by Beth Powning
She snapped a bean, thinking that her own future was no longer bleak. Thunder rumbled away down the valley, leaving the quickening patter of raindrops.
“I can keep Flora and Enid,” she said. “I can keep them. Maud will leave soon. I really could not run this boarding house without Flora.”
He took a long breath through his nose and closed his eyes. “If you would let me…help pay…”
She felt intimacy rush up, violent as the thunder. You. Me. A matter of allowing, after being asked. Yes, she thought, immediately, a reflex, pleased. And then, after a moment, heard the newly learned response: no, of course not.
Blood rushed to her face. She picked a stray stem end from her skirt.
* * *
—
“If I could just see it,” Enid pleaded. They were washing dishes, after supper. The thunderstorm had blown over, but they could still hear a far-off, intermittent rumble. The new cat, a stray, crouched over a bowl of milk, shoulder blades like grasshopper’s legs.
“It’s just a house,” Flora said. She swirled the dishcloth over the bottom of a cast-iron frying pan and handed the pan to Enid, who dried it and hung it on a hook behind the wood stove. For once, Ellen was not in the kitchen. Mr. Dougan had stopped by for a visit and she had taken him out back to inspect the raspberry canes he had planted last summer.
“Not the house. Course I would like to see that, too, Flora. And all them little bitty things.”
“Those. Those things.”
Enid sighed, annoyed.
“Those little bitty things, then.”
She picked up a cut-glass sugar bowl, examined it closely, running the tips of her fingers between the pyramids. “Mr. Sprague knocked over the pitcher that matches this, didn’t he?”
Flora watched her, hands working in the soapy water, feeling for the cupcake moulds. Enid’s face, in its new fullness, was perhaps a version of the father Flora could barely remember. Round brown eyes. Hair darker than Flora’s, strands of red and brown mingled with the blonde. Yet people said to them, Oh, you must be sisters. My sister. I have a sister. Flora felt the wonder of it, that she was not alone.
“He did,” Flora confirmed. “He talks with his hands.”
Enid’s giggle came like rain after thunder, released. She put her hand over her mouth.
“Flora. I meant the dress.”
“What are you talking about? Here.” Flora dumped a handful of the cupcake moulds in the wire drainer.
“Your dress. That Mr. Tuck got for you. I want to see it.”
Enid had been talking about the dress ever since Flora had told her about it. To still her curiosity, Flora described it in detail. The soft white wool, the blue velvet underdress.
“Enid. It’s not my dress. It’s his. It’s like…it’s like one of his tools. It’s just a thing to make us more money.”
“But I…”
Enid set down one of the cupcake moulds. She had dried it with extreme care, as Flora had instructed, so that no rust would form at the tin seams. Swallows nesting in the eaves, above the open kitchen window, made a sweet, contented chirping, like pegs being turned in tight holes.
“I would like to try it on,” she whispered. “I never wore a dress like that. Think I would feel like a princess.”
Flora’s hands continued to work in the soapy water, gathering the forks, pinching and working her thumb along their tines. As evening gathered the light, the house darkened, drawn towards its nighttime self—captured gold in the nap of chairs and cushions, books beneath glass-shaded lamps—and she traced a thought so complex she could not express it, how she and Enid were at the beginning of their life together, sheltered beneath this stout and complex roof, caught in the mesh of Josephine’s family; and yet, still, she felt the thing that she and Enid had never been without—danger, fear—so familiar as to be an essential part of them. The fear seemed to be growing, since she could not trust that this house would always be theirs. For it would not. One day, they would be cast to the winds like fledgling birds. She and Enid were still alone, and the danger, she realized, was that of the two worlds she had begun to inhabit—Josephine’s and Mr. Tuck’s—it was his with which she was most closely aligned and upon which their survival depended.
I can do it, though, she thought, lifting a handful of forks and dumping them in the drainer. She pictured her work for Mr. Tuck like a path which she must follow with extreme caution, navigating places which ordinarily she would avoid.
