‘‘Guess where she’s got him tonight,’’ he said.
‘‘Where?’’
‘‘At the Opera House.’’
She pulled a face, leaning away but panning him. ‘‘Oh, go on,’’ she said.
‘‘No! That’s right. At the Opera House.’’
She snorted a little bit as she laughed. ‘‘Well, isn’t that a wonder—at the Opera House.’’
‘‘He’s changed, our Gabe.’’
‘‘But what about all those rumors that he beat up Elfred and she was seeing both of them?’’
‘‘Aw, Ma, come on, what do you know about Elfred Spear? Put that all together with some new divorced woman coming to town and figure out what Elfred would try.’’
‘‘With his own sister-in-law?’’
‘‘That wouldn’t stop Elfred.’’
She thought for a minute. ‘‘So Gabriel was defending her.’’
‘‘Same as I’d have done for Aurelia if it had been her. And I’ll tell you something—it better not ever be her or I won’t leave Elfred alive. I’ll finish him off for good, the randy bastard.’’
They sat for a while, judging Elfred and Roberta Jewett. Finally Maude pushed up and said, ‘‘Well, I might go over there tomorrow and put some ginger creams in Gabriel’s cookie jar, see if that housekeeper wants a few slicers for his supper.’’
Seth studied her back as she braced it and tried to get the kinks out. ‘‘Guess it got too late for weeding,’’ she said. ‘‘Gnats might not bother anymore, but the mosquitoes will.’’
The Jewett-Farley clan attracted plenty of gawkers at the Opera House that night. During intermission Gabriel bought them all lemonade, and they stood beneath the lobby chandeliers sipping, watching people’s glances carom away as if everyone in the place weren’t whispering about them.
One couple came to greet them: Elizabeth and Aloysius DuMoss. They crossed the lobby and Elizabeth made a show of extending her hand to both Gabriel and Roberta.
‘‘Good evening, Mrs. Jewett . . . Gabriel . . . I see you have both of your families out tonight. Hello, girls.’’
They all chorused a hello, and she said, ‘‘Mrs. Jewett, may I have a quick word with you?’’
She led Roberta aside and got straight to the point. ‘‘Forgive me for intruding on your evening, but I thought you should know . . . there’s a movement afoot to bring up this unpleasantness about you at the school board meeting Monday night. I hear you threw Alda Quimby off your front porch this afternoon, so the battle lines are drawn.’’
‘‘That was fast. I only tossed her off about three hours ago.’’
‘‘The new party line.’’
‘‘Oh . . . that.’’
Elizabeth reached out and gripped Roberta’s forearm imploringly with her gloved hand. ‘‘Listen to me. Don’t let them cow you, and don’t be scared. They’ve got no power to do this. It’s all been caused by a bunch of gossiping women leaning on their husbands and putting bugs in their ears. They’ve got no right! No right at all!’’
Roberta was stunned by Mrs. DuMoss’s ferocity.
‘‘Perhaps not, but they’re doing it anyway, and no matter what I might have threatened, I don’t have the money to hire a lawyer to advise me of my rights.’’
‘‘You don’t need money. If it should come to that, I have money, and I would be the first one to come to your aid.’’
‘‘You? Why, Mrs. DuMoss!’’
‘‘Please . . . Elizabeth.’’
‘‘Elizabeth. Why, I’m speechless. Why ever would you make an offer like that? And what would your husband say?’’
‘‘He would be the first to say, ‘Go ahead, Elizabeth.’ ’’
‘‘But why? You scarcely even know me.’’
Elizabeth squeezed Roberta’s arm somewhat harder, then released it. ‘‘I know enough. And we won’t let them get away with it.’’
The last act of the play was lost on Roberta. She kept remembering Elizabeth DuMoss’s words and wondering what in the world had prompted them. She wondered about the school board meeting and if she would be summoned to it, or if they simply would go ahead gossiping about her while she wasn’t even there. In her view, all they were doing was gossiping, if what Elizabeth said was true and they had no authority to threaten having her children taken away.
