Westminster West

by Jessie Haas

  Sue realized she hadn’t answered. “No … tell me a story.”

  Aunt Mary laughed. “If that ain’t just like a child! What would you like to hear?”

  “Tell me … about wartimes.”

  Aunt Mary’s bulk seemed to become stiller. “Now why do you want to hear about misfortunes, and you layin’ there?”

  Sue didn’t answer.

  Aunt Mary sighed again. “Well, like cures like, they say. My war stories are just sickness and sorrow. I nursed awhile at the hospital in Brattleboro, on the old mustering ground. Where the fairground is now.”

  “Yes.”

  “A good many of us feel they might have chosen a different spot to hold the fairs,” Aunt Mary said. “I never go but what I start to sorrowin’ over somebody—like as not poor Johnny Coombs.”

  “Johnny Coombs?”

  “Why, didn’t you ever hear this story? That camp was halfway a hospital as soon as ever it was set up. Hundreds of fellows never got any farther south than that. Took sick and died, all cramped in there together with one another’s coughs and fevers. Poor Eliza took Johnny—just a little boy—to see his father off, and he came back with some fever. When he got through it, he was the way he is now.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know that.”

  “Course, Eliza never should have taken him. She feels it yet. All the child they were ever going to have.” Aunt Mary sighed. “Well, nobody can say Johnny hasn’t been a good son within his limits, but his gauge is set pretty narrow.”

  Sue let her eyes close, seeing the camp, a little bright-eyed boy holding his mother’s hand.

  Later. Aunt Mary was knitting, and Delyra Goodhue was at the door, small and slight in her black cashmere dress. “Hello, Mary. I came over to see if I could spell Jane for a while—might have known I’d find you here!”

  “Shh.” The chair creaked sharply as Aunt Mary got up and moved to the doorway. “She’s sleepin’ again. Now, Delyra, there’s no need for you to tax yourself. I can set here all day if I’m a mind to—can’t be late to dinner, ’cause there isn’t any till I make it!”

  “Oh, I can sit as well as anyone!” Delyra Goodhue said, with a little laugh. “Be a rest for me. Homer and I finished with our currant jelly this morning, and I’m a little worn.” Though their voices were lowered, they were perfectly distinct, and Sue closed her eyes again.

  “You’re well enough for jelly makin’, then?”

  “Homer does a good deal of it. I sort and stem, and he does the stirring and squeezing. He does take hold—as good as having another woman in the house!”

  “A nice man without notions is as good as a woman any day!” Aunt Mary said stoutly, and laughed. “There! That’s broad-minded for you!”

  “How is Susan, do you think?”

  “I don’t call her real sick. You know, I’ve seen a lot of sickness in the family lately, Delyra, and there’s a look to it. Sue’s out of frame some way, no doubt about it, but she don’t need watchin’. I wouldn’t stay, except I know how Jane can be.” Sue’s eyes almost opened at this.

  Delyra Goodhue said. “Jane’s seen trouble.”

  “Then she ought to know this isn’t it! But there! It clears the sight of some and clouds the sight of others. I knew she’d be in a fret and not gettin’ work done, so I came.”

  “Clare’s helping in the kitchen, I see.”

  “Yes, I was glad to see her there. I like Clare ’most as well as Susie, but Janey’s spoiled her terrible, imaginin’ she’s delicate—”

  “Clare was sickly.”

  “Clare was sick, once! Jane should have put her to work once she was better, for the sake of her character, if nothin’ else. I declare, lookin’ at the work you do—and you are sick—I should be ashamed to raise a girl like Clare!”

  “If we had nursed a cousin and seen her die when we were girls, Mary, maybe we’d think differently.”

  Nursed a cousin? Who? Cousin Caroline and Cousin Charles both died just as the war began. Had Mother nursed Caroline?

  Aunt Mary was silent for a moment. Then she said, in a voice that trembled slightly, “I used to worry about poor Laura, after she’d had to watch her sister die, and I planned out how I was goin’ to help ease her mind, and now there’s no need for it and no time.… I will leave then, Delyra. Seems as if I’ve got to be out in the air when these thoughts come upon me.”

