American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,33

when the town was first built, I think. They were dead wrong, of course.” Mrs. Benjamin takes a breath. “My God, I’ve just about used up all the air in here, haven’t I? And heaven knows there wasn’t much to start with.” She glances at Mona, sensing an audience, and asks, “Are you interested in the town’s history much, dear?”

At first Mona wants to say no, she isn’t. Small-town history is the same all over. Yet this is not just any town: this is her mother’s hometown. She feels an unexpected duty to hear more of this place, to give its history context and color in her head, and perhaps doing so would color in a bit of her mother, too. She might even learn why her mother was here, and why she left. “You know what, I think I’d enjoy that,” she says.

“Excellent. You must come around tomorrow and have lunch with me and the rest of the girls. It’ll serve as a good greeting from all of us. Now, don’t get the wrong impression—they are not all old hens like me. Some of them are sprightly young things, like yourself. And I assure you, I keep my house in much better order than I do my office. I’ll be curious to hear what you think of my tea.”

Mona glances down at the cup of stinking brown swill. She is speechless at the idea of drinking it.

“Do you know what the secret ingredient is?” asks Mrs. Benjamin, and her eyes grow wide and her voice a little soft. Somewhere a clunking air conditioner gets louder, building to a moan.

“No,” says Mona.

“It’s resin,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “The blood or pitch of a pine. You find it while walking in the woods, usually. All the trees will be hale and hearty, but then you’ll see one that will have a ragged wound, or some unsightly bulge. The tree will look a little bent, perhaps, or its leaves will have an orange tint to them. That is because the tree is dying, you see. It is bleeding out. The bulges are what I prefer, their resin is white or yellow and is quite viscous. It looks almost like butter. It gives such a good taste to the tea. Of course, it is pretty solid stuff. They use it to make torches, after all. You have to dissolve it in a little bit of wood alcohol… it’s the only way to get it down.” She smiles, and Mona sees her teeth are small and amber-brown, just like the eyes of the goats and deer around her, and they glisten queerly in the faint light of the basement. “Perhaps I’ll make you some. It makes the rest of the day go so much better.”

“I guess I can see that,” says Mona, who suddenly wants nothing more than to get away from this strange place filled with cabinets and dead things and the perfume of wood alcohol and pitch.

“Well, I won’t hold you up,” she says. “I am sure you want to see the house. Run along, and I’ll look forward to hearing all about it later.”

“All right,” says Mona. She begins backing away, papers clutched tightly in her hands.

“Good day,” says Mrs. Benjamin, and she laughs quietly, as if enjoying some private joke, and she returns to her work, muttering and humming to herself in several clashing octaves.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The careful striae of small towns. Invisible boundaries, reflecting pay grade, church attendance, model of home. Blue-collar neighborhoods with open garages packed to bursting; houses deeply set in wooded copses, accessible only by winding driveways—the upper crust, surely; then packed, denuded, Puritanical homes, white and harsh and cauterized. The value of the cars (all American) fluctuates wildly from street to street. Crowds of children at play burst out of hedges, then disappear like flocks of pigeons wheeling over cityscapes. In all yards and at all corners, people wave constantly, at everything and everyone, hello hello and how d’ye do, and how d’ye do again.

And there, just on the corner ahead, below a big, leaning spruce, is a low adobe home she’s seen before, though last time it was rendered in the yellow hues and dusky shadows of instant film taken decades ago.

Mona pulls up in front of her mother’s house. The sense of déjà vu is overpowering. She sits in the car for a while, just staring at it. She knows she has never been here, but she can’t help but feel as if she has,