by Sarah McCoy
She lifted her skirts and waded out until her face came under the fullness of the sun.
“This was my secret place. When I was a girl.”
“It’s beautiful.” He took a step toward her and the water rippled against her calves.
Then—suddenly—he slipped and fell. Only two feet deep, but it was enough to soak him through. Marilla threw her head back with a laugh and nearly tumbled in too.
“I’m glad I amuse you,” said John. “Care to help me up?” He extended his dripping hand.
She took it and pulled with all her might. The water gave a soft whoosh. Rivulets ran down. The gossamer shirt clung to his skin. Her heart did a queer double-beat. Before she had time to turn away, he pulled the shirt off over his head. Grumbling, he wrung it out. The muscles of his back flexed like newly churned butter, soft and yielding. His stomach bent narrow at the waist where his suspenders hung loose. He turned, their eyes met, and in that moment there came a silent roar inside her, as if all the love and heartache she’d ever known had been uncorked.
John moved forward or she moved forward—she couldn’t say. The water swayed. The trees whirled. And then his hands were around her. His lips on hers. She closed her eyes, kissed him back, and let her skirt slip from her grasp. As the cloth took on water, it pulled her deeper. His mouth was hard and sweet like a plum. His naked body smelled of melted snow, glacial and alive, just as he wrote, just as he was. She ran her hands along the ladder of his ribs, under the swell of his arms, over the stretch of his belly, and up the channel of his chest. While she’d seen her brother and father shirtless, she’d never known the feel of a man. Flesh under her fingertips.
He cupped her face; his thumbs traced their mouths as one. Behind her eyelids, she saw him in red bursts and wondered if a person could die of loving.
A downy woodpecker started after some tree bug. Its loud staccato jolted them apart. The sun was setting, its light slanted from the west, casting new shadows across their faces. More time had passed than they’d realized. Coolness settled over them. It would be dark in an hour.
Marilla remembered: Matthew and Hugh would be coming in from the fields soon with no supper to fill their hunger. Her decisions affected others, not just herself. She caught a chill and goose bumps rose up on her arms.
“You’re cold,” said John. “We’d better get back.”
His shirt had floated off to the shallows. He fished it out and put it on, wet as it was.
“I hope we dry up before home.”
Marilla hated to think what Hugh and Matthew might assume.
“Tell them the truth. I was an oaf and fell into the stream. You saved me.”
John pulled her close again and kissed her. Red warmth. She let it consume her. She needed to believe it was worth dying for. She desperately wanted to understand her mother’s last words to her father.
XVIII.
An Exam, a Letter, and Mayflower Regrets
Mr. Murdock might’ve been harsher in his examination had he not suffered from a chest cold that had him sputtering like a kettle with too little water. He’d deemed Marilla literate enough to sit for the exams, and then went home to apply a mustard plaster. His phlegm had abated enough by that Saturday morning, though he smelled awfully rank. Marilla was grateful to be seated a few rows back.
John and the other grade-eight boys had been moved up to the front row. When he saw her enter, he smiled. Sam Coates threw an elbow into his ribs. Marilla and John hadn’t spoken of their walk in the woods. How could they?
Once, she had accidentally turned the corner into the kitchen and seen her mother and father in an embrace. They’d jumped apart as if a horse’s whip had been lashed, and her modest father’s cheeks had colored so shamefully that Marilla knew it had to have been an egregious disgrace. That night before bed, she’d prayed for God to forgive her parents. Though she’d grown up and understood the natural way between men and women, it remained a thing of unmentionable unmentioning. Especially now when her mother was dead.
So she smiled back primly at John and hung her hat on one of the hooks.
“Pupils on home study, please take a seat in the third row,” instructed Mr. Murdock.
Marilla slid into her seat and relished the feel of the timeworn desk. The wood was rubbed smooth at just the right places so her knees and hands felt welcome.
