Painting the Light

by Sally Cabot Gunning

  But if she doesn’t . . . “Any idea where I can turn some gold nuggets into cash?”

  Lem swiveled to get a better look at Ida. “I do, as a matter of fact.”

  It was that easy. Tuesday Ruth sent Hattie down the hill with Ida’s 20 percent, along with a meticulous accounting. Ida had gone with Lem to someone he knew at the bank and received pretty much what Henry had suggested the gold was worth, which turned out to be pretty much what she’d gotten from the sale of the livestock. She’d then taken the cash from the gold and put it into Oliver’s college fund.

  “Why the hell didn’t you just leave your money with Ruth if you were going to do that?” Lem spluttered on the ride home.

  “Because it’s my money. Can you understand that?”

  Lem shifted to look at her. “The day I understand you—” He grinned. “But yeah, I guess I do.”

  “And Oliver is Ezra’s son. If Ezra had claimed Oliver, if he had drowned, if he’d never launched that gold scheme or signed over the farm to Ruth—” Ida had grown heated, winded. She took a breath, started again. “According to Malcolm Littlefield, if Ezra had been an honest, decent man, Oliver would have inherited half of everything—the business, the properties, the farm.”

  “So why didn’t you just sell that ram and give him that money too?”

  “Because,” Ida said, “Oliver’s not the only one Ezra owes.”

  When they reached the farm Lem bolted from the wagon. “Bloody hell!”

  Ida looked: the ram had knocked flat the hayrack and was butting the pieces across the grass.

  As Lem collected his tools from the barn, Ida fetched Bett and her crook and chased the ram into his pen, successfully this time. This she’d learned too—never turn your back on a ram. As Lem set to work repairing the hayrack Ida stood and watched for a time, transfixed by the way the island light had changed again, casting long, slanting fingers across the fields, throwing purple shadows under the sheep. She watched Lem bend to his work and saw in the strain of his back, the earth-brown in his coat, the steel in his hair, something that she believed was worth capturing; she went inside for her paints.

  She took out her pad and made a quick sketch but soon moved on to the larger paper; she was deep in her efforts when she felt rather than saw a change in her peripherals. She looked sideways and saw Henry Barstow topping the hill. He had no bicycle this time; he swung along with what at first appeared to be the same old effortless stride, but as he drew nearer Ida could see the determination that powered him forward. He drew up alongside Ida.

  “I heard you’re leaving for Boston soon.”

  Ida set her brush down. “Soon.”

  Henry said nothing. Strange, Ida thought, how one man’s presence felt so different from another’s: Lem’s body beside her in the wagon always felt like a fortress, a wall; Henry’s standing beside her felt like the edge of a forest or an ocean, a definite line of demarcation between them but a porous one, a thing either one might step through if only they dared.

  I guess he had his reasons, Lem had said.

  “Why?” Ida asked. “Why didn’t you tell me? And don’t say it was because you weren’t sure.”

  Henry’s answer came so fast it was as if he’d come up the hill with it already formed. “Because I wanted you to be a widow. I wanted you—I wanted everyone—to think you were a widow so after my divorce I could marry you. That’s the real reason why. After that one, after that one, I thought, well, she told me she didn’t like Ezra much; I thought, wouldn’t she rather have him dead than alive? Wouldn’t she rather have the thing over? I didn’t think—” He stopped. “I didn’t think. It was wrong of me to decide for you what you’d want to know.”

  “When were you sure?”

  “I don’t know. It was too inconceivable. Too cruel, even for Ezra. I kept making excuses for him. That night in your room when you showed me where the gold was hidden, I told you maybe he left it for you to find, but we both knew he didn’t. When I put you away from me that night you thought it was because I wasn’t sure about my wife, but it was because of Ezra. Only Ezra. What if we’d done this thing with you thinking Ezra was dead and then later you found out he was alive, and I knew? What would you have thought of me then?”

