by Mary Swan
Rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands, the bottle firmly back in the drawer, he wished he had thought to drink a toast to the dead girls. To all the dead girls. In the early years of their marriage, Marianne had conceived again and again, but those possibilities fell away like petals. One did come to term but was born waxy and still, a light fuzz of hair on her delicate skull. They named her Eleanor and sometimes he thought she’d stayed and grown; sometimes he thought he heard her voice from another room.
• • •
There was no need but he walked the path to the stable anyway, and found the food bin empty, Prince snickering and nudging at his shoulder. It was Eaton’s job to see to the horse before he went to school, unlike him to forget. Marianne had been complaining, but then she often did. The tears in Eaton’s jacket, the mud on the knees of his trousers, wrinkling her nose when he came into a room and sending him to wash. He’s a boy, Robinson said, stop fussing. But neglecting responsibilities was a different matter. The murders had happened months before, Eaton’s screaming nightmares now coming only rarely, but that didn’t mean that everything was as it had been. At the funeral Robinson sat next to the aisle and when the boys walked past, carrying the small white coffin, he saw his son like a stranger, jaw clenched and something stony in his face. He meant to talk to Eaton that night, to sit down in the office maybe, just the two of them, but he was called out to a difficult birth. Tiptoed up the stairs just before dawn, still holding the image of a wisp of hair stirred by the sleeping baby’s breath. It seemed just a heartbeat before that Eaton had been a tiny wrapped bundle, held tight in Marianne’s arms. Robinson in the doorway, feeling the twin skewers of joy and shame.
• • •
The grain rattled in the bin, the metal handle of the water bucket cut into his palm; there was a warm smell of horse, of clean straw, and he remembered standing just like this on a winter afternoon, some years before. Remembered sudden shouting and how he dropped the same bucket, came into the house just as the front door crashed inward, a wild-eyed man he recognized but couldn’t at first name, breathing hard. In his arms a boy, legs hanging down, hair stiff with ice. The river, the man said. Timms, his name was, Abel Timms. He went through, Timms said.
In the kitchen the stove was burning hot and they swept aside the silver Lucy was polishing; it fell clanging to the floor as they laid the boy on the table. It was clear he’d been in the water some time, his face bluish, his skin so cold, but Robinson sent Lucy for blankets, unbuttoned the jacket, the shirt. Rolled him over and thumped his back between the narrow shoulder blades. Lucy shooed the cluster of people out of the doorway and together they took off the boots, cutting the laces, took off the heavy trousers and wrapped him in the blankets until only the small face showed. Timms stood back against the wall, his hands clenched in his hair.
There was nothing to be done but Robinson did it anyway, rubbing the hands, the stick-thin arms, raising the eyelids with his fingers, rolling the body over and back again. A trickle of water from the freckled nose seemed like a miracle until he realized that it was only ice, melting. There were welts on the boy’s face, a bump over one eye, and a faraway part of him noticed that, but let it be. He’s gone, Abel, he finally said, and Timms slid down to the floor, knees up, face buried in his hands. For what seemed like a long time the only sound was the drip of water from the edge of the table.
Lying awake that night Robinson thought about the boy, whose name he still hadn’t heard. Thought of him lying on another kitchen table while shadowy women cleaned him with soft cloths, patted him dry. By now he’d be dressed in the best clothes he had, hands folded, marks of the comb in his hair. Lying in a box with one lamp burning and someone keeping watch, as if he could still feel loneliness. Robinson had thought there was nothing left to touch him, had thought his heart was stone. But everything inside him had screamed when the door smashed open, the boy the size of his own son, the sodden jacket so very similar. When he lifted the small, cold flap, Eaton’s blue eye looked back at him.
• • •
He knew Marianne’s dilemma, could almost see the thoughts chasing round in her head as they faced each other across the table, knives in their hands. How much she wanted to know, wrestling with how she hated to need anything from him, even news. There were times he played with that, but just then he didn’t have the heart for it. He told her how it had been and she said, Good. Said, He should have suffered. It was what the whole town had been saying, what Robinson himself might have felt, if he hadn’t seen it.
