A Gathering Light

by Jennifer Donnelly

  I thanked her and ran to the attic as fast as I could, dumping off the sheets on my way. I was powerfully curious. No one had ever sent me a package before. When I got upstairs, I saw that it was a heavy parcel, wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. There was an envelope tucked under the twine, too; it was Glenmore stationery. I opened the package first, eager to see what was inside of it. There were three books: Sister Carrie, by Theodore Dreiser; The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair; and Threnody, a volume of poetry by Emily Baxter. Miss Wilcox had written another book even though her husband told her not to! I was so excited, I hugged the little volume to me. I didn’t know the meaning of threnody, so I pulled my dictionary out from under my bed and looked it up. It was defined as a song of lamentation, a funeral dirge. I smiled at that, pleased to know that I was not the only one in these parts given to things morbid and dispiriting. Next I opened the envelope, unfolded the sheet of paper inside, and caught my breath as a five-dollar bill fluttered out. I picked it up. There was a letter, too.

  Dear Mattie,

  I thought you might like these books. (Do take care to hide the Dreiser.) I hope, particularly, that you enjoy the volume of poetry, as I wish to leave you something by which to remember me. I am departing Eagle Bay tomorrow. I won’t be teaching next year. I had hoped to tell you this in person, but Mrs. Morrison was unable to locate you. I am including Annabelle’s, my sister’s, address in this note. I’ve told her all about you and she’s very eager to have you as a boarder. The enclosed will help get you to her house . . .

  There was more, but I didn’t read it. “You can’t go!” I said aloud. “You can’t!” I ran out of the room and was downstairs in the kitchen in no time flat. Weaver was sitting at the table, eating ice cream. The trappers’ handiwork was still visible on his face. His eye hadn’t healed completely and his mouth was still tender. Cook and Mr. Sperry had the top of the stove off and were frowning down into it.

  “Can I please take the trap, Mr. Sperry?” I asked, panting. “I’ve got to go to Inlet. I’ve got to.”

  “Have you lost your mind? Supper’s only a few hours away. And besides, you can’t handle Demon by yourself,” Cook said.

  “I’ll be back in time, I swear it,” I said. “And I can manage Demon. I know I can. Please, ma’am. . .”

  “No. And that’s the end of it,” Cook said.

  “I’ll walk, then.”

  “You’ll do no such thing.”

  “Mattie, what’s this about?” Mr. Sperry asked.

  “It’s a friend of mine. She’s . . . she’s in trouble and I’ve got to go to her.”

  “You can’t go alone. Mrs. Hennessey’s right, Demon’s a handful. I’d take you if I could, but I’ve got to get this stove working before supper.”

  “But I’ve got to,” I sobbed. “I’ve got to.”

  Mr. Sperry, Cook, and Weaver all looked at me. The other girls are always crying for some reason or another—homesickness, moods, a spat—but I have never cried here. Not once.

  Weaver put his spoon down. “I’ll go with her,” he said.

  Mr. Sperry looked from me to Weaver and back again. He shook his head. “Go on, then. But be back here ready to serve supper by six sharp. Or else.”

  I hitched up Demon, Mr. Sperry’s own horse, and drove hell-for-leather all the way down Big Moose Road to the highway and on into Inlet. I told Weaver about the package on the way and who Miss Wilcox really was.

  When we arrived at Dr. Foster’s camp, Weaver took the reins and told me to go in. “I’ll wait outside,” he said. “I can’t stand a lot of female drama.”

  I knew that was just his way of giving me time alone with Miss Wilcox, and I appreciated it. I ran up the back steps, past the boxes and crates piled up on the porch, and banged on the door.

  “Mattie, is that you?” Miss Wilcox said, opening the door. “How did you get here?”

  “Miss Wilcox, why are you leaving? Please, please don’t go!” I said.

  “Oh, Mattie!” she said, hugging me. “Come in. Come in and sit down.”

  She led me into the library. I sat down next to her on the settee and looked around. The books were gone. Every last one of them. The desk was bare. The fine paper, pens, and pencils were all packed away.

  I heard a match flare, smelled the sulfur. Miss Wilcox was smoking. “Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked me.

