He imagined the Cropsey girls in their rented dollhouse. How were they to have the breadth of mind a man might, who was out in the world and knew better? For all their book learning, what did they know of a hard day’s honest labor, hoisting timbers and blacking hulls like Jim did? They begrudged a man a dram of relief, but took the gifts his wages bought, every time. They heard whatever some fool preacher said, and couldn’t distinguish the gold from the pig shit. He began to pity Nell as he might a child. And who could stay angry at a child?
He rolled a cigarette as he walked, slowing for the tricky part of pouring the loose tobacco into the paper. Lighting it, he amused himself by blowing blue fumes straight into the air, trailing them behind like a locomotive, and thought, “Who am I fooling?” In truth, he loved every moment at Seven Pines. There was an air of pleasing civility about the Cropseys, an industry of constant improvement in mind, that he had never experienced in his home. Just being around them made him feel the rusty gates of possibility creak, crack, and begin to open on what lay beyond.
The girls were all beautiful in their ways, from Ollie’s elegance to Lettie’s steady, dimpled smile to the way Nell fit just so under his shoulder. Yet they were more than just pretty faces to him. Each represented a distinct inspiration, each the seed of a different future he might imagine for himself. He envisioned how the long lines of Mrs. Olive Wilcox would reflect well on him, coming to the door to welcome their guests. A half-dozen children surrounded him on the lawn with Mrs. Carrie Wilcox, as she unpacked roast chicken from a wicker basket. And he imagined Mrs. Ella Maud Wilcox filling their cab with packages from the shops of St. Louis. Out of breath, glowing softly with perspiration, she would lean in to kiss him, and ask about his day.
His reverie ended when he reached his mother’s house. He found her at the stove, boiling hunks of bread in a cast iron pot. He gave her a kiss on the cheek and joined her as she stared into the roiling water.
“Testing again?” he asked.
“There’s a plaster taste in everything that bakery makes,” replied Martha Wilcox.
He broke off a piece and took a bite. When she stared at him, expecting his opinion, he just grinned and kissed her again.
“You’re a damn fool,” she said. “I don’t know what that girl sees in you.”
“Language, dear mother.”
After their quarrel Nell didn’t see Jim for the rest of the week. Roy Crawford, a boy who had lately began to pay court to Ollie, came over twice. They sat in the parlor, batting pleasantries between them. He was a quiet presence, polite and chivalrous and without any of Jim Wilcox’s sharp edges, and she felt she should be nice to him. He worked at one of the oyster shacks on the other side of the river, so his hands always smelled of shellfish, and he had bandages on his fingers from cuts he got handling them. He brought iced buckets of oysters to Seven Pines on Saturdays.
Nell stayed alone in the dining room at her needle and thread. Ollie kept one eye on her, watching as Nell’s languor deepened and she left off sewing altogether, just gazing out the windows. And when she could take her sister’s bereft mood no longer, she politely dismissed Roy.
“Lose something out there?” she asked Nell.
“I don’t know where I get my certainty. And I definitely don’t know where it goes when I need it.”
She approached Nell from behind and retied her sagging chignon. “You know, there are other boys in this place. I bet any number would love to come over here.”
“Do you think I was rude to him?”
“Was he rude to you?”
She looked at Ollie over her shoulder, brow arched, blue eye frosty.
“Wouldn’t you know?” Nell asked. “You were listening, weren’t you?”
Ollie felt her arms drop, letting Nell’s hair fall loose. She blushed.
“Of course not.”
“Oh don’t be a ninny. I don’t care. Just tell me: was I wrong?”
Being caught out like this so mortified Ollie she could barely speak. It took her a moment to get her mouth working again, during which she felt the impulse to atone by saying the opposite of what she wanted.
“Not rude. Maybe you put him in a position where he could nothing but refuse. As a man.”
Nell turned back to the window: “Of course I did that. I even knew it at the time, but I kept on doing it.”
