Lem grew thinner, paler, more winded; the pills in the bottle dwindled and needed to be refilled. The doctor went up and down the hill, but as Lem had predicted, he made no great difference in things as far as Ida could tell. She—and Henry and Hattie—learned to recognize the subtle changes in Lem’s skin and breathing and fabricated restful things that needed his attention, like the splicing of a rope or a review of accounts or even just keeping Ruth company at teatime. The whiskey seemed to help, or at least it helped Ida. Over the whiskey bottle they argued about everything they’d always argued about, but without the teeth in it, if in fact there ever had been teeth in it. Once, when they’d fallen silent and Ida had taken a longer than usual drink, Lem pointed at her glass. “It doesn’t help anything, you know. Fact of the matter—” But when Lem saw the tears in her eyes he let it go.
In between the farmwork and chatting with Lem, Ida continued to study the sheep. She took note of the fact that although every sheep had a neck, the neck didn’t always show. She learned that even the Cheviot’s white face wasn’t white, just as she’d learned that muslin and linen and paper weren’t white. She learned that the black eyes weren’t black. She learned, at last, to paint them as they seemed and not as they were.
Lem and Hattie married standing before the fireplace in Ruth’s house, everyone struggling to harvest smiles for the occasion, to ignore the physical wasting in Lem and the grief in Hattie’s eyes. The only one oblivious of the second gathering soon to come was Oliver, who careened around the wedding feast as if he were Bett working the flock. Ironically, of all the guests, Ruth was the one who shined, hobbling from group to group to greet the guests personally, to inquire at each stop if everyone had food and drink and a comfortable enough chair.
“You might like to be closer to the fire,” she told Oliver’s grandmother. “I don’t think that plate is full enough for a strapping fellow like you,” she told George Amaral. “Wait there and I’ll fill your glass,” she told Henry, who happened to be standing talking to Ida at the time.
“I’ll do it, Ruth,” Ida said, but Ruth had already hustled off. Ida followed her into the kitchen. “You should sit and rest,” Ida said.
“It’s my daughter’s wedding,” Ruth snapped back, and burst into tears.
Later, much later than was wise for the players, the party began to disintegrate, and Lem found a moment to fall into the chair next to Ida.
“Change of plans,” he said. “Last night Ruth fell on the stairs, and Hat doesn’t want to leave her here alone. But Ruth doesn’t want to move, of course. So I’m going to move in here, at least for now.”
Ida looked at Lem. Lem looked at Ida. “So that farmhouse is going to sit empty till we get a manager in. I asked you to stay for my wedding and you stayed for it. Now I need to ask you to stay for one more thing.”
“You don’t need to ask me anything, Lem. I’m here.”
“Till I’m gone.”
Was this why Lem didn’t fight harder for Ida to get her money? Because he wanted her to stay around till he was gone? Ida’s eyes filled. “Till you’re gone.”
“Or till Hattie gets in a manager.”
“All right, till then. Just don’t push your luck too far, my friend.”
“Maybe all along you’ve been the best friend I had.”
“No,” Ida said, “you got it the right way around the first time.”
It turned out Lem had less time, not more, or maybe he just got tired of the life that had been left him. Hattie and Ruth hovered over him ceaselessly, chirping at him to take his nap, tucking an afghan around him every time he moved. Ida stayed on at the farm, doing her part to annoy Lem further by chasing him off every time he tried to lift a bucket, Henry appearing as if by transubstantiation every time Lem tried to bang a nail. It was Ida who found Lem facedown in the pasture one morning at dawn, a saw in his hand and a partially cut dead tree limb bobbing over him like a dark hand.
Against Ruth’s objections, Hattie declined to hold a funeral for Lem.
“We’re going to remember him as a bridegroom, not a corpse,” she said, and held fast to it, no matter how loud and long her mother railed. The family gathered at the grave to watch him into the ground in silence and then moved on. But having seen what grief wasn’t, Ida was quick to identify what it was when it slammed her between the eyes: she was heartbroken; bereft; immobilized. Ida had promised Lem she would stay till Hattie found a manager for the farm, but in February Hattie told her it was time for her to get gone.