  She left and Delyra Goodhue sat by the bed straight and still as if she had found a perfect resting point between her strength and her weakness. She gave off a faint scent of peppermint.

  Why had Mother nursed Cousin Caroline? She would have been just a girl herself. The fading old daguerreotype on Mother’s bureau, the brown lock of hair in the frame, and the little scrap of paper: “for my Cousin and Dearest Friend, Jane Wilcox.” But no one had ever said what those things meant. Sue opened her eyes, but more time must have passed than she’d thought. The chair beside the bed was empty.

  “I don’t see why a hardworking country girl shouldn’t enjoy a fit of the vapors just as much as a society belle!” Dr. Campbell’s voice. Cool hands had partially awakened her. “She’ll get over it in her own good time.”

  Mother said nothing. She’s angry, Sue thought, and later Mother said, “… doctors don’t know a thing!”

  “A Boston specialist?” someone suggested. Aunt Emma? Something in that thought stirred Sue to open her eyes. Mother and Aunt Emma were watching her.

  Then they were gone, and Minnie was whispering, “Wake up, Susie! Listen! The school burned down!”

  “What?” Sue’s voice came thick and husky. She had not used it in a long time. “Which school?”

  “Ours, last night! They say lightning, but there was no storm! It’s the firebug! It has to be!”

  Everything was jumbled together in Sue’s head. After a minute she said, “Henry must be so pleased.”

  “Pleased?” Minnie’s face was close, her eyes as big and shiny as marbles.

  “He’s been saying—”

  “Oh, your mother’s coming! Don’t say I told you. I wasn’t supposed to get you excited.”

  Sue almost smiled at that. Did she really seem excited?

  Minnie said, “I’m on my way home—day off. Johnny Coombs is driving me.”

  Sue managed to raise her eyebrows. That was response enough for Minnie. She groaned. “Yes! Susie, he likes me!”

  Then Mother was at the door. “Minnie, Johnny seems impatient.” Sue heard Minnie’s quick steps down the stairs. Mother came to the bed, rested her hand on Sue’s brow, and Sue closed her eyes. But I don’t know anything about the school, she thought, and something seemed to gather together in her mind, like a horse getting ready to stand.

  The next day Clare brought a bowl of raspberries. They were red as rubies in the green china dish. Clare’s dress smelled like sunshine, and the raspberries smelled like roses.

  Sue pushed herself up a little on the pillow. It seemed to take a great effort. “What day is it?”

  “July twenty-seventh.”

  July twenty-seventh? That was more than a week … “Have I been—what have I been doing?”

  “Don’t you remember?” Clare asked in a fascinated voice.

  “Oh. Yes.” But it didn’t seem possible that so much time had passed, and Sue had wondered for a moment if she’d been out of her head, raving.

  She looked at Clare. How strange—Clare was red-faced, sweaty, tired. Delicate, fragile Clare, who must not overdo. Work didn’t make her look fragile, though. It made her look sturdy. Clare must hate that.

  “When are you going away?” she asked. “Isn’t it soon?”

  Clare flushed. “I can’t go with you like this!”

  No. No, she probably couldn’t. Sue took a raspberry from the green dish, crushed it against the roof of her mouth. The sweet, warm fragrance flooded her senses. Clare, out in the hot sun picking raspberries? What had come over Mother?

  “Clare?” Mother called from the foot of the stairs.

&nb
sp; “Come up!” Clare answered. “She’s awake!”

  12

  LIFE DID NOT CHANGE overnight. Sue still slept a great deal. She was still dizzy. But the light had come on again inside her head.

  Mother and Clare carried up all the work they could. Perhaps they’d been doing that right along, and Sue hadn’t noticed. Now she felt the whole weight of Mother’s anxious attention, her eyes glancing up from sewing or sorting, the intense listening when eyes and hands were occupied.

  Often Sue felt a pleased little smile on her lips in response, which she quickly smoothed out. But other times the worry in Mother’s face seemed to light dry tinder inside Sue. She would notice how thin her own hands looked, how pale, and how far away they seemed from her head on its pillows, and she would remember that word, consumption. Dr. Melton said she did not have it. Everyone said she did not have it. But the fear in Mother’s eyes said “maybe.”

