He stepped into the kitchen and was met by a reedy girl who had inherited his height and big feet, but little more of him. She was all Caroline’s—from the buggywhip thinness to the paprika hair. Though not a classically pretty girl, she had her pretty points. Her skin was as fair and unflawed as a sliced potato, but unlike that of most redheads, hadn’t a single freckle. Her green eyes tilted up slightly at the corners and were framed by brows and lashes so pale they might have been illusions. Unfortunately, her ears even stuck out like Caroline’s; she kept them covered at all times, out of self-consciousness.
‘‘Hi, Daddy. I thought you’d never get here. I’m starving.’’
‘‘You’re always starving. What’s for supper?’’
‘‘Fish cakes and boiled potatoes.’’
Fish cakes again. Mercy, he got so tired of fish cakes. But she did the best she could after school, more than a father should expect. Often he felt guilty that she had to spend so much of her precious free time on duties that a wife and mother should have handled.
‘‘How was school?’’ he inquired, hanging up his oilskins on wall pegs beside the door.
‘‘Boring. Same old thing—Miss Tripton lectures, Mrs. Lohmer scolds, and Miss Bisbee treats us like children who can’t be trusted for a minute while she’s out of the room. Honestly, she still appoints a room monitor when she leaves!’’
‘‘Well, not long now till the end of the term.’’
He poured water from a teakettle and washed up while she put the fish cakes on two plates, dumped potatoes into a bowl, poured milk for herself and coffee for him. Drying his hands with a towel, he shuffled over and stood beside the table while she filled his cup.
‘‘I met some new girls today.’’
‘‘Girls? You mean my age?’’
‘‘One of them.’’ He tossed the towel aside, and the two sat down and started smashing potatoes and spreading them with butter. ‘‘The other two were sixteen and ten.’’
‘‘Well, who were they? How come they aren’t going to school?’’
‘‘They will be pretty soon. They just moved into town and they’re cousins of the Spear girls.’’
‘‘What were they like?’’
‘‘The youngest one was smart as a whip. I talked to her the most. I think they’re all pretty musical. Other than that, I don’t know much about them, except they looked rather like ragamuffins.’’
‘‘Where’d you meet them?’’
‘‘At the steamship office, actually, then I found out they were moving into the old Breckenridge house, so I decided I’d go up there and see if I could scare up a little business.’’
‘‘Oh, yuck, nobody’d catch me living in that boar’s nest. They must be awfully poor if they have to have a house like that.’’
‘‘I think they are.’’
‘‘Is their dad going to work at the mill?’’
Gabriel took a swig of coffee, giving himself time to think.
‘‘Ah, no, actually . . . there is no dad. Just a mother.’’
‘‘Oh.’’ Isobel grew thoughtfully somber. Because she had been reared primarily by Gabriel and recalled so little of her mother, it was difficult for her to imagine growing up without a dad. ‘‘Poor kids.’’
‘‘I think they do all right. They certainly don’t lack for imagination, and they seem to be a rather happy troop—singing, playing the piano, writing operas.’’
‘‘Writing operas!’’
‘‘That’s what she said—the little one, that is. Her name is Lydia. She said she and her sisters wrote an opera in Latin.’’
‘‘My gosh! They must be brains!’’
‘‘I thought the same thing. Well, in any case, you’ll probably be meeting them soon.’’ He pushed back his plate. ‘‘Thanks for making the fish cakes, honey. Have you got studies tonight?’’
She made a face. ‘‘Orthography and civil government. We’re having examinations in both of them tomorrow.’’
He stood, picking up his stacked plates and cup. ‘‘Then leave the dishes for me. I’ll do them later on, but first I have to work on an estimate for the Jewetts.’’
‘‘The Jewetts?’’
‘‘That’s their name, the new girls. Rebecca, Susan and Lydia Jewett.’’
Isobel shrugged and turned away. ‘‘I’ll probably meet them at school as soon as they get there. I’ll see if I like them or not.’’
