“And she’s a bastard.”
Worse than smarty; mean. When these moods came upon her, a result of lost sleep, it was difficult to know how to handle her. “Lots of children are illegitimate, but it doesn’t mean they’re any less or any worse than we are. People can’t help the circumstances of their birth.”
“She’s still crazy. She hardly ever talks, she mumbles, and when she does talk she says nutty things. And she goes into the woods to trade looks with the boys. And her mother’s a sex fiend.”
Through the doorway, I caught Beth’s eye as it flashed a humorous look at me behind Kate’s back: Has designs on you. “Come and have your Granola, dear.”
“Not hungry.”
“Kate, you’ve got to eat something. I’ve got scrambled eggs and sausage. Honestly, with people—”
“—starving in India; I know.” Kate ambled into the kitchen and I heard a chair scrape the floor as she sat at the table. “What are we having for lunch?”
“Darling, try to think about your breakfast first, huh? We’re having vichyssoise with chopped chives, chicken breasts stuffed with crab—”
“What’s for dessert?”
“Mousse au chocolat.”
“Are there any extras?”
“No. And you’re having fruit cup, anyway. You know what the Widow said about sweets. There are four mousses—two for your father and me, two for the Dodds.”
“Rats.” There was a pause while Kate munched a piece of toast, then: “Daddy, you know what an oracle is?”
“I have an idea—”
“Like they have at Delphi, right? And it tells you things, right? Well, Missy Penrose is supposed to be an oracle.”
“Is she filled with revelation, then?” I managed to suppress my smile by turning it into a yawn.
“Don’t laugh. They really believe it. You know about the Minervas’ barn?”
“Kate,” Beth put in, “that’s just a story; nobody believes it—”
“Sure they do. They really do. Yokels.”
Fred Minerva had been having a run of bad luck, all of which had stemmed, or so the villagers maintained, from his stumbling in the dance at Spring Festival. Soon after, he stepped on a rake and got blood poisoning; then his barn had caught fire in a July electric storm.
“But before it burned,” Kate went on, “he asked Missy Penrose if he should build a cupola and have a weather vane, and she told him, ‘Save wood, save iron.’ She was telling him a cupola and a weather vane would be a waste because the barn was going to burn, and it did.”
“Haven’t they ever heard about lightning rods?” Beth said.
“They don’t have them,” I said. “It’s not permitted. Nor insurance.”
“But it only stands to reason—”
“They’re not interested in reason, sweetheart. It’s the custom.”
“See? Yokels.” Kate put down her fork and went to the refrigerator. Beth said, “Darn, I’ve forgotten the picnic hamper. Now, where did I see it last?” She went out through the hall. Kate was rummaging in the refrigerator freezing compartment.
“Kate, are you happy here?” I said.
“Sure. I guess so.”
“Are you looking forward to school?”
“Um.” She closed the refrigerator and got a spoon from the drawer.
“We can always move back to Seventy-eighth Street.”
“Aw c’mon, Daddy.” She ate for a moment. Then: “You said I could have a horse.” Angry, resentful.
“Sorry, sweetheart, you know what—”
“The doctor said. I know.”
I felt guilty about the horse. Unthinkingly I had promised it before we left New York, not realizing then the serious allergic effects of animals on Kate’s asthma. The doctor in Saxony, who had been treating her, had told us to keep her from direct contact with any four-footed creatures, but the trouble was far more serious than a mere allergy.
Since the age of nine, Kate had suffered from a congenital condition known as status asthmaticus, which continually imperiled her life. After years of treatment, to little effect, we had learned from a new doctor that the symptoms were self-induced, a form of psychosomatic asthma, whose origins had been eventually traced to the trouble Beth and I had had between us six years ago. It was, the doctor said, Kate’s unconscious way of getting even with us. Once, she had almost died, and only the respirator from the fire department had saved her. It became important that she not get overly excited or emotionally upset, either of which conditions was likely to induce another attack. Her last, a week ago, had come as a result of her disappointment about the horse. There was a tantrum, followed by a seizure, and the doctor had to be called over from Saxony.
