Patience & Sarah

by Isabel Miller

  “Is it far?”

  “No, it’s near. About ninety miles. It’s on the Hudson. You’ll pass it. It’s the first county this side of Albany County. It’s freehold. The patroons missed it.”

  “Maybe they didn’t want it,” I said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Reckon it should be looked at. No sense getting way out west and then wondering.”

  “No. You could do worse than look at it.”

  “Don’t mention it to Patience?”

  Parson grinned and said, “I won’t, Sam. I can hold my tongue as well as you. Thank you for that.”

  We got to the theater. It was all bright paint and bright lamps and noise and stink. At least down in the pit it was stink. I won’t say any one city man stunk worse than any one farmer, but you don’t generally find farmers bunched up like that, and smoking cigars, and spitting. I looked at Patience, to get her to make some sign she’d liefer be alone in bed with me. She made a little face and wrinkled her nose, to show she wasn’t overfond of every single thing here, but it was plain to see she was happy and excited and while she had an ounce of fight left in her she wouldn’t leave. I was near sick, but she most needed a millstone in her lap to keep from flying right off the bench. I just had to shake my head.

  Then some horns and fiddles started and the big curtains opened up, and some girls and men came prancing out, all decked out so bright, singing and jangling things in their hands and whirling around and smiling, and I swear, I felt like a fool to feel it, but I never felt so cheerful in my life. I just didn’t have the grip I thought I did on being manlike.

  The crowd let out a yell and clap, me right along, and everybody was so ready to laugh it didn’t matter what was said. I’m still studying on some of the jokes. Like, this farmer boy that was one of the heroes? I mean, these two farmer boys come to the city – kind of like Patience and me, I see. And this one farmer boy says, “How fur north must I walk, to get to the North River?” That’s one of the jokes I study on yet, but at the time I laughed right along, till the tears came, and Patience too.

  (One mistake people make is thinking actors sink to going onto the stage, like any other form of going bad. I want to say, I believe they do it because they get an ambition to, men and women both. They want to do what will bring that love and happiness up at them, I believe.)

  Afterwards, Mrs Peel, who had a gift that way, remembered quite a few of the songs and hummed them as we walked along the street.

  It all made a little speck of cheerfulness in a nervous time, and later the memory came and livened many a dull day. But it couldn’t brighten the whole of its own night. I had a new worry that came at me when we got alone again.

  My mind was clear on where to go – Greene County, no matter what it was like – but the worry was getting Patience to agree to it. Her with her dreams of being heroes and homesteaders and shoulder-to- shoulder and all.

  Well, I’d told her plain I wouldn’t take her to wild country or let her think I would. But did she remember that? And if she did, did she think she’d changed it all somehow? And if I was foolish enough to talk it over with her, was there any hope she’d be sensible?

  I just wished I knew a sure-fire way to have my own way. Did Pa ask Ma what she thought about going to the Hooestennuc Valley? She went and she made-do, that’s all. At the time it riled me for Ma’s sake, but that night in New-York I saw there was a lot to be said for a way where there’s no backtalk and everybody’s place is set.

  We went up the two sets of stairs to our room, me first and Patience behind me, tickling me through my skirt and laughing and whispering what we’d do when our door was shut again, and I swear I was near as cross at her as if I’d already spoke of Greene County and heard her say unreasonable things about the frontier.

  I almost didn’t even love her, because I couldn’t say, “That’s it, woman! Now get used to it!” It just felt beneath me, somehow, to be sneaky and sly and plotting how to get her to stop at Greene County without letting on why. I blamed it all on her. If only she’d had good sense, I could be my regular aboveboard self. Didn’t it show how open I generally was, that Parson was relieved I could tell a lie?

  Patience turned the key and pitched her bonnet away. She was already too hot to stand it in the cold room, and she said, “Get down here, you tall child, where I can kiss you,” and she opened my clothes and touched me all the places she’d taught me to like best, except then I didn’t like it, for feeling guilty at what I meant to do. But I played glad, and kissed her too, to keep her wild for me so I could get my own way. And she was burrowing at me, saying, “Where’s my wet? Where’s my melt?” and I didn’t have them to give her.

