Painting the Light

by Sally Cabot Gunning

  And just how did one do that? Ida wondered.

  Ida took off her travel suit and hung it up for brushing; she unpacked the heliotrope and mauve with a sigh. She could feel the grit of the train on her skin, but she would have to wash later; she had work to do. Outside again, she collected Bett and loosed her in the pasture with the ancient cry: Away! The dog swung wide to the left and got the sheep well grouped; Ida’s Bring ’em here drove them to the gate and they poured through into the near, small pasture where Ida could keep a closer watch over the flock. She gave Bett a That’ll do, and the dog stood down. They walked together inside—the nights that Bett spent in the yard were few now—but after a good run she usually settled calmly at Ida’s feet and got to work shedding fur over everything Ida owned. It was a price she was willing to pay for the soft eyes on her whenever she moved, for the touch of warmth against her at night, for the shared sighs.

  Ida rose before dawn the next morning and made her own restless circle of the pasture, looking out for the signs Lem had mentioned, but all was calm. She checked the ewe and lamb in the pen and spent the rest of the day catching up on farm and house chores but made time at midafternoon to pack up her sketch pad and wheel out the bicycle. If she planned to return to the Boston art world, she needed art that would sell in Boston. But what?

  The wind chased Ida down the track and she let it direct her; it buffeted her all the way to the shore and deposited her on the beach, where the remnants of last winter’s gale still lingered in stray bits of wreckage, eroded dune, the distant, crooked wharf. It struck Ida that this was just the thing for her to sketch—the storm was well known in Boston and this would serve as a record of it. If she captured what she saw now, if she then went back and attempted to recall what she’d seen then . . . She propped her bicycle against a nearby stone wall, found a rock facing east, and began to sketch.

  It began well. Surprisingly so. The scene took naturally to her charcoal; the black and white desolation flowed viscerally over the page, but when she went back in with a few destructive, hacking strokes symbolizing the storm’s rage she overdid it, allowing her own anger to creep in. At Ezra. At Henry. At herself for marrying Ezra in the first place, for letting Henry’s new distance upset her so. At the end of an hour, Ida was chilled, exhausted, and less and less happy with her efforts; she packed up and set off for home. Still distracted, still unhappy, she soon came up with another reason for her foul mood: forgetting her usual caution she tangled her skirt in her chain and toppled into the sedge, where she spent the last half hour of daylight picking out the cloth.

  Ida ate cold mutton for dinner, cleaned up the kitchen, and climbed the stairs, trailed by Bett; the hip she’d landed on when she fell had begun to ache, and she was looking forward to dousing the lamp and getting straight into bed, but when she saw the torn skirt she’d left lying on the bed she roused. She rifled the trunk for a pair of Ezra’s pants in a similar tweed, thinking to lay in a patch, but instead found herself carrying the skirt, pants, and oil lamp into the empty studio where her sewing machine still sat. Ezra had bought her that machine, an unusually thoughtful gift, or it would have been, if it hadn’t come on the heels of one or another caught-out lie, the exact lie now escaping her.

  Ida found a roll of tracing paper and ripped off a large swath. She began to draw, everything she remembered from the bifurcated skirt she’d seen in Boston. She ripped apart both garments and pieced them back together, Ezra’s pants adding the material for the needed gusset that would enclose the legs. When Ida had finished, the result looked more like a baggy pair of men’s trousers than a fashionable bicycling skirt, but she walked the room delighted with the way each leg moved freely within its own casing, the way the hem fell only to the top of her boots and no farther.

  Next morning, after Ida finished checking the sheep and tending to the other animals, she put on the skirt—or trousers—and went to the barn for her bicycle. She’d just mounted it for a test run when Ruth, Hattie, and Oliver came down the hill. Oliver scooted off to the pasture fence, but Ruth and Hattie came straight for Ida. She dismounted.

  “What on earth are you wearing?” Ruth said.

  “A bicycle skirt.”

  “Don’t tell me that thing goes out in public.”

  “Only when it’s on top of a bicycle.” Ida spread her legs apart, displaying the clever gusset. “This will keep me from breaking my neck.”

