The Widow's House

by Carol Goodman

  You had to get picked for Monty’s class, though; you couldn’t even apply for it. Only a handful of senior English majors were chosen, no one knew exactly how. It was unlikely that he consulted the other creative writing faculty. He didn’t mingle much, never kept office hours in the department, and seemed to despise most of his colleagues. If they had recommended a student it might be reason enough for Monty not to admit them. Perhaps he read the submissions to the campus literary magazine, Hesperian, but the year I was a junior, Amy Feinstein, who’d never submitted to Hesperian, had gotten in.

  There were rumors, unsurprisingly, that he picked girls for their looks and potential bed-ability, and certainly there’d been a fair amount of attractive women in Monty’s classes (and rumors that after graduation they had wound up in Monty’s bed), but that didn’t explain how he chose the guys (although some tried to posit bisexuality, those rumors were squashed by Monty’s ferocious Hemingwayesque heterosexuality) or why he sometimes picked aggressively plain girls.

  Camouflage, I overheard Jess say to someone on our first day of class, for the really good-looking girls. And then he’d looked at me and I had blushed. Did he mean I was beautiful? Or that I was the camouflage? His smile seemed to indicate the former. I’d looked down and busied myself writing my name on the notebook—

  That had been the moment I’d written these words, with Jess looking at me. It hadn’t been the first time I’d seen him. Jess Martin was a legend on campus. There was a rumor that he’d already written a novel and burned it on a bonfire in the woods that had gotten him kicked out of the dorms sophomore year. He’d lived off campus since then and dated local girls. I’d seen him at the farm stand with a tall blonde in cowboy boots. He was already publishing short stories in real literary magazines. But it was, I was pretty sure, the first time he had really seen me.

  Not many students had. I still lived off campus (my scholarship did not cover room and board) and worked at the farm stand in the afternoons and I hardly ever spoke in class. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t have anything to say as that Bailey students had so much to say. I’d never encountered a group with so many opinions and so much faith that the world was waiting to hear them. But on that first day of Monty’s Senior Fiction Seminar, Jess had looked across the broad oak conference table and smiled at me as if we’d known each other for years and were sharing a private joke. Under that regard I’d written my name with such verve and flourish. Because being chosen by Monty (I didn’t think it was for my looks) had made me suddenly visible. In turn, it had been Jess’s smile that gave me confidence. When Monty had appeared—fifteen minutes late, in a rumpled white linen jacket and with a Mason jar full of iced tea, like a plantation owner who’d just wandered in off his veranda to find unexpected guests—and barked “Why are you all just sitting here like bumps on a log? Write something for God’s sake!” I had opened my notebook and begun a story that had been rattling around in my head all summer. I hadn’t even thought about it. It came pouring out. I’d gotten so immersed that I’d forgotten the class around me, the intimidating cool poses of the Bailey students, Monty sipping from his Mason jar (which smelled suspiciously of bourbon), and the light breeze coming in from the open window carrying with it the early autumn scent of cut hay and ripening apples—or perhaps the apples had been in my mind because that’s what I wrote about.

  At some point I became aware that the sound of my pen moving across the paper was the only sound in the room. I looked up and saw, to my horror, that the other students had stopped writing and were all looking at me.

  “Now that,” Monty said, wafting his nearly empty Mason jar in the air, dispersing the incense of Lipton and Jack Daniel’s, “is writing. Care to share a few lines, Miss . . .” He’d squinted down at a crumpled sheet of paper—a class list, I supposed. “. . . er, Jackson, isn’t it?”

  I think now that I would have refused if I could have formed the words to do so, but I’d spent all my words. The only ones I had left were those on the page in front of me. So I’d read—

  I opened the notebook now and read the first line of the story I’d started fourteen years ago. It was called “The Apples of Discord.”

  Every year when the apple blossoms bloom the town council of Discord selects a Queen of the Apple Blossom Festival . . .

  I felt an icy prickle at the nape of my neck, as if someone had laid a cold hand on my back. This was why I’d remembered the apple blossom girl story. I had written a story about her and here it was!

