Fiona motioned to a door in the corner of the room. “That is your wash closet,” she said and opened the door to reveal a small bathroom with a toilet, a sink and a tall brass bathtub. Bottles lined the shelf above the tub, five of them, each a different color: pink, green, purple, yellow and white. From a cursory glance, Hanna imagined they contained soaps and lotions similar to that blue bottle of shampoo Jotham had tossed onto the kitchen table months ago, only these were curved in ornamental shapes, with prominent labels and exotic designs. Hanna resisted the urge to pick each bottle up, to lift the cap and smell the fragrance within, to test the bottles’ weights by shaking them.
An oval mirror hung over the sink and beside that was a painting of a faceless woman carrying a pot on top of her head. The rendering was strikingly realistic, down to the bales of hay bookending the village pathway and the long, sinewy crack in the pot atop the woman’s head. Hanna stepped closer, enrapt by the woman’s missing features. She wondered who had chosen this painting. Whether they’d done it with any foresight: placing the painting of a faceless woman in the wash closet of a child bride, a young woman unfinished, the lion’s share of her journey still ahead.
“Do you like it?” Fiona asked.
“The painting?”
“The wash closet.”
“It’s mine?” Hanna said.
“Yes, dear. It’s yours to use alone.”
Had this been any other day, and Hanna had learned of a secret bathroom in Jotham’s house, an offshoot only she knew about containing a bathroom in which one could sit for more than thirty seconds without a small child’s inquisitive fingers appearing under the crack in the door, a smile would have spread over her face. Hanna would have danced with joy. Having her own bathroom was the extravagance of all extravagances. It was a dream come true. But a dream that came in the apex of a nightmare.
* * *
Hanna lifted a sandwich to her mouth and took a bite.
“It’s been years, hasn’t it?” Paedyn said.
The women were sitting at the dining room table, eating sandwiches and salad. There was orange juice in a carafe, fresh-baked rolls and a fruit plate in the center of the table. The toddlers were eating separately on a small table in the next room. Hanna had been doing everything in her power not to gorge like a savage on this wonderful feast, and now Paedyn was asking a question while she had her mouth full.
Hanna swallowed and endeavored a smile. “It’s been six years since my last visit.”
“If only Edwin and Jotham got along like they used to. For years, decades even, they were like brothers,” Paedyn said. She was eating her sandwich with a knife and fork, careful not to spill a single crumb onto her dress. She was about to speak again when Fiona cleared her throat. She met Paedyn’s gaze and Paedyn turned her attention back to methodically carving her sandwich.
The tall woman across from Hanna took a sip from her glass. Sage was drinking wine, red wine—dark and crimson and aromatic—even though it was just past noon. “I have to admit,” she said, “I was surprised when Jotham and Edwin agreed to your union. Maybe surprised is the wrong word. I mean, look at you.”
At first Hanna blushed, thinking perhaps she was offering a compliment. But as the words hung in the air, as Edwin’s wife swirled her wineglass and ran her tongue along her teeth one by one, the slow realization set in: Sage wasn’t flattering Hanna. She was implying there was something tawdry about Hanna’s appearance. This woman, with whom Edwin spent his days and nights, didn’t want Hanna at her table any more than Hanna wanted to be there. Hanna picked at her fingernails. She focused on the mechanics of chewing her food, on not allowing herself to be baited, on what might come next.
Sage continued. “But after everything that happened, their business dealings, with Jotham coming away with—how do I say this delicately?—such a meager return, and Edwin having all this—” she motioned around the room, at the house, the tall ceiling overhead “—it’s a wonder they worked out an arrangement.”
All four women looked at Hanna.
“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “My father doesn’t speak about such things.”
In truth, Hanna knew few specifics about Jotham and Edwin’s past business dealings. She knew even less about the work Edwin did now. Hanna assumed it had something to do with construction. Whether that meant actually picking up a hammer and a nail or whether he was the person in charge, no one had ever said. She did know—from hearing her sister-mother Katherine gossiping out the window—that Edwin’s work took him along The Road and outside Clearhaven’s borders.