“I can’t hire a manager if I have no house for him,” she said. “And I want him in place before lambing season arrives.”
Ida arranged for her old room at Mrs. Clarke’s boardinghouse and sat down to write to Helen Ballou. I return to town, she said. I’d love to meet and show you some work, perhaps get some advice on what might sell. She finished loading her trunk and packed up her crates of artwork, and by the time she was ready to leave, a return letter had come from Helen.
Call when you arrive. We’ll meet. I wouldn’t presume to advise you on your work, but one of the instructors here, a Mr. Parmenter, has connections at the Guild. We’ll start there.
Ruth and Hattie loaded up the carriage and drove her to the dock.
“Well, good-bye,” said Ruth, “do come again,” as if Ida had been visiting for the weekend.
“Oh, Ida,” Hattie said, but left it at that.
Henry said nothing because Henry wasn’t there.
38
Helen Ballou made good; Ida hadn’t been in town a week when an appointment had been arranged with the fabled Mr. Parmenter. Ida had kept the painting of Lem repairing the hayrack for herself but set aside for Mr. Parmenter the one she felt would be more apt to please: the Christmas portrait. Mr. Parmenter didn’t know Lem and wouldn’t have the first idea that it was nothing like the real man, and there was a fair amount of technical skill in the skin, the cloth, the reflected firelight. And as it was her only acceptable portrait, it would have to do. She also included two still lifes: a vase of lilacs reflected in the gloss of the parlor table and the still life of the bowl of apples. To Ida the lilacs appeared imprisoned in the table gloss, but she’d gotten the gloss just right, as well as the complexity in the colors of the flowers; the apples looked contrived and untouchable to her, as if no one could ever eat one for fear of disturbing the composition, but this was what the Guild liked to show: portraits and still lifes. At the last minute Ida included one that Henry had paused over—the sheep huddled against the storm—at the least it would serve to show Mr. Parmenter why she’d gotten so little done in her three years gone.
Mr. Parmenter’s studio looked much like Mr. Morris’s, and as Ida stepped inside she felt a brief lapse in her resolve, but only a moment later she rallied, as if Mr. Morris had placed a firm hand under her elbow and eased her along. Mr. Parmenter himself was un-Morris-like in every way; heavy instead of gaunt, ruddy instead of pale, unflappable instead of excitable, spare with his words instead of effusive.
Ida set out her paintings and set in to apologize. “I’ve been living on a sheep farm, running a sheep farm, in fact, so I’m afraid I don’t have many portraits or still lifes to show.”
Mr. Parmenter pointed to the painting of the sheep. “That’s because your life wasn’t still. This is the one for the Guild.”
The Guild jury accepted the sheep. Mr. Parmenter himself bought the one of the institute student because “this is how I want my students to draw.” Elated, Ida walked the city, reclaiming it as her own despite the many changes, despite the initial sensation that came at her from nowhere of feeling dirty, hemmed in. But with the money from that sale Ida resumed her classes, signing on not with the notorious Mr. Wirth but with Mr. Parmenter. It was, she told herself, the least she could do.
The sheep painting sold, and Ida was asked to replace it with another; she chose the schooners beating across the Sound. One day in class she found herself turning the muscled back of an athletic young model into Ruth as
she climbed the hill, her back as stiff as her opinions, every muscle in her body bent on driving her stick into the ground. But the thing that Mr. Parmenter remarked on first was that golden light in the sky—Ida had finally come close to capturing it with the faintest wash of yellow, orange, and burnt sienna—and when he was laid up after a fall from his horse he asked Ida to take over his class.
“Remember,” she told the group, “there is only one way to make light. Have some dark to put it on.”
In July Hattie wrote.
