He was a coward, and a fool, to entertain the slightest notion that a woman twenty-five years younger than himself might find him suitable as a mate. Even for a woman closer to his age, he would be no prize, with his belly that would press into her, his lumpish, lined face, his tendencies to catarrh and boils, his sour breath. He snored, and his feet were unsightly, with bulging yellow nails and bunions that had to be soaked in vinegar water each night. But he had over the years put aside a tidy sum; he could provide her a comfortable home and respite from her work. Though she might want to continue teaching; she had a passion for it, one of her finest traits. Her devotion to young Benjamin was touching to witness.
She likely had a passion for life too—he had often thought so—with her strong young body, the firm breasts that it hurt him to think of. Smaller breasts than Isobel’s, upturned, he imagined, and milky flanks. He touched himself, removed his hand, and gripped the brass bedstead. It would only increase his longing, and afterward he always felt a twinge regarding Isobel, even though he knew she would bear him no grudge.
Since Lena had touched his hand, he had evaded her, staying out on his rounds long past the usual hour and reading the newspaper at breakfast. He had likely missed his opportunity, not taking her hand, not speaking for all this time. If she had meant what he hoped, she would think him disinterested or timid. Tomorrow she was going to Joliet to visit her mother, not to return for a week, he had heard her telling Mrs. Bosley in the hall. Her voice had sounded so cheerful and full of music that he wondered if a young man waited along with her mother. On several occasions she had alluded to a friend in Joliet.
In the distance was the long throaty call of a horned owl, a sound lonely as a train whistle, and, farther off, a faint response. There would be love somewhere this night in Morseville.
He thrashed out of bed and went to look out the front window. Across the street, the saloon was closed; a drunk Injun lay on the board sidewalk. Otherwise the town was empty, the rutted street and closed shops a desolate scene in the sharp light of the moon, deep shadows in the alley beside the dry-goods store. If she should leave this place, he could not bear it.
He struck his hand against the window sash. He should ask to drive her to the train station. By golly, he would. She would have made other arrangements, but should she be willing to alter them, that would be a sign. He swallowed down his queasiness and sat at his desk, now afraid to sleep, lest he should miss her departure.
She wore a dress that favored her green eyes, and she smelled of lemon soap. Mrs. Bosley had planned to take her to the train station, but Lena seemed pleased by the new arrangement. He wished he had thought to wear his new shirt. At least the buggy was presentable.
The ride to Stockton was short, just under three miles, but he lengthened it, taking the back road. They were mostly silent. She mentioned a book she was reading. Her profile was lovely in the dappled light as they rode beneath the trees.
He had loaded three valises into the back of the buggy, surely more than necessary for a week.
“Will you see your friend, then?” he said.
“I have many friends in Joliet,” she said. “It’s my birthplace.”
“They’re fortunate to know you.” What a thing to say.
“You look weary, Horatio. I hope you’ll take care of yourself.”
He glanced at her hands, folded in her lap, and pulled the horse to a halt. His heart was going like a bellows at Christmas. There were purple asters in the ditch. He sprang out and picked a handful, stood by her, and presented them with a bow.
She looked astonished. It was hopeless. But he had begun.
“Lena—would you consider an old man for a suitor?”
She met his eyes steadily. “I don’t think of you as old, Horatio.”
Sweat rolled into his left eye. He took out his handkerchief—none too clean—and wiped his face.
“Do you mean,” he said, “a possibility?”
“Yes.” She smiled and swung her legs over the side of the buggy. He lifted her down and kissed her.
He was in a daze for the remainder of the ride, holding her hand until they came into Stockton, seeing her onto the train, a proud man, a new man, blowing a kiss to her at the window, watching the handsome train recede. As he rode back toward Morseville by the same road that had altered his life, the world seemed newly alive and he was part of it. He skirted the town and, before starting on his rounds, drove out to the cemetery to tell Isobel.
