“What do you see?” she asked. She looked out into the yard.
“Shhh,” I said. I put a finger to my lips. “Why are you up?”
“I could not sleep.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Why are you up?”
“I could not sleep, either.”
“What is that sound?”
“It is the rain,” I said. “See?”
We stood at the sink and looked out into the yard.
“It is beautiful,” she said.
“Come on,” I said. “I have an idea.”
I walked out to the mudroom and sat on the bench and took off my mother’s shoes and rolled my torn stockings down over each knee. I unbuttoned my blouse and slipped it off and dropped it on the floor. I unfastened the hook at the waistband of my skirt and let my skirt fall on top of my blouse.
Hattie watched me. “What are you doing?” she said.
I turned the knob and let the door fall open and then stepped out onto the porch. Rough floorboards, soft rain, the sound of water in the dark. I looked back at my sister. “Be careful,” I said. “Watch for splinters. And keep your voice down.”
A pallid mist drifted across the yard and hung under the black trees. If all the souls lost on the earth had stepped out of that night I would not have been surprised. Hattie followed me down the stairs and onto the wet grass.
“Look up,” I said.
She turned her face to the sky. The rain fell on us as if we were sightless. I opened my arms and began to turn in slow circles, pivoting on one heel, my toes sunk and releasing in the mud. I turned faster and faster and then Hattie spread her arms slowly, as if testing the air, and then she spun beside me. I did not care if Martha woke up. I did not care if the neighbors turned their lights on and stood on their porches and turned their dogs on us and burned their trash and gave us evil looks. I laughed and Hattie laughed, too, her hair sleek against her head like the wet pelt of some slippery animal. We were like lost girls then, made of rainwater and the night. I wondered if our mother could see us, if she had taken her place in the sky and could look down at us and laugh at the way we were nowhere to be found but in her absence had become completely free.
Then Hattie ran from me and twirled under the trees and I ran to catch her and she screamed and ducked and dodged until, finally breathless, I caught up with her. I put my arms around her and rested my cheek on her wet hair, her chest heaving and the sharp pain of my own breath under my bruised ribs. I did not care. Rain washed over us and the trees creaked and dripped in the night.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” I said.
She shivered. “It makes me feel alive,” she said.
I pulled back and looked at her, teeth chattering, hair wet and hanging around her shoulders.
“You need a bath,” I said.
“So do you.”
“I will fetch the water. You go inside and take everything off in the mudroom.”
“You will wake Martha,” she warned.
“So?” I said.
“She’ll be mad,” she said. And then she grinned.
“I do not care,” I said.
I rolled the washtub out from under the sink and set it in the middle of the room. I struck a kitchen match and lit the lamp with its red glass shade. When the water had just begun to steam I lifted the copper and emptied it into the washtub. Hattie lowered herself into the water. I gave her an old tin cup and a bar of Fels soap so she could wash her hair. I leaned against the sink and watched her. The smell of rain and earth filled the kitchen. She slid down in the tub until the water came up to her shoulders.
“Tell me a story,” she said.
The clock ticked in the front room. I pulled a chair up next to the washtub. The only stories I knew were my mother’s stories and I picked one.
I told her about an old nobleman who lived alone near Garz, back on the island that was haunted by the golden seagull and the dwarves and the bells under the sea. I told her that there was a small castle in the woods, with spires and turrets and a drawbridge to keep everyone out. The woods themselves were haunted by black dwarves. You could often see their footprints in the sand, thousands of them, like a band of unruly children had been dancing along the water’s edge. The old nobleman lived in the castle. He had once had three beautiful daughters and they were known far and wide as the fair-haired maidens, but he had been cruel to them and they had left him all at once. Now he lived alone. He’d been a hunter and a sportsman but he withdrew from all activities and did only the few things that still pleased him: he sat alone, he drank alone, he ate alone. He spent all of his time thinking about the black dwarves who lived in his woods. They were the worst of their kind and the old nobleman would have been better off afraid of them. They had ways that were unknown to men and they liked to play tricks. They carried hatchets and wore armor that no blade could pierce. If they caught you alone, you might as well say your prayers.
