The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell (6 page)

I had lived on this earth for twenty-five years. Those years held my girlhood, the barn out back, my first horse, my sisters, and the daughter I had birthed—all that had ever been real to me. But now, here were these few weeks in costume where no one knew me and nothing looked familiar. If one of these worlds was to be the real and the other the dream, you might think that two decades of life with family would be the waking state and the brief costume drama the dream. And that’s the way it was—at first.

But in just a handful of weeks, that changed. The costume drama was now my waking state, and what I had thought was my real life had become the dream. All my anchors had come loose—even my Helen, I’m ashamed to say. I had set out with her in mind, to find freedom for us both, but now I didn’t know how the pieces fit. There was no script for me to read, not that there is for anyone. My plan was simply to get through each day without being discovered, everything else to be revealed, including how to present myself in a letter.

I thought I might write things in a general way, simply telling Helen and the others that I was alive and they were still in my heart. I hadn’t finished the first sentence when it occurred to me the letter couldn’t be sent. It would bear the mark of Honesdale. Given half a chance, brother John would travel some distance to find me or spy on me or spoil whatever good thing I had found. I thought about handing the letter to one of the barge captains at Blandin’s and asking him to mail it in Kingston. But what man would not be curious as to why? He would open the letter, and I’d be tarred and feathered for sure.

So there it was. I could not write the truth, nor could I send a lie. I was alone—like Jonah, swallowed whole and spat up on a foreign shore. And by having started and stopped a letter, I had opened the gate to memories that ran in my mind as though through a lantern. I saw a little girl playing with a spotted dog by a creek in Westerlo. Then that creek became the Basket and the little girl turned into Helen.

At the start, I thought she was part of me, so firmly attached in taking my milk. But once Helen began to talk, there was never again a doubt about that. She was who she was and had something of her own to say about everything, often talking to herself or to imagined friends. Once I heard her scold a toy horse that Father had carved, telling it not to be naughty. She was mimicking me from the day before when I had lost my temper, and I, no doubt, had been imitating my mother.

Helen slept in a crib beside me, and if she woke from a bad dream I would wake also. Once, when she was two, I heard her crying and brought her to my bed. “Mommy,” she said as I lay down beside her, “what made Aunt Elsa die? Was she bad?”

“No, dearest,” I said. “She was old. She got sick and died.”

“Am I going to die?”

I wanted to reassure her, but I knew that I mustn’t lie—about this, of all things. “Yes, my dearest girl. We all die.”

“But I don’t want to,” she cried.

I gathered her to me and told her that she didn’t have to worry about that for a long, long time. I didn’t try to explain heaven to her young mind. Indeed, how to explain it to anyone? Helen might imagine a heaven with all of us brought together before the hearth at our home on Basket Creek. But I might imagine us before the hearth in Westerlo when I was young and all seemed safe. And so when we all do meet again in heaven, whose fire do we sit before? And who would be the grown-ups and who the children?

* * *

Miss Watson’s violin lessons began the next week in the hour after dance class. I expected her to be an eager learner. She wasn’t. She showed nothing of the intent she displayed when she proposed the instruction, acting almost put upon as I tried to teach her the strings. I began to wonder if she really cared about the violin, or then again, perhaps I was pushing too hard.

At the start of the third lesson, I thought to try a little conversation, asking Miss Watson if she had always lived in Bethany. She said she had and asked where I was from. I told her I grew up on a farm in New York, and that much was true. But I knew the smaller past I had, the safer I would be, so I invented one without siblings and told an awful lie. “My parents died when I was at the academy in Coxsackie,” I said sadly, “in the year of the fever.”

I held my breath and waited for lightning to strike me dead, the vigil broken by Lydia’s voice. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, her eyes filling with sympathy. I felt the urge to invent more tragedy but instead asked about her family.

“They’re on all sides of me,” she said, lifting her eyes to the heavens. “If you counted aunts and cousins, we’d almost be a beehive. My uncle Karl has a farm north of town where he raises horses. In the summers I used to ride with my cousin Jason, but then he left to find his own land in Minnesota.”

