Page 10 of The Invisible Hour

When Ivy looked at her something passed between them. Mia didn’t care about Joel’s claim that children belonged to everyone. She knew who was there for her. She knew who she could depend on. They were whispering, standing near one another; they could almost read one another’s thoughts. “Will your plan tell us where to go?”

“California?” Mia said. She’d seen photographs in the library of Monterey and Bolinas and San Francisco. All of those places were at the other end of the country, as distant as possible from here.

For a while, Ivy didn’t say anything, and Mia thought she was angry, but then Ivy heaved a sigh and said, “Honey, that’s so far.”

“That’s the point,” Mia said.

Ivy shook her head. “We’d never make it.”

“What about Boston?” Mia was crying, but she didn’t know it.

“Go back to where I came from?” Ivy said sadly. “What would I do there? I didn’t even finish high school. I wouldn’t be able to support you.”

“I’ll get a job,” Mia said stubbornly.

Ivy laughed, but again it was something darker than laughter. When Joel had noticed that Ivy was restless during that first year, he’d told her that if she ever thought of leaving, he would keep Mia. Remember that, he’d advised her, and she had. “My girl,” Ivy said. “You can dream, but know that’s all it is.”

The light in the woods was so dim they felt as if they were nothing more than shadows. Almost invisible, but not quite. They could hear the voices of people leaving the Community Center.

“Be more careful,” Ivy said. “So far, I’ve been able to calm him down when he gets angry, but I don’t know what he’ll do if he’s pushed too far. He’s not the person I first knew, and I don’t know what he’s capable of.”

After Ivy walked away, Mia remained in the woods, listening to the night birds, owls and herons shifting in the trees. She realized that she had been so startled by her mother’s sudden appearance she’d forgotten to thank her for taking the blame for possessing a book. She said it now, even though she was alone; she spoke into the empty night, hoping that somehow Ivy would know that she was grateful. Mia would never forget who was there for her, and who took the blame, and who had followed her into the woods to warn her that nothing stays the same.

CHAPTER THREE THE FOREGONE CONCLUSION

September was a glorious month, when the whole world turned yellow. It was the season of the harvest, time to pick and sort apples. Look-No-Further was the only variety they grew, for it was said that if you ate nothing else for three days you would still never tire of the taste. At this time of year, work was unending, and members of the Community were in the fields twelve to fourteen hours a day. Even the youngest children worked in the orchards, given sturdy boots and small canvas gloves so they wouldn’t prick their fingers on the branches as they reached for low-growing fruit.

This year the crop was so huge, outside laborers had been hired. The Community members were told not to speak to the help in the orchards and to ignore the transient children, who played games between the trees, singing songs in a language Mia didn’t understand. When the day was through, she sneaked over to the far field, where the caravans were parked, and watched the families fixing their dinners on grills set over fires. Children called and parents answered. Boys played baseball and shouted at one another. Mia wondered where these people had been before coming to the Community and where they would go next. She wondered if on their travels they’d seen all the things she’d read about in books. One evening a woman with long dark hair left her family and walked over to Mia, concerned to see a girl out by herself as darkness fell, standing in the damp grass and watching them. “Do you need anything, honey?” she asked. “Something to eat?”

The food smelled wonderful, but Mia shook her head. It wasn’t food she wanted, but information. “No thank you,” she said, but then as the woman was walking away Mia called, “Have you been to California?”

The woman turned and smiled. “Not yet,” she said. “Have you?”

“Not yet,” Mia called, and they waved to one another before Mia walked back across the field. The crickets were calling like mad at this time of year, their last sweet song. Mia might have torn up her escape plan, but that didn’t matter; she had it memorized. She hadn’t left today, she hadn’t begged that woman to take her along when the apples were all picked, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen. It didn’t mean she would never see San Francisco, and Paris, and New York. In books, no one helped a girl who didn’t help herself and every fairy tale ended with the same lessons. Trick your enemy, do what you must, believe in enchantments, save yourself.

