by Nero Blanc
“So … so, Phillip deserted his wife?” Kate asked after another moment of silence. Her expression was troubled; she was a person who felt others’ pain swiftly and deeply.
“Yes.” It was Sara who answered. Her voice was somber. She put down her needlework; her blue eyes were hard and unforgiving. “The rumor was that Phillip ran off with the nanny. He and Prudence had a son, an only child, late in their marriage—”
“Yes, yes, that’s right …” put in Weezie. “I vaguely remember the story, now … No one spoke about the kid, though … something wrong with him from birth. He had to be institutionalized—”
Kate gasped. All faces turned in remorseful dismay toward her very pregnant belly.
“I didn’t mean—” Weezie began, but Kate, wide-eyed, cut her off:
“Is he still … institutionalized?”
Again, it was Sara who spoke the difficult truth. “Prudence’s son died, dear, long before his mother.”
Kate’s eyes swelled with tears as the other women exchanged guilty and uncomfortable glances, then DiAnne looked toward the windows. “Goodness! It’s begun to snow. Look at it! A real blizzard. That’s not at all what the newscasters were predicting.”
With that, all the lights flickered, then failed completely.
“Oh, not again!” Sara said. “I suppose the entire of Liberty Hill will be out of power—as usual. When, in heaven’s name, will they finally embrace the twenty-first century and bury those infernal electrical wires?”
LIKE the remainder of the house set high on the hill overlooking Newcastle and its harbor, the spacious kitchen at White Caps was a compilation of long-past eras: late-nineteenth-century glass-fronted cabinetry, an early-twentieth-century zinc-topped worktable, a deep copper sink circa 1930, wood countertops crisscrossed with decades’ worth of knife pricks and scrapes, and a gleaming 1940s white cast-iron stove outfitted with compartments for warming plates and rolls. The “newest” piece of equipment was an electric toaster—already a classic, purchased in 1956.
Lit now by hurricane lamps and candles, and with the gas stove heating milk for cocoa while its broiling rack turned homemade bread into cinnamon toast, the room was the most comforting place imaginable.
“It’s coming down in positive sheets,” Weezie observed from the window. She was letting DiAnne and Kate “do the honors” at the stove while Sara and Martha retrieved first a set of gilt-rimmed cocoa cups that had belonged to Sara’s mother, then a silver serving tray, silver spoons, linen napkins, a creamer, and the sugar bowl for those who required extra sweetening—accoutrements the staunch old lady felt indispensable when presenting warm liquid refreshment. Never for Sara a mug, a packet of instant “chocolate mix,” or hot water straight from the tap.
“Which means the hill road will be sheer glass within the hour,” Sara observed. “If it isn’t already.”
“Oh …” Kate murmured.
Sara frowned in self-rebuke. “How inconsiderate of me, dear. Of course, you must get home to your little ones. I should have sent you on your way at once … We’ll call your Andrew; he can fetch you. I don’t want you driving in this.” Sara retrieved the phone from the wall but found that service had gone the way of the electricity. “Oh, one of you girls will have to use your portable—”
“It’s all right, Sara. I’m okay to stay.” There was something hollow and tentative in Kate’s tone that made the other women take immediate note. But they did so out of the corners of their eyes, then just as furtively turned their pensive glances in Sara’s direction.
“I don’t mind calling Andy if you don’t want to be pegged as a ‘weather wimp,’” Martha offered.
The quaint expression would normally have brought a smile to Kate’s face. This time it did not.
Uncharacteristically, it was DiAnne who spoke the reassuring words all were thinking. “What happened to Mrs. Pierce’s baby won’t happen to yours, Kate … You have two beautiful, healthy boys already; and you’ve told us the doctor indicated ‘clear sailing’ ahead.”
Kate didn’t reply at first. When she did, it was to avoid the subject altogether. Again, this seemed unusual. “This is so nice … being with you all … It’s like school days.” She sighed. “Cocoa and conversation. I feel as if I should have on my pj’s and slippers.”
“If the snow keeps up, we’ll all wish we’d brought pj’s,” Weezie wisecracked.
