Calista came downstairs just as Susannah was bringing pancakes to the table. She was fully dressed in a pair of black tuxedo pants, fitted black turtleneck, and a knit cardigan that sported ornaments, candy canes, and a fat, full-bearded Santa on the back; it was one of her collection of “ironic Christmas sweaters,” of which there were many.
“Where are you going?” As soon as she said it, Susannah realized how much like an interrogation her words sounded; she wished she had spoken more gently.
“To Alice’s.” Calista helped herself to several pancakes and scrutinized the bottle of maple syrup sitting next to the platter. “Foley Farms,” she read. “Megan’s last name is Foley; I think this might be someone in her family.”
“Her father?” Susannah reached for the butter, imagining a crew of pink-cheeked men with earmuffs, lumberjack coats, and tin buckets—an endearingly wholesome fantasy.
Calista shook her head. “Probably not. Megan says he’s in jail.”
The fantasy disintegrated. While the kids ate, Susannah pondered the implications of Calista having a friend whose father was in jail. Don’t be so judgmental, she could hear Polly saying. You don’t know if it’s even true, or if it is, what he’s in for. Think of all the people wrongfully incarcerated. Or maybe he’s a political prisoner. The maple syrup had an intense, almost burnt taste, and Susannah drizzled a little more on the last bite of her pancake. What if it were one of your daughters, she silently argued with Polly. Wouldn’t you be even the teensiest bit worried?
After breakfast, Susannah was left alone—Jack was off with Liam and Matthew, two new friends from his grade, and Calista, irritatingly, with Alice. But at least that meant time to spend with Betsey Pettingill, and then, tonight, with Corbin Bailey, a prospect laced with equal parts guilt and anticipation. She did not believe in an afterlife, at least not one in which the dead assumed corporeal form and could look down on the doings of those they left behind. Still, she silently addressed her dead husband. I still love you. I’ll always love you. But you’re gone, and I’m here without you. And it’s lonely. Really lonely. Forgive me, okay? Then she slipped into the flannel-lined jeans she’d recently ordered from L.L.Bean, and added a sweater and a polar fleece vest; her room could get chilly.
Before she began to work, she did a quick search for Linda Jacobsmeyer; she found five people with that name, but from the details she was able to gather, it was clear none of these Linda Jacobsmeyers was the one she sought. Could she be using another name? Susannah would have to ask around.
But right now, she wanted to return to the manuscript. She pulled out the notes she’d made on her trip with Corbin. A lot of good material here, though she wasn’t yet sure how she was going to handle all of it. Right now, she still saw Betsey as a child, and so it was to the child that she returned:
We went on to Salisbury as planned, but the whole time I pined for my mother. She was waiting by the gate for us when we got home. I jumped down from the mare, not caring that I fell and skinned my knees, and went racing toward her. At first I couldn’t say anything, but just pressed my face against her apron. Uncle Benjamin came following behind. “Quite a time they had over at the Curriers,” he said. “A dead baby was found in the barn—”
“I found it! I found it and I wish I hadn’t!” I lifted my face away from my mother’s apron and started crying in earnest, letting loose the torrent of tears I’d had to stifle at the Curriers’.
“What’s all this?” my mother said. Uncle Benjamin told her the story. I was crying too hard to say much.
“Why, my poor little poppet.” My mother knelt and used the hem of her apron to dry my face. “What a fright you had.” She looked up at my uncle. “And for the babe found in the barn. Do you think she—that is, would she really . . . ?”
My uncle shook his head. “That’s for the jury and the judge to decide,” he said. “She’s off to Portsmouth now. There’ll be a trial.”
“She didn’t do it—she didn’t!” I exclaimed.
My mother did not dismiss me the way Patience and Sarah had. “How do you know?” she asked.
“I just do.”
She wrapped me in her arms. “Don’t think of it, Betsey. Put it right out of your mind.”
She did not have to repeat it. I never wanted to think of it again. And for the rest of the summer, I was able to do just that. It was a lovely season, one long golden day unfolding after another. When it rained—and we did need the rain, for the crops and the garden—it always seemed to rain at night, and in the morning the freshly rinsed sky would be so bright and clear it almost hurt my eyes.