  I said, “My chest ached all day from what I gave you last night,” which was true, and she bent her head at the thought and was satisfied, I think – she had a little tiny cocky smile.

  Oh, how could I treat her so? It can be said for Pa, at least, that he didn’t work on Ma’s feeling for him, to get his way. But maybe he would’ve, if she’d had some.

  Next morning we dressed, not shy, and then she sat on my lap while we waited for the call to breakfast. She was full of kisses, which I tipped my chin up for, and she was full of plans for how to get the most out of our last day in the city.

  She said, “I want to see the ships come up the bay, and all the flags, and I want to buy some paints and brushes. The colors, darling! You can’t think what I saw advertised in the newspaper. Purple lake and Federal drab and Hartford smoke. I may not dare buy, but I have to see, don’t you think? And garnet and crow.”

  “Patience?” I said, quite weak and soft – guilty.

  “And dragon’s blood. And olive.”

  I figured before breakfast was my last chance that day to make use of the special weakness for me she got by being on my lap, so I kept saying, “Patience? Patience?” till she started hearing.

  She said, “What is it, sweetheart?”

  “Did I tell you about my uncle?”

  “Someday you really must tell me all about all of your uncles.”

  “That lives in Greene County? A brother of Ma’s?”

  “Does he?”

  “Maybe we’ll never come back – ”

  “Who knows?”

  “ – we won’t. And I want to see him, and my cousins, and all, fore we get too far and never come back.”

  She was putting her mouth here and there on my head and huffing warm down through my hair to my scalp. “Back from where?” she whispered.

  “Oh, Michigania, or Ohio, or wherever we go.”

  “Don’t be silly. We’re going to Genesee,” she said, huffing on my neck then, not suspicious.

  “Or even Genesee. We won’t even come back from Genesee. And there’s my uncle I never got to see. And my cousins.”

  “I guess we could. Where did you say they are?”

  “Greene County. Right on our way. We’ll pass it tomorrow on the river. I want to stop.”

  “You want to?” she asked. I knew I had her. “All right, darling.”

  Oh, I just get sick remembering.

  And that day I couldn’t eat my breakfast. I hoped Patience thought I was too excited. She ate hers all right and talked to the other lodgers. I was glad to be rich and deaf.

  Looking back I can see that the day was interesting, and everyone was kind to us. At the bank where Patience changed her Connecticut banknotes for York State ones, there was a fine old banker who looked us over and liked us and got to talking with Patience. She wouldn’t’ve wanted me to talk to strange men like that, but she did lots of things she wouldn’t’ve wanted me to do. He asked where we were bound, the very question she’d warned me not to answer, and she told him Genesee with a stop first in Greene County, and he said, “Poor old Greene County. Land’s going there for a song. You can get a good farm now for eight hundred dollars. Forty good acres for that! What a pity!” I guess if you think it’s a pity depends on if you’re a banker or a farmer, and if you’re buying or
selling. I just wanted to pull her away. It wasn’t till later I came to see how that banker was a fine old man, and that he likely saw about us, and wished us luck.

  It was a day to remember all right. We went to a Mechanical Panorama, and a flea circus which was a cheat because the fleas didn’t do all the things the sign said they would, like dance and play ball, but just walked around like any other fleas except they had little balls and things tied to them. We went to the Museum of Natural Curiosities, and it was a cheat too, saying it had a two-headed calf and you could easy see the wires holding the other head on. Still there’d’ve been a way to enjoy even the cheats, if it hadn’t been so heavy on my heart about my lie.

  And dear Patience was doing everything to please me, asking didn’t I want some cherry soda water? A hot muffin? An orange? They had vendors all over. I tried an orange, not to keep saying no, but I felt so foul I couldn’t stomach it. In the end I slipped it to a hog when Patience wasn’t looking.