“It was in the attic.” Beth came in with the picnic hamper. “Kate, open the window over the sink, can you? It’s such a beautiful day out, a real New England day.” She set the hamper on the counter and turned. “Kate! Rocky Road ice cream? For breakfast?”
“It’s just eggs and milk, Mom, just breakfast food.”
“And condensed-milk sandwiches for lunch. You’ll be breaking out in pimples again, and none of the boys will—”
“—look at me. Who cares.”
After making an issue of the ice cream, Beth now chose to ignore it. Anything to avoid a scene; but while the rod was spared, the child was spoiled. I had long since given up protesting.
“What are you going to wear today, dear?” Beth asked brightly.
“This.”
“Blue jeans and a T-shirt? Wouldn’t you like to wear a dress? Something pretty? For the fair?”
“What’s so special about the fair, anyway? Honest, it’s all anyone talks about. Yokels.”
“Kate…” Beth remonstrated gently.
“Do you know they go crazy?”
“Who?”
“The villagers. Moon madness. When the moon’s full, they go dancing in the fields and do crazy things.”
I looked up from my puzzle. “Do they turn into werewolves and vampires?”
“Well, it’s true.” Kate banged her spoon for emphasis. “And there’s a ghost, too.”
“I haven’t heard anything about ghosts,” Beth said.
“There’s a ghost out in the woods—”
“Who told you?”
“Missy Penrose. It comes out at night and eats babies and goes riding down the road on a headless horse—”
I decided Kate’s sense of drama had confused local superstition with Washington Irving. From conversations with Robert Dodd, I had learned that Cornwall Coombe tended to be slightly mythic in its lore, but I had not heard anything about a ghost.
Beth tried to calm Kate, who was prancing around the table making wild moaning sounds and generally imitating a spirit. “Darling, don’t go getting excited now. Go up and put on a dress, please? You’ll look so pretty.”
When she had gone, Beth gave me a brief look and I knew what she was thinking. What are we going to do about her? It was the one thing troubling our existence, and the thing we both felt guilty about.
I could hear the creak of the wicker as she filled the Hammacher Schlemmer picnic hamper. Across the hedge, Professor Dodd’s sun-porch window slid open. In a moment a voice called, “Anyone up over there?”
Beth crossed to the sink and leaned to our window. “Morning, Robert. Lovely day for the fair.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Good morning,” Maggie Dodd called. “Marvelous day. Just listen to that bird.” Maggie was enthusiastic about everything, as if she took it as a personal responsibility that we should like everything about Cornwall Coombe. Yet it seemed to me that though her touch was light, in her own bantering way she was always putting the village down. “How’s the picnic coming?” she asked.
“Just finishing.”
“I think you’re crazy, doing the whole thing yourself. I could have done the dessert, at least.”
“I wanted to. It’s chocolate mousse. How are the martinis doing?”
“
I’m just going to fix them. Ned doesn’t want martinis?”
“Doesn’t like them.”
“I’ll put in some Scotch, then. See you later. I’m going to get Robert’s breakfast.”
Beth turned off the tap, dried her hands, and began wrapping the chicken breasts in foil. Beyond the hedge I could hear Maggie speaking to Robert, then silence, then another voice:
“D’Artagnan trembled.
“‘Certes,’ said Aramis, ‘I do injustice to the beauties of this thesis; but, at the same time, I perceive it would be overwhelming for me. I had chosen this text—tell me, dear D’Artagnan…’”
I recognized what we had come to call the Invisible Voice, the man who had recorded Robert’s talking-books. It was a daily sound that we had become accustomed to, and through the summer I had caught portions of the remainder of Great Expectations, followed by Madame Bovary, and this week The Three Musketeers. Robert was reading his way through the classics.
“Darling, did you say you were going out to sketch?”
“Mm.”
“You’d better hurry; it’s getting late.”
I finished the puzzle, tossed the paper aside, and went from the bacchante room into the kitchen, then started out the back door.
“Wait, Ned.” Beth went to the cork bulletin board, referred to a penciled slip of paper, and did a few rapid calculations. “Have you got some cash? Stop at the Widow’s and pay her five dollars. We owe for eggs and honey. And here—” handing me a paper sack—“take her the rest of the cinnamon buns.” She gave me an uncertain look.
