Part 6
She didn’t cry. She felt very calm and very clear, the way it is when a long blizzard suddenly stops and you can see every branch.
She put the bottles back, closed the box, and set it exactly where it had been, turned the same way. She laid the little notebook on top. She took nothing from it. She took only the log, and crawled back up into the black garden under the stars, holding the oilcloth notebook against her chest.
She read the log for three nights under the blanket, by the light of a flashlight she’d borrowed from Sam without asking. She was reading her own handwriting. At first it was round and even, then more and more crooked, sliding off the line, and toward the end it was so bad she could barely make it out herself.
Took 6 gal. Good grass on the high meadow. Lupine done blooming. Set 4 wheels.
Dizzy by the cellar, sat down on the ground, spilled the whey. Funny.
Started the tincture. Bitter, puckers your tongue.
Three days in a fog. Counted the gallons four times. Got a different number every time.
Can’t feel the floor with my feet.
Travis brought papers. Signed. Don’t remember what.
L. makes the cheese without me now. Cuts the curd too big, that’s why the wheels weep.
Couldn’t get up today.
After that it was nearly blank, with a few lines of two or three words. The last entry was a month before they put her in the chair for good.
Lord, what is happening to me.
Jules lay in the dark and understood that she was holding something that couldn’t be faked. Nobody writes about grass and gallons and weather month after month and, along the way, about losing the use of their legs, if they made it up after the fact. The log had been written as it happened, by a hand that was weakening in front of your eyes.
Two nights after that she went into the front room.
On top of the wardrobe there lay a blue folder with an elastic band. Jules had known that folder since she stopped walking. It was brought to her and taken away again.
She climbed onto a stool. It was madness to stand on a stool at night on legs that held her a minute at most. She clung to the wardrobe door and breathed through her mouth. The folder was heavy. She sat down with it on the floor between the bed and the wall, turned on Sam’s phone, and photographed it page by page. She photographed and read.
On top was the grant agreement. She had signed that one herself, with a healthy hand, and even remembered the day. It set out the obligations: the farm had to keep operating for at least five years, the money could be spent only on approved purposes, and a report was due every year. A separate line said that if the terms were broken, all of it had to be paid back, and that the owner of the farm was personally responsible.
The owner of the farm was her.
Next came the loan papers. The loan had been taken out that first winter, when she was already walking by holding on to the walls. Borrower: Julianne Pruitt. Amount: $240,000. Purpose: farm expansion.
Jules looked at the signature at the bottom. It was hers. The same flourish, her grandmother’s schooling. Except the letters ran downhill, and the last loop slid down and off to one side, like the signature of someone who has had a paper pushed in front of her while somebody holds her elbow. She remembered the cactus in the teacup and nothing else.
Under the loan agreement was a deed of trust. The land and the house on River Road had been put up as security for the bank: the house with the blue trim, her grandmother’s house, and all the land under it, including the slope where her great-grandfather had dug the cellar.
Jules closed her eyes and sat for a minute.
Next came letters from the bank. At first they were polite; later they weren’t. Past due. A demand to pay the full balance immediately. A notice of default and a warning that the bank would proceed against the property.
Then came a sheet she had to read twice. A purchase agreement. Seller: Julianne Pruitt. On the seller’s line Linda had signed “for Julianne Pruitt,” with nothing attached to show she had any right to. Buyer: Robert Vickers. Property: the land on River Road, zoned residential. There was a note that the buyer had already paid earnest money, and a clause saying that if the sale fell through on the seller’s side, the earnest money would be returned together with an equal amount as damages. The earnest money had been paid in May, three months earlier.
The last document in the folder was printed on good paper, with the kind of margins lawyers’ offices use. A petition for appointment of a guardian and conservator. Petitioner: Linda Pruitt. Respondent: Julianne Pruitt.
Below that, in smooth, careful lines, it said that Julianne Pruitt suffered from a severe disorder of the nervous system, did not get out of bed, could not care for herself, did not understand the meaning of her actions, confused dates, could not manage her property, and needed a guardian. Clipped to the petition were a letter from the clinic in Garnet, a statement about her condition, and a copy of that same discharge summary with the word polyneuropathy on it.
At the bottom, someone had written by hand in pencil: Hearing Sept. 30. Judge assigned. File motion for evaluation at home ahead of time.
Jules photographed the last page, turned off the phone, and sat in the dark.
Now she could see all of it, the way you see the whole valley from the top of the pass. First they made her the owner. Then they took money in her name. Then they took more in her name and put up the only thing she had, which had come from her grandmother. They stopped paying. Now the land had to be sold to a man who wanted it for a lodge, and only the owner could sell it. The owner sat in a wheelchair and was inconvenient. She might wake up one day and ask questions.
So the owner had to be declared incapacitated. Then her guardian, whoever the court appointed, and the court would of course appoint her mother-in-law, could ask the judge for permission to sell the ward’s property in the ward’s best interest. To pay off her own debts, naturally.
Everything fit.
There was one question left, the only one Jules couldn’t get around. What becomes of the owner once the land is sold, the debts are paid off, and the guardian is still the guardian?
She looked at the dark window, and for the first time in all those weeks she thought of her death as something settled and scheduled, like a hearing on September 30…
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