The sisters fell silent, and Ollie went back to tying Nell’s hair. But before she could finish, Nell spun about and hugged her.
“What’s this for?”
As that gingery scent filled her nostrils, and Ollie felt the softness of Nell’s neck against her cheek, she felt herself sinking. She pulled back instead of letting herself linger there.
“It is for being my sweet sister,” Nell said.
They didn’t speak of Jim until the following Sunday. After supper was done, and the plates washed and put back on their shelves, and the leftovers wrapped and placed among the blocks in the icebox, Ollie slipped outside and behind the work shed. There, under the cover of a magnolia, she found Nell standing high on her toes, studying the remains of one of the blossoms, a cigarette dangling from her lips.
Ollie took the butt from Nell’s mouth and leaned against the wall. She took long drags, letting out profuse puffs because she didn’t fully inhale and liked to watch the smoke distribute on the air.
“Did Jim come by today?” she asked.
“Why are you asking me? Wouldn’t he be here to see you?”
“You’d think. But he's been paying more attention to Carrie these days. I suppose he wants to make me jealous.”
They laughed—until the sound caught in Nell’s throat.
“He’s so obvious,” she said, “but he’s trying.”
“If he wants to be with Carrie, let him. Why must you take his bait?”
“I’m not taking it.”
“Take this from your elder sister: you’ll never get anywhere if you don’t stick to your decisions. You must stay strong. Sooner or later, he’ll understand what’s best.”
“I know. But…”
“There’s always a ‘but’ with you.”
Nell took back the cigarette and fell against the shed. There was an inquiring look on her face that made Ollie self-conscious.
“What is it?”
“I don’t think I noticed until now,” said Nell, “that you are getting to be more and more like him.” And the way she flicked her eyes toward the house, she knew that by “him” she meant their father.
Ollie soon learned the extent of Nell’s strength. Coming back from downtown, she turned into the yard at Seven Pines and drew up short. For there, sitting on the porch together, were Nell and Jim Wilcox.
They lounged in adjoining chairs. Nell had her arm slung across Jim’s lap, and Jim was stroking it as one would a contented cat. It took Nell a moment to notice Ollie, but when she did she quickly pulled her arm back and straightened up. She wore a chagrined look as Ollie approached.
“Well hello there, you. Buy anything nice?”
Ollie glanced at Jim as she mounted the steps. Jim stared back with a faint smile that seemed just on the right side of the line between polite and defiant. He wore no fancy cologne today; as she passed, her skirts brushed him, and wafted up the distinctive smells of turpentine and grease.
“Afternoon, Miss Olive,” he said.
“Afternoon, Jim,” she replied, nostrils pinched.
She went inside without acknowledging Nell.
That night, Olive went to bed early. Nell joined her, and lay staring at the ceiling for a while. She could tell from Olive’s breathing that she wasn’t sleeping.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Nell.
Ollie was silent.
“You can upbraid me if you want,” the other went on. “I deserve it. I was weak, I own it. He came here with a piglet. A piglet! And he’d dressed the little thing just the way he dresses himself, with that kerchief. Well, when I saw that little piggy Jim, what could I say? ‘
You’re right to see me like this,’ he said. The damn fool, he knows exactly how to talk to me. What could I have done?”
Ollie fought her impulse to answer, but lost.
“You could have stuck with what we agreed.”
“I know, I’m sorry. Just don’t be mad at me for not being as strong as you.”
They lay silent for as long as it took for the horned owl in the magnolia to hoot three times. Then Ollie reached back and patted Nell’s hand.
“It’s all right,” she said. “Go to sleep.”
Yet it wasn’t all right. The entire affair upset Ollie, and dominated her thoughts in a way that she resented—which in turn made it preoccupy her more. It should have been such a small thing, to brush this irritant away, this boy who was so unsuited to Nell. Girls rid themselves of boys all the time, didn’t they? And yet here he was, reclining on her porch, flashing impertinent looks. If she had been a conniving person—a truly calculating villainess—she might have come up with more creative ways to discredit him in Nell’s eyes. But she was nothing like that. All she had was to appeal to her sister’s rational nature.
