What a Woman Must Do

by Faith Sullivan

  Maybe the girl in the dark blue car was a farm girl on her way home. Maybe she was one of the Geiger girls, whose family farmed the acreage neighboring the old Drew place.

  If the girl were Bess and she rode past the Drew farm, would she realize that that particular land had been Kate and Martin’s? Probably not. Bess had never taken an interest in the country side of Kate’s life. Like many town girls, she looked down on farms. And farmers.

  “You know how I miss the farm, Celia. Do you think Harriet understands what a blessing it would be to have country people in the family?”

  Maybe Kate could teach Harriet a few things about the country. Naturally, things had changed in twenty-odd years, but some things didn’t change, like slopping hogs and leading the cows in from pasture at milking time; gathering eggs from Plymouth Rocks and dressing Rhode Island Reds. Then, too, she’d subscribed to Country Gentleman for a good many years. She’d kept up and might still make herself useful.

  At a quarter past seven she stood before the mirror in the front hall running a comb through her hair. Without dismay she thought, I look my age.

  When she’d been a child newly moved to town, she’d looked at sixty-year-old town women like herself, gray-haired and not going anywhere except to Ladies’ Aid meetings and to Lundeen’s for a piece of cambric, and she’d thought that people who were sixty and settled heavily into their shoes had concerns no more serious than whether the squirrels would dig up the tulip bulbs. Life was simple and blessedly unworrisome for sixty-year-old women. By that age, your obsessions had subsided, and their memory was something soft to lay your head on.

  But now she saw that sixty meant you knew more ways and more reasons to worry, and you knew how to swallow your worry each day, like a tiny dose of poison, while you sorted clothing for the missions and purchased your piece of cambric. At sixty your enduring obsessions burned as brightly as old stars.

  Returning the comb to the drawer of the hall table, Kate made her way to the oak rocker in the living room, hooking her cane over the arm. From there she watched for DeVore Weiss, her eye eager and worried.

  At seven-thirty a car stopped in front of the house, and a tall, loose-jointed fellow, wearing tan twill trousers and a freshly pressed plaid cotton sport shirt, emerged, one long leg at a time.

  He slammed the car door, started up the walk in a headfirst lope, remembered something, and returned to the car. Retrieving a box from the front seat, he headed again for the house. So thoroughly scrubbed and pressed was DeVore Weiss, he looked as if he were on his way to church.

  The doorbell shrilled, and Kate grabbed her cane, struggling to her feet. “I’m coming. I’m coming.”

  “How do, Mrs. Drew.” He grinned broadly. “I’m a natural poet, don’t ya think? ‘How do, Mrs. Drew.’ ” He stuck out his hand, and Kate shook it.

  “I’m Kate,” she told him, leading him into the living room, liking him already. Why on earth had Harriet thought that he had only one expression? “Have a seat there, on the sofa.”

  He held out the box he carried, a Whitman’s Sampler. “This is for you.”

  “A bribe, is it?”

  “Well, of course. What kind of fool do you take me for?” he laughed, and Kate laughed with him.

  If she were younger, Kate thought, she might marry this long-legged German herself. “I’ll call Harriet. You open this box so we can all have some.” She went to the hall and called up the stairs, “Harriet, you have a guest.” Then she returned to the living room, helped herself to a caramel, and resumed her seat in the rocker.

  “You farm east of town,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am. I farm a full section three miles east.”

  “That’s a lot of land.”

  “I’ve got a couple of high school boys and a good hired man. It’s plenty of work, though.”

  “You like it?” Kate pressed.

  “I wouldn’t want to do anything else.”

  She relaxed. “I lived on a farm when I was small, and again when I was married. There isn’t a better life.”

  “I hope you’ll be spending time out at our place once Harriet and I make it legal.”

  “I’d like that.” Where was Harriet? Why wasn’t she down here entertaining this lovely fellow? “Would you like a glass of iced tea or a beer, Mr. Weiss?”

  “I’m just plain DeVore to you. And I’d like a glass of beer. It’s been hotter than a gangster’s pistol all day.”

