“Mr. Freeman, if this is on my account—”
“There are a great many things I would do on your account, Widow Berry, but I do this on my sister’s account. May I tell you something you perhaps don’t know of me? I am, at times, a man of temper. In such mood as I’m in at present, I fear for my treatment of her. I intend to send her a message declining her hospitality on the grounds of some business at the tavern. Shall I include the cheese, with your compliments?”
If that was his definition of “temper” there were few need fear him, Lyddie thought. And then she thought of something else. It hadn’t occurred to her to brave the men-only world of the tavern in search of a market for her cheeses, but people ate there as they ate elsewhere.
“You may give the cheese to Mr. Thacher with my compliments. And tell him he may have another at any time, for a shilling.”
30
A young Indian woman from the nation began to walk down the road in the direction of Cowett’s every morning. Lyddie traveled through town, leaving her name at the shops in case anyone had need of nurse or housekeeper. She even stopped at the tavern to inquire if they were in need of more cheese; she made her trip early in the morning so as to avoid the busiest part of the day and actually found the main room empty, but even so, Elkanah Thacher rushed to meet her at the door in an effort to preserve what might be left of her reputation. When she stated her business he said, “Widow Berry, as much as I’d like to buy my cheese from you, I’ll get nothing out of Winslow if he hears I’m doing business with a Clarke.”
So there it was in all its black-and-white irony: Lyddie would be shunned by some because she was not with Clarke and shunned by others because she was. Lyddie thanked Thacher and turned to go, but before she’d swung the full way around her eye caught a curious sight: Eben Freeman coming down the stairs trailed by a dun-colored girl with black hair and blue eyes, who took her leave of him by sliding a hand along the seam of his breeches. Lyddie continued out the door, but soon enough she heard him behind her. “Widow Berry!”
She turned. “Good morning, Mr. Freeman.”
“Good morning to you. I’m surprised to see you here.”
“No doubt. Do you find your accommodation acceptable?”
“Acceptable, yes. Not quite the stuff of home.”
“But not as lonely.”
He peered at her.
“An old acquaintance, is she?”
“We’ve met before, yes.”
“You must have made a good impression.”
“I daresay she’s not suffered at my hand.”
“I daresay she’s not bettered at it, either.”
“One might ask what ‘better’ would be. She’s no poorer, surely.”
“Ah, yes. And we all have our way to make.”
“Perhaps you’d care to choose another subject, Widow Berry.”
“I’m afraid I’ve run out of subjects.”
“Very well, then. Good-day to you, Widow Berry.”
“Good-day to you, Mr. Freeman.”
Freeman came to see her the next afternoon and stepped inside with something akin to sheepishness in his manner. It didn’t suit him. He began at once. “Widow Berry, in regard to a recent unseemly conversation I inflicted upon you at the tavern—”
“You forget ’twas I inflicted the conversation on you, Mr. Freeman. I’m afraid I’ve grown too used to my own company and have lost the knack for polite society.”
“No, no, I’ve always found your conversation most—” He hesitated. “Might I say open?”
“You might better say brazen. But for that you must blame Edward. He nurtured in me a free way of speaking between us that is ill suited to outside company.”
“In that case I take it as nothing but compliment that you would speak so with me. May we consider the subject now closed?”
“We may.”
After that visit things returned to normal between them, except that Lyddie began to dream strange dreams of blue-and black-eyed Indian children, until the first of July, when Lyddie looked up at the sky and saw the waxing moon and wondered as it rounded if it would pull Mehitable’s child from her womb. From then she dreamed of other children, some dead, some alive, some motherless, all white.
On July sixth Lyddie had already put up the cow, bolted her door, and let down her hair when she heard a gentle tapping against the door. The day had begun with a soft southwest wind that had built up into a good breeze, and she thought the shadblow had dropped another limb until she heard the small voice. “Grandmama?”
Lyddie flung back the bolt and wrenched open the door. “Bethiah!”
“’Tis Mama. She says, would you come? ’Tis her time. She asked Papa to send for Granny Hall, but he said no, he would fetch the doctor.”
“The doctor! Why the doctor? What’s happened?”
“Nothing’s happened. Papa said if a Mrs. Winslow would have the doctor so would a Mrs. Clarke.”
Lyddie found her pins, stuck up her hair, and set off with Bethiah, asking what questions she thought the girl might be able to answer. Was Mama up or in bed? Did she lie still in the bed or did she move about? How long had she been in the bed? Was there anyone with her?
