“Mind what?”
“My going to Duffy’s, Ida,” Ezra said, as if speaking to a child. “We’ve finished dinner.” Ezra peeled off bills and laid them on the table. He lifted his eyes and caught Ida’s look. “What is it? The city girl wants me to walk her home? All right, let’s get along.”
“Go,” Ida said. She pulled another bill out of Ezra’s hand. “I’m going to have coffee. And dessert.”
“You’ve got coffee and pie at the house.”
“Yes, I do, but right now I’m in the mood for someone else’s coffee. And cake.”
Ida turned to signal the waitress and by the time she’d turned again, Ezra had left.
Ida ordered a piece of yellow cake with butter frosting and a cup of coffee and another cup after that. She watched the few other diners—a table of six men, strangers to Ida, likely off one of the ships in the harbor, and a husband and wife she recognized who lived out along the county road but whose names, if she’d ever known them, had long escaped her. She gazed at the lanterns on the anchored boats, fighting the jangle of the coffee, attempting to stay unruffled. Calm. Ezra was right—they had finished dinner, and they would never stay to order dessert when Ida had an apple pie in the pie cupboard at home; neither did it made sense for Ezra to walk up the hill only to walk back down again a minute later. Even so, it rankled, a special night turned into a contentious one.
Ida must have been sitting there longer than she’d thought because Henry Barstow passed the window, looked in, saw her still sitting there, and stopped dead. He came in.
“I’m surprised to see you here. Ezra said you’d gone home. Is everything all right?”
“I’ve been enjoying the view.”
“Ah.” He turned to look out with her.
“You weren’t long at Duffy’s,” Ida said.
“I try to exit with my dignity intact.” He smiled. “And my pocketbook.”
“Ah. Ezra never minds leaving those things behind.”
“Or his wife?” Barstow looked away, looked back. “I’m sorry. It’s not my place to—”
“He wanted to walk me home. I told him I wished to stay on a bit, watch the lights come up on the ships. But now I’m ready to go.” Ida pushed back her chair and stood at the exact minute Barstow reached to help and Ida knocked into his arm, scattering some papers he’d been carrying. She leaned over to help collect the pages but by the time she’d gotten there he’d already deftly sorted them into a neat sheaf.
He straightened. “May I walk you home?”
The little dance with the papers had left them standing so close Ida imagined she could feel the heat from the lantern light reflected in his eyes. Extraordinary, he’d said in Boston, referring to her painting of Mrs. McKinley. On a few occasions, usually late and in the dark, Ida had wondered what he’d found so extraordinary about that work. Now she imagined them discussing it as they climbed the hill side by side, one of those deft hands under her elbow as they walked . . .
“No,” Ida said. “No thank you.”
“Please. I’m not just playing the gentleman. I’ve been hoping for a chance to talk to you about commissioning a painting.”
Ida felt her shoulders ease. A commission. No one could fault her for accepting a walk and a talk over a commission. And besides, who was there to fault her—the six strangers off the ships? The couple from out along the county road had long gone. Ida and Barstow set off down the street, side by side, step synced to step.
Ida had already learned that October on the Vineyard was never one thing—the sun could bake them one day and the wind could frost the grass the next. It was true the sun had already sunk, leaving nothing behind but a diffuse gold band at the very rim of the earth that flickered and dimmed with each step they took, but the wind was still soft and halfhearted, tipping the occasional leaf and then retreating to the treetops. Neither spoke, but neither seemed to mind; when Ida slowed to look at an early star, Henry stopped and looked with her. Without the forward motion Ida grew aware again of how close together they stood; she resumed walking at a quicker pace.
“You wanted to speak to me about a commission,” she said.
Henry didn’t speak for so long, she began to think she’d misunderstood him at the restaurant. “Mose and I grew up on a farm in Chilmark,” he said at last. “We had a good time on that farm when we were boys. But once we began to grow into ourselves we couldn’t wait to get out, get off, get on that boat. And before I managed to book a return trip, my father died.” Barstow cleared his throat. “Before he died, a photographer came to the farm and took a picture of my father working in the orchard. The photograph is fading out and there are other folks in it I don’t care about. I wonder—could you paint my father in his orchard?”
