Harvest Home (30 page)

I felt the pulse flutter again. I jumped to my feet and ran into the kitchen. I had picked up the receiver and started to dial when I felt Beth’s hand on mine.

“What are you doing?”

“Calling the firehouse. For the pulmotor—”

“
No
.” Her fingers pushed the button, breaking the connection. “I don’t want them back here.”

“Christ, Beth—”

“
No
. I don’t
want
them.” She looked toward the bacchante-room door. “She’s doing it. Leave her alone. If she can’t do it, no one can. Leave her alone.
Leave her alone
.” Her voice rose to an anguished pitch, the cry of agony of a mother for her daughter. I replaced the receiver and reached to take her in my arms. She pulled away.

“Beth—”

She spun on me, her eyes flashing fire. “I know where you’ve been.”

Been? Where had I been?

I had forgotten. With Tamar Penrose. Even in my innocence, I felt a flood of guilt. Beth was clutching my shirt. I looked down at it: lipstick, two buttons gone, spatters of chicken blood. I opened my mouth to say something, but she went into the other room—past Maggie, who stood in the doorway.

Maggie took a glass from the cupboard, found the Scotch on the shelf, poured a stiff shot, got ice and soda, then set it on the table. She pulled out the chair and gestured for me to sit. I did as she indicated, taking the glass she handed me. Absently I stirred the cubes with my index finger. Maggie pressed my shoulder, then took another chair, and sat across from me, offering me silent comfort. I could hear the faint, insistent effervescence of the soda in my drink. We waited. I could hear the low voice of the Widow Fortune.

Then, after a little while, I could hear Kate’s voice, too.

I completed a painting of Fred Minerva’s barn in less than four days, working at the site during the day, nights in the studio. When Beth’s village activities required her elsewhere, I interrupted my work to stay by Kate’s bedside, sitting in the club chair, which I had moved up from the bacchante room. We would talk, or play games, and sometimes I would sketch her, or objects in the room, or views from the window. Some noontimes the Widow would come in her buggy and fix lunch for me, thus relieving Beth of the extra duty. While I ate in the kitchen, I could hear the creaking of the club chair as she sat beside Kate’s bed, and the low intense tones of her voice as she talked. Sometimes Kate would laugh, and that made me feel good. Sometimes the Widow would stay the entire afternoon, and then I could devote more time to my easel. She would often cook dinner for us, and through my open studio window I could hear her bustling among the pots and pans while tantalizing cooking smells drifted out to me. I decided she must be cooking for herself as well, for I would see her packing part of the meal in her wicker basket, first wrapping it in foil to keep it warm, and covering it with a linen napkin. Then, promptly at five, she would hurry off to where other important things demanded her attention.

Worthy Pettinger did not leave, as I had expected him to, and when he heard of Kate’s illness, he came regularly after school, scheduling his visits to coincide with the Widow’s departure, when he would go up and visit with Kate until Beth came home.

When the barn painting was done, I sent it off to the gallery in New York. Some days later, I got a call saying it had been sold and a suitable check would be forthcoming. Before beginning the portrait of Justin Hooke, I immediately set to work planning another for the gallery—Jack Stump’s bait shack by the river. The peddler’s latest trip must have taken him up into Vermont somewhere, for we had seen nothing of him for weeks, and I had still had no opportunity to talk with him about my discovery of the screaming skull in Soakes’s Lonesome.

On the Friday following Kate’s attack, I came into the kitchen shortly after five to find the Widow Fortune still at the sink, washing up the pans and bowls she had used to prepare dinner. Through the glass window of the oven I saw a leg of lamb on the rack, several slices cut away from the joint, which she had doubtless wrapped and put into her basket. She was filling a thermos with hot soup from a pot that simmered on the stove.

“Now, that’s what I call soup,” I said when she had let me taste from the ladle. “What is it?”

She laughed. “I don’t think you’ve yet come to trust my cooking. That’s nothing but mushroom broth.”

“Ah,” I said.

“With a little borage thrown in. And some purslane. And a bit of chervil.”

“Ah,” I said, tasting again. “That’s it, is it?”

“Of course it’s not. Think I’d tell a fellow—even a good-lookin‘ one—everything I put in my soup?”

“Or in your mead?”

“Here, go wash your hands—you got smudges all over ‘em.”