Marianne’s fork moved steadily from her plate to her mouth, the flesh at her neck folding around the high collar of her dress. He asked about Eaton and she said that he had been rude, had rushed right past her and up the stairs, saying something about a headache. Robinson thought of the untended horse, said he would look in on the boy, said he would speak to him. She looked up at him and he suddenly knew that there was something she could say, some word, or even just the tone of her voice saying it; he knew that if she said the right thing, it would make a difference. Instead she reached for the absurd little bell by her glass, asked Lucy to bring more potatoes for the Doctor, and the moment was gone. She spoke again but it no longer mattered and he looked at the silver-handled bell, the same one that had sat on the fine linen cloth by her mother’s right hand, the same tinkling notes that had seemed, all those years ago, like the sound of everything he had ever wanted.
He heard Eaton’s name, and knew what she would be saying. At one time she had held their son so tightly, crooned to him as he lay in her arms, but from the moment he put on trousers it seemed he brought nothing but trouble. The noise he made and the mess, even though he was, compared to most, a quiet boy. Not his fault that he grew out of his clothes almost as soon as he put them on, surely not surprising that he sometimes dropped things, broke things, tracked mud into the house. Left mud on the floors that Marianne, after all, did not have to clean. Sometimes he saw a look on his son’s face, a baffled, helpless look. It seemed to Robinson that she wanted Eaton to be the boy who sat between them in the family photograph they’d had taken. The boy with the unstained jacket, with all his shirt buttons, the boy who sat with his hair neatly combed and didn’t move, didn’t say a word. And there was sometimes the unwelcome, flickering thought that Eaton would be punished all his life in place of Robinson himself. He thought again that he should talk to his son, maybe take him along on his country visits one day, the way he used to before the diphtheria scare. There would be time to explain some things about mothers, about men and women. Time to tell him that he would grow up and it wouldn’t matter, that none of it was his fault.
• • •
Marianne had stopped talking and he couldn’t bear to watch her chewing mouth. It was just past noon, the sun at its highest point, but the dining room was in shady light and looking past her he saw the gently shifting new leaves on the maple tree outside the window. He was suddenly weary, just terribly weary, and he wondered how they had arrived at this place. It had happened slowly, he knew it must have happened slowly, but it seemed that he had closed his eyes for a moment, opened them again and found that they were here, separated by the polished table in the middle of a long day, without a kind thought in their heads.
There was a time when he knew everything. Moved with a jaunty step along city streets, knowing he was being noticed in his well-cut suit. Top of his class at the School of Medicine, engaged to a girl with round blue eyes, the softest cheek. All that he had left behind quite firmly sealed away, his life rolling out ahead of him, bathed in golden light. There were things he might have thought about, but he didn’t. Marianne had pouted, in her pretty way, when he told her that he wouldn’t be able to take her to the concert, that the invitation to the Professor’s house was not something to be turned down. Perhaps he should have paid more attention to the way her expression changed so easily, how it was weeks before she allowed him to kiss her again. But he was so young then, so sure, and Marianne’s eyes we
re the clearest blue. He didn’t even think of her when he and Smith inspected each other on the doorstep, flicking bits of dust from the ends of their trousers, the toes of their shoes. The Professor’s invitations were rare, and they both knew it meant something. The maid who opened the door stood aside for them, and in the light of the entrance hall the rich carpet seemed to glow, leading them forward. Yes, Robinson said to himself. Oh, yes.
