The House on Primrose Pond

by Yona Zeldis McDonough

  “I remember,” Alice said. “I remember every word.”

  “I’m sorry I said it that way. And sorry I hurt you. I was feeling hurt, though. Not that that’s an excuse. Just an explanation.”

  “I understand,” Alice said stiffly. “Or I tried to. Maybe I overstepped with Calista and let my own needs blind me to yours. But I was so taken with her, you see. I wasn’t being very sensitive.” She sat quietly for a few seconds, looking down at the package of tea she still held in her hands. “But the other part—the part about Dave and your mother. Well, that was true. I didn’t want to believe it, but it all makes sense now. Those irksome little details I tried to push away for so long? They were all bits of a puzzle I could never solve. But you did.”

  “What details?” Susannah moved closer to the bed.

  “Dave’s last words were Le chat noir. He repeated them several times and I thought he was rambling. He’d always wished he’d spoken French. Once he even bought some language tapes and another time he enrolled in an adult ed class. But it didn’t last long—he had no mind for languages. So at the end I thought he was remembering some random phrase he’d learned. I was wrong. He was remembering—your mother.”

  “And that trip. But the affair must have started years earlier, don’t you think?”

  “I do,” said Alice. “Because here’s another thing: after he died, I found a poem about a woman in a flowered dress in his desk—”

  “Pale blue flowers?” Susannah asked. It must have been the same poem she had found!

  “Yes, pale blue flowers. And then I found that picture I’d told you about. It was of your mother, in that very dress. And it was taken in 1976, at our Fourth of July party. Maybe that’s where it started for them.”

  “But not where it ended.”

  “No, the Canada trip—that was the end. Though I’m not sure how much there was in between. Your parents moved away.”

  “Quebec wasn’t the end either.” Susannah was dreading what she would have to say next. “There was one more thing. My mother knew about it, though for a long time your husband didn’t.”

  “Knew about what?” Alice put down the box of tea.

  “Me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My mother got pregnant with Dave’s child. Dave was my biological father.”

  “That can’t be!” Two vivid streaks of color appeared on Alice’s face.

  “That’s what I thought at first,” Susannah said. “But Lynda Jacobsmeyer confirmed it.”

  “You saw her?”

  Susannah nodded. “In Boston. I suspected and I asked her outright. She said it was true, and that my mother had told her.”

  “Oh,” said Alice. “Oh, oh, oh.” Her eyes shone brightly but no tears fell.

  “If I’m Dave’s biological daughter, then that means Calista and Jack are his grandchildren. So we are a family—kind of. Which is why I am going to ask that when you get out of the hospital—or rehab if you have to go to rehab—you come to stay with us.”

  “But I could never—I mean, I couldn’t impose—”

  “Where will you go? How will you manage? Your house won’t be livable for months; you’ll need help. Let us help you.” Susannah’s face was wet. “Please.”

  “I don’t know . . .” Alice looked down at the box of tea that sat on top of the blanket, and then back at Susannah. “Maybe we can try it,” she said. “Try it and see how it goes.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Susannah parked on South Street in Portsmouth and got out of the car. Flanking the house on the corner was a bright blaze of forsythia; it was a sunny day in April and the yellow flowers seemed even brighter when seen against the cool blue sky.

  “Do you have everything?” Corbin asked.

  Susannah checked her bag again; everything, including her much thumbed copy of Hanging Ruth Blay by Carolyn Marvin, was there. “Good to go,” she said.

  They walked into the cemetery together. This was the execution site where Ruth—she was never Blay in Susannah’s mind—had been brought, and Susannah felt compelled to see it. She didn’t know exactly where the gallows had been erected, but Marvin’s book showed a photograph of the spot; Corbin had wanted to come along to help her find it.

  Last week he had gone with her to the historical society, where the curator, Sarah Rux, had laid out a blue linsey-woolsey on a bed for their inspection. Its provenance was uncertain, so Susannah knew the quilted blue cloth with its many holes may or may not have belonged to Ruth, but she had wanted to see it anyway. They had been planning to go to the cemetery too, but it was raining hard and so they’d postponed it until today. This was the final stop—for Ruth, and for her.

  “Let me see the photo again,” Corbin said. She obliged. “Do you think that it’s over there?” He pointed to a monument similar to the one in the picture, but when they got closer to inspect, the names didn’t match. They kept walking, though, hand in hand, except for when Susannah stopped to take notes or photograph an old headstone or arresting statue. Angels with their wings open or folded, heads gazing heavenward or down in sorrow. Babies with lambs. Crosses, representations of Jesus and of Mary—all the myriad expressions of mourning or grief. She’d had Charlie cremated—he’d always said he wanted that—and had scattered his ashes, again heeding his wishes. But there was something to be said for a final resting spot, a place to localize the swell of sadness that still rose up from time to time.

  “Was she buried here? Ruth Blay?” Corbin asked. He’d taken off his jacket and carried it under his free arm.

  “She was, but there’s no marker.”

  “So it’s all about the spot.”

  “All about the spot,” she agreed. “Wait, what about that?” She dropped his hand and hurried over to another monument. “No, that’s not right either. The name we’re looking for is Sise.”