“And your father—his business is trees?”

“Trees, yes, trees,” said Lydia, her arms extending as though they were branches. “The bigger and more beautiful, the sooner it shall be killed.”

I felt myself smile. “I think, Miss Watson, most people would describe what your father does as harvesting.”

Lydia sat back in the chair. “I know. There should be no complaint. We want for nothing.”

“But you seem to have one.”

An awkward silence followed. I had gone where I should not have. “Don’t pay me any mind,” I said trying to go back. “We all have—”

“No, you’re right,” said Lydia, interrupting. “But it’s not the trees. It’s not. It’s just … ” Her eyes went to the floor, and her voice went there also. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen my father make my mother laugh. I’ve often wondered how it was that they married.”

“Oh, I’m certain they have attachments,” I said, trying now to fluff the pillow. “The simplest of reasons are sometimes the hardest to see.” I had just mimicked my Aunt Bertha who used to say vacant things like that when I was a girl. Lydia didn’t like it any more than I had.

“Then tell me, Professor,” she asked, “what are
your
simple reasons—the ones that brought you to Honesdale?”

My thoughts ran about like ants while I did my best to look composed. “Well, if you must know, Miss Watson, I came here, because I was told that Honesdale was a place of unrealized social aspiration.”

“Oh, my,” said Lydia, her hands meeting in a gleeful clap. “Are you here to fulfill that aspiration or frustrate it?”

I held back a smile. “At the moment, Miss Watson, I’m more concerned with what might be said if no music is heard from here.” And with that, I began to play the violin, so that someone passing might hear music, as though a lesson were being taught. First I played my part, then hers, that of a student who is learning and none too well. I played so badly that Lydia brought her hand to her mouth to keep from laughing.

“This is the best lesson so far,” she declared as I put the violin down.

“Yes,” I agreed. “You’ve played not a note, and if it goes on like this, I won’t accept payment.”

“Well, I can’t bring the quarter back and keep coming. What would you have me do with it?”

I thought for a moment, playing her game. “You go to church on Sunday?”

“Yes, of course. It’s boring. I hate it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. But since you’ll be there anyway, just slip it in the plate.”

Lydia smiled as she considered the plan. Then she shook her head. “No, Professor Lobdell. I think it would be best if I gave you the quarter and learned to play my own bad notes.”

T
HE PIANO ANNOUNCED the hymn, and the congregation stood to sing all four verses of “Awake My Soul.” When it was over, we could hear the annoying groan of a Presbyterian pipe organ a block away. I smiled inwardly, thinking of my outspoken Miss Watson suffering in her pew up in Bethany. As for me, I had no great fondness for sermons, but I had liked singing hymns when we lived in Westerlo, particularly in the summertime when the windows were open and God could hear better. And sometimes I felt God’s presence—not just in church but when I was alone at night or off in the woods hunting. He would speak to me—not with words but with thoughts and feelings. But when I tried to tell about this at the Methodist meeting in Long Eddy, Reverend Hale told me to sit down and not talk nonsense. “The word of God is from the Bible,” he said, pounding his fist, “not from clouds or stars!” I vowed not to go to another meeting.

But I hadn’t kept that vow. Once again, I was in a Methodist church, this one a block above the town square in Honesdale. I was lonely and felt the call. And, of course, Reverend Hale wasn’t there. Instead, there was a younger man, Reverend Albright, whom I had gotten to know after prayer meeting the week before. I listened with hopeful interest as the young reverend spoke from the pulpit on the parable of the talents. He made no more sense out of it than I’d been able to do on my own.

After the service, as we exchanged greetings by the door, Reverend Albright asked if I would wait and walk with him. A short time later, he and I were advancing clockwise around the town square. My minister walked with a measured step, his hands firmly clasped behind him. I secured my hands in like fashion and right away felt more highly born.

