by Peter Geye
The mere sound of her voice buoyed Odd. He took her hand on the table and smiled.
Rose leaned toward Rebekah and said, “He leads you to believe that because he wishes to make your life easy.” She winked. “Don’t believe him, make him meat and gravy.”
“Bread and butter’s fine, but this here’s a right feast,” Odd said. “I thank you kindly, Missus Sargent.”
“Harald, pass Odd the creamed corn and hominy bread. Here’s a young man who knows how to please his hostess.”
After the pleasantries at the start of the meal the table settled into a formal silence interrupted only by polite requests for second helpings. By the time they finished with supper, dusk had settled with still more snow. Harald requested coffee to go with the pudding, and Rebekah joined Rose in the kitchen to help prepare it.
In the dining room Sargent took out his pipe and packed it. He poured each of them another glass of apple wine. Odd could see the bare branches of the apple trees through the dinning room windows.
“Rebekah was to see Doctor Crumb?”
“She was.”
“He’s the finest physician in all of Duluth. Educated at the University of Chicago.”
“Seemed a fine fellow.”
“He was a help?”
“Rebekah’s right private about that business.”
Sargent nodded. “Do you mind if I ask you a question, Odd?”
“Shoot.”
“How old are you?”
Odd had to think about it. “Guess I’m twenty-four years old.”
“I had you pegged for older than that.” He paused. “Mind if I ask how old Rebekah is?”
Odd smirked. “Old enough to know better than to get stuck with me.”
Sargent smiled. “I apologize if I seem impertinent. I was just curious.”
“I can’t even begin to imagine what impertinent means, but your curiosity is no harm to me.”
Sargent took a deep breath. They each took a drink from their wineglass. “You’ve been studying the Bible?”
“I’ve read some.”
“Is it helping you toward peace?”
Odd stared long on the empty apple-tree branches.
“Thoughtful,” Sargent said.
“There’s plenty of good stories in that book. But I find my peace on the boatwright floor. Out on the lake hauling nets.” Odd turned back to the window. “In the expectation of my child.”
“Then your heart is full of love. If it is full of love, it is full of peace.”
“All I’m full of right now is apple wine and pork chops. That’s enough for me.”
Sargent let a knowing smile play across his face.
Rose served the coffee and pudding and when dessert was finished they adjourned to the sitting room. Odd could tell from the bleary sheen of her eyes that Rebekah was tipsy. She’d had two full glasses of apple wine. Once that look would have set his heart to thumping, but now it filled him with dread. She’d behaved so far, but he knew how careless she’d become lately, knew she felt there was nothing left to lose. He knew also that there was nothing she loathed so much as pious folks.
“I hope that meal pleased you, Rebekah,” Rose said.
“You are a wonderful cook. A wonderful hostess.”
Sargent said, “Mother takes it to heart if her dinner guests don’t leave with a bellyache.”
Rose put her hand on Sargent’s arm. “Rebekah’s belly is home to a child of God, there’s no ache in the world capable of upsetting her.”
Rebekah flashed a false smile. “No ache in the world,” she sang.
“Rebekah,” Odd said.
Rebekah turned to Sargent’s wife. “My belly aches all the time. I feel awful.”
Odd leaned forward.
Rebekah continued, “My back aches. I can’t sleep. I—”
“You bear those things so your child needn’t,” Rose interrupted. “Put those cares from your mind.”
“Put them from my mind,” Rebekah repeated. She sat back in the overstuffed chair, wrapped her hands around her abdomen.
“Besides the love of God, the love of a child is life’s greatest reward, Rebekah,” Sargent said.
Odd buried his face in his hands.
Rebekah looked up at Sargent. “There’s no reward in this life,” she said. She turned slowly to Rose. “I ought to envy you. I know that. But it’s pity I feel.”
“Rebekah!” Odd shot from his seat on the davenport. “Enough!” He turned to Sargent, turned just as quickly to Rose. “I beg your pardon. I don’t know what’s come over her.”
