‘‘Actually, I rather enjoyed it. Your girls sing very well.’’
From upstairs Rebecca called, ‘‘Mother, who’s here?’’
‘‘It’s Mr. Farley!’’ she called back.
‘‘What does he want?’’
‘‘I don’t know.’’ Then to him, ‘‘What do you want, Mr. Farley?’’
He boosted off the door frame and came in. ‘‘Thought you could use a little help with the heavier boxes, maybe take a look at your stovepipes, make sure they don’t have any squirrels’ nests in ’em.’’
‘‘No, thank you.’’ She marched over to the mountain, selected a box and hefted it down. ‘‘We’ll manage.’’
He came and lifted it out of her hands while they were still in midair, his height advantage making it effortless for him to pluck it from her.
She turned and gave him a dirty look. ‘‘Haven’t you got some work to do somewhere?’’
‘‘Ayup.’’
‘‘Then why aren’t you there?’’
‘‘Got my own business, me and my brother. He’s working at a job out by the Lily Pond and he’ll get along fine till I get there. Where do you want this?’’
The carton held her cast-iron frying pans. He handled it as if it contained nothing more than a thimble keep.
‘‘In the kitchen.’’
He took it there and she followed, watching as he set it on the floor beside the iron cookstove.
‘‘Look, Mr. Farley.’’ She lowered her voice. ‘‘I heard you whispering and tittering with my brother-in-law upstairs. I think I have a pretty good idea of what that was all about, so why don’t you just leave the unpacking to me and my girls and take your leave? I’m not the kind of woman you think I am, and you’re not going to gain any advantage by hanging around here acting indispensable. I’ve got my piano inside. That’s all I needed you for, and I thanked you for that.’’
He straightened his spine by degrees, angling her an amused expression.
‘‘Why, Mrs. Jewett, you do me an injustice,’’ he said, brushing his palms together.
‘‘No, Mr. Farley, you do me an injustice. I told you before, I’m not a stupid woman. I know men and their ways, and I know perfectly well what preconceived notion the word divorced brings to their minds. Shall we at least agree that I’m bright enough to have figured out what you and Elfred were whispering about upstairs?’’
Farley considered her for some time. By Jove, he’d never met a woman like her before, and if truth were told, he wasn’t sure why he was hanging around here. Nevertheless, he decided an admission of his first mistake would put them on friendlier terms.
‘‘Very well. Please accept my apology.’’
‘‘No, I will not.’’
Farley couldn’t decide whether to chuckle or gape. Never having had an apology flung back in his face before, he gaped. And thrust his chin forward as if he’d just swallowed a horsefly. ‘‘You won’t?’’
‘‘No, I won’t. Because it was rude and embarrassing what you did, and since I have no wish to further our acquaintance, I choose not to accept your apology.’’
A few beats passed before he muttered, ‘‘Well, I’ll be damned.’’
‘‘Good,’’ she said, turning away with her nose in the air. ‘‘That would please me very much.’’
She disappeared into the living room, leaving him to gape further. He whipped off his cap, scratched his head (which didn’t need it), looked around the kitchen, felt his curiosity about her gather steam, hooked the cap back over his temple (lower than ever) and followed her.
From the doorway between the two rooms he watched her clamber onto a packing crate and reach for a bandbox from high on a stack. The back of her skirt was a wrinkled mess, and the back of her hair was just plain awful. When she leaned forward the heels of her black high-top shoes lifted off the carton, and they, too, were scuffed and worn down so there was no sole left on them. He assessed her and made no more offers of help.
‘‘I’ll be going then.’’
‘‘Yes, please do.’’
‘‘So do you not want me to do the work on the house then?’’
‘‘Suit yourself. That’s between you and Elfred. But if you do it, I’ll want it understood, you’re to knock before you enter and stop staring at my hindside the way you’re doing right now. I’m not interested, Mr. Farley. Not in you or any man, is that understood?’’ She stepped down with the bandbox and faced him.
Off came his cap again and he scratched his head in a frenzy of astonishment. ‘‘Good God afrighty, woman, you carry a big stick, don’t you?’’
‘‘Yes, I do. But you haven’t lived in my shoes, so don’t judge me, Mr. Farley.’’
