Orchard

by Larry Watson

  The sheet was not enough to keep Sonja warm, and she reached for the blanket, but as she did, Henry stopped her hand. She hoped his intention was to cover her body with his, but instead he yanked the sheet from her and leaned back in his chair.

  “I’m cold.”

  “Well, you’re just going to have to stay cold until I get my eyes full. That’s the favor I want.”

  “Very well,” Sonja said, rolling over and turning her back to her husband. She drew up her knees for warmth.

  Henry laughed. “That view suits me too!”

  He reached out and put his hand on her backside, and in spite of the intimacies of the previous hour—he had touched her in places and ways she had never touched herself—she flinched at his caress.

  Their firstborn child was named for neither her parents nor his. Henry and Sonja favored the first month of summer above all others, and though their daughter was born in the dead of 1947’s winter, she was christened June Marie House. If Henry’s mother had any opinions about her granddaughter’s name, she did not voice them. Two years later, Henry and Sonja had a son, whom they named John in honor of Henry’s father. If this pleased Henry’s mother, she did not say so. However, by this time she no longer consumed alcohol, and many people noticed what a poor memory she had for what she had said and done during her drinking years.

  8

  Harriet Weaver feared that if she didn’t draw a breath of cool air soon she would faint. She pushed herself up from the overstuffed chair and crossed the room. She was alone, so she didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission to open the window.

  She lifted, she pressed, she thumped with the heels of her hands, but the window wouldn’t budge. Whoever had last painted the room had made no effort to keep paint from sealing the window shut. She returned to her chair, but instead of sitting back, she perched on the front edge and hung her head to the level of her waist.

  October had been unusually warm, but last night temperatures had dropped into the twenties, so perhaps when John Feeney, Attorney at Law, came into his office that morning he had turned the heat as high as it would go. But hadn’t any other client complained? Hadn’t Mr. Feeney or his receptionist noticed the heat? For that matter, where were they? Over an hour ago, the secretary escorted Harriet in here, a room with a small wooden table and two places to sit, this chunk of mauvy brown velour currently soaking up her sweat and a straight-backed chair that could have come from the same kitchen as the table. A reproduction of a threemasted schooner hung on the wall, but that was the room’s only decoration. On the table was a six-week-old copy of Life that Harriet had already perused. The only window looked out on nothing but the blank brick wall of a building across the alley, so Harriet did not even have a view of Sturgeon Bay’s main street to help her pass the time.

  Could they have forgotten her? Every time she put her ear to the door she heard nothing from the other side. She wasn’t sure what prevented her from opening the door. It might have been the fear that she would try the knob, find it locked, and then know she was truly trapped.

  Perhaps she was undergoing a procedure to which John Feeney subjected all clients who came to him seeking a way out of their marriage. You say you want a divorce? Well, you sit in this room and sweat over what that might mean. Or was Harriet left alone so she could gather herself and think about how she might present her case? Then, when the time came, she could speak calmly and rationally to Mr. Feeney and not take up any of his time with her weeping.

  Yet when Harriet tried to imagine talking to anyone about her wish to divorce Ned, she inevitably found herself trying to answer, in her mind, the questions her mother would put to her.

  You say you still love the man, then why—

  It’s his philandering, Mother. For years I could ignore it, but somewhere I lost that power, and I don’t believe I can regain it. Besides, the girls are grown now. Their parents’ divorce might upset them, but their lives will remain intact.

  These affairs . . . they’re doubtless only matters of the flesh. Now, where men are concerned—

  Please. Don’t lecture me on who or what men are. On this subject, I’m afraid I have more knowledge and experience than you.

  You know, don’t you, that you’d be walking away from fame, from greatness? From having your name in the art history books.

  Only as a footnote, Mother. And that has always impressed you more than me.

  Then you think you could be happy with an ordinary man?

  Don’t say that with such scorn, Mother. But I don’t deceive myself; I know I couldn’t be happy with any other man but Ned.

