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Paige.

Article Excerpt
"They're not going to do anything for him, are they?"

Paige pronounced the word do, as if saying it was due her father, that somebody do something.

Her husband, struck dumb as usual by his wife's suffering, her sense of unease in the world, her unwillingness to accept things as they were, blushed, turned his face from her.

"Somebody ought to do something," Paige said, aware now that she was addressing no one in particular.

Ronnie and June had come to see their father after his stroke, had flown in from San Diego and Newark, June saying her good-byes tearfully, as if on stage, Ronnie standing next to the bed, his knees touching, one set of toes covering the other, as he'd stood when they were children, awkward, like a calf, looking for the eyes of a sister, a nurse, anyone who might make him feel less alone, less bewildered by his father's decline. Then they'd flown away, away from the rich brown soil of the prairie, toward their various coastlines. We'll scatter his ashes at Thanksgiving, sometime soon, was what they said.

They were always flying away, pushing toward the edge of something that didn't belong to them. Paige, on the other hand, had stayed behind, firm and heavy, like a pumpkin, resting on her native soil, had married a farmer, knew she was where she belonged, though their farm was constantly under threat, their lives constantly at the mercy of things beyond their control. To this Paige responded, year after year, with a fury of canning and putting away, followed by another season of planting, growing, picking. She darned socks, chose her groceries carefully, found in every detail some remnant of God's mercy.

She said good-bye to her sister and brother, didn't envy them their...

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