When the play was over they all rode home in Roberta’s motorcar, and the girls were starving, as usual, so Roberta made popcorn and said, avoiding the front porch swing, ‘‘We’ll be in the backyard. Come on, Gabriel.’’
Outside the grass was heavy with dew and the lights from the kitchen windows slanted across the lawn. They could hear the girls’ voices from around the kitchen table, and smell the marigolds that were blooming near the pump as they passed it and headed for the deep shadows beneath the elms.
Gabe tugged on Roberta’s hand and turned her around. ‘‘Now tell me what Elizabeth said.’’
‘‘She said I shouldn’t be scared, and that she’d fight the school board with me, and that they have no right to do what they’re doing, and that if it means hiring a lawyer, she’ll pay for it herself to stop them. But she didn’t tell me why. Gabe, she hardly knows me.’’
‘‘Elizabeth is a fine woman. Her word carries a lot of weight in this town.’’
‘‘But why would she do such a thing?’’
‘‘I don’t know.’’
He drew on her hand and she fell against him, flinging her arms around his shoulders. ‘‘Oh, Gabe, this has been the most mixed-up day. All day long at work I was planning how I was going to come home and get all cleaned up the way you like me, then I was going to tell you I’d marry you, only when I got home that Quimby woman was on my porch, and then I never got my bath taken and I never got my hair washed, and now all of this talk about the school board has just robbed this whole night of all its magic.’’
‘‘Hold it a minute. Back up to the part about you marrying me.’’ He settled her against him with his arms locked low across her spine. ‘‘Did you mean that?’’
‘‘Oh, Gabe, how could I not marry you? We’re practically married already, the way the girls spend time together, and the way we’re always back and forth at each other’s houses. Besides that, Rebecca told me this morning that I’m much more in love with you than I realize, and that I’m too independent for my own good.’’
‘‘So are you going to marry me or not?’’
‘‘Yes, I am.’’
‘‘Well . . .’’ He let out a gust of breath. ‘‘That took you long enough.’’
‘‘But I don’t want that damned school board to know it. If anything comes of this inquiry, I want to fight it on my own merit as a mother, not by crawling to them and asking their mercy because I’m going to be married, with a man to take care of me from now on.’’
‘‘Rebecca’s right. You are too independent for your own good.’’
‘‘First I beat the school board, then we let the news out, okay?’’
‘‘Roberta,’’ Gabe said, frustrated, ‘‘what does it matter?’’
‘‘It matters, Gabe. By now you should know me well enough to realize that it does matter to me.’’
‘‘But why do you have to be so stubborn?’’
‘‘I promise I won’t be about everything. Just about this. Please, Gabriel.’’
He sighed and said, ‘‘All right, Roberta, we’ll do it your way.’’ His hands dropped from her waist and she felt cheated out of the romantic spirit that should have accompanied the last few minutes.
‘‘Gabriel,’’ she said, capturing his hand as he pulled away. ‘‘I’m sorry I ruined the moment when I accepted your proposal. I had it planned much differently.’’
He acted a little sulky, so she carried his hand to her mouth and kissed it. ‘‘Gabriel,’’ she whispered, ‘‘come on . . . don’t be mad. Aren’t you even going to kiss me?’’
‘‘Well, hell, we wouldn’t want the school board to find out,’’ he sa
id.
In the dark she grinned at his childishness and took it as a challenge.
She drew on his hand and crooned, ‘‘Gabriel?’’
He let himself be dragged back to her, but still didn’t take her in his arms. With his back to the house he said, ‘‘How many faces are looking out the kitchen windows?’’
‘‘None. But if you won’t kiss me, I’ll kiss you. It’s all right . . . just stand there passively and I’ll show you. That one goes there . . .’’ She put his right hand on her waist. ‘‘And that one goes there . . .’’ And his left arm around her back. ‘‘And these go there.’’ Putting her lips on his, she hove against him and hugged him melodramatically.
He freed his mouth to say, ‘‘Roberta, I swear—’’
‘‘Swear it later,’’ she said against his mouth. ‘‘Right now I want to give that school board something to talk about.’’