  “Why are you leaving, Miss Wilcox?” I asked, fighting back my tears. “You can’t go. You’re all I have.”

  I heard her bracelets tinkle, felt her hand on my arm. “Oh, Mattie, that’s not true. You have your family and Weaver and all your other friends.”

  “They aren’t what you are!” I shouted angrily. “All these weeks, Miss Wilcox, when I tried to get the money to go to Barnard from my aunt Josie and my uncle Fifty, and you came to speak to Pa and he said no, just knowing you were here in this room reading your books and writing your poems made me feel good and brave. Why are you leaving? Why?”

  “My husband made good on his threat. He’s furious about the new book. He’s cut off my funds. And he’s made sure I can’t earn my own living. At least not here. He’s written the school trustees and told them who I am. I’ve had to step down.”

  “But you’re a good teacher! The best one we ever had!”

  “Unfortunately, Mattie, the trustees don’t agree with you. They say I am a pernicious influence on young minds.”

  “But they wanted to keep you on. They wrote you a letter in May. You told me they did.”

  “They wanted Emily Wilcox, not Emily Baxter.”

  “Can’t you stay, anyway? You could give readings at the Glenmore. They have literary evenings. Or you could—”

  “My husband is on his way, Mattie. My sister wired that he’s a day away at most. If I’m still here when he arrives, the next stop for me is a doctor’s office. And then a sanatorium and so many drugs pushed down my throat, I won’t be able to remember my own name, much less write.”

  “He can’t do that.”

  “He can. He’s a powerful man with powerful friends.”

  “Where will you go?” I asked, afraid for her.

  She sat back against the settee and blew out a long plume of smoke. “My grandmother left me a little bit of money. It’s in a trust and my husband can’t touch it. It’s not much, but it’s something. Plus I have my car and a few pieces of jewelry. I’m going to hock them and go to Paris. I won’t miss the jewelry so much, but I’ll sure miss that car.” She took another drag on her cigarette, then stubbed it out in a plate on the table.

  “I’m driving it back to the city tomorrow. I’ll go as far as McKeever on the main road and then take the Moose River Road to Port Leyden. I can take back roads from there to Rome, then head straight for New York. I don’t want to risk running into Teddy. The car’s big enough to hold my clothes and a few boxes of books. That’s all I need for now. I’m having the rest of my things sent to my sister’s. I’m going to hide out at her house while I sell the car. And once I’m in France, I’m going to do my best to get a divorce. Teddy’s dead set against it, but I’m hoping I can make him so angry that he’ll change his mind. A few more volumes of poetry should do the trick.” Miss Wilcox smiled as she said that, but I saw the cigarette tremble between her fingers.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “For shouting at you. I was selfish.”

  She squeezed my hand and said, “You are many, many things, Mathilda Gokey, but selfish isn’t one of them.”

  We sat together in silence for a few minutes, Miss Wilcox smoking and holding my hand. I didn’t ever want to leave this room. Or my teacher. But I knew the longer I stayed, the longer I kept her from packing. And come morning, she had to be gone.

  “I have to go,” I finally said. “Weaver’s waiting for me outside. We have to be back by six or we’re going to be in trouble.”

  “Well, we can’t have that, Mattie. You need your wages. Maybe you can visit me in Pari
s someday. Or maybe, if all goes well, I can come home sooner rather than later. And then we can have lunch on the Barnard campus.”

  “I don’t think so, Miss Wilcox,” I said, my eyes on the floor.

  “But why not?”

  “I’m not going to Barnard. I’m staying here.”

  “My god, Mattie, why?” she asked, releasing my hand.

  I couldn’t answer her for a few seconds. “Royal Loomis asked me to marry him,” I finally said. “And I told him yes.”

  Miss Wilcox looked like someone had drained all the sap from her. “I see,” she said. She was about to say more, but I cut her off.

  “Here’s your five dollars back,” I said, pulling the bill out of my skirt pocket. “Thank you, Miss Wilcox, it was very generous, but I won’t be needing it.”

  “No, Mattie, you keep that,” she said. “Money can be tight when you’re first married. You keep that for yourself. Use it for paper and pens.”

