The Widow's House

by Carol Goodman

  I stared at the heavy revolver. I’d grown up with guns on the farm. My father wouldn’t hesitate to shoot a fox or coyote menacing our chickens and he’d made me learn how to shoot. But I’d never liked them. I could smell the metal and oil from where I sat.

  “Is it loaded?” I asked, noting the tremor in Monty’s hand.

  “Of course. It wouldn’t do much good if it weren’t. When I’m dithering over a passage I tell myself I can either get down to it or put an end to it. I find a loaded gun focuses the mind.”

  He looked up, saw the horrified expression on my face, and put the gun back in the drawer.

  “Don’t be so literal, Clare. It’s a metaphor. Like Chekhov’s gun.”

  “Oh,” I said, trying to smile, “I see.” But as I left the library I remembered what Chekhov had said about the gun: If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired.

  AS I DROVE to the library that day I told myself that Monty had just been trying to get a rise out of me, the way he’d say provocative things in class to stimulate a lively discussion. Saying I looked like Mary Foley and suggesting I might be related to her was another way of “getting me going.” If so, it had worked. At least on the subject of Mary Foley. (As for the gun, I’d already decided to sneak into the drawer when Monty wasn’t around and unload it.) Was it really such a far-fetched idea that I was related to Mary? Concord was a small town made up of close-knit families. I’d noticed several Foleys in my school. Mary might have had a sister or brother who had a child who had landed in the nearby mental hospital—it wouldn’t be such a big surprise given the family history—and given up their baby for adoption. I could check the census records to see what other siblings Mary had. I remembered from a report I’d done in high school that the Village Hall kept the local census records—and the Village Hall was right across the street from the library.

  As I pulled into the Village Hall parking lot I realized there was another option. I could go to St. Anne’s and ask to see my records. Trudy had told me that the records were sealed, but I’d often wondered if she hadn’t lied about that. Besides, I knew there were ways to petition to have your records opened. I’d never tried. The truth was that since overhearing I’d been born in a mental hospital I’d been afraid to learn how crazy my birth mother had been.

  But if I could find out first who she had been, if she had been a descendant of Mary Foley’s sibling, I didn’t think I would be as afraid.

  The Village Hall was a two-story brick building with a relief of golden apples over the door. Inside there was a mural depicting the history of apple growing in New York State, from 1647 when Governor Peter Stuyvesant planted an apple tree from Holland on the corner of Third Avenue and 13th Street (a spot I’d pointed out to Jess once) to the introduction of apples to the Hudson Valley and the famous varieties bred in the state. In third grade we’d all had to do a report on the history of apple growing and make dioramas based on the Village Hall mural. I could still remember gluing cotton balls onto stick trees to represent apple blossoms and tiny red gumballs for apples. I remembered every detail of the mural—the coppery skin of the half-naked Seneca Indians and the tiny frogs and birds hidden in the reeds of the riverscape. So why had I forgotten the story of the apple blossom girl? Could it be that the idea had entered my head only when Monty came into the class that day—that I had picked it up psychically from him? Maybe I had forgotten it so quickly because it wasn’t my idea at all and now it had come back to me only because I was in daily contact with Monty.

  I had heard a few writers over the years talk, as Sunny had, about being the vessel for the muse or God or some other spiritual force. They talked as if it was some kind of gift to be the mouthpiece of an external force, but it had always sounded to me like a curse. I didn’t like the idea of being Monty’s mouthpiece. But if I had some family connection to Mary, wouldn’t that mean the story was as much mine as his?