IT HAPPENED LATE IN the day, at the end of the harvest. The occurrence that changes your life is never expected, it is sudden as rain pelting down from the sky, it is a flash of lightning, it is the moment you will never forget. Mia was at the school, out in the yard helping with the little children at recess, watching them glide away on the old wooden swings. She was alerted to the fact that something was wrong when she heard fierce shouts, then a deep quiet. The worst that can happen often happens in silence. It is not the explosion, but the aftermath, when you see through smoke and ash, that you know how much you have lost.

Usually, it was possible to hear people’s voices drifting over from the orchards until dark; Mia had worked there this morning, side by side with Ivy, until Evangeline told her she was needed at the school. Now Mia noticed there were no trucks idling, no calling voices of the hired workers, not even any birdsongs. It was still warm as summer, and the countryside was dotted with pokeweed and tangles of Virginia creeper growing wild in the ditches. Mia froze when she saw the men running. Evangeline came and informed Mia that there had been an accident. The truck collecting the bushels of apples hadn’t had the brake on correctly and had slipped backwards and crushed someone.

“All you can do is accept what has happened.” Evangeline’s voice was kinder than usual, but her face was pale.

Mia saw the men carrying the body of a woman. Blackbirds in the fields arose, calling to one another until none were left behind. Mia’s fingers were wrapped around the chain-link fence of the play yard as she watched the men bring the body to the main house. It was the season of the bees, when they fled from their hives and arose in swarms in the last of the good weather. Two of the men in the field were stung. Neither one faltered, and not a single cry was heard.

“Mia, come away,” Evangeline called as Mia stood looking out.

But Mia stayed where she was, transfixed. She recognized Ivy’s gray shift and the red boots she always wore.

Let’s do it tonight. Let’s be invisible, Mia had said that morning as they were picking apples. They had climbed a tree together and they might as well have been alone in the world, hidden by branches. Ivy had smiled at her daughter’s suggestion. Her hair had begun to grow back, and to Mia she looked like a princess in a fairy tale, one who might consider escape, but then Ivy shook her head. He’d find us, she said. And, anyway, where would we go? She said that once upon a time, a girl at the farm tried to leave and take control of her own body and her own life and that the rules had killed her. We’re not birds, she told Mia. We can’t fly away.

Now they were delivering her from the orchard. Ivy’s hair looked like black feathers in the bright sunlight. Her boots fell off as they carried her to the Community Center. They lay there in the grass, and no one seemed to notice. This was what the end was like, quiet and aching. We never got to run away, Mia thought. We might have been birds and flown so far we’d be west of the moon right now.

The sun was beating down on Mia’s back and she didn’t even know she was crying until a sob escaped from her throat. She knew the men who were carrying the body, she knew their names, and their wives and children, but they looked like strangers to her now. Joel came out to meet them, rushing over to embrace the body of his wife. People said you could hear his howl of grief in the farthest field. He didn’t care who saw him weeping. If he noticed Mia in the play yard, it didn’t matter. He couldn’t have cared less. What was over was over, what was done was done, this was a world of love, and those who had been here would be loved evermore. Joel wiped his eyes and stood tall. He would have the women bathe the body and then they would bury Ivy in the small fenced-in cemetery that faced Hightop Mountain.

The service was the following day, in the graveyard where Joel’s first wife, Carrie, was buried. The mountain was shrouded in clouds, and only renegade bands of light came through. The women were all dressed in black or dark gray and wore scarves to cover their hair. The children were gathered in a circle, all holding late-blooming purple asters. The girls Mia’s age sang a song Evangeline had taught them about a blackbird in honor of the departed soul.

Ivy was wrapped in a white sheet and lowered into the ground. Coffins weren’t used, as the Community believed it was best for the departed to return to the earth from which they came. Everyone could hear Mia sobbing. She’d been sitting up all night outside the Community Center, where the body had been kept, and when the women tending to Ivy, washing her feet and readying her for the world to come, came to chase her away, Mia couldn’t be driven off. Finally, Joel had said, “Leave her be.”

But now, as the grave was being filled in with dark, rocky soil, Mia flung herself upon it, shouting out that her mother didn’t belong there. She belonged in California, far away from here. She pointed a finger at Joel, as if calling down a curse. “You ruined her,” Mia cried. “It’s all because of you.”