  “Rest!” Mother would say if Sue reached for a bean to snap or a sheet to hem. “It’s so easy to work yourself into a relapse.”

  After a few days Clare began to make a little sound when Mother said this. Probably only Sue could hear it because Mother never turned her head. Sue realized: Clare doesn’t think I’m truly sick.

  Clare should know!

  It was time to dry the lavender. Mother and Clare filled their aprons with blue spikes and brought them up to spill across Sue’s bed. With plain white yarn they tied the spikes together, a few at a time. The air was full of the cool, clean fragrance.

  Suddenly Clare broke the silence. The quick inbreath before she spoke told Sue she’d been struggling to make herself speak. “Mother, couldn’t Sue go to the mountains in my place?”

  Clare didn’t mean it. She was really asking, Am I still going? But Sue’s heart thudded twice. Mother’s hands stilled, and she looked sharply at Clare, meditating some response. The sound of buggy wheels interrupted.

  “That will be your aunt Emma,” Mother said. She stood as she spoke, stripped off collar and cuffs, reached back to untie her long apron. By the time she reached the front door, her fresh, starched cuffs would be in place and her hair would be smooth.

  Clare bent lower over the lavender. Sue could see the side of her face, flushed and sullen. After a minute she said, “I do think one of us should go!” Jerkily her fingers went on picking up the lavender. “You don’t believe me, but—I’d be happy if you went.”

  Sue couldn’t help smiling. “No, you wouldn’t! You’d only try to be.”

  Clare laughed shakily, and tears spilled down her cheeks. “It wouldn’t work! I’d hate you! But could you go, Sue? Are you well enough?”

  No, Sue thought. She hadn’t challenged the spirit level in the past few days. She kept her head propped, even when she slid over the edge of the bed to use the chamber pot. But she knew what the level wanted. Stay here. Lie still. It was clearer than the Voice of Conscience, for which she’d been taught to listen since early childhood.

  “I can’t!” she said, tears starting in her own eyes.

  “But you are a little better?”

  “Yes, I’m a little better.”

  Clare nodded decisively. “Then I’m going! There has to be a way. Why is Aunt Emma here, anyway? Why haven’t they come up?” There was a low murmur of voices from the dooryard, no words clear. Clare strained to hear, and Sue noticed the stubborn set of her chin, remembered Mother saying—a long time ago, when they were little—“That child has the disposition of a mule!” For years now they had been ignoring that strength, but Clare still had it.

  “How can you, Clary?” she asked. “What will Mother do for help?”

  Clare’s face crumpled. “I don’t know! Oh, Susie! All that washing! All those pies! You always made it look easy! Even when you were thirteen, you were so good at everything! When you got sick, I thought I’d be the good one, but I didn’t think it would be so long. Susie, I don’t want to anymore!”

  Does she think if she cries hard enough, I’ll just stop being dizzy? Sue wondered. When she had cried, when Clare was sick, had she thought crying would help? No, she had cried alone and washed the tears away with cold water so no one would know.

  And when the work was too much, she had tried even harder and smiled pridefully. Suddenly she had an image of a boy standing before a laden oxcart. The oxen tossed their horns sullenly, took a step, and the boy glanced proudly at his father—who needed him!—and never moved.

  Never moved again.

  Mother had needed her, too, and she had stood stubbornly in front of that crushing load, proved herself reliable, and Mother kept on needing her. Now Mother needed Clare, and Clare was crying!

  “I’m sorry,” she said stiffly.

  “It’s not your fault. But it isn’t fair! I’ve been looking forward to this trip for so long!”

  No, it isn’t fair, Sue thought, with such a powerful mix of pity and anger that she thought her heart might crack. It wasn’t fair for Clare to be asked twice, and Sue never. It wasn’t fair for Clare to be disappointed.

  Nothing’s fair. There’s no such thing as fair. She wanted to put her arms around Clare’s neck and cry along with her because each of them was stuck in her own life. Clare must be Clare, and Sue must be Sue, and neither of them could go to the White Mountains.

  Now she could hear Mother and Aunt Emma talking their way slowly through the house and up the stairs. “Better splash your face,” she said to Clare, who seemed suddenly far away—still on the edge of the bed but very far away.