  “Thank you,” I said, knowing that was what she wanted me to say. Knowing, too, that it would likely be spent on seed corn or chickens, never on paper or pens.

  “You take care of yourself, Mattie,” my teacher said, walking me to the door.

  “You, too, Miss Wilcox.”

  She said good-bye to Weaver as I climbed into the trap. She gave him a hug and told him to study hard at Columbia. She told him she was going to spend some time in Paris and that he should come visit her there. I looked back as we drove off and saw her silhouetted in the doorway. She looked small to me. Small and fragile and defenseless. She had not looked that way when I’d arrived.

  “Giddyap!” I told Demon, snapping the reins. He broke into a trot.

  “You all right?” Weaver asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said, driving down the middle of the street. Past the saloon. Past O’Hara’s and Payne’s stores, past the barber’s and the post office and the school.

  As soon as I made it out of the village, I pulled up on the reins until Demon stopped, then leaned my head into my hands.

  “Aw, Matt,” Weaver said, thumping my back. “She didn’t die; you’ll see her again.”

  “She may as well have. I won’t see her again. I know I won’t.”

  “You will so. She won’t stay in France forever. She’ll be back in New York one day.”

  “But I won’t be,” I said quietly.

  “What?”

  I didn’t want to tell him, but I had to. I’d kept it from him for weeks, but I couldn’t keep it from him forever. “Weaver . . . I’m not going. I’m not going to New York City,” I said.

  “Not going? Why?”

  “Royal and I . . . we’re sparking. I’m going to . . . he’s . . . I’m staying here. We’re going to be married.”

  “To Royal? Royal Loomis?”

  “You know another Royal?”

  “Jeezum, Mattie! I don’t believe this! I’ve seen him call for you, seen you out riding together, but I didn’t think it was serious. Why don’t you marry Demon? Or Barney? Or that big rock over there?”

  “Weaver, stop it.”

  “But he’s nowhere near good enough for you! Does he write? Can he write a story like you can? Does he read? Does he even know how?”

  I wouldn’t answer.

  “You ever show him your composition book? He ever read your stories? Just tell me that. Just answer that one thing.”

  I didn’t answer. There wasn’t much point. I couldn’t explain to him that I wanted books and words, but I wanted someone to hold me, too, and to look at me the way Jim looked at Minnie after she’d given him a new son and daughter. Or that leaving my family—that breaking the promise I’d made to my mamma—would be like tearing my own heart out.

  Weaver railed on and on as we drove. I let him. There was nothing else I could do.

  If you harness two horses together and one is stronger, the weaker horse gets buffeted and bruised. That’s what being friends with Weaver was like. A farmer can put an evener on his team’s yoke to compensate for the weaker horse by shifting some of the load to the stronger one. But you can’t put an evener on two people’s hearts or their souls. I wished I could just up and go to New York City. I wished I was as strong as Weaver was. I wished I was as fearless.

  But I was not.

  con • fab • u • late

  “Ada! Weaver! Mattie! Frances! Get those pies outside! And that ice cream, too!” Cook bellowed from the doorway.

  “Yes, ma’am!” we hollered in unison.

  “And don’t forget the lemonade!”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  “And stop shouting! This is a resort, for pete’s sake, not a lumber camp!”

  “Yes, ma’am!” we shouted, laughing as we clambered out of the kitchen, through the dining room, out the front door, across the porch, and down the steps to the Glenmore’s front lawn.

  “Chat,” Weaver said, passing me.

  “Converse,” I shot back.

  It was the Fourth of July, the biggest night of the summer season, and no hotel on Big Moose Lake, or Fourth Lake, or any other lake in the whole state of New York threw a better party than the Glenmore. We had about a hundred of our own guests, plus some guests from the other hotels who’d rowed across the lake especially, plus just about every family from Big Moose Station, Eagle Bay, and Inlet, too. Anyone could come, and most did. The hotel charged a dollar for grown-ups and fifty cents for children, and people saved all year to bring their entire families. For your money you got to eat as much barbecued chicken and pork spareribs and corn on the cob and potato salad and three-bean salad and macaroni salad and biscuits and strawberry shortcake and pie and ice cream and beer and lemonade as you could hold. You got to listen to a brass band from Utica, and you could dance, too, if you wanted. You could walk in the woods or take a boat out. And when it got good and dark, around nine-thirty or so, you got to see real fireworks shot off from the dock.

