by Peter Geye
Harry said, “You want to learn how to do this?”
“I don’t think so. My plan is never to hunt bear again.”
“You want to keep me company anyway?”
Gus, in answer, sat down by the flames.
His father removed his coat and unbuttoned and rolled up his shirtsleeves, then pulled the knife from his belt. He knelt down and rolled the bear on its back, and sang softly while he went to work. “Un loup hurlant vint près de ma cabane, / Voir si mon feu n’avait plus de boucane, / Je lui ai dit: Retire-toi d’ici, / Car, par ma foi, je perc’rai ton habit!”
When the bear was skinned Harry slit open its gut and yanked the offal from its belly. Soon after, he took the bear’s heart from its chest and offered it to Gus. “Freddy Riverfish would say to take a bite. You want one?”
“No way,” Gus said. “That isn’t happening.”
Harry’s smile was mischievous. He raised the bear’s heart up to the morning sun, then brought it down to his open mouth.
“I CAN’T IMAGINE why you’d want to spend another minute in here.” This was Gus talking. We stood again in the apothecary, on the main floor. “All this dust. Everything faded and worn.” He shook his head. “It’s ghostly.”
“Ghosts are the stuff of dreams, Gus.”
“This place is a dream,” he said.
He by then had taken on the countenance of someone wearied by his own story. I thought he might say something more about his father and their winter—there was almost never a preamble, and he started each memory like a man running out of a burning house—but instead he said something that surprised me. “It’s always bothered me that my father had to spend his childhood living in the fish house. Poor as a peasant. While she lived here. Feeding filet mignon to those dogs of hers. Starting fires with ten-dollar bills.”
“All that money, Gus, what did it buy her?”
“Hey, she was warm at night. She didn’t have to spend her time worrying about which way the wind was blowing.”
“Fortunes turn, though, don’t they? Just look at you and your sister. Consider the legacy of Rebekah and Hosea Grimm and put yours next to theirs. I don’t need to point out that the same building you think your father must have pined away for is one that your sister just gave away. Not sold, given. Your family name will be right above the door.”
“We’ve come honestly by what’s ours, Berit.”
“Oh, I know that. Of course I do. But that sign came at a price and Thea Eide—your great-grandmother—paid it. Odd Eide paid it. Your father, he paid it, too. You’re paying some yourself, no doubt.”
He looked at me.
“Other people paid other prices, Gus. That’s all I want to say. I don’t mean to harp. But there’s not a soul in this town who doesn’t owe something to their neighbor.”
He took in the big open room and drew a deep breath. “That’s why you’re curating this place? There can’t be very many other reasons to.”
I crossed the room and hung my coat on the hook by the door and turned again. “I told you before, this place isn’t as fraught with meaning for me as it is for you.”
“Even before my mother made this her trysting place, my father had us understand we were not to come here. We were not to speak with Rebekah. We were not to so much as look in her direction. Like she was some sort of sorceress. A Medusa.”
“She was a great many things, but a sorceress? No. Far from it. And she was beautiful, not hideous.”
“I don’t know, she turned plenty of folks to stone.”
“More like she was made of stone herself,” I said. “Of all the heartbreaking lives this town has harbored, Rebekah’s was the most so. The most.”
Gus rolled his eyes.
“It’s true. And you owe her much. Harry had it otherwise. I know why, and I understand, and I’m sure I could never convince you to feel differently. But you’d be a fool not to look around. There are things for you to see here.”
“Such as what?”
I said nothing, just walked to the staircase and started up, rounding the newel post on the second-floor landing and heading up to the attic, where I went to the kitchen table. A hundred years it had stood there. Now I swept a sheet off it and Gus walked over and looked at the portrait lying on the table.
“Your mother’s,” I said.
He stared at it intently. “She could only see something through if she was painting it,” he said. “Or destroying it.”
“She saw you and your sister through to the end.”
“Now you’re her champion?”
“Certainly not. But as it was with Rebekah, so it was with your mother. They were complicated women. Their lives weren’t easy, either one. Rebekah’s especially.”
“Not easy? She never knew anything except ease.”
“She didn’t have to hoist gill nets, it’s true. But ease? You’re mistaken about that.”
“What was hard for her? Tell me.”
“Try to imagine what it would’ve been like for a woman to abandon her child back then. Seventy years ago, Gus. Women were treated very differently in those days. Even a woman with her means. She might as well have been a leper.”
He looked doubtful.
“She made a decision that cost her any chance for a normal life.”
“You said it—she made a decision.”
“Have you ever thought about how much easier it would’ve been for her to leave from behind this window? To be with your grandfather? To raise your father?”
“Then why didn’t she?”
“Because she didn’t know how to. She didn’t know how to love herself, much less the people she cared about.”
“What does her gravestone say?”
“Gus.”
“Tell me. You know.”
“It says, ‘I have loved.’ ”
“That’s right.”
“She learned how to love by staring through this godforsaken window. By looking down on a life she could only regret not being a part of.”
“Nonsense.”
“How could she be a mother? She was no one’s child.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“She was an orphan. She never had anyone.”
