Painting the Light

by Sally Cabot Gunning

  “And then there’s the question of what you would do for food and clothing and shelter. Thinking of yourself, that is.”

  “Well, yes. That. It turns out I was better positioned in that regard before my marriage.”

  “And if there are children—”

  Well, of course. How foolish of Ida not to guess that. “How many?” she asked.

  “Two girls.” Henry looked out at the February sea and could not have been warmed by the sight. Ida shivered. Beside her, Henry felt it and jackknifed away from the lighthouse wall.

  “You’re cold.” He began to remove his coat, but Ida waved him still. She didn’t want his coat. She didn’t want Henry.

  That night Ida felt parts of her legs she didn’t know she owned; she woke to the throb and stayed awake to the rest of it—Henry, married Henry, with a wife he was reluctant to divorce, a wife Ida doubted he would divorce. And two children. But what did it matter to Ida? She was a new widow still attempting to grieve for her husband; she had no business riding around the island with a married man. She had no business accepting the loan of his wife’s bicycle.

  So Ida decided the thing in the middle of the night—neatly, painlessly—and woke in the morning again thinking of Henry. She didn’t understand all that it was that drew her, what it was that had drawn her to him that first day when he’d arrived at the gallery with his wife. With his wife. Did she hear herself? But why shouldn’t her mind return again and again to that day, that day of her first exhibit at the Guild, that day Mr. Morris had told her she’d gotten it just right, that day a stranger had called her work extraordinary . . .

  Yes, there was that. But in truth he might have finished that sentence in any number of ways: Extraordinary the way that painting says nothing. Extraordinary the way a prominent subject can get a third-rate work into a prestigious gallery. Extraordinary the way the ground overtakes the whole, no matter that Mr. Morris had decreed it just right. Ida knew nothing of Henry’s views on art. She knew nothing of Henry. But even so, she couldn’t picture any of those words escaping his mouth. Even so, he’d told her to paint the next Russell, which told Ida that even if he knew nothing about art, he knew something about artists. He knew something about her.

  And he was married. And Ida was newly widowed. Enough of it.

  Ida got out the bicycle the next morning and rode it into town to return it to Henry, return it to his wife, but she couldn’t help relishing that last moment of freedom. Before their marriage Ezra had spoken, not only of “his” farm, but of “his” horse and carriage. In truth it was Ruth’s horse and carriage, and Ruth had not proved amenable to lending it; if Ida wanted to go anywhere she walked, another strong contribution to her sense of feeling trapped. The freedom Ida felt now, with the two simple wheels under her, drew her to ride past the salvage company and out along the beach road, feeling everything ease in her as she felt the pull in her muscles, the wind against her face. She hadn’t realized how trapped, how strangled she’d felt until these few moments when she was free of it. Until she was about to lose the bicycle.

  Ida turned around. Back in town she saw that the Addie Todd had still not risen from the sea, and a group of workmen who should have been on the salvage lighter now stood idly on shore. She pulled up alongside the beach and wandered over; again, Chester Luce was among the crowd and she approached him as she had before; she imagined (or did she?) that he looked at her differently this time, but she refused to let it divert her.

  “A dispute with the owners over funds,” Luce explained. “They don’t want to leave in case word comes that it’s been resolved, but they don’t want to work if they won’t get paid.”

  Ida turned around to head back to her bicycle but behind her she heard a shout. She turned again and saw John Cottle stride up to George Amaral where he stood at the edge of the group, clamp a hand on his shoulder, and haul him around.

  “I told you, Amaral, you keep your wife out of my kitchen.”

  “And I told you, Cottle, my wife can go where she wants.”

  “And say what she wants?”

  “And damn well say what she wants.” Ida edged closer. This was George Amaral, the man who’d tried to shush his wife at Ezra’s funeral?

  “You want them voting, is that what you’re telling me?”

  Amaral laughed. “Never happen.”

  “Oh, you think not, do you? Have you heard your wife?”

  “I’ve heard her. And it looks like you think more of her talents than I do.”

