Painting the Light

by Sally Cabot Gunning

  “Call the Bethel, ask for more men,” Lem shouted back.

  Ida ran to the house to put in the call, but when Hattie came on the line she told her what to say and ran back to the field; they needed Lem on a pitchfork, not on the wagon; if they didn’t get the hay in the loft before the rain it would mold, or worse yet, combust. She drove the wagon along the rows, pausing long enough for the men to fork in the hay until it mounded higher than her head and walled her in on both sides; as she headed for the barn she saw three men with pitchforks slung over their shoulders, heads down, trotting toward her. The first two men she didn’t recognize. The third was Henry.

  The men unloaded the hay, climbed in, and rode with Ida back to the field. Ida recalled those times in her Beacon Hill home when she and her mother had left her father and brothers in the parlor to tend to something in the kitchen; Ida would try to engage her mother in conversation but her mother’s ear was always tuned to her father’s voice whenever it wafted in from the other room. But it worked the other way as well; Ida had been sitting with her father when her mother left the room and watched her father’s eyes following, even lingering on the door she’d passed through. It had seemed to Ida then that an invisible string bound her parents together even when they were apart, and she thought of that now as Henry sat behind her in the wagon. She still felt pulled by that invisible string, no matter how it had frayed.

  Once they reached the field, the men vaulted down and began madly forking hay into the wagon; when it reached a certain height one of the men climbed atop the load to receive and place the forkfuls the better to keep them from tumbling. As Ida urged the ox from windrow to windrow she caught glimpses of Henry, his back arcing and straightening with a rhythm that no carriage maker got planing wood. But what on earth had Hattie been thinking in calling Henry Barstow to her aid?

  They put away four loads and were a scant few forkfuls into a fifth before the storm broke over them with a rumble and roar. “All right!” Ida shouted over it. “Coffee at the house!” The men piled into the wagon; by the time they reached the farmhouse their clothes sagged on them like fresh-hung wash on a line.

  Ida put up the ox and threw a tarpaulin over the hay, thinking of the barn door after the horse had bolted. She hurried in to get the coffee on, but Hattie was already inside, the coffee perking, the table covered with cold chicken and mutton and cheese and pie, only some of those items out of Ida’s larder. Despite the drenching, the men were in high spirits, joking and laughing, the kitchen filled with the steaming mass of them, so it took Ida a minute to realize that Henry wasn’t there.

  When they’d gone, when nothing remained but an empty pantry, Hattie and Ida set themselves side by side at the sink and dove into the dishwashing and drying. Not having to face Hattie eye to eye, it seemed the perfect time to ask Hattie the burning question. “You called Henry?”

  “He’s walking and breathing, isn’t he? And I knew he’d want to help—he was raised on a farm.”

  Yes he was, and Ida had forgotten that fact, as she’d also forgotten the fact that Hattie was raised on a farm. This farm. Ida turned to Hattie to say something about that, how Hattie was the one person who never seemed to butt into the farm’s doings, and was silenced by the sight of tears painting Hattie’s cheeks.

  “Hattie! What’s wrong?”

  Hattie smacked at the dampness on her face. “Nothing. I’m tired.”

  “Well, stop. Sit down. I can finish this.” Ida gripped Hattie’s elbow to guide her to a chair but Hattie shook her off.

  “I’m fine. It’s not that kind of tired.” She swung around to face Ida. “Doesn’t it get to you sometimes? Day in and day out, the same old thing? And what result in the end? Even when you finally get something you’ve always wanted, even then, there’s no happiness in it because you just know it’s going to end terribly.”

  “Hattie. Sit.”

  Hattie sat. Ida sat. Hattie flapped her hands. “Oh, don’t listen to me, Ida. I don’t know what I’m saying half the time. And I sure don’t know what I’m saying now. It’s just . . . I don’t know, I can’t bear it sometimes.”