  Clare went quickly to the washstand and came back to the bed and the lavender. Mother and Aunt Emma came in. Aunt Emma’s skirts made a stiff, expensive sound, and her face had the rested look that Sue always thought of as the true expression of wealth.

  “Clare,” Mother said.

  Reluctantly Clare turned to face them.

  “You’ve been such a help, and I felt sorry that you might not have your fun. But Emma has suggested that Minnie come here to help me, so you can get away.”

  The back of Clare’s neck went red. “Oh, Aunt Emma! Mother!” She hugged them both, and Sue watched. Yes, she thought. This was the way things would happen.

  The next few days passed in a frenzy of dressmaking. Even Sue was allowed to sew on trim and to set the hem on a skirt. It was good to be at work again. The hum of the sewing machine treadle downstairs seemed to set her thoughts free.

  This trip would put things right again, she decided. Clare had learned to work. When she came back, Sue would be recovering, and they would share the tasks, side by side like Bright and Lucky in double harness. Perhaps this winter Aunt Emma would invite Sue to Boston for a visit. Perhaps next summer she would be the one to go to the mountains.

  The last morning Clare brought Sue’s oatmeal, and a little later she hurried in again, wearing her handsome green traveling dress. Her eyes were bright, her whole face was bright and alive. Clare is beautiful, Sue thought.

  Clare stooped and kissed her cheek. “Keep on getting better, Susie! I’ll see you in three weeks!”

  The buggy rattled away. An hour later Mother came back with Minnie.

  13

  THE KITCHEN DOOR BANGED. Quick steps went all the way to Clare’s back bedroom. A thump, a pause, and then Minnie was running up the stairs. She bounced into the room and kissed Sue on the cheek. “Susie! We’re going to have so much fun!”

  Then downstairs again, where Mother was trying to hurry the baking along. Sue was alone, but the house was full of laughter.

  At dinnertime Minnie brought the tray. “Your mother says I can eat with you.” She propped Sue up briskly like someone plumping a pillow.

  “I’m flattered you’d want to,” Sue said, “when you could sit at the table with the boys.”

  “I’m on vacation from boys,” Minnie said, helping herself to a hot biscuit. “Remember I told you? Johnny Coombs has taken a shine to me.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes! And working on that barn for the Campbells, he’
s got an excuse to stop by at least once a day. That’s why I put the idea in Mrs. Campbell’s head that she could loan me to your mother.”

  “I thought it was Aunt Emma’s idea.”

  “It almost was,” Minnie said. “She caught on awful quick! But how are you, Susie? Feeling a lot better?”

  “Y-es,” Sue said cautiously.

  “Good! Now if only you were downstairs, we could talk all the time. You should have that room they put me in.”

  “That’s Clare’s room,” Sue said quickly. It was pretty but narrow and small and tucked away at the back of the house. “If I was going to be downstairs, I’d just as soon be in the parlor.”

  Mother came in just then, with her usual swift, sober glance at Sue’s face. Minnie turned to her with a bounce that rocked the bed. “Mrs. Gorham! Why don’t we bring Susie downstairs and put her on the couch? She must be lonely up here, and it’ll save us wearing our legs out on the stairs.”

  Mother’s eyes widened. “Well, I’m not sure. Sue needs rest and quiet—”

  Father was with her, though, and his face brightened. “That’s a good notion. Jane, don’t you think Susie got about all the rest she needs, sleeping for a week?”

  Mother said, “I guess there’s no harm in trying it, just for the afternoon. No, David, you can’t just take her down! I have to get things ready.”

  Mother and Minnie bustled upstairs and down, getting sheets and pillows, a screen, the chamber pot. Sue lay waiting. She felt nervous, and that seemed absurd. She was just going downstairs, for heaven’s sake!

  When all was ready, Father scooped her up and she put her arms around his neck. His shoulders were hard, as if made of wood. He smelled of sweat and the outdoors; he was warm.… The stairs. They were at the top of the stairs.

  Sue squeezed her eyes shut. She felt a lurching downward, the strain in Father’s body, and she heard a faint worried sound from Mother. Then everything became black and blurry.…

  A pillow was under her head, and someone was asking a question. “Just let me be quiet,” Sue murmured.