I cleaned up the sink, while she sat down heavily in a chair. She looked tired tonight, and I knew her care for us was taking its toll of her strength. She smiled, a small smile of gratitude, which seemed to say,
Well, haven’t we come through it all nicely?

Suddenly I was on my knees beside her, my arms around her waist, my head in her lap.

“Here, now—here, now,” she said. “Come, don’t do that.”

“Thank you,” I murmured into the folds of her long apron. She patted the top of my head, then down my cheek, then pushed at my shoulder, half pleased, half embarrassed by my display.

“Nothin‘ wrong with sentiment, if it’s what you truly feel. That’s the trouble with folks, they’re too afraid to show what’s inside ’em.” As I rose, she gave my hand a solid squeeze, then looked toward the door behind me. “Evenin‘, Worthy. Late, en’t you?”

Worthy Pettinger stood in the doorway, looking disconcerted at having come upon us at such an intimate moment.

The Widow rose and went to him, brushed his hair from his eyes. He submitted to her careful scrutiny, squirming as she took his chin in her hand. “Thinner you are, and peaked. No, don’t move.” She opened the black valise. “Spoon,” she said to me. I fished one from the drawer and handed it to her. She took a bottle, unscrewed the cap, and poured. Worthy’s eyes rolled as she put the spoonful of liquid to his lips and made him swallow. “Another.” She dosed him again, pushing the spoon at him while he bent back against the sinkboard. Then she capped the bottle, returned it to her valise, and rinsed the spoon.

“Don’t take on so, boy,” she told him shortly. “Go and bring the buggy for me—the mare’s hitched to the garage doors.”

When he had gone to do her bidding, she set the valise beside the splint basket and went up to tell Kate goodbye. In a moment I heard the station wagon pull up, and I opened the front door for Beth. Our greeting was constrained as she laid her things down on the hall table and took off her coat.

“How’s Kate?” It was always her first question.

“O.K. Want a martini?”

“Afterward.” She hurried up the stairs. Kate’s bedroom door opened, then closed. I could hear the exchange of greetings and the drone of the women’s voices. The kitchen door slammed and in a minute I saw Worthy hunching in the shadows at the opposite end of the hallway.

“You all right?” I asked before stepping past him into the kitchen.

Silently he followed me in, watched while I got ice from the automatic dispenser, the glass martini pitcher, the gin, and the vermouth. Soon I heard the Widow’s footstep on the stair. I mixed the drink, poured it into a stem glass the way Beth liked it, and put it on the refrigerator shelf.

The Widow came in tying up the strings of her bonnet. As she smoothed her skirts, I noted her shears were not in their accustomed place at her side. She turned to Worthy, who stood behind the table yanking his finger joints, which cracked loudly. “Why such a long face, boy? You look like you was off to Armageddon for the final battle.” She picked up the black valise.

Again I felt compelled to express myself. “Thank you for your prayers.”

“Try some of your own. Sunday’s Corn Tithing Day. Worthy, don’t shirk your duty to your Lord. You want things, come to church and ask for ‘em.” He looked down, still cracking his knuckles. “Leave off them anatomical detonations and hand me my basket, I’m late.”

He came around the table and gave her the splint basket. She folded the linen napkin over its contents and went to the doorway, then turned.

“Sunday. Church. Tithing Day. Don’t forget.”

“
I won’t forget
!”

I whirled, shocked at Worthy’s tone. He stood with his shoulders hunched, the lock of hair falling down over his brow. He made no move to push it aside; his hands hung limp at his sides, and I could see the muscles in his jaw working as he glared angrily at the Widow.

“Very well,” she replied evenly, and went out. The buggy springs creaked as she mounted; she clucked up the mare and the wheels ground along the drive. Worthy went to the sink tap, filled a glass, and drank.

“Bad taste,” I remarked, meaning the two herbal doses he had swallowed. He nodded, wiped his mouth.

“Are you still planning to leave?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“I can’t go till—” He broke off. “Soon. I’ll go soon.” His eyes narrowed as he stared into the sink. “I’ve got something to do. One last thing, then I’ll get out and never come back.”

He went upstairs, and when Beth came down a few moments later I carried her martini and my Scotch into the bacchante room. The sofa had been taken away to be recovered, and we sat on either side of the fireplace, she in the Salem rocker, I in a Windsor ladder-back.