Sage finished her wine and poured herself another glass. “It must have been difficult for Jotham, with Edwin tossing him aside like...what do people toss aside? Trash. That’s it.”
Hanna’s cheeks flushed redder. She attempted to come up with a rebuttal, something clever or affecting, an indisputable truth to refute the woman’s wicked words. Nothing came to her. Hanna didn’t know how her family had descended into poverty, and she couldn’t defend Jotham if her life depended on it.
Sage swallowed another mouthful of wine. During the whole lunch, not a peep emerged from the short woman to Hanna’s left. She drank her juice and took chipmunk-sized bites of her food, never looking up from her plate. If that young man, Daniel, thought Hanna had a habit of looking down at her feet, he should have spent five minutes with Edwin’s third wife. Hanna thought of Daniel now, those stray strands of hair falling across his forehead, his lanky arms. She wondered if he really was sitting by the pier at the old Grierson place.
Paedyn motioned to the salad Hanna had brought. “Did you grow these vegetables yourself?” she asked.
Hanna looked up from her food, at the forkful of spinach in Paedyn’s hand. “Our garden froze over with winter. These are from the marketplace.”
“Really? From the marketplace?” Sage asked, reaching for the wine bottle again. “That’s quite an expense at this time of year. Quite an expense.”
Hanna glanced at Paedyn eating the last bite of her sandwich, at Fiona’s impenetrable expression, at the short woman poking at her food like a mouse. She thought of a half-dozen responses: I don’t handle the finances; I wouldn’t know; Who are you to say such things? But the response that emerged was hasty, without restraint, her voice flush with more youthful naiveté than she intended.
“We’re not poor,” Hanna said.
“No one said you were, dear,” Fiona said.
Hanna peered in the direction of the front door. “When is Edwin arriving?”
“He’ll be home soon. He wanted us to get to know each other first.”
“Yes, Hanna. Let’s get to know each other.” Sage set her glass down and leaned forward, grinning like a fox. The tall woman’s words sniped the air. “Tell us about yourself. I bet you’re...fascinating.”
The room turned hot. Hanna’s heartbeat hastened. Silence reigned. Then the short woman chortled, a short snicker that got caught in her throat. She looked at her fellow sister-wife across the table and they both howled with laughter.
Paedyn set down her knife and fork. “Come, Hanna, you can help me with the dishes.”
* * *
Hanna joined Paedyn by the kitchen sink, scrubbing plates and then drying them, separating the leftovers that could be preserved and discarding the rest. Hanna found herself stealing glances at the woman’s raindrop eyes and her pointed, elfin chin. She wasn’t sure why—instinct, perhaps—but Hanna suspected Paedyn was the barren wife, the one Jessamina had called “dry like sand.”
Paedyn bore down on a serving platter with a scrub brush. “Never mind those two. They’re trying to get a rise out of you,” she said.
“It felt like more than that.”
Paedyn set the scrub brush aside and touched the ends of Hanna’s hair. “I’ve never seen a color quite like this before. It’s lovely.�
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That red glow returned to Hanna’s cheeks. Paedyn spent the next few minutes trying to convince Hanna to cut her hair short in the front and leave it long at the back; an “easy style to maintain,” she said. Hanna had seen this hairstyle on dozens of women at church. In fact, her sister-mother Katherine had recently cut her hair in this style. Hanna nodded and grinned, but she had no desire for her hair to look like a boy’s up front, whether it was considered manageable or not.
“Do you like your room?” Paedyn said.
“Very much,” Hanna said, drying Belinda’s bowl with a dish towel. “It’s more than I ever expected.”
Paedyn leaned in close. “We don’t always sleep in our rooms.”
“Do you sleep with the children?”
Paedyn glanced back toward the dining room. One woman had the big-bellied baby in her hands and the wives were discussing whether he’d been getting enough milk.