“No,” she said. “He wouldn’t let you try it on, Enid. I’m his saleswoman, that’s all it is. It’s just a costume. You keep your mind on reading, writing and arithmetic.”
Flora untied her apron and hung it on the wooden rack. She turned from the rack and saw that her sister was staring bleakly out the window, dishcloth hanging in her hands, and wondered if Enid had been seized by the treachery of memory, if the coming of dark reminded her of nights in the Nova Scotia house.
NINETEEN
A Dark Ghost
SHE PULLED UP HER sleeve, studied her wrist. Scratched.
“There’s a sale on in Hampton, tomorrow, at the hardware store,” Flora told Josephine. “Mr. Tuck asked me if I could come with him to pick out some of the more feminine appurtenances for his little house—material for curtains and bedspreads. I could see about some things you need. Corner irons to repair the window screens. And that stove bolt for the grate. I could pick up some matches and stove polish.”
“Of course,” Josephine said. “Of course, Flora.”
She gave her two dollars in case she found any bargains.
* * *
—
Flora told Enid that she was getting up very early the next morning.
“I have to go to a sale in Hampton. Don’t get up with me.”
* * *
—
Jasper Tuck stood close, both hands on her.
“You want them to think no one else will have a miniature like theirs,” he said, twitching at the dress, adjusting the tabs across her chest.
They left at daybreak. Flora noticed spider webs strung from the grass, so heavy with dew that some strands had separated and now drifted, forlorn remnants. They drove to Summer Street and waited beneath an elm tree until the milk wagon had passed by, making deliveries, and maids had begun to open front doors.
The horse fretted, lifting his hooves, stamping them down.
* * *
—
A maid not much older than Flora opened the door. Sleep crusts in the corners of her eyes, rough-pored skin, teeth like crooked clothespins. She frowned at Flora, then glanced past her at the miniature house on the veranda.
“Yes?”
“May I speak to Mrs. Dunfield?” Flora said. “I’ll wait here. I don’t need to come inside.”
A shadow quivered across two milk bottles. The girl came onto the veranda and picked up the bottles before vanishing back inside.
Mrs. Dunfield came to the door. A white dress of cotton lawn fell around her slender frame. Her eyes were quick, comprehensive. She studied Flora, then checked beyond to see who might be waiting in the street. She frowned upon noticing the miniature house.
“Good morning, ma’am.” Flora had no idea what to say next. She felt thick, garish, perspiring in the petticoat and velvet underdress, this white wool gown, which, she suddenly realized, was inappropriate for this late August day whose heat sounded in the spreading throb of insects. She could not say I am Josephine Galloway’s servant. She could not say I am Mr. Jasper Tuck’s assistant. She could not say I am a Home Child who was saved from the auction. She could not say I am running Mrs. Galloway’s boarding house and taking care of my sister who we have just rescued from dire circumstances.
“You are the girl who spoke at the tea meeting, aren’t you? With Mrs. Galloway? You are the girl she rescued from the pauper auction. Flora,
isn’t it?”
Flora had not foreseen this.
“Yes, ma’am. Flora Salford.”
“Will you step in? My, it’s going to be a hot day.” The woman’s eyes, though, remained on the miniature house. “What is that?”
“It’s a miniature house being made for the MacVey sisters.”
“Why yes, indeed. Oh, my goodness. It is exactly the same as their house, isn’t it?”
“I am helping make it,” Flora said. “I made the windows and some of the…” She took a breath. “I was sent to see if you would like to buy one. He would make an exact copy of your house. There would be nothing else like it, not anywhere in the…”
She felt the pent words drain and die. Her neck quivered.
The woman came out onto the veranda and let the screen door fall shut behind her. She looked closely at Flora. Then she motioned to two white-wicker rocking chairs, shaded by a trellis of clematis.
