Chapters (13)
“I have never understood why a person who is not a genius bothers with art. What’s the point? You’ll never have the satisfaction of having created something indispensable. You’ve got your little scenes, your pretty images, but that desperate exhilaration of blowing past all the fixed boundaries of art, of life—that will forever elude you.” He took down another glass, waited for her to smash it, and when she didn’t he quickly made his drink. His eyes wandered over her as he drank. Then he said, the liquid still glistening on his lips and tongue, “And why don’t you tighten up that robe. I’m done looking at those things.”
Matty was fascinated by her work, the new movements of her arms, the strange tool and its wonderful noise as she thrust it again and again into the earth, and the spray of dirt and rocks that came up over her back onto the grass, sometimes landing on the thick rubber lip of his red sneaker. He sat and watched her with more interest even than he watched the backhoes on Spring Street, digging up an old septic system. She worked hard and fast and the sweat began to mix with the milk and the tears inside her robe. She was surprised, given the season, how soft the earth was, how relenting. Soon she’d dug deep enough to step down into it. She felt its warmth curl around her ankles. Its smell was intoxicating. She’d paid so little attention to the earth in her life.
When she was done digging, she scooped Matty up and brought him into the house, fed him a small bowl of rice cereal mixed with applesauce (they were back in their regular spots on the wonderful wobbly shelves), and put him in his crib. He cried briefly, but by the time she came back downstairs and listened for him through the monitor, there was only the loud tide of his breath in sleep. She dragged the man from where he’d fallen across the pantry’s narrow threshold out the back door. His feet bounced carefree down the steps. He was light and fell into the hole gracefully, like a piece of cloth, so she didn’t have to get in there and rearrange him. There was no mound when she’d finished; every scoop of dirt had fit perfectly back in. She replaced the sod she’d carefully cut out and went inside. According to the clock on the stove, her work had taken forty-nine minutes.
The book was sprawled on the floor where he had flung it. She brought it over to the couch, tossed off the diaper, and lay lengthwise, on her stomach. She turned to the last chapter. The red cross-outs had faded, and it was, she could easily see now, a fine ending.