by Mary Volmer
“Mutti,” he said, teasing his whiskery chin across the top of her head. When he caught me staring, he did not, as I expected, look away. From a face like mine, you see, everyone, even Hiram Cassidy, who was used to seeing me, looked away. Instead, a smile crossed his lips, and as if we had shared the same amusing thought, he winked.
“You.” He slumped into a chair across the table from me as Mr. Dryfus limped into the room, a stack of newspapers under one arm. “You are not Miss Rebecca Branch.”
“That,” said Mr. Dryfus, “is the sister.”
“There was meant to be a sister?”
“Madelyn,” I managed. Sister irked me. “I’m not dumb.”
“I can see that.” The young man stretched his legs under the table. His f ingers, too, were long and restless, with peculiar black stains on pointer, ring, and thumb.
“And you will be mindful, William,” said Mr. Dryfus, levering himself carefully into a chair, “that Miss Branch is Mrs. Lyman Dryfus now.”
“Oh yes, I heard. Everyone has heard. Off the carriage and into the courthouse, Lyman?” Then to me. “Did he even give your sister time to brush the dust from her skirts?”
“I saw no reason to wait,” said Mr. Dryfus stiffly.
“Didn’t you? Well. One thing is sure. You’ll have no need to place a marriage notice in the Register.” Again adopting me as audience and ally, he leaned forward, smelling faintly of mud and not so faintly of sweat, apples, and whiskey, his deep voice becoming soft and playfully urgent, as though imparting great conf idences. “Many a willing widow calls this a dark day,” he said. “And now look at him.”
Mr. Dryfus looked no different to me than he had the day before, except maybe less nervous. He folded his broadsheet sharply.
“And now he’s off to the courthouse I suppose?” said William. “Today Lyman? No rest for the . . .”
It was then that Mama, coal smudged, scuttle in hand, opened the backdoor. I was sure mucking the scuttle had been her idea, but appreciated, nonetheless, the accusing expression the young man gave Mr. Dryfus. Mama had never been particularly obedient; Mr. Dryfus and Clara would learn this. She was making herself useful, and besides, she preferred work to leisure. Even at night, with all necessary labor complete, she took up her tatting. “Busy hands make a quiet mind,” Dot used to say. She also used to say, “Ain’t coming to see your lace, Rebecca,” when she must have known as well as I, Mama didn’t make lace for backroom men. Something else, maybe a lingering romance with the big, white Wilcox house, drove the compulsion. She admired beautiful things.
The young man, recovering himself, bowed, sweeping an arm over his head and down like a gallant. “Miss Branch,” he said. “I mean, of course, Mrs. Lyman Dryfus.” But upon rising and looking full upon her, his manner altered, as did his waggish tone.
“The photographs lie, I see,” he said with utmost earnestness. “Your beauty far exceeds your likeness.”
Let me assure you that no backroom man had ever managed such a phrase. No one, I thought, would ever spend such a phrase on me.
Mr. Dryfus sat up straight.
“You might have met last night, had you returned at a decent hour.”
The young man’s eyes had not left Mama’s face. She glanced between the two men, carefully unmoved. I might as well have vanished from the room.
Said Dryfus: “I have spoken to you about roving nights.”
“Yes, yes,” said the young man softly, his eyes not leaving Mama. “You have spoken.”
“Your mother would not have—”
“My mother?” He jolted to his feet, bumping the table. Mama took a step back, but the violent change in him took everyone by surprise. Everyone except maybe Mr. Dryfus, who I’m sure meant to rile him.
“Wilhelm,” said Clara edging toward him.
“My mother cared not what I did with my time so long as I did not interfere with her painting.”
“’Tisn’t benef icial in any case,” said Mr. Dryfus without seeming to notice Clara glaring nails at him. “Neither to the health.” He creased the broadsheet. “Nor to the mental faculties.”
“Lyman!” said Clara. The pot bubbled. Outside a chicken cackled, quieted, but I hardly heard it. I was watching William. We were all, even Mr. Dryfus behind his paper, watching William, who, before she could pull away, took Mama’s coal-blackened hand and placed on her palm a slow, deliberate kiss. Then looking up at Mr. Dryfus, he walked out.