  “I think plenty about her talents. She’s got my wife yapping at me across the dinner table, enough to curdle my chowder. This from a woman who never dared a cross word to me in all our marriage. What are you thinking, man? Letting your wife’s mouth run like that? You put a stop to it, or I will.”

  George Amaral took a step closer to Cottle. “Are you threatening my wife?”

  “I’m protecting my home! My peace! My—” Cottle lifted his head and saw Ida. “And what are you glaring at? Are you one of those too? One of those sufferages?”

  “I’m one of those who believes a wife should be free to speak without her husband’s permission,” Ida said. “Just as you should be free to speak without hers.”

  George Amaral pivoted to face Ida. He didn’t look all that thrilled with her defense, if that’s what it was, and after that one quick look to put the face to the voice he turned back to Cottle. “You leave my wife alone.” He strode off.

  Cottle hollered after him. “That’s what I’m saying! You leave my wife alone!”

  That’s done it, thought Ida, as every head in the group behind them swung around—Mrs. Cottle’s reputation ruined, and Rose Amaral about to become the victim of those patronizing whispers that always drift after a woman but never before her. She would have tea with Rose, she decided. Soon.

  But Cottle wasn’t yet through. As he turned back to the group of men on the beach it appeared that not a few were laughing at him, picking up on Amaral’s theme of women’s suffrage as a doomed cause. It took less than a minute for Cottle’s hackles to rise once more. He poked the nearest sniggering gentleman in the back. “Can you count, Chidwell?”

  “Can I count!”

  “Utah. Idaho. Colorado. Wyoming. Women vote in all those states already. If we don’t watch out, we’ll be peeling the potatoes while our wives are out running the country.” He whirled on Ida. “What are you smiling about? You think any bunch of fools can run the United States government?”

  “They’ve done it before.” More shouts, more laughs, again at Cottle’s expense.

  So Ida had made no friend that day.

  Ida returned to her bicycle, thoughts back on salvage now. Henry wasn’t in the office but his bicycle was; she recalled he’d mentioned inventorying the warehouse and tried there next, but still no Henry. She stood in the door and looked around; some order had risen from disorder, items now grouped into categories, unclaimed salvaged items separated from salvage equipment. Ida went over to the salvage equipment and poked around, wondering if the salvage company on the beach might want to purchase it, but she didn’t see much of anything that could possibly be worth anything. She was about to leave when she paused; why didn’t she see much of anything worth anything? For example, where was Mose’s dive suit? Ida rolled her eyes toward the ceiling; the salvage equipment was on the Cormorant, of course.

  Ida left the warehouse, returned to the office, and climbed the stairs to the apartment. From outside the door she could hear singing:

  Hot is the lava tide that pours

  Adown Vesuvius’ mountain

  And hot the stream that bubbles out

  From Iceland’s gushing fountain.

  And hot the boy’s ears boxed for doing

  That which he hadn’t oughter,

  But hotter still the love I feel

  For Squire Jones’s daughter.

  Ida rested her forehead against the door and listened until the song ended before knocking. When Henry opened the door her
face inexplicably heated; being inside a single man’s apartment sat high on her mother’s things one never does list. Soon enough though she was distracted by how much the apartment had changed; or more precisely, how much it had been cleaned: no dust and dirt and mouse droppings, no clothes festooning the chairs, no stray boots on the kitchen table; a kettle actually simmered on the tiny stove and an attenuated gray tiger cat skirted the perimeter of the room. Curiously, a newspaper image of the Newburgh impaling the Union Wharf had been tacked to the wall.

  Henry pointed to the cat. “I lured her in with a piece of bacon. I’m now down four mice.” He pointed again. The lower right-hand light on the pane of windows nearest the door had been knocked out and a thick piece of canvas hung over it. “So she can come and go as she pleases.”

  “You’re really settling in.”

  Henry peered at her. “This makes for a difficulty?”

  “No. No. I saw you’d sorted the warehouse and thought you might be finishing up, moving on.”