“Back to the drawing room and fireplace?” Sara asked while Martha stated a pragmatic:
“Lucky thing your furnace isn’t electric, Sara.”
“That’s where you’re wrong in your assessment, Martha,” chuckled Weezie. “It’s lucky the ancient thing doesn’t still burn coal.”
“Jest all you wish about my parsimonious ways, ladies. But let us remember to give thanks that we have heat—and that I was persuaded to install an emergency generator gizmo to aid the furnace’s electrical starter thingy … Now, there are plenty of nightclothes and wool dressing gowns upstairs, though they may smell a tad of mothballs.”
“Oh, I love you all to pieces!” Kate gushed. She hugged Sara, who sent a perturbed glance in the direction of the other women before ordering a gentle: “We should have our cocoa before it gets cool. If someone would carry the hurricane lamps, and another the candles …”
“THIS is the game,” Weezie announced as she put her cocoa cup on the mantle and placed another log on the fire. “We go around the circle, each person fessing up to their most embarrassing moment. Whoever has the worst story wins.”
“That would be me,” Sara announced with an airy smile as her guests gazed at her in wonderment. “I was thirteen. My father had put me on a train to New York. I was traveling alone to spend the weekend with a great-aunt who lived there. On Beekman Place, which had a very grand ring to a child from coastal Massachusetts … I’d never gone such a distance on my own hook before, and I was dressed for the occasion: a good dress hat—brown leghorn straw, I recall … gloves with three pearl buttons—”
“You still wear dressy hats and gloves, Sara,” interrupted Weezie. “Are you sure you were only thirteen?”
“Hush,” murmured DiAnne.
“Yes. It was warm weather, and I was bare-legged—”
“Being bare-legged ain’t so terrible.” Weezie chuckled. “That’s how everybody dresses nowadays, Sara, along with exposed navels, in case you—”
“Hush, Weez, will you?” DiAnne protested. “Let Sara finish.”
“It’s an important element of the tale, Louise,” the old lady continued. “The other element is that I had a most recalcitrant pair of combinations—”
“Combinations?” Kate asked.
“Panties, dear … Originally, a term for a one-piece undergarment covering both top and bottom … We didn’t use the word ‘panties’ in those antediluvian times. I don’t know why …” Sara squinted as she remembered; two bright pink spots lit up her cheeks. “My hips had not yet … Well, I was a bit of a beanpole then, if you can believe it. At any rate, it was an undergarment that began slithering downward as I walked through the train … until, with a whoosh, it fell down around my ankles.”
Martha’s blue-shadowed eyes were wide. The notion that the august old lady could ever have experienced a disconcerting situation was inconceivable.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“Walked away from it.”
“Walked away?” Martha persisted.
“Stepped out of the wretched thing and continued down the aisle as if I were merely stepping over an annoying piece of trash.”
“What did the other passengers do?” Martha asked.
“I have no idea. I never looked back … But I’ll tell you I could have walked off that moving train, and all the way to Beekman Place if I’d been able … As it was, I simply marched forward, car by car … When I reached the door leading to the Pullman coach, I stopped, and took a seat. I don’t think my spine hit the chair’s back during the entire journey … And my leghorn straw? Oh, it felt like nettles cli
nging to my scalp.”
Weezie was now laughing so hard she cried. “Marched forward and never looked back. That’s so like you, Sara.”
“What choice did I have?”
“I can think of plenty, starting with a squeal and a hasty retreat to the nearest ladies’ room … though if it had been me, I would have ended in an undignified tumble with my bare rump exposed to the horrified onlookers.”
“Precisely why I kept going,” Sara stated. “And it’s why I never keep a stitch of clothing that has an old or fraying elastic waistband.”
“Well, that certainly alters our image of you, Sara,” DiAnne said. “The next thing you know you’re going to tell us that you and Prudence Pierce broke wind in public.”
Sara had also started to laugh. “What Prudence did, I’m afraid, I have no record of. As for me …”
Laughter became infectious then, the easy mirth shared by people comfortable with one another. It was Kate who interrupted.