“I do studio portraits,” Ida said. “I don’t know about an orchard.”
“It’s mostly my father I want. Will you look at the photograph, at least?”
“Of course.”
They’d reached the track. The growing dark had brought out more stars but concealed the ground—not that the second part mattered since Ida was looking up at the stars anyway—but of course she would trip, and there it was, the hand under her elbow, light but firm, warm even through her sleeve.
“Whoa! Mind your feet.”
Ida fixed her eyes on the ground and picked up her pace once more, which separated elbow from hand. “Do you miss the Vineyard?” she asked.
“On nights like this,” Barstow said. He looked up at the sky as if to demonstrate the parts he missed and he tripped, but with no steadying hand at his elbow he went all the way down, measuring his whole long length in the dirt.
Ida bent over him. “Are you hurt?”
Henry didn’t answer, mostly, it would appear, because he was laughing. Laughing. If that had been Ezra he’d have bolted upright cursing the invisible root that had tripped him, the loose boot heel the cobbler hadn’t fixed properly, or Ida for whatever she’d said that had distracted him from minding his step or for tripping him up in the first place or just for bearing witness.
But when Henry stopped laughing and still didn’t move, Ida grew concerned. “Do you need help?”
“All kinds, no doubt, but I believe I see the Big Dipper emerging. God’s breath! Was that a shooting star or am I suffering from concussion? But as the odds are slim that you’re going to join me down here in the dirt I’d best get up.” He jackknifed upright, reclaimed her arm, pulled it through his, and locked it there with the opposite hand. “Now if I fall you go with me,” he said.
Ida laughed, and she laughed again, all alone, after he’d left her at her door, thinking of that ridiculously long shape lying in the dirt and grinning up at the stars, regretting not lying down in the dirt with him.
Now, at the salvage office, watching Henry Barstow’s hands a second time, remembering that other night and the feel of those hands, Ida flushed and stood up.
Henry stopped shuffling his papers. “Must you go? I’d hoped to repay you for that dinner.”
“No,” Ida said. “No thank you.”
She was lonely, that was all it was. But how dangerous, this loneliness! The last time she’d felt this lonely she’d run off and married a sheep farmer, and not a month ago she’d said to him, with as much feeling as she’d ever said anything to anyone: Go. Stay there forever. Now he was gone forever. Ida had seldom been lonely when Ezra was gone for a week at a time, the peace overriding any other emotion, but now the permanence of this new state left her feeling hollow, unstable, vulnerable, as if she’d never weathered a storm or chased off a fox or corralled an ornery sheep. She lay in bed remembering how Ezra used to rest his hand on her hip as they slept, remembering the hot weight of that hand and how content, how anchored she’d felt lying under it. She remembered how he’d smelled of what he’d eaten and drunk and worn and done and smoked, the smell of his life and parts of hers. She missed that smell. Certainly if she could miss a man’s smell, she must have loved him once? Must have been able to forgive him onc
e? But to deceive her about a late night at Duffy’s was one thing; to deceive her about the farm, to deceive her with Ruth . . .
Ida got up and went downstairs, as restless as a ewe about to lamb. What had Lem said? Ezra had signed over the deed to Ruth, yes, but he’d planned to buy it back. With Ida’s money, no doubt. So why hadn’t he? On their marriage, Ezra had been disgusted to find the Beacon Hill house heavily mortgaged; perhaps its sale and Ida’s family money hadn’t been enough for the farm and the boat and the business on Main Street, and he’d chosen to leave her homeless in the event of his death versus sacrificing his dream. In fairness, Ezra hadn’t chosen to die on the Portland, hadn’t chosen to leave Ida dependent on Ruth for her shelter, and yet Ida had to wonder now if she’d ever been anything but money to her husband. She thought back to the day they’d met, to Ezra’s eyes fixing on hers from all the way across the room, and again wondered—had they fixed on her heart or on her locket?