“Come,” she said. “Sit down.” She set her hands together, palm to palm, and pressed them between her knees. “Tell me. Who is he?”
Flora leaned her head back to expose her sweating neck. The wicker was damp, cool. The green floorboards were freshly painted.
“Mr. Jasper Tuck. He makes miniature houses.”
“I heard of someone…down near the coast? A man going from house to house…”
“No, it’s not him,” Flora said, quickly. Whoever he was. Surely Mrs. Dunfield had misheard. “Mr. Tuck is from up north.”
“Where, up north?”
She recognized what she had felt, when, instead of throwing corn to the chickens, instead of making the kitchen fire with the good, dry kindling, instead of serving oatmeal to the boarders, she had removed her apron and her brown gingham dress in Mr. Tuck’s workshop and submitted to putting on the dress he’d picked out for her.
Shame.
“I don’t know the province. It’s what he told Mrs. Galloway when he came to the boarding house.”
“Who are his people?”
New Brunswick was like a vast house with interconnecting rooms, hallways, closets with familiar contents, parlours filled with friends and relatives. She had learned to say, I’m a Salford. My people are English.
“He’s not from around here. He says he has no people.”
“What’s his name?”
The wrong questions, she thought. Not—How much does it cost? How long will it take to build? Will it look just exactly like my house? It had never occurred to her that she would not sell a miniature house to this woman of evident wealth.
“Mr. Jasper Tuck,” she said. “His parents were killed in an accident.”
“Were they.” Mrs. Dunfield plucked at a thread in her cuff. A cat jumped up onto the veranda railing and wove its way on cloud-quiet paws.
She shook the thread from her hand and reached over to touch Flora’s sleeve. “Whatever you’re doing to help this man, I would advise you stop.”
* * *
—
Flora went down the street and fetched Mr. Tuck.
Mrs. Dunfield stood like a dark ghost behind the screen door as Mr. Tuck and Flora carried the house down the pathway. They moved awkwardly, arms extended, as if carrying a body.
* * *
—
She had not considered that they would be returning in broad daylight. All the twenty-minute ride back, she slumped on the seat, sweltering, the armpits of her dress soaked. As the horse turned up the lane, she hoped that Josephine would be busy at her desk, that Enid and Ellen would be in the kitchen. The harness was outlined with a yellow froth of the horse’s sweat; purple-black flies hovered as if suspended from strings. Mr. Tuck drew horse and wagon to a standstill behind the barn and Flora slid down and ran into the workshop. She began a frantic tugging—buttons, tipped to fit through holes. Hooks, behind her neck. Panic changed the place’s shape, brought details into focus. Saddle rack marks, pale, on the walls. Cobwebs, and the expanse of workbench where the miniature house had been, and a small brass duck on a windowsill.
Jasper Tuck came through the door. He threw down a paper parcel—stove bolt, corner irons and matches he had purchased to validate Flora’s supposed trip. He sat on the edge of a chair, hands on his knees.
“What did you say to her?”
“What you told me to say. That it would be the only house like it. That it would be just like her own house.”
“What did she say?”
Flora could not tell him that every subsequent statement from Mrs. Dunfield’s lips had been about him. Who was he? Who were his people? Where did he come from?
“She said it was beautiful. She said they couldn’t afford to buy one but maybe someday. Someday, she said. She would like to have one.”
“You’re lying, aren’t you.”
“I don’t lie.” But sometimes I have to.
He was a sprung hinge, on his feet, grasping the tab of cloth across her breast, pulling her to him. She cried out, pushed against his chest.
“She wanted to know about me. Eh?”
“I said you came from up north.”
“You could have tried harder.” He grasped her shoulders and shook her.
“I don’t know anything about you.” Her head snapped forward, flung back. His thumbs dug into the hollows beside her collarbone, opposing fingers like steel.
