by Noelle Carle
Two days later, Sam slept in the injury ward of the field hospital with a bandage on his forehead. Chap Hudson sat on one side of him and Aubrey Newell on the other.
“Do you think he’ll be okay?”
The chaplain grinned. “It only grazed his head. Thank the Lord. I hear you found him…again.”
Aubrey pulled inside himself, as if cringing a little. “Sometimes I just get the feeling I need to do something. So I go do it.”
The chaplain studied the young man a moment. “I know that feeling,” he answered. “But that’s why they’re thinking of sending you home. You can’t keep leaving your post. Or is it something else?”
Startled, Aubrey sat up straighter, his dusky cheeks burning. “What do you mean?”
“Some people have a death wish. They feel like maybe they’ve done some things that were pretty bad, like they ought to be punished or would be punished for if anyone knew. They think they can earn something by punishing themselves, or can make things right by some kind of self-imposed system of justice. Maybe you feel that way. Maybe you don’t understand that God forgives, even the worse things we can think of.”
Aubrey ran his fingers through his hair, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He sighed deeply. “Maybe. Maybe God forgives but usually people don’t.”
Chaplain Hudson nodded, agreeing with him at this insightful statement.
Standing, Aubrey looked again at Sam. “You’re wrong about one thing, Chaplain. I don’t have no death wish, but I got a life wish…for him.” He pointed at Sam, then walked away.
Chapter Sixteen
These Deeply Momentous Things
As soon as it was needful in the spring, Alison would journey with her teacher to her former home in Pennsylvania where they would stay until the baby came. Mrs. Reid planned to adopt that baby, sending Alison back home with no one the wiser that the baby was Alison’s.
Aunt Pearl knew and approved of this plan. Although she couldn’t think how they would explain the fact that Alison was accompanying Mary or that she would largely be invisible in the community by then, she had no better solution. Her brother knew nothing of it yet, but Pearl realized it would be impossible to keep the truth from him as Alison’s pregnancy progressed.
Mary was suppressing her excitement, tempering it as she saw how Alison was struggling with not only the thought of a child, but the violent nature of its conception and the changes it would cause in her life.
“You said God helped you after your husband died. Couldn’t God have prevented this from happening?” she spat out one afternoon as they sat alone in the school. “I’m feeling terrible! I have no energy. All I want to do is sleep. Why did this happen to me?”
Mary stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Alison. This was done to you, yes. It is unjust, yes. But God will see that good is worked out of it. That’s his way.”
Alison stared back at her teacher, her mouth clenched tight, fighting back the tears that seemed so close at hand these days. She sighed. “Good for you, maybe.”
“Alison!”
The girl shook her head. Hatred surged through her. She hated this baby. She hated Aubrey Newell, and she almost hated Mary Reid. Ever since she was raped she felt like a different person; ugly, dirty and marked by what he had done to her. She couldn’t bear to be around Esther who was planning her wedding. She couldn’t write letters to Sam that didn’t seem to her stilted and unnatural. She loathed going to school, seeing her friends in their simple lives; innocent and unaffected. She felt apart from her family, from her friends and her home. Life went on in its simple routine, but she felt outside of it, lost in a tiny but ruthless maelstrom inside her head.
When they learned that Robbie Bell had died, there was mourning throughout the village. Alison immediately wrote to Sam, to somehow reassure herself that he was alive. They held a memorial service on a balmy warm day in early March. The children filed out of school that afternoon and saw the black clad procession moving towards the church. Alison burst into tears at the sight of Robbie’s father, his usual stoic features crumpled into such pain. Davey came to stand beside her, holding her hand, and Owen stood in back of her, one hand heavy on her shoulder. “I want to go,” Alison murmured to her brothers.
“I’ll come too,” Davey said, a catch in his voice. Owen followed along behind them until Reg Eliot stopped them.