  Ida had no words. She laid a hand on Hattie’s wrist and thought of all the things she didn’t know about her. What was it Hattie “always wanted”? If working at the telephone exchange and living with her mother wasn’t it, what was? What dreams did she secretly harbor? Never before had Ida felt the weight of her own failing so intensely. She had been no friend to Hattie. There had been overtures aplenty, but Ida had ignored them or denied them altogether. And now, when she desperately wanted to offer some sort of comfort, she didn’t know how to do it. Ida thought of Rose, how she’d avoided Rose until she hadn’t, and how warm, how sympathetic, Rose had been. She thought of Mr. Tilton; Ida had never troubled to speak to him, and then once she did trouble to do it, why, he’d been friendly. Was it Ida all along who had refused to let this island in?

  “Everything doesn’t end terribly,” Ida said, and was taken aback for the second time that afternoon when Hattie burst into laughter.

  “Oh, Ida, that you could say that! You of all people! Do you know I could hate Ezra—I mean really hate my own cousin—for what he did to you.”

  You don’t know the half of it, Ida thought, but now wasn’t the time. And what was the thing to say now? There Ida remembered Rose, the way she’d touched her ears, offering so simple a thing as to listen. “Hattie, please know, anytime you have something burdening you that would be lighter if shared—”

  Hattie stood up. “It’s already lighter, Ida. Thank you. And don’t mind my silliness. But I am tired. I’m going home now.”

  Ida’s middle-of-the-night list grew. She needed to check in on Hattie; she needed to thank Rose for sending the men from the Bethel; she needed to tell Ruth to pay them; she needed to remember to turn and air that last load of sodden hay that hadn’t yet made it to the loft. And she needed to decide what to do about Ezra.

  How easy to do nothing about Ezra. Ida could continue to walk among the islanders as the widow Pease and no one would ever know that their former neighbor, friend, nephew, cousin was alive and well on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. But Ida would know. She thought of Rose, Rose with her ready sympathy, her willing ear, Rose believing Ida to be a widow in need of her deepest concern, her greatest efforts at comfort. How could Ida ever look Rose in the eye again knowing the lie she was living? But did Rose even matter?

  Yes. Ida was taken aback to feel that answer hit her like a jolt in her spine. And Mr. Tilton, who’d conversed so sympathetically with Ida, he mattered too. And her new friend Mr. Howes at the newspaper store. Even Chester Luce. And what of Ruth and Hattie and Oliver? How different was she from Henry if she decided on their behalf that they’d rather not know the truth about Ezra? And how could Ida ever look Hattie in the eye and say Trust me with your troubles if at the same time she harbored such a monumental lie?

  It took Ida two more days to summon the will, to pack up the papers in the order in which they’d come to her: Ezra’s letter, the assayer’s card, Dermott Hale’s card, the gold pamphlet, the deed to the property on Block Island, the letters to Mose. She placed them inside the canvas tote she took to the market and tied it with twine in case of wind; she pondered as she walked what the chances were that Ezra would be apprehended versus Ezra remaining free. Ezra remaining free. Was that, after all, Ida’s biggest fear, that Ezra would remain free?

  Tisbury claimed two constables; Ezra had approved of one and disapproved of the other, but Ida hadn’t paid enough attention to recall which was which. A constable named Ripley ushered Ida into a chair but perched himself on the edge of the desk, hawklike. He even looked something like a hawk: blunt brow, powerful shoulders, salt-and-pepper hair, a wariness behind the eyes, but when he spoke Ida believed she detected a certain gentleness in his tone. It will be all right, she told herself. Again.

  “How may I help, ma’am?”

  “I’m Mrs. Pease,” she began. “I believe I have
some evidence of a crime.”

  “What crime?”

  “I’m not sure. Impersonating a dead person? No, that wouldn’t be it exactly, impersonating death. Or is that a crime?”

  Ripley blinked. “Perhaps you’d like to show me your . . . evidence.” He nodded at Ida’s package, which she still clutched in her lap. Ida hurried the package onto the desk and untied the string, reviewing the contents in her mind as she laid them out; as she did so she realized that Ezra’s not being dead was probably not the larger crime, unless, of course, you were his widow. Or wife. Dear God, Ida thought, it hadn’t occurred to her till now that she was still married to the man. She took a breath, collected herself, went on.