  I read through the next few pages, the chill spreading from the nape of my neck to the base of my spine, like cold water pouring down my back. The details were eerily similar to the story Monty had told us, from the seduced girl carried off in the apple blossom laden cart to the girl drowning herself in the pond. When the ice broke, I’d written, she thought it was her heart breaking. No wonder I’d been able to recite it at our dinner party—I’d been quoting myself! Clearly the story had been inspired by the history of Riven House. I must have overheard it listening to my mother and her friends gossiping in the kitchen and assimilated their stories into my own version over the long summer working in the orchards. I must not have known the story had anything to do with Monty’s family—or else I’d never have read it aloud. What must he have thought? I remembered that when I had finished reading he’d been staring at me. I’d been terrified of what he’d say. He was famous for making withering comments that sent students running from the class in tears. But what he’d said was, “Well, class, Miss Jackson has set the bar exceedingly high. Go home and endeavor to write something worthy. Class dismissed.”

  Funny how I had remembered his comment all these years better than the story that had prompted it. Had I ever finished it? I began flipping through the pages to see, but the sound of my own name made me look up.

  “Clare! It is you. Hi!”

  I stared at the pretty blonde for a full ten seconds before recognizing her.

  “Katrine,” I said, quickly enough that I hoped she didn’t see that I hadn’t recognized her at first. Her wide, friendly smile gave nothing away. She was wearing a burgundy wrap dress and teetering on high heels, clasping a travel mug. Of course, I realized, her real estate office was practically across the street. She must come in here all the time. She didn’t look dressed for tromping through snake-ridden fields today, though. “How nice to see you. Do you want to . . .” I gestured to the seat across from me.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to disturb your writing,” she said, looking down then at the notebook, which I’d closed and drawn protectively against my chest. “I didn’t know you wrote too.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “At least not anymore. I was just reading over something . . .”

  “Is it one of Jess’s books?” she asked, perching on the arm of the couch across from me. The tattooed girl looked up and scooted a few inches away, giving Katrine room to sit, but she remained perched, as if she was really too busy to commit to sitting or she was worried that she might pick up something from the ratty old upholstery. “It must be so exciting to see a writer as talented as him at work. Is he finding the atmosphere at Riven House inspiring?”

  “He’s been writing,” I said, not liking to admit I hadn’t read anything. “But I don’t know if he finds the atmosphere inspiring. Jess doesn’t really believe in those things.”

  Katrine tilted her head, a perplexed look creasing her smooth forehead. “And what about you? How are you settling in?”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” I said quickly. “The caretaker’s cottage is . . . okay. Once I got it cleaned out.”

  She clucked her tongue. “I asked Sunny Gruenwald to straighten up, but she must have forgotten. Did you get the welcome basket I sent?”

  I looked at her blankly. “The basket . . . ?”

  “With bread and cheese and wine. I thought it would make a nice romantic dinner for you guys on your first night.”

  I recalled the picnic dinner spread out in the candlelight. “Oh, yes, of
course,” I said. “That was so thoughtful of you. I should have thanked you for it”—only my husband never mentioned where the food came from—“I was just so busy unpacking.”

  “No worries,” she said with a smile that suggested otherwise. “Jess thanked me.”

  He had?

  “Of course, that’s right, he told me he was going to take care of that, but still . . . It was all delicious.”

  “Oh, it all came from the new wine bar on the corner, Bread & Bottle—except for the grapes, which I got from the Corbett stand. In fact, one of the Corbett brothers mentioned he knew you from high school.”

  “Dunstan?” I asked, my voice high and shrill as a teenager’s.

  “No, I think it was Devon . . . or Derrick?” She laughed. “I never can tell those Corbett boys apart, one’s more handsome than the next. But then you know that.” She smiled coyly and waggled a finger at me. “You dated one of them in high school, didn’t you?”

  “I . . .”