I was my mother’s only child; she generally doted on me and was content to let me stay close by her side. I helped her in the vegetable garden or played in the field behind our house. Sometimes we went berry picking and brought home baskets full of dark, tart berries that we turned into crumbles, grunts, and fools. Once we went to a nearby stream and I was allowed to take off my shoes and stockings and wade in; I loved the way the cool, clear water eddied around my feet and ankles. The only place I would not go was the barn. Even though the baby had been found in a different barn, miles away, the commingled smells—of milk, of manure, of hay, of wheat, and of grass, made me think of the other, and the other was what I was resolutely trying not to think of.
It wasn’t until late September, when the first scarlet leaves had started to show in the trees, that I thought about the baby and its gruesome discovery again. My uncle had come to visit, and since he’d been in Portsmouth just prior, he shared the news as he sat at our table, drinking the cup of water my mother had fetched him from the well.
“There’s been a verdict in the Ruth Blay case,” he said.
“What was it?”
“Guilty,” said my uncle.
“May God have mercy on her soul,” my mother said softly.
“What will happen now?” I had been sitting on the floor, quietly playing with the wooden doll my father had carved for me, and my mother had not realized I was there until I spoke up.
“Betsey!” she said, her surprise evident. “This is not for your ears. Please go upstairs at once.”
I picked up the doll. She had a smooth body, rigid arms, and features that had been created by the merest flick of the knife. “What will happen to her? Will she be hanged by the neck until she is dead? Or will she be burned at the stake?”
“Where did you hear such things?” my mother cried. She turned to my uncle. “Who’s been filling her head with this evil talk? Was it those nasty biddies down in South Hampton? Benjamin Clough’s sisters? Or that wife of his, Olive? Nothing better to do than spread such tales and fill the minds of innocent children with such wickedness?”
“No, it was Patience and Sarah,” I said, for though I had not liked those ladies at Mrs. Currier’s house, they were not the ones to blame.
“Well, you shouldn’t think or talk like that ever again. Mrs. Blay will appeal the decision, won’t she?” My mother glanced anxiously at my uncle.
“No, I was told she would not.” He looked down at his hands, rough and worn as leather.
“Then you mean—”
“She has asked for a reprieve, though, to ready herself—”
“Not another word,” she said sharply and looked at me. “Go upstairs now, Betsey, and take Dolly with you.”
I did as she said, cradling the doll in my arms. She had no legs, but the muslin skirt my mother had helped me sew covered up that lack. I looked into her face. Her expression was not smiling, not sad, but calm and comforting. She was the first and only doll I’d ever had and I loved her. But Dolly was not the right name for her. I would call her Ruth instead. I knew better than to say this aloud, though. So I did as my mother bade me and brought her upstairs. Ruth, Ruth, Ruth, I chanted, the name a special, haunting syllable on my tongue, one that I alone would know.
Something else happened
around this time. It had nothing to do with Ruth Blay, who languished in a Portsmouth jail, alternately pleading for her life and trying to make peace with relinquishing it. It had nothing to do with those ladies who had turned, as if in one cold, implacable tide, against her. And it most certainly had nothing to do with that June day and the grisly discovery I had made under the floorboards in the Cloughs’ barn. But in my childish mind—I had just turned six—it was all jumbled together.
It was October, I think, or early November. There had been a frost, and whatever leaves still remained on the trees were slick and shining with ice. One of our neighbors, Abitha Collins, was big with child that season. This was hardly a remarkable occurrence. She had three older children; the boys were apprenticed out, one to a blacksmith and the other to a cooper, and her eldest, a girl of sixteen, had just gotten married and gone to live in Massachusetts with her husband’s family.
Abitha was a small, almost negligible woman, with a weak chin, dusty brown hair, and a wan complexion. I never saw her laugh or smile and rarely heard her speak; her husband, a large, loud man, was considered a bit of a brute and my parents did not seek his company. But my mother felt sorry for her and would often send me over with a loaf of bread or something from her garden. Abitha always thanked me for whatever I’d brought, and one day she gave me a little scrap of lace from her basket. It was so delicate and pretty, I couldn’t wait to get home so I could sew it onto my doll’s dress.