  When Kate returned with the beer, Harriet had come down and was standing in the doorway. She wore a cotton dirndl skirt covered with pink and lavender flowers, and a soft, gathered peasant blouse. The garments made her look rounder and very womanly.

  “DeVore and I have been having a nice chat,” Kate told her. “Now he’s going to have a beer. Why don’t you come sit on the sofa?”

  DeVore was standing and he gestured toward the empty space beside him on the sofa. Harriet crossed the room shyly and, straightening the back of her full skirt, sat down, but leaving a distance of perhaps twelve inches between herself and DeVore.

  Now what, Kate wondered. Should she get out of the way or try to cement them together in some conversational way? “DeVore’s been telling me he farms a section. That’s a big farm.”

  “Six hundred and forty acres,” Harriet piped, like the bright little girl who has researched on her own.

  “Yes. A man surely needs loyal, hard workers with a spread like that,” Kate observed. “DeVore, maybe Harriet would like one of the Whitman’s chocolates you brought. I had a caramel and it was delicious. DeVore was saying maybe I could visit the two of you when you’re settled. Nothing would make me happier. You know how I am about the country. If you invited me out once in a while, I’d think I’d died and gone to heaven.” Had she laid it on too thick? she wondered.

  “Well, of course, we want you to spend as much time with us as possible,” Harriet affirmed indignantly, as if the point had been questioned. “You’ll be one of the family, won’t she, DeVore?”

  Holding the Whitman’s Sampler box on her lap, Harriet bent over the chart on the inside of the lid, while running a finger lightly along the rows of chocolates.

  “Anything wrong?” DeVore inquired.

  “I’m looking for a maple-flavored piece.”

  DeVore slid over next to Harriet and bent his head over the chart. “Looks to me to be the second from the end in this row,” he said, handing her a piece of candy.

  “No, that wasn’t it,” Harriet told him, chewing and swallowing the candy. “That was mint. I didn’t think it was the right shape for maple.”

  “Well, I think you’d better just eat through that row until you find it,” DeVore suggested.

  Kate decided that it was time to go. Besides, her hands weren’t quite steady; she needed to put her head down. “I think I’ll go upstairs now,” she told them. “I’ve had a busy day. I hope to see you often, DeVore.”

  Chapter 22

  BESS

  Bess soaked in the lily-of-the-valley-scented bath for forty minutes while the pads of her fingers grew raisiny. As the water cooled, she added warm. Harriet had already had her bath when Bess arrived home, so she needn’t worry about relinquishing the tub, not that she would any longer worry about such things. Harriet could look out for herself.

  The rooms were not soundproof, and Bess could hear Harriet dressing to go out, could hear hangers making little metallic snick-snick sounds, scraping back and forth across the closet pole. Harriet was on edge.

  Aunt Kate had said that she was ashamed of Bess. Why? Because Bess had tried to save Harriet from a terrible mistake, whereas Kate was letting her go without a qualm, easy come, easy go?

  Harriet belonged here. Coming home from college to find her gone would be like coming home to find her dead. No, worse than that, because she would have gone willingly.

  If Harriet turned down DeVore Weiss, would she be so very miserable?

  She couldn’t feel about him the way Bess felt about Doyle Hanlon.
Who knew what Harriet felt—desperation? embarrassment at being unmarried? Whatever it was, it was turning her into some German galoot’s hausfrau.

  Still, Bess knew with certainty that Harriet would marry DeVore Weiss and move to a farm east of town and look after three or four subhuman Weiss children. She wouldn’t any longer be Bess’s family. She would be Mrs. DeVore Weiss.

  Bess’s fists clenched beneath the scented water, its lily-of-the-valley bubbles long since collapsed.

  Like Celia and Archer, Harriet was lost to Bess. Bess squeezed her eyelids tight. She wouldn’t cry over Harriet. Though she still mourned Celia and Archer when they sneaked up and stood hovering at the boundaries of sleep, she sure as hell wasn’t going to mourn Harriet.

  Aunt Kate was calling up the stairs to Harriet, telling her that she had a guest. Harriet bounded down the hall, past the bathroom door, high heels clacking on the wooden floor. Down the stairs she hurtled, sounding like a many-cornered object falling, step to step, all the way to the bottom.

