“You don’t look it, ma’am.”
“Not a day over fifty,” she joked. “My name’s not ma’am. It’s Maggie.”
Setting the pails down, he blushed. “It don’t sit right.”
“I met your wife,” she told him.
“Oh?”
“At Morrisey’s, the other day. We drove back up together.” She offered this as explanation somehow, but wondered what she was explaining; Hal’s beard was trim, and he had shaved.
“I heard.”
“You need a car to help her with the groceries,” said Maggie. “Please take mine.”
She thinks Bermuda to herself, or Mexico, New Zealand, somewhere where indulgence thrives and where it wouldn’t matter if she was a widow with a child born late. She could tell new incurious neighbors that her husband had died suddenly, too soon to know their baby; she could live there as long as she liked. And if the notion took her to return, why then she’d claim the child was hers by her new foreign husband, or only by adoption, or a foster child. She’d resume her maiden name.
She could, of course, notify Andrew. He would do the proper thing. She smiles at the formula, using it, and thinks how far from proper their shared behavior has been. Yet he is marriageable, wealthy, witty, a man of the world. He had proposed to her, half-serious, for years. He would urge an abortion or marry her or come to the hospital and be her comfortable consort in their shared old age. Maggie weighed such gain against loss and found it insufficient. She would tell him afterward, perhaps.
For all this effortful preparation feels useless to her otherwise. She’s weary in advance as she’d surely feel in fact; why pack to leave, she asks herself, in order to pack to come back? The Big House is her home again, and she’ll not be hounded out of it for mere propriety’s sake. It doesn’t matter, Maggie thinks, it’s just not worth the trouble, I’ll tell him or leave when I’m up to it, if . . .
She leaves the if alone. It means too many things. If means if she does not miscarry, if the baby’s born alive and well, if there’s opposition in the town that doesn’t fade away. There are myriad alternatives to if. It means if Ian also leaves, or the school system fails to improve, or if she meets someone from Bermuda or Mexico or New Zealand who makes her want to move.
That someone is some male stranger, however, and Maggie feels ashamed. She’s lived too long in such subservience to embrace it willingly again; she needs a woman friend. There are none in this town. And those she’s claimed for New York friends have their own kind of trouble by now, or their families have been dispersed, or their projected beginnings are not how she wants to begin.
When she forces herself to walk through town, nobody notices. She’s self-conscious as a girl at her first dance. She remembers how each nerve end seemed exposed at the skin’s surface, and the tingling temerity of self-exposure. In India, she’s heard, midwives follow pregnant women from the moment of conception; they can tell from the way a woman walks if she’ll be a likely customer.
But Maggie makes it through. “I’m thinking of adopting,” she tells Elizabeth Conover. They wait for the same teller at the bank.
“Adopting?”
“Yes. A Vietnamese child, maybe.”
“You can’t.”
There is a discussion going on ahead of them; the girl behind the window is uncertain.
“Why not?”
Elizabeth coughs. “Persons of color. There’s trouble . . .”
Maggie advances. “A nigger baby. Injun. The only good one’s dead.”
“Don’t raise your voice,” says Elizabeth. “That isn’t what I meant.”
“What did you mean, then?”
“Obstacles. A single parent . . .” She flutters her hands, flustered, “At our age, you know.”
“I don’t know.” Maggie chooses peace. “I’ve only been thinking about adoption. I haven’t made inquiries yet.”
“Well, when you do,” says Elizabeth—handing in her bank book, saying “Afternoon” to the new teller at eleven—“that’s when the trouble begins.”
So she carries her secret through town. The third month, she has a fainting spell, and Mac Andrews from the filling station drives her home. “Something I ate,” Maggie says. The air revives her, and she thanks him so effusively he stammers out, “No t-trouble, ma’am; a p-p-pleasure.”
“You know, the strangest thing,” she says. “I don’t know if your name’s Mac Andrews or MacAndrews. Mr. MacAndrews. After all these years.”