The next time my mother asked me to go, I started out right away; maybe Abitha Collins would give me another piece of lace and I could make my dolly a cap. The day was gray and chilly but the bread, wrapped in a bit of linen, was still warm, and I held it close to my chest, along with my doll; I took her with me everywhere. When I got to the house, I knocked on the door. There was no answer. I knocked again, harder this time. When there was still no reply, I cautiously pushed the door. It was not locked and I was able to peek inside. At first I saw no one, but then I heard a noise—it sounded like panting. I turned, and there was Abitha, lying in a corner of the room and breathing very hard. The lower portion of her gray-blue dress was wet, and I saw a puddle of clear liquid beneath her on the pine floor.
“Betsey,” she said in a low voice. “I’m so glad you’ve come. Please go and fetch your mother—right away.”
“Are you well?” I asked, dismayed by both her prone position and the labored sound of her breathing.
“Yes, yes,” she said. “But the child—” She pointed to the hard, round bubble of her midsection. “The child is on the way and I need help. Please go now!”
I had never heard her say so many words at once and, dropping the bread, I turned and ran back across the field that separated our two houses. When I gave my mother the message, she picked up her shawl and together we made the trip again. But once we got to the Collins’ house, she said, “You were a good girl in bringing me here. Now you must go home and stay there.” I said nothing. My father was away and the house was empty. I did not want to be there by myself. “What are you waiting for?” my mother said. “Go!”
“Please let me stay,” I said. “I’m afraid to be alone.”
My mother looked at me, as if taking my measure. “Very well. But you have to do exactly as I ask and when I tell you to step outside, you must do that too—do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I nodded, so grateful that I was not to be sent back to the empty house. I set Ruth gently down on the painted sideboard and asked, “Do you need me to fetch Mr. Collins?”
“That won’t be necessary,” said my mother. “Men are useless at a birth.”
What she did ask was that I help her get Abitha onto the bed, where she had first removed the woven coverlet and spread out several thick white cloths Abitha must have been saving for this purpose. Then my mother lit a fire under the pot of water—fortunately it was full, so I did not have to go to the well—and told me to let her know when it was hot. For the next couple of hours, she soothed and comforted Abitha in her travail, encouraging her to squeeze her hand when the pains came and wiping her brow with a soft cloth that had been dipped into the warmed water. My mother had had only a single child, but she had assisted at the births of many.
It was only when Abitha’s panting and moans turned to actual screams that my mother sent me out. “It won’t be long,” she said. “The baby will be here soon.” I did not want to go outside but I did not want to stay and hear the screaming either, so I took my doll and did as I was told. I set Ruth down on a tree stump and began gathering up things I could use in our games together: acorns that could serve as food, a curving scarlet leaf that could be a plate. To my growing pile I added some pinecones, and more leaves: thin golden blades. While I gathered, I sang to myself, so I would not hear the sounds coming from inside the house. There were birds swooping in and out of the mostly bare trees and rustling from the creatures that lived on the ground—squirrels, chipmunks, and the tiny brown field mice that skittered like shadows.
But why hadn’t my mother come to fetch me yet? She had said it would not be long, yet the sun was sinking lower in the sky and the light was fading. The birds quieted and the rustling increased: other animals were coming out now and the sounds I heard might indicate a fox or a skunk.
I looked up to see that a large gray owl had settled on a branch and was looking straight at me. His flat face, ringed with darker feathers, and the fixed orbs of his maize-colored eyes had a hypnotic effect: I could not look away. At the same time I was frightened that he might swoop down and snatch me up. I knew this was foolish; I was too big for him to carry off. But looking at those unblinking eyes, I could almost believe that he possessed otherworldly powers.
Ignoring my mother’s words, I grabbed my doll, opened the door, and stepped back into the house. In my fright, I had not registered that the sound of the screaming had stopped. Instead, there was now the muffled sound of weeping. My mother sat on the bloodstained bed, her arm encircling the small, hunched shoulders of Abitha Collins. Across the room, in a woven willow basket, was a still and shrouded bundle. No one had to tell me what had happened. The baby whose passage into the world had caused Abitha Collins to writhe and scream was gone—dead, like that other baby back in June. Only this time I did not scream; indeed I could not have screamed even had I wanted to, because as soon as I saw the bundle, I crumpled to the floor in a faint.