“The Widow says Kate can come down for a little while tomorrow,” she said, rubbing her finger around the edge of the glass.

“That’s good.”

“But only for an hour or so.”

“Fine.”

The Tiffany clock ticked, filling the silence between us.

“Beth.”

“Mm?”

“Why are you acting this way?”

“I’m not acting any way. I just—”

“Just what?”

“I just didn’t think it was possible.”

“Possible for what?”

“Possible for you—” She took a sip of her drink. “Please, Ned, I don’t want to fight—”

“I don’t want to either. There’s nothing to fight about.”

“Then can’t we leave it at that? Kate’s going to be all right and—”

“Yes. Kate’s going to be all right. But are we?”

“Yes. I guess so. I don’t know.”

“Look at me.” She raised her head and returned my gaze. “I went to Tamar Penrose’s, yes. But nothing happened. I promise you that nothing happened.”

“Then it must have been a wasted visit.” She drank again, and asked, “Why
did
you go?”

“I didn’t go with her, I went with the kid—Missy. I—” I broke off. How could I explain to her why I had gone with Missy that afternoon? Or what it was I was trying to find out from her. Or my fears, which I considered foolish ones but which, nonetheless, I had failed to rid myself of. “It’s true,” I maintained stolidly. I felt hot and confused, hating the distance between us, wishing we could put down our glasses and hold each other. “It’s true,” I said again.

“You went home with a little girl at six o’clock in the evening? For what possible reason?”

“To find out something.”

“From a thirteen-year-old child?” Her smile was the one she used when she wanted me to feel like a fool. And I did. How could I tell her about the red pointing finger, the mad child prophesying in her mother’s kitchen, the bloody chicken, guts spilled all over the floor?

“She fell out of a tree—I went to see if she was all right—I followed her—we were sitting on the porch, in the swing. We were playing cat’s cradle—”

“Ned.”

“It’s true. She tied my hands. Tamar came home.”

“Tamar…”

“What should I call her—Miss Penrose?”

“That’s what you used to call her. Until things got on a different—footing.”

I rose angrily. “Look, I’m trying to tell you the truth. I’m trying to tell you what happened.”

“You said nothing did.”

“It didn’t.”

“I didn’t bother saving your shirt. I threw it out.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t feel required to sew back the buttons some other woman had ripped off my husband’s clothing in her eagerness to avail herself of his body.”

“I kissed her.”

“Once.”

“No—”

“More than once.”

“Yes—”

“And you had a few drinks and got a little stinko, and she was there and she was so inviting you couldn’t help yourself—isn’t that the way it went?”

“I__”

“You couldn’t help yourself. The male instinct. Loin lust. What did you do about the child?”

“She wasn’t there. She went out.”

“Nice. The mother sends the child out to play while she—”

I crashed my glass into the fireplace to silence her. “You can believe me or not, however you choose, but I’ll say it once more. Nothing happened beyond a couple of drinks and a kiss.”

“I’d better get a broom,” she said.

I watched her go into the kitchen, and above the ticking of the clock I heard Kate coughing upstairs. I took my car keys from the hook and left the house.

When I got home, it was after three o’clock in the morning. I tiptoed into the kitchen and put two quart cartons into the refrigerator, turned off the light Beth had left for me, and moved up the stairway. Outside Kate’s door, I stopped and listened. I could hear the sound of her easy breathing. I went across the hall and opened the door to our bedroom. Beth was asleep in the four-poster bed. The light on the bureau was still burning. I undressed, and laid my things on the chair. For some reason I was thinking of Cassandra, the prophetess of Troy. Having spurned the love of Apollo, it had been given to her to speak with his tongue, but, speaking, it had been her fate that no one should believe her. But the hollow horse came, and the walls of Ilium were tumbled.

And the walls of Cornwall Coombe? It was Missy Penrose’s fate that everyone should believe her, every last villager. I switched off the light. Outside, there was no moon. All was still and dark. A quiet night. I wondered what and who could make it “all-prevailing.”

Even after I had had only four hours’ sleep, the yellow bird managed to wake me the following morning at my accustomed hour. I could hear Beth in the shower, and when she emerged from the bathroom, pink and flushed, I wanted to pull her back into bed. She put on her robe, removed the towel she had wrapped around her, and sat at the dressing table brushing her hair.