‘‘You’d better get one thing straight.’’ He reset his stance and pointed at the bridge of her nose. ‘‘Women around here don’t talk like that. And if you want to have any friends, you better not either!’’
‘‘Talk like what?’’
‘‘You know what I mean! Like . . . like that! Like you were!’’
‘‘Oh, you mean women around here pretend that men aren’t whispering about them in salacious undertones behind their backs?’’
‘‘Look, I apologized for that!’’ He pointed again, but was beginning to get rosy in the face.
‘‘And then added insult to injury by standing in the doorway staring at me as if I were Lady Godiva. Shame on you, Mr. Farley. What would your wife think?’’ She turned away, put the bandbox on the piano stool, lifted off the lid and let it dangle from its silk cord. From inside she lifted a black straw hat with a pink rose, and from beneath that a stack of folded scarves.
All the while he stood behind her, ill-tempered and embarrassed, prodded by her chastising into actually wondering what his wife would have thought. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then back again before defending himself with the most paltry excuse.
‘‘I don’t have a wife.’’
‘‘I’m not surprised,’’ she returned, standing with her back to him while tying a scarf on her head backward.
When it was in place Roberta turned to find him right where he’d been for too long, looking as though he’d like to clunk her a good one and send her reeling against the wall.
‘‘What are you still doing here, Mr. Farley?’’
‘‘Damned if I know!’’ he spouted, and clumped through her parlor, across the porch and down the rickety steps into the rain. The last she saw of him was a flap of his brown oilskins as he veered left and stomped away.
‘‘Good riddance,’’ she mumbled, and went to work.
Gabriel Farley was a Mainer, born and bred, accustomed to the whims of the weather, but the damp and rain aggravated him that day. Well, maybe it wasn’t all the damp and rain doing the dirty work. It was pretty hard to get a sassy woman like that out of your mind, especially when she had you pegged dead to rights about your motives in nosing around her to begin with. Especially when you’d excused your actions with a misguided remark like I haven’t got a wife.
Damn it anyway, why had he said that?
He’d been ramming around most of the afternoon with his jaw set, glowering, before his brother Seth finally said, ‘‘What’s eating you today?’’
‘‘Nothing.’’
‘‘Something with Isobel?’’
‘‘Nope.’’
‘‘Ma?’’
‘‘Nope.’’
‘‘Well, what is it, then?’’
‘‘Mind your own business, Seth.’’
Seth continued measuring a piece of cross-bucking for the wide double doors he was making. He and Gabe were building a shed/garage for one of the rich summer families who had homes in Boston and cottages here. A workbench of plywood and sawhorses stretched down the center of the newly erected structure. Seth bent over it, slashed a mark, stuck the thick gold carpenter’s pencil behind his ear and whistled softly between his teeth.
He knew Gabriel. Best way to get it out of him was to q
uit asking.
He whistled some more while Gabe worked on setting a small window, going outside into the rain and using his hammer, then coming back inside to do more of the same.
Pretty soon Gabe said, ‘‘I’m going to be starting a job for Elfred Spear tomorrow, so I’ll leave you to finish this one.’’
‘‘What’s Elfred got going?’’
‘‘Well, it’s not exactly Elfred’s job, he’s just the one who’s paying me to do it.’’
‘‘Oh?’’
‘‘It’s the old Breckenridge house.’’
‘‘You’re kidding! That old wreck?’’
‘‘I went over and looked at it this morning. Structurally, it’s pretty sturdy. And it’s got a slate roof.’’
‘‘Old Sebastian was crazier than a coot by the time he died. I can about imagine what the place looks like inside.’’
‘‘Ayup, it’s a mess all right, but nothing that can’t be fixed with some soap and water and plenty of paint. Needs a couple of new windowpanes, and plenty of puttying around the old ones. Foundation needs some mortar between the stones here and there, but I can handle all that pretty easily. I’ll be tearing off the whole front porch and putting a new one on. Might need you when I get to that.’’
‘‘Just let me know when.’’
‘‘Yup.’’
They worked awhile before Seth asked, ‘‘So who’s Elfred carrying on with these days?’’
Gabriel kept on sawing. ‘‘He didn’t say.’’
‘‘I feel sorry for that wife of his.’’
‘‘What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.’’
