‘‘Actually, I think I’m pretty ordinary, but it’s nice to hear you say that anyway. Thank you, Gabe. And thank you for beating up Elfred. I surely hope it doesn’t get you into a bunch of trouble.’’
He used their joined hands to knock a mosquito off his temple. ‘‘I don’t think it will, because underneath it all, Elfred’s a coward, and if he accuses me publicly, he’ll also have to explain why, publicly, and I don’t think he’s got the guts to do that.’’
Just then Isobel called, ‘‘Dad, come on! The mosquitoes are biting me!’’
‘‘Me, too,’’ he said to Roberta, and dropped her hand. ‘‘Well, good night. I’ll try to stop by tomorrow night and see how you are.’’
‘‘I’ll be here,’’ she said, and moved to the top of the steps as he descended them. He passed her girls bounding back to the house, hounded by mosquitoes, too.
‘‘Night, Mr. Farley!’’ they chorused.
‘‘Good night, girls. Take good care of your mother now.’’
The girls mounted the steps in two leaps and Susan shrieked, ‘‘Come on, let’s get inside before they eat us alive!’’
In her bedroom ten minutes later, Roberta hung Caroline Farley’s worn, stained lavender muslin maternity dress on a hook behind the door. Strewn around the room were her own discarded clothes from as long ago as a week. But the care she disdained for her own possessions she lavished on the dead woman’s garment as dutifully as if Caroline herself were watching: She centered it carefully on a hanger, and touched the stains gently before her hand trailed away and fell to her side.
Oh, Gabe, she thought, what are we going to do?
Removing the dress left Roberta naked. She put a hand to her lower belly and closed her eyes, hating Elfred Spear. Glancing down at her stripped limbs, she felt a wave of despair and the repressed urge to shed tears for herself. She had never been vain, not even remotely. Indeed, bodies, to Roberta, were merely the vessels housing the soul and mind and spirit. They needed fuel to power those souls and minds and spirits, as well as occasional maintenance, but beyond this, Roberta thought little of the human body’s physicality. Looking down at herself she saw very clearly her mediocrity— size, texture, shape. All showed the history of a woman who had borne three children and spent a lifetime of hard work with little time for self-care. But her flesh— plump, unfirm though it was—was her own, no one else’s to use as he wished.
She had no full-length mirror in the room, only a small rectangular one with a chipped plaster frame, hanging above a bureau. Passing it, she caught a faint glimpse of her breasts, and hurried to cover them with nightclothes, as if Elfred might still be lurking.
Even when she had donned her faded summer nightgown and tried to think of tomorrow instead of today, the thick-throated urge to cry persisted. Two opposing wills urged her. One said, Cry. The other said, Don’t cry. She was struggling between the two, straightening out her unmade bed when Rebecca knocked and said, ‘‘Mother, may I come in?’’
Roberta grabbed the sheets and rubbed both her eyes before calling, ‘‘Sure, Becky. Come ahead.’’
Becky slipped in and hovered near the door, showing an uncharacteristic reserve. Backed up against it, she stared at her mother and attempted a flicker of a smile that failed dismally.
Roberta sat on the edge of her bed, trying to appear unemotional. ‘‘Still up?’’
‘‘I’ve been waiting.’’
Oh, Becky, I’d hoped you wouldn’t understand. I wanted to spare you that. Roberta’s features dissolved into an admission of sadness. Too quietly she admitted, ‘‘I guess I knew that.’’
A stretch of silence brought the night closer and sharpened the need for truth. Where to go from here— one woman of thirty-six who knew too much about the world in which men and women met and clashed; one of sixteen who only suspected. One who wanted to protect, one who wanted to know.
Rebecca found the courage to speak first. ‘‘You didn’t tell everything, did you?’’
The terrible lump formed in Roberta’s throat again and brought with it an overwhelming sorrowfulness. Her lips shaped the word no, but it failed to emerge as she wagged her head sorrowfully from side to side.