“Got it right the f-f-f-first time,” Mac brings out.
“Yes. Thanks.”
He sprays gravel at her, leaving, showing off the car’s acceleration, and she puts her head between her knees.
Then she takes a call for Ian, from Jeanne Fisk. The local chamber-music group wants to invite him to their practice session Thursday night. “I know he’s busy,” Jeanne says. “But he might be interested, and we need another player. Would you give him the message, please?”
“I’m sure he’d be happy to come. He isn’t all that busy.”
“If Sally lets him. I’ve never seen a girl keep tighter rein.” There is petulance or malice in her voice. “She should share him, don’t you think? With the rest of us poor unfortunates. But they’re not married yet.”
“I’ll give him your message,” says Maggie. “Thursday night.”
She hangs up, heavily. Maggie is shaking; she brushes her teeth. She scrapes the bristles on her gums until they bleed. She discovers in herself such jealousy of her son’s young lover that she has to hold the sink. She studies her blear scrubbed reflection, then sticks out her tongue.
The next day Sally Conover appears at the Big House. Maggie remains in her room while Ian answers the bell. She hears laughter in the porch, then in the kitchen, then silence; then Ian returns. “What did she want?” Maggie asks.
“To borrow sugar,” Ian says, and deals the hand of rummy it is his turn to deal.
“You like her, don’t you?” Maggie asks.
He moves his head so that it seems both nod and shrug.
“You find her—attractive?”
“Enough,” he says, discarding. “Your turn. Knock with four or under.”
“Enough for what?”
“Your card.”
“Why won’t you talk about it?”
“Enough to sleep with.” He takes her discard. “If that’s what you’re asking.”
She feels her stomach tighten, then release. “Not exactly.”
“To go out to dinner with. Your turn. To give a cup of sugar to.”
She picks up a seven of hearts. Of all the cards she might have drawn, this is the least useful; she discards.
“What’s the problem?” Ian asks.
The child within is hers alone; she will not share it with her son. She picks the king of clubs. “No problem.”
“She’s just who’s here is in this town at this time. You understand.” Ian gives his sheepish, theatrical grin. He offers her the eight of diamonds: a stranger, some other woman’s man.
“Jeanne Fisk called yesterday,” she says. “I forgot to tell you. About this Thursday evening. She hopes you’ll call back.”
“All right. Your turn. We don’t have to finish.”
“We do. What was the knock card?”
“Four.”
“I’m sorry,” Maggie says. “I suppose I’d thought of you as . . .”
“Without alternative? Lonely? Gin.”
Now Maggie asks herself what was the point of her abashed insisting that the Boudreaus accept what she gave. It was as if she ratified her own existence in the gratitude of others—saw herself only in mirroring eyes. And, since Boudreau regarded her as generous and honest, she could see herself that way. He gave his gap-toothed grin at her, and she smiled warmly back. He told her stories of the Alagash, how he loved pumpkin pie with catsup on it, how he’d never say no to a good piece of pie. She baked them for him, Thursdays, according to the available fruit and left them by his lunch box if he were out in the f
ields. Harry wanted to be a mechanical engineer. He studied mechanical drawing in school, and she gave him Judah’s felt-cased compass set. Hattie looked askance at that, and Maggie reminded her that charity begins at home, that there was a blessing on alms. “It’s expensive,” Hattie said. “The boy won’t know what to make of it. Why don’t you buy him one at Woolworth’s; why give him one so old and good?” Maggie settled the discussion by insisting, although she was not certain, that Judah would have approved.
Thereafter she kept her small charities secret—telling Hal to rent the tractors out and keep the rental fee. She put fifty dollars monthly in the safe for Harry’s schooling, moved by his earnest self-betterment. She was shamefaced, always, in front of Mrs. Boudreau’s voluble thanks and complaint, saying Judah would have wished it, saying she was only doing what he’d asked her to. She paid them more for pasturing and tending to the horses than the horses had been worth—and watched the man and boy on the bridle path together, evenings, after chores.