He stepped away from the painting and shook his head again.
“Think of all you and your father went through. And I don’t just mean that winter. I mean all your years together. Think of all the questions you ever asked him. Think of all the questions your children have asked you. All the things you’ve taught one another. Think of all the love you’ve known. She never knew any of that.”
“She could’ve come down from this place anytime at all. She could’ve said she was sorry. Any of the million days she spent up here, she could have quit this for good. None of us were ever very far away.”
“And what if she had come down? Your father, he’d have forgiven her? No, he wouldn’t have so much as looked at her. In fact, he might have struck her down. And you? You’d have forgiven her?”
He was almost shaking, he was so upset.
“She knew where she stood with those closest to her, or who should’ve been. She was scared and alone. All she ever knew was loneliness. Loneliness she brought on herself, true. But she had to live with it all the same.”
“My father, he had his own share of loneliness.”
“Of course he did. But he also had you and Signe. He knew your love.”
Gus walked slowly back toward the portrait.
“Signe was here to see her paint it. Part of it, anyway. So many years ago. Still, I remember it very well. Charlie Aas was here, too. And because Rebekah was here, so was I.”
The layers of light and subject in that painting are unlike anything I’ve ever seen. In the center of the canvas, Rebekah Grimm sits in her rocking chair, holding a hat. The background is a view of the lake from the window, and waves are coming across it from the south. The portrait streams from dark-as-night blue on the left edge of the canvas to indigo a
s soft as the blue of Rebekah’s iris. It is as if the waves are bringing the light, or, perhaps, the dark. Maybe both. Her eyes—indeed, all of her—seem to gather the thousand shades of blue between the two edges before casting the color back onto itself. Her face is oversized. Not exactly caricature, though not far from it. But beautiful and youthful. The only thing that isn’t a shade of blue is the pink hat in her hands.
“All those years ago, when your mother bought this place, Rebekah made it a condition of the sale that your mother paint her portrait. She never showed it to your father, I’m certain of that.
“I remember Signe. She didn’t know enough to be leery of Charlie Aas yet. She was only twelve years old. She didn’t know how to be amazed yet, either. By your mother’s talent or the particulars of that gathering. All those people in the same room. What it all meant. All the endings it foreshadowed.” I got a chill just thinking of it. “Your mother, though? Well, she was right at home. She explained that they’d been working mostly at night or in the afternoon, but on that day they were into the morning light. She wasn’t sure the composition would work, so she asked Signe what she thought.
“What in the world was Signe supposed to say?” I asked. “It seemed cruel, putting that question to a child. But Signe, she surprised me. She said, ‘It looks sad.’ Oh, I can remember it perfectly. Perfectly. I was just delighted.”
Gus smiled and shook his head as though it was beside the point to explain about Signe, and it was. After a moment he said, “She was a beautiful artist. There’s just no getting around that, is there?” He took a deep breath. “If only she’d been as gentle with her family as she was with her brushstrokes.”
I sat down on the chair beside the table and told Gus about the rest of that morning.
I wish I could say why it was such a memorable day. Partly, of course, it was Lisbet and Charlie being there together. So brazen they were, even if they had their excuses. Charlie was her real-estate agent, after all. Partly, though, and maybe more important, it was because I saw in that gathering three generations of Eide women in the same spot, and what Signe had said about the painting could have been said many times over about the incongruity of their being in one another’s company.
Signe asked her mother, “How long have you been painting this?”
“We started the day we bought the place. Miss Grimm is a determined subject. She sits for hours on end without so much as batting an eye.”
“I’ve had much practice,” Rebekah said, her voice sharp. It would have been the first time Signe had ever heard her speak.
The girl looked at Rebekah sitting in the rocking chair, her eyes cast down on that hat in her lap. By 1963 I’d spent more than twenty-five years with her and I thought I’d seen every expression she was capable of, but there was a new depth to her sadness with Signe in the room. And what did Signe herself see? It was impossible to tell. She was every bit as stoic and straight-faced as her mother.
“Miss Lovig,” Lisbet said, “why don’t you put water on for tea? Maybe we’ll take a break and Signe can spend some time with her grandmother.”
And because it was my place, I went to the kitchen and put a pot of water on the stove. From where I stood, I could watch Signe and Rebekah. They said nothing to each other, only sat there by the window. Rebekah with her hollow gaze on the water, Signe with her eyes on the woman she’d spent her whole young life not knowing. Charlie and Lisbet, they stood on the edge of the kitchen and lit cigarettes and watched Signe as though she were a puppy. It wasn’t long before they found an excuse to fetch something from Lisbet’s car and went downstairs.
It was only then Rebekah said, “Your mother, she’s running around with another man? With Charlie Aas, no less. Charlie’s a swine.”
This was Rebekah’s way. She spoke to almost no one. She hardly ever left her seat at the window, entertained almost no visitors. Still, she knew the color of everyone’s underclothes.
“An oinking pig.” She almost smiled before her expression turned sour. “He’s not the first hornswoggler who’d have us believe this backwater’s the headwaters of the world. It is certainly not. That’s one thing you should know.”