She drove her head into his chest, twisted. She brought up her knee and he bent forward, released her. She felt desire between her teeth, the bite she had not taken. They stared at one another, panting. She heeled her hand into the violated hollow, rubbing the pain.
“Why wouldn’t I want to sell one of the houses?” Thick, hot. “Of course I want to. It’s my living, too. I can’t help what happened. It wasn’t my fault.”
The clicking of a lawnmower, snipping off the tops of the grasses. Their own breath.
Grief, in her throat, like all the disappointments she had ever suffered: a dormancy, awakened.
* * *
—
Enid sat at the kitchen table, reaching down to retrieve onions from a bushel basket at her side. A rack of Mason jars steamed, sterilizing, in a blue-speckled tub on the wood stove.
“This house has changed,” Ellen said.
She was in one of her moods. Nothing was right. The dill seed was too soft. The cucumbers were the wrong variety. Mmm, Enid agreed, diffusing, as Flora had told her to do.
“Never would have seen a cracked windowpane when Captain Galloway was alive. Veranda floor was fresh-painted every spring. Once he brought a carton of ready-made pickles from one of them countries. Portugal, I think. No, Greece. Now, they were nice little cucumbers.”
Enid said nothing. She was worried about Flora, who had gone to Hampton with Mr. Tuck and had not yet returned. There had been so few men in Enid’s life. She did not remember her father. In the workhouse, men and boys were reduced to the sound of gravel-making in the hidden yard. Hammers on rocks, chinking. On the ship, she had seen sailors up close, sluicing the vomit-slimed floor of their cabin. Watch caps, whiskers—like horses, mute and powerful. Once she’d arrived in Canada, there were men on the Halifax streets, hunched on the seats of wagons, walking the aisle of the train. Never speaking to her. Never touching her. Only their eyes, watching. Then the boy. Mr. Mallory. Jasper Tuck.
“She’ll be all right,” Ellen said, interpreting Enid’s silence. “I’ve heard her stand up for herself.”
“But you don’t trust Mr. Tuck.”
“I only met two men I trusted. Mr. Dougan and Captain Galloway.”
“What about Mr. Fairweather?”
Ellen’s sleeves were rolled up. The flesh of her upper arm hung in a fan of fatless wrinkles. The white skin quivered as she chopped onions, fresh from the soil. She paused to wipe away onion-tears. “We’ll see about Mr. Fairweather.”
&nb
sp; “He found me. He saved me.”
“That he did. ’Tis not you I worry about with that one.”
A cricket, close by on the side veranda, started up his strident sawing.
“Were you ever married, Ellen?”
Ellen continued chopping the onions. Her mouth tightened at the corners. She took a breath that lifted her chest beneath the water-spotted bib of her apron.
“Was. For a time. Your age, I was.”
The knife pivoted onto its point beneath her hand. Fell through the onion. Its juices, released.
“I ran out of the house. A mass of bruises, I was. There was a dog on a rope and I let him loose. He scurried down the lane, scared as me. I remember it was pouring down rain and the fields were covered with blackbirds. They all flew up and me running through the mud. And I thought free as birds. Free as birds.”
She wiped her eyes on her sleeve.
Flora walked into the kitchen. Amid the tang of onions, she thought nothing of Ellen’s tears. She went to the sink and turned the tap and filled a glass with cloudy water. She drank with her back to them.
“Flora?” Enid said. “Did you go to Hampton?”
On the stove, the Mason jars made a thin tinkle as the water came to a rolling boil. Flora rinsed the glass and set it into the dish drainer. She turned to them, her eyes dark, furious. She tossed a wrapped parcel onto the table. “The bolt. And other things.”
Enid dropped her knife.
“Was it Mr. Tuck? Did he…”
Flora smiled, strained. “No, no. I’m just tired, Enid. It was a long, hot morning and in the end we…we didn’t get very much.”
“I’ll go next time,” Enid said. “Why couldn’t I? I would like to see Hampton.”
Flora shook her head, looked away.