“You always were impulsive, Kate,” her mother said, embracing her. “But of course I’m delighted. I hope you’re planning a long stay. What about the children?”
“They’ll manage,” Kate said. “Frank’s mother will be glad to have free rein.”
They sat in the parlor with tea and cookies. The room hadn’t changed over the years, each piece of dark furniture in the same place where it had first been planted: the brown velvet love seat on which her mother perched, crocheting a doily, chairs of punishing horsehair, end tables cluttered with memorabilia from China. A photograph of her father in his clerical collar looked benignly upon them from the mantel. In one corner of the room was the spinet piano where Kate had practiced Bach airs and inventions, the sheet music still on the stand, as if she had left home yesterday instead of twelve years ago.
Her mother sipped at her tea, cast a glance in Kate’s direction. “What’s wrong, dear?”
“My life is unbearable,” Kate burst out. Tears sprang to her eyes. “Frank …”
Her mother went still; she set down her crocheting and stared at her, blinking. “What is it?”
“He …” Kate thought of him grunting, shoving into her. “My husband … in an intimate moment …” Her face went hot.
“Of course he isn’t a gentleman.” Her mother took up the doily again, her mouth set in a grim line. “You should have married Pastor Williams.”
The clock on the mantelpiece chimed, straining with the effort. Four o’clock; soon Frank would be coming in from the fields. She’d left before dawn. All day he would have thought of her note on the kitchen table. At supper, her empty chair would accuse him.
“I advise you to keep to yourself as often as possible,” her mother said, “though I do not speak from personal experience. Your father was always a gentleman.”
Kate’s teacup rattled in her hand. She set it on the table and watched her mother crochet with a new ferocity. Her face was closed; she wanted to hear nothing further.
“I’m going for a walk,” Kate said. She rose, crossed the room, and paused at the door, yearning for her mother to call her back.
“You’ll be back for supper?” her mother asked.
“Yes.” She waited, but there was nothing more.
She went quickly down the front steps, thinking of her father, of sitting in his lap when she was a child. But she wouldn’t have been able to tell him either; he would be horrified. How could she tell anyone—even her old friend Marianne—that her husband was in love with a dead woman, for whom she was only a substitute, or that she was raising their child, a secret from the world.
She walked past the shops on Main Street, looking in the windows to avoid the eyes of others. She should have gone the back way to cross the river. Too late now. How dreadful if she should encounter Emily Kettering—Mrs. McCann now, perfectly turned out, a lady of leisure, a triumphant little smile to accompany her gushing salutation. Kate hurried past shoes and boots, confections, feathered hats, a man being shaved by a barber, the razor gliding through the foam.
She went on, walking faster, toward the river. Frank unpinning her hair, slipping off her gown; beautiful as an angel, he said. In bed he used to be tender, considerate, and their pleasure had been mutual. That Butterfly woman had made him a savage. Her vision blurred with tears as she started across the bridge. She glanced down at the water, the swift current.
She went on—block after block of houses, husbands returning from their work, children in the yards, the smells of supper—and
headed into the countryside, so hot and thirsty she felt she might faint; that would be a relief. She walked and walked until she wore her thoughts away and there was nothing left of her but motion.
When she returned to the house, she found a tin of butter cookies in the kitchen and took them upstairs. She got into bed, ate all the cookies, and went to sleep. In the morning her mother brought tea and a coddled egg on toast. Kate sipped at the tea, put the tray aside, and returned to her pillow.
“You’re not well,” her mother said. “We should call the doctor.”
“I’m only tired,” Kate said. “Let me rest in peace.” She slept through lunch and supper, again and again plunging into the liquidity of sleep, the haven of it.
Her mother brought her a Bible, soft foods, tonics. A letter from Frank arrived. We miss you sorely, dearest one, please hurry home. The children are distraught.