Rebecca slipped across the room and sat on the opposite side of the bed at a diagonal from her mother. She was barefoot and dressed in a white nightgown. Her hair had been braided in a coronet that day—she’d been experimenting with hair since Ethan Ogier had been paying court—and it formed a shock of loose squiggles, like unfurled rope fanning her shoulders. When she sat, she unconsciously pressed back against the footrail as she had against the door, but her mother understood: Tonight her daughter would grow up in a way neither of them wanted.
It took a while before Becky could say, ‘‘You don’t think I know about it, but I do. About what Uncle Elfred did to you.’’ Her eyes were big with the certainty of it. ‘‘He did, didn’t he?’’
Forever after, Rebecca would never be the innocent girl she had been, but Roberta would not lie to her daughter. She nodded slowly, twice.
‘‘I know what it’s called, too. I’ve heard the boys say it.’’ Becky’s voice held tinges of both defiance and fear.
‘‘It’s a terrible word.’’
‘‘I knew it had to be because the boys were whispering when they said it, and when they caught us girls listening they got mad and told us to get out of there.’’ Tears appeared in her eyes and she looked down at her nightgown and the outline of her knee beneath it. A sudden outrage replaced the horrified wonder in her voice and she made a fist on the bedspread. ‘‘How could Uncle Elfred do that to you? It’s so horrible.’’
‘‘Yes, it is. It was. But I couldn’t let the younger girls know.’’
Rebecca nodded sadly.
‘‘Elfred’s been making innuendos to me ever since I got here. He’s a sly, insidious lecher, the absolute worst kind. Always does it when Grace’s back is turned. Poor Grace, married to a hypocrite like that.’’
‘‘Does she know what he did to you?’’
‘‘Gabriel says so. He didn’t try to keep it a secret why he was beating Elfred to a bloody pulp right in his own front yard. And Grace was right there watching. She heard what Gabe accused him of.’’
‘‘Will she divorce him like you did our dad?’’
‘‘I don’t know, Becky. My suspicion is that she’ll think I lured her poor beleaguered husband on, that it was all my fault, just because I’m divorced. She and Grandma are in cahoots on that.’’
‘‘But how could she think that?’’ Rebecca grew indignant. ‘‘She knows you’d never do that! You’re a good person, and you’ve always taught us to be good, too.’’
‘‘Ah, Becky . . .’’ Roberta slumped back, partially on her pillows, partially against the headrail of the bed. ‘‘If only the rest of the world were as fair-minded as you.’’ She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘‘It’s not though.’’ They opened again and she appeared relaxed, idly plucking at the chenille as if to pick it from its backing. ‘‘And that’s the reason I told the girls they can’t defend me, because there are going to be people in this town who take Elfred’s side. He’s a man, after all, and men somehow get excused from perpetrating vicious acts like this. Women get blamed—that’s just how it is.
Especially divorced women.’’ She rolled her head to face Rebecca. ‘‘But you and I know the truth, and Gabriel knows, and that’s all that really matters to me. Anything others might say means little or nothing to me. I’m only sorry if it hurts you girls, especially if it makes your sisters realize exactly what happened.’’ She hauled herself upright again. ‘‘That’s one of the aftereffects of this that I hate Elfred all the more for. For robbing my babies of their innocence. Look’’—her hand lifted and fell—‘‘here you are, having this discussion, when you should be totally unaware of any such thing, living your young life without this blight on your memory. Oh, Becky . . . I wish I could undo it for you.’’
At her mother’s
sudden surge of emotionalism Becky got up and hurried around the bed. ‘‘Oh, Mother, I wish I could undo it for you.’’ Seated at Roberta’s side, Rebecca embraced her as if she were the mother and Roberta the daughter.
Roberta allowed herself some tears . . . but few. She and Rebecca had always been close, but even closer since her divorce. As the oldest, Becky had uncomplainingly assumed the responsibilities that fell her way, often playing surrogate mother in Roberta’s absence. Tonight, her sweet concern brought peace and healing; the tender pat of her hand on Roberta’s shoulder made both of them feel much better.
Against Roberta’s hair, her daughter said, ‘‘Isobel’s dad was awfully good to you though, wasn’t he, Mother?’’
Roberta drew back and held both of Becky’s slim hands.