  Bess yanked the rubber plug by its chain, and the bathwater began slurking away. Rising, she reached for a towel and stood for a moment watching the water line sink lower and lower, leaving no ring because the bubble bath carried it away. In just that way would Harriet disappear from Bess’s life, leaving no residue.

  Bess dried off and pulled on an old robe. She tried to glide soundlessly down the hall lest Aunt Kate be reminded that she was home and ask her to come down when she was dressed. She wouldn’t come down for DeVore Weiss.

  Anyway, they were probably having a lovely time, all of them talking about her. Or about DeVore’s farm. Aunt Kate would like that. She was obsessed about the country, about “the old place.” Bess didn’t even know where the old Drew place was. Kate must have pointed it out to her once, but she couldn’t remember.

  Bess flicked from its hanger a green cotton sheath dress that Harriet had sewn for her from a Butterick pattern. One of her favorites, it set off her black hair and dark eyes. Never again would Bess stand on the dining room table, laughing and complaining, while Harriet took half an hour to mark a hem with the talcum powder marker. “For God’s sake, Harriet, this style will be out of fashion before you get the hem marked.”

  Bess lay down on the bed and held the corner of the sheet to her eyes. She was still lying on the bed when she heard her great-aunt, slower and more hesitating than usual, climb the stairs.

  At the top, Kate waited, as though catching her breath or gathering strength. At last she started down the hallway, but creeping, it seemed to Bess, her cane going only a little ahead of her with each step. When she passed Bess’s room, she didn’t pause or call or knock. Bess could sense the high feeling on the other side of the door as Kate passed. Her aunt must be very angry. Maybe Harriet had told DeVore no, and it was Bess’s fault.

  In the thickening twilight, Bess stared at the sloping ceiling, thinking how much she had lost in twenty-four hours: Harriet, maybe Kate, maybe even Donna when she figured out what was going on between Bess and Doyle Hanlon. Well, it was their loss.

  In the quiet gray depths of the first floor, the phone was ringing. She waited for Harriet to answer, but the ringing continued. Bess got up and ran down the stairs. Was it Doyle Hanlon calling to change their plans?

  When she reached the phone, it had stopped ringing. She didn’t dare call the operator to ask who had phoned. If it were Doyle Hanlon, she could not risk arousing the suspicions of the women at the telephone company. Sue Ann Meyers’s mother might be on the switchboard tonight.

  Bess went to her room and put on stockings and flat-heeled shoes. Turning on the light over the makeshift vanity, she applied mascara and lipstick; then, pulling her hair into a ponytail, she twisted it into a French knot and pinned it in place.

  Digging in a shoe box under the vanity, she found a pair of earrings made to look like green jade flowers with gold leaves. Screwing them on, she cast an oblique glance at the person in the mirror, someone alien to her, someone with old eyes, Archer’s eyes.

  She flicked off the light and left the room, pulling the door to and glancing down the hall at her great-aunt’s closed door. She wouldn’t knock. Aunt Kate might be asleep. At the foot of the stairs, Bess hesitated, turning to look back up into the shadows of the landing.

  On the dining room table she saw a big Whitman’s Sampler box. Extracting a nut cluster, she stood chewing thoughtfully, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, tapping with her fingertips on the back of a dining room chair. At length she crossed to Kate’s desk and sat down, switching on the fluorescent desk lamp and drawing a notepad to her.

  Aunt Kate—In case you get up in the night and come downstairs—Gone to meet Donna. I love you and I’m sorry you’re ashamed of me. Too much of Archer in me, I guess. Bess.

  Gazing around the dining room as if it might be a long time before she returned, she picked up her purse from the table. At the front door, she flipped the porch light on, closing the screen door silently behind her.

  The sky was still a fading delphinium color, but the streetlights were lit and the evening star was bright. Bess walked south on Second Street. She didn’t want to encounter Cousin Frieda. Aunt Kate had said nothing about seeing Bess in a dark blue Mercury that afternoon, but perhaps Cousin Frieda would bring it up. Panicky circumspection was a part of Bess now. You never knew when you might slip up.