No apology, of course. Kate tore the letter in half and shoved it beneath the mattress. She thought of Franklin in the yard, his face somber, looking down the road for her. Mary Virginia would cling to her grandmother, her eyes puffy from crying. She should have left them a separate letter, she should write to them now. But she closed her eyes and they faded away.
There were more letters from Frank; she put them beneath the mattress and swam back into sleep.
One afternoon her mother came to tell her that Frank was in the parlor.
“I’m not well enough to see him.”
“He’s your husband. You’ve been away from him for two weeks.”
Kate shook her head.
“Don’t be absurd, Kate.”
When she didn’t move, her mother went away and reappeared shortly with a box of chocolates and a vase of pink roses. “He says he has more gifts for you at home. He wants you to come with him.”
Kate pulled the pillow over her head and drifted away.
A week later she awoke in the middle of the night and could not sleep again, even with the tonic.
She lit a lamp and sat at the dressing table, staring at her reflection. Her hair was tangled but her face was the same, as if she were the same woman.
She couldn’t stay here. Her mother wouldn’t want her indefinitely—she had made that clear—and there would be the humiliation of it, people talking. And there were the children. She thought of Mary Virginia’s sweaty little hands patting her face, of Franklin looking gravely at her, his eyes delphinium blue, like hers. It had been terrible of her to leave them; even worse, she had barely thought of them. What kind of mother was she?
She would keep herself from Frank, as her mother had advised, until he came to his senses, and devote herself to Franklin and Mary Virginia. They needed her; even Benji needed her. She would make Franklin’s favorite lemon pie, a new dress for Mary Virginia; every night in the parlor she would conduct devotionals, with particular attention to Benji. She had failed him in that regard; she had never managed to bring him to God. She must try harder. At bedtime she would say prayers with each child, and every morning and evening she would spend an hour in private prayer.
And she would continue to develop her intellectual interests and social circle. The suffragist Charlotte Cross was coming to Stockton soon, to give a presentation at the town hall. She would persuade Aimee Moore to let her host the pre-lecture dinner. Although Aimee—who had known Miss Cross at Mount Holyoke—had invited her, Kate’s house would be particularly suitable for the event, given that Miss Cross had a strong interest in the Orient. Miss Cross would enjoy talking to Benji and Frank, and it would give Kate pleasure to show Frank that she thought nothing of his misdeeds, that she could even speak of Japan herself in the most casual manner possible, that he was irrelevant to her.
She would make trips to the Art Institute and the opera in Chicago—Aimee and her husband had invited her more than once—and take up piano again. Her Galena teacher had considered her something of a prodigy, and she had given two successful recitals when she was a young woman. Frank knew she wanted a piano; perhaps that was the surprise.
In the morning she wrote to Aimee and prepared for her return.
The day that Kate had departed, Frank woke late, with a violent headache. He vomited into the chamber pot and pulled on his clothes. Downstairs, his mother set coffee before him and handed him Kate’s note.
“It’s surprising she didn’t tell us aforehand,” she said, and turned back to the stove. She was cooking eggs; the greasy odor made his gorge rise again.
The paper shook in his grip. Her sentence sloped down the page, not her usual fine penmanship. She hadn’t signed it.
Last night’s dream came to him: butterflies feeding on his skin. He looked out the window.
“They’re gone,” he said.
“She went alone,” his mother said. “All the children are here. I told them that their grandmother is ill, that word came in the night.”
She shook scrambled eggs onto a plate and put it before him. He inched it away, tried a sip of coffee. “She took the new buggy,” his mother said.
“Buggy,” he said aloud, then repeated the word in his mind.
“Bud Case came by. Benji and the Swede went with him.”
“Christ,” he said. Today they were threshing at the Miller farm.
“You’d better call on our Lord in all sincerity,” his mother said. “Your uncle Edward lost everything on account of the bottle. It’s the devil’s poison.”
“That’s not it.” He stood, pushing back the chair. It fell; he righted it and headed to the door.