Seventeen
Roberta received no summons to the school board meeting, but if she was going to be talked about, she was going to be there. A frailer spirit might have cowered, but cowering would have been greater cause for shame than being scrutinized in public for one’s mothering, for which Roberta had no reason to apologize. At seven-thirty P.M., when the school board convened in the central auditorium of the high school for its last meeting before the fall school term, Roberta was present. So were Gabriel and his brother, Seth and Seth’s wife, Aurelia, as well as most of the members of the Greater Camden Ladies’ Tea, Quilting and Benevolent Society, a number of teachers, and Elizabeth and Aloysius DuMoss, whose charitable contributions to the school board had, in 1904, helped build the very building they were meeting in. Other nosy townspeople who’d gotten wind of the contretemps between the board and Roberta Jewett came also, hoping to spice up their lives with additional fodder for gossip.
For some reason Roberta failed to fathom, Alda Quimby acted as spokesperson for the board. After Mr. Boynton had called the meeting to order and the board had discussed some mundane school business, the chairman quietly deferred to Mrs. Quimby, who clamped her hands together on the tabletop and glanced past Roberta’s shoulder without ever meeting her eyes.
‘‘Mrs. Jewett . . . now, if we might ask you a few questions regarding the issues brought to our attention by certain members of the Benevolent Society . . .’’ Alda cleared her throat and Gabriel squeezed Roberta’s hand.
‘‘Ask anything you want,’’ Roberta replied from the second row. ‘‘Do you want me to come up there and face the gallery as if I were testifying in court?’’
There was a visible amount of sheepish shifting on the chairs up front.
‘‘That won’t be necessary. You can stay where you are.’’
In the back of the hall a group of young people who had been expressly forbidden by their parents to attend the meeting quietly opened the door and slipped inside to stand along the rear wall. Roberta’s children were there, and Isobel, of course; Shelby DuMoss and the Ogier boys, plus a cross section of others ranging in age from nine to sixteen who had, at various times, lounged around the Jewetts’ front porch or gone on nature hikes up on Mount Battie, eaten boiled lobsters in the front yard or put on plays or gone clam digging or gathered around the piano to sing while Roberta or one of the girls pounded the keys. The last three to enter—later than the others—were Marcelyn, Trudy and Corinda Spear.
Alda Quimby noted their arrival and stalled for a moment, glancing at her fellow board members, who conveniently kept their eyes averted.
Alda pursed her lips and began again. ‘‘Mrs. Jewett, you moved here, I believe, this past spring.’’
‘‘That’s right,’’ Roberta said, loud and clear, so everyone in the hall could hear.
‘‘And you came from Boston, where you had recently gotten a divorce.’’
‘‘That’s right. Is that a crime in the state of Maine?’’
Mrs. Quimby glanced at her constituents, but none of them offered any help. They were all studying the tabletop.
‘‘No, it’s not. So when you moved here you bought the old Breckenridge house and fixed it up with the help of Mr. Farley.’’
‘‘Yes.’’
‘‘And you secured work as a traveling nurse, employed by the state.’’
‘‘That’s right. I’m a graduate of the preparatory nursing course at Simmons College in Boston.’’
‘‘So you travel around the countryside in an automobile which—’’
‘‘Which I purchased from Mr. Boynton here. Hello, Mr. Boynton, it’s nice to see you.’’
Boynton turned as red as a boiled lobster and looked as if his collar was going to pop off.
‘‘So your job as public nurse takes you away from home from early morning until sometimes late at night.’’
‘‘Some days.’’
‘‘During which time your children fend for themselves.’’
‘‘My children are sixteen, fourteen and ten and have been taught to be self-reliant. Yes, they fend for themselves when necessary.’’
‘‘Your house, Mrs. Jewett, has become rather a gathering spot for other young people of Camden, has it not?’’
‘‘I guess you could say that.’’
‘‘Where they are allowed to stay past suppertime and into the late hours of the night, whether there is any supervision there or not.’’
From the back of the hall a young voice called, ‘‘Why don’t you ask us those questions?’’
