Painting the Light

by Sally Cabot Gunning

  She called him. “Thank you for the loan of the bicycle. I wonder how much it would cost to purchase it.”

  She could feel the weight of Henry’s thoughts down the line. “That painting of my father. Did you ever finish it?”

  Ida had. She’d even carried it with her to the island, and yet she’d never given it to Henry, because it was too Henry. Too hers. “You’d have to see it. To decide if you like it.”

  “All right, I will. Now?”

  Ida swallowed, nodded, realized Henry couldn’t hear a nod and said, “Now. Yes.”

  They sat on either side of the whiskey bottle—another bottle—and looked at each other. It was all they seemed able to do. After a time Ida fetched the painting and Henry said, “The bicycle and fifty dollars,” and Ida said, “The bicycle only,” and Henry said, “The bicycle and twenty-five,” and Ida nodded.

  After a time Henry said, “Here I sit across from you, where I’ve wanted to be forever it would seem, and yet I don’t know what to say to you. I just don’t know what I could say in fairness to you. I’m not free, Ida.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m not free and I don’t know what we can do.”

  “Well,” Ida said, “you could stay.”

  It was drier than before: no sodden clothes, no tears. It was slower, more considered. Ida watched their clothes drift to the floor like fall leaves, layering one over the other—boots, stockings, trousers, skirt, blouse, shirt. They lay on a clean bed, not a moldy banquette, and reached across all that lay between them until there was nothing there but each other, until Henry’s hands began to do all that she’d dreamed they could do and more. Ida felt she’d been long acquainted with Henry’s hands, but not the rest of him, not even on that banquette, and it took them a long time to learn all they needed to learn of each other. All, at least for now.

  After they’d reached stillness and had lain there luxuriating in that stasis a good while, Henry shifted. “It’s near dark. I’d best—”

  “No,” Ida said. “Don’t go.”

  “You know what you’re going to get if come morning my gig’s still sitting out there?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You’re sure?”

  A lightness filled Ida, a thing she at first couldn’t identify until it came to her that what she was feeling was joy, the joy that could only come from knowing, at last, when to care and when not to. “I’m sure.”

  39

  May again. New lambs. Fresh green. An occasional blue sky. A decisive wind. Ida was in the garden watering Oliver’s freshly planted seeds; he’d come to visit recently but the excitement hadn’t been Bett or Betty or Ollie but the new dog he now had waiting at home, a dog he’d named Henry, who was really really really going to miss him while he was gone. Oliver had planted more radishes and squash and peas and raced around trailing Betty for a time but hadn’t dug a single useless hole. Ida had been somewhat sad about that.

  She heard the wagon climbing the hill and thought of Lem, as she often did, but of course it wasn’t Lem but Chester Luce’s new delivery boy, bringing Ida’s recent order along with the mail, which wasn’t part of his job, but “just to save you the trip, Mrs. Barstow.” Of course she wasn’t Mrs. Barstow, but Henry had never actually gone home after the night when Ida had asked him to stay, and after a time people just assumed she was, or if she wasn’t, well, it was nobody’s business but their own. Ruth, of course, had her own ideas about whose business it was. “It’s a lie,” she said. “A flat-out, outrageous lie.”

  Well, of all the lies Ida had come to know, this was one she could live with.

  The boy carried the packages and a single letter inside, set them on the kitchen table, and returned to his wagon. Ida picked up the letter and opened it.

  When Henry came in Ida was sitting at the kitchen table staring at the square of pasteboard she’d propped against the jam jar in the middle of the table. He’d come in singing. Buffalo Gals, won’t you come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight . . . It was good to hear Henry singing again, to know that he felt all right sharing his voice with Ida now, but he broke off midstream when he saw her sitting and staring so. He came up behind her, rested a hand on the back of her neck, and leaned over to read the pasteboard. Ida read with him, again: a one-way passage on the RMS Umbria, New York to Liverpool, August the twenty-fifth.