“You never had this trouble before you deserted the Plum River church,” his mother said. “Go to Pastor Pollock, Frank, I beg you. Ask him to pray with you.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mother,” he said, under his breath. “I’m sorry for every bad thing I ever did.”
Outdoors, he spied a butterfly in the lilac bush, another skimming along the fence. A butterfly lit on his shoulder; he slapped it and stared at the smear of orange on his palm. He rubbed his hand on his trousers.
“God,” he whispered, “Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.” There was no answer; there never had been. He walked unsteadily to the barn.
The men had taken the Percherons, and Daisy’s stall was empty. He’d lost her. His Kate. Katie.
He started mucking out the stalls. Goddamn butterflies. They were a plague as sure as the crickets his father had called Idaho devils, as sure as the grasshoppers that stripped the fields, the chinch bugs, the corn black with them.
Butterfly devils, feeding at his soul.
He’d been a good enough man at one time, a man of discipline aboard ship: first mate, then lieutenant, everything in order, the medical kits, spare clothing for the men, the chamber pots emptied on schedule. Teaching new hands to haul the lead, to navigate, respected for doing more than his share. Night watch, the smell of the open sea, the shudder of the ship beneath him like a large animal, the slosh and slap of waves against the hull—it had been intoxication enough. He’d traded the world of water for the world of dirt, and he was the dirtiest thing in it.
The next evening, after a day of threshing, he went to see Keast at his boardinghouse. He was still out on his rounds. Frank waited in the parlor, Mrs. Bosley passing through occasionally, giving him coy smiles. He’d kissed her once when they were young; she was Nellie Green then.
He went outside to wait and, when he saw Keast coming up the street in his buggy, fell in step beside him. Keast greeted him heartily, said he’d be glad for a smoke before supper.
In his room, Keast offered Frank some whiskey.
“I’ve given it up,” Frank said.
“Wise of you,” Keast said, pouring himself a slug.
Keast sat down in a hard-back chair, motioned Frank toward the up-holstered one. He looked pretty goddamn cheerful for a horse doctor, smiling, holding out the box of cigars as if he were a gentleman in a drawing room.
Frank took a cigar and lit it. He couldn’t think how to begin. “I believe I’ll take you
up on that drink,” he said. “Just a snort.”
Keast handed him a glass of bourbon and he drank it down. “I’ve lost Kate,” he said.
“Ah. Surely not.”
“She’s gone to her mother.”
“Women go to their mothers sometimes.”
“She’s not coming back.”
“Go to her, then.”
“It’s not like that. It’s desperate. Beyond anything you can imagine.” He looked down at his hands, grime under the nails, the knuckles that would never scrub clean. “I haven’t always been honorable,” he said. “In Japan …”
Keast was regarding him steadily; Frank met his eyes.
“No one of us is perfect,” Keast said. “Man or woman.”
“I must win her back,” Frank said. “What can I do?”
“You could write to her—a love letter.”
“That won’t be enough.”
Keast sighed, took another drink.
“You’re leaning on a slender reed,” he said. “But, in my experience, women appreciate gifts.”
When Kate returned three weeks later, Frank led her into the parlor.
“Surprise!” he said.
Kate stared at the new bay window.
“It’s not quite finished,” he said. “But I thought you’d be pleased—you admired the one in the Moores’ parlor. Do you like it?”
“Yes,” she said in a faint voice. “I’d thought … maybe a piano.”
“I worked like Jehoshaphat on the window,” he said. “And here’s another little gift. Look at your pretty bird.” He picked up a wicker cage from a table by the window. “A lovebird,” he said.
“Oh,” she said.
“You could teach it to sit on your finger.” He started to open the cage.
“Don’t,” she said. “It will spoil the carpet.”
That night he slid into bed, careful not to touch her. “I was thinking,” he said. “Maybe we could take a holiday, to Lake Geneva in Wisconsin, just the two of us. What would you say to that?”
“That would be fine,” she said in a dull voice.
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