  Ida looked at this man and tried to imagine what she would have thought of him, but all she could picture was Ezra in that situation instead of Henry, Ezra in that room. He’d have had her splayed out on that bed in an eye blink and then stuffed the gold in his pants on his way out the door.

  “But at Makonikey—”

  “At Makonikey you told me you didn’t care about my wife or about Ezra. You told me about your family. You were so sad. And I wanted to make you not sad.” He smiled, but not as if he meant to. “And you were half dressed. And I’d wanted you for so long. So when you told me you didn’t care about Ezra, well, I chose to believe it.”

  Ida picked up her brush; set it down again; she looked out at Lem working and Henry looked too, as if Lem’s progress rebuilding the hayrack was the only thing that concerned them. After a time Henry took a step closer to gaze at Ida’s painting, and his nearness set off something new in Ida, or rather something old, something that made her recall how she’d missed his presence, his touch, their talks, how these past months she’d been able to grieve more deeply for Henry than she’d ever managed to grieve for Ezra.

  The silence grew long. Ida’s sketch pad lay on top of her paint box; Henry picked it up and began to flip backward through the pages with nervous fingers, unseeing, or so it seemed to Ida—as if he only turned pages in order to do something with his hands. But when he drew close to the end—or the beginning—he stopped at the image of Lem she’d sketched at Christmas and held it up next to the current painting. Right there Ida saw it; the one that wasn’t Lem and the one that was; the one that was the lie and the one that was true. Without words Henry flipped through another few pages, skipping over the still lifes and portraits, stopping at one of an institute student poised with her brush midair, her body alive with concentration and intensity; stopped again at the sheep on a blowy day hunched against the hill, the wind evident in the posture of the trees, the grass, the clouds, the braced posture of the sheep themselves; paused once more at the one of the schooners beating across the Sound.

  “Are you sure Boston’s where you belong?”

  Ida took the sketch pad and closed it. “You’re the one who needs to figure out where you belong.”

  “I belong with you,” Henry answered, steadily, calmly, as if it were a fact everyone but Ida had long known.

  But before Ida could respond—if she could have responded—a commotion broke out among the sheep. Betty had leaped too high or too long and gotten wedged in the fork of a tree; she started to bawl, and the rest of the lambs joined in. Ida opened the gate and started across the field as Lem straightened and began to jog toward the tree from the far side; Ida reached the sheep before Lem, picked up its hind legs and shoved it through. When she turned back to the fence she saw that Henry was no longer leaning against it but had already covered half the distance to the track. She could have called to him. She should call to him. She stood frozen until she felt the ground shudder under her and swung around.

  Lem had made it only halfway across the pasture and lay curled on the grass, one arm crossed over his chest, the other clawing at his jacket pocket.

  “Henry!” Ida screamed and flew.

  Lem’s face was gray, his lips blue. He’d managed to withdraw a bottle of pills from his pocket and shook one out, put it under his tongue. Ida knelt beside him. “What is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No,” Ida said. “Do not say that to me.”

  Henry reached them and knelt too. He took the bottle of pills from Lem’s hand. “Nitroglycerine. Your heart?”

  “Get me up, that’s all I need from you.”

  “You sit. I’ll get the wagon. And the doctor.”

  “The doctor’s been. He gave me those pills. There�
�s nothing else he can do. They should work fine in a minute or two.”

  Henry and Ida shared a look. Henry jogged off for the wagon, returned, helped Lem in. Lem sat breathing heavily, his hand pressed to his chest as if were trying to hold something in, a posture Ida had seen before but only remembered seeing now.

  “Just the same,” Ida began, “the doctor—”

  “Ida, I’d take it kindly if I could just sit on your porch for a spell. This thing should blow off soon.”

  They sat: Henry, Ida, Lem, not on the porch but in the parlor, Lem almost forcibly reclined on the sofa. The spell did appear to have blown off—he’d stopped rubbing his chest, his breathing was less labored, his color had returned; he swung his legs over the side and sat up, but stayed in that position, elbows on knees, head down.

  “Does Hattie know?” Ida asked.