  The hotel itself looked as pretty as a painting. Red, white, and blue bunting had been ruched all around the porch and the balconies. The red roses were in full bloom, and the blue hydrangeas, too. Every window was lit, even the dock was aglow with lanterns. Tables, made out of boards and sawhorses, covered with stars-and-stripes cloths, sagged under the weight of all the food and drink. All you could hear was laughter and music.

  The lawn itself was teeming. There were people everywhere. Scores of tourists in linen suits and fancy dresses, and local people in their faded and mended Sunday best. Even Hamlet was turned out for the occasion, with a red-white-and-blue ribbon tied around his neck. My pa was there. He stood talking with Frank Loomis and George Burnap and a few other men. He nodded when he saw me. Weaver’s mamma was talking to Alma McIntyre. My aunt Josie was interrogating poor Arn Satterlee about Emmie Hubbard’s land and who was after buying it. I did my best to avoid her. She had told the whole county how selfish and uncaring I was to have gone to the Glenmore. She was only mad because Pa wouldn’t allow Abby to clean her house and she now had to pay a girl from the village to do it. Uncle Vernon was talking to the Reverend Miller and his wife, and Mr. and Mrs. Becker. Mrs. Loomis was filling her plate with macaroni salad. Emmie Hubbard, looking thin and anxious, was swatting her kids away from the pie table. She didn’t have the money to bring them, but Mr. Sperry always let them in for free. No one was supposed to know, for Mr. Sperry didn’t like people thinking he was soft. Mrs. Hill, Fran’s mother, had taken Fran aside and was scolding her for something. Probably for sneaking off to the Waldheim after Ed Compeau. Fran was making her eyes all big and serious, trying to look as innocent as the day.

  Weaver zoomed by again, an empty pitcher in each hand. “Discuss,” he said.

  “Confer,” I replied.

  Confabulate was my word of the day and Weaver and I were dueling with it. It means to chat or talk familiarly. I like it a lot because it is a word that winks at you. It has shades of the word fable in it, as if it wants you to know that that’s what most conversation is—people telling each oth
er tales.

  “Matt? Where should I put these? Mrs. Hennessey handed them to me on my way in.”

  It was Royal. He had a pie in each hand. I was aware of people’s eyes on us. It made me feel special and proud. I took them from him and placed them on the dessert table.

  “I’m going to talk to Tom L’Esperance,” he said, squeezing my arm. “I’ll see you later,” and then he was gone.

  I passed Belinda Becker on my way back to the kitchen. She was wearing a very pretty dress of dotted swiss tied with a pale blue sash and was leaning on Dan Loomis’s arm like she couldn’t stand up without him. Martha Miller was with them. She stared at me long and hard with a face sour enough to shame a lemon.

  I saw Minnie and Jim. They were standing down by the lake. Minnie’s face was turned up to her husband’s. She still looked tired to me, but she was smiling. He was, too, and before they headed back up to the lawn, he bent his head to hers and kissed her. Right on the mouth. I knew it was sweet, what they had. Despite their troubles. And I hoped I would have something like it.

  “I thought you hated him,” I said, as Minnie waved and ran up to me.

  “You’ll understand when you’re married,” she said, kissing my cheek.

  “Smug little witch.”

  “Who’s smug? Why didn’t you tell me about Royal Loomis? It’s all anyone’s talking about!”

  “I tried! You had a crying fit and passed out on me. I have lots to tell you, Min. So much—”

  “Minnie! What kind of pie do you want?”

  “Coming, Jim!” Minnie yelled. She kissed me again and ran to her husband.

  I watched her go, watched her fall in with the endless and needless fussing women make over unimportant things like pie and lemonade, and remembered with a twinge of jealousy how we had once belonged only to each other. Now she belonged to her children. And Jim. And their home, their life. Not me.

  I felt a thump on my head. Weaver trotted by with a tray in his hand. “Speak.”

  “Talk,” I said, swatting at him.

  “That’s weak,” he said.