Rebekah stood unsteadily. “You’re lucky… .”
“Rebekah!” Odd repeated. He took her forcefully by the arm. “Don’t say another word.”
He walked her to the front door and took her coat from the rack. He put it over her shoulders and opened the door and pushed her outside. When he turned around Harald and his wife stood in the foyer, their faces full of sympathy.
Odd looked at the floor. “I wish there was something I could say.”
“Nonsense,” Rose said. “When a woman is with child she says things she doesn’t mean. It can be a very difficult time.”
“Odd,” Sargent said. He moved toward him, put his hands up, and shrugged. “Mother’s right. Rebekah is alone in a strange place. She must be anxious about the child. Go home with her. Read the Bible with her. Stand by her without malice or fear of your own. That is your duty now.”
Odd pulled his coat over his shoulders. “Thank you, Mister Sar
gent. I will take care of her.” To Sargent’s wife he said, “Missus Sargent, I apologize for Rebekah’s foolishness. Don’t matter how out of sorts she is, she oughtn’t behave that way. It’s me she pities, not you. I know that. Me and her own self. I’d explain if I could, but I can’t. Not even one of them Bible writers could explain it.”
Odd walked out with his head slung low. When he got to the end of the Sargents’ walkway he turned to look back at their home. From the warm light of the foyer he saw both of them silhouetted in the window, and he knew that no such scene would ever play in his life.
The wait for the trolley on a Sunday evening was intolerable. Odd and Rebekah stood under a grocer’s awning on Superior Street in an awful silence. Odd’s anger had given way to resignation while Rebekah’s sharpness turned dull. He could no more look in her direction than find words to express his sadness. By the time the streetcar emerged Rebekah was nearly sleeping on her feet. Odd took her by the arm and led her onboard.
They still hadn’t spoken as they entered their brownstone half an hour later. Odd would normally have taken her coat off, hung it up, and asked her if she’d like a drink or for him to draw her a bath. Instead he kicked his boots into the small foyer closet and walked to the sitting room window. He heard Rebekah remove her own boots and walk slowly to the davenport. Odd kept his back to her, kept his eyes fixed on the darkness.
“All those prayers and talk of the Bible,” she said. It was as though she expected Odd’s complicity, as though she hadn’t embarrassed him.
“I guess their decency undid you,” Odd said.
“Decency? Ha!”
“Because they believe in something bigger than themselves you write them off? I suppose all the lies you’ve lived, all the shit you ate, that’s better?”
“Don’t forget, darling, you’re right here with me, living the biggest lie of them all.”
He thought to say, But I want to change. I see our chance. Instead he only set his jaw.
Some time passed before Rebekah said, “I can’t understand how it’s come to this. For all my life I can’t.”
Odd said nothing. Since Christmas he’d said all there was to say. He’d said it all twice.
Some more time passed before she continued, “I thought of getting an abortion. I went all the way to his office before I lost my nerve. Now it’s too late.”
An automobile rounded the corner outside, its headlamps sweeping past their window, filling t
he room for a moment before leaving it in darkness again. He heard a match strike the box and Rebekah light a cigarette. He heard her exhale.
“I wrote letters to Hosea.”
“The hell you say?” Odd said, spinning around.
“I told him about us. About being pregnant.”
“Goddamnit, Rebekah.”
She took a long drag from her cigarette. “I asked him if I could ever come back.”
He turned his good eye toward her, flashed a gaze so fierce it made her shudder.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said.
Now he spoke with his teeth clenched, “Does he know where we are?”
“No.”
“When did you last write him?”
“A month ago. Maybe.”
He ran his hands through his hair. He felt dizzy with rage. He looked at her without blinking until she stood and started for the bedroom. He spoke to her back: “I forbid you to ever write him again. This is our new life here. Do you understand? This is our life and it has nothing to do with what we left behind.”
She stopped and turned and looked at him, thought to say more, but turned again without saying a word.
