The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay (8 page)

Maddie, clearing dishes, was humming and smiling. Avis and Idella looked from the door to the old boots still on the floor to Maddie breezing about the table.

 

Mrs. Doncaster came over one afternoon soon after that. She brought an apple pie for them, as she was near dying of curiosity. She’d been observing as much as she could from all her windows. But it was time for a closer view.

“Bill,” she said, after watching Maddie brew a pot of coffee—a sip of which very nearly threw her to the floor—and serve it up to all of them, including Avis, “you got a woman-child on your hands here. What the hell are you doing adding fish to the kettle?”

“She come along and jumped in. Hell, she showed up on the doorstep like a sorry old dog. You saw the state she was in. And goddamn it, Elsie, I need someone to cook and help with the girls if I’m to keep ’em. I’m about run out since Emma died. Life isn’t life no more. It’s work and then some.”

“You be careful about the ‘and then some,’ Bill Hillock.”

“Get on back to your window, Elsie.” Bill laughed at her. “You see things better from a distance.”

That night, as on most nights, Bill sat down at the worn maplewood table with his bottle of whiskey. He’d gotten the table from his brothers for a wedding present. John and Sam had cut down the tree and made it with their own hands.

He sat in the flickering lamplight with a tumbler of whiskey and ran his hand over the surface of the wood. It wasn’t smooth. But it was sturdy and well oiled and familiar. Emma had loved it, so he did. Her hands had been all over it.

It was two years now since Emma had died. It had hit him hard—two little girls, a son who’d hardly speak, and a baby girl to boot. Four children. He took a sip of whiskey and moved the lamp, watching the shadows lurch across the walls.

The girls were upstairs now, where Maddie’d taken them. Someone was still walking about, though, creaking the floorboards. He had a feeling it was Maddie. She was a strange one. He hoped she’d work out. Elsie was barking up the wrong tree, looking for trouble where it wasn’t.

He needed someone to help. It was wrong to expect as much as he had from Idella. She was going on ten now. At eight, Avis was her helper. Them girls needed a woman around to help them and tell them things that he wasn’t so sure he understood fully himself, when it came to that—concerning female situations and skills. He’d never paid heed. Christ, he had all a man could do—plowing and planting, hunting when he could, and fishing in season for herring and lobster. It was hardscrabble land and a hardscrabble bay—not easy to get a living out of. He’d heard that out west at harvesttime there was good money to be made harvesting wheat. He’d like to get on out there if he could and make some cash. He’d been talking about it with Sam. But what to do with the kids sprouting under his lone roof?

He topped up his whiskey and held the glass against the lamplight. The whiskey glowed shimmery and gold. Emma’s hair was like that when she’d been in the sun, the gold color of whiskey. He’d smother his face in her loosened hair and tell her he was drinking his fill and it still wasn’t enough.

When she died, Emma’s smell was still with him. He went to bed and felt the touch of her hair on his face so strong that he sometimes reached up to brush it away in his tormented sleep. He’d been near out of his mind with grief.

His mother had come to stay with them and try to help. But she was seventy-three years old. Her kids had gone through her and out and into the world, and she was spent, worn to the shape of a gnarled tree. “Them kids is too much for me, Bill,” she said. She lasted three weeks, the final week only because Bill had begged her to give him time to get a girl in.

So he’d set out to get the only help he knew he could afford—he hired a French girl from way down country to come and live with them and take care of things in exchange for room and board and not much else but a little dab of money he scraped into a pile at the end of each month.

“You get what you pay for,” he said out loud, and took a swig. He laughed to himself. That sure as hell seemed the truth.

He got more than he paid for in some cases, though, less in others. There was the one who shit on the rug. That was the funniest damn thing. She blamed Idella flat out. Said Idella did it in the night and rolled up the rug to hide it. He’d never seen Idella so mad. It beat anything Avis ever done to her.