Signe looked at her for a long time before her eyes widened. “Miss Grimm, are you blind?”
“I can still see light and dark. But not much more.”
Signe didn’t say anything.
“Don’t pity me, child. I’ve seen enough in my life.”
Signe still didn’t speak. She stared at Rebekah, rather too freely, as far as good manners went.
“How old are you, Signe Eide?”
“I’m almost thirteen.”
“That means your father is now forty-three. Am I right about that?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Who will tend his nets?”
“No nets this year. He might have to sell his boat. That’s what Mom says.”
“Sell his boat?”
“Mom says there aren’t any fish in the lake anymore.”
“Sell his boat?” she said again.
“He might. If anybody will buy it.”
Signe simply could not take her eyes off her grandmother. They sat there silently for as long as the water took to boil.
Then, while I made the tea, I heard Signe say, her voice almost a whisper, “Miss Grimm?”
Rebekah held her gaze on the window, as if she could see again and the lake was on fire.
“Miss Grimm, why aren’t we allowed to know you?”
“Young lady, don’t ever doubt that your father knows what’s best for you. He learned how to be a father from the best man this town has ever known.” She finally turned to her. “He was right, keeping you from me.”
I set the tea on the table before the rocking chair and poured a cup for Rebekah. She took a sip and looked toward the staircase. Charlie and Lisbet appeared as if magically summoned.
“You’ve been telling secrets up here, haven’t you?” Lisbet said, glancing at Signe even though her words were meant for Rebekah.
Rebekah leaned toward Signe and whispered, too silently for Lisbet to hear her, “Tell your father I’d like to buy his boat.”
—
I could tell my story didn’t impress Gus much. He might even have been getting impatient.
“Let me see if I understand,” he said. “Because Rebekah was once decent to Signe, we should exalt her? Hang up her portrait as the Matriarch of Gunflint?”
“Honestly, you’re even a harder case than your father.”
“I mean, the simple fact she wanted her portrait done in the first place says it all.”
“You’re right. She was vain. Because she was beautiful and thought of herself and no one else. I actually think wanting to have her portrait done was an attempt to understand herself differently, though.”
“And not because it was my mother doing the painting? Not as a way of getting closer to us?”
“Maybe that was a part of it. But I doubt it.”
“Why?”
“How can I say this?” I offered, blushing. “Rebekah, she was the subject of countless photographs.”
“Photographs?”
“Yes. One of Hosea Grimm’s main enterprises was the distribution of nasty pictures.”
“You mean pornography?”
“Old-fashioned pornography, yes. That’s why he brought her here.”
“Come again?”
“He sold those postcards all over the world.”
“Pornographic postcards?”
“Such as pornography was a hundred years ago. Pictures of her in negligees and corsets. Of her bare shoulders.”
He turned his attention back down to the painting.
“Yes,” I said, “that same woman. Which is to say this wasn’t her first portrait. And that wasn’t the first she suffered. She was an orphan, as I’ve told you. She was an orphan who ran away when she was all of twelve years old. The same age as your sister in the story I just bored you with. Think about that. At twe
lve, Rebekah ran straight into a brothel. From which she was adopted by Hosea and brought here to be his prime subject.”
He looked up, his eyes wide and disbelieving.
“She knew nothing in this world except abuse. She didn’t understand happiness or even possibility. She was more alone than anyone I’ve ever known. And she deserves a little dignity.” I stood up and spread the sheet back over the painting.
“Gus, you asked me why I’m doing this.” I spread my arms as though to suggest the apothecary. “I didn’t end up like Rebekah. Some bluenose in the attic who never had a friend in her life.” Just saying those words made me feel as though I’d betrayed her. “All the people who should have loved her. You. Your sister. Your father. All that happiness she might have known. She got none of it. Can you imagine that? All those lives passing right under your window every day and there’s nothing you can do about it? You’d go blind, too. Blind and mad.” I pointed at the portrait one last time. “I could have been her. I really could’ve. I got the benefit of your father’s love instead. A benefit that might have been hers had things been different.
“But they weren’t different, Gus. Things happened just as they did. To all of us.” I reached over and took his hands in mine. “I think Signe gave this building away hoping it would erase this part of her life. A part of your family’s life. I’m sure that my having a hand in the historical society isn’t something she was hoping for. But I want to do it for your father. This seems like something that would please him. And I want to do it for Rebekah. She deserves some kind glances, even if they come from strangers who are only passing through.”
HE NEVER ventured past the bur oaks again but he went daily to the felled tree, the harvesting of that wood now his sole enterprise.
While he gathered the wood, Harry built a cache and a ladder to reach it, and on those stilts they stored the butchered bear and dozens of gutted fish, packed with snow, that Gus caught in the evenings. Behind the cabin Harry dug a hole, put a box around it, and called it the jakes. He did repairs on the cabin and made a second bunk. His work made Gus feel inadequate, until the last of the oak logs was laid in the snow beside the cabin and Harry said, “That’ll get us through.” Those simple words buoyed Gus more than he could explain.