  After supper we walked out again. Would I like to hear a philosophical lecture? Look at the stars through a telescope? I near said no, but caught myself. If she wanted to, it was the least I could do. Let her enjoy herself, anyhow, I thought. The philosophical lecture was about how people and animals and plants are made of billions of little boxes stuck together, too little to see. I wonder about that.

  In bed I played dead-tired and stayed apart from her, and played asleep until I felt her sleep, which wasn’t soon, and then I rolled on my back and stared at the coals of our fire dying away, and when there was barely anything left to them I got up and lit a spill and carried it to the lamp.

  When I got the lamp going, I looked down at Patience and thought how I mustn’t break her rest and how there was nothing to say that couldn’t wait, and right during such thoughts I bent and petted her hair and kissed her and said, “Patience, wake up. Wake up, Patience. I got something to tell.”

  She sat right up, scared, saying, “What?”

  And even knowing I was fixing it so she’d never believe another word I said, or trust me in anything, and maybe not even love me, which would mean I couldn’t stand to stay alive, I said, “That was a tale, about my uncle and them. And we needn’t stop at Greene County. We’ll make out somehow, wherever you want to go, if you’ll still have me.”

  She sat there blinking and scowling and shaking her head, like to get a bug out of her ear, and I had to tell it all three or four times over before she got it straight, her being just awake and not ever thinking I might be a liar. I can’t say it got easier to tell. My tongue kept sticking to the top of my mouth, but I kept on till she had it all clear and then she said, puzzled, “Why? Why?” so I told her why, which was even worse, and then I couldn’t even be scared. I knew I’d lost my chance in life and I knew I deserved to.

  My eyes blurred over, which was all to the good because I didn’t want to see her face when it wasn’t full of love for me, and finally I just let myself drop down crosswise of the bed, outside of the covers, face down. She kept so quiet.

  I thought how she’d trusted herself to me and promised her brother to never go back. I felt so sorry for her – a little softish lady, plumpish, not overyoung, kind of weak, no part of her tough. I thought to ask her to let me stay with her till she got settled somewhere. Maybe she could keep school right here in the city, I thought to say, where Parson and Mrs Parson could help her get new friends and maybe she could love somebody who’d be better and finer than me, more her own kind, man or woman, and the thought made me bite the quilt and groan like the thought of just dying never could. Her mouth, her bosom, her breath, her warm wet, her melt, for someone else! I lifted up from the quilt and let my groans be loud. Let her think I was playing for pity – I was. Let her worry I’d be heard. Maybe she’d hold me and still me if she worried enough.

  So she came by me and held me, saying, “Don’t, Sarah. Hush.”

  I couldn’t talk, but I could whisper. “You’ve got to see how sorry I am and let me off.”

  “Nothing is so terrible.”

  “Oh, real terrible. But love me anyhow?”

  “I have to. What else can I do?”

  I knew what else she could do, and groaned again. “Say you don’t fault me.”

  “Fault you? No, lamb.”

  I couldn’t stop being puffy right away, but I could smile.

  She said, “I think a lie you can’t go to sleep without confessing is no great harm.”

  “Don’t say it’s no harm, because it is. Just say you can still love me.”

  I raised my head then and opened my eyes so I could see if to believe her in case she said it, and I saw something I needed more yet than love right then. I saw she wanted me, and I knew she couldn’t unless the rest was settled. And it didn’t matter that somewhere in the back of my mind I was still worried where we’d end up and how I’d take care of her. With my heart cleared of its lie, I could want her again too.

  I rolled over to my back, to make whatever she might want easy for her, and looked at her face, and stayed very still and quiet.

  BOOK FIVE

  Patience

  Chapter One

  I said “Of course I do, of course I love my Sarah,” which was true, always, but then I said, “Of course I’m not angry,” and that was not, though I thought it was until I began touching her with hand and lip and noticed in myself a temptation to be not quite gentle.

  I was so shocked at myself I had to draw away from her. I thought, but I am tender, I am only tender, always and only tender.

  She stayed as she was, not even turning her head to look at me.