  Lem’s head came up, along with a rare display of ire. “Who do you think I am, someone who’d marry a woman without telling her I’ll be dead by May?”

  “May?”

  Lem dropped back on the sofa. “So I’m told. Hat caught me in the middle of a spell, and I told her just that; I told her about May. That’s when she said, well, Lem Daggett, we need to get married. Soon.”

  “Hattie said—?”

  “Surprise you? Yep, Hattie wants that farm and Ruth won’t give it to her lest she’s married, so she offered me a deal. We get married, Ruth gives us the farm, and Hattie nurses me through till the end.” He coughed, sat up again, shook his head as if in disbelief. “Till May.”

  Henry and Ida exchanged a look. “Kind of arbitrary, this May,” Henry said.

  “He added a ‘more or less’ to it.”

  “Let’s say more, then. Let’s say next January. You can see a little more of that new century.”

  Ida looked at Henry in alarm, but Lem was grinning. “January it is. If that’s all right with you, Ida.”

  “Yes,” Ida said, through fury, through shock, through everything she was feeling about this man. She looked again at Henry. Oh, how could she not admit it now? These men.

  37

  They called Hattie. She arrived and took command. “I’ll keep my eyes on you this night if you don’t mind,” Hattie said when Lem announced his plan to drive himself home. “We’re going up that hill, not down.”

  After they drove off, Henry and Ida returned to the parlor together. Ida sat on the sofa where Lem had so recently sprawled, but she left room for Henry; it seemed the right thing to do. Henry sat down beside her but leaned forward much as Lem had, elbows on knees, staring at the floor.

  “He told me more than once,” Ida said. “He told me he was the best friend I had.”

  Henry leaned back and opened his arm. Ida let her head drop onto his shoulder. Idly, as if out of old habit, Henry began to pick the pins out of her disarranged hair and comb it through with his fingers. Ida closed her eyes and sank into the comfort. Comfort. Such an unknown thing in her world.

  After a time Henry said, “Hattie. Bloody hell.”

  Ida pushed herself upright. “She wants the farm! Hattie. She’s never looked at a sheep. She’s never come around when work’s going on, except once, at the shearing, and she looked like she hated every minute of it.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want the farm. Maybe that’s only what she told Lem. I doubt he’d marry her otherwise, turn her into a nurse and then a widow without something for her at the end.”

  He’s right, Ida thought. Lem would never marry Hattie just to get a nurse; he would never let Hattie do it. And that Henry would see that before Ida did put her to shame. When had she become that person who would first assume everyone was out for his or her own gain? When had she first begun to so ignore Hattie that she knew nothing of that beating heart inside her? Tears stung at Ida’s eyes, tears over Lem, yes, but tears for Ida too, and tears for this man who again held her, who wiped her tears off her cheek with his thumb.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’ve hurt so much and all I did was hurt you more.” He stood up. “I’m going to finish off that hayrack so Lem won’t try to do it and then I’m going home.”

  “Thank you,” Ida said.

  Henry’s smile was bitter. “For the hayrack or for going home?”

  “Henry.”

  He stopped.

  “I need to always know.”

  “Know what?”

  “Everything. All of it. The truth of things. I can’t go back to always wondering what’s being hidden or camouflaged or . . . left out. Just plain left out.”

  He studied her. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “I know.”

  Ida watched out for Hattie the next morning on her way down the hill to the exchange and stepped out to intercept her.

  Hattie saw her and held up a hand. “Don’t,” she said. “Whatever you’re going to say, don’t.”

  “I’m not going to Boston,” Ida said.

  “You’re going.”

  “Not till after the wedding. Lem asked me not to.”

  Hattie broke stride, swung to face Ida. “Did he, now.”

  “A while ago. I just didn’t know why till the other day. Just as I didn’t understand your tears that day.”

  Hattie started walking again. “Do what you want, Ida.”

  “I want to stay for the wedding. If you two don’t want to move into the farmhouse before then.”