  I turned away from the mural to the clerk’s window where a middle-aged woman with tight gray curls and pale blue eyes sat crocheting a colorful afghan. When I asked if I could see the census records for 1930 she sighed, put down her wool regretfully, and eased herself out of her chair. I followed her to a small windowless room in the back of the building where the town’s census records were kept in large bound volumes on tall metal shelves. She pointed vaguely toward the rear of the room and wheezed her way back to the front desk. Figuring that the older books would be in the rear of the room, I decided to start there. The dates on the bindings were so faded on these, though, that I had to take down each book to read the date, climbing onto a rickety stepladder to reach the ones on the top shelves, discovering as I did that they were out of order. It took me half an hour to find the 1930 census. By the time I found the Foleys of Concord I was wheezing just as heavily as the clerk had been. I found two Johns, one on Main Street whose profession was listed as “pharmacist” and one whose profession was listed as farmer and who lived on Apple Ring Road. The address startled me. There were only two farms on Apple Ring Road—the Jackson farm where I’d grown up and the Corbett farm. In 1930, though, the Corbett farm had belonged to a John Foley who lived there with his wife, Margaret, and one daughter, Elizabeth, age seventeen.

  Of course Mary would have been dead by 1930. To be sure it was her family I went back to the 1920 census and—after much scrambling up and down the shelves—found her. Mary Foley, age nine, Elizabeth Foley, age seven.

  So Mary did have a younger sister. Elizabeth could have had children and one of them could have had a daughter who ended up pregnant in the Hudson Mental Hospital. But how to find out who Elizabeth had married? By the 1940 census she would have been twenty-seven, probably married and listed under her husband’s household. I looked back at the 1930 census and noticed that Elizabeth was the last entry on the page—but not necessarily the last in the Foley household. I turned the page and found three more listed: Sonia Larsson, cook, Betty Murfree, housemaid, and Kevin Corbett, apple picker.

  That explained it.

  Dunstan had once told me that his grandfather had started out a picker and married the orchard owner’s daughter. Of course it made sense. The Corbett orchard was the one next to ours until the Corbetts bought my grandfather out in the Depression. So that meant Dunstan Corbett might actually be related to Mary Foley. Maybe that was the connection I had to Mary. I’d always found the Corbett family warm and open compared to mine. What if Mrs. Corbett had been so welcoming precisely because she knew of some connection?

  I went back to the 1940 census and looked up Kevin Corbett. I found him listed on Apple Ring Road, only now he was listed as the head of household and John and Margaret Foley as father- and mother-in-law. At least he’d let them live there. Elizabeth Foley Corbett was listed as his wife and there were three sons: Daniel, Patrick, and John—Dunstan’s father.

  Those Corbetts are a fruitful family, my father used to say.

  When I’d told Dunstan that he’d responded, It sounds like he’s calling us a bunch of fruits.

  I smiled at the memory of Dunstan’s voice as I got up to put the books back on their shelf. Would it be so bad to find out I was related to him now? I wondered as I balanced precariously on the stepladder, clutching the two heavy census books. After all, it had been years since we dated, years since that first time he had put his arms on my waist to steady me on a ladder . . .

  The memory was so vivid that the dusty shelves vanished and I was reaching instead through gnarled branches for a just-out-of-reach apple, the ladder shimmying under my feet and a voice calling out for me.

  “Clary!”

  The voice was so real I lost my balance and began to fall, but there were those hands again, so broad they encircled my waist, carrying me safely to the ground. I looked up into eyes that were still as blue as the sky glimpsed between apple boughs.

  “You never did have much sense of balance,” Dunstan Corbett said. “You almost broke your neck.”

/>   I swallowed, my throat tight from all the dust. “Maybe the Village Hall should invest in a sturdier ladder,” I pointed out, stunned that Dunstan’s first words to me in thirteen years were to call me unbalanced.

  “I’ll put it on the agenda next town meeting,” he replied, his lips quirking. “Along with a suggestion that city folk be kept out of the records room.”

  “City folk?” I balked. “I’m just as much from here as you are, Dunstan Corbett.”

  “Is that what you’re aiming to prove looking through the town records?”

  “Actually,” I said, “I was looking for someone else . . .”

  “Mary Foley?”

  “How . . . ?”

  “It’s a small town, Clary—or did you forget that too, living down in New York City?”

  I wanted to tell him that I hadn’t forgotten anything—not the way that one lock of blond hair fell over his eyes, or the way his hands had felt on my waist, or the crease in his left cheek when he was trying not to smile. But of course I couldn’t say any of that because I was married to Jess Martin.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I guess I did. I’ve forgotten a lot of things.”