I took the bag, at the same time drawing her into my arms.
“Ned?”
“Mm?”
“Kate—?”
“I know.”
“You don’t know…” Her frustration put an edge to her voice that I seldom heard. “You’re not a mother. You don’t know.”
I held her for a moment, then released her and said, “Don’t worry. It’s going to be O.K.” But I said it with an assurance I scarcely felt.
4
WHEN THE GREAT BACK-to-the-land movement began, Beth had suggested we make a clean break with the past. By mutual agreement we decided that no New York friends would clutter up our guest room, at least until Christmas. Consequently we were both isolated geographically and cut off from our old acquaintanceships as well. Which was not a problem: our parents all were dead, and what friends we might elect to have come and visit could well wait.
Still, though I had never confessed my doubts to Beth, at times I worried. Where were we to fit into this yesteryear place? Apart from the Dodds, whom would we have for friends? How was Kate going to fare at Greenfarms School? Were we crazy, burying ourselves in a one-horse town, where it was necessary to drive way out to the turnpike to find a shopping center or to see a movie, where people still believed that what was good enough for their fathers was good enough for them? How could they talk to me of painting, or I to them of corn?
Therein seemed to lie the answer. When in Rome…Though I had never been intimate with nature, next year I would plant corn. I would plow up the field at the foot of the property and put in corn and beans and tomatoes and early peas. I would get gardening books; I would learn about the soil and how it might produce, even for a city dweller. Formerly a lover of the pavements, now I would be a lover of the earth. There, at the corner of Penrose Lane, on this bright morning of the Agnes Fair, I laid claim to the land, swearing fidelity to it. I felt it was as Beth had said: today was a new beginning.
I turned left onto Main Street and continued in the direction of the Common. The Widow Fortune’s house, several blocks along Main, was almost obscured behind a corn crop so high it hid a man’s hat. I had heard Robert Dodd say the old lady talked to the corn to make it grow, a concept I found fanciful, supposing plants must grow as they chose, or as they received sustenance; but growing because someone talked to them…
I went down the lane at the side of the small, gabled house and into the dooryard, where I set the sack of buns on the back-porch steps, next to a pair of worn shoes. Beside these was a bunch of flowers in a leaky pail. A large black iron pot sat over a smoking fire in the door-yard, the contents simmering and making thick plopping sounds. Savoring the aroma, I discovered other smells, the pungent musk of damp earth, the dusty tang of broken flowerpots and manured trowels, a tinge of fertilizer. Good country smells. Everywhere I looked, I sensed an earthy richness, an appreciation of growing things, plant life and animal life, all of life. There were patches of garden under the window sills and, along the fence, a bed of cabbages, their pale green heads set in perfect alignment, the rows meticulously tended. No weed, I felt sure, would dare show its face under the Widow Fortune’s careful scrutiny.
My eyes traveled along the rows, to discover the old lady herself, kneeling among the cabbages. Oblivious to my arrival, she held herself upright, with bowed head, her hands clasped over her breast, and I guessed she might be praying, though why in a cabbage patch I had no idea. The soft morning light lay about her in a wash of water-color tints, all mist and mother-of-pearl, violet and gray and rose; and observing the motionless form, I thought, Here is someone who appreciates the joys of a solitary contemplation of the day. Presently she lifted her head, and, still not noticing me, she rose, digging her fisted hands in the small of her back to ease it, and scanning the sky overhead, lost in some cloudy reverie. Then, lifting her skirts that she had pinned up for purposes of convenience, she peered at the ground around her and spoke.
“Come, now, slow one, have a bite.” She bent and broke off some cabbage leaves and dropped them beside a large brown stone at her feet. As though by some feat of sorcery, the stone moved. I blinked, then realized it was a large tortoise whose shell resembled a stone. While it proceeded to eat the cabbage leaves, she bent down and spoke to it like a witch to her familiar, then straightened, her black form real and corporeal amid the dissolving mists.