Other young voices added, ‘‘Yeah, why don’t you ask us what we do there?’’
‘‘And what Mrs. Jewett does with us.’’
‘‘And how much fun we’ve had on her front porch this summer doing stuff that nobody else in this town ever thought of teaching us.’’
Roberta’s head had snapped around, as had Gabe’s and every other one in the room.
‘‘I told them they were not to come here,’’ Roberta whispered.
‘‘It’s their lives, too, Roberta,’’ Gabe replied, low.
‘‘But what if the subject of Elfred comes up?’’
‘‘I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see.’’
The children were marching boldly down the center aisle between the rows of wooden folding chairs, led by Rebecca. ‘‘We’ve got some things we want to say before this goes any farther. If you adults can speak up, so can we.’’
‘‘Children are not allowed at school board meetings!’’ Mrs. Quimby shouted above the clatter of footsteps as the children headed straight for the front of the hall.
‘‘At our house we’re allowed to speak. Why shouldn’t we here, when it’s my mother you’re accusing?’’ Becky fearlessly led her legion to battle, speaking in an orator’s voice that had gained a sense of drama from all the plays she’d been putting on since childhood. ‘‘Everyone in this room should be lucky enough to have a mother like mine, then we might have more open minds and less bigotry right here at this very moment. Don’t think we don’t know what kind of things you whisper behind her back just because she’s divorced. Well, the best part of our lives began when she got rid of our father.’’
Lydia chimed in. ‘‘All he ever did was go away for weeks at a time and never even come home at night.’’
Susan added, ‘‘He only came home when he ran out of money. Then he’d take it from her and leave again.’’
‘‘So we were all really happy when my mother got divorced,’’ Becky said, ‘‘and she has a job that we’re all very proud of, too.’’
‘‘She’s a nurse, and she helps people,’’ Lydia told everyone.
‘‘And she owns her own motorcar and she runs it herself, which most women would be afraid to do.’’ That was Susan.
‘‘But our mother’s not afraid of anything.’’
‘‘Not even of you. She wouldn’t have had to come here tonight to answer your questions, and neither would we . . .’’ Rebecca’s glance took in her cohorts. ‘‘But we thought you should know what we do at our house.’’
/>
Isobel stepped forward. ‘‘Before Mrs. Jewett came here, I was a really lonely girl who didn’t have many friends or pastimes I was interested in. You all know my mother is dead, so I didn’t have anyone at home after school and during the summer days either. Then I met Susan and Becky and Lydia and their mother . . . and everything changed. I guess the first thing we did together was put on Hiawatha. She let us use her front porch and roll the piano right next to the front door—’’
‘‘And make any costumes we wanted . . .’’ Shelby DuMoss led a roundelay of remarks that fell from any child who wished to speak. Even the three Spear girls chimed in.
‘‘And props . . . gee, my mother wouldn’t let us make a mess like that on our front porch!’’
‘‘Then she let us put on the play for our parents.’’
‘‘Only not many came.’’
‘‘But we put it on at school, didn’t we, Mrs. Roberson?’’ Becky turned to find her teacher in the crowd. In row four, Mrs. Roberson stood up. ‘‘They certainly did, at my and Miss Werm’s invitation, for the entire student body. And it was very well done indeed. If any of you thought the performance was originated and rehearsed at school, you stand corrected. It was all a product of the children’s own ingenuity. Miss Werm and I attended the performance on Mrs. Jewett’s front porch and saw immediately how the children were encouraged to take part in some very healthy activities there. Of course, we heard about them in school, too.’’
Miss Werm stood up. ‘‘Not only drama, but music as well. And I believe I heard something about nature walks that she conducted.’’
‘‘Oh, yeah! She took us up Mount Battie and we identified trees and collected insects and she’d recite poetry.’’
‘‘At school we never liked poetry before, but when Mrs. Jewett taught us, it was about stuff we could understand.’’
‘‘It’s always fun at her house because everybody laughs there.’’
‘‘And nobody tells us to be seen and not heard.’’
‘‘And there’s always something to do.’’ These remarks were made by the Spear girls.