  “I’ve barely begun to sort the warehouse.”

  “I didn’t see Mose’s dive gear. It would be on the Cormorant?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “That burned boat may not be worth the expense of raising, but what of the gear?” Ida explained about the lull in the Addie Todd project. “Maybe they could use another job to fill in the time. We could give them a percentage of the salvage.” She had learned something from Ezra, after all.

  Henry insisted they take their bicycles to cross the street and coast down the single block to the shore, but since it was likely Ida’s last ride, she didn’t argue. They transacted the deal in fifteen minutes, a half-and-half split, settled on a handshake between Henry and Morgan, while Ida, the one whose idea it was, stood aside and watched with her hands hanging limp. When they returned to the bicycles, Henry pointed the other way, toward the beach road, and again Ida didn’t argue.

  They rode all the way to Cottage City, the smooth concrete roads a treat after the rougher going in Vineyard Haven. On the way back they stopped to rest on the lee side of a dune, against a piece of a wrecked dory no doubt washed up there during the gale.

  “Oliver on your mind?” Henry asked, pointing to Ida’s boot, which had begun to dig its own hole in the sand.

  “You’re the big expert, digging yourself all those holes. Or so you said.”

  Henry began to dig his own hole in silence. It was that silence that drew Ida to persist.

  “What holes have you dug yourself into, Mr. Barstow?”

  Without looking up, Henry spewed out one long string: a certain night at Duffy’s with Mose; another night at Duffy’s with Mose; a trip on the Cormorant in a storm; the carriage shop; the job of executor; he supposed he should now include his marriage . . . He stopped digging and looked hard at Ida. “But no, I can’t consider the job of executor as a hole.” He stood up and held out a hand for Ida.

  They rode back, Henry leading the way, continuing past the shop and up the hill to Ida’s, which meant that she couldn’t return the bicycle unless they rode back to the shop and Ida walked home. Ida pictured the scene: her pushing the bike at Henry, Henry pushing it back, an argument igniting; Ida had enjoyed the afternoon too much to end it in argument. If life with Ezra had taught her one thing it was that another day for arguing was always around the corner.

  12

  Ida woke again in the night, imagining sounds. Footsteps. Knocking. She and Bett and the gun made another circuit that revealed nothing, and Ida finally had to face up to a new groundless edginess in her, caused by . . . what? She’d never been so edgy when Ezra had gone off and she’d been alone. What had changed? The gold. It came to her as she returned to her bedroom and crossed by the closet to her bed. Ezra had been hiding that gold from someone, and now she’d decided that someone had come looking. But no one had. There were no footsteps, no knocking, no anything. Ida snuggled in with Bett and fell asleep only to wake an hour later to another sound that proved to be a branch ticking against a downstairs window.

  Despite her fatigue the next morning, Ida would have returned the bicycle right then if Hattie hadn’t called to say that Ruth was waiting with a contract for her to sign. This time there was no one digging holes in the yard; she asked Ruth as soon as they’d settled at the table, “Where’s Oliver?”

  “At the exchange with Hattie. I told her, ‘I’ve raised my child.’”

  Ida only hoped she hadn’t said it in front of the boy, but it was a thin hope. Ruth pushed the paper across the table to Ida. Ruth had kept to Ida’s figure regarding the percentage on the wool profits but declared it forfeit if Ida lost more than two sheep at lambing time.

  “Six,” Ida said.

  “Three.”

  “Five.”

  They went back and forth, Ruth growing heated, Ida staying calm, until the calmness wore Ruth down. They settled on no more than four lambs lost, but no matter the loss, 20 percent of the profits at the livestock sale. Ida made sure to include the provision that her presence at the farm was not required beyond the wool sale.

  As Ida rose to leave, Ruth said, “You were seen.”

  “Seen?”

  “You and that Barstow. Out riding around on bicycles.”

  “He’s teaching me.”

  “The bicycle is bad enough. Displaying your posterior like that. Skirts flying every which way. And then the matter of you barely widowed and him a married man.”