  “Don’t look so surprised,” she said, getting up and adjusting her slinky dress over her long legs. “It’s a small town. You’ll get used to it again. If you like, we could have a glass of wine at the Bread & Bottle and I’ll fill you in on all the gossip.”

  For a moment I almost told her I couldn’t—that I was needed at the house. But for what? To make Monty and Jess dinner? To listen to them trade literary gossip into the night?

  “That would be great,” I said. “I haven’t had much female companionship up here.”

  “You mean you haven’t been hanging out with Sunny and her children?” she asked coyly.

  I smiled. “She’s actually been very nice. She dropped off some dandelion greens and raspberry tea—to strengthen my uterus,” I added a bit wickedly.

  Katrine snorted coffee through her nose. “You definitely have to come for a drink at the B&B. We don’t want your uterus getting too toned.”

  I laughed and said I’d love to. Then, feeling bad about making fun of Sunny, I added, “She must have her hands full taking care of her grandkids. I sometimes hear the baby crying late at night.”

  Katrine shook her head. “Grandkids?”

  “Yes, at least I assumed they were her grandchildren. She just calls them her children—”

  “Oh,” Katrine said, a sly smile curling her lipsticked mouth. “That’s what she calls her puppets. Sad, huh? You must be hearing something else at night. Foxes, maybe. They can sound like babies.”

  “Oh,” I said, my skin prickling. “That must be it.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence and then Katrine glanced down at her watch and pretended to be surprised at the time. “I’ve got to go. I’m catching a train into the city.”

  “Oh,” I said, wistfully. “Do you go in often?”

  “As often as I can. I was a theater major in college and you can’t really see anything worthwhile up here. You should come in with me sometime. I’ve got a girlfriend with an apartment who lets me stay there and a friend who gets me discounted theater tickets.”

  I told her I’d love to go in with her sometime although I was thinking that I had friends of my own in the city I could visit, like Marika, who’d called only a few days ago to ask me to come down for drinks.

  After she left, I went back to my coffee and notebook but the pumpkin spice latte had grown cold and cloyingly sweet. I opened the notebook back to where I’d stopped reading and read the last line of the story I’d begun fourteen years ago.

  And ever after the inhabitants of Discord House were haunted by the smell of apple blossoms and the sound of a baby crying in the night.

  No wonder I heard a baby crying in the night. I’d scared myself with my own ghost story.

  Chapter Seven

  I drove back from town, clutching the steering wheel to keep my hands from shaking. I wasn’t sure what had rattled me more—Jess not telling me where the food had come from (he hadn’t, had he?) or the news that Sunny didn’t have any children—at least not the kind that cried at night. I must have imagined it; it wouldn’t be the first time.

  Merging onto River Road I nearly ran into a speeding Audi. It honked and swerved past me—Bailey students driving too fast—and I pulled into the dirt parking lot of the Corbett farm stand to catch my breath. Taking deep breaths to steady myself, I glimpsed a plaid flannel–shirted man hauling a crate of apples off a flatbed. The contours of that broad back reminded me of Dunstan, but his face was hidden by a canvas baseball cap. Besides, it wouldn’t be Dunstan—he was a policeman. It would be one of his brothers, Derrick or Devon. One of whom had asked after me. Maybe seeing a friendly face would calm me down.

  I got out of the car and walked across the dusty lot, the sun hot on my back, and under the striped canvas awning into cool, raftered shadows. My father had built the open-air building and the slatted tables now laden with baskets of apples. They were in full apple season now—Jonagolds, Cox’s Pippins, Blue Permains, Honeycrisps, Sweet Sixteens, Macouns, Sommerfelds. I saw the dark-haired girl in the yellow apron weaving in and out of the tables with a paring knife, slicing apples into the china saucers laid out in front of each basket, and hoped she’d be more careful with her knife than last time. I didn’t think I could stomach the smell of blood right now. I walked around for a few minutes, sampling apples, their scent, the lazy drone of bees, and the pale yellow light of sun filtered through canvas, soothing. I wasn’t entirely sure that Jess hadn’t said where the food had come from—and even if he hadn’t, it didn’t mean anything. Things were going well. Jess was writing. We were happy up here. Waking up in the middle of the night (at 3:36, it was always at 3:36) wasn’t a big deal. I could always nap later.