‘‘I was so glad to have him there. He’s really a very kind man.’’
‘‘I felt bad when you two fought.’’
‘‘So did I.’’
‘‘And I’m glad you’re back together again.’’
‘‘So am I.’’
‘‘So is Isobel!’’
They found enough levity for smiles, then Rebecca divulged, ‘‘Isobel told me that she wishes her dad would marry you.’’
‘‘Did she?’’ Roberta smiled softly, picturing Isobel, whom she, too, loved. ‘‘I’m afraid that won’t happen though. We’re just too different.’’
‘‘What kind of different?’’
‘‘Oh, you know. He’s fastidious, I’m messy. He lives by a schedule, I hate clocks. He thinks you have to sit at a table with a fork and knife, and I think tables were made for resting your heels on. Also, his family objects to me because I’m divorced.’’
‘‘Oh.’’ A beat passed before Rebecca asked, ‘‘But would you marry him anyway if he asked you to?’’
‘‘I don’t know. Would you want me to?’’
‘‘Well . . . not for us—I mean, we get along just fine without him, and we have lots of fun together, just the four of us. But you seem happier when you’re with him.’’
‘‘I didn’t realize that.’’ After some thought Roberta added, ‘‘Well, maybe I did realize it, because when I saw him at school that day and he didn’t speak to me, I felt just terrible. And after that I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I don’t know, Becky . . . once you’ve been married and it hasn’t worked, you get sort of scared of trying again. And like you said, we four Jewetts get along pretty darned well on our own, don’t we?’’
Becky reached out and closed two buttons at Roberta’s throat. ‘‘But he beat up Uncle Elfred for you, and let you wear his wife’s dress, and he let Isobel start coming here again whenever she wants to. I think he loves you, Mother. I think he loves you very much and he just doesn’t know it yet.’’
With that, Rebecca sedately rose and kissed her mother on the top of the head. ‘‘Don’t you worry about anything. I’m going to take extra good care of you from now on, and whether he marries you or not, I think Mr. Farley will, too.’’
Mr. Farley, at that moment, was contemplating the same thing: taking care of Roberta Jewett. He was standing in his bedroom in his summer underwear, discovering some gravel on the coverlet where her head had been. Goddamned Elfred Spear, he ought to have his balls cut off! Gabe reached down and rubbed a couple of grains between his fingers, then dropped heavily to the edge of the bed, sitting there a long while, picturing what that bastard had done to Roberta. And she, so full of pluck and life, never hurting a flea. Truth was, she was one of the most loving people he’d ever met. Good to her kids. Good to his kid. Good to him. Probably really good to the sick people she took care of all over the county as well. It was just no damned fair that a woman like that should fall prey to slime like Elfred. Ask anybody who knew him and they’d say that Elfred was sure a fine businessman, and owned a big beautiful house, and had himself a real nice family. And couldn’t that man make money, hand over fist! Apart from how ‘‘good’’ Elfred did, they might chuckle about his neverending peccadilloes. But did they stop him? Did anybody ever try to stop men like Elfred?
No. Instead, they gossiped about women like Roberta because she had a little white piece of paper that said she didn’t have to be married anymore to a no-good sponger who had never taken care of her or his kids to begin with! Had her husband ever loved her? Hard to believe a man like that had much love in him. If he did he would have been home more and kept her happy instead of taking up with other women and leaving her to support those kids alone.
Poor Roberta, she’d had a hell of a life, always scrabbling for a living, never complaining about it. But now . . . what if she had one more? What if that sonofabitch Elfred had left her pregnant? Wouldn’t that give the good matrons of Camden grist for the next twenty years’ gossip? And those three nice girls of hers would pay a price, too. Lord, Lord, it just wasn’t fair.
Gabe was no expert, but he’d done some figuring about how long it had taken from the time Elfred raped her until the time he left her alone to bathe, and it seemed to Gabe that no matter what she’d done after he closed the door, nature had had plenty of time to take its course.
He supposed she must be lying in her bed worrying about the same thing. What if? What if?
He sighed and rose like an old man, straightening muscle by muscle, then flipping down the coverlet off his pillow. He turned off the light, stretched out for the night and folded his hands beneath his head.