  Henry sat down. “So.”

  Ida said nothing.

  “So, he is over there.”

  Ida stood up. “I best get moving; I teach a class at three o’clock.”

  “Ida.”

  Ida sat back down. Henry lifted his hand, rested it over hers where she’d flattened it against the table.

  “I was always wondering,” Ida said. “If he never got on that boat, if his intent was only to get everyone looking for him elsewhere, couldn’t he show up here anytime? What if he did show up here and tried to claim—” She swung her arm wide, indicating the house, the farm, Henry. Her life.

  “But now you know he did get on that boat. So this is good news.”

  Ida smiled at Henry. “Yes. Good news.” She watched him ponder, decide, say it.

  “Aren’t you at all tempted? Paris? Your own studio? No more trekking back and forth to Boston to sell your work? No more instructing vacationing teachers in how to teach their students to draw a pear?”

  Ida turned over her hand and threaded her fingers through Henry’s, felt the answering pressure. “I belong with you,” she said.

  After a time—a long time—Henry picked up the ticket. “So what do we do with this? Take it to the constable?”

  “No. If we do that, they’ll be waiting for him on the other side. They’ll arrest him and bring him home. Sooner or later he’ll get out of jail and then—” Ida shivered.

  Henry held tighter to her hand for a second and then let it go. He stood up and crossed to the stove with the ticket.

  “Don’t,” Ida said.

  “What? Change your mind already?”

  “No. I want to keep it.”

  Henry peered at her. “Insurance?”

  How to explain? “It’s proof he told the truth to me at least once,” she said. “He said he’d send a ticket and he did. It’s proof that in his eyes I’m worth that at least.”

  “That you’re worth—” Henry stopped, his eyes dark, his mouth tight; he set the ticket back where it had rested against the jam jar.

  Ida collected her paint supplies and her straw hat and crossed to the door but stopped there; she turned around and looked at Henry. He sat facing away from her, but she could see how the tightness had traveled from his mouth to his jaw and around to the back of his neck.

  Worth.

  What was Ida saying? Why was she still, again, trying to see herself through Ezra’s eyes, trying to find her own worth inside a worthless being? Like an avalanche, the last of the snow that had lingered on the roof of Ida’s mind thundered to the ground and slithered away. She set down her paints, reversed her steps, laid a hand on Henry’s neck just as he’d laid his hand on hers. They did this often, whenever they could: the touching, the reminding that they were together, that they were connected. One. That touching meant everything to Ida but even it wasn’t the measure of her worth; Ida’s worth could be traced only through the memory of who she’d once been and then lost and had at last regained, in the promise of who she would yet become. She reached around Henry, snatched up the ticket, opened the stove lid, and fired it in.

  Acknowledgments

  I have to start with Jim Athearn of Morning Glory Farm on Martha’s Vineyard. For some strange reason known only to Jim, he responded to a cold email inquiry about sheep farms on Martha’s Vineyard, and off we went. Jim organized an all-island sheep farm tour, which turned into an all-island history tour, and history being a shared favorite subject of ours, we’ve been kibitzing ever since. Jim also graciously agreed to proof the manuscript for bloopers—despite my many visits to the Vineyard, I’ve spent most of my l
ife on Cape Cod, and I knew better than to assume that what’s true on the Cape is true on the island. For example, did you know that on Cape Cod we call them spring peepers and on Martha’s Vineyard they call them pinkletinks? Or that what we call shadblow they call wild pear? Or that it’s always better to harvest your hay when it’s “in the bud”? Jim set me straight.

  I also have Jim to thank for introducing me to the “Painter who Farms,” Allen Whiting. I may have fallen in love with the beauty of Clarissa Allen’s sheep farm in Chilmark, but when it comes to sheep, Allen Whiting’s historic Cheviots are the ones that own my heart. Allen graciously spent an afternoon talking sheep with me as we stood knee deep in newborn lambs. I even got to bottle-feed one—I guess that explains my love affair with those Cheviots. Allen and I also exchanged books, a deal in which I came out far ahead: he got a paperback edition of The Widow’s War and I got a gorgeous hardcover coffee table version of The Artist at Sixty.

