I look down at the bundle in my hands. At the pale blue ribbon. At the loopy handwriting, so like my own.
If I burn these letters, who will hear Grace Brown’s voice? Who will read her story?
ter • gi • ver • sa • tion
“Would you like a cup of tea, Mattie? How about you, Weaver?” Emmie Hubbard asked. Her eyes were calm and smiling and not the least bit crazy looking.
“Yes, all right. Thank you,” I said, putting the chocolate cream pie I was holding down on the table.
“Yes, please,” Weaver said.
Emmie took a tin of tea and some cups and saucers down from a shelf. As she turned, I saw a flash of white. It was the nape of her neck, pale as milk above her collar. Her hair was coiled neatly at the back of her head. Usually it was down or caught in a loose messy braid. I realized I’d never seen the back of Emmie Hubbard’s neck before. Her faded cotton dress hung crisply from her narrow shoulders. It had been pressed. Maybe even starched.
Weaver and I glanced at each other. I could tell from the expression on his face that he couldn’t believe what we were seeing, either.
Emmie’s house was tidy. The floor had been swept and the bed made. Her kids were clean—mostly. Myrton’s nose still dripped, Billy’s ears needed attention, and Lucius had sticky hands, but their faces were scrubbed and their clothes had been washed.
“Mattie, please tell Mrs. Hennessey thank you for the pie,” Emmie said.
“I . . . I will,” I said, embarrassed to find myself gawking.
Weaver and I had asked Mr. Sperry if we could take Demon to visit Weaver’s mamma after the dinner service. He said we could, and Cook had given us a pie to take with us.
Weaver sat down on the bed next to his mother. She’d tried to get up to help Emmie with the tea, but Emmie had waved her away. “How are you feeling, Mamma?” he asked.
“My arm pains me some, but I’m all right,” she said.
“I heard you got the pig back.”
“That’s right. The Loomis boys found her. They fixed her pen for me, too. I’m awful glad I didn’t lose her.”
The kettle whistled. Emmie leaned over the stove to get it. I remembered seeing her bent over the stove another time, for another reason. I had a feeling Frank Loomis wouldn’t be fixing her stove again anytime soon. Not while Weaver’s mamma was around. She was a righteous and upstanding woman. If she ever saw his bare ass in here, she’d tan it for him.
Emmie served the tea and cut slices of pie for everyone. The children loved the taste of chocolate. Even Lucius. He was too little to eat the crust, but Emmie gave him some whipped cream and filling and he smiled and clapped. We chatted for a while, and Weaver’s mamma told us how Emmie was making fruit pies according to her recipe and selling every one down at the train station and how she, Weaver’s mamma, minded Emmie’s kids while Emmie was gone, but that was all she did, because Emmie didn’t let her lift a finger. Emmie smiled and flushed and said it wasn’t true—why, just the day before they’d both been over picking beans out of the Smiths’ garden and at least the trappers hadn’t managed to destroy that. Emmie’s eyes darted to Weaver’s mamma constantly as she spoke. It was like she was feeling for her, making sure she was there. Weaver’s mamma nodded and smiled at her.
It was nice to sit in Emmie’s neat house, watching her bustle about, seeing her kids smile as they ate Cook’s pie. It was pleasant and peaceable and made a change from trying to haul her out from under the bed.
But then Weaver forgot himself and asked Emmie why she didn’t plant a garden herself. It wasn’t too late to get beans and greens out of one, he said, and then the whole room went quiet and I could see from the look on his face that he’d suddenly remembered about the auction. Nobody wanted to talk about it, though. Least of all me, knowing, as I did, who was going to buy it.
“But Mamma, we have to talk about it . . . ,” Weaver pressed.
“Hush, Weaver,” she said, her eyes darting to Emmie. “I know, son. We will.”
Emmie looked at us and bit her lip. She pulled at a tendril of hair.
“Where’s Tommy?” I asked, anxious to change the subject.
“Over at your place. Helping your pa,” Weaver’s mamma said. “They’ve got an arrangement now. Tom’s to help with the plowing and clearing, and your pa will pay him for it in milk and butter.”
“I like butter,” Myrton said, sniffing a string of snot back up his nose.