He was dressed for the funeral, but in his hand he held what looked like letters. Cleo ran up to him, then seeing his face, she turned away without a word to him. She passed by Alison and said, “I’m sorry,” in an almost inaudible voice.
“Miss Granger, I’d like a word with you,” Reg said. Alison liked Sam’s father. He was quiet and solid, like she knew Sam would be when he got older. He was sometimes gruff with the children, but never cruel. And he loved them. She could see it in his eyes when he watched them in the playground or running about the trees in their yard. He was gentle with their friends too. He always called her Allie, so the “Miss Granger” confused her.
Then he seemed to notice her brothers there, so he took her arm and said, “In private, if you don’t mind.”
Alison looked back at Owen. “You go on ahead,” she said. The boys turned towards the church where they met Aunt Pearl just going up the steps. Alison’s heart sounded so loud in her ears she feared she wouldn’t hear what Reg said, but his words were very clear when he spoke.
He held out two envelopes. The handwriting was Sam’s and she saw they were addressed to her. Reg pulled them away as she reached for them. “You will not write to my son anymore. And you will not be getting anymore letters from him.”
Alison drew her hand back as she swallowed. “Why? What happened?” she asked. She realized then that Sam’s father was enraged. His lips were drawn into a straight line, and his hand, when he moved it back to his pocket, was trembling. He stared at her, anger and sorrow pulling his face into a tight mask. He shook his head slowly.
“I know,” he almost whispered, ‘what’s inside you and I know it can’t be from Sam.”
A gasp escaped Alison and she began to tremble. “How do you…?” She couldn’t finish. She moved away, only to have him grasp her arm.
“I’ll not tell Sam, at least not yet. He needs his wits about him just now, not a..a…betrayal like this!”
Alison wrenched her arm away and ran. She ran past the store and the public wharf, past the Alley’s boat repair shop and the outbuildings, past the bait shacks that lined the shore. She ran as she hadn’t run in months until her legs were burning and her lungs were straining with the effort. She didn’t realize she was sobbing as she ran until she stopped and felt the tears sliding down her chin and neck. She was at the top of the point where the harbor began. A meadow ran along the side of the road where the Gilman’s grazed their sheep. The road ended at the cliff that stood perhaps seventy-five feet above a tumble of boulders. The sea moved among these rocks languidly, making chuckling noises as the tide rose.
Alison stood immobile, panting to catch her breath. Then she collapsed to her knees. She felt again a cold numbness take hold of her. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t begin to probe the meaning of what Mr. Eliot had just said. What loomed ahead of her was a loss so complete that Dickens’ words in Our Mutual Friend– a blank life- ran through her mind over and over. She stared down at the rocks below her and repeated them out loud. “A blank life.”
Into her mind came the dark thought of what it would feel like to fall onto those rocks and lie in that chuckling water, to stop thinking and worrying and dreading what was ahead. Some tiny part of her clung to life, whatever it held, and she just sobbed and recoiled at the thought of dying. Her tears continued until her stomach felt sick and the day was beginning to fade. As she attempted to stand up, to start for home, she felt a trembling in her lower abdomen that rapidly blossomed into a flare of hot pain. She hurried through the pasture, scaring the sheep into a tight little cluster. She crossed the north road and stumbled through the
clumps of the Gilman’s potato fields, stopping twice to kneel down and grip her stomach, so grinding was the pain now. Finally she climbed the stairs to her father’s office and staggered through the door. Relieved to see his waiting room empty, she crossed it just as she realized her legs were wet and her skirts were bloody.
She pushed through to his examining room where he and Pearl, still in her funeral dress, looked up in surprise at her presence.
“Papa! Something’s wrong with me!” She had time to see the dawn of concern on his face before she fell to the floor.
The rest was lost to her, except for a brief snatch of time when she felt herself surfacing from the depths of pain. She felt a hand on her forehead and knew it was Pearl’s. “Don’t tell Papa,” she implored, forgetting he was right there.