“But, like all dwarves, the black dwarves could be overcome. If you had the cap that belonged to a dwarf, you had his magic. If you had the glass shoe that belonged to a dwarf, you had his power. One day the old nobleman came across a tiny silver bell. He knew what it was right away and picked it up and put it in his pocket.”
Hattie sloshed in the bath. “So he rang the bell and asked the dwarf to bring his daughters back,” she said.
I shook my head. “That is what you would think,” I said. “But that is not what happened. The old nobleman called the dwarf to him and asked for riches. He asked for wine. He asked for a great table laden with meat and fine food of every description. Then he asked for beautiful clothes, a cape and soft leather boots and a set of chain mail made of chased silver. A helmet made of gold.
“The dwarf brought all of these things. But he grew tired of the man’s demands, for the man always wanted more. One day the dwarf decided he would turn himself into a bird and fly over the nobleman’s castle and see what he could see. This he did. Down below he saw the nobleman sitting in his courtyard, surrounded by his treasure, all alone. The next time the nobleman rang the bell, the dwarf did not appear. Instead, an old woman walked up to the castle gate. The nobleman tried to send her away. He wanted his dwarf. But the old woman said that when he rang the bell, he’d called her. Now he must tell her what he wanted. Of course, the old woman was the dwarf in disguise but the nobleman did not know that. He told the old woman that he did not need to listen to her and she should go away before he gave her something to be sorry about. But the old woman just laughed and stood at his gate and did not leave. She leaned on a white staff and on it there were strange carvings in an ancient language that the nobleman did not know.
“All of a sudden the nobleman stopped arguing with the old woman. A sly look came over his face and he pointed to the sea beyond the castle and cried out, ‘Look at them! There must be thousands of them at work!’ And he explained that he could see the black dwarves who lived under the hills at the edge of the woods and every day they came down to the sea and caused ships to wreck so they could pilfer the cargo and hide casks of wine and crates of amber and all the best parts of the cargo in their crystal palaces underground. And he could make them do his bidding and they looked to him as their king and they brought him the choicest parts of the loot.
“This story made the old woman angry because the dwarf inside her knew that it was not true. But the dwarf also knew that stories have a way of getting around. If the old nobleman told enough people that he ruled the black dwarves, pretty soon everyone would think that he did. So the dwarf decided to teach the nobleman a lesson.
“‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘How do you make the black dwarves do your bidding?’
“And the nobleman took the bell from his pocket. He explained that when he rang his bell, the dwarf must appear and he must do exactly what the nobleman wanted.
“The old woman took one look at the bell and said, ‘Oh, what a beautiful bell! I have never seen anything like it! Will you sell it?’
“But the n
obleman shook his head and said he would not sell it, because there was not another such bell in the entire world. He would not give it up for anything. ‘And what a delightful sound it has,’ he said. ‘Only listen, mother. Is there any weariness in the world, any sorrow at all, which cannot be softened by the sound of this bell?’ And he rang it again.
“The old woman thought the nobleman could not resist money so she flashed a handful of silver dollars in front of him, a great handful, more than the nobleman had ever seen. Still he said the bell was not for sale. So the old woman held her staff out to him and showed him its strange writing. She began to entice him with talk of the secret arts, and all kinds of charms and wonders, and how these would bring him everything he had ever wanted, far more than the bell could bring by itself. Before long, she could see that the nobleman was wavering. He held the bell in the palm of his hand and he looked at the white staff on which she leaned. She kept talking, telling him of the way that the world would be made perfect and everyone would be the same, but he would be wealthy and held in high esteem and he would never be sad or lonely again, and the island on which they lived would be a perfect land in the middle of the ocean, just the way the old songs said it would one day be. A heaven on earth, she promised, all for one and one for all.”