“Good morning,” I called at last. She turned, peering at me through round, silver-rimmed spectacles, waiting for me to approach. “Watch your hoofs,” she said in a forthright tone, “don’t tread on my cabbages.” A sizable woman, she presented a handsome figure, Junoesque in its stateliness: large head, straight neck, full shoulders. Though time had tugged her here and there, causing the neck to sag under the firm chin, her skin was pulled tight and shone with a robust glow over the rosy flesh. How old was she? I wondered again. Age had not seemed to wither her; there was nothing crone-like in her appearance; her constitution appeared firm, her heart stout, and if her teeth were not her own she did not yet walk with a cane.
If someone had driven up at that moment and asked me my first, surest impression of the Widow Fortune, I would have said comfortable and motherly.
“You’re an early riser,” she said briskly.
“‘Carpe diem,’” I quoted, watching where I walked.
“Can’t speak French,” she replied; the merry twinkle in her eye told me she knew it wasn’t French.
“‘Seize the day,’” I translated.
“It’s the early mornin’ that’s got the gold in its mouth, as they say. I like to be up before all the trammel starts.”
When she spoke, it was with a firm authority, a distinct voice that knew what things were about. Listening, she had a gentle, luminous expression, humorous but not mocking.
“Beth sent you some cinnamon buns for breakfast.” I nodded toward the back-porch steps.
“Well, now, that’s neighborly. I’ve got the kettle on; let me put the cow to pasture, and you’ll come and have a cup of tea with me.” It sounded less an invitation than a command performance, and I found myself nodding in accord. Her step was spry as I followed her along a footworn path to the barn, where she disappeared for a moment, then reappeared, herding a large brown-and-white cow into a small pasture, carefully setting in the fence bar to keep the animal out of the corn.
“Brown Swiss.” She spoke with a touch of pride, explaining that the cow, wh
ose name was Caesar’s Wife, was descended from the first herd of Brown Swiss brought from Switzerland to New England almost three centuries before. Caesar’s Wife was the Widow’s treasure.
She led me back the way we had come, stopping to stir the boiling pot with a large wooden paddle. “Hog,” she said briefly, and I watched the pieces of meat and fat rise to the surface. “One of Irene Tatum’s. Slaughtered it myself last week. Most mysterious thing! Hog had two stomachs, if you can believe it.” She gave me a look. “Guess what I found in one of ’em? A collar button.” Her look sharpened, as though testing me. “Wouldn’t you call that an augury?”
“I guess I might,” I said, laughing.
“Sure you would. Anybody would. But what sort?” she asked in a dismayed voice, looking at the sky again. The pig, she went on, had been put down for salt pork, and she had made sausage with her own casings. The leavings went for blood puddings, and now all that remained was the head which was boiling in the pot; that would be for scrapple.
She pulled out the paddle, shook it, and laid it aside. Now she took a splint basket from a peg on the wall and marched to a corner of the garden where she began examining her plants.
“Only a minute,” she called, snipping several sprigs with the large silver shears suspended from her waist by a length of black ribbon. Someone was sure to have iced tea at the fair, she said as I came up behind her, and a sprig of mint always went nice. She held it out for me to inhale its cool fragrance, then cut some more and offered me another sniff. “Pennyroyal. Good for colic.” When she had done, she led me to the back door, took off her boots, and coaxed her feet into the worn shoes. Enjoining me to wipe my feet, she showed me into the kitchen. She laid the basket on the table and indicated a chair where I might be seated. While I put aside my sketchbook and drawing case, she tucked the cinnamon buns in the warming oven, put out a second cup and saucer beside the one already in evidence, poured tea, brought butter from the refrigerator, and a pot of honey.
The kitchen was low-ceilinged, small, and comfortable, and furnished with the clutter of a lifetime. One counter, on which sat a score of green bottles, with a scattering of corks and labels, was a small bottling works. Another held several shallow crocks whose contents looked as if they had only recently come from the oven: the blood puddings she had spoken of. A large tin kettle bubbled merrily on the stove. She spooned some of its contents up, blew on it, then tasted. It was not to her apparent liking, for she made a face, then bustled about, adding a little of this, a pinch of that, until the brew was more to her satisfaction.