  “I’d like to restate the crime if I may. The man in question, my husband, Ezra Pease, did impersonate death, but he did so in order to escape prosecution for—” Ida could think of only the one word: “fleecing some investors.” She attempted a smile. “I say this well aware of the irony.”

  Ripley didn’t blink.

  “Considering he owns—or used to own—a sheep farm.”

  Still nothing. “I’m having some difficulty following you, ma’am,” Ripley said. “What exactly is this crime?”

  “I’m sorry. Let me start again.” Ida pointed to each item as she spoke, each laid out in the precise order she’d packed them: Ezra’s letter, the assayer’s card, Hale’s card, the gold pamphlet, the deed to the property on Block Island, Mose’s letters. Ripley slid from desk to chair and picked up each item as Ida referenced it, read all the words on each. Ida waited as he did so, and only when he’d laid down the final letter to Mose did she resume.

  “I went to Block Island. I’d been left without much in the way of assets, and I wanted to find out if that piece of land could be sold. And that’s where I found Ezra. Alive. When we all believed he’d drowned.”

  “And why did you believe he’d drowned?”

  Looking back on it later, Ida identified that question as the exact moment when it occurred to her that this must be the constable that Ezra had approved of, that it might not end all right after all. She pushed Ezra’s letter across the desk. “He said he was on the Portland. The Portland went down. There were no survivors.”

  Incredibly, this bit of news seemed immaterial to the constable. He asked the question several more times in several different ways; she didn’t actually know her husband was on the Portland, wasn’t that correct? She’d talked to no one who actually saw him get on the Portland, correct? His body never came ashore, is that correct?

  “His body never came ashore because he didn’t drown.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “Because I found him alive and well on Block Island!”

  There Ripley chose to smile. “You’re sure?”

  “Sure of what?”

  “That it was your husband? Many months had gone by since—”

  “Are you asking if I mistook the identity of a man who shared my bed for two years?”

  The constable looked down; he pushed himself back from the desk as if to increase the distance that separated them; he opened and closed a desk drawer to no purpose that Ida could see. Her talk of beds had flustered him. Well, good.

  “I’m only suggesting,” he went on, “if the man you saw resembled your husband a good deal, and if you were desperately hoping to see your husband alive—”

  “I did not go to Block Island in hope of finding my husband alive. Even when I saw him I had trouble believing it could be him. Nothing in either my experience or my being could account for the enormity of such a deceit. But then we spoke. At length. And he confessed to his crime. He laid out his plans to escape to Paris and invited me to join him.”

  Ripley pursed his lips, drummed his fingers on the pamphlet, looked up at Ida. “This crime you refer to—this Gold from Sea Water scheme?”

  “Yes. And the crime of impersonating death, which, if it isn’t a crime, should be.”

  Ripley sat back and pondered Ida. Ida pondered him. He was the first to drop his eyes. Well, good again. “You’re saying your husband deceived you and then confessed his crime to you and then invited you to go with him and you simply walked away and returned home and came straight to the law to report him. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that the fellow didn’t suspect you’d do that very thing?”

  There, at last, Ripley succeeded in flustering Ida. “I . . . yes. No. I had no intention of actually going to Paris with him, but I let him believe I would. I’d spoken of Paris once . . . He . . . he believed I was like him, that I’d calculate what I’d get out of the scheme and never mind who else got cheated. He believed I’d decided it was in my best interest not to turn to the law.”

  “So. A deception for a deception.”

  Ida peered at the constable. Was he, could he possibly be, implying that the two deceptions were the same? That she and Ezra were now even? As Ida studied the constable she recalled Ezra’s suggestion that someone on the island had alerted him to the fact that a detective was tracking him. Perhaps it wasn’t Lem. Perhaps it was this constable. And perhaps the private investigator only got involved because the constable had already refused to do so.

  Ida stood up and made to collect her papers, but the constable speared them with a finger. “The evidence stays here. I’ll contact you with any developments.”