“Myrton, honey, what did I tell you about using your handkerchief?” Weaver’s mamma said.
“Oh yeah.”
He dug a piece of calico out of his pocket, wiped his nose on it, and showed it to me. I mustered an admiring smile for him.
We stayed for a few more minutes, and then we had to get back to the Glenmore. Weaver was quiet on the drive. I was the one who spoke first. “Your mamma’s one tough nut,” I said.
“Don’t I know it.”
“I didn’t think anybody could ever shape Emmie Hubbard up. God only knows how she did it. And with one arm broken, to boot.”
Weaver smiled a sad smile. “You know, Matt,” he said. “Sometimes I wish there really was such a thing as a happy ending.”
“Sometimes there is. Depends on who’s writing the story.”
“I mean in real life. Not in stories.”
Tergiversation, my word of the day, means fickleness of conduct, inconstancy, turning renegade. I felt like a renegade myself just then. I didn’t believe in happy endings. Not in stories or real life. I knew better. But then I thought about Emmie’s shabby little house and how it was warm and welcoming now. I imagined my pa showing Tommy how to handle a plow, and Tommy all manly and important as he brought home the milk and butter he’d earned. I thought about Weaver’s mamma being looked after for once in her life. And Emmie’s pride in doing the looking after.
And then I thought of Mrs. Loomis crying in the barn, and Jim and Will tormenting the Hubbards every chance they got, and the set of Royal’s jaw when he talked about wanting them gone.
“Me, too, Weaver,” I sighed. “Me, too.”
lu • cif • er • ous
“Mattie Gokey, what’s ailing you? You’re slow as a mule tonight and every bit as stupid! Pick up for table eight. Pick up!” Cook yelled.
It was evening, right in the middle of the supper service. The dining room was full to bursting and Cook was in one of her tempers. I ran one order out and came right back in with a new one. John Denio was sitting at Cook’s worktable as I called the order out, eating his supper.
“Henry?” I heard him say. He was staring at the bite of food on his fork.
“Vat?”
“You make your biscuits with pepper in ’em?”
Henry had cooked the help stew and biscuits for supper. We’d all finished eating an hour ago, but John had missed supper as he had to go meet an evening train. Henry had kept the leftovers warm for him.
“Vat pepper?”
“You know, black pepper. From peppercorns.”
“I don’t know vat you talk. I don’t put any pepper in any biscuit.”
John put his fork down. He covered his supper with his napkin. “Then do me a favor, will you, Henry? Keep the damned mice out of the damned flour bin!”
Weaver laughed his head off. So did I.
“Don’t know what you’re laughing at. You et ’em, too,” John growled.
We stopped laughing. I felt a little green. I didn’t have long to dwell on it, though.
“Mattie, pick up for table seven. Pick up!” Cook barked.
I carried four bowls of soup to my table, sloshing them as I walked. I craned my neck trying to see the boathouse from the dining room windows. The boats were all in for the evening. The dock was empty.
“They must’ve gotten back,” I said under my breath. “They must have. So where are they?”
There was cream of celery soup all around the rims of the bowls and down the sides, too, as I served them. The croutons had sunk. The guests at tab
le seven did not look pleased.
“You got lead blocks for feet tonight?” Cook asked me, when I returned to the kitchen.
“No, ma’am.”
“Look alive, then!’”
The kitchen doors flew open. “I need a pot of tea for room twelve, Mrs. Hennessey,” Mrs. Morrison said, whirling by. “And a dish of milk toast. One of the Peterson boys is poorly.”
“Am I running a dispensary now as well as a kitchen? Mattie, cut two slices of white bread—”
“Mrs. Peterson asked especially for you to make it, Mrs. Hennessey. She said your milk toast cured her little Teddy of his spastic bowel last summer.”
“Give little Teddy some of Henry’s mouse-shit biscuits. That’ll cure him,” John grumbled.
“Anything else I can do? Fluff Teddy’s pillow? Sing him a lullaby?” Cook groused, pulling lamb chops from under the broiler. “Mattie, fix a pot of tea, will you? Or does Lady Peterson require that I boil the water, too?” she grumbled at Mrs. Morrison’s back. “Eighty-five for supper, fifty of them in all at once, a special birthday meal for twelve, and now I’m a nursemaid as well . . .”