“We shouldn’t make fun of Mrs. Pierce,” she ventured. “After all, she—”
“You’re right,” Martha agreed. “You have to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes—”
“Or ‘combinations,’” Weezie added with a mischievous grin, but the jest ended in a sudden thump of snow spilling from the roof to land in a pile on the formal boxwood hedge that ran the length of the house. There was a pinging crack as branches split and broke under the weight. Every head turned toward the sound, then all five women stood and walked to the windows.
Before them, the landscape was solid white. The green of the rhododendrons and azaleas was buried; firs bent under cover of snow so deep it looked like icing slathered on by a giddy and unsupervised child; only the pruned and bare rosebushes, poking up above the drifts, showed a hint of black, but every crevice of every branch was daubed with frothy ice. What had become of the trees and shrubbery more distant to the house was impossible to tell.
“No one’s going home tonight,” observed Weezie, “not unless it’s by strapping on snowshoes or taking a sled down the hill.”
“You’ll want to phone your boys and Andrew.” Take-charge Sara turned to Kate as she spoke. “I know my husband was totally useless when it came to the culinary arts—”
“The boys aren’t with Andy.” Kate’s words, spoken quickly, had a curious and almost atonal breathlessness. “They’re at my sister’s … for a few days …”
The other women waited; no one moved or allowed themselves to appear disconcerted by the news.
“I was feeling … well, just anxious, you know … and with the baby coming so soon … my sister thought it might be a good idea for me to have a little time to myself … Breathing room, she said.”
“That’s a sensible notion,” Martha began. “Husbands and wives need to spend time alone together; especially with a new one in the oven.”
But the unhappy look on Kate’s face indicated such was not the case.
“Andrew’s not home, either … is he,” DiAnne prompted.
“No.” Kate seemed about to say more. She opened her mouth, shut it, then began to weep.
Above her bent head, her friends looked at each other, a wordless fusion of comfort and support in one communal body.
“How long has Andrew been gone?” DiAnne asked.
“Only a day this time.”
“This time?” It was DiAnne who reiterated the words the others echoed in silence.
“It’s not what you think!”
“We’re not ‘thinking’ anything at all, dear,” Sara soothed. Her quick glance at Weezie sent her back to the fire and a fresh log piled upon the glowing embers; toward Martha, to a chair pulled toward the rekindled blaze, a pillow patted and waiting for Kate to sit; toward DiAnne, to a box of tissues.
Without being aware of her friends’ guidance, Kate found herself in the chair, the other women hovering close by. She looked up, her face strained, miserable. “It’s my fault he’s gone.”
Weezie’s expression clouded in indignation. “Your fault? It’s not your—” She stopped what might have become a diatribe when she felt Sara’s fingers lightly touch her arm.
“Why do you say that, Kate?” Sara asked.
“I’ve been so … so needy … so, well, whiny and complainy … and work isn’t going well for him … and the kids, well, little boys can be so rambunctious … and then Andy can’t relax when he comes home … and I can’t make the house as nice as he wants it to be …”
Again, Weezie was on the verge of interrupting; again, Sara soundlessly held her in check:
“And where is Andrew now, dear?”
“At his brother’s … I think.” Kate’s voice had sunk to a near-whisper.
“You ‘think’?”
“That’s what he told me, Sara, but …”
“But what?” This time Weezie’s ire couldn’t be contained.
“Well, what if he’s having an affair? What if that’s why he’s gone off on his own? What if he’s like Prudence Pierce’s husband?” Kate began to sob.
DiAnne proffered the box of tissues; her own expression had taken on a peculiar combination of stoicism and grief. “He’s not having an affair, Kate.”
“You don’t know that, DiAnne!”
“Yes, I do. Because if he were, you would have guessed. Unfaithful spouses always give themselves away. Maybe that’s because deep down they want to be caught.”
The others now regarded DiAnne, who lifted her chin in a perfectly typical gesture of resourcefulness and reserve.
It was Weezie who gave voice to what all were thinking. “Oh, Dee, I didn’t know … I’m so sorry …”
But Weezie’s effort at conciliation was interrupted as Kate burst into fresh tears. “See! The same thing happened to DiAnne!”
DiAnne stroked her hair. “Don’t cry, sweetheart … It wasn’t my husband who cheated—it was me.”