“Psst—” Rachel hissed. She’d just come in and taken a desk beside Marilla wearing a new school dress of white-and-indigo stripes. She pointed to the cuffs. “I crocheted the lace myself.”
“Very pretty,” said Marilla.
“This is an examination, not a sewing circle!” Mr. Murdock glared at them.
“I’d rather the latter,” Rachel mumbled under her breath.
Marilla didn’t dare move a muscle, even when Mr. Murdock turned away to hack into his handkerchief.
“I’ll walk with you home after,” Rachel whispered. “Mother wants me to ask Mr. Cuthbert if he’d lend us a few cucumber seeds for the garden . . . don’t you just love summer cucumbers? I do—”
“Miss White, would you kindly move from your seat with Miss Cuthbert over to the empty desk by the window.”
Rachel picked up her box of chalk and sponges. “Yes, sir.”
John dared turn around again. He winked. Thankfully, Rachel didn’t see—too busy grumbling over being reseated alone.
On the stroke of nine o’clock, they began.
By noon, it was over. Marilla had used every minute to scrutinize her answers until Mr. Murdock called the time. John had done the same, while Rachel had finished early and waited outside under the apple tree, now pink and petal-fluffed.
“Marilla!” she called to her.
But John had followed Marilla out and caught her by the hand to the side of the schoolhouse.
“How’d it go?”
“I think well.”
He smiled. “No questions about the Danish colonies to ruin us.”
She had to laugh at herself.
He leaned in close, and she smelled the sunshine on his skin. The memory of the brook’s current swirled around them.
“John.” She put a hand on his chest.
“Ma—rilla?” Rachel came round the schoolhouse.
Marilla dropped both hands to her sides.
Rachel’s head swiveled like a sparrow eyeing two worms. “Like I told you, I’m going by Green Gables on my way home.” She took Marilla’s arm. “The Ladies’ Sewing Circle is meeting this afternoon, if you care to join.”
Marilla had nearly forgotten the Ladies’ Sewing Circle. It seemed so long ago that she was worried over perfect knots and even stitches. It shamed her to remember how concerned she’d once been with the women’s appraisal of her needlework. She couldn’t even say where her circular was now.
“I’ve got to get supper on,” Marilla declined and gave an apologetic glance to John. “We best be going.”
“I’ll come see you when Mr. Murdock posts the scores,” he called after them.
“Oh, fiddle-dee-dee, who cares about scores. If we don’t pass, we’ll take it again next year. Come on.” Rachel marched swiftly, pulling Marilla along with her.
When they reached the violet meadow, Rachel’s steam petered out. Her gait slowed to a normal amble. The monarchs, swallowtails, and ladybugs alighted from their hiding spots, sending the field into a rainbow of winged motion.
“What is between you and John Blythe?”
Marilla shrugged. A ladybug landed on her wrist and followed a blue vein up the soft, pale underside of her arm. “We’ve been studying every day for this exam. He wants me to do well . . . to prove Mr. Murdock wrong.”
“Is that all?” Rachel’s voice edged on caution. “Because there are those who think John is rather handsome. The kind of boy that a girl could find herself in love with.”
“In love?” Marilla balked. “With John Blythe?” And then she saw the strawberry blush crawling up Rachel’s neck. “Oh!” Her stomach dipped. “I didn�
��t think you . . . I assumed you and John disliked each other. Rachel, I promise I didn’t know.”
Rachel gave a sad, thin smile. “He’s yours now, Marilla.”
Marilla shook her head in protest.
“Yes, whether you like it or not, it’s as plain as the nose on his face. He’s in love with you.”
She thought of their kiss—was it one or many? The memory of his arms around her made her tense her own. The ladybug took its leave.
“Love,” she whispered. “What do any of us know of it, really?”
Rachel leaned into Marilla’s side. “We know we want it. I’m envious is all. I wish it had been me, but then, I’m glad it wasn’t. Handsome as he may be, John Blythe thinks himself some kind of know-it-all.” She stuck out her tongue. “He would drive me mad!”