TWENTY-FIVE
Susannah finished typing the word “faint” and looked up at the clock. Almost five—how had it gotten so late? She had been so immersed in Betsey’s world that she’d completely lost track of the time. Glancing at her phone, she saw there was a text from Corbin. The weather report was predicting snow for late this evening, so he wanted to pick her up at six o’clock rather than seven. That way, he could get her home before the snow really started coming down. Good idea, she texted back. Thanks for suggesting it. Only now she was going to have to rush to get ready.
At least she did not have to factor in the kids. Jack was staying over at Liam’s and Calista was having dinner and going to a movie with Alice. And not just any movie showing at the nearby Cineplex; oh, no. They were driving to Dartmouth, in Hanover, to see one of the films being shown in the Truffaut Festival the French department was sponsoring. Though if it was snowing hard, would Alice really want to make the drive? Should she call to discuss it? But that would only make Calista angry; she was going to have to rely on Alice’s good sense.
She hit save and turned off the laptop. What was she going to wear? Twenty minutes later, Susannah’s bed was a repository of rejected dresses, skirts, blouses, and sweaters. Nothing seemed right. People in New Hampshire dressed down, not up. She did not think she had seen a woman in heels since she’d gotten here. But this date was momentous in its way and she wanted to wear something special, something that said she understood its importance.
Chilly in the bra and panties—peach colored, lace trimmed—she’d changed
into, Susannah returned to the closet. Here was something she had not considered: the two-piece number she’d found in the attic when she’d first gotten to the house, still swathed in plastic from the dry cleaners. Extracting the dress from the transparent shroud, she slipped it on, reaching her arms around to her back to get at the zipper. The ivory satin bodice with its black velvet collar made her skin glow, and the black-and-white tweed skirt skimmed her hips in a flattering—and, she thought, subtly sexy—way. And once she put on the matching black velvet jacket, with its jet buttons and tweed cuffs, Susannah felt transformed. She knew she was attractive, but she also knew she wasn’t the beauty that her mother had been. Yet in assuming Claire’s dress, she seemed to assume something of her allure. It was a heady feeling, and she studied herself in the mirror for several seconds.
Now it was a quarter to six. She rummaged in a drawer for sheer black panty hose; fortunately, she still had a few pairs from her New York life. She didn’t know if she could manage the snow with the black patent leather pumps she also unearthed, but she was going to wear them anyway; it was only a few steps to the car and Corbin would just have to take her arm. There was just enough time to brush her teeth and swipe on a little blush, a coat of mascara, and some lipstick. Corbin’s car pulled up as she touched a few drops of gardenia-scented perfume to her wrists and the hollow of her throat.
“You look amazing,” he said when she opened the door.
“Thank you.” She was happy she’d pleased him. Then she took in the black cashmere sweater and white shirt under his coat; his eyes above the white collar seemed even more intensely blue than she’d remembered. He wore dark pinwale corduroy pants, and a quick glance downward revealed good black shoes, well polished, with a buckle on the instep. So he’d dressed up too. She got her coat and, just as in her fantasy, Corbin took her arm on the way to the car.
But once they had gotten on the road, she was suddenly overcome with shyness. Here she was on an honest-to-goodness dinner date, her first in decades. She felt the by now familiar thrum of excitement sitting next to him, and the sight of his taut, well-muscled thigh so close to hers on the seat filled her with a kind of long-dormant longing. Still, this felt wrong, all wrong. Where was Charlie, her best friend, her soul mate, husband and father of her children? Dead, that’s where, and for the first time since he had died, Susannah felt a spike not of grief, but of anger. Why had it been left up to her to see that he’d worn the bicycle helmet? Wasn’t he a grown-up? Didn’t he have any responsibility, to himself, and to her and the kids? That’s what Polly had said and maybe there was some truth in it. She turned her face to the window; spreading, snow-covered pines rushed close and then receded.
The House on Primrose Pond Page 20