SUPPER consisted of serious “comfort foods”: Ritz crackers piled with peanut butter and jelly (who knew Sara could have a stash of peanut butter?); canned tomato soup thickened with real cream; ginger snaps (wasn’t ginger a root—like carrots or turnips?); a quart of butterscotch ice cream that almost didn’t make it past the five-spoons-in-a-pot category; a block of Vermont cheddar cut in fat chunks; popcorn cooked in an ancient pot on top of the stove and drizzled with an entire stick of melted butter; warmed cider stirred with cinnamon sticks—and all eaten piecemeal. Sara had decreed that rules did not apply, not for the entire snowbound night. To bolster the dictum, she’d produced camphor-scented nightclothes and antique dressing gowns, slippers, and wool socks. Along with this “girls’ dorm” attire, the edibles seemed a perfect fit.
Outside, it continued to snow and snow and snow, but once Kate had “beamed in” with her sister and kids, and been assured the two boys were “happy as clams at high tide,” no one at White Caps cared what the weather did.
However, to the group sitting—or rather, lounging—around the zinc-topped kitchen table with the remnants of the feast, it became increasingly obvious that DiAnne’s confession, as well as Kate’s admission, wouldn’t be as easily dispensed with as the blizzard. Conversation about who preferred “crunchy” peanut butter to “smooth” or visa versa was wearing thin; the ice cream was gone; the popcorn had been reduced to a few charred and unpopped kernels. It was time to take the bull by the horns. It was DiAnne who did so.
“I’m afraid I dropped rather a bomb back there.” She hesitated, frowning, her lips a tight and solemn line. For a moment it seemed as though the old DiAnne, the prim-and-proper lady, was about to reassert herself. “My behavior isn’t something I’m proud of …” Again, she stopped. No one else stirred except Martha, who oh-so-gently set down a spoon.
“Oh, I could find a lot of excuses … I was young … I didn’t feel Frank ‘valued’ me … He was working at the bank almost nonstop … I didn’t have enough to occupy me—and goodness knows, I need to keep busy, as I’m sure you’re all aware.” DiAnne allowed herself a th
in, wry smile. “Or maybe I merely wanted excitement … I was raised to value self-denial, to behave politely in all circumstances, to remember I was a ‘lady’ first and foremost … Maybe, I was simply trying to rebel …” The words trailed off.
“Which isn’t always a bad thing, Dee,” Weezie offered after a moment. “You have to flutter your wings a little if you want to learn how to fly.”
DiAnne turned to her. “True for you perhaps, because you’ve never hurt anyone. I did, though. I hurt a very decent man.”
“But you’re still married to the same guy, Dee. What you did obviously didn’t cause irreparable pain or damage.”
“He’s a good person, Weez. He forgave me.”
Weezie’s eyes narrowed into slits. The notion of begging absolution didn’t sit well with her.
It was Martha who addressed the heart of the matter. “Forgiveness from another person is one thing. But perhaps you haven’t forgiven yourself?”
DiAnne’s sad eyes gazed into Martha’s. She shook her head. “I can’t.”
“But isn’t that the lesson we’re supposed to learn?” Kate asked. “Isn’t that what we always hear in church: Forgive others … love each other as you do yourself?”
Weezie attempted a teasing chuckle. “I’m not going to address that subject.”
“Well, yes, Kate,” Martha added slowly, “that’s what we’re taught: to love each other as we much as we do ourselves … But … but I’m not really certain I love myself all that much.”
“Oh!” Weezie said. “I thought I was the only person who felt that way.”
“Me, too …” Kate admitted in a tiny voice.
DiAnne sighed and lowered her head while Sara offered her own well-seasoned view:
“My grandmother used to talk a lot about courage—not love or forgiveness, which probably speaks volumes about her New England forebears … Courage, she liked to tell me, was the most important of all the emotions, because without it, you could sustain no other: neither love, nor compassion, nor joy … She said that it took courage to live, to overlook unkindnesses, to turn the other cheek—”
A rumbling roar interrupted the speech; the floor beneath the kitchen seemed almost to shake. “The furnace!” Sara exclaimed. “This does not bode well.”