We were supposed to have eighty-seven for supper. Eighty-seven, not eighty-five. Two guests hadn’t showed—rooms forty-two and forty-four. Carl Grahm and Grace Brown. They had table nine. I’d set it for them, but it was already eight o’clock and they still hadn’t come in off the lake.
I’d waited on them earlier at dinner. They’d ordered soup and sandwiches, and they’d argued throughout the meal. I’d overheard them as I brought their food.
“. . . and there was a church right by the hotel in Utica,” Grace Brown said. “We could have gone in and done it there.”
“We can do it up here, Billy. We’ll ask if there’s a chapel,” Carl Grahm said.
“Today, Chester. Please. You said you would. You promised me. I can’t wait any longer. You mustn’t expect me to.”
“All right, don’t get so upset. Let’s take a boat ride first, why don’t we? It’s a beautiful day. We’ll ask about a chapel right after.”
“Chester, no! I don’t want to go boating!”
I passed by a few more times to make sure that there was nothing they wanted. The man ate all of his lunch, then the girl’s untouched soup, then he asked for dessert. He told me to charge the meal to his room. “Grahm,” he said. “Carl Grahm. Room forty-two.” I’d heard the name earlier from Mrs. Morrison. She’d told me a couple on vacation, a Mr. Grahm and Miss Brown, had come without any reservations and that she was putting them on the top floor and that I was to turn down their beds that night.
I cleared their plates when they were done. And then, later, I’d seen Grace on the porch and she’d given me her letters and I’d stuffed them under my mattress and forgotten about them, and about her and Carl Grahm, because Cook kept me busy all afternoon peeling potatoes.
I hadn’t thought about them at all until the supper service started and I’d seen that their table was empty. Then I couldn’t stop thinking about them.
“Mattie! Water’s boiling!” Cook shouted now. “Get a tray ready for room twelve.”
I grabbed a teapot and spooned leaves into it, careful to stay out of her way. I took the kettle off the flame and poured water into the pot. Just then Mr. Morrison came into the kitchen to get himself a cup of coffee.
“Didn’t see you at supper tonight, Andy,” Cook said. “You all right?”
“I missed it. Too busy waiting for a couple of darn fools to bring my boat back.”
Cook snorted. “Which two fools? The Glenmore’s full of ’em.”
“Grahm. Room forty-two. Had a woman with him. Took a boat out after dinner and never came back.”
I dropped the teapot. It shattered. Scalding water splashed all over.
“Look what you did!” Cook screeched. She whacked my behind with her wooden spoon. “What on earth’s gotten into you? Get that mess cleaned up!”
I thought of my word of the day, luciferous, as I picked up the broken pieces of the teapot. It means bringing light. It has the name Lucifer in it. I knew all about Lucifer, thanks to my good friend John Milton. Lucifer was a beautiful angel whom God chucked out of heaven for being rebellious. He found himself banished to hell, but instead of being sorry for angering God and trying to make amends, he set about agitating again. He went to the Garden of Eden and wheedled Eve into eating from the Tree of Knowledge and got the whole of mankind kicked out of paradise forever.
It was a dreadful thing that he did, and he is not to be admired for it, but right then I felt I understood why he did it. I even felt a little sorry for him. He probably just wanted some company, for it is very lonely knowing things.
Quietly, I get out of bed, dress, put up my hair, and gather my belongings. I’m not sure of the time, but I would guess about five o’clock. When I am ready, I count out my savings. Between the money I started out with, and my wages and tips, and the extra money I made walking Hamlet, and the five dollars Miss Wilcox gave me, I have thirty-one dollars and twenty-five cents.
I leave the attic, careful to make no noise, and walk down the main stairs. I am in Mr. Morrison’s office, my mamma’s old carpetbag in my hand, just as the sky is starting to lighten. I place Grace’s letters on his desk, then write him a note on Glenmore stationery, explaining how I got them.