Daniel Granger was a sickly gray color and his eyes were glassy as he tried to stop the lifeblood flowing from his daughter’s body. He fixed his eyes briefly on his sister. They held such distilled anguish that Pearl flinched. “You should have told me,” he hissed.
Pearl nodded, realizing her mistake.
Alison lingered in a seeming twilight for days. There were two or three moments of confused consciousness, when she heard murmuring and felt gentle hands at work on her. Her mind felt foggy, until, like the light over the water, there was one bright illuminated moment of clarity when she heard her father’s despair and Aunt Pearl’s sobbing. She thought she was dying then, and she cried out in her mind, “I don’t want to die. Please, God. It’s not my time.” She prayed then as she’d never prayed before, to a God who seemed more real and close than she’d ever imagined. And her fear ebbed away. If she ever doubted again that God could hear her, she would remember this moment of perfect calm and curious joy. She slept then.
When she woke up one morning to the sun spilling through the window, it was with a peculiar sense of loss that she realized the baby was gone. The emptiness in her body was disconcerting.
Aunt Pearl sat by her bed, dozing in her mother’s old rocking chair. Looking at her sleeping face in the surge of sunlight, Alison could see how thin the skin under her eyes had become. Tiny lines like the wrinkles in crepe paper made her look fragile and old. Her mouth sagged open and Alison could hear the even puffs of breath that caught a little at the back of her throat. Her hands loosely held knitting needles. Never content to sit idle, her knitting was her constant. She made sweaters for all of them, and mittens for everyone in the village. Her afghans were gorgeous, done in patterns of her own making, and given as gifts to each newly married couple. Lately she’d been knitting nothing but socks and sweaters for the troops in France. Alison had noticed Aunt Pearl stopping to spread out her fingers, or to rub her wrists. Alison knew that her aunt had been at her side all these long days and nights. She remembered her arm around her shoulders, helping her drink eggnog. She could recall the feel of her hand on her forehead, or her gently changing the linens around her. Such a current of affection ran through her that she reached out her hand and laid it on Aunt Pearl’s arm.
Pearl slowly lifted her head, stiffly as if her neck hurt. Her eyes focused and she smiled a little when she saw Alison was awake. “Hello, darling. Are you back?”
Alison drew in her breath. Nodding, she answered, “I think I am.”
Pearl moved to sit on the side of the bed. She laid her fingers on Alison’s forehead and brushed the hair back. She seemed reluctant to meet Alison’s eyes, but focused instead on the tiny ministrations; snuggling up the blankets, taking a damp cloth and stroking it across her already cool brow. “Folks think you’ve had influenza. There have been some cases of it. Some real bad.”
Alison sighed, heavy-hearted to think suddenly of her teacher.
Aunt Pearl finally met her eyes, her busy hands reaching for Alison’s. “You lost the baby, dear. Do you know that?”
In a small voice Alison answered, “I know.”
Pearl drew her lips together. “Your father was furious…with me,” she hastened to add. “I tried to explain to him how strongly you felt about him not knowing. He’s always been so…” she hesitated, searching for the right word. “Open with you. You’ve never kept a secret from him.” She smiled unexpectedly. “I remember how you told him what he was getting for Christmas one year because you couldn’t bear to keep it from him.”
She ran her hands across her face, rubbing her eyes. “I think he feels hurt, and then to have you hemorrhage like that. It reminded him of your mother, when Davey was born.”
“Where is he now?”
“Over at Gilman’s. Chester is very sick. They think he’s dying.”
“Oh, no!” Alison exclaimed.
Pearl nodded. “One of the Ouellette girls died two days ago…the one Chester was sweet on. You remember she went to France to be a telephone interpreter? She must have come back with it. Everyone’s pretty much staying home right now. School was closed for three days.”
“So, does Mrs. Reid know…what really happened?”