“No. We sleep with Edwin,” she said. “I doubt Fiona told you, and may the Creator bless her soul for keeping you in the dark. I just don’t want you to be surprised.” Paedyn drew close and Hanna could smell the soap from her morning bath. She whispered. “He doesn’t lie with us separately, in the dark, like most men do. We all pleasure him together. We watch. We each...participate. With him. With each other.”
Hanna dropped the salad bowl. It crashed to the floor with a terrible clatter and then rolled to the center of the room, where it spun in a circle. The women entered the kitchen and Hanna felt their eyes upon her. Finally, the bowl settled. Hanna meant to step forward, she meant to pick it up, but her legs turned to stone.
Fiona approached, a mixture of concern and consternation in her guarded eyes. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m so sorry,” Hanna said. She picked up the bowl and then stood perfectly still.
Hanna wanted to storm out of Edwin’s house right away, to march straight to the church, to barge uninvited into Brother Paul’s office and demand to speak to him. This was not what he’d told her last week. What Paedyn described wasn’t how men had relations with their wives. It was depraved. It was against nature.
“Don’t be sorry. I’m quite clumsy myself sometimes,” Paedyn said.
She placed her hand on Hanna’s back and when she did, the woman’s hair brushed delicately, almost tenderly, against Hanna’s arm. Hanna shuddered. She became suddenly aware of her skin, her dress, the damp ceramic bowl in her hands, and the more aware she became, the more her eyesight grew murky. Specks of orange glistened in the air and, beyond them, skeletons: skeletons in the women’s faces, in the outline of Paedyn’s hair, in the papered walls. Hanna saw their long, emaciated cheekbones, the vertebrae jutting out of the tall woman’s back like a patch of prickly metallic thorns; she saw Paedyn’s hair as a thousand brown strands seeping like creeping vines. She struggled to catch her breath. Hanna needed to escape, to run to the bathroom and splash cold water on her face, to find some way to compose herself. She was about to step away when wheels sounded on the gravel outside.
The women turned to see Edwin’s truck pull into the driveway.
* * *
The next twenty minutes passed quickly. Edwin entered. He kissed his wives and hugged his children. Sage hastily hid her wine as Edwin embraced Hanna, planting a single kiss on her wrist. He insisted on giving Hanna a second tour of the house and Hanna walked from room to room with him, listening to Edwin describe the stones he’d selected to refurbish the fireplace and his thoughts on hickory rather than oak for his hardwood floors. The adults reconvened at the front door again and Fiona was suddenly all smiles as Hanna buttoned up her jacket. She held Hanna gently by her arms and thanked her for coming. Hanna, feeling Edwin’s eyes upon her, thanked Fiona “for a wonderful visit” and then slipped on her boots and stepped outside. As the wives waved goodbye, Paedyn called out how she’d love to help with the wedding preparations. Then the door closed and Hanna found herself standing across from Edwin, the two of them alone.
Hanna fidgeted nervously. She dragged her boots along the gravel underfoot. As the sound grew louder, Edwin looked down at her feet and she stopped. He was on his way back to work and Hanna was affording him a wary gaze. The musky smell of sawdust hovered about Edwin like a fog, threatening to overpower her. Hanna pushed her mind into his and saw him looking at her like a ripened plum; she could see his sharpened teeth impatiently anticipating that first bite. The longer they stood facing each other, the more Hanna’s stomach twisted in knots.
“I know this is difficult for you,” he said. “I hope to make your transition from daughter to wife as easy as possible. You know, when your father brought you home, you were the cutest, softest little baby I’d ever seen, with your little bald head and these tiny feet that never stopped moving. I like to think I had a hand in raising you in your early years and that Jotham and Kara have done a wonderful job. You’ve grown into a beautiful, intelligent young woman and I know I can provide a good home for you, if you’ll let me.”
A pang of remorse shot through Hanna’s chest. Ever since Edwin arrived, she’d been finding fault in the way he looked, the way he carried himself—things Edwin couldn’t control. Now here he was, saying he would take care of her, that he admired her. She felt she needed to apologize, and she almost did, only something Edwin said struck a chord inside her.