  “Well then, you’d best make note; he’ll be on an ocean liner called the Umbria headed for Europe in the middle of August.”

  The constable didn’t appear to be listening. Again, he tapped the Gold from Sea Water pamphlet. “To be clear. You never saw any gold?”

  “No,” Ida said, but with such difficulty she marveled at the difference among humans, that Ezra could lie without a blink and here Ida left the station with the sweat pouring between her breasts and her heart beating out of her stays. Or it would have been beating out of her stays if she were wearing any. She took a deep breath, at least still able to revel in that particular freedom, and again found herself mourning the loss of the bicycle that had inspired the loosening in the first place.

  The next step was now predetermined. Ida had set the police on the trail of a living Ezra; she now needed to tell Ruth and Hattie that Ezra was indeed living. She did spend the walk home hunting for reasons why she might not have to do that, but as she didn’t find any, she landed once again facing the two women across the kitchen table. Outside the open window she could hear the shuffle and thunk of Oliver picking up rocks and throwing them against the barn.

  This time neither woman shed tears, but the paired faces were riven with pain, hurt, disbelief, and that other kind of grief—the kind that comes when trust dies.

  “You’re sure,” Ruth said, but not as if it was a question.

  “I’m sure. But I confess I had trouble believing right away.”

  “That boy,” Ruth said. “That poor, poor boy.”

  For a minute Ida thought Ruth meant Ezra until she heard again the thunk of stones against the wall, saw Ruth’s eyes travel to the window.

  “You leave that boy alone,” Hattie said with a fierceness Ida had never heard before. “There’s no need for him to know.”

  “The whole island will know.” Ruth pointed at Ida. “She went to the constable.”

  “Well, he doesn’t need to know right now.”

  Ida stood up. Hattie stood with her. “I’ll walk you down.”

  They set off down the hill with matching strides. “Are you all right?” Ida asked.

  “Well, I’m not surprised,” Hattie said. “That he’s alive, yes, but what he’s done . . . even my mother isn’t surprised. I can tell by looking at her. And I remember once after Ezra left the house and Mother discovered she was missing her gold thimble, I remember how she looked then, how Ezra-the-golden-boy myth had already started to crumble. But then when he drowned—” Hattie snorted. “Or she thought he did, that brought back the halo.”

  “But you. Are you all right?”

  “I want you to forget the
other day. My mother can be a trial; I don’t suppose I have to tell you. I got tired, that’s all. But I’m the one should be asking you! Dear God, Ida—” Hattie went on about Ezra, things he’d said and done that Hattie now claimed had convinced her, if not Ruth, that all with Ezra wasn’t necessarily as it seemed, or rather, were much as they had seemed, if not just as they were presented. And Oliver. Hattie had a good deal to say about Ezra’s mistreatment of Oliver.

  “His grandfather’s written, you know. His wife’s better, and they’re ready to have the boy home, but I’m not going to send him off until we’ve decided what to tell him about Ezra. But it’s not like the boy even knew him. I remember one time—”

  Clearly, Hattie intended to keep up the Ezra talk all the way to Ida’s door; Ida couldn’t blame her—this was new news and big news for Hattie—but Ida was done talking of Ezra. Thinking of Ezra. She decided to attempt a change in subject: the Antis.

  “Well,” Hattie said, “I can see their point.”

  Ida stopped walking. “How so?”

  “Well, I mean, really. What man will ever allow it? And in truth, how many women do you know who would want to bother with it?”

  “A good number. Some of whom you know too.”

  Hattie peered at Ida. “Well, if you ask my opinion, the men are taking care of it just fine, and I, for one, don’t want that responsibility.”

  “But what if I want that responsibility? If we had the right to vote, I could vote, and you could not vote. Why should I be denied the chance simply because you don’t want to?”

  “Ida, be practical. Think of how we spend our day now, me with a job and a household to keep up, you with a household and a farm, me with all that extra work I’ll be taking on come December.”

  “What work?”

  “Oh. Yes. I’ve been meaning to tell you. Lem and I are getting married in December and Mother is giving us the farm.”