  Then why—

  Because I once was necessary to him, and now I’m not. Now I’m habit.

  At this point, Harriet could imagine her mother’s face puckering into an expression of derision and scorn, the look that some of Sargent’s imperious dowagers wore. Daughter, whatever gave you the idea that you could expect so much from life?

  Not you, Mother. Certainly not you.

  Just as she had on two other occasions in the past hour, Harriet took cigarettes and matches from her purse, and just as she had twice before, she put them back when she noticed again there was no ashtray in the room.

  She picked up the copy of Life again: September 8, 1947. She began to page through the magazine, but now she was not seeking a story or article to help her pass the time; she was searching for anyplace there might be room for a divorced, middle-aged woman. She imagined herself as one of the paper dolls that Emma and Betsy used to play with, and on page after page, Harriet tried to insert an image of herself into scenes.

  “Tourists swim at Phantom Ranch after a mule ride down into the Grand Canyon. . . . Coeds break cakes of ice on an engine to promote Toledo, Peoria, and Western Railroad’s refrigerator car service. . . . Dorothy Dolan of Racine, Wisconsin”—why, she lived not two hundred miles from Harriet!—“twirls her baton and marches in circles in New York’s Legionnaire’s Parade up Fifth Avenue. . . .” It was no use; these lives seemed as unlike Harriet’s as that of Hedy Lamarr, who lent her beauty to the makers of Royal Crown Cola.

  Harriet flipped more pages, concentrating now on the advertisements, those depictions of ostensibly normal lives. Ah, but this was even worse! She couldn’t seem to find a woman who wasn’t at a man’s side—both of them wearing their Koroseal raincoats or their Stetson hats, sleeping contentedly under a General Electric automatic blanket, staying happily within their budget with Cheney fabrics, waking together to the on-the-dot alarm of a Telechron electric clock. . . .

  She tossed the magazine back on the table, stood, and began to pace the perimeter of the room.

  Could she die in this room? The notion was absurd, but she couldn’t help but think that she had been forgotten. Or was she sealed up here as part of a deliberate plan—one more whiny wife whose tired, trite complaints no one really wanted to hear.

  These thoughts panicked her, though it was a completely different prospect that finally propelled her out the door. She didn’t want Ned to wonder, after she was dead, What was she doing at a lawyer’s office? She thought she had been fully prepared to say to Ned: You are a self-centered, skirt-chasing son of a bitch, and I want a divorce. But when she realized she didn’t want him to deduce, all on his own, why she was visiting John Feeney, she had to admit that her commitment to this enterprise was not as strong as it needed to be.

  Harriet found herself once again in that abrupt little hall she had walked down earlier. To her right was the door the secretary had led her through on the way to the waiting room. To her left was a narrow stairway that led down to the street, and though the stairs were steep, Harriet still rushed her descent.

  She worried that once she reached the bottom the glass door would be locked, and she would have accomplished nothing more than enlarging her prison, but the door pushed open easily. As soon as she was outside, she felt the sweat cooling on her forehead and at the back of her neck. The door sighed slowly shut, and Harriet knew it sealed
a pact she had just made with herself. Never again would she climb the stairs to John Feeney’s, or any other lawyer’s, offices, at least not on her own initiative. The day might come when Ned would abandon her, but she would not be the one to make the first move to dissolve their marriage. It was strange; she was out in the open now, and she should have been able to breathe in great gulps of chilly air, but some force still seemed to press on her ribs and chest, preventing her from taking in any more oxygen than she might sip from a thimble.

