The House on Primrose Pond

by Yona Zeldis McDonough

  “I hope you like cinnamon rolls.”

  “Love them.”

  On the drive back, Susannah was acutely conscious of her time with him slipping away. “Did you ever have the sense that my mother was unhappy in her marriage?”

  “Why do you ask?” Harry was already on his second cinnamon roll. “Did she ever say so?”

  “Not explicitly. But I sensed a lot of tension between my parents. Especially the summer we came back here together.”

  “That was when?” Harry asked. “Sometime in the 1990s, right?”

  “1994.” So he knew about the visit. He must have seen her while she was in town.

  “She called me and we tried to get together. But we didn’t manage to make it happen.”

  “Too bad.” How hard should she press? On the way here, her questions had elicited tears. “I know she took a trip to Quebec that summer. My father didn’t go with her, though; she went with Lynda Jacobsmeyer.” Or you.

  “Quebec? I didn’t know about that. Must have been lovely up there in the summer. Not that I would know—I’ve never been.”

  Really? Susannah wanted to ask. But here they were at Starbucks, where Martha was waiting for them. Harry must have gotten tired out from his therapy session; despite the coffee, he dozed the rest of the way back to Eastwood, waking only when they reached her house. When he did, he looked at Susannah with an expression that she could describe only as beatific, and clasped both her hands in his. His ring was heavy and cold against her fingers. “I’m so glad to have seen you, my dear. Thank you for accompanying me in a walk down memory lane. We’ll meet again, won’t we?”

  “Yes, of course.” Harry had to be the man who was her mother’s lover. He was good looking and cultivated; he and Claire shared many interests. And he’d even said he’d been in love with her. What better proof than that? Yet he had not actually confirmed her suspicions. How could she get him to admit it?

  Susannah let herself into the house feeling deeply unsettled. Of course Harry wasn’t going to confide in her based on a single meeting. If she wanted an admission, she would need to gain his trust and confidence by cultivating him slowly. And since Deedee was not going to allow that, it would all have to be done on the sly.

  She went upstairs and turned on her laptop. It was still early; Jack wouldn’t be home for a few hours. And Calista wouldn’t be home at all. She hadn’t seen her daughter once since she’d left; Calista had asked Jack to bring over her clothes, schoolbooks, and backpack rather than come and get them herself.

  Well, she wasn’t going to think about that now. And she wasn’t going to think about Harry and her mother. She could channel her agitation into words and onto the page. Use the quiet turmoil to infuse her novel, the one she still hoped to convince Tasha she should write.

  She looked over what she had written so far. The symmetry between the two dead babies, Abitha’s and Ruth Blay’s, was good from a dramatic standpoint. And it underscored the fact that there were so many stillborns in the eighteenth century; it was very likely that Ruth’s infant was just one of a very large number.

  After the death of Abitha’s infant, my mother adopted very strict measures to protect me. She would let no one discuss the deaths of infants or children in front of me, and she made sure to keep any news of Ruth Blay from me as well. “The poor child has been frightened enough,” she said. “No need to alarm her any further.” It helped too that Abitha’s husband died—was killed actually, when a restive horse he’d paid too much for at auction reared up and kicked him cleanly in the temple, splitting his head open—and Abitha moved away to be near one of her older children. Without the reminder, I was gradually able to let these events sift from my mind, like the coarse grains of grit that I rinsed from the squash we grew in the garden.

  Seasons passed and years turned. I became a young woman, with a young woman’s responsibilities and a young woman’s longings. I spent days rolling out pastry dough, kneading bread, mending stockings, and stitching a quilt for my hope chest. I learned to grab a hen by the feet, pin her wings, and slit her throat in the time it took to recite the Lord’s Prayer. Then, while the bird was still warm, I would gut and strip it, gathering the feathers to fill a quilt or pillow, and finally place her cleaned, denuded body into the iron pot to cook. That the naked creature’s tiny wings and plump thighs resembled the arms and legs of newborn babes was an observation I could tamp down and ignore. “O, that way madness lies; let me shun that; No more of that.” Those lines, from King Lear, would guide and instruct me.