I admit it. I have always envied men their facial hair, would have liked to grow some myself. Receding chins, flaccid cheeks, all manner of blemish or stain could be hidden beneath without notice; the whole of a man’s appearance might change with one trip to the barber.
Blemish or not, the young man, William, was hiding something. I’d been sure of that even before Mr. Dryfus’s insinuation, which I didn’t understand but found easy to resent on William’s behalf. When Mama sent me upstairs for the linen, I decided that if I discovered anything of Mr. Dryfus’s worth thieving—anything rich enough to tempt Mama away from Reliance—I’d have no qualms taking it. But the parlor held nothing of obvious worth, nor did the room Mama shared with Mr. Dryfus. My f irst glimpse through William’s door, the last on the right, was no more encouraging.
Barn swallows streaked tight shadows across the broadcloth curtain; the window was closed, the air thick and stale, and there was nothing at all on the walls, which seemed odd if his mama was a painter. (I gathered from the talk she was gone, maybe dead, and found out later she was.) Even Mr. Dryfus had hung pictures: a portrait of a young man, his father maybe, standing beside a cushioned chair and a cross-stitch of oak tree in a f ield. This set me wondering what Mr. Dryfus and William were to each other—cousins? Surely Mr. Dryfus was not old enough to be his father, though I knew better than to assume.
I put the laundry basket down by the bed, ran my hand up the catches and hooks of a faded purple afghan bunched at the base. Under the bed I found nothing more than dust and a threadbare sock. On the rolltop desk adjacent the window were blackened pen nubs, two smooth, green river rocks, scraps of paper. Nothing of worth. Only the drawers offered a brief, false hope, when opening the second on the right, I found a cigar box the size of a Bible with long-necked river birds carved in relief on the lid.
Inside, though, were only photographs of women. Plump, bare-breasted women draped over couches, and lounging on chairs with their legs wide open. Their eyes, soft as their bodies, and their open mouths made them look like infants, passing gas. Another girl might have been, but I was hardly shocked, for they were of much the same persuasion as the pictures Hiram Cassidy hid under copies of Call to the Unconverted. I didn’t think they’d fetch much, and I did not think them beautiful—until I imagined William looking at them too, and heard his voice in my head. Your beauty far exceeds your likeness.
Then another voice. “Hey.”
I whipped around, holding the case behind me, and there, f illing up the doorway, was the big boy, Hanley.
“Nothing,” I said. “The linen.”
But of course the bed was still made, and anyway, he hadn’t asked what I was doing. He wasn’t going away, either. Apart from the long parade of backroom men, three eventful months at Susanville School represented my only experience with the male species. Unless, of course, you counted the pageant of handsome lovers traipsing through the novels I’d read aloud to Dot.
He stood watching me.
“What?” I said, looking down to hide my face beneath my bonnet. Probably the impulse made me even more suspicious.
“In books,” said Hanley, “ugly means dumb.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Well, so does big.”
Kick him in the jewels and run. That’s what Dot told me to do if ever a backroom man got ideas. What Hanley did surprised me more. He laughed, the grin on his bristled face as disarming as the lolling tongue of a great, f
riendly dog.
“I guess so,” he said, but still didn’t budge. I heard Mama call. I really did need to collect the linen. “You know the girl that went missing?” he said f inally. I nodded, though in truth I hadn’t given that girl a second thought. “They’re not going to look anymore. I just,” he scuffed his big foot against the door frame. “I don’t know. I thought you’d want to know.”
“Okay.” I wasn’t sure what else to say, and stood there staring at the floor until f inally Hanley turned to go. I waited for his footsteps on the stairwell before I put back the cigar box of naked ladies, gathered the linen, and joined Mama in the backyard.
“I been thinking on it,” I said, dumping more potash into the wash boiler with the linen. Already lye was cracking my f ingertips. “I don’t think Mr. Dryfus wrote those letters he sent.”
Mama frowned over one of Mr. Dryfus’s shirts. “We go’n to need chalk to lift this ink.”
“Didn’t cross his t’s or his f ’s,” I persisted. “They look more like l ’s.”
