Anything Is Possible (Amgash #2)

by Elizabeth Strout

even in a town like Amgash, their extreme poverty and strangeness making this so.

The oldest child, a man named Pete, lived alone there now, the middle child was two towns away, and the youngest, Lucy Barton, had fled many years ago, and had ended up living in New York City.

All those years she had lingered after school, alone in a classroom, from fourth grade right up to her senior year in high school; it had taken her...

then he thought—as he more often did—of Lucy, who had left for college and then ended up in New York City. She had become a writer. Lucy Barton.

But Lucy Barton had troubled him the most. She and her sister, Vicky, and her brother, Pete, had been viciously scorned by the other kids, and by some of the teachers too.

He always remembered that hug, because she had been so thin; he could feel her bones and her small breasts, and because he wondered later how much—how little—that girl had ever been hugged.

It seemed the older he grew—and he had grown old—the more he understood that he could not understand this confusing contest between good and evil, and that maybe people were not meant to understand things here on earth.

Tommy had walked out behind one of the barns and seen Ken Barton with his pants down by his ankles, pulling on himself, swearing—what a thing to have come upon! Tommy said, “None of that out here, Ken,” and the man turned around and got into his truck and drove off, and he did not return to work for a week.

he felt every day of his life that he should have killed himself in return.”

“My father—” And here Pete unmistakably had tears in his eyes. “My father was a decent man, Tommy.” Tommy nodded slowly.

“And so he went in and turned on those milking machines that night, and then the place burned down, and I never, ever forgot it, Tommy, it was like I knew he had done it. And I know you know that too.”

“Son”—the word came out involuntarily—“you mustn’t think that.”

I think he went back eventually, but he never liked you after whatever happened had happened.”

“I found him playing with himself, Pete, pulling on himself, behind the barns, and I said that was something he couldn’t do there.”

“And you knew too,” Pete finally said. “And that’s why you stop by here, to torture me.”

“Pete,” Tommy called. “Pete, listen to me. I don’t come here to torture you. And I still don’t know—even with what you just told me—that it’s true.”

“I’m just telling you, Tommy. He wasn’t supposed to go and do those things in the war that he had to do. People aren’t supposed to murder people. And he did, and he did awful things, and awful things happened to him, and he couldn’t live inside himself, Tommy. That’s what I’m trying to say. Other men could do it, but he couldn’t, it ruined him, and—”

But it came to him now: He had never seen the woman smile. Pete was gazing at the ground.

for it felt as private in its anguish as what the boy’s father had been doing out behind Tommy’s barns that day.

Oh, it was the mother. It was the mother. She must have been the really dangerous one.

But the truth is, I don’t know if my mother loved us or not. I don’t know about her in some big way.”

as he said this that it was not true. But did that matter? It didn’t matter.

The truth was that he did not really want to visit this poor boy-man seated next to him ever again.

A few months later Sebastian was gone. Having met in their late thirties, they’d had only eight years together. No children. Patty had never known a better man.

Angelina Mumford getting out of her own car; she was a middle school Social Studies teacher, and her husband had recently left her. Patty gave a big wave, and Angelina waved back.

“That’s a nice name, Lila Lane.” The girl said, “I was supposed to be named for my aunt, but at the last minute my mom said, Fuck her.”

“She’s a bitch. She thinks she’s better than any of us. I never even met her.” “You never met your aunt?” “Nope. She came back here when her father died, my mother’s father, and then she went away and I’ve never met her. She lives in New York and she thinks her shit doesn’t stink.”

Fatty Patty never did it with her husband, Igor, never did it with anyone. People say you’re a virgin.”

“Get out of here right now, you piece of filth.”

“Your aunt is Lucy Barton,” Patty said. She added, “You look like her.” The girl stood up and left the room.

“Seriously, Patty. The fact that Lucy Barton’s niece is such trash should come as no surprise, I mean really.” “Why do you say that?” “Because. Don’t you remember them? They were just trash, Patty.

I remember Lucy being with him. It made me shudder. It still does, honestly. His sister’s name was Dottie. A scrawny girl. Dottie and Abel Blaine.

“Have you seen Our Mother who is not yet in Heaven recently? How’s her dippiness factor these days?”

“I don’t care if she takes it,” Linda said, and Patty said she knew that. Then Patty said, “Are you in a bad mood or anything?” “No, I’m not,” Linda said.

Charlie Macauley, and Patty almost walked out when she saw him because he was the only man, other than Sebastian, that she loved. She really loved him. She had liked him for years without knowing him too

His wife was notably plain, and thin as a stick.

These were the very cornfields—in their summer fullness—where, by the age of fifteen, she had allowed boys to thrust themselves against her, their lips huge-seeming, rubbery, their things bulging through their pants, and she would gasp and offer her neck to be kissed and grind herself against them, but—really?—she couldn’t stand it she couldn’t stand it she couldn’t stand it.

Her mother had become as little as Patty had become big. This is what Patty thought each time she saw her mother now.

Confusion seemed to appear on her mother’s face; she shook her head slowly. “Did you get dressed today?” Patty asked.

she was already gaining weight from her antidepressants, and she had once stopped a wedding from happening only weeks before she was to be married.

that he had been taken as a boy again and again and again by his stepfather? Sebastian could hardly stand being with people,

Patty, I love you, but I cannot do it. I just cannot do that, I wish I could. And she said, “That’s okay, I can’t stand it either.”

She noticed that he was aroused when this happened, and she was always sure to touch only his shoulders until he calmed down.

“Oh, she was nice. She just wasn’t much. I think she came from Mississippi originally. She married that Mumford boy, he was rich, and then she had all those girls and plenty of money.”

going to ask if her mother remembered

I wanted to kill him, Sebastian had told Patty. I really did want to kill him. “Of course you did,” she had said. And I wanted to kill my mother too, he said. And Patty said, “Of course you did.”

“I saw Lucy on TV a few years ago. Hot shot. She wrote a book or something. Lives in New York. Smork. La-de-dah.”

She did not say anything about the medicine that was supposed to slow dementia.

“You turned out the best,” her mother said at the door. “It’s too bad your be-happy pills added that weight, but you’re still pretty. Are you sure you have to go?”

Because she knew—she almost knew—that when she died she would be with her father and Sibby again.