XXIV.
(April 1907)
There were secrets cankering at Grimm’s.
One of Hosea’s strictest rules was that no one — not Odd, not Rebekah, not any visitor — enter his offices on the second floor of the apothecary without his accompanying them. He kept the doors locked and carried the keys on a chain that hung from his belt loop. As a young boy Odd had been given the strap for merely testing the glass doorknob. He’d never been much curious about what was in those rooms, but something had gotten hold of him that spring. So Odd played sleuth.
Late one Saturday night, after he figured Hosea had left for the Shivering Timber, Odd crept out of his bedroom and went down to the second floor. He felt pure of heart but still his pulse quickened. At the bottom of the staircase he paused, tried to stay his quivering sight, and realized that one of the office doors was open. A swath of bright light fell on the hallway floor. Odd could hear voices.
He sat on the bottom step and looked again down the hallway. On his hands and knees he crawled halfway to the light.
“Good, now,” he heard Hosea say. “Yes. Very good.”
“As if there’s a good or a bad,” Rebekah said.
A flash of light came from the doorway, followed by the chemical smell of magnesium and potassium chlorate.
“Why are you such a contrary girl?” Hosea said.
“Why, indeed.”
They were silent for a moment. Odd pushed himself against the wall, the light from the open door not ten feet down the hallway.
“Will you remind me to order more castor oil tomorrow? The Johnsons have near run us dry of it,” Hosea said.
“Of course.”
“Pull the peignoir off your shoulder. There, good.”
“The Johnson kids have been near to death all winter long. Are they going to be all right?”
“The Missus Johnson prefers quackery to doctoring. I’ve given up on her.”
There was another pause in their conversation. More flashing came through the doorway. Odd inched closer to the light on the floor.
“If you’re going to keep me awake all night, you might consider uncorking a bottle of champagne. Anything to hurry this along.”
“You’re difficult enough sober. Inebriated you’d be impossible.”
“Nonsense. If you gave me something bubbly to drink you might actually get a smile out of me.”
There was another flash, then the sound of a match being lit, then a moment later Odd could smell Hosea’s pipe smoke.
Now Odd was only an arm’s length from the doorway. He felt unnaturally calm given the intrigue, but still he was not quite ready to show his face. He knew instinctively that the goings-on in that bright room were none of his business.
“Odd sure is turning wise, isn’t he?” This was Rebekah speaking, and whatever edge had gotten hold of her voice was gone when she spoke of Odd.
“He’s a fine boy.”
“Do you want me to take this off?”
“Yes, take it off. And put the boa around your neck. Straddle the arm of the divan.”
Now there was more quiet, only the faint sound of Rebekah moving around the room. Odd slid so that his left shoulder was only a few inches from the doorjamb. If he’d extended his leg, his foot would have rested on the edge of the light on the floor.
Two or three full minutes passed without a word from either of them. All of the powers of his imagination failed Odd now. He’d never heard the word peignoir nor boa. He could not dream up what was happening in all that flashing light. He had always supposed that Hosea’s medical equipment was stored in the rooms along this hallway, knew that one of the rooms two doors down was his surgery, the room in which Odd himself had been born. But even to his ten-year-old mind there was no logic that might explain a medical procedure of any sort that needed be conducted now, some hours after midnight.
“That’ll get a rise from the perverts,” Hosea said. He clucked his tongue, then added, “Hold your bubs. Push them together.”
“Are we almost finished?”
“We’ll be finished when I say so.”
“Just hurry.”
All Odd heard for the next five minutes was the click and snap of Hosea’s camera and flash. When Hosea said, “That’s enough for now,” Odd jumped to his stockinged feet. He ran to the dark end of the hallway and crept quietly back upstairs. He slid into his bed, the flashing lights from Hosea’s office stayed with him until he closed his eyes and fell asleep.
Hosea was stirring the hash when Odd came down for breakfast the next morning.
“It’s Sunday, right?” Odd said.