• • •
He waited until Marianne had made her way up to rest, pulling on the banister, before he climbed the stairs himself and quietly opened the door to Eaton’s room. His son lay on his side, facing the tall window, the bedclothes pulled up so that only the top of his ear, a tousle of brown hair showed. Robinson said his name, stepped forward so that he could see more of his face, but Eaton seemed to be sound asleep and he left the room as carefully as he had entered it. Downstairs in the kitchen Lucy dropped something and the sudden clatter in the silent house made him almost lose his footing, made his heart race as he grabbed at the railing, and in his office he thought about pouring another small drink, but closed the drawer again. He had planned to spend the afternoon reading a few more chapters of Beard’s book on neurasthenia, looking over the paper on galvanism in the new Lancet. May was usually the quietest month, the oldest and sickest of his patients already carried off by the long winter, children breathing easily, running out in the fresh air. But he knew there would still be people tapping at his door, maybe with some small complaint, maybe to settle a bill, but really to talk about the morning. When he opened the back door the air was soft on his face and the world was light and green. Not the muddy smell of the first of spring, but something gentler. He thought of putting the saddle on Prince, of galloping along any road that led out of town, but in the end he hitched up the buggy and they moved out more sedately. The door to Allen’s store stood open but all the others along the north road were firmly closed and they flicked at the edge of his vision as he drove, some green, some fresh black, some weathered wood.
• • •
Professor Harris had a daughter named Faith, who wore a shimmering, leaf-colored dress and sat with them at dinner, full of questions and opinions. And the Professor, the fierce Professor, smiled from the end of the table and told them about her Latin and Greek, about the work she did, collecting money and clothing, visiting the poor. Very commendable, Smith murmured, looking up quickly and then down at his plate again.
The dishes were gold rimmed and the wine glasses sparkled in the light of tall candles. Robinson, feeling that he could say anything at all, asked if she really believed that charity was the answer, if she didn’t agree that however well intentioned, it merely allowed things to go on in their wretched state. Please explain, Mr. Robinson, Faith said, sounding suddenly like her father in the lecture room. So he asked if she really thought a man would work hard to better himself, his lot, if he knew he would be taken care of, regardless. It was true that there were deserving cases, they all knew that, but wouldn’t she admit that they brought a great deal on themselves? So many children, for one thing, and money spent in the tavern instead of on food and clothing, on education. It was an opinion he’d heard Smith express many times, after a clinic at the hospital, but now Smith sat silent and with his own words lingering in the air Robinson suddenly wasn’t sure if he believed them. They had come easily to his lips, an opinion he seemed to have acquired, although he couldn’t remember ever thinking about it. He thought now of the ragged children pelting passersby with horse dung and running away, laughing. He thought of the taverns that lined the way he took from Marianne’s house to his lodgings, the light and noise spilling into the street, the cursing bodies sometimes rolling out the door. The women who called out as he walked quickly home, inflamed by the kisses Marianne had allowed, and how once, cutting through an alleyway, he had heard an animal grunting, seen shapes moving against the sooty brick, hard to make out.
Mr. Robinson, Faith said, and he noticed a flush of red on her cheeks, noticed how much he minded the edge in her voice. The Professor raised a hand before she could continue, gave her a look that she obeyed. The serving girl carried in a platter of meat, refilled their glasses, and Smith commented on the wonderful meal. The Professor said that their cook was a treasure, and Faith picked up her silver fork, said, Are you from the city, Mr. Robinson? and he answered that he had lived there some years. And what of your family? she asked, and he said that he had none, and asked for the sauce to be passed.
