed to me that the thought behind the ritual, the simple act of remembrance, was more important than the visit itself. I could see nothing that was gained by our actual presence at the cemetery. Besides, it was only a matter of a single day. We could go this afternoon, twenty-four hours later than we'd promised. I was sure that, considering the circumstances, our father would forgive us our tardiness.
But then, at the same time, I realized that much of the visit's importance came through its strict observance, the fact that we were forced to put aside a specific afternoon each year, block it off from any outside interference, and devote it to the memory of our parents. The minor inconvenience of it was exactly what gave it its weight. The new year was a boundary, a deadline we'd let pass.
I began to consider several possible forms of penance for this transgression, all of them revolving around an increased number of trips to the grave site in the coming year, and was up to twelve, one each month, when Sarah reappeared from the bathroom.
She was naked except for a yellow bath towel wrapped around her head. Her breasts had become so full that they looked comical on her tiny frame, like something a pubescent boy might draw. Her nipples were a brilliant crimson, two scabs against the bloodless white of her skin. Her belly hung low and heavy, and she cradled her hands beneath it while she walked, as if it were a package she was carrying, rather than a natural distension of her body. She looked awkward, clumsy. It was only at rest that she had any grace, holding her eight months' weight with a peculiar stateliness, an animallike elegance. I watched her waddle to the windows and, one at a time, pull open their shades.
The room filled with gray light. The sky was cloudy, cold looking, the trees beyond the glass dark and bare.
My eyes were partly closed; Sarah glanced toward the bed but didn't seem to realize I was awake. She unwrapped the towel from her head, bent over, and rubbed at her hair. I watched her, her body framed against the window and the winter sky beyond.
'We forgot to visit the cemetery,' I said.
She looked up, startled, her body still bent partly over. Then she went back to rubbing her hair. She worked vigorously at it; I could hear the sound of the cloth against her scalp. When she finished, she straightened up and wrapped the towel around her chest.
'You can do it this afternoon,' she said. 'After you go back to the plane.'
She came over and sat on the edge of the bed, her legs spread wide, her weight resting behind her on her hands. I sat up, so I could see her better. She looked at me and put her hand over her mouth.
'Oh, God,' she said. 'You're all bloody.'