“At least I will not hear of any quarrels for a while,” she told herself. When Nell and Jim had reunited in the past, it was usually followed by a few months’ peace, as Jim reverted to his best behavior and Nell was temporarily in a forgiving mood.
But this honeymoon lasted only through the end of October. That evening, before supper, Nell looked at her in that way that suggested they meet behind the shed. When Ollie got there, Nell was pacing.
“Do you know what he did now?” she asked.
Ollie shrugged.
“We were in town, outside the Bee Hive. I had to go into my bag, and do you know what I found there? Do you know?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“A frog. A disgusting, warty, wet frog…”
Ollie burst out laughing. She laughed so hard she felt her balance slip, and had to lean against the wall. Nell fumed as she watched her sister convulse.
“Yes, go ahead. Enjoy yourself!”
“I’m sorry,” Ollie gasped. “I really shouldn’t. I shouldn’t—”
“No you shouldn’t. I suppose I deserve it.”
“I should say so! Did he confess to it?”
“Gladly! He thought it was ever so funny! To make me scream like that, in the middle of a busy street…”
Ollie would have indulged in her vindication longer, but she could see that Nell was close to the limit of her humiliation. She straightened.
“So what did you do?”
“I made him take me home.”
“What do you want to do now?”
“It’s not only what I want to do,” she replied. “It’s what you must do too.”
Puzzled, Ollie shook her head.
“A man like that…isn’t a man yet. And I can’t very well wait for him to grow up. This time I’m going to drop him. It’s time to do the necessary…”
Nell took Ollie’s hand and pressed it to her breast.
“…and I need you to promise me: if I become weak again, I want you to stop me. Any way you can—”
“My dear, I can’t. I don’t want that responsibility…”
“You must! Argue with me! Divert me! Sit on me if you have to! You’ve always been strong.”
Ollie withdrew her hand. She would not have denied a certain relief in being proven right, but this turn of things filled her with anxiety.
“I need you to promise me,” said Nell.
“I…Nell…”
“Promise!”
“What are you girls doing out there…?” Mary Cropsey cried from the kitchen stairs. “I can hear you talking!”
Nell pulled Ollie close, their noses touching. “You will promise,” she whispered, and squeezed her hand. Then she twisted away and was gone.
The Shed
I.
Oh, swift flowing river, a secret you hold,
Way down in the depths of the waters so cold
Oh be merciful, river, hark to our prayer,
And tell us who gave to your pitying care,
The fair girl whose story so sad has been told,
Stole away in the night, a lamb from the fold.
Whose treacherous hand dealt the villainous blow?
The secret, oh river, you surely must know…
—from a poem by Jeannette Crapsey (January 8, 1902)
Mary Cropsey kept watch in the turret from the day Nell disappeared. The tower was like the rooftop platforms some architects put on top of seaside houses. “Widow’s walks”, they called them, though in truth she had never seen a widow or a wife of any kind cross those promenades, looking out for their husbands missing at sea. She objected to the term. To consecrate a mere piece of carpentry to such loss, to grief, struck her as indecent. Especially now, under these circumstances.
She hardly looked at the river in the years they had lived at Seven Pines. To a mother, it was either a byway devoted to commerce, and therefore the province of husbands, or a venue for leisure, which placed it in the sphere of her children. At the same time there had always seemed something hostile about it. Its syrupy water oozed from the swamp, impenetrable to light. The wind did not raise it, but furrowed its surface, making it darker still. Heavy creatures slid beneath, blank-eyed and oily. The thought of her dear Nell among them was unthinkable, intolerable. She thought of nothing else.