“What do you mean—my father brought me home? I thought I was born in my mother’s bedroom. The midwife was there,” Hanna said. “Was I born in a hospital? Was I born in the big city?”
Edwin stammered.
“Of course not. You were born at home, as all children in Clearhaven are born.” His voice regained its strength. “What I meant to say was when your father brought you to my home.” He touched Hanna’s elbow. “It is a home, you know. And we’ll be glad to have you as part of it.”
Hanna’s mind spun, unsure whether to be comforted or outraged by Edwin’s sudden attempt at kindness. Edwin seemed to sense her unease. He didn’t try to kiss her. He didn’t lean in for another hug. All the same, Hanna positioned Belinda’s salad bowl in front of her pelvis, to deflect him if need be. A yard away, a large dog was standing in the back of Edwin’s pickup truck, the animal’s brown hair freckled white. Above, gray clouds marbled the midday sky, the tall trees encircling her and Edwin, confining them, heightening how alone they were in that moment. Hanna imagined what they looked like from above, the two strange bedfellows, the middle-aged man and his teenage bride. She delved deeper into her imagination and pictured Daniel standing in Edwin’s place, his dark blue jeans, the casual way he spoke as though they were long-lost friends, the music from his earphones, redemption. What would Jotham have said if he’d spotted the two of them together? What would Brother Paul say?
“Hanna?”
It was Edwin, standing closer now, his eyebrows busheled together.
“I’m sorry. I was lost in my head,” Hanna said.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you home?”
Hanna envisioned a second goodbye, this one as she stepped out of Edwin’s truck and onto Jotham’s driveway, the entire family lined up at the window to see. She pictured Edwin spotting their audience and stepping out to take her hand. Wrapping his arm around her back and slow-dancing with her while Hanna’s sister-mother Katherine cheered deliriously from the front porch. Hanna struggling to keep her revulsion at bay. She tried to imagine anything else. Hanna thought about Emily and how her sister was attending school without her, whether Charliss was watching over his siblings. She thought about her mother back home, the emotion in her voice last night. For the third time today, that young man, Daniel, slipped to the forefront of Hanna’s mind. She wondered what he would make of Edwin’s wives, whether one of Daniel’s sister-mothers also hid her wine the moment his father came home, whether Daniel would ever take her hand and dance with her cheek-to-cheek. Hanna looked down the street and
not in the direction of Jotham’s house.
“Thank you, but I could use the walk.”
Edwin stepped into his truck. “Be safe.”
“I will. And thank you for lunch, for everything,” she said.
Edwin’s truck pulled away and faded until it was a small blue speck in the distance. Then it disappeared entirely. Hanna fastened the last few buttons on her jacket. She took a final look at the big house she would soon call home and then stepped with purpose down the driveway.
9
As Hanna’s foot touched the woodlands’ edge, a gust of wind sailed through the trees, surging over the sound of the stream trickling nearby. Above, the treetops tilted toward her. Twice this winter Hanna had seen the same phenomenon. She’d noticed it in autumn, as far back as last spring, as well. Whichever way she looked—north, south, east or west—the breeze was pushing the trees toward the center of town. It was as though Clearhaven, a city alone, ardent in its disavowal of the outside world, inhabited the center of a vortex. What shocked Hanna wasn’t how this was possible but rather how long she’d gone without noticing. She felt like a person living at the base of a mountain who, after years of blissful ignorance, had finally looked up to see the enormity standing beside her.
She thought back to just days ago. Who was that person who agreed to marry a grown man? And Hanna did agree—she realized that now—through her inaction, through her inability to muster the courage to defy Jotham and Brother Paul. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when she opened her eyes and saw the mountain standing beside her. But there it was, surrounding her on all sides—mammoth, insurmountable, and starting to cave in.
Hanna Who Fell from the Sky Page 8