But all he could think about was Roberta, Roberta, Roberta beside him where she’d be safe from men like Elfred for the rest of her life.
She was still asleep the following morning when the telephone rang downstairs, blending into some weird dream she’d been having. Bolting up, she felt her pulse hammering as she sat in her rumpled bed, trying to sort out why the school bell was ringing at home, and where the girls were on Saturday. Oh! It was Friday, and judging from the angle of the sun, she should be on her way to work.
The phone rang again.
‘‘Oh my,’’ she mumbled, scrambling out of bed, noting the alarm clock said seven-thirty. She took the stairs with her hands on both walls, breaking her downward plunge, and grabbed the receiver off the prongs as the bell jangled for the fifth time.
‘‘Hello?’’
‘‘Morning, Roberta.’’
‘‘Oh . . . Gabe.’’ She rumpled her hair and squinted at the bright kitchen window. ‘‘What are you doing calling at this hour?’’
‘‘Wondering how you’re doing today.’’
‘‘I just woke up and I’m going to be late for work, but other than that I’m doing all right, Gabe. Really I am.’’
‘‘Well, good. Something I want to talk to you about, but not with Central listening in. You suppose you could meet me at noon someplace?’’
‘‘At noon?’’
‘‘Or whenever would be best. I thought you might be able to get away for a bit after you check in at your Rockport office. I’m doing a job down that way myself, and we could maybe meet, say, oh I don’t know . . . out by the south end of Lily Pond off Chestnut Street?’’
‘‘Sure, I guess I could.’’
He gave her some specific directions and they agreed on eleven-thirty.
‘‘See you then,’’ she said.
‘‘Ayup,’’ he said, ‘‘see you there,’’ and hung up. She stood for a few seconds with her hand on the receiver after she’d hung up, wondering what he wanted. She remembered his concern yesterday, his protectiveness, but that was what anyone would do in such a situation, it wasn’t the normal Gabriel. Well, she’d know soon enough, and in the meantime she was later than ever.
When she arrived at their meeting place his truck was pulled off the road into the shade beside a clearing that led down to the pond. Around the edge of it water lilies spread the surface with plate-sized leaves, dotted with big yellow blooms. Across the water houses were visible, but on the near side the residences were secluded in the woods, and only a rock pile broke the stretch of open land betwe
en two sections of thick, green forest. Someone had scythed the wild grasses and left them to dry in the sun. The heady scent of shorn clover made ambrosia of the air. To Roberta’s left, a split-rail fence divided the woods from the field, and on its far side a small herd of black and white cattle were chewing their cuds and twitching their tails. Two of them watched Roberta as she got out of her car, shaded her eyes and waved to Gabe.
He was propped against a waist-high boulder forty feet away, wearing a straw hat and chewing a piece of grass. When she waved, he boosted himself up and walked back toward her. She enjoyed watching his lanky movements, the relaxed stride of his legs in his blue denim pants and the slight riffle of breeze against the rolled-up sleeves of his white shirt. They met in the middle of the clearing, where grasshoppers caromed off the hem of her uniform and landed on the toes of his worn leather boots.
‘‘Smells good out here,’’ she said when they were still ten paces apart.
‘‘Clover,’’ he said.
‘‘Peaceful, too.’’
They came abreast of each other and stopped. ‘‘So peaceful I realized too late that you might not be very anxious to meet another man out in the middle of nowhere with nobody else around.’’
‘‘Oh, Gabe, I’m not scared of you.’’
‘‘Well, I hope not.’’
The bright midday sun reflected off her white clothes and made her squint, even with the sun at her back.
‘‘Pretty hot out here in the sun,’’ he said. ‘‘Come on, let’s go sit in the shade by the truck.’’
‘‘All right.’’
She turned and walked beside him through the stubble of clover and meadow-grass, lifting the fallen bits of green with the toes of her white nurse’s shoes, as he did with the toes of his boots, stirring its perfume, which grew heady beneath the hot, hot sun. In the distance, one of the cows mooed as if asking where they were going. The woods formed a rippling green wall as they moved toward it.