  Hattie snorted. “Before the wedding? With my mother? With Lem?”

  “Henry Barstow finished the hayrack.”

  “What hayrack?”

  “The ram knocked it out.”

  “Oh,” Hattie said, but she might as well have said, “What ram?” Or come to that, “What farm?”

  “I know why you’re doing this, Hattie. I know you don’t really want this farm. You only said that to Lem so he’d agree to marry you and let you take care of him. You’re a good soul.”

  Hattie laughed. “Oh, Ida, I’m not as good as all that.”

  “Good enough.”

  “No, Ida, not even that. I’m marrying Lem Daggett because I’ve loved that old crab since I was sixteen years old.”

  Ida made her way up the hill. When she walked in, Ruth was standing over the stove and looking a good deal older than she had the last time Ida had seen her, which had been older even than the time before.

  “I’d love a cup of tea, thank you for asking,” Ida said.

  Ruth turned around just far enough to glare at Ida, but she lifted the kettle, filled it at the sink pump, and set it back down on the stove.

  “So I suppose you know all there is to know,” Ruth said.

  “Oh, I doubt it.”

  “My daughter’s marrying a man who’ll be dead before she’s figured out how to iron his shirts. She’ll be left with a farm she hasn’t the first idea how to run. Why? I said. Because I love him, she said. All of a sudden, after ignoring him her whole life, she decides she loves him.”

  Ida, who’d thought a bit about this a little more and recalled a few moments, said only, “I think maybe she’s loved him for a while.”

  Ruth carried the pair of teacups to the table and slapped them down. “I’m not feeding you.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “I don’t care if it’s all right or not. I’m not feeding you is what I said.”

  Ida gave up. Moved on. “I’ve come to ask permission to stay on at the farmhouse till the wedding. Hattie says they won’t be moving in until afterward, and I thought maybe I could help out. Henry Barstow already mended the hayrack—”

  “Henry Barstow! What’s he still doing around?”

  Ida didn’t answer that. “Well?”

  Ruth stirred her tea. “It’s not as if I could get a tenant in there for only a month. But I’ll expect you to take care of the place just as you did before if you stay on.”

  “I will.”

  Ruth pushed her cup away. “Lem told me what you did with that gold money. I don’t understand you, Ida Pease. All that fuss and bot
her—”

  Ida rose. “I don’t care if you understand me, Ruth. Is Oliver coming to the wedding? His grandparents? They can stay with me if they are.”

  “Oliver will be staying here with me. Don’t think you can lure him away with one measly bag of gold.”

  At first little changed on the farm and then much did. The trick was to find the thing that needed doing before Lem did and then to call in Henry—Henry who had fled his own family farm never to return. He talked Lem into teaching him how to repair stone walls so he could be on hand to do the lifting and came away talking things like gravity and friction and interior fill and exterior facing; he loaded the hayracks so Ida could keep at her paints; he actually picked up the shovel one day before Ida could get to it and mucked out the ox stall.

  And Ida found reasons to be where Lem was. She declared that before she left the island she was going to master drawing and painting sheep, to take away with her an honest representation, and so often in the afternoon light she joined the men at the wall with her sketch pad and paint box. She discovered that whether or not they were working on a wall, where Lem was Henry often was, and that the two men had worked out a game where Henry pretended he’d just stopped by over estate business with Ida. But Lem let Henry do the lifting, the fetching, the carrying, and while Henry loped this way and that Ida and Lem talked.

  “He’s not a bad fellow.”

  “No.”

  “Shame about his wife, though.”

  “And my husband.”

  Lem made a disgusted snort, much like the ram’s. “If I get him in shotgun range—”

  “Then you’d go to jail, and what would I do?”

  Lem set down the sketch he’d been studying. “As we’re talking about that, what will you do, Ida?”

  Ida wanted to say, I’m here as long as you are and then I’m gone, but she knew Lem wouldn’t like either half of that sentence. Instead she said, “Vote.”

  And just as she’d planned, Lem tipped back his head and laughed.