American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,61

disturbed. He’s held her as she’s cried before, but not like this, arms limp and eyes wide open as she talks into his lap in a monotone voice.

There is the sound of singing from the other side of the lake. Miss Tucker has hobbled out of her cabin and is standing on the dock with a lantern, singing a tuneless little reel. There is a splash from the center of the lake, a bit of froth stirred up—perhaps by the wind, perhaps by something else—and he sees the old woman stoop and hold something just above the waters. Perhaps a fish? A hunk of meat? He isn’t sure. There is another splash, and a moan from somewhere near the dock, and she stands back up and wipes her hand on her dress. But now her hand is empty, and she is smiling out at the waters with the fondness of a trainer observing the antics of a well-behaved pet.

“What I would give,” says Gracie, “for an arrangement as simple as that.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Mona discovers that her house’s attic is stuffed full of boxes, and over the next few days she sorts through them all, trying to see if their contents can tell her more about her mother. Many of them seem to be from the family who lived here before, but every once in a while she comes across a document or artifact of her mother’s that urges her on. And as she works and lives her life in this town, she begins to understand Wink a little more, or she thinks she does.

Wink is a sunny place, but you never have to go far to find a welcoming porch, or the shade of a pine, or a cool shelf of rock. There you can sit and watch the midday sun turn honeyish and dusky, and soon the streets will echo with the sound of children and the clatter of bike wheels, and people will begin venturing out to knock on neighbors’ doors with pitchers of iced tea or lemonade or martini in their hands.

Wink is a place where no vehicle ever seems to go faster than thirty miles an hour. The cars drip and slide through the neighborhood lanes with the gentle pace of raindrops weaving down window glass. There just isn’t any need for a rush; nothing is far away, and no problem would ever require you to hurry. If you’re late, everyone will understand.

And all the cars in Wink are American. Maybe it’s because it’d be tough to get them serviced here if they were anything else, but the residents all take a special pride in it, regardless.

Everyone freely walks across everyone else’s lawn, and sometimes people even hop a fence; in Wink, this is totally understandable, because what’s mine is yours, my good fella, and maybe I wanted you to swing on by so you could see how my roses are doing, or to have an Old Fashioned and a game of pool.

Wink is a place of evening baseball and dazzling sunsets and the cheery hiss of dance music through an idling car’s radio. It is a porch place, a place of folding chairs and electric fans and crystal glassware, and pitchers and pitchers of carefully prepared beverages. It is a place of homegrown tomatoes and crawling ivy and roses heavy and drooping with blooms. People get dressed up to go to the diner in Wink: it’s where all the official meets and greets are held, where everyone goes to hear the news, where you take your folks out when you want to treat them to a good time and a good piece of meat.

Wink is a quiet place, a laughing place, a place where you can throw down a towel anywhere you want and stare up at the pale blue sky and no one will bat an eye, because it’s always early summer in Wink, and such things are meant to be enjoyed.

Every second is a forever in Wink. Every day is a cool afternoon waiting to happen. And every life is one lived quietly, with your feet up and your sun-dappled lawn before you as you watch the world happily drift by.

Sometimes Mona feels she has come back to a home she never knew she had. But each time she begins to feel this way, she finds herself watching the children.

Of all Wink’s pleasant wonders, it is the mothers and the children Mona studies the most. She watches them as they walk down the sidewalks,