  He smiled then. “Let’s get you a cup of coffee—you look like you could use one—and I’ll tell you a few things about Mary Foley.”

  WE WALKED TO Cassie’s through dead leaves swirling in the chilling air. I shivered in my too-light sweater and Dunstan handed me his denim jacket as automatically as when we were seventeen and he’d hand me his jacket on our walks home from school. It might even have been the same one with the frayed collar that used to brush against my face when he leaned in to kiss me . . .

  “You’re not wearing a uniform,” I said.

  “Day off,” he said, holding the door of Cassie’s for me.

  “So why were you in the Village Hall?” I glanced around the coffee shop but didn’t recognize anyone. Still, I felt half a dozen eyes snag on us as Dunstan led me to a back table by the window and pulled out a chair for me. Dunstan always drew attention when he entered a room. I’d always thought it was because he was so tall, but watching him now I realized it had more to do with the quietly self-possessed way he carried himself and those blue eyes that seemed to take in everything around him.

  “Stop looking so nervous, Clare. You make it sound like I was stalking you.”

  “I didn’t . . .” The crease on the left corner of his mouth deepened and I saw he was teasing me. “I’m sure you have plenty of reasons to go to the Village Hall on your day off.”

  “I do. But today my reason was you. Maureen phoned me to say you were in the records room so I came down to see you. Pumpkin spice latte and a cider donut?”

  I nodded mutely to my usual order and watched Dunstan walk up to the counter, glad for a moment to collect my thoughts. Not only wasn’t meeting him an accident, he knew what I’d been ordering at Cassie’s for the last two months. I looked around the café again, catching eyes just as they turned away. Dunstan was right; I’d forgotten what a small town Concord was. If you kissed a boy at the Lyceum Theater on Saturday night half the crowd at the Sunday farmer’s market knew about it. How long before the town was talking about two old high school sweethearts having coffee together at Cassie’s?

  “Are you worried about your husband being jealous that we’re talking?” he asked when he brought back my latte and his plain black coffee.

  “No!” I said, taking a scalding sip. “Jess wouldn’t . . .” I was about to say Jess wouldn’t care but amended it to, “Jess won’t mind. He’s not the jealous type. At least not romantically. Now, if you were an editor offering me a six-figure advance for my new novel . . .”

  Dunstan laughed and his shoulders relaxed. Mine did too, although I felt a little disloyal that I’d used Jess’s literary envy to set Dunstan at ease.

  “No fear of that. I always said you’d have to be the writer in the . . .” He grimaced. He’d been about to say in the family, the closest Dunstan and I had ever gotten to talking about getting married. He’d be the steady income provider with insurance—he’d always known he wanted to be a cop—and I’d make our fortune writing novels.

  “You always believed in me,” I said. “I hope you know how much that meant to me.”

  He raised his eyes from his coffee and looked at me, giving me the full force of those blue eyes. I was afraid he’d say that it clearly hadn’t meant enough, but instead he said, “I still believe in you, Clare. I’m still expecting you to write the great American novel.”

  I could hear Jess’s dismissive laugh in my head at the phrase, but ignored it. “I’d settle for something a whole lot slighter than that, but I do have an idea for a story.”

  “Mary Foley?”

  “How do you know that? And don’t say it’s a small town again.”

  “CJ told me you’ve been researching her in the library and I remember you being interested in the story the summer before . . . before your senior year.”

  The words before you broke up with me hovered in the air, but I was too intrigued by what he had said to worry about that. “You do? I talked about her?”

  “You don’t remember? You told me you had a dream about her—a nightmare, really. Like one of those dreams you used to have about your great-grandmother.” He shuddered. “Maybe that’s why you forgot about her. Those dreams you had gave me the heebie-jeebies.”