  “So. No need to worry, then.”

  Ruth stood up out of her chair and pointed at Ida. The storm that roiled her features took Ida aback. “I should like to know what your mother was thinking when she raised you up. Have you never heard the word manners? Or are you too ignorant to know what the word means? I won’t have you dishonoring his memory by getting called harlot all over town. Do you hear?”

  If there was one word Ida knew growing up it was the word manners, and in particular, manners when applied to one’s elders. And it was true, there was a time when Ida would never have spoken to someone like Ruth the way Ida now spoke to her. But somewhere along the way, after Ida’s parents had died, after she’d married Ezra, after she’d been snapped at by Ruth too many times to count, it had occurred to Ida that manners traveled in both directions. If Ruth wished to ignore the rules when she spoke to Ida, Ida could bloody well ignore them when she answered back. But what was the point—or better put, the gain—in jousting with Ruth? There was no need for another retort. There was only need for feet on the ground. Ida left.

  On Wednesday one of the ewes aborted. Ida knew because of the bloody tail, but she called Lem anyway to be sure. He cleaned up the animal and came in to wash; he looked at her shelves—all three painted now, and the splashboard and the stool—but said nothing. Ida wished he had—she was still trying to decide if she wanted to paint the table and chairs.

  “I hear you’re signing on with Ruth,” Lem said. He paused. “I hear other things too.”

  “If from Ruth, I hope you know enough—”

  “He has a wife, Ida.”

  “Who does?”

  “Are you getting cute with me now?”

  “I’ve already had this talk with Ruth, Lem. First it’s bicycling isn’t ladylike—”

  “It isn’t. Coming up that track to see you sprawled in the dirt—”

  “I must say I’d expected better of you, Lem.”

  “I might say the same of you, Ida.”

  Ida went to the door and opened it. “Thank you for stopping by.”

  “Only because there’s nothing for him to do while I’m working,” Hattie said. “And you seem to have free time on your hands.” She looked without looking at the bicycle leaning against the barn. Ida had never seen anyone master the look-without-looking as well as Hattie; the eyes didn’t shift directly left but rotated upward as if looking for rain, only sliding sideways on the way back down. But she wanted to ride that bicycle as much as Ida had; Ida could feel it. Since the day of the contract Ida had come to think something
better of Hattie; she’d also come to think something worse of Hattie’s life, stuck there with Ruth except for those few days of freedom at the telephone exchange. “I’ll give you a lesson on your way home,” Ida said.

  “Would you?”

  “I must warn you, your mother won’t like it. Or Lem Daggett, for that matter, but he doesn’t count.”

  Hattie’s gaze drifted from Ida to Oliver, who had run from the dog pen to the sheep pasture, scattering the sheep to the far end. He wandered next to Ida’s herb garden and started digging up the dirt with his boot.

  “You’ll mind him?” Hattie asked.

  “Don’t they have dirt at the telephone exchange?” But just then Ida noticed the perfect curve of Oliver’s neck as he bent over the ground, and the way the sun backlit his ear, turning it into a translucent shell. Perhaps she could sketch Oliver, paint Oliver, while he was distracted with his digging. “I’ll mind him,” Ida said.

  Ida handed Oliver the bucket of corn and led him to the chicken house. She showed him how to scatter the corn on the ground and to watch his feet as he did it. When the chickens were all busy pecking up corn kernels she walked Oliver into the coop and showed him how to feel in the nests for the eggs; winter production was slow, but Oliver located three eggs and set them meticulously in the basket. Next she took him to the pasture fence to look over the sheep.

  “We do this every day,” she said. “Even if it’s cold, or raining, or snowing, or—”

  “Hailing?”

  “Hailing,” Ida said. “We look over the flock to see if any are limping or sluggish—”

  “What’s sluggish?”

  “Moving slowly. Head hanging. Not eating. Lying down.”

  “That one’s lying down.” Oliver ran along the fence to get closer to the resting sheep and spooked it into rising and trotting off. He raced back to Ida. “Not sluggish?”