Ida circled to the desk, sat down, and rolled back the lid. She began to paw through the cubbyholes, looking for the only letters Ezra had ever written her, composed during that brief spell after their meeting when she was in Boston and he had returned to the island. There weren’t many letters, the meager number exhibiting how precipitous the courtship had been, the contents exhibiting that she’d been an easy enough mark. I wish you were here, he wrote in one. I see your eyes whenever I close mine, he wrote in another. Come, he wrote finally, as if he were commanding Bett, and she’d come, left home and career and what few friends she’d managed to keep after sinking into the solitude of her grief.
Ida combed through the rest of the papers in the desk: the farm book; a collection of business cards; the papers for the ram; some marine outfitter’s catalogs; bills and receipts; a sheet of letter paper, blank except for a Dear Sirs written across the top in Ezra’s hand before, presumably, he’d been interrupted. This was why she felt suspended, she realized; Ezra’s old world was still here, still intact, still waiting for him to return and finish his letter. What Ida needed was a good clear-out, a nice, deep line in the sand marking where she would leave the past and move into the future, whatever her future was.
Ida stuffed the business cards back in their cubbyhole in case she might find need of them. She saved the papers on the ram, the farm book, and the bills and receipts, but she took the letters and the catalogs and threw them on the floor next to the stove to use when lighting the next fire. She climbed the stairs and approached the closet again, ready now to face it. When her father and brothers died she’d given their clothes to a neighbor; when her mother died she’d kept her clothes and jewelry for herself, even the things that didn’t fit, even those she’d ruined with failed alterations. She wanted nothing of Ezra’s; she would ask Lem if he wanted anything, and if he didn’t, she’d take them to the Seamen’s Bethel to be donated to the shipwrecked sailors.
Ida opened the trunk that still sat in the middle of the room and spread her town clothes out on the bed. She began to fill it with Ezra’s clothing, shoes first, soles facing, as her mother had taught her, but when she got to the oiled jacket and wool sweater she rethought her decision to keep nothing—she’d already put those items to good use and might do so again. She folded the sweater on the shelf and hung the jacket back on its peg along with the best of her town clothes; she would spend her free time cleaning and mending them, getting them ready for Boston. She attempted to shove the trunk back into the closet until she could engage Lem and his wagon, but the trunk was heavier now that it was full of Ezra’s things, and she shoved it so hard it slammed into the rear wall, popping loose a piece of paneling. Ida pulled off her shoe, intending to bang the panel back into place, but as she bent low she saw that a piece of newspaper had been stuffed in behind the paneling. Ida lifted it out and felt something heavy inside. Lumpy. She unfolded it and a half dozen pebbles rolled out into her hand—rough, heavy, glittering. Too heavy. Too glittering. Too . . . gold.
7
The previous winter had set itself down hard, the ground frozen to rock, the track crusted with ice, the wind beating all the moisture out of Ida’s skin and hair. Island winter wasn’t as cold as Boston winter, but it was damper and grayer, and it was that gray that froze Ida inside. There seemed little point in looking out the window at nothing but gray or walking into town to exchange one gray for another gray; there seemed little point in even stoking the fire if the cold was within her.
Ezra was now home in the sense that he wasn’t off island, but they were so seldom within the same four walls that Ida had already established the habits of a woman living alone, not bothering to clear her mending from the chair or put away the drying rack next to the fire only to put it back out again. When Ezra blew through the kitchen door in the middle of the day, Ida looked up in surprise. His eyes were alight in a way that Ida had already come to dislike intensely; where she might normally have greeted him with whatever false warmth she could muster she remained silent, wary.
He began to speak before he’d closed the door. “Mose and I are going to the Klondike!”
Ida had heard of the Klondike, the river in the Canadian Yukon Territory that was panning out gold. She waited for the rest—this she’d learned to do before responding—and if nothing else it gave her time to shed what Ezra called her withering tone and come up with something less . . . well, less withering.
“This fellow came into Duffy’s—he’s going and he wants Mose and me to go with him. So we’re going.”
“Why?”
“Why! To get rich. What’s the matter with you? You’ve heard talk of all the gold.”
“Yes. And I’ve heard talk of all the people who died getting there.”
“That was winter. We’re looking to go in another month, as soon as it thaws.”