  I tried a Sommerfeld, an apple I hadn’t tasted since college, and nearly swooned at the rich caramel flavor. I bought a dozen, but I didn’t see either of the Corbett boys at the register, only another flash of plaid flannel out in the back.

  “Tell Devon that Clare Jackson said hello,” I told the yellow-aproned girl.

  I drove back crunching on a Sommerfeld, feeling better. When I pulled into the drive a fox streaked across the road, a red blur like a smear of blood. There was probably a den nearby. That’s what I had been hearing in the night. A little further up the drive I had to pull over to let Sunny’s pickup truck pass by. When she was parallel to me she leaned out her window and said she was going down to Beacon for some supplies for “the children.” I wished her luck and drove on, feeling sorry for her. She must be pretty lonely to think of her puppets as children. Then again, papier-mâché and wire never broke your heart.

  When I came into the house and found Jess at his desk, head bent over his laptop, my voice was casual, as if I always interrupted him when he was writing.

  “I just saw Katrine at Cassie’s.”

  Jess looked up from his laptop, his eyes soft and vague, a look he often had when he was writing, as if he were hearing a voice call his name and he’d forgotten whose voice it was. Or maybe even forgotten his own name. After a moment he said, “Oh, the Realtor,” and closed his laptop. He must have been done for the day. “Did she try to sell you a split-level in MY-lan?”

  Ever since Jess had discovered how the locals pronounced the neighboring town of Milan he’d taken any excuse to use its name.

  “No, but she did ask me if I liked the welcome basket she sent. Why didn’t you tell me she sent that food?”

  He scratched his head. His hair was standing up in peaks, the way it did when he’d been writing all day. I’d seen him pulling at it, as if he were trying to tear the words out by the roots. He smiled a boyish smile to go with his boyishly tousled locks. “Didn’t I? I guess I thought you saw the card.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Well at least you sent a thank-you.”

  He lifted both eyebrows in an expression of comic surprise. “Jeez, Clare, didya think you married Emily Post?”

  “Crap. She must think we’re barbarians.”

  “City slicker barbarians.” Jess grunted and pulled me i
nto his lap.

  I squealed, not at all angry anymore. Not mentioning the card was no big deal—not like keeping the Brooklyn job from me and I’d all but forgotten about that already—and Jess’s arms felt warm around me. The fall was still mild, but it would be getting cold soon. We had the whole winter to hunker down together in our cozy little house like the foxes in their den. Soon we’d sleep with the windows closed and I wouldn’t hear them anymore.

  WE DIDN’T GO up to the house for drinks or dinner that night. We stayed in and I made grilled cheese sandwiches and sliced the Sommerfelds. I made Jess taste them with his eyes closed.

  “What do you taste?” I asked.

  “Caramel. You’ve dipped them in caramel.” But when he opened his eyes he saw the apple slices were bare.

  “Witch,” he accused.

  “Barbarian,” I countered.

  When he kissed me, his mouth tasted fleetingly of caramel. That was the secret of the Sommerfelds. The first time you bit into one your mouth was flooded with caramel, but when you took another bite, looking for that taste again, you got plain apple. You had to sneak up on it, Dunstan Corbett had told me the first time he’d fed me the apples with my eyes closed. The taste was elusive, but when you caught it you wanted to suck that sticky sweetness right out of its flesh. That’s how Jess kissed me that night. Like I’d surprised him. Like he was looking for something he’d lost.

  Later, lying in bed, moonlight paring the room into white crescents, I watched Jess sleep, his face half in moonlight, half in shadow, and thought love was like those apples. You had to sneak up on it. And just when you thought it was gone—there it was again. I drifted in and out of sleep on this thought, each time I opened my eyes finding Jess’s face a quarter inch more in darkness, as if he were slowly vanishing before my eyes, until only a sliver of cheekbone remained and I fell into a deeper sleep.