  Ruth looked as if she preferred the option of the broken neck. She stalked off after Oliver. Hattie remained. She pointed to Oliver where he hung on the gate, calling in vain to the sheep that had scattered to the far side of the pasture at his approach.

  “It’s good for him to be here.”

  Ida looked at the boy. “Do you know, I like having him here.”

  “I’m glad. I thought you should know him.”

  Ida looked at Hattie. “Why? Why did you think I should know him?”

  Hattie looked away.

  Ida looked again at Oliver, at that blocky little body, the wide-set eyes, the brows that angled upward toward the nose as if always in question.

  “Hattie. Why should I know him?”

  Hattie made no answer.

  “He’s Ezra’s, isn’t he?”

  Hattie’s head snapped up.

  “Isn’t he?”

  Hattie nodded.

  “With his own cousin.”

  “Second cousin once removed. No one counts that.”

  Ida looked from the boy to Hattie; suddenly the woman appeared deeper, darker, stranger. Ida opened her mouth to ask the questions that roiled through her head: Why didn’t you tell me? Does Ruth know? Does Oliver? Does Ezra?

  Ida asked that last one first.

  “Oh, he knew. He just didn’t admit it.”

  “Did he provide for him?”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  “You never asked him? You never once said, how’s Oliver, or where’s he living, or does he need clothes, or—”

  Hattie raised her chin. “How could I ask any of that when Ezra never admitted it?”

  “And Oliver? What’s he been told?”

  “That’s the odd thing. Nothing. One day he just made up this father of his and when no one told him otherwise he stuck to it.”

  “And Ruth?”

  “Suspects, I think. I see her looking at him sometimes, not in a happy way, and she snaps at him all the time. She wants him out of her sight. I’m just as glad to oblige her.”

  “This grandmother—”

  “She’s having some kind of operation next week. We’ll see after that. I’d offer to keep him anyway, but with Ruth—”

  Ruth. Ida was sick to death of Ruth. When the old woman left the fence to return to them, Ida swerved wide and joined Oliver.

  The boy pointed to three sheep standing grouped around a tree stump, picking off the lichen. “The others don’t like them.”

  “Of course they do,” Ida said, “but they’re their own family—the grandmother, the daughter, the granddaughter.” Or at least Ida thought they were.

  “My father has sheep,” Oliver said.

  “Come,” Ida said, “I have something to show you.”

  The boy stood at the edge of the barn stall, looking from the lamb to Ida and back at the lamb again, beaming.

  “Can I touch it?”

  “No. His mother won’t like it.”

  Oliver watched the lamb nurse in silence for a time. “My mother died,” he said.

  “So did mine.”

  Oliver looked up at Ida with new interest.

  “Come along,” she said.

  They rejoined Ruth and Hattie. “You’ve got a ewe ready to drop,” Ruth said.

  “I’m aware.”

  “Well, I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Ida waved at the sheep. “I hope they do.”

  Ruth, Hattie, and Oliver prepared to start up the track, but with a skill Bett would have envied, Ida cut Hattie from the group and held he
r back. “You need to tell that boy who his father is and that he’s dead.”

  “Why? It won’t make him feel any better.”

  “Maybe it won’t, but it will save him a lifetime of looking in the face of every stranger. A lifetime of lying.”

  “Boys lie. They outgrow it.”

  Hattie started to walk on, but Ida caught her arm. “I mean it. Now, while it’s almost fresh news. Not a year from now when it’s turned into another ugly secret. I’m warning you; if you don’t do it, I will.”

  Now, only now, did Ida remember. She’d never met Oliver’s mother, Ezra’s cousin Mary Nye, but the first time Ida heard the name, Hattie had whispered it to Ezra—supposedly out of Ida’s hearing—at their wedding.

  “I was thinking of having Mary Nye’s boy here for a visit come summer.”

  Ida distinctly recalled Ezra’s answer because his tone had changed so abruptly, just as Ida’s ears had perked up when Hattie had dropped her own tone to that whisper. But Ezra’s voice had turned the other way, each word dropping, distinct and heavy as a stone—a warning. “He’ll arrive when I’m gone.”