  “You are angry,” she whispered.

  “No. But I want – ”

  She waited without moving.

  It took me a minute or more to admit the rest: “To bite you.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “No! How could I want to hurt you?”

  “Because I tricked you.”

  “That only makes us even. Didn’t I trick you into living with me? Couldn’t I have kept Martha out just by locking the door, and let us go on and on the way you wanted to? I’m glad to be evened up.”

  “You don’t act like you’re glad,” Sarah said. “Come by me like before. Don’t be clear over there.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do!” I said. Her bedgown was old and soft, easy to rip. “You didn’t like the day I gave you! I wanted to delight you and you wouldn’t be delighted! You made me afraid a whole long day that you’d stopped loving me! You gave the orange I bought you to a hog! Lie to me if you must, but don’t you ever again refuse to be delighted when I am giving you something!” And I caught her side in my teeth and clung there, hard. She stayed still and unresisting and stretched out like a sacrifice and let me learn what besides tenderness my love was made of, until my anger was completely gone and all our sweetness came flowing easily back.

  Much later, when we had satisfied almost everything but sleepiness, I said, “Dear little girl, I hope I didn’t hurt you too much.” (A lie.)

  “You didn’t,” she said peacefully. (A lie too, I thought.)

  But next morning when we looked for a mark there was none. And I’d clamped my teeth so hard! I wonder if it is generally true that a heightened woman can’t be marked.

  And is it generally true, I wonder, that being united in love refreshes better than sleep? (Oh, I wish Sarah and I had someone we could talk about these things with.)

  We woke refreshed, after what could not have been more than minutes of sleep. I wanted nothing so much as to mend Sarah’s bedgown, but it was the morning for taking our boat up the Hudson River, and I had to forgo the delicious false penitence and secret pride of that task. The boat wouldn’t wait, so the bedgown must.

  Our daily inquiries after the progress of loading had made the steamboat agent know and like us. “This is the day, ladies,” he said. “A passage for two to Albany, right?”

  “To Greene County, please,” I said.

  Sarah said, “Pat
ience! You needn’t!” She took my arm and shook it. “I explained. You needn’t. I’ll go wherever you want.”

  The agent got a little treat from watching that. He looked back and forth between us with great interest and perfect good will, as well as some doubt as to our destination. I settled his mind by pushing the money through the wicket. “To Greene County,” I said.

  “That’s to the city of Hudson,” he said. “You’ll have to get you a ferry across the river there. The dock at Kaatskill’s still abuilding. You got kin there? You ever been there before? You figure to settle there?”

  “Miss Dowling has an uncle there,” I said, to have a little laugh at Sarah.

  He said, “Well, get on board anytime. She’ll sail when she’s got the tide to boost her along. If anything happens, hold your breath. Don’t breathe the steam is all.”

  So we climbed the gangplank. Sarah was afraid, her eyes big like a child’s, but she kept up with me. The boilers were building pressure, getting ready, making a noise like nothing I’d ever heard. Like a dragon, perhaps. A herd of dragons. The deck pulsed under our feet like a panting dog, and it was hot though the wind off the harbor was cold.

  “I’ve heard these things do blow up,” Sarah said.

  “And carriages overturn, and horses throw their riders, and walkers fall into pits, and oxen gore, and if we tried I’m sure we could smother in our beds.” (“Bed,” I amended in a whisper.) “Trees fall, lightning strikes. Let her blow!” (I whispered, “I don’t care, while we’re together.”)

  “Maybe you better hold my hand, so we won’t get blowed apart,” she whispered.

  I took her hand. It was natural to feel timid and hold together. All the ladies were doing it. If I hadn’t taken her hand someone else would have. She looked so darling, tall and worried there.

  And late in the morning the tide came up the bay and up the river and our pilot nudged us out into it and the people on the deck waved and called, “Goodbye, goodbye,” to the people on the dock who were shouting something our engines drowned out, but I read their lips and it was “goodbye” too. The way west was first north, up the Hudson. Not many of us would ever come back.