The day was warm, and many people were out. Reverend Albright nodded the occasional greeting, but the good pastor was not the picture of ease. His lack of social graces matched his frayed appearance, but I was not put off by any of this—his unruly shock of hair and rumpled clothes I saw as emblems of humility. I think he found comfort in my company, because I, like him, was from somewhere other than Honesdale. I knew from our previous meeting that he didn’t feel welcome in his parish. He had been sent from seminary to assist the much-beloved Reverend Webster who had died just four months after the young pastor’s arrival.

“They have not forgiven me,” he said in a low voice. “They think Webster would still be here if I hadn’t come.”

“Things should improve with time,” I said, as though I had seen this circumstance before. The advice brought me a moment of satisfaction, but no comfort to my minister.

“No, Joseph,” he said, not breaking step, “it gets worse. Quite daunting, really—a wall of faces staring back as I speak. And I’m certain that this one is totaling the receipts for the week, and that one is scheming to punish some matron across the aisle for a slight she has imagined.”

“You’d see the same anywhere,” I said. “I wouldn’t bother myself.”

“I can’t not,” said my pastor. “As I stand by the door, I want to say,
What an ugly bonnet, Mrs. Johnson. Did you eat too much cabbage last night, Mr. Barstle?
”

I laughed. “Reverend, you must not fret so.”

“Malcolm,” he replied. “Please call me Malcolm.”

* * *

Lydia and I came to terms over the violin. She could keep coming for lessons if she would give her full attention to the instruction, which would occupy the better part of the hour. The rest we could chat or fritter away as we liked. With this as our agreement, she applied herself and made acceptable progress. We decided that she would bring the violin to her house on Tuesday nights so that her mother and sisters could hear her practice and not harbor grand expectations.

After just a handful of lessons, Lydia became informal, calling me Joseph when the others were not there. I could have corrected her but didn’t. I liked her company and saw in her a bit of myself. And in return, I began using her given name, calling her Miss Watson only when I wanted to feign a scolding. Soon, she was staying beyond the hour, content to read the newspaper while I swept the room. One day in early June, I walked over to the window where she sat holding the
Herald
. She cleared her throat and began to read aloud:

The Steamship Atlantic arrived yesterday, bearing news that the Russian Embassy has again left Constantinople. The Czar was said to be furious at the rejection of his demands by the Sultan, declaring he would have vengeance. In London the price of funds has declined.

“Joseph,” she said, not looking up, “would you rather have dinner with the Sultan or the Czar?”

“I don’t know. Are they coming to town?”

She turned the page and began to read something else:

Last Sunday we observed that all the saloons in Honesdale were closed. Let the town continue to enforce the ordinance, and let it include the barbershops and ice cream parlors. It may sadden some dandified idlers to be denied the privilege of getting shaved and oiled upon the Sabbath or of cooling their palates with ice cream, but plain and industrious citizens will cheerfully sustain the authorities.

Lydia set the paper aside, got up, and walked down a narrow board in the floor as though it were four feet off the ground. “Joseph,” she said, moving her hands to keep balance, “why would God be offended by ice cream? Is it awfully wicked to cool one’s palate? Or is it the slurping? I rather think it’s the slurping, don’t you?”

I laughed.

Lydia stopped her balancing act and turned to me. “Beardslee’s a prig,” she said, referring to the editor of the
Herald
and using a word that might merit a mouthful of soap were she at home. “If he really wanted to improve the Sunday promenade, he could protest the fashion of the barge owners to parade around the park as though they command ships at sea.” She lifted her shoulders and walked stiffly as though navigating the corners of the town square. “Have you seen the blue coats and brass buttons?”

“I have,” I said. “I saw one last week with epaulettes.”

“Yes! And where is our Mr. Beardslee when we need his protection against such a thing? Out filling his belly with bratwurst, I’m sure.” Lydia picked up her shawl. “Such a sour man; it’s hard to imagine how he has children.”

* * *

I returned to the tavern that afternoon to hear angry voices coming from the back room. I couldn’t make out what was being said, but I heard the word
poser
. A sick feeling went to my stomach. I looked over to where Damon was sitting and saw the
Honesdale Herald
spread on the table before him. Then from the back room I heard the name Beardslee coupled with other words I should not repeat.