  When all my work was done and prayers duly said, I would slip out of my dress and into my cambric shift; I would lie very still in my maiden’s bed, conjuring the man I might be lucky enough to marry. Would he be dark or fair, young and strong or older and well established? Would he be a blacksmith or a tinker, a baker, butcher, or tailor? A cooper or a candlemaker? Perhaps he’d be a soldier from the militia, one of those brave New Hampshire boys in the smart blue coats who had fought bravely in the Battle of Bennington or the Siege of Boston. The war had been going on for several years by then and we were lucky; New Hampshire did not see the worst of the fighting, though Portsmouth had been in danger from the British ships, and the capital was for a time moved to Exeter.

  But the man I married, Joel Eastman, was none of these things. He came from the Eastman family of Salisbury—the very town where I had been headed with my uncle all those years ago. But this was mere chance, I told myself. It had nothing to do with that trip, or the discovery I made while we were on it. And of course Salisbury had changed in the intervening time.

  My new husband was a prosperous gentleman farmer with a large herd of Jersey heifers and many acres of rich, fertile land. And he was a fine man too, all I could have hoped for and more. After we were wedded, in 1785, I bade good-bye to my mother—my father had died some time before this, of the ague—and went with him to his home, a handsome two-story brick house with four chimneys and many windows. Inside, there was a center staircase, a parlor, dining room, six bedrooms, and a big, ample kitchen that became my sovereign domain.

  He was gentle with me, Joel was, and the good Lord blessed us with three children in quick succession: Sally, Pettingill, and my namesake, little Betsey. I was a fortunate woman, and I knew it. Yet after the birth of the first, Sally, something strange befell me, something I could not name or explain, but whose grip was no less powerful for that. I was weak, of course. Childbirth, especially for the uninitiated, is torturous work, and my body needed time to heal. But even when it had, my mind did not follow suit.

  Day after dismal day, I lay in my room upstairs, cocooned by the feather bed and the counterpane I had stitched for my hope chest. I did not want to see the infant I had brought into the world. Nor did I wish to eat, drink, or have discourse with anyone. One morning, Joel knocked gently and then opened the door. There he stood, twirling his hat on his finger, round and round again. I wished he would just go away. “Dearest, don’t you want to get up today? The air is so fine; it would do you good,” he said.

  “I need to sleep,” I said. “I’m still weak.”

  “But you’ve slept for so many hours,” he said.

  “Is it my fault that I’m still so weary from the birth?” I was petulant, wanting only to be left alone in the darkened room whose curtains I permitted no one to part.

  “The birth was two months ago,” Joel said quietly. “And the child—she needs you.”

  At first, I had fed little Sally because I had to, but I found the constant tug and pull of her tiny mouth upon my person an assault each time. I remained rigid while she suckled and had to force myself to place my arms around her. Finally Joel had hired a wet nurse from a town nearby, and now when Sally cried I buried my face in the pillow until the wet nurse attended to her and her cries ceased. This went on for several weeks; the child grew and thrived, but I took no joy in it. It seemed I could take no joy in a
nything.

  In the end, it was my mother who saved me. Joel sent for her, and she came. Older she was, and less spry, but her mind was intact and her will strong. She marched over to the curtains and pulled them apart. The sun streamed in, so bright it hurt my eyes. “Close them, please!” I begged.

  “Nonsense,” she said. “Joel’s a fool to humor you the way he does. You’re getting up today. Come on, then.” When I did not move, she came over to the bed and took my arms, as if to pull me to my feet. “There are only two paths, Betsey,” she said. “Toward the light—” She turned slightly, toward the window. “Or toward the dark. And as hard as it is sometimes, we must always go toward the light.”