  She had parked blocks away so no one would recognize her car and wonder why it was in front of the building with John Feeney’s name stenciled in gilt on the door. She walked slowly down the street, and soon her breathing eased to the point where she believed she could smoke a cigarette without collapsing a lung. But before she could reach into her purse, there was her mother’s voice again. Ladies do not chew gum or smoke in public. She was approaching the Shamrock Bar, its green neon sign burning through the gloom. Now, there was a solution. . . . She could enter the Shamrock, order a whiskey and water, and light up a cigarette. Would that satisfy her mother? But of course Harriet’s mother not only had an extensive set of rules for behavior; they were ranked according to the degree to which they branded a woman unladylike. Smoking on the street was high on the list, but it was still below entering a tavern without escort. And now that Harriet thought about it, divorcing one’s husband might have been at the very top of her mother’s list.

  Harriet’s Studebaker was parked under a streetlamp, and its light enabled her to see, from almost a block away, someone leaning against the car. It didn’t take her long to realize who it was, and once she did, she didn’t quicken her stride but instead slowed and glanced about frantically for a doorway to duck into.

  And then Harriet had to laugh out loud. Only the Shamrock Bar offered sanctuary—now, this was surely a circumstance for which not even her mother had formulated a prohibition: Could a woman enter a tavern without escort in order to avoid the husband she had intended to divorce only an hour earlier?

  Ned watched her approach, and she knew she was being appraised. She could still turn men’s heads—she didn’t have to walk through the Shamrock for confirmation of that—but she was no longer certain her husband’s was one of them. Should she walk past him? No, she had made her decision when she ran from the lawyer’s offices. She had no choice now.

  Harriet took Ned’s cigarette from him and inhaled deeply before asking, “What are you doing in town?”

  “I ordered some brushes from Snow’s, and Sid called to say they were in.”

  “Snow’s is on the other side of town.”

  Ned shrugged. “I was going to stop for a drink, then I saw your car and thought I’d wait a few minutes to see if you wanted to join me.”

  “Have you been waiting long?”

  “I’m on my third cigarette,” he said, taking the butt from her for the final drag.

  “Well, here I am. Is the drink offer still good?”

  In spite of Harriet’s layers of coat, dress, and slip, Ned’s fingertips still unerringly found the hollow where her spine dipped, and with the slightest pressure there he guided her back the way she came.

  Inside the Shamrock, they sat at the bar, smoked, and drank brandy and soda, Ned’s drink of choice when the weather turned cool. Ned needed consolation and encouragement, in that order. He had been working outside all day, trying to capture in watercolor the drab tones of an untended meadow backed by a stand of hardwoods. But the sun refused to cooperate; colors brightened and shadowed at will, and Ned ended up ripping apart sheet after sheet in frustration.

  Harriet knew exactly what the script required of her. Don’t despair, she told Ned; tomorrow the light will be as constant as a lover. Don’t worry; a talent as great as yours can stop the sun in the heavens. Don’t give up; the world is waiting for your work. When they left the bar, Harriet was certain that Ned would return to the meadow the next day, determined and confident of his powers.

  For years, for decades, the artist serves an apprenticeship, practicing lines, lines, lines—spoken, written, or drawn—so that he may one day deliver them without a trace of artifice to an audience. Harriet had rehearsed her role so well that not even she could discern a difference between performance and belief.

  Why had Ned never asked her what she was doing in town that day?

  Over the years, Harriet concocted her own explanation, which she brought out from time to time. It was a fantasy, she knew, tiny but durable; it was like the pretty pebble a child picks up, its beauty and utility available only to its owner. Harriet told herself that Ned didn’t ask because he knew. John Feeney and Ned were friends, or acquaintances at least, and Mr. Feeney called Ned when Harriet arrived at the office. “Don’t talk to her,” Ned had said. “Put her in the waiting room and let her cool her heels. She’ll come to her senses.” In Harriet’s construction, Ned acted from love and knowledge of his wife’s character. He knew she’d bolt from the building, and he would be waiting for her. Occasionally, Harriet would indulge herself further: If she had not run out when she did, Ned would have come in and saved their marriage.