Hattie tipped a cup of water over her head. “He took it?” she said. “Right?”
I nodded. “Yes,” I said. “How could he resist? He thought the old woman was a witch and she was offering him what he had always wanted, which was everything just the way he alone always wanted things to be. Who would not want that? So he took the white staff and gave the old woman the bell and it turned out that the old woman had not lied. The white staff brought him riches. His cows and sheep grew fat and he was soon known as the wealthiest man on the island. Everywhere he went, the people bowed to him. He tried to live a quiet life but he could not understand why the white staff never forced the dwarf to do his bidding. But you know why. As soon as he had his bell back, the black dwarf sewed it back on his cap and disappeared underground. The bell had much more power than the staff.”
When I finished, I tucked Hattie into her bed as if she were still a very little girl, smoothing the quilt and patting her hair. Just as she turned to go to sleep, she told me she loved me.
“I love you, too,” I said. Warmth spread through me. Whatever else might be true, Hattie loved me and the night had chased away all of my worries about Martha and my father. August would soon be on his way back, like someone carried out of the world of dreams.
I closed the door and came back into the kitchen and poured a little more hot water into the tub. I stripped and stepped in and sat with my arms wrapped around my knees. I thought of a black dwarf drilling down into the ground like a snake sliding into its hole. I dipped my hands into the water as if I could raise from the tub the sounds of the river at night, and the soft sounds of the oars as August pulled us toward shore.
In the morning, the trees dripped. I lay awake fully dressed with the blanket pulled up over my clothes as if I were already in exile from a land I did not love, as if a clear road were laid out before me, or a river that would take me to an ocean I had never seen. Then I heard someone’s hand on the glass, tapping lightly. I threw the blanket from the bed and went to the window. August stood in the yard looking up at me and my heart lifted fast when I saw him. He grinned and beckoned and then pointed at the yard behind the house. I smiled and held up one finger. Behind me, Martha stood in the doorway, a small black valise in hand. She lay this on the bed and put her palm flat on my back.
“Let me help you,” she said. She picked up my brush and began to brush my hair while I fastened the last two buttons on my dress. I could not bear to leave August waiting for one more minute in the yard. “Hurry up,” I said.
Martha laid her hand on my back again. “I can pin it if you stand still,” she said. Her voice was sharp but she smiled a little. It seemed that even she could not help but catch some of my excitement.
When my hair was twisted and pinned and my dress fastened, she sat on the edge of the bed. “This is your choice,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And you can make no other?”
“No.”
“Do you really think he said yes?”
“It does not matter.”
“So you will leave your family?”
I did not reply.
“Your responsibilities?” she said. She picked at the sheet and smoothed it and turned it and turned it. “Your duty?”
“What about his duty to us?”
“He does what a father is supposed to do,” she said.
“Martha,” I said. “He hit me. He kicked me.”
“You are not the first. And you will not be the last.”
“But that does not make it right,” I said. “Mother—”
“Shut up about that,” she said. Her voice rose. “Just shut up.”
“It was wrong,” I said.
“It was a terrible accident.”
“It was?”
“Yes,” she said. “It was.”
“Because that is what he told you.”
She made a smothered sound and began to weep. “Because that is the way of the world,” she said. “This is just what happens. You have to accept these things.”
“Do you really think that?”
“Do you really think that it will be different out there?” She waved her hand toward the wall. Her voice was thick, wet. “When you leave here?”
I felt my throat close. “Yes,” I said.
She groaned and mopped her face with her skirt. Then she reached over and unbuckled the peeling clasps on the valise and lifted it so that it spread open on the bed. The cloth on the inside hung in tatters. “Here,” she said. Her eyes were watery and dim. She had given up on me. “You can put your things in here.”