Thoughts were the least of the things she was prepared to sacrifice. When the horror struck, it was her first instinct to mortify herself. If Nell’s absence was to be redeemed, it could only be by her mother’s vanishing—in spirit if not in physical fact. If He demanded her eyes, she would give her eyes. If it was to be her life, she would shed a tear for her surviving children, but go forth gladly. There would always be time for her husband to marry again.
The single thing she begrudged the Lord was her recollection. Mary Cropsey was two months gone before it occurred to her that she would have her fourth child; where previous indispositions had assaulted her body, Nell had pleasantly manifested within her, warm and indistinct. When she was born, her beauty reduced all to inarticulate wonder. “Ah,” said the doctor as he toweled the blood from her tiny face. “Oh,” said her husband when she was presented, swaddled in down. When she drowsed and drifted away, the adults marveled at this accomplishment.
This is how she chose to remember Nell’s infancy, in this twilit glow. She could do no more than this, still and watching from her helpless vantage, the river shuffling heedlessly to sea. The hours passed and the shadows swiveled around her. Her daughters came up to hold her hand, or to offer food. A chamberpot was left under her seat—by whom she did not notice—but her fast halted her functions, until not even her brief sips of water passed through her. Staring at the shimmering water, she lost all feel for her materiality, or that of the house, until she became no more than pure longing. She was sad and shattered upon the air.
She abruptly resumed corporeality when she saw them throw sticks of dynamite into the river. The explosions split the river’s grape-like skin. Blossoms of vapor rose that seemed pretty until the concussions shook the turret. She screamed. Feet pounded the staircase, and she cried “What have they done to my poor Nell?” as they took her by the arms and tried to drag her down the stairs. She was weak, but would not cooperate. Her husband cursed her in the presence of their children. She still would not relent, until at last they gave up, and led her back to her chair, which she seized as if overboard and grasping the last piece of flotsam.
In the middle of December she woke to witness the season’s first snow. Small flakes distributed over the land and water, falling in straight lines as if in a hurry to reach the earth. The far shore of the river dissolved in the crowded air; a crusty mantel formed on the ground, like the residue on the bottom of a pot left too long on the stove. A single pair of wheel-tracks marked the street, fading as the snow covered them.
Her brother-in-law, whom she followed the
children in calling “Uncle Hen”, came out in the early morning, wearing his boots and his nightshirt and no hat. He walked with a shuffle, as if reluctant to lift his feet, and paused at the side of the road. For a moment he gazed into the foggy expanse that hid the river. Then he raised his arms above his head. He seemed beseeching, enjoining God, and the gesture gratified her for a moment; she felt not so alone in her ordeal.
But then his hands clawed further into the air, and she realized his posture was nothing more than a morning stretch. Higher, and the hem of his nightshirt exposed the ropey cords behind his knees. When he was done, he turned back, stepping precisely in his own tracks on his return.
She could tell if it was freezing outside by the fog of her exhalations on the windows. Later that day the glass cleared and the sun came out. The residue of snow gleamed, until it dissolved into the sickly green of the winter grass, and she knew the temperature had risen. “Here one minute, gone the next,” she muttered.
“What did you say, Mama?” asked Lett, who had been sitting behind her silently.
“Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.”
“Oh Mama—”
She broke her vigil to sit for Christmas dinner. A table lined with expectant faces greeted her as she entered the dining room. Her regular place was waiting for her; William Cropsey regarded her from the head of the table, with no expression. When she took her seat on his left hand he indicated the blessing would commence by bowing his head. All the Cropseys joined hands—except for Olive and William Douglas, who were separated by the seat usually taken by Nell. It was left empty.
“In Thee, O God,” Cropsey began, “we live and move and have our being. Thou didst create us, and Thou dost uphold us, and without Thee we are nothing. We bless Thee for this food, the token of Thy continued care for us. We take it as a gift from Thy hand of love, and we pray Thee for wisdom, that we may spend the strength it gives us in ways that will please Thee best…”
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