‘‘Ayup. Well, I’ve got that estimate to work on, so you get your books and I’ll leave half of the table for you.’’
They spent the next two hours sitting beneath the new electric light in their white-painted kitchen while the teakettle breathed a thin whisper of song. It was a comfortable room with a pressed-tin ceiling, beadboard wainscot and a curious combination of outdated and modernized equipment, evidence of the owner’s ability to upgrade and remodel the house by himself. The lights were electric, the range wood-burning. The sink had a drainpipe but no faucet, only a pump. The oak table and chairs, fashioned by Gabriel’s own hand, dated back to the year of his marriage, but the glassdoored cabinets were a recent addition and were tricked out with clear glass knobs, at Isobel’s request.
A fluffy caramel-colored cat came and shaped herself into a loaf on a third chairseat underneath the table, tucked her paws and squinted into a doze. The rattle of her purring joined the music from the teakettle while night pressed its dark face to the windows. Three times Gabriel got up and refilled his coffee cup, then resumed working. Once Isobel got up and found herself two molasses cookies. When she had finished munching and studying, she closed her book and looked up to find her father staring into space, his pencil idle.
‘‘Daddy?’’
‘‘Hm?’’ Gabriel started from his reverie. For some odd reason he’d been thinking about that Jewett woman. ‘‘What?’’
‘‘Maybe you should give up and go to bed. You’re staring.’’
‘‘Am I? Well, I’m not tired. Just wool-gathering. Listen, I’ve got this estimate pretty much finished and I have to give it to Elfred Spear. You don’t mind if I take it over there now, do you?’’
‘‘Tonight?’’ she said in surprise. ‘‘It’s kind of late, isn’t it?’’
Gabriel checked his pocket watch. ‘‘Nine. That’s not too late.’’ He tucked the watch away, pushed back his chair, tamped his estimate together and reached for a light jacket. ‘‘Rain’s stopped. Guess I don’t need my oilskins. I won’t be gone long.’’
She stretched, bending backward on her chair, both arms raised. ‘‘Okay, good night, Daddy.’’
‘‘See you in the morning.’’
He went out without touching or kissing her, thinking how grateful he was to have her and worrying about two, or four, or six years up the road when she’d probably get married and leave his house.
Disturbed by the prospect of loneliness, he put it from his mind.
Outside, the grass was squishy between the steppingstones, and the sky had cleared. Pinpricks of stars put bright holes in the deep blue velvet overhead, and somewhere spring peepers were fluting. Passing beneath the rose pergola he thought as he often did, Miss you, Caroline.
Under the lean-to it smelled of petroleum and the packed earth floor. Blackness surrounded him as he felt his way along the left running board to the front of the truck where he started the water drip into the carbide crystals of the headlamps. He swung open the lenses and lit the lamps, then did the same for the sidelights. Inside the truck he went through the regimen of adjustments—spark lever, throttle, emergency brake, choke wire and key—before finally getting out to crank the engine. Back in the driver’s seat, he pulled down the spark lever to the running position, put the throttle back up, pulled the emergency brake halfway up and maneuvered the three foot pedals until finally he was rolling forward out of the open-ended shed.
Ridiculous of that Jewett woman to think she could do all that!
What was it that kept putting her back in his mind? He’d bee
n thinking of her when Isobel roused him, and now again, though he could not for the life of him understand why. Probably just the motorcar, he thought— the sheer brashness of a woman thinking she could own one when she’d have to go through all this just to get the thing started. To say nothing of running it and keeping it in repair!
No . . . no, he thought. She’d be crazy to buy one.
But if he’d ever met a woman in his life who’d do a crazy thing like that, she was probably the one.
He pulled up in Elfred’s yard and left the engine running as he crossed the beams of the carbide lights and approached the front door.
Elfred answered the bell himself, dressed in trousers and a smoking jacket. ‘‘Well, for heaven’s sake, Gabe, what are you doing here at this hour?’’