Pearl straightened and shook her head. “No one does, but your father and me. I told your brothers you were sick, so they and everyone else think that. In a way you have been sick. You gave us quite a scare.”
Alison looked away. “Why did it happen? Did I do something wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
Picking up one of her braids, Alison toyed with it. She moved restlessly. She didn’t want to tell Aunt Pearl about what Sam’s father had said. Nor that she’d run so far. “I mean, can the things we do, or maybe really strong feelings, make everything go wrong?”
Again Pearl drew near, stroking Alison’s arm. “Not usually. Babies are incredibly hearty. This baby, well…it wasn’t right. It’s nature’s way.”
Her blue eyes filling, Alison grasped her aunt’s hand tightly. “Are you sure? Can I have other babies someday?”
“I am sure. There’s nothing to worry about. You will have fine children one day.”
Then as if realizing what she’d heard, Alison questioned, “It wasn’t right?”
Pearl’s hand loosened. She shook her head. “These things happen,” was all she would say, looking away. “It worked out for the best this way.”
Alison closed her eyes as sorrow enveloped her. She couldn’t understand her feelings. Days ago she wanted to be an innocent and pure girl again. Now she cried for a lost baby who wasn’t right from the start.
The residents of the village felt lucky to have so few fatalities from the influenza. The large cities from Boston to New York and on down the coast, across the country to Chicago and San Francisco suffered huge losses and had to prohibit public gatherings. In Little Cove, Annette Ouellette and Chester Gilman died, while another Ouellette sister lived through the flu, very weakened but alive. Alison’s father was astonished by the swiftness and severity of the illness. It swept around the globe killing hundreds of thousands until finally as summer settled in, the illness left.
Alison recovered her strength and disabused no one of the assumption she’d had influenza. After many days, when she could no longer avoid her, she finally told Mary Reid the truth, that she no longer carried the child.
Mary took the news with silent resignation that was frightening. Her eyelids fluttered for a moment, then she folded her arms across her middle and shrugged. She shook her head and walked away from Alison.
“Mrs. Reid? I’m sorry,” Alison mouthed to her teacher’s retreating back. “I really am.”
Alison refused to admit to her father the name of her attacker, even when he rightly guessed who it was. He telegraphed everyone he could think of in an effort to find out where Aubrey had gone, but there were no answers. Alison still felt a strange complicity in the whole event and preferred to hope instead that Aubrey Newell would die in France, in some horrible way. She was grateful for her own life, and felt awe over the clear answer to her prayers when she lay dying, but she could not forgive him. She would do her best to forget him.
Chapter Seventeen
&nbs
p; She Can Do No Other
Mary Reid spent the summer of 1918 considering whether she would leave Little Cove. She loved the children in her school, and she’d grown to love the three girls in her care as if they were her own. She had a good job, a home provided for her and a fairly secure future. But this latest disappointment was a constant reminder to her of her childlessness. Alison’s tragedy was, in Mary’s mind, going to be redeemed by filling a need in her life. She had allowed herself to anticipate so many things; the weight of a sleeping baby in her arms, the smile of recognition, or ownership, someone to call her “mamma”. In a few brief weeks she had knit sweaters and blankets enough for several babies, telling Gladie Cooper at the store that the wool she bought was for a friend who was expecting.
The day Alison told her the truth was a day almost as black as the day she lost Ian. Coldness filled her that refused to thaw. She felt angry at Alison, at God, at fate; whatever malignant power had taken away her hope.
With three weeks left until the beginning of school, Mary had made up her mind. She was to meet with the school board members to inform them of her decision on Monday evening. In fact that whole day she spent wrestling with the finality of it. She had neither a job nor a place to go.
Even as she walked across the road to the school, she regretted asking for the meeting. The air was pungent with the tang of the ocean and the small breeze provided a respite from the heat of the day. The long shadows of the sun were tinged with purple haze. Mary ached with the beauty of this place. Her steps slowed as she absorbed the sounds and sights around her.