He teased Idella about it. He knew he shouldn’t, but sometimes she needed a little teasing. She was forlorn and sad so much of the time. He didn’t know how to help her. Avis was different. She’d have laughed out loud if the girl’d accused her. Or went along for the fun of it. But Idella was wounded by it.

It was just as well that one girl was gone after that rug business. She was the pretty one. Too pretty to have on hand. He knew it. He’d noticed more about her than he should or wanted to. It wasn’t just her curly black hair or her black eyes that snapped up at him in a knowing way. It was her breasts. He had more than once stopped his hand from reaching over to squeeze them. And one time he’d done it. She was bending over him to take his plate from off the table. He was sitting alone there with his pipe and his whiskey. The kids had all run off into the fields. And he’d touched her.

She’d stopped and looked at him. She looked right into his eyes while she held that plate half covered with beans and his hand pressed against that breast, and he didn’t take it off. Till her eyes narrowed and she spat at him, hit him full in the face—hot, wet spittle. Then he’d taken up his whiskey and no words were spoken. That was the night she shit on the rug. He didn’t know if it was from fear of him that she didn’t use the outhouse or purposeful spite. He did know he had something to do with it. The next day she was gone. But not till she’d accused Idella. And not till he’d paid her.

Bill reached into his pocket and pulled out his pipe and tobacco pouch.

So this one, this Maddie, who looked like a horse and cooked about like one, too . . . well, she was the last hope. If she didn’t work out, he’d about decided to ship Avis and Idella on down to Maine to stay with John and Martha and get more schooling. John and Martha had seven boys. Christ. He pressed the tobacco into the bowl of his pipe and sat for a long time before lighting it. Well, they’d offered.

 

One afternoon all three girls had baths in the tin tub in the kitchen—for the men were mostly gone during the day. They were sitting upstairs on the beds untangling strands of wet hair with their fingers and passing the one comb between them. Suddenly Maddie looked up at the two girls, her eyes wide. “I want to look more . . .” They sat and waited for the next word, but it never came.

“Pretty?” Avis asked finally. “You mean you want to look more pretty?” Maddie nodded, barely moving her head.

“You want us to cut your hair for you, me and Idella?” Avis was excited.

“You could do that?”

“I guess.” Idella shrugged.

Avis ran down the stairs, came back with Mother’s best scissors, and handed them to Idella, who was already combing and making a part down the middle of Maddie’s hair.

“Hold still,” Idella said. “You’ve got to put your head up, not down, Maddie, or I can’t see which way the hair falls.” She carefully set about to trim the ragged edges of Maddie’s hair into as even a line as she could. “This will certainly be an improvement.”

“Your mother,” Maddie asked, keeping her head still. “Was her hair very beautiful?”

“Oh, yes.” Avis talked while Idella concentrated on her snips. “She had long, long hair, and she wore it up on her head with ribbon. You should wear your hair up, Maddie.”

“I don’t know how to do that.”

“Don’t look at Avis.” Idella was bent in concentration.

“There’s a special top drawer where Dad keeps Mother’s things.” Avis scooched in front of Maddie so that she could talk to her. “Sometimes me and Idella go in there and look at them. Her clothes and her brushes and hair things.”

“Mother’s hair was a lovely light brown.” Idella put down the scissors and started to gently comb. “When the sun was on it, there were streaks of blond. She’d wash it from the rain-barrel water and then let it dry in the sun. We’d all put our faces in her hair to smell it. Dad, too. He came out of the barn once and saw us laughing ’cause Mother would tickle us by brushing her hair soft across our faces. He walked right up to us and said he wanted a turn. And he got one. A long one.”

“They kissed with us right there in front of them.” Avis stood up suddenly. “Aunt Francie made a fancy braid of Mother’s hair when she died, and we all got a piece of it. Do you want to see mine?”

“I don’t think you should,” Idella said.

“Why not? It’s my piece.”