  “I’m not sure just when—”

  “When I’m gone, Hattie.”

  But of course Ida never understood the warning at the time, although Hattie must have; Oliver never visited the island while Ezra was alive.

  The ewe ready to drop was Queen. Ida watched her move with faltering steps along the wall, head lowered, sides heaving. Most do fine on their own, Lem had told her, and Ida repeated it to herself as she stood her vigil. The ewe dropped down, got up, dropped again and stayed there, raising her head and throwing it back with each contraction. The water bag appeared, then the hoofs, then the nose, and then the rest of it; Queen’s head whipped around to break the sac and lick the mucus from its nose. The lamb shuddered, took its first breath, and stumbled to its knees. Queen kept lapping, washing down every inch of the lamb until it was thoroughly cleaned before she nudged it toward her bulging udder. “Oh, you sweet, sweet thing,” Ida said out loud. The ewe’s head swung around to look at her.

  “You too,” Ida told her.

  Ruth appeared first, alone this time. Ida watched from the kitchen window as she went to the paddock, spied the new lamb, and stormed toward the house. Ida met her with the door open.

  “I expect to be told when a lamb is birthed.”

  “Oh,” Ida said sweetly. “I didn’t know that. The count is two so far, alive and well.”

  “I’ll be keeping my own count, thank you.”

  “Fine. What’s your method? I like to start at one.”

  Ruth leaned in. “You think to amuse me? You don’t, you know.”

  I think to amuse me, Ida thought, but of late it was getting harder to do.

  Lem was next, coming up the track unsummoned. He’d told Ida the lambing was now her responsibility, but he seemed as unwilling as Ruth to trust it to her; he admired the new lamb but questioned why the pair in the barn hadn’t been returned to pasture, pointed out the ewes he felt were nearest to birthing, and reminded her—again—of the signs to watch for. But the difference between Lem and Ruth was considerable; Ida knew enough to listen when Lem spoke. She returned the barn animals to pasture and watched the pair of new lambs bounce off in a wild game of tag that soon turned into king-of-the-hill over a twelve-inch tuft of earth.

  “Two down,” Lem said.

  She listened and heard nothing in Lem’s words but the words, and they fell on her light as a cloud.

  “Coffee,” she said, not like a question.

  They sat at the kitchen table talking sheep until Hattie arrived with Oliver. Ida looked her question at Hattie; Hattie responded with a shake of the head. Lem rose. “Would you like a lift to the exchange, Hattie?”

  “Why, yes, thank you, Lem.” Before she climbed into Lem’s wagon, she drew close to Ida. “You tell him,” she said.

  18

  Ida saw and heard nothing of Henry for a week. It worried her into fitful sleep, leaving her awake and pondering if Henry had been that angry by her lack of trust or if he was ill or if he’d gone back to New Bedford to his real life. In the night, every possibility seemed likely; in daylight only one did: Henry, angry.

  But in daylight Ida was busy. The previous year Ida noted that the lambs came along on a bell curve, first a few and then a few more and then a whole rush of them until it trickled out at the end of April. During the next week Ida woke to find two new lambs, watched another drop, and called Lem over one that wouldn’t.

  “Give it two hours,” Lem said, but at an hour and forty-five minutes Ida went back to the phone; it would take him fifteen more to get there, she reasoned.

  Lem arrived in ten; in less than two he’d clambered out of the wagon, stripped off his shirt, and felt inside the ewe.

  “One nose, one hoof.”

  So there was the trouble; nose and both hooves had to exit together. Lem slid around inside the ewe until he found the other tiny hoof and guided it out; he took hold of each leg and applied gentle traction as the ewe heaved, easing out the lamb. Ida was so elated she gave Lem a hug that bloodied her coat, the feel of his bare back reminding her belatedly that this was not a thing she should be doing, but Lem himself seemed unperturbed. “Good you called,” he said.

  After he left Ida made a final circle of the pasture, went inside to sponge off her coat, and still feeling the good outcome of one phone call, decided to make another.

  He answered the phone full of business. “Henry Barstow.”

  “Come by the farm,” Ida said. “I have something to show you. Six of them, in fact.”