  I smiled to think of Dunstan Corbett afraid of anything. He was the guy you’d call if a spider or wasp got stuck in the apple bins, the one who’d step into the middle of a fight if a smaller kid was getting bullied, the boy who dove under the Saw Kill waterfall when his brother slipped and fell into the water.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I think I tried to put those dreams out of my head. I don’t remember dreaming about the apple blossom girl, though. But you must be right. I found a story I started senior year and thought I’d try writing something about her now.”

  “Farmer’s daughter runs off with a rich guy from the city. I can see the appeal.”

  “Jess isn’t rich,” I said too quickly.

  “No, I guess not if you had to come back here.”

  “You make it sound like I hated the place.”

  “God, Clare, you have forgotten a lot. You told me once you’d rather die than wind up growing old in Concord.”

  “I said I thought I would die if I stayed here. It wasn’t Concord or you, it was living in my home after my father died. My mother . . .” I stopped, realizing my voice had risen and that the tables around us had gone quiet. There were probably people in here who had known my mother. Only when Dunstan reached across the table and squeezed my hand did I realize how close I was to tears. That was another thing about Dunstan—he always knew what I was feeling before I knew myself. Like how he’d known I was leaving him for Jess before I knew it.

  “I don’t blame you for that, Clare. Hell, I don’t blame you for any of it. I was a pretty big jerk that whole last year.”

  “No you weren’t.”

  “I think you’re doing that editing thing you do again. I was a jerk. I knew the minute you met Jess Martin that you’d leave me for him, so I started preemptively acting like an asshole. For Christ’s sake, Clare, I dumped a truckload of manure on the lawn of that frat house he was living in.”

  “Bailey doesn’t have fraternities,” I said. “It was the Organic Cooperative Wellness House.” Dunstan’s lip twitched and I felt a tug at the corner of my mouth. “Which actually made the whole manure thing pretty funny.”

  “It was completely organic manure,” Dunstan said with a straight face. Then we were both laughing so hard I got pumpkin spice latte up my nose.

  Dunstan handed me a napkin. “It wasn’t funny at the time, though. You broke up with me the next day. I’ve wondered since if I didn’t drive you off, but then I figured that you were bound to go away after college anyway. You needed to get out of Concord to become the writer you wanted to be. I used to think I’d come to peace with it as long as I k
new you were happy and that you’d done what you had set out to do.”

  “I guess you were disappointed then that I haven’t.”

  He looked at me strangely. “Are you disappointed, Clare?”

  For a moment I wasn’t sure if he were asking me about writing or marrying Jess.

  “I think I have been,” I said, “but coming back here has changed that. Jess is writing again—and so am I.”

  He looked away from me and I noticed for the first time that there were fine lines around his eyes. “What about you?” I asked. “I heard you got married.”

  “And divorced,” he said, without looking at me. Then he smiled. “I married a Bailey girl. I think I did it to get back at you, which isn’t something I’m particularly proud of. It turned out she didn’t much like living in Concord either.”

  “I’m sorry, Dun. I’m sure you’ll find someone else.”

  He smiled. “I didn’t say I hadn’t.” Before I could react to that he said, “Look in your pocket.”

  “My pocket?” Then I remembered I was still wearing his denim jacket. I reached inside the right-hand pocket and pulled out a slim leather-bound book. It felt warm, as if it still held the heat of his body. I laid it on the table between us.

  “Don’t you want to know what’s in it?”

  “Yes,” I said, my voice hoarse.

  “It’s my grandmother Lizzie’s diary. She was Mary Foley’s sister . . .”

  “Elizabeth Foley. I just came across her name in the records. Did she ever talk about her sister?”

  “She died before I was born,” Dunstan said. “And my father never talked about her. There was something about that side of the family that was . . . haunted.”

  “What do you mean haunted?” I asked, feeling a chill move up my spine.

  “I meant gloomy. John Foley was a hard-assed businessman who bought up failing orchards in the Depression.” He looked at me warily. “What did you mean, Clare?”

  “Nothing . . . just there are stories . . .”

  “Maybe Riven House isn’t the best place for you to live. You always had a pretty wild imagination. Have you seen anything there?”