Then, starting in the end of March, Hal went on a two-week drunk. She did not encounter him, but heard the clucking disapproval of Hattie and her friends. He had been found in ditches or asleep in unlocked cars; his wife locked him out of the trailer, and he walked the streets. He was harmless and incompetent, they said; he wouldn’t hurt a fly. But it was shameful anyhow, the way his clothes got muddy all over, the way he’d look at you and not say anything but start to cry, his brain so addled with the stuff he’d not known Jeanne Fisk’s name when for some crazy reason she offered him a ride. You’d have had to fumigate the car, they said; they stopped his credit at the Village Arms. But he’d gotten hold of cash and walked down to Hoosick and paid for his binges there where they didn’t know him and would not refuse a customer. There was trouble enough in this country without the men in it drinking themselves glassy-eyed or falling-down foolish and maudlin. They should refuse to serve him, Hattie said; the police should lock him up and let him sleep it off.
On the second Thursday Maggie found a lunch box by the sugarhouse and opened the door to find Boudreau inside, sprawled full length on the floor. He sat up, blinking in the shaft of light, focusing, and said, “Well.”
“Well.”
“I was hoping to fix these buckets,” he said. “There’s holes in them.”
“Yes.”
There were a thousand sugaring buckets, with holes worked through the base.
“Mr. Sherbrooke wouldn’t stand for that,” he said. He shook his head; she bent above him, helpless, trying to seem helpful. “He’d want them fixed by sugaring time. Them maples ought to be tapped.”
“You’d need a soldering iron.”
“Ayup.”
“He did it by himself, you know, my husband told me so. Destroyed them. He wanted to let the sap run.”
“I never . . .”
“It’s all right,” said Maggie. “You just sleep. You come on in the house and take a shower, if you’d like.”
“No,” Hal said. He shrank from her. “These clothes . . .”
“I’ll clean them. We’ve got a machine.”
“No.” He built himself up to his feet. There was a bench behind them; he sat on that. “I’m drunk,” he said. “I was. I’m so ashamed. I never . . .”
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said.
“I want to. Leastways, sit.”
She shrank from him, but he patted the wood. He did so till she sat.
“Now shut that door.”
She did his bidding once again; the sugarhouse was dark, sweet-smelling.
“There’s stories I could tell you,” he said. “Things you ought to know about.”
“All right.”
“My father died when I was ten.” He coughed. “And there were eight of us, you see, so Mother had to farm us out, this was 1936. The bottom’d fallen out, grown men were grateful for work. And I stayed with people called Baker—Germans they were, north of here. Up by Burlington. He was a good enough man—big, jolly, but distant, if you follow; he’d put his arm around me and there’d be no warmth to it.”
Boudreau shivered. He sucked an unlit pipe. He looked at her, but seemed to see instead the farms by Burlington; his eyes were wide.
“What was Mrs. Baker like?”
“A hard woman, mean . . . She worked me so long it’s a wonder I’ve still got the stomach for farming. Outside I was farmhand and inside the house I played maid. Scrubbed those steps for her; polished the porch. But mostly I remember how she was too cheap to even buy me boots. All winter long we’d spread manure from off a sled, you see, hitch it up to ponies and just walk along in the fields. All winter I’d be wearing ankle shoes and I remember that I used to pray for dawn; dear God, I’d say, just let the sun come up.”
He blew out ashes from his pipe bowl. Startled by this loquacity—he had never spoken to her at such length before—she put her hand on his hand. Boudreau coughed; there was a white dried crust around the edges of his eyes.
“Milking was like that way too. Except at least the cows were warm; I had to milk five cows every morning in the dark. But by the time I’d got my things and moved about a bit it was warm in the barn, sweet-smelling to me, Jesus; I’ll need a cow to milk when I’m eighty, else I won’t know I’m alive. I’d just lean my head against them, tell them my troubles, and pull . . .”