Marilla had to laugh. “Yes, humility is not his most notable characteristic.”
They crossed into the spruce woods, where the needles carpeted the ground and crackled lightly underfoot and the air smelled clean and warm.
Rachel patted Marilla’s hand. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll find my husband soon enough.”
Husband. The word choked Marilla. Who said anything about husbands? Suddenly, she felt ten times her age, heavy with the burden of what was to come and wishing they could turn back the clock to a year ago: when they were girls sewing pretty sleeves and planning May Picnic costumes; when her mother was full of new life and Green Gables was their Promised Land. It’d all turned out so differently than expected.
They’d just come over the log bridge when they spotted Matthew on the crossroad. He was not alone. Johanna Andrews was with him.
“Speaking of love . . .” whispered Rachel.
But the closer they came, the more certain Marilla was that this was not a meeting of lovers.
Johanna held her basket stiffly in front of her, back straight as a chair, face hidden beneath her straw bonnet. Every time Matthew stepped forward, she stepped back so that there remained a wide gap between them. His head hung low. His shoulders were more slumped than usual. Hearing their approach, Johanna turned. Her face was red as a raspberry.
“I’m sorry, Matthew,” she said. “This isn’t what I want. Please, just let me go!” And then she ran down the lane toward Avonlea.
Matthew’s eyes were coals burnt to cinder. He blinked open and shut without seeming to see them.
“Nothing but meetings and partings in this world. Dear me,” Rachel whispered. “I best come back another time for the cucumber seeds. Or you can come over whenever you wish. We’re doing prayer shawls and caps for the orphanage, plus I’ve just started on my first cotton warp quilt. I have extra yarn.”
She quickly kissed Marilla’s cheek good-bye, then dashed ahead to catch up with Johanna and inquire what the disagreement had been about—for surely there had been one.
Marilla went to Matthew. They said nothing, just started down the opposite path to Green Gables. Matthew pulled a long blade of bluestem from one of the tufts bordering the road and peeled it into strips with a gentle zip. He tossed the strands off to the dirt; his fingernails were stained green from the task.
“Care to tell me what happened?” Marilla asked when he reached for another blade.
He exhaled. “Can’t say I could, even if I tried.”
She nodded. “Quarrel?”
“I dunno.”
“Was there some offense done?”
He shrugged. “I just dunno what happened. One minute I was walking her home and showing her where Father and I hope to plant turnips next year, and the next minute she’s gone off.”
That did seem strange. “Maybe she doesn’t like neeps. Did she say?”
“Not to my recollection. She just said she hated the stink of pasture on everything, and she wasn’t going to spend her days churning buttermilk and peeling potatoes.”
“I don’t like potatoes either, but you never mentioned potatoes.”
Matthew shook his head. Marilla shook hers too.
“Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with you, Matthew. Maybe something happened at the Andrewses’, or maybe it’s just an upset inside Johanna.”
Marilla had her blue days. She couldn’t explain the expansive melancholy that often overtook her in the form of a headache. She’d learned that it was simply best to lie down with a cold compress and wait for it to pass, so as not to impart suffering by way of her tongue.
“Just a storm,” she comforted. “By tomorrow it’ll have blown over.”
But at church the next day, Johanna seemed ever more set in her coldness. She said nothing, but gave off such an unfriendly disposition that even her sisters looked afraid to intervene. Matthew steered clear of all the Andrewses, following Hugh once more in departing the fellowship hour as quickly as Jericho could take them. Rachel waved to Marilla with a pitiful look, and Marilla longed again for her mother. The church ladies would’ve talked to Clara about Matthew and Johanna. Then they’d all know how to help. But Marilla was still a shy child in their eyes, even if she felt older.
Matthew didn’t speak of Johanna after church, and Marilla didn’t bring her up. They simply went on: bringing in the cows from pasture, bedding down Jericho, feeding the chickens, sweeping the yard, putting supper on the table, reading the Bible before bed, praying in the darkness, sleeping and dreaming of things forgotten by sunrise.