  They kept walking until Susannah began to feel hungry—and the need to use a bathroom. She knew they could go and get lunch—and find a ladies’ room—and come back, but she wanted to look one more time and began to walk the paths again. And here, on the north side of a reed-ringed pond, was the monument she sought. “Look!” she called to Corbin. “Here it is.” The name, Sise, was the same as the one in the photo. He walked over to join her.

  Without the trees, which would not have been so tall and mature, and the headstones, the view would have been pretty much as Ruth had seen it, her last sight before all sight was gone. The place was not a cemetery back then. The land, owned by the South Church, had been a pasture and was often used as a military training ground. Samuel Hall, a farmer, owned land adjacent to the field, and he was furious that the crowd—it had been a large one—had damaged his stone walls in an effort to get closer. Susannah had seen the documents in which he’d demanded recompense.

  The scaffold would have been built on the highest point, overlooking the pond. Ruth would have been brought by a cart that carried the plain wooden coffin she’d be buried in; Susannah knew that was common practice. And then, when her hands and feet were bound and she’d uttered whatever last prayers she had in her to utter, the noose was placed around her neck and the order given to send off the cart. Unless her neck had been broken by the fall, she would have dangled there, left to die of slow strangulation.

  Susannah let the images, no less harrowing for being imagined, seep through and into her. She wanted to feel them so she could write them. And she needed to write them, to write them as vividly, respectfully, and humanely as she could.

  “Horrible,” she said finally. “Let’s go.” She took his hand and they walked off.

  • • •

  They went to Gino’s, on the waterfront, for lunch, where they ate lobster bisque and lobster rolls; the granddaughter of the original owner, Concetta, knew Corbin and came over to say hello.

  “I heard you’re giving old Wingate a ru
n for his money up there in Eastwood,” she said.

  “I’m doing my best,” he said. Corbin was back on the Wingate crusade again. The committee members had told Mr. Wingate that they refused to negotiate with anyone other than Corbin as their leader, and someone got the governor’s ear too. Susannah was so glad; she knew how much it meant to him.

  The air had turned a little cooler by the time they got in the car to drive back. Spring was coming, but it was coming slowly.

  “Will I see you later?” Susannah asked when Corbin dropped her off.

  “I’ve got a meeting, but I could come over later if you want.” Since that drunken night at her house, he’d been attending AA meetings again. Extra insurance, he’d said.

  “I want.” She leaned in to kiss him. Actually, she was looking forward to a little time on her own this evening; she wanted to begin the process that would transmute the facts of her field trip into fiction.

  • • •

  “Susannah, is that you?” Alice called out when Susannah walked into the house.

  “It’s me,” Susannah answered. She went into the kitchen and found Alice seated at the table drinking a cup of tea. No one else appeared to be at home. “Did you do that all by yourself?” she asked.

  “I did,” Alice said. “The occupational therapist was here supervising me, but she said I was coming along splendidly. Just splendidly.”

  “That’s great.” Susannah hung up her coat and began putting her things away.

  “And I spoke to the contractor; things are coming along at my house too. Soon I’ll be out of your hair.”

  “You know I don’t feel that way.” Susannah sat down across from Alice and took the older woman’s hand. “I don’t feel that way at all.”

  “I know you don’t, dear. But as grateful as I am to you—all of you—I’m eager to get back home again. I’m redoing the living room, you know. I’m fed up with all that pink.”

  Susannah smiled. She wasn’t lying when she said that having Alice here wasn’t any trouble. It was different, to be sure, but it was a good kind of different. Alice’s presence had helped her adjust to this new self, the one whose father was not her father. She’d had so many questions about Dave: What was he like? Had he wanted children? Had they ever tried to have any together? Alice told her a story about a near adoption of a little redheaded baby boy; was that part of her attraction to Calista? Lynda had told her he’d been happy when he found out. Did Alice think that would have been true?

  These questions had not been easy for Alice at first; she too had to readjust her version of her past and rewrite the story of her marriage in her own mind. Dave’s infidelity had hurt her terribly, just as Claire’s had hurt Warren. But here they were, each with an unexpected connection to the other—unexpected, and sometimes touched with grace. She had decided not to tell her children what she’d learned just yet; she wanted to get used to it herself first. Maybe in the summer, when they could be out on the pond, the long, cold winter well behind them.

  Susannah got up from the table to start preparing dinner. Alice insisted on washing her own cup, spoon, and saucer—“See, I’m getting more self-sufficient every day”—and then went to lie down for a while. She couldn’t manage the stairs, so with the help of a pair of folding screens she’d found at one of the antique stores on Route 4 and a rented hospital bed, Susannah had partitioned the living room and created a space for her. Fortunately, there was a bathroom downstairs too; Corbin had added safety grips to the shower stall so she could get in and out by herself.

  Calista came in and then Jack and Liam; the kids pitched in with dinner prep and they had an easy, relaxed meal. Calista even volunteered to clean up, with Alice keeping her company and helping when she could. The boys disappeared to Jack’s room, and Susannah was able to go upstairs with her laptop and her Moleskine; the notes she had taken earlier were all there.