‘‘Listen to yourself, Gabe. The man makes a fool of her, and him with three daughters to boot.’’
‘‘You saying you never stepped out on Aurelia?’’
‘‘Y’ damned right that’s what I’m saying. We might have our little tiffs now and again, but I wouldn’t do that to her.’’ Seth worked a minute or so before asking, ‘‘You aren’t saying you stepped out on Caroline, are you?’’
‘‘Good God, no. Not as long as she drew breath.’’
‘‘Then how can you excuse it in a rounder like Spear?’’
Gabriel dropped his tools, rubbed his eyes hard and sighed. He’d been unhappy with himself all day long, and damned uncomfortable about what had happened up at the old Breckenridge house. ‘‘Hell, I don’t know, Seth. I guess I’m in a state right now. I’m just so sick and tired of this living alone.’’
‘‘You’re not living alone. You’ve got Isobel.’’
Gabe stared at his brother in silence, then walked to the unfinished doorway and stared out at the rain. Caroline had never minded the rain like most people do. She had often worked right out in it.
‘‘Yes, I know. I’ve got Isobel. And the older she gets, the more she reminds me of her mother.’’
Seth abandoned his work and crossed the shed to stand near his brother. He crooked a hand over Gabriel’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. ‘‘Comin’ close to the time she died, is that it?’’
‘‘Ayup. Every year at this time it gets bad.’’
The rain had drilled a trough below the edges of the new eaves. It made tiny explosions as it fell into the puddles there. Things smelled musky with renewal—the earth at Gabe’s feet, the new-milled lumber above him. Out on the little lake known as the Lily Pond, frogs were singing as if they absolutely loved this weather. They were probably out there laying eggs. Robins were back and had nests built already. The other day, right outside their shop downtown, he’d watched a pair of mating loons doing a splendid, fluttering ballet on the surface of the water, like toe dancers. Spring—heartless spring—it was always difficult to get through spring without Caroline.
‘‘You want to know how bad it got today?’’
Seth dropped his hand from Gabe’s shoulder and waited. Gabriel slipped his palms beneath his armpits and propped his weight against the unfinished door opening, continuing to stare out at the rain. ‘‘I ran into Elfred at the wharf, and this woman was with him— his sister-in-law, actually. Turns out she’s divorced.’’
‘‘Divorced! Aw, now, Gabe, you can do better than that!’’
‘‘Just let me finish. Turns out she’s divorced and she’s got three kids and she’s moving into that mess that Sebastian Breckenridge left behind when he died. I heard that and I went hotfootin’ it up there to see if she could use a carpenter.’’ Gabe shook his head, a little abashed, now that he thought about it. ‘‘I mean, I was up there faster than a goose on a June bug. But she caught on to me, and let me tell you, Seth, she put me in my place. It was embarrassing.’’
Seth whapped Gabriel on the shoulder and started to laugh.
‘‘So that’s why you’re in this puckered-up mood.’’
With the toe of his boot Gabriel pushed a couple of wood chips off the new pine floor into the puddle outside. ‘‘Yeah . . . I guess. Truth is, she made me feel like a jackass.’’
Seth went back to work. He hammered a diagonal onto the cross-buck door, then started searching out a length of cedar for another. He found a long onebysix, picked up one end and eyed its length. ‘‘So what’s she like?’’ he inquired offhandedly.
Gabriel boosted off the door. ‘‘Hell, she’s a mess.’’ He came back inside and resumed work, too. ‘‘Clothes, hair, house—you name it, everything a mess. Even her kids. They look like a bunch of orphans.’’
‘‘So what are you standing here fussing about her for?’’
‘‘I don’t know. Because I’ve got to go back there tomorrow and face her again, I suppose.’’
‘‘Well, hell . . . maybe she won’t be there if the house is that bad. Maybe she’ll decide to live someplace else.’’
‘‘Oh, she’ll be there all right. Probably be sitting there playing her piano and singing her head off in the middle of all that filth. I tell you, Seth, it was the damndest thing you ever saw. I went back there after we helped unload all the drays, and there she sat, playing the piano as if there weren’t a thing out of place. And her kids were singing upstairs! You’d have thought they were living in the Taj Mahal. But you know what? They’re a happy bunch. And one of those little girls, the youngest one? Well, I want to tell you, that one’s got a head on her shoulders. Nearly talked my head off. And language! Whew, I’ve read newspaper publishers that didn’t use language that fancy. You know what she said? She said that she and her sisters wrote an opera. In Latin, mind you!’’