I write three more notes, address them, and put them in the mail basket. The first is to my father. It has two dollars in it, the balance of what he owes on Licorice, the mule, and a promise that I will write. The second is to Weaver’s mamma. It has twelve dollars and seventy cents in it and a note telling her to use the money to pay off Emmie’s taxes. The third one has a ring in it—a small, dull ring with an opal and two garnets. It is addressed to Royal Loomis and says to see if Tuttle’s will take it back and that I’m sorry and that I hope he gets his cheese factory someday.
I pass the coat tree on my way out of the office, the one made of twisted branches and deer hooves. In the gloom of the foyer, it looks like a dark, malevolent fairytale tree and for a few seconds I feel that it wants to catch me in its gnarled limbs and hold me fast. There’s a woman’s boater hanging on it. It’s worn at the edges; its black ribbon is frayed. Grace Brown put it there when she and Chester arrived. I lift the shabby little hat off its hook and fight down the urge to crush it. I carry it into the parlor and place it next to Grace’s body.
I take her hand. It is smooth and cold. I know it is a bad thing to break a promise, but I think now that it is a worse thing to let a promise break you.
“I’m not going to do it, Grace,” I whisper to her. “Haunt me if you want to, but I’m not going to do it.”
IN THE BACK of the Glenmore, a little ways into the woods, is a cottage where the male help sleeps. It is quiet and dark. I pick up a handful of pebbles and toss one at a window on the second floor. Nothing happens; no one comes, so I toss a second and a third, and finally the window opens and Mike Bouchard sticks his sleepy face out.
“That you, Mattie? What’s up?”
“Get Weaver, Mike. I need to see him.”
Mike yawns. “Huh?”
“Weaver!” I hiss. “Go get Weaver!”
He nods. His head disappears, and a few seconds later, Weaver’s pops out.
“What do you want?” he asks me, looking cross.
“I’m leaving.”
“What?”
“I’m leaving, Weaver.”
He pulls his head in and then barely a minute later, the cottage door opens and he’s outside, shrugging his suspenders up over a half-buttoned shirt.
“Where are you going?”
I reach into my skirt pocket instead and press seven dollars into his hand.
“What’s this for?”
“For your train ticket to New York. Use the money you earn here to pay for a few months’ room and board in the city. You’ll have to get a job when it runs out, but it’ll get you started.”
Weaver shakes his head. “I don’t want
your money. I’m not taking it.” He hands it back to me.
I throw it on the ground. “Better pick it up,” I said. “Or someone else will.”
“Mattie, it’s not just train fare and rent. You know that. It’s my mamma. You know I can’t leave her.”
“She’ll be fine.”
“No, she won’t. She’s got nowhere to go after Emmie’s place is sold.”
“Emmie’s taxes have been paid. The auction’s off. Didn’t you hear?”
Weaver gave me a long look. “No, I didn’t,” he said.
“You will.”
“Mattie—”
“Good-bye, Weaver. I’ve got to go. Now. Before Cook gets up.”
Weaver bends down and picks up the money. Then he takes hold of me and hugs me so hard, I think he’ll break me right in two. I hug him back, my arms tight around his neck, trying to draw some of his strength and fearlessness into me.
“Why, Matt? Why are you going now?” he asks me.
I look at the Glenmore. I can see a light glowing softly in a window in a little bedroom off the parlor. “Because Grace Brown can’t,” I tell him.
We let go of each other. His eyes are welling.
“Don’t, Weaver. If you do, I’ll never make it. I’ll run right back inside and put my apron on and that will be the end of it.”
He nods and swallows hard. He makes a gun of his hand and points it at me. “To the death, Mathilda Gokey,” he says.
I smile and aim right back at him. “To the death, Weaver Smith.”
It is just past ten o’clock. The dawn came and the sun rose on a flawless summer morning. I am standing, frightened but resolved, on the train platform in Old Forge.
Is there a word for that? Feeling scared of what’s to come but eager for it, too? Terricipatation? Joybodenous? Feager? If there is, I mean to find it.
My carpetbag weighs heavy in my hand. I have most everything I own inside it. I also have my train ticket in there, an address for Miss Annabelle Wilcox of New York City, and two dollars and twenty-five cents. It is all I have left from the money I saved. It isn’t very much at all. I will have to find a job right away.
A Gathering Light Page 27