  Tasha had asked her why she was so attached to this story; she had told her it had something to do with guilt. Guilt—her own, Betsey’s—that was the animating force, the guilt that linked them, and the guilt that pushed her ahead. She had not given Betsey a real chance at expiation because she sensed it was not time yet. Before expiation, there had to be confession, and her character would need to unburden herself. But there was this piece of the story, the most grim, the most awful, that she still had to tell. And having been to the cemetery in Portsmouth, the last place where Ruth Blay had walked and lived and breathed, she felt she was finally ready to try.

  THIRTY-NINE

  I’d been thrice blessed, and carried easily with the first three, but this pregnancy was a hard one. I was sick all the time and often it was not only the taste but the mere smell of certain foods, like the lamb stew Joel liked so much or shepherd’s pie, that turned my poor stomach inside out. And of course I was so very tired. Nursing my little Betsey and keeping up with the other two at the same time stretched me thin and taut as a thread. Prudence was a godsend during those months, always offering to take the older children to play with hers, even keeping them overnight sometimes. She brought me loaves of her light, airy bread—one of the few things I could keep down—and honey from the bees her husband tended.

  One evening, we sat together in my kitchen. It was September, but the air still held the warmth of summer. The children were all asleep and Joel was off to Boston on some business. So it was just the two of us. I was about to prepare a pot of tea, but Prudence laid her hand on my wrist. “I have something else I think you’ll like better,” and from the capacious folds of her skirt she produced a small bottle filled with a dark liquid. “Elderberry wine,” she explained. “I brewed it myself last spring when the fruit was in season. It’s just the thing to calm your nerves and settle your stomach.”

  I looked at the bottle. While Joel liked to partake of beer or ale and, when he could get it, wine, I tended to abstain. Spirits made me feel both silly and sleepy, and as a mother, I did not want to encourage these qualities in myself. But maybe Prudence had a point. I was in need of calming, both body and mind, and I did not see how a small tipple would harm me. Fetching two small glasses from a shelf, I brought them to the table and let Prudence pour.

  The first taste was sweet, with a hint of spice. Then came the slight burn, but it was subtle, starting in my chest and radiating out to my arms and fingers, legs, and even toes. I had another sip. “Delicious,” I declared. To my surprise, the glass was now empty. Without asking, Prudence refilled it along with her own. Then we touched our two glasses together gently.

  “I’ve got a couple more bottles in my pantry,” she said. “So I can leave this one here with you.”

  “Oh, no, you shouldn’t.” But I was secretly glad she had made the offer. The wine was making me feel so peaceful, so tranquil. I might be moved to take a small nip every night; it would no doubt make bedtimes that much easier. “Could I give some to the baby? When she’s teething?”

  “You certainly can,” said Prudence. “Rub it on her gums. It will quiet her right down.”

  “You never did tell me the rest of the story about Ruth Blay.” I surprised myself with these words; I had not intended to bring up the subject again. Prudence did not know that I was the child who had discovered the dead baby, and even though I was desperate to know the particulars, I feared that talking about it might somehow lead the finger of blame to point at me. But alcohol loosened my tongue and let down my guard. The words were out now; I could not take them back.

  “I didn’t? Well, I can tell you now. She went to jail and there was a trial straightaway.”

  “Yes, I remember that part; you told me.”

  “Did I tell you about the indictment, then? How it was filled with the names of all those women who sought to single her out and smear her name?”

  “Women?”

  Prudence nodded and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Oh, yes—there were several of them. I
t was long ago but I remember them still. Abigail Cooper was one. Loveday Brown another. And Mary Rogers and Olive Clough.”

  That last name pierced my hazy spirit-created bubble. I remembered Olive. I most certainly did. And maybe some of the others who had been at the table, so ready to accuse and judge. “They were against her, then?”

  “Every last one. She was arraigned in August, but the trial was adjourned until September 21—I still remember the day because it was my good mother’s birthday. It lasted only a single day and then the jury thrashed it out for several hours—all night long, I was told. They came back with a guilty verdict. I’m sure those women”—and she stopped to wrinkle her face in disgust—“had poisoned the well.”

  “But she asked for a reprieve?” This I vaguely recalled from my childhood.

  “Twice asked, twice granted. But the third time . . .”

  “Denied.” I knew the ending, if not the details.

  We sat quietly for a few minutes and the ensuing silence was filled up with the sounds of the night outside: moths that beat against the lighted window, the scuffle of small animals, the soft but menacing hoot of an owl. “Were you there?” I asked finally. “At the end?”

  Prudence nodded. She may have filled her glass yet a third time; I was no longer paying such strict attention. But I could see her eyes had widened and gone glassy with tears. “It took place in Portsmouth. The morning was cold but there was quite a crowd, for it had been on everyone’s tongue for weeks. She came in a cart, she did. They must have gone down Middle Road to Cow Lane and entered the field on South Street. Her hands were tied and her skirts too. I saw her right close up as she passed. Pale, straight, and silent. She was not looking at anything visible; she was looking, I could swear, into Eternity.” She stopped for a moment to take another sip.