The Caretaker by Ron Rash

Author:Ron Rash [Rash, Ron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2023-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

19

July 28, the day she and Jacob had met, was still seven weeks away, but as Naomi lay in in the dark, she was already making plans to order the marigolds that would be set on Jacob’s grave. Of course her father and Lila would try to stop her if they knew, but she could get the flowers delivered without their knowing. All it would take was some money and an envelope. Naomi thought about Blackburn. For months she’d expected him to visit but he hadn’t. Even with Jacob gone, she didn’t think he’d go to Florida and work in the orange groves with his family. Did the Hamptons forbid him to come? Or did Blackburn, like them, blame her for Jacob’s death? Naomi wasn’t sure, but she was certain that he’d nevertheless place the flowers on Jacob’s grave.

Annie Mae. Nothing worthwhile comes without a price, Granny Dowd, the midwife, had told Naomi that afternoon she writhed in the bed, Lila beside her, patting Naomi’s brow with a damp cloth. Lila had placed an ax beneath the mattress to cut the pain, but neither it nor the damp cloth and Lila’s soothing words dimmed the pain. Vivid pain, so much so that Naomi saw it when she closed her eyes—bursts like orange flames—as she’d sweated and pushed. Between contractions Naomi had tried to think of happy things, but all that came was more pain—the memory of Mr. Hampton coming out of the woods with his briefcase and the telegram bringing word that Jacob was dead. Lila had squeezed her hand tighter as Granny Dowd said, One more hard push, girl, and that baby’s gonna blossom out of you and into this world. And Annie Mae had come, wet and squalling and ever more pretty than the prettiest flower. And still so.

Naomi reached over and felt the infant beside her, Annie Mae’s skin smooth and soft as a dogwood petal. Lila said Annie Mae should sleep in a crib, but Naomi wasn’t ready to do that yet. She needed to reach out in the dark and touch the child, to feel the rise and fall of her breath and know a part of Jacob yet lived. Naomi pondered what to write about tomorrow. In the last months, she’d filled three Blue Horse tablets, memories for Annie Mae’s hope chest. Though she’d taught herself cursive, Naomi printed each word. The way the vowels and consonants lined up separate made the letters look sturdier. She’d written about the evening she and Jacob met outside the movie house, about their sparking and elopement, their first Christmas together.

But as Naomi lay in the dark, she wanted to tell Annie Mae about an ordinary day. Or what had seemed so, because now she knew it hadn’t been ordinary at all. Maybe that was the saddest thing about life, that you couldn’t understand, not really, how good something was while living inside of it. How many such moments swept past, lost forever. But not all of them. Naomi lit a lamp, held it near Annie Mae’s sleeping face.

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