The daughter has made her father seeAnd perhaps...
The daughter has made her father seeAnd perhaps this was all she had ever wanted to doShe has given him sight, the sight to see clear through to that which will never be regularized, to see what you can't see and don't see and won't see until three is added to one to get four
He had seen how improbable it is that we should come from one another and how improbable it is that we do come from one anotherBirth, succession, the generations, history--utterly improbable
He had seen that we don't come from one another, that it only appears that we come from one another
He had seen the way that it is, seen out beyond the number four to all there is that cannot be boundedHe had thought most of it was order and only a little of it was disorderHe'd had it backwardsHe had made his fantasy and Merry had unmade it for himIt was not the specific war that she'd had in mind, but it was a war, nonetheless, that she brought home to America--home into her very own house
And just then they heard his father scream: "No!" They heard Lou Levov screaming, "Oh my God! No!" The girls in the kitchen were screamingThe Swede understood instantaneously what was happeningMerry had appeared in her veil! And told her grandfather that the death toll was four! She'd taken the train up from Newark and walked the five miles from the villageShe'd come on her own! Now everyone knew!
The thought of her walking the length of that underpass one more time had terrified him all through dinner--in her rags and sandals walking alone through that filth and darkness among the underpass derelicts who understood that she loved themHowever, while he had been at the table formulating no solution, she had been roxanne mulberry nowhere near the underpass but--he all at once envisioned it--already back in the countryside, here in the lovely Morris County countryside that had been tamed over the centuries by ten American generations, back walking the hilly roads that were edged now, in September, with the red and burnt orange of devil's paintbrush, with a matted profusion of asters and goldenrod and Queen Anne's lace, an entangled bumper crop of white and blue and pink and wine-colored flowers artistically topping their workaday stems, all the flowers she had learned to identify and classify as a 4-H Club project and then on their walks together had taught him, a city boy, to recognize--"See, Dad, how there's a n-notch at the tip of the petal?"--chicory, cinquefoil, pasture thistle, wild pinks, joe-pye weed, the last vestiges of yellow-flowered wild mustard sturdily spilling over from the fields, clover, yarrow, wild sunflowers, stringy alfalfa escaped from an adjacent farm and sporting its simple lavender blossom, the bladder campion with its clusters of white-petaled flowers and the distended little sac back of the petals that she loved to pop loudly in the palm of her hand, the erect mullein whose tonguelike velvety leaves she plucked and wore inside her sneakers--so as to be like the first settlers, who, according to her history teacher, used mullein leaves for insoles--the milkweed whose exquisitely made pods she would carefully tear open as a kid so she could blow into the air the silky seed-bearing down, thus feeling herself at one with nature, imagining that she was the everlast-419 ing windIndian Brook flowing rapidly on her left, crossed by little bridges, dammed up for swimming holes along tas hermes the way and opening into the strong trout stream where she'd fished with her father--Indian Brook crossing under the road, flowing eastward from the mountain where it arisesOn her left the pussy willows, the swamp maples, the marsh plants; on her right the walnut trees nearing fruition, only weeks from dropping the nuts whose husks when she pulled them apart would darkly stain her fingers and pleasantly stink them up with an acid pungencyOn her right the black cherry, the field plants, the mowed fieldsUp on the hills the dogwood trees; beyond them the woodlands--the maples, the oaks, and the locusts, abundant and tall and straightShe used to collect their beanpods in the fallShe used to collect everything, catalog everything, explain to him everything, examine with the pocket magnifying glass he'd given her every chameleonlike crab spider that she brought home to hold briefly captive in a moistened mason jar, feeding it on dead houseflies until she released it back onto the goldenrod or the Queen Anne's lace ("Watch what happens now, Dad") where it resumed adjusting its color to ambush its preyWalking northwest into a horizon still thinly alive with light, walking up through the twilight call of the thrushes: up past the white pasture fences she hated, up past the hay fields, the corn fields, the turnip fields she hated, up past the barns, the horses, the cows, the ponds, the streams, the springs, the falls, the watercress, the scouring rushes ("The pioneers used them, Mom, to scrub their pots and pans"), the meadows, the acres and acres of woods she hated, up from the village, tracing her father's high-spirited, happy Johnny Appleseed walk until, just as the first few chanel cambon fake stars appeared, she reached the century-old maple trees that she hated and the substantial old stone house, imprinted with her being, that she hated, the house in which there lived the substantial family, also imprinted with her being, that she also hated
At an hour, in a season, through a landscape that for so long now has been bound up with the idea of solace, of beauty and sweetness and pleasure and peace, the ex-terrorist had come, quite on her own, back from Newark to all that she hated and did not want, to a coherent, harmonious world that she despised and that she, with her embattled youthful mischief, the strangest and most unlikely attacker, had turned upside downCome back from Newark and immediately, immediately confessed to her father's father what her great idealism had caused her to do
"Four people, Grandpa," she'd told him, and his heart could not bear itDivorce was bad enough in a family, but murder, and the murder not merely of one but of one plus three? The murder of four?
"No!" exclaimed Grandpa to this veiled intruder reeking of feces who claimed to be their beloved Merry, "Nof and his heart gave up, gave out, and he died
There was blood on Lou Levov's faceHe was standing beside the kitchen table clutching his temple and unable to speak, the once-imposing father, the giant of the family of six-footers at five foot seven, speckled now with blood and, but for his potbelly, looking barely like himselfHis face was vacant of everything except the struggle not to weepHe appeared helpless to prevent even thatHe could not prevent anythingHe never could, though only now did he look prepared to believe that manufacturing a superb ladies' dress glove in replica miu miu quarter sizes did not guarantee the making of a life that would fit to perfection everyone he lovedYou think you can protect a family and you cannot protect even yourselfThere seemed to be nothing left of the man who could not be diverted from his task, who neglected no one in his crusade against disorder, against the abiding problem of human error and insufficiency--nothing to be seen, in the place where he stood, of that eager, unbending stalk of a man who, just thirty minutes earlier, would jut his head forward to engage even his allies
The combatant had borne all the disappointment he couldNothing blunt remained within him for bludgeoning deviancy to deathWhat should be did not existImprobably, what was not supposed to happen had happened and what was supposed to happen had not happened
The old system that made order doesn't work anymoreAll that was left was his fear and astonishment, but now concealed by nothing
At the table was Jessie Orcutt, seated before a half-empty dessert plate and an untouched glass of milk and holding in her hand a fork whose tines were tipped red with bloodShe had stabbed at him with itThe girl at the sink was telling them thisThe other girl had run screaming out of the house, so there was just the one still in the kitchen to recount the story as best she could through her tearsOrcutt would not eat, the girl said, MrLevov had started to feed MrsOrcutt the pie himself, a bite at a timeHe was explaining to her how much better it was for her to drink milk instead of Scotch whiskey, how much better for herself, how much better for her husband, how much better for her childrenSoon she would be having grandchildren and it would be better for gucci men wallet them