Mother is grown more forgetful. She thinks at times you’re still at the farmhouse and at other times that Lem is alive. She complains the pair of you never attend her anymore. The new manager has lost six lambs and two ewes. I’m working at the farm more and more—it’s a way to keep Lem with me. Bett allows me to direct her now, which is quite a feather in my cap, as I see the thing. Henry Barstow has bought the salvage building from the bank and opened a bicycle shop. He repairs carriages in the old warehouse. He helped with the haying again this year. Write and tell me how you fare.
Ida wrote back. I’m most glad to hear from you. I fare well; I’ve sold the occasional painting and I teach too. Indeed, this is where I belong, but then she remembered that it was Henry and not Hattie who had doubted her. She crumpled the paper and started again.
I think of you all. I went sketching in the park the other day and drew a dog that looked remarkably like Betty. Yes, Betty, the sheep, not Bett, the dog.
In October Hattie wrote again:
We did well at the sale this year. Please advise what I owe for that ram. It’s quite unfortunate that nature demands we keep him, as he’s as unpleasant a creature as I’ve ever known.
Ida answered:
Perhaps in exchange for the ram you might rent me a room—ironically, my island paintings seem to sell best—my teacher tells me it’s because they’re honest. So I have in mind a working visit— It’s not that I begin to forget the island, it’s that I begin to remember too well.
Ida crumpled that page too and began again, leaving off after the words working visit.
Hattie responded:
Do come. In exchange for the beast’s proclivities we will keep a room available day and night all year long. You are much missed—by all.
In March, before Ida had answered the previous letter, Hattie wrote again.
Our new villain, that is to say our new manager, has had words with Ruth and up and quit just as we head into lambing time. What do you think of another kind of working visit to the island? The farmhouse is available now . . .
Ida packed her bag.
She stepped off the boat onto the rebuilt wharf and looked for Lem and his wagon, an old habit that had refused to die with the man. Another old habit: casting her eye down Main Street for the salvage company sign, now replaced with one that read h. m. barstow, inc. Ida hefted her bag and was about to direct her trunk into a waiting hack when Henry Barstow pulled up in a two-wheeled gig, clearly a Barstow from stem to stern with its simple, clean lines. He swung to the ground, scooped up Ida’s trunk, and heaved it aboard: he helped her in, and they started up the hill.
“You’re looking well,” he said.
“And you.” But he wasn’t, exactly. He looked older; drawn; or more like, drawn down.
“Are you bicycling?” he asked.
“No.”
They fell silent.
Henry carried Ida’s bag inside. Hattie had left a waxy green fountain of periwinkle in a canning jar in the middle of the kitchen table, the table still bearing up well under Ida’s paint; through the pantry door she could see that someone had stocked the shelves.
“How long do you stay?” Henry asked.
“Till lambing winds down. Or until Hattie finds another manager.”
Henry nodded. “Things are going well?”
“My island work is selling. I hope to restock while I’m here. I’m taking classes again. I even teach sometimes.”
“How to draw nude men?”
“How to draw,” Ida snapped.
“I only meant to joke. Apparently I don’t know how anymore.” He hefted her trunk and carried it up the stairs. When he came back down he looked different.
“Henry, what are you doing here?”
“Hattie asked me to meet you.”
“No, I mean on this island.”
He shrugged. “The cars haven’t yet arrived here. The bicyclists have. Those concrete roads out at Cottage City. That shell road out to West Chop. The word is spreading. And there’s nothing for me in New Bedford now that my wife has taken the girls to Connecticut.”
My wife. “Still no divorce, then?”
Henry shook his head, a violent yank left to right. “But she allowed the girls to visit last summer. They loved it here.” He centered his gaze, looked long at Ida. “You needn’t worry that I’ll be hovering. I just have to say, it’s good to see you back.” He jerked his head up the hill. “They missed you.” He went to the door, stopped again, “Oh, I almost forgot. I left you something in the barn. Leave it if you don’t want it—I’ll collect it later on.”