• • •
There had been no rain for a week or more and the road was dry, but not yet swirling with dust. He turned down Blasted side road, with a vague idea of stopping at the McCains’ to see how Simon’s leg was healing. But Prince kept up a steady trot past the rutted lane and he settled himself as comfortably as he could on the seat, let the reins lie loose in his hands. Thinking, for some reason, of the doors along the north road flicking past. Thinking about doors, about opening a door, or sitting at a desk looking at one, how no one had ever said what that would be like. Not the Professor, not the others who came to the lecture rooms, who led them through the corridors of the hospital, dropping bloody dressings at the bedside. Some of the lecturers tried to prepare them, told stories from their own experience. Told them what it was like to do everything you could to save a man, a child, and to lose them anyway. And what it was like to see a boy who had been all but dead just hours before, out rolling a hoop with his friends. But no one mentioned waiting for a knock at the door, or the moment before it opened, no idea who or what would come through. The little thrum of anticipation, a challenge every time, a test of skill, of learning, a puzzle to be solved. He couldn’t believe that he was the only one who saw it that way, still saw it that way, although as he grew older he sometimes felt apprehension, even dread, with his quickening pulse. When he first came to town, old Dr. Poole introduced him around, advised a notice in the newspaper, and Robinson wondered how much he’d been told. He shook men’s hands, held Marianne’s elbow going up the steps to church, sat in the freshly papered room in the new house and waited for the tap at the door, waited for the start of it all. Poor Miss Burns the first, he remembered, long dead now.
He slowed Prince to a walk, and could hear the buggy creaking. Some kind of bushes flowered wild by the side of the road, and a sweet rush of feeling filled him up. He wondered if anyone would watch over Heath, by the light of a tall candle, but knew it was unlikely. He was probably already closed in the box, the tap of the hammer, the nails biting cleanly, everything sealed up. Over. The lives he had taken avenged, as they had to be, and people ready to talk about other things. Heath had gone to wherever it was he was expected, although in fact he’d seemed to have left his life months before. When they took him in the woods there was one bullet left in the gun but he made no attempt to use it, on himself or on the men who knocked him down. Mostly he was silent, the sheriff said, sitting on his cot, staring at his feet on the floor. Heath answered Robinson’s questions, during the monthly examinations, but only with a word or two, and never meeting his eyes. The same with the doctors his young lawyer brought from the city to determine his sanity. In the end Wellman could only argue that Heath must be insane, because only an insane man could do what he had done, but the jury was not convinced. That morning, just that morning, Robinson had thought that he might finally look up, might look him in the eye. He had realized that he was keeping his own eyes fixed on the white shirt beneath the dark gray coat, the loose threads dangling where two buttons were missing, maybe given as souvenirs to the jailers who stood by his side.
• • •
That day in September Robinson was tired, so tired, and thinking that it would have been wiser to take the bed that was offered at Radfords’ farm. But once the crisis was past all he wanted was to be gone, to be out of the dark, creaking house, little more than a shack, where the children peeped over the edge of the loft, their eyes just dark smudges in pale faces. All he wanted was to lie down in his own soft bed.
• • •
The darkness was loosening as they finally came into town. He settled Prince and climbed the stairs, pulled back the covers, but each time he slid into sleep strange dreams arrived with a thump, and he had to get up again. The day, when it properly came, was blue and crisp and the morning passed, and in the dead part of the afternoon he was dozing in his chair when he heard pounding at the door, the front window rattling. Constable Street with a wild look in his eyes, hurrying him along the walk, up the two steps, through the gaping doorway. The little girl, he said. She made a sound when I turned her over; she’s still alive. But she wasn’t; later he explained the gasp, the gurgle, though Street didn’t seem to take it in.
He’d never been in Heath’s house, but it was laid out like many others, and even without Street’s broad back in front of him he could have gone straight to Rachel’s room. It was clear what had happened and he thought he could still smell a trace of gunpowder, but that may have been his fancy, looking at the wound. From the way she’d fallen it seemed she might have been kneeling at the side of the bed. He’d seen many things, but nothing as cold and hard as this, and he remembered that a day or two before he had seen her with Eaton, just outside the low gate, her hand stretched out to give him something, and his stretched out to take it. He remembered that innocent as that moment was it made him think, seeing his son alone with a girl, of all that lay before him. He thought of his own first fumblings, his ignorance and his terror, and thought that it was almost time to explain things to Eaton, to give him facts to ease his way. Maybe they would take fishing poles, just the two of them, to a quiet spot on the river. In the spring, when it was warm enough to roll their shirtsleeves up, and Lucy could pack them a lunch and they would talk, man to man, father to son.