‘‘Brought that estimate.’’
Elfred removed the cigar from his mouth and looked down at the papers in some surprise.
‘‘At nine o’clock at night?’’ A sly glint formed in his eye as he accepted the sheets. ‘‘You are in a hurry, aren’t you, Gabe?’’ He chuckled conspiratorially.
Gabriel lowered his chin and scratched his left sideburn. ‘‘Well . . . thought I’d get it taken care of right away, that’s all. I can use the work.’’
‘‘Sure, Gabe. I know how it is.’’ Elfred cursorily glanced at the estimate and said, ‘‘I don’t know why I even bothered to have you write it up. She’s not the kind of woman a man says no to, is she?’’
Gabriel put his hand on the doorknob, eager to be away. It was useless to protest that he had no ulterior motives in hurrying with the estimate after the wisecracking he and Elfred had done at the woman’s expense.
With a wicked grin Elfred lightly slapped Gabe on the jaw, as if patting bay rum there. ‘‘Go ahead, Gabe. Give ’er hell.’’
Gabe stalked back out to his truck thinking, Damn it but I hate that Elfred. He is one very repugnant man.
He drove along through the spring night. Trees were budding and the runoff from the day’s rain burbled along the edges of the street to the harbor below. Once again he heard the frogs and smelled the thawing earth.
Spring without Caroline—how bittersweet.
At home, he pulled under the lean-to and secured the car for the night, then walked slowly along the steppingstones, under the pergola and into the kitchen, where Isobel had left the new electric light burning.
Wearily he pulled off his jacket, hung it and turned to face the room where he had taken care of so many domestic duties since Caroline had died. Isobel did her share, but so did he, often late at night like this when he was tired and would rather have gone to bed.
There was water in the reservoir and the teakettle. He filled the dishpan and washed dishes, dried them, wiped off the table and put a nice neat little doily in the middle, just as Caroline had always done. It was one she’d crocheted herself. On it he put her philodendron plant, the way she always used to. With his damp dishtowel he wiped some fingerprints off a glass pane of a cabinet door, then folded the towel neatly and hung it on a towel rack he had made himself. His last duty was to pump water to fill both the reservoir and the teakettle for morning.
Pretty soon he’d put in a bathroom and some radiators, he promised himself. A modern stove, too. It was silly to have electricity and not make use of all the conveniences it could bring.
He’d have to make time to do the work, that was all.
Before he turned the thumb crank for the electric light, he looked the room over and found it satisfactory. Rugs neatly aligned at the sink and the back door, cupboard neat, chairs pushed in.
Just as Caroline would have liked it.
Near eleven o’clock, with plodding footsteps, he shuffled upstairs to his lonely bed.
Four
The Jewetts got to bed well after eleven P. M.,awakened late and ate boiled macaroni in hot buttered milk for breakfast—the fastest thing Roberta could devise to slam on the table. Things were in such chaos that the girls couldn’t find hair combs, so they took turns using their mother’s. Neither could they find clean underwear or stockings so they wore the ones from yesterday. Their dresses were wrinkled from traveling, but nobody seemed to care. Late heading off for school their first day, neither Roberta nor the girls made an issue of it as they set out together.
‘‘Would you look at that,’’ Roberta remarked, catching sight of the harbor below. ‘‘Like one of Lydia’s glass floats.’’ It had cleared overnight and the water took on so intense a blue it appeared as if the sun were lighting it from below rather than above. From three blocks up, the view was splendid. There were boats at rest beside the village docks and others heading out toward the silver-misted horizon. Some had white sails, some moved under steam power, their tracks spreading behind them like lifting wings. The many islands dotting Penobscot Bay looked like nuggets of ice with the sunlight melting their tops.