She motioned me to get busy. I did, for a few minutes, but it was sticky hot, the sun glaring sideways at us over the fence of a yard twice as long as it was wide. At the far end, near a coop made of apple crates, three chickens picked through a browning garden patch. Somewhere close a dog was barking, a child screamed, gulped for breath, screamed again, and a woman called “Jacob? Jacob, leave that be now!” So many people so close did not seem natural. I glanced again at Mama. I’d had my monthlies, considered myself all but grown (certainly I understood more about life than many a young woman on her wedding night), but I couldn’t understand how Mama could be as resigned to this place as she pretended.
“Well,” I said. “Don’t you think Mr. Dryfus the kind of man to cross his t’s?”
“Not sure as I know what kind of man he is.” She looked at me crossly. Hanley stepped from the kitchen to the side alley for a smoke. Mama lowered her voice.
“Anyway it don’t matter now.” She dunked a pair of skivvies. “We are staying where we are. Mr. Dryfus and me, we legally wed and he got to provide for us now, by law he got to, so don’t go upsetting a good thing.”
“Good thing,” I scoffed.
“Everything settled.” She scrubbed. “Everything go’n be settled. Tonight.”
I had been watching a dappled tom slink through a hole in the fence and looked up to f ind the bafflement and the hint of fear in her voice, mirrored on her face. Dot had been her conf idant as well as mine. We were not in the habit of conf iding in each other, so, it was a moment before I understood what she was saying.
“What? You mean to tell me he ain’t—”
“Lower your voice—”
“Well, can’t he?”
From what I had observed in Susanville, through the knothole in the backroom wall, what was required was a purely mechanical act easily accomplished by some of the dullest specimens ever to wear trousers. Mama’s role took no active participation at all, unless you counted cleaning herself after. He was able, she said. That was obvious enough. And she could tell restraint pained him. Well, this baffled the both of us. Could it be? Was he being considerate? Was he giving Mama, the supposed virgin, time? Was he the virgin?
I laughed out loud. Mama did not. Maybe Clara spoke with him? Maybe it bothered him to think his hasty marriage had been publicly misconstrued as other than it must have been in his mind: a pragmatic use of his only free afternoon that week. How was he to know that pragmatism served Mama better than consideration? Consideration was not an obstacle Mama was regularly forced to overcome. If he expected her to be grateful, she was not. They lay awake for hours, both miserable.
Somehow I didn’t guess William would be burdened with the same scruples. And really I didn’t see what difference it could make, what they did or did not do now. She said herself they were legally wed.
“It’ll be settled tonight,” Mama said with a force of will I recognized and knew to trust. Then she pointed at me, hands dripping, as if the failed consummation were my fault. “You just stay out of his way.”
Later, in my more generous mood, I allowed that, although she might have been shaped by circumstances cruel and indifferent, Mama was not by nature cruel or indifferent; she was not without the capacity for surprising, if rare, tenderness. Hiram Cassidy Main, the traveling agent who brought us books, once placed in my hand a white-brown shell the size of a good throwing rock and bade me be still and silent even when something spiny began prickling. Soon I was staring at a sand-colored crab testing its legs against the warm planes of my palm. I used to think of Mama like that crab, hunkering down inside a shell, venturing out tentatively, and never for very long.
When I was little, she knitted me caps and embroidered dresses. She called me darling! My darling Madelyn, like we were both fancy ladies. Sometimes I’d imagine for her a joyous reunion with my father, Landis Wilcox—or rather a reunion between Mama and a handsomely nondescript man in a gray peacoat. I never dreamed myself between them, remained a stranger to them both, an observer, because . . .
Well, I guess I’d always suspected that I was the tragedy of Mama’s life. No one had ever said this, but I could feel it deep down, and now along with the accustomed, almost comfortable guilt this fear brought, came an exhilarating resentment.
“Well,” I said. “You can’t tell me what to do, can you? You ain’t my mama, right?”
The sweet venom with which I’d spoken soured in the next long moment of silence. Hanley lumbered back through the kitchen door. In the distance I could hear shouts of the children at the school off Main Street. Mama had not stopped scrubbing, but her shoulders had squared, her eyes set on the suds bucket as if it held some great curiosity.
“Need lemon juice to bleach,” she said f inally.
“Mama?” I whispered, full of useless remorse.
“Vinegar might do,” she said.
4
Mama’s marital purgatory lasted a full three weeks. I know because she informed me of each successive failure with a baffled little shake of her head. Another, more expressive, woman might have fretted. Mama transferred all anxiety into effort, that is, into housekeeping, and had no qualms conscripting me into service.