  “I’m tied up just now.” The words, the line, felt dead.

  “That’s all right. Tomorrow then. They won’t grow up overnight.”

  “Lambs? Congratulations. But I did want to speak with you. I’ve sold the Boston office furniture and terminated the lease. Someone’s coming to look over the warehouse goods next week.”

  “Well, then . . . well done.”

  “And you. Well done to you. I’ll get up as soon as I can.”

  He hung up.

  Congratulations . . . tied up . . . well done to you. All right, then, something was wrong, and Ida doubted it had anything to do with ill health. She’d apologized for keeping the gold a secret in Boston, but if he was going to stay angry she was going to get angry. Now that Ida thought of it, she was angry. Having to guess at Ezra’s moods had tired her straight through; she was done with it.

  Ida changed into her bicycle skirt, collected her bicycle, and rode into town, pumping the bicycle and her anger with the same stroke. She opened the office door to Henry’s bicycle but no Henry. She tried the warehouse, but no Henry. She climbed the stairs to the apartment and knocked; when a woman opened the door Ida stepped back.

  “Yes?”

  Ida well remembered Perry Barstow, but clearly Perry didn’t remember Ida. “I’m Mrs. Pease,” Ida said. “I have business with Mr. Barstow.”

  “Ah! Mrs. Pease and the never-ending estate business. I told Henry, even dead we continue to wait on his brother.” She turned around, skirt in a careless whirl around her long legs, just as Henry entered the room and fixed his eyes on Ida. What was that look? Beyond surprise. A warning, perhaps? Perry turned to face Ida again. “I’m sorry, dear. What did you say your name was?”

  “Ida Pease,” Henry said. “Hello, Ida. We can talk in the office.”

  He approached the door as if to walk through it, as if to walk Ida downstairs, as if to do what he’d just said he’d do—talk to her in the office—but Ida held up her hand. “You’re busy,” she said. “We’ll talk another time.”

  Ida exited the building, turned left for home, about-faced, and turned right for Tilton’s hardware. Tilton actually gave her a nod as she entered, so she must not have looked as dangerous as she felt.

  “I need paint.”

  “More of the ochre?”

  So he’d remembered. But ochre wasn’t the color of rage. “Brick
red,” she said. “My husband bought some from you two years ago or so. I can bring in the can—”

  “No need.” Tilton disappeared and returned with a new can. “Only one brick red.”

  But so many colors for rage; Ida saw them in a kaleidoscope before her eyes all the way home. She wasn’t raging at Henry: he’d done nothing but cohabit with his lawful wife. She was raging at herself for forgetting about the wife. Oh, Lem, she thought, why don’t I listen harder when you speak?

  Most ewes liked to deliver near daylight, but not all of them. Ida saw it as soon as she crested the hill: the distressed animal lying on its side, the swollen lamb’s head protruding from her, the lamb’s eyes slits, its tongue blue. Again, Ida at a loss. Again, the call to Lem.

  He managed to get there in nine minutes this time. “This calls for a smaller hand than mine,” Lem said.

  Ida stripped off her jacket and rolled her sleeve over her shoulder. Lem coached her on how to slip her fingers into the hollow below the throat, feel her way past the shoulder, and push and pull until the head shrank back and the legs came forward.

  “Gentle pressure,” Lem said. “If you pull, she’ll push. Let her do the work. Ease it. Ease it.” Ida gripped the legs, applied steady pressure in concert with the heaving of the ewe, and the lamb slid out, as ugly a thing as Ida had ever beheld. The ewe barely lifted her head, but when Ida set the lamb at her nose she rallied. By now Ida knew that deep, guttural chatter with which a ewe greeted her offspring, knew that by the time the ewe had licked the lamb clean she’d have created a bond that would last for life. She watched to make sure the lamb was breathing normally and found its way to its mother’s udder; she straightened, senselessly holding her bloody arm away from her already filthy skirt, turned around and saw Henry Barstow standing at the fence.

  After Ida washed and changed they sat in the kitchen, drinking coffee topped with rich, yellow cream and eating thick slices of buttered bread. Since Ida was famished she ate in silence, waiting for Henry to speak, something she was getting better at.