  Her words were simple, but somehow they broke through the shell around my heart. I let her ease me from the bed, help me dress, and brush my hair, which, I confess, I had allowed to grow tangled and matted in my despair. Then she poured the water from the ironstone pitcher into the bowl and I rinsed my face. Standing in front of the window, I looked down at the brick path that led up to the house and out at the trees surrounding it: oak, birch, maple. I took a deep breath, and then another. Somewhere, in another part of the house, there was a loud, insistent wail: a baby’s cry. My baby.

  “Bring her to me,” I said to my mother. And she did.

  Susannah printed out the pages she’d just written. If she actually got a contract to write this novel, she’d need to flesh out Betsey’s marriage a bit more fully, and she made a few notes in the margin. It was only on a second reading that she realized just how much emotional truth she’d invested in that final paragraph. She felt exiled from her own child. So what if Calista was sullen, judgmental, accusatory, and angry? She was still her daughter, her darling girl. Nothing could ever change that.

  Susannah got up. Even though she had been calling Alice in the evenings to get the “Calista report,” today she just couldn’t stand to wait. She picked up the phone and Alice answered almost immediately. “This is getting ridiculous. I want to talk to her.” She had kept herself from calling Calista directly; she did not want to run the risk of yet another rejection.

  “I can ask,” Alice said. Her voice was low; was Calista in the room? “But this isn’t a good time to discuss it. Why don’t we speak tomorrow, earlier in the day? Better yet—why don’t you come here for lunch?”

  “Tomorrow is Saturday,” said Susannah. “Won’t Calista be there?”

  “She’s planned something with her friends,” Alice said. “She won’t be back until dinnertime.”

  Susannah was not at all sure she wanted to have lunch with Alice Renfew; her resentment was still running pretty high. But she squelched the thought. If having lunch with Alice would help her find her way back to her daughter, then lunch was what she would do.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Remnants of plowed snow were piled high by the side of the road and there were puddles in the ditches. The purity of the landscape was compromised by all the gray slush, but it was a welcome, if messy, harbinger of spring. On the way to Alice’s, Susannah passed the barn and made her way up the walk, neatly shoveled to reveal the bricks, laid in a herringbone pattern, below. The door, painted a glossy black, matched the shutters, and lace curtains could be seen through the tall windows.

  “Come in, come in,” said Alice. She wore a knee-length tunic that appeared to have been made entirely of ribbons—gold, red, embroidered, silver—over black pants and a black turtleneck. As Susannah unzipped and handed over her parka, she felt that her bland gray slacks and ivory sweater were dull by comparison.

  “Let’s go into the dining room—everything’s all ready.” Alice turned and Emma turned with her; Susannah followed them both. All the rooms on this floor were painted the same shade of dusty rose; the color set off the white moldings. A rectangular mirror in an elaborate gilt frame hung over a mantel and a large vase of flowers dominated a low marble-topped table. The furniture looked to be antique—or reproduction, Susannah didn’t know the difference—and all upholstered in various shades of pink. Needlepoint pillows dotted the sofas—there were two—and chairs, some of which had doilies draped over their rotund arms or backs. The walls were covered with paintings, some in oil, some watercolor, and everywhere, on every available flat surface, were veritable hordes of framed photographs.

  Susannah took all this in quickly before sitting down. Alice went into the kitchen and returned with two bowls of corn chowder on a tray. She set them down and took her seat across from Susannah. The table seemed too large for just the two of them, but it had been covered with a floral-patterned cloth and was dense with china, cunningly folded napkins, silver saltcellars, and bud vases so the effect was cozy, not intimidating.

  “I know you must feel mistrustful or even resentful of me,” Alice said. Susannah had been about to taste the soup—enlivened by bits of red pepper and shrimp—but her spoon-holding hand stopped midway to her mouth. “Still, I think you know I feel a special bond with your daughter and I’m only trying to help.”

  “I appreciate that,” Susannah said, caught off guard by Alice’s candor. “But I’m not comfortable leaving this situation so open-ended. I want to set up some kind of timetable here. I want Calista to come home.”

  “She doesn’t want to go home,” said Alice. “That’s what she’s told me.”