  I first met Andy Rice at the Taylor-Bray Farm Sheep Festival in Yarmouth Port here on Cape Cod. To watch Andy shear a sheep is to watch an artist at work; to listen to him talk sheep is to enter into a whole new wonderful world of entertainment. An additional bonus was the reading list he provided, and I suspect I now know more about sheep and sheep dogs than any non–sheep farmer on earth.

  Archivist Bow Van Riper at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum gave generously of his time while I sank into the museum’s collections of all things Portland Gale, Summer Institute, Gold Hoax, and artist Amelia Watson, whose watercolors of Vineyard sheep got me hooked on my setting. The folks at Vineyard Haven Public Library allowed me to sit spinning through microfiche of the old Vineyard Gazettes for hours and answered every call for various obscure bits of information. I am grateful.

  Artist Odin Kaeselau Smith managed to stop laughing long enough to teach me what I needed to know to make Ida’s struggles at the palette (hopefully) ring true; her words are sprinkled throughout these pages. Artist Geoffrey Smith graciously allowed himself to be cornered at a Christmas party to discuss the differences between landscape painting and portrait painting. William Morris Hunt’s words can also be found within these pages; he was one of the first artists to offer classes to women at the Museum School in Boston in the late-nineteenth century.

  Thanks also to Paul Daley, who provided the proper rifle, figuratively speaking, and to Bill and Patsy Roberts, who read—and in Patsy’s case, reread—the manuscript and offered much useful feedback.

  My editor Jennifer Brehl is a true partner. We dance to the same tune, but she always knows when I’m off a note. It’s been wonderful to get to work with assistant editor Nate Lanman—his sure but light footprint can be found throughout these pages. My agent Kris Dahl helped me shape my tale by refusing to accept “a sheep farm on Martha’s Vineyard” as the answer to that annoying question “What’s this book about?” She also reminded me my sheep were characters too, and suggested that we share an odd affection for farm animals. I would also like to thank copy editor Victoria Mathews, production editor Dale Rohrbaugh, and especially Mumtaz Mustafa, for her persistence and patience with the cover design. It is much appreciated. My family of readers, Jan Carlson, Diane Carlson, Ellie Leaning, and Nancy Carlson always see what I never seem to while simultaneously providing the necessary enthusiasm to drive the project forward. Jan also accompanied me to art classes and provided that needed impetus. My husband, Tom, critiqued, encouraged, and chauffeured, each of those things many times over. He also made sure I kept painting, and I now have two whole paintings of sheep that I haven’t (yet) thrown out.

  One last thank-you, and it’s a big one—to my readers, you can’t imagine how you inspire me when I mention there’s a new book coming and you respond with a chorus of “When?” Many a day it’s sent me back to the desk instead of out for a beach walk.

  About the Author

  SALLY CABOT GUNNING lives in Brewster, Massachusetts, with her husband, Tom. A lifelong resident of New England, she is active in local historical organizations and creates tours that showcase the three-hundred-year history of her village. She is the author of three “Satucket novels” (The Widow’s War, Bound, and The Rebellion of Jane Clarke) as well as the historical novels Benjamin Franklin’s Bastard and Monticello.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Also by Sally Cabot Gunning

  Monticello

  The Rebellion of Jane Clarke

  Bound

  The Widow’s War

  Benjamin Franklin’s Bastard (as Sally Cabot)

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  painting the light. Copyright © 2021 by Sally Gunning. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  first edition

  Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

  Cover images: © Pictures Now/Alamy Stock Photo (Martha’s Vineyard); © Mary Wethey/Trevillion Images (woman)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  Digital Edition JUNE 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-291626-6

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-291624-2

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