We washed and aired the linen, mended bedspreads, darned socks, scoured floors, polished silver (a quick job, to be sure), and this in the f irst four days. The shop, like all shops along Union Street, had been built into the side of the bluff. Spiders colonized every corner, closet, and window frame. At night when I lay down to sleep, I could feel the tickle of the webs I swept daily and the prick of tiny legs down my skin. Before long whatever romantic notions I’d entertained of the life we’d encounter in Reliance were soundly crushed, for it truly appeared I helped buy Mama the title of wife with all my remaining claims to freedom.
I began to dream in food: poached eggs, chicken livers fried in lard with onions, sow’s-foot stew with broth thick enough to hold a penny—any number of tasties might have made the toil acceptable. I might even have taken some satisfaction in the labor. As it was, I shat out most of Mr. Dryfus’s graham bread and healthful fare, and Mama’s guts suffered terribly.
“Mrs. Dryfus,” said Mr. Dryfus one night as we sat, the very likeness of a family: Mama with her tatting, Dryfus with a book, in the dismal little corner parlor. “If Nature had not intended the body to expel its noxious emanations, She would not have made it thus painful to refrain.”
Then he promptly set an example.
Frankly, I was impressed by this and more by the fact that he’d noticed Mama’s discomfort at all. Mama was mortif ied. Her expression alone could have torn holes in the brickwork. She walked out, leaving her tatting like a reprimand on the armchair, and me on the floor pretending great interest in Bewick’s History of British Birds, one of few books in the shop that wasn’t in German. You see, Mama could not speak or write like a lady; nor had she yet ven
tured to the shops among real ladies “and their dresses.” But by God, she felt she had the makings, and ladies did not pass gas. Not, at least, in parlors.
I might even have told Dryfus this, if he’d asked me, which he didn’t. Really, I’m not sure what he would have made of it if I had. Not much probably. I don’t think he wanted Mama to be a lady. Would have been just as happy to have a maid in the house as a wife. Except he didn’t have to pay a wife, and it was obvious, by now, how much he’d overstated matters when he promised a steady income.
The Register, one of three weeklies in town—the only to publish in English and German—sold by subscription, which few had money to buy. The small amount of scrip he did receive was all but worthless, issued by banks that no longer existed. People paid by other means: in corn or apples or hazelnuts and such. Once I opened the door to a toothy little man with a dead goose under one arm, which, to my horror, Dryfus passed on to the bank clerk in payment for other debts.
Refusing meat was a matter of health to Mr. Dryfus; eggs, a matter of principle. He charted his own bowel movements as a captain charts the sea and would have done the same with Mama, I think, had he the wherewithal to insist. Besides heads, he read books in three languages and championed all kinds of principles and theories, and while he never asserted himself physically, he thrust his opinions forward with an authority that only William, on that street of craftsmen, clerks, and grocers, seemed to doubt. A good number of people in town, even Hanley—who, as devil, endured the brunt of his criticisms—seemed to respect, even to like him.
Every Monday night, for example, he hosted the Reliance Phrenological Society, which from what I could see was six men drinking Wallendorf’s Beer, reading aloud scholarly articles, and offering asides and solemn nods when a pause seemed to make such responses appropriate. They deferred to Mr. Dryfus whenever a dispute arose. Mr. Le Duc, the cobbler, called him Herr Professor. William, when feeling contentious (he often felt contentious) did the same.
William’s every exchange with Mr. Dryfus, even the simplest, was prickly. And I could tell Mr. Dryfus didn’t like, any more than I did, how William watched Mama, how he did things for her like open doors and pull out chairs, and other niceties I’d read about in books. (It was William who’d written those letters Mr. Dryfus had sent Mama—I was almost sure of it. He’d written, in effect, to me and I to him and the knowledge, frankly, thrilled me.) Still, I guessed more than Mama stood between them; from the way they avoided the subject since that f irst day, I had an idea it was to do with William’s mother. Or maybe with Clara, who, from what Hanley told me, as much as raised the both of them, though they weren’t cousins, or in any way related like I’d guessed. Hanley reckoned William was a good number of years younger, not yet thirty at any rate.