August sat smoking on the back steps. When he saw us, he flicked his cigarette into the wet yard and stood up. Then came the cries of what seemed to be hundreds of distant dogs. I looked up and saw an enormous V of geese winging north, each body dark against the wan light. The sound of wind which was not wind but was the sound of their rustling wings as they passed by the hundreds overhead. August took my suitcase and Martha put her arms around me. I leaned stiffly against her thin frame and she told me in a weak voice that she was sure I would be able to come home someday. Hattie came into the mudroom in her nightgown and asked what was going on. I leaned down and gave her a hug. She asked again. “What is going on?” she said. She pushed at the suitcase with her toe. “Are you going somewhere?” Then she leaned against the doorframe and Martha put her arm around her. August picked up my valise and took my hand and we walked out over the wet grass. I lifted the hem of my skirt so it would not drag in the mud and we turned and came along the side of the house. August squeezed my hand and I smiled up at him. I felt the wind rush through me as if it would lift me higher and higher and in that wide-open sky I would fly and never come down. It was almost impossible to believe and yet it was really happening. I had escaped. I was getting away. I was finally going to be free.
Out on the road in the early morning light we surprised a lone deer standing on the crest of earth that rose between the muddy wagon ruts. She stood and stared at us with a blank expression and then leapt away and flipped her white tail as she bounded into the underbrush. The world was filled with the sound of birds.
14
We followed the road along the interurban rails. The river gleamed silver as it snaked below the bluffs. We passed the ice factory where in midwinter men had laid out their iron grids and cut blocks of ice from the river and hoisted the blocks by wagon team onto the banks and from there dragged them to the sawdust rooms of ice cellars, where the blocks would stay whole until June. August took my hand as we came to the apothecary with its awning furled tight as a sail and then to the greengrocer’s, where the canvas was also rolled away and no barrels stood on the sidewalk. All of this was as u
nfamiliar to me as the shore of a new country. The place I would live with August. The place our lives would begin. Everything seemed strange and new and the world I had always known was now made up of parts that no longer fit together. My heart skipped and I skipped a little, too, just to keep time with it, and August laughed.
The sky grew brighter. The rain had greened the grass overnight and the trees that had been bare the day before were filmed with new leaves. Just past the bank, August turned into a narrow road and we walked past wooden buildings that grew smaller as we moved away from the center of town. Finally he stopped in front of a tearoom and set my valise on the ground.
“Are you hungry?” he said.
I shook my head. I had become too unreal in my escape to feel something as common as hunger. I was unanchored from everything, liberated from my father’s world. I did not want to spoil it with eating.
“Come on,” he said. His eyes sparkled. He took my hand and pushed on the door until it opened. “Just some coffee.”
We were the only ones there. We sat at a table with a blue-and-white-striped cloth under the front window. He ordered coffee and sweet rolls and then stretched his arms over his head and yawned. Then he looked at me and smiled and reached across the table and took my hands in his.
“Okay?” he said.
I grinned. “Okay,” I said, and laughed.
He looked around. “This is nice,” he said. “Right?” When I nodded, he smiled. “This is my plan,” he said. “I have a place for us. And before we go there we will go to the courthouse. It will all be legal.” He gave my hands a little shake and started to laugh. “We will be happy forever,” he said.
The idea flickered through me and grew stronger, like a promise already kept. The woman who ran the tearoom brought two china cups and two saucers and set these down in front of us. She came back with a coffeepot and a pitcher of milk and a bowl of sugar on a tray. She set the tray down between us and poured the coffee and then carried the coffeepot back to the rear of the tearoom, where a large stove was already hot. She stood at a table and pinched yeasted dough from a ball resting in a bowl. She laid the pieces out in front of her and flattened them into rectangles, which she spread with a mixture of cinnamon and sugar. She rolled the sheets into logs and twisted the logs into clover shapes and laid the shapes on a metal sheet. Then she slid the sheet into the oven.
The End of Always: A Novel Page 14