  Susannah had a spoonful of soup to buy herself time; then she had another. It was delicious, and if she had not been having this conversation, she would have really enjoyed it. “This has been brewing for a while,” she said finally. “Then Corbin put her over the edge.”

  “She can’t see him replacing her father.” Alice began to eat her soup.

  “No one is replacing Charlie!” Susannah said. Obviously Alice had been getting her information—or misinformation—from Calista. “I’ve only gone out with Corbin a couple of times. She’s distorting things—”

  “Maybe she is,” Alice said. “Which is all the more reason to let her stay here with me so she can adjust slowly, without having it rubbed in her face.”

  To sit here and listen to this woman she hardly even knew analyze her daughter made Susannah want to walk out of the house and never come back. But Alice was a way—the only way, really—to reach Calista. “Well, I want to be able to see her. Or at least speak to her. I don’t want to be so totally cut off.”

  “Of course not,” said Alice. “I’d feel the same way if I were in your situation.”

  But you’re not in my situation! Susannah could not decide whether Alice was truly well intentioned or whether she was taking some covert—and perverse—pleasure in making her unhappy. She was trying vainly to frame a tactful reply when the phone rang.

  “Please excuse me,” said Alice. “I’m expecting a call, and if this is it, I’m going to need to take it.” She got up from the table and walked into the kitchen. The dog followed.

  Susannah was grateful for the small reprieve. She finished her soup and began to look around the room. Across from her was a low, highly polished wood sideboard on which sat a row of photographs in silver frames. Many of them seemed to be of Alice either alone or with a man she assumed to be her husband. She could hear the murmur of Alice’s voice from the kitchen—she’d closed the door behind her—and she got up to take a closer look.

  Here was Alice in a dramatic straw hat in front of the Eiffel Tower, and another, in a different hat, in front of the Trevi Fountain. But Susannah was more interested in the legendary Dr. Dave. Tall and broad, he had the body of someone who’d played college football, and a confident, easy smile. In the photos showing the two of them, he was always touching her—arm around her shoulder, pulling her close, holding hands. In one photo, obviously taken decades ago, they were dancing; in another, he was kissing her cheek. The marriage, at least in these pictures, looked like a happy one. And they were well matched in terms of their style: Dave wore elegantly fitting suits, some of them three piece; dramatic hats, lik
e a fedora or a panama; and was partial to bow ties, which he sported with some panache. For a country doctor he was quite the natty dresser.

  “So sorry! I had no idea that would take so long.” Alice had come back into the room with a platter of small sandwiches. Susannah went back to her seat. Maybe looking at all those photos had softened her, because she no longer felt so resentful of Alice. Corbin had said she was lonely, and seeing the connection she’d had with her husband, Susannah was sure that was true. She knew what it was to lose and mourn a husband, and she wondered whether there had ever been another man in Alice’s life after Dave died.

  Susannah ate a sandwich—chicken salad, studded with walnuts and dried cranberries—and then the molasses crisps in a different, more accepting frame of mind. Alice was a good-hearted woman, she decided. Calista could have done worse in terms of companions. “Is she making any friends at school?” she asked.

  “Not really,” said Alice. “I think she finds her peers a bit unsophisticated after what she’s been used to. But there are a few young people in town she’s been friendly with.”

  “Yes, I know.” Despite what Polly had said, Susannah did not entirely like—or trust—them.

  “Oh, you mustn’t worry.” Alice had picked up on her disapproving tone. “They’re a good bunch, really.”

  “You know them?”

  “At one time or another I did; they were all patients of Dave’s, and I have a fondness for them. Even the ones who’ve been struggling a bit. Or maybe especially the ones who are struggling.”

  Susannah considered this; hadn’t Polly said she’d been too quick to judge? “Well, I’d like to meet them, then. Maybe Calista would want to invite them over—she could have a party or something.”

  “Maybe.” Alice got up. “Would you like some tea or coffee? I can’t believe I waited so long to ask.”

  Susannah looked at her watch. “You know, this has been lovely, but I really should be getting back now. We’ll do it again soon.” And she actually meant it.