Avis went to her drawer and pulled out a cigar box. Dad had given them each one for their birthday for treasures. Idella knew what was in Avis’s. Dried flowers from Mother’s grave, as there were in her own box, and shells and rocks they’d found down on the beach—mostly little bits of nothing.

Idella’s box had truly valuable things. Besides her own lock of Mother’s hair, there was a handkerchief that had been Mother’s, and sewing scraps from one of her dresses, and beautiful buttons Mother had cut off an old blouse and given to Idella. There were eight of them, and they were blue. She planned to use them someday on a special dress, maybe even her wedding dress.

Avis riffled through her box and removed a carefully folded handkerchief. She laid it on the bed. Slowly she took from the folds a thin braid of soft brown hair. It was clipped at each end with a tiny knot of velvet ribbon. “When you hold it to the light, you can see the blond of it.”

“Can I touch it?” Maddie asked.

“If your hands are clean.”

Maddie rubbed her hands into the folds of her skirt and then placed the tip of her thick, rough finger onto the lock of hair. “It’s so soft,” she murmured.

“Avis, put that away. There’ll never be another strand of Mother’s hair. Never.” Idella turned away and stared hard out the window.

“Let’s go do something, Maddie,” Avis said. “Let’s get out of here.” She put her braid back into the handkerchief and carefully returned the box to her drawer.

“I have to work now. I can’t play with you all of the time.” Maddie stood up and shook out her hair. “Thank you, Idella, for the haircut.” Idella nodded but did not return her look.

“I’ll help you work,” Avis said.

Maddie laughed. “You want to peel the potatoes for the supper with me? Then come.”

“Will you teach me more French words?” Avis asked.

“Oui.”
Maddie laughed.
“Bien sûr.”

“What’s potato?”

“
La pomme de terre.
‘The apple of the ground,’ it says.”

“Apple of the ground! Dad calls me the apple of his eye.”

“He called Mother that.” Idella turned sharply and glared at Avis.

“He calls me that, too. When you’re not around being prissy.”

Avis went crashing down the stairs. Maddie looked at Idella, whose back was again turned. She paused but did not speak and quietly closed the bedroom door behind her. “Apple of the ground,” Idella whispered. She thought of Maddie, shapeless in her woolen folds. “Yes. Potato.”

 

Maddie went into the downstairs bedroom. She went in slowly. She’d waited all morning till Avis and Idella went off to find fiddleheads. Dalton and Bill were both out working. She was alone in the house.

It was dark in the room. The bed was all undone and tousled. There was a dresser with a mirror on top that must be where Emeline had done up her hair. Where he shaved now. She picked up the lathering brush. It was slippery on the handle and smelled sweet, still damp from his morning shave. She set the brush back and smelled her fingers. The soap smelled of him at breakfast, when she leaned down to put the plate of eggs in front of him. She loved that smell.

She looked down at the dresser. The top drawer would have been for Emeline. Maddie pulled it open, making a quiet, shuffling sound; the smell of dried lavender floated up to her. Sachets tied with purple ribbon lay on top of neatly folded clothes. There was lace, and velvet ribbon curled into a corner—and a handkerchief with lovely blue embroidery. Maddie reached down and touched the soft blue knots gathered into flower shapes at the corner edges. Linen. And soft cotton. There were hair combs and barrettes made of tortoiseshell. She ran her fingers along their sharp prongs. Closing her hand around a barrette, she couldn’t help herself—she quickly put it into her pocket.

There were blouses with lace collars and cuffs, and a camisole with tiny stitches and gathers, real womanly things, white and very delicate. Emeline must have made them herself, her special clothes. Maddie fingered the folded fabrics and lifted a blouse up into her hands. Underneath was something dark. It startled her. Coiled and tied with a ribbon on each end was a long, thick braid of hair. It had been given to him, she thought, touching it with a fingertip, after the funeral. It was for him to hold and smell and put his lips to as he did when she was living, when he had a wife.