It was a noisy morning. The gulls were at it, and so were the workers at the Bean shipyard below. The tattoo of their hammers joined the more musical ring from a stonecutter’s shed on Tannery Lane. ‘‘Listen!’’ Roberta hearkened. ‘‘In my oldest memories I awakened to the sound of those hammers.’’ Other noises of commerce drifted up the hill as well—the clatter of the electrics, the burr of boat engines and the chug-putt of motorcars. All of these notes were filtered by the April morning into a fine harmony while the earth, washed by the previous day’s rains, smelled brash and black.
Late or not, the Jewetts were enraptured by their new surroundings.
They walked beneath an eddy of gulls who scolded continuously. Susan eyed them and scolded back. ‘‘ Cree cree yourselves!’’
‘‘Are they ring-billed?’’ Lydia asked.
‘‘No, they’re herring gulls,’’ Susan replied.
Rebecca began reciting Swinburne.
‘‘The lark knows no such rapture,
Such joy no nightingale,
As sways the songless measure
Wherein thy wings take pleasure . . .’’
‘‘ ‘To a Seamew.’ ’’ Roberta cocked her head and watched the birds. ‘‘A lovely choice, though these can’t be mews, not on this coast. I agree with Susan. I think they’re herrings.’’
Rebecca said, ‘‘I hope I like my English teacher.’’
‘‘And my music teacher,’’ added Susan.
‘‘I like this town,’’ Lydia, the pessimist, put in, surprising them all. ‘‘It’s pretty.’’
It was a disjointed conversation but typical among the Jewetts. Their interests were so diverse that a stranger overhearing would have been addled by the quick shifts in topic.
At the school on Knowlton Street they met the principal, Miss Abernathy, an overfed woman around forty with glasses and wavy gray-streaked hair, which she wore in a chignon. She welcomed them but at one point checked her cameo watch and noted that it was nearly nine-thirty in the morning.
‘‘School begins at eight, Mrs. Jewett.’’
‘‘Yes, I know,’’ Roberta replied, unruffled, ‘‘but we were reciting Swinburne on our way.’’
‘‘Swinburne?’’ repeated Miss Abernathy.
‘‘As in Algernon . . . the English poet?’’
Miss Abernathy put her marbled pen in its holder and smiled indulgently. ‘‘Yes, of course. I know who Swinburne is. It’s not common for our students to be familiar with his works, however.’’
‘‘Oh, my girls are familiar with as many poets as I can get them to experience. And composers and authors as well.’’
‘‘Indeed? So we have a trio of true scholars here.’’
‘‘Scholars?’’ Roberta considered. ‘‘Maybe not. But they’re inquisitive and they have imagination.’’
‘‘Then they should do very well.’’
Roberta left them at school without the slightest doubt that’s exactly what they’d do.
When she got back home, Gabriel Farley’s strange- looking truck was parked on the street and he was sitting on her front
step.
‘‘What do you want?’’ she asked ungraciously.
He lumbered to his feet, reaching full height just as she reached the porch steps. ‘‘I’m repairing your house.’’
‘‘Hmph.’’ Right on by she went, into the house without even slowing.
He stood in the trampled weeds of her front yard, his gaze following her through the open doorway. From the porch straight back to her kitchen and out a doorway on the opposite end it was one clear shot. He watched until she spun right and disappeared behind a kitchen wall. His gaze swung to the rusty anchor half-buried in the dirt, then he curled his tongue around an eyetooth, sucked once and shook his head at his boots. He’d cooked his goose with her yesterday, that was for sure. Not that it mattered, because he really didn’t like her much.
Resigned to the fact, he went to his truck to get his tool caddy.
After examining the outside of the house, he decided he’d better get the porch torn off and rebuilt first thing, because it was dangerous with the floor half rotted, and he’d have to cross it a hundred times himself in the next couple of weeks. The wrecking he could do alone, then he’d get Seth over here to help him rebuild it.
He climbed the porch steps, peered inside and heard Roberta dragging boxes around in the kitchen, unpacking things.
‘‘Mrs. Jewett?’’ he called.