Ida went out to greet Bett and look over the sheep; so many new ones, but sprinkled throughout Ida was able to spot a few old friends, Queen proud among them; she looked to be heavy with impending birth, and Ida was glad she was here to see her through. She moved along the fence to the barn and stepped into the dust and gloom, ambushed by a sudden sense of loss. But over what, an ox stall waiting to be mucked out? Ida didn’t think so. She turned to leave and spied her old bicycle, basket attached, leaning against the corn bin.
The rest of Ida’s reintroduction was hurried and informal; Hattie and Ruth had barely made their respectively substantial and imperceptible fusses when the lambs began to arrive. Ida had found Ezra’s old canvas pants on the peg where she’d left them and slipped them on like old friends; she coached Hattie as needed, hearing Lem’s voice in her head as she did so: gentle pressure . . . if you pull, she’ll push . . . ease it . . . ease it but in truth Hattie took to the task far better than Ida had dreamed. After a particularly grueling day of one turned lamb and two sets of twins, they sat together at the kitchen table and talked of Lem.
“I wonder what he’d say if he could see us now,” Hattie began.
“Ida, get out of those pants.”
“Ida, don’t even think of getting on that bicycle.”
“Vote? You?”
They fell silent. “I would have, you know,” Hattie said after a time. “All of it. The pants. The bicycle. The voting. I didn’t care what Mother thought, but I knew how he felt, and I cared what he thought. I kept on hoping—”
Ida stood up. “Come on.”
Hattie was shorter and plumper than Ida but managed to worm into Ida’s bicycling trousers anyway. The trouble was, once they got to the bicycle they couldn’t stop laughing. They laughed when Hattie was upright, and they laughed when she was on the ground. They laughed when they were just standing beside the bicycle staring at it. They laughed when Ruth came barreling down the hill to scold. And they laughed—oh how they laughed—when Hattie finally sailed off down the track and up again, whole. They went to Henry’s bicycle shop together and shamelessly asked for a second loaner; Ida would never have done so on her own, but with Hattie by her side she didn’t mind. While they were there another woman came in inquiring about a bicycle, and turned to Ida, where she was standing by as Henry adjusted Hattie’s seat for her.
“Do you ride one of these?” she asked.
“I do.”
“What do you like about it?”
“The freedom,” Ida said. “The means to make my own way from here to there.”
“Yes!” the woman said, so thoughtfully that an idea occurred to Ida.
“Do you live here?”
“Summers. Out by the lagoon.”
“I wonder if you’d be interested in joining a group lobbying for women’s suffrage?”
The woman peered at Ida. “Here?”
<
br /> “Yes, here. It has to happen everywhere, doesn’t it?”
“I . . . Yes, yes, it does. Yes. I would.”
So Ida now had two to bring to Rose. And as she watched Henry and Hattie another thought occurred: she’d ask Henry if she could put up a poster in his shop. If a woman was brave enough to get on a bicycle, she was brave enough to speak out for the right to vote. Or so it would seem.
Hattie bought material and Ida made her her own bicycling skirt. They didn’t ride far—they couldn’t, not when lambs kept arriving—but they did make it to West Chop and back again, and another day they rode through town as far as the lagoon. When they got to the top of the hill again, they dismounted and went straight to the fence to look over the sheep.
“We could do it, you know,” Hattie said.
“The vote?”
“No. I mean yes, that too. But I meant this farm. My sheep. Your ram. We could do this. An even split down the middle. You’d have time to paint summer and fall but you’d be here to help with the lambing, shearing—”
“No,” Ida said. “Boston’s where I belong.” But again, it was Henry’s challenge she was answering.
And yet, as lambing season wound down, Ida thought more about what Hattie had said. She rode out alone with her sketch pad and paint box and captured a single horse and carriage on the road to West Chop, the horizon its destination, and just above the horizon that light that Ida had seen nowhere in Boston no matter how she’d hunted for it over buildings, harbors, fields. She rode the other way to Cottage City and then out along the county road and came home with a basket full of more promise than she’d found in Boston in a year’s time. She thought this and then she thought no, this wasn’t for her, she couldn’t come back with him here, and then she thought, late at night, alone, or could I?
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