“Canada doesn’t thaw.”
“Canada thaws, Ida.”
“And what about the two dozen lambs you have coming due? You left the ram in with the ewes all year last year. Lem says this means they’ll start dropping any day now and go straight through till May.”
“Well, listen to you, the little sheep farmer. Lem’ll help—just fix him a bed in the barn—”
“Ezra.”
“Ida.” He had a way of mimicking her inflection to the decibel, and Ida knew better than to take it as a compliment. “This is the answer to your dreams. You’ll be a wealthy woman again; you can sit around and paint all day and pay someone to cook and clean; you can go to Europe and see all those famous painters in Paris you keep talking about.”
Once. She’d mentioned it once, the Salon and the famous and soon-to-be-famous artists who were invited to show their work there, an invitation that meant everything—everything—to the would-be artist. To join Sargent or Cassatt or the person who would become the next Sargent or Cassatt . . . to be the person who would become the next Sargent or Cassatt . . .
Ida shook her mind free of Paris and tried again. “You don’t know you’ll find gold. You don’t know you’ll even live to get there.”
“Lord, I never knew a woman to argue so hard against being rich. Well, you can thank me when I get back from the Yukon.”
Ida tried again over dinner. In bed. In the morning. She talked about the farm—Ezra’s family farm—with a warmth she didn’t feel, with a panic she did feel. She questioned the man who had asked Ezra and Mose along. Who is he? How well do you know him? What if he takes your money and disappears?
Looking back, Ida could barely believe she’d pushed on for so long, but at some point—Ida could no longer remember exactly what point—she’d stopped arguing, which allowed Ezra to stop arguing and proceed with his plans unimpeded, until one day Ida had overheard Mose and Ezra in their own argument, Mose questioning the dangers and expense of the journey, the character of the man from Duffy’s, the probability of actually finding gold. Ezra responded as if he’d never heard such concerns before, first incredulously, then angrily, but the subject of the Klondike disappeared from his conversation.
Now Ida stood half in and half out of the closet, fingering the nuggets. Ezra and Mose had not gone to the Yukon; where then had this gold come from? And why did Ezra feel the need to hide it behind a wood panel in the closet? Not to hide it from thieves, since Ezra left his pocketbook on the bedside table and the door unbolted at night. Was he hiding it from Mose, the gold come out of some salvage job and Ezra didn’t want to fork over his partner’s share? Or perhaps he was hiding it from creditors—Henry Barstow had said there wasn’t as much money as there should be, and maybe here was some of that money.
Or maybe he was just hiding it from Ida.
Ida’s thoughts had stalled there when a violent knocking erupted below. She peered out the window: Ruth, beating on her door with her stick. Ida hurried down and got there before the wood splintered; Ruth fell into the house red-faced from exertion. Or ire.
“I’d like to know when you started locking doors!”
“The day I realized I didn’t have to leave it open for Ezra anymore.” In fact, Ida had started locking the door the day she’d watched from the oxcart as Ruth opened it and walked in.
“Yes. Well. That’s just about the very subject I’ve come to talk about.” She pushed through to the parlor stove and sat down. Ida gave some thought to not following, but she did discover a stirring of something that was half curiosity and half alarm. What was Ruth cooking up now? She joined Ruth at the stove.
“It’s almost a month and we still haven’t marked my nephew’s passing. Even those Barstows who never even did a proper funeral for their parents, even that Barstow fellow put a nice notice in the paper for his brother.”
“What notice?”
“‘Moses Judah Barstow, late of Vineyard Haven, always with us.’ I’ve waited on you this long but no more. I talked to the Reverend Beetle and the service is set for Friday at one o’clock. I’m here as a courtesy, asking your preference on hymns and any words you’d like spoken. You have no folk and not much I can see in the way of friends, but there are people on this island who want to pay their respects to a good man gone and they’ll have their chance Friday at one.” She threw it out as a challenge, as if Ida planned to argue some part of that sentence, but Ida didn’t. She could listen to Ruth’s plans as if from a distance, as if it had nothing to do with her.
Painting the Light Page 6