Seth stopped working and gazed over in wonder. ‘‘How old you say this girl was?’’
‘‘Ten.’’
‘‘Ten. Feature that.’’
‘‘Ayup, ten.’’
They thought for a while, imagining themselves at ten.
Seth said, ‘‘Hell, I could barely wipe my ass by the time I was ten.’’
Gabriel laughed.
‘‘I seem to remember that. Sometimes I had to wipe it for you.’’ It was nearly true. Gabe was four years older than Seth, and his mother had often relied on him to be her helping hand.
Gabe’s thoughts returned to the precocious Lydia. ‘‘How do you suppose a girl gets that smart by the time she’s ten?’’
‘‘I don’t know.’’
‘‘The way she talked, her mother teaches them a lot.’’
‘‘That’d be the . . . ah . . . the woman with the tacky hair and clothes.’’
Gabriel bent a wry glance at his brother. ‘‘What’re you gettin’ at, Farley?’’
‘‘This’s the most you’ve talked about any woman since Caroline died, you know that?’’
Gabe gave out a throaty sound, neither grunt nor chuckle. ‘‘You’re demented, man. I told you, she’s got a tongue that could fillet a flounder at six paces, and she’s not any too ladylike.’’
‘‘Let me get a look at her first, then I’ll tell you whether I’m demented. You’re the one who said you went sniffing after her ’cause you heard she was divorced.’’
‘??
?Well, maybe I did, but she’s about as lovable as a water moccasin, so don’t go spreading any rumors, you got me?’’
‘‘Yessir!’’ Seth squelched a grin. ‘‘Gotcha!’’
The rain let up toward evening. Gabriel stowed his wooden tool caddy in the back of his Ford C-Cab, got in, set the spark on retard and went through four more steps before getting out to crank the truck. It coughed to life, and he lifted a hand in farewell as he got back in.
Going through all that rigmarole to start the truck brought the woman back to mind. She’d said she intended to buy a motorcar. Now that was just plain silly. First thing she’d do was break her arm trying to start it. And how could she remember everything she needed to know before she even gripped the crank?
Besides, what would people say? Ladies just didn’t do things like that.
But then, in spite of how she protested, he guessed she was no lady.
Why in tarnation was he even wasting time thinking about her?
He’d think of something else.
It was a gol-darned pretty evening. Off behind Ragged Mountain the sky was clearing: You could tell by the peachy glow that lit its rim, though above it the clouds were still streaky gray-green like an old lobster’s back. But they were in motion, lifting, dissolving in advance of a clear day tomorrow.
He took Chestnut down into town, then swung over to Bayview where his shop was sandwiched between the street and the rocky shore. He left the truck running on the street while he went inside. The doors were locked but Terrence, their clerk, had left some notes tacked to the wall beside the wooden telephone box: Mrs. Harvey had come in and was wondering how much they’d charge to replace a broken chair rung; the minister from the Congregational Church would like to speak to him about heading up a committee for cemetery cleaning; his daughter had stopped by after school and said she was just wondering what time he’d be home for supper; the Opera House was interested in having some stage props framed up for an upcoming production.
He dropped the notes on a dusty rolltop desk, picked out some price lists and catalogs and locked up again before climbing back in the truck to head home.
He lived on Belmont Street in a tall, narrow white house with a small shed out back to which he’d added a lean-to for his truck. From the shed a stepping-stone walk led to the house and was hooded by a white pergola just outside the kitchen door. He passed beneath it on his way through the yard, glancing at the canes of the climbing roses to see if any sprouts showed. They were all he’d kept of Caroline’s flowers, and he carefully protected them with straw each fall, kept them pruned and fertilized all summer. The rest of the garden he’d long ago allowed to fall victim of the grass, and by now, after seven years, he couldn’t even tell where the garden had been. Sometimes this saddened him, for when he thought of Caroline, he thought of her in a sunbonnet, wearing gloves, doubled over a hand cultivator, caring for the flowers she’d loved so much.