Hosea startled at the sound of Odd’s voice, turned from the stovetop to see the lad. “There’s tea in the kettle, boy-o. Grab a cup. Eggs and hash in a jiffy.”
“Why are you awake? Why are you making breakfast?”
“There was business to attend to last night. I missed my frolic. Here I am full of vigor. We’ll be off to church after breakfast.”
“I don’t want to go to church.”
“Why not?”
“Why would I?”
Hosea poured the bowl of whisked eggs into the hash. He sprinkled salt and pepper over it and turned to face Odd. “Why would you, huh? That’s what you want to know, is it, boy-o?” He turned back to the hash, stirred it for a few minutes, then took the skillet off the stovetop and brought it to the table, where he set it on a trivet. He spooned a plateful for Odd, then a plateful for himself, then sat down across the table from Odd. “You might want the Lord on your side, son.”
Odd said nothing, only stared back at him.
“For the fight.”
“What fight?” Odd said.
Hosea blew on his plate of steaming hash. He forked it around his plate. “‘What fight’? Good Christ, what’s wrong with you this morning?”
Odd picked up his own fork and held it before him. “I’m tired out. Couldn’t sleep last night.”
Hosea’s eyes shot up and into Odd, who didn’t flinch. Hosea stared at the boy for a long minute. He smirked. “The fight, boy-o, is this life of ours. I don’t know if you’re equipped to tussle with the big boys, that’s why I say you should have the Lord on your side.”
“I’m ready to fight,” Odd said.
“I’m only speaking as an impartial observer, Odd, but you don’t inspire confidence.”
“I can fight!”
Hosea shook his head. “Eat your breakfast. Then we’ll go to church. And let’s refrain from these boasts, this backtalk. Your virtue is in your tractability. Let’s be a good boy.” He flashed Odd a condescending smile, took a large bite of his hash, then a big swill of his hot tea.
Odd did not go to church. After he finished his hash, Hosea told Odd to make a plate for Rebekah, told him to put it on the stove and to get his churc
h clothes on. Hosea then went to ready himself. When he returned fifteen minutes later, Odd still sat at the table, his legs crossed, a week-old newspaper spread before him as though he were actually vested in the happenings of this town. Hosea said nothing, only walked down the staircase. Odd heard the bell chime and the front door slam shut. He pushed himself back from the table and walked to the sitting room window. He watched as Hosea marched up Wisconsin Street. He watched until he turned north, toward the hillside church, and disappeared.
Odd stepped to Rebekah’s bedroom door then. He put his ear to it to hear if she was awake. After a minute, content that she was still sleeping, he went down to the second floor. All of the excitement of the night before was gone. His heart beat slowly and his sight was steady and clear.
He walked down the hallway and stood before the locked door that had emitted Hosea’s and Rebekah’s voices the night before. He tried to shoulder it open, then took a few steps back and glowered at the door.
It was only a minute before Rebekah came downstairs. He turned to watch her walking toward him. She looked sleepy, still wore her nightdress.
“What are you doing down here, Odd?” she said. Her voice was soft, gentle. It always was with him.
All the balky instincts that had arisen with Hosea that morning were gone now. He felt boyish again. Shy. He looked down at her feet. “What’s a bub?” he said.
Rebekah’s eyes widened and she couldn’t help but laugh. “What? “
“A bub. What’s a bub?”
“Where did you learn that word?”
He turned away. Looked back at the door. “How ’bout a pervert? What’s that?”
“Oh, my,” she whispered.
“How come you and Hosea were up in the middle of the night?”
Rebekah sat down. She sat down right on the floor and crossed her legs. She took Odd’s hand and pulled him down, so they were each sitting cross-legged, their knees touching. She looked right at him with her sleepy eyes.
“I couldn’t sleep last night, so I went exploring. I heard you two down here.”
“Did you see anything? Did you look into this room?” Rebekah nodded at the door without taking her eyes from Odd.