Mr. Murdock promised to post the exit exam scores the following Monday after school let out. That morning she’d gone to the Whites’ with the cucumber seed and picked up an apple-leaf pattern with corresponding yarn for a cotton warp quilt. Marilla didn’t think Rachel would let her leave without agreeing to rejoin the Ladies’ Sewing Circle project. It was for the “dear little orphans, after all,” said Rachel, and how could Marilla argue with that? Rachel didn’t mention Johanna Andrews, and Marilla didn’t ask.
Despite her reservations, Marilla was glad to do something for the orphanage again. She thought of Junie often and hoped the red bonnet had kept her cool through summer and warm in winter. A wine red shawl would look good with it, she thought, and had it in mind to pop by Mrs. Blair’s for the extra skein after the post office. She never made it. A letter arrived from Izzy. Unlike all the others, it was addressed specifically to her. She hurried home with it in her hamper, her mind churning on what Izzy could want to say to her alone.
She cracked the seal as soon as she came in the door.
Beloved Marilla,
Has it already been a year since your sweet mother, my sister, took her leave? It’s hard to believe. The pain of it remains raw as a new wound. With the anniversary of her death near, I find myself unable to think of anything but you, dear flower girl. It’s been so long since I heard from you. Your father and brother write me that you are well and running Green Gables with the fortitude of a queen. You have your mother’s gift in that regard. I was never so good at maintaining a home. I haven’t even a pet, knowing too well that I’d let it run wild as it pleased. The discipline of a family was never my forte.
Skunk slinked to Marilla’s feet. She picked him up and gently scratched her fingers beneath his soft neck until he purred.
I understand why you declined to come live with me in St. Catharines. I worry that your lack of correspondence may be for fear that I’ll try to force you from your home. Never! I respect your decision, as I trust that you respect mine to return to my own.
That being said, I do believe my sister would’ve liked us to be close—closer in her death than we had been in her life. I hear her voice in my own sometimes and see her reflection at every turn. She reminds me that she is not gone from this world. While her body may vanish to dust, her spirit lives on in you. I don’t think I could stand to miss you both. Please write to me. It would mean ever so much.
With all my love,
Aunt Izzy
Marilla could barely read the closing through her trembling. Was the calendar right—was it May already? She hadn’t lingered in the Avonlea social circles lo
ng enough to hear the talk of picnic planning or anything else. Of course Rachel hadn’t brought it up, knowing the painful memories of last year. So Marilla had been left to tunnel into her daily regimen without the mindfulness of time and life beyond. Izzy’s letter pulled her from her blindness like a groundhog blinking at the sun.
Her chest heaved. Skunk squirmed under her hold, so she put him down. Her empty hands yearned to grasp something solid. Her mother. She wanted her mother’s hand. She curled her fingernails into her palm until crescent moons formed. The aching shot to her head. She closed her eyes and saw flashes of purple: the amethyst brooch with her mother’s hair. It was in her box of sewing notions and precious things. She hurried upstairs to her bedroom. Her temples throbbed. The purple flashes spotted her vision. Opening the box, she thrust her hand in and felt the bite of metal.
“What the devil!”
Her finger returned: red. The droplet grew round and rounder until it could hold its form no more and ran down the side of her hand. She put it to her mouth. Mineral on her tongue. With her other hand, she carefully found the brooch and then lay down on the bed, running her thumb around the oval of braided hair.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” she whispered. “I promise. I’m sorry.” She closed her eyes to let the bursts of pain be absorbed into the darkness.
A knocking below woke her. She didn’t know how long she’d lain there—minutes or hours. Her finger had clotted and scabbed with crimson. She set the brooch on her vanity and smoothed back her hair with a little water before going down to answer.
“Marilla!” John stood on the front porch with a bouquet of mayflowers.
There was no denying—it was May. Her heart sunk at the certainty. She’d lived a whole year—twelve months, three hundred sixty-five days—that her mother never saw.