  She stepped along almost on tiptoe, not calling attention to herself. A milky full moon, pale and innocent, hung low in the eastern sky, evoking Celia’s face. All gentle curves and softness, Celia had kissed her good-bye on the steps of Aunt Kate’s house, then driven away, framed in the open window of the car, smiling at Bess as she disappeared out of sight. Everywhere she turned these past two days, Bess was met by Celia. Bearing right, onto First Avenue, Bess turned her back on the Celia moon.

  As she reached Truska’s, she stumbled without apparent cause, thrust out a hand to steady herself against the brick wall, then sank down on one of the steps leading to the side door. Bent over double, she held her fingers in the corners of her eyes and bit her lower lip.

  “Bess! I’ve been looking all over for you. I called your house and no one was home.” Donna was hurrying across Main Street, waiting for a car to pass, then running on toward her.

  Bess straightened.

  “I wanted to talk to you at the cafe,” Donna explained, advancing toward her. “But with Shirley hanging around, there wasn’t any chance. Let’s sit here a minute.” She was breathing heavily. “Where’re you going? You’re all dressed up.”

  “I was heading for the Lucky. I got a stitch in my side,” she lied, “so I sat down. Sometimes I think I have an appendix problem.”

  “Why didn’t you call me after work?”

  “I got tied up. I’m sorry.”

  “Doyle Hanlon?” Donna asked without warning.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, but something’s going on with you and him, that’s all. The way you acted last night. Then his dropping in at the cafe and leaving when he didn’t see you. I’ve got a funny feeling.” Donna lay a hand on Bess’s. “Am I wrong?” she asked.

  Bess shook her head. She looked at Donna, then away. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

  “Why would I? When did this all happen?”

  “Last night … today. It’s hard to believe it happened so fast. You probably think I’m a tramp, but it’s still me, Donna. I’m so scared.”

  Donna put her arms around Bess. “Would you like me to go with you to the Lucky?”

  “Yes. We’ll give you a ride home.”

  “This doesn’t change you and me,” Donna told her as they walked. “We’re still friends.”

  Bess was too grateful to answer.

  “I’m not going to college,” Bess told Donna when they had settled into a booth and ordered beer.

  Donna said nothing, but she was shocked, Bess could see. She was more shocked by this than by Bess’s confession about Doyl
e Hanlon.

  “I can’t leave.”

  “What about your aunt Kate?” Donna asked. “She’s all excited about you going to college. She told me how proud she was that you were a good student.”

  “If I stay, I can look after her. Harriet’s marrying DeVore Weiss.”

  “Wonders never cease.”

  “Aunt Kate’s going to be alone, and I don’t want to leave. It seems like something that was meant, doesn’t it?”

  “But she’s going to think it’s her fault you’re not going.”

  “I’ll make up some story so she’ll know it’s nothing to do with her.”

  Hammy brought their beers and carried away the dollar bill Bess had laid out. “What’ll you do if you stay, work at the Loon?” Donna asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “There aren’t any decent jobs around unless you’ve got a college education.”

  “I haven’t had time to figure everything out.”

  “I think you should go to college. You can see him on weekends. If it’s really love, it’ll last.”

  “For God’s sake, Donna, you sound like some damned Joan Fontaine movie.”

  She regretted hurting Donna’s feelings, but she couldn’t stand to hear glib inanities about love from someone who didn’t know the first thing about it.

  At that moment Doyle Hanlon pushed open the screen door and cast a glance about as though casually surveying the room for anyone he might know. Only a dozen other customers were scattered around, and they were all from the Ula National Guard unit on their way home from training in St. Bridget.

  When Doyle Hanlon’s eyes found Bess and Donna, he assumed an expression of pleased surprise. Stopping at the bar to pick up a beer, he made his way along to the girls’ booth.

  “Well, ladies, we meet again. May I join you?”

  During the next hour Doyle Hanlon danced twice with Bess and twice with Donna. To an observer he appeared to be whiling away an innocent Thursday evening.