  The problem was, in order to preserve this fantasy, Harriet could never say, in the midst of a quarrel, “Do you know why I was in Sturgeon Bay that day? Do you? I was there to file for divorce!” She couldn’t bear to think of Ned answering yes or no. Thus do our own fantasies cripple us.

  9

  “I had an uncle once who was blind,” Henry’s mother said, “and I swear he didn’t go by touch as much as that child.”

  The child she referred to was her grandson, John, and she remarked so frequently on his propensity for feeling his way through the world that his mother was driven to concocting little tests to verify her son’s sight. Sonja would wiggle her fingers before his eyes, or hold his favorite toy just out of reach. She would wave a brightly colored cloth, or—once, and she was immediately ashamed—flare a match at the edge of his vision just to watch him startle. Of course he passed every one of these tests, as Sonja knew he would, yet he was so precious to her that she could not keep from worrying at the least suggestion that something might be wrong with her child.

  And certainly it was true that from infancy, John House seemed to rely on touch more than any other sense. He liked to lay his cheek against his mother’s hand for comfort, an action that reminded Sonja of how, when she nursed him, he wanted to remain pressed against her breast even when he was no longer suckling. He ruffled the dog’s fur endlessly, feeling the hair rise and fall under his fingers. When he lay in bed at night, he ran his knuckles back and forth against the cool sheet. Summer or winter, he would press his forehead against a window as though he were gauging the weather by the feel of the glass. Occasionally, his hands would happen upon something—the crenellated base of a floor lamp, the tufts of chenille on his parents’ bedspread, the carved wooden leg of the couch, a stone, a handkerchief-size square of tanned deer hide—whose feel would put him in a reverie. The deerskin he found on his father’s workbench— Henry thought that he might stitch it into a pouch to hold June’s ball and jacks—but when it became apparent that no use that patch of leather could be put to would match the pleasure that John House got from folding it over and over and brushing its nap, Henry decided to give it to the boy. In truth, anyone who observed John House in one of his brown studies of touch might believe the boy was blind; his eyes would glaze and he seemed unable to move until he had taken in all the knowledge and satisfaction his fingers could bring.

  So sudden and complete were these spells that as John grew older Sonja worried what would happen when he started school. He was a bright child and a ready learner, but suppose he became so taken with the texture of the paper on which he was instructed to draw a tree that he never touched pencil to paper. For that matter, the grain of the pencil itself might engross him and keep him from his arithmetic.

  Sonja’s fears were not without basis. When John was three years old and his sister
was five, their father lifted them both onto Buck’s back. Henry told Sonja to stand next to the children, and he made sure their house was in the background. Henry had a new box camera, and that day he planned to capture on film what he loved most in life.

  John had never been on Buck before, and the horse’s textures—the short hair growing tight against the skin, the fluttery softness of the ears— were almost too much for the boy. June sat behind her brother and held him tight, but John was supposed to hold on too. Henry showed him how to twine his fingers into Buck’s mane, but John could not keep his hands still. He was patting and stroking Buck everywhere, searching for that spot where he could lose himself in feeling.

  Henry hardly had time to step back and line up his family in the viewfinder when John disturbed the composition. He leaned forward and to the side, probably in an attempt to lay his cheek against Buck’s long, muscular neck, so sleek in the sunlight it looked wet. June scooted forward, trying contradictorily both to tighten her grip on her brother and to allow him to go where he wanted to go. She must have dug her heels into Buck’s ribs in a way that made him wonder if he were being spurred, but to the horse’s credit, he did not step forward with his riders. He turned his head as if to ask June if she was sure of her command. The horse’s great head looming toward him startled John and caused him to jerk back, and that movement was probably enough to keep him on Buck’s back for another instant, time enough for Sonja to grab her son and keep him from falling.

  Henry scolded his daughter, and she began to cry. John held back his tears, but he clung to his mother and buried his face in the hollow of her neck. Sonja wouldn’t put him back on the horse, and Henry gave up on his family portrait.