He breathed so slowly, deeply, that she doubted he was still awake, and when he clasped her, shuddering, she was not certain he knew. His body was slack and hair lank. She felt her stomach heave, and held her breath and breathed through her nose, shallowly, because he reeked. Still, Maggie whispered to him, although he did not listen, that she was there, was hoping to help, and fitted her limbs to his limbs. One year before, returning, she had clung to Judah in just such a fashion and, when her husband tried to lie with her, mastered the impulse to flee.
At ten o’clock, however, cramped and cold and queasy, she disengaged herself and left the barn and walked back home. And when she saw him the next day, Boudreau’s manner was sober, reverted. He apologized for his behavior, sleeping in the barn and such, and said he was a burden for his wife and family to bear. “A cross to carry,” Maggie said, and Hal announced, “Yes. That’s what she calls it—misfortunate. It’s just exactly her words.”
VIII
“Say something. I’m pregnant,” Maggie repeats.
“You’re not serious,” says Ian.
“Yes.”
“You’ve got to be joking.”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Not absolutely. But it’s a very good guess,” she says.
His horse drops its head, sidestepping.
“Might I ask . . .” Here Ian too drops his head. He raises it again, with a queer half-grin, and stares at her, assessing.
“Go right ahead . . .”
“Who’s the father?”
“You might ask that.”
“Well?”
Her horse shifts for forage, stamping. Maggie releases the reins; Maybe turns three-quarters around.
“Anyone I know?” says Ian.
“The odds are for miscarriage. You ought to know that. And I’m not certain I’ll carry the thing—be able to. It seems unlikely, doesn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been pregnant, you see.”
A rabbit bolts past them; she lets her horse walk. There are felled trees by the trailside—cut up into log lengths, but left there to dry. After some time, Maggie says, “I’m glad you find it funny.”
“Not funny, no . . .”
“Amusing, then. There’s so little humor in the world these days.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“What did you mean?”
The trail is wide enough; he rides alongside. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Just tell me what you meant.”
“I was thinking,” Ian says, “how many ladies might have hauled me to the woods to tell me some such secret. But in my generation, you
see, they take precautions. Pills. An I.U.D. . . .” He ducks, avoiding a branch. “And there’s no Judah left to make a shotgun marriage out of it; there’s no way I can help you, really, except to grin a little. I meant to laugh with you”—he finishes—“not at.”
Now Maggie hesitates. Should she fall in with his attempt at levity or tell him that she needs his help—that she’s a frightened woman with no support system in place? Birds shriek at them, departing. “My man of the world,” Maggie says.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You’re all I’ve got. You’re my only comfort, Ian, no matter what you think.”
“No.”
“Yes. Believe it. You won’t remember Seth . . .”
He puts his hand up to his shirt and buttons it.
“You can’t, of course, how could you?”
“I was two years old,” he says.
“Well, I’ve been pregnant three times in my life,” Maggie says. “Whatever the younger generation thinks; whatever precautions you take. It was as if, when Seth was taken from us—strange, I still think of it that way, ‘passed on,’ ‘passed over,’ whatever; I can hardly read the words ‘crib death,’ ” Maggie says, “much less say or think them—crib death, crib death, crib death—maybe I should practice. When Seth died, at any rate, it was like my body put itself on birth control. It was inconceivable, Ian. There seemed nothing left to conceive.”
He is silent. The branches that brush them are wet; the fallen wood cracks wetly under Maybe’s hooves. They follow a carpet of leaves.
“You want this child?”
“I want to talk to you about it. If I were certain, I wouldn’t be out riding; if I knew for sure, I’d spend the next five months in bed. With my feet on a pillow, understand.”
“Are you planning to marry?”
“No.”
“Does the father know?” He cannot keep levity out of his voice. “Are his intentions honorable?”
“Or maybe I’m trying to kill it, that’s what. That’s why we’re riding, after all.” She faces him and shakes her head. “You’ve been giving a pretty good imitation of Judah, my friend; you’re conducting just the sort of inquisition he’d have approved of . . .”
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