They reached the Clarke house in tandem with Nathan and Dr. Fessey. Dr. Fessey hailed Lyddie with good cheer and hurried inside, but Nathan Clarke stepped square in front of her.
“You may turn right around home, Mother. Have I not made it clear? You’re not welcome in my home any longer.”
“My daughter asked for me. She sent Bethiah. Excuse me.” Lyddie stepped sideways, but he grabbed her by the arm.
“You’ll not set foot in my house. Today or any day hereafter.” He swung back through the door, dropping the bolt down after him.
Lyddie stood in the darkening air, her mind and body stalled, until a bullfrog in the nearby creek sounded and her mind, at least, went into motion. She considered and discarded any attempt at forced entry on the grounds that such commotion would not be helpful to Mehitable, but should she stay in the yard or should she go? If Lyddie stayed where she was she would at some point find out how her daughter fared; Dr. Fessey would come out and he would tell her. If Lyddie left, she would know nothing until her one visitor, Eben Freeman, arrived, bearing some third-or fourth-or fifth-hand account of the result.
Lyddie stayed where she was. Bethiah had vanished inside with either the doctor or her father, and Lyddie had some hope that the girl might come out to look for Lyddie, but no one came out at all. The dark thickened. The air cooled. Lyddie walked up and down the drive until she stepped into a hole and went down on a knee. Hours passed. Or minutes. The bolt rattled and Dr. Fessey stepped out onto the stoop, leaving Nathan Clarke framed by firelight in the doorway.
“I thank you, sir,” Clarke said. “We’ll settle the fee when we have something to show for it, shall we?”
The door closed and the dark returned. Lyddie stepped out of the shadow.
“Dr. Fessey.”
“Good God! Who’s there? What the devil! Widow Berry. You near cost me the last breath in my body. Why do you lurk there?”
“I would know how my daughter fares.”
“Oh, yes, yes. An awkward situation, haven’t we? Well, let me tell you, we’ve naught but a false alarm. I’ve given her some laudanum and she’s deep asleep, and if I may say, she’d best make a better job of it when the real time comes. Quite the timid thing, isn’t she?”
“She’s not had a child.”
“No, and she won’t, either, if she doesn’t put some backbone into it. Say now, are you limping?”
She had walked beside the doctor as he started for the barn, but she hadn’t realized until he said it that she was, indeed, limping. He offered her a ride home, and Lyddie accepted. He walked the horse to the block, mounted, and pulled her up behind him. The doctor’s coat smelled of the usual smoke and tobacco with none of the Indian’s sassafras, Edward’s salt, or Freeman’s sweat. His hair smelled of camphor. His horse ha
d such a rough gait, even at the walk the doctor had to maintain to keep Lyddie behind him, that by the time she dismounted her limp had worsened.
“Here, now,” Fessey said, sliding down after her. “Let me come in and look at that knee.”
Lyddie tried to discourage him, not wishing to owe a doctor’s fee over nothing but a routine lameness, but he stepped around her into the house, and once he’d spied the Indian’s brandy bottle on the homemade shelf he said, “There now, I’ll take a dram of that in payment.”
Lyddie poured the doctor a dram. She sat on one of the chair’s Sam Cowett had brought and Dr. Fessey pulled the other across from her. He lifted her skirt, lowered her stocking, poked the knee, gripped her foot, and turned it in all directions.
He dropped her skirt and patted the knee. “You’ve done no great damage. Wrap it tight in a flannel soaked in this, and if you give me another dram there’ll be no charge for the liniment.” He pulled a small jar from his pocket.
Lyddie got up and refilled his glass.
“Now here comes some advice free of charge. Are you ready?”
“I don’t think—”
“No, you don’t think, Widow Berry. If you did, you would see that your little adventure must come to an end eventually. You can’t keep on without support of any kind forever; before long you’ll be on the charge of the town and stuffed up in the attics of the lowest bidder. I say, why prolong the inevitable? Now before you say anything else, I know all about you and that Indian, and I tell you I’ve lived and worked in this village a long time and there’s nothing that doesn’t get forgotten the minute the next thing comes along. Put it behind you. You’ve already quit him; now make your confession before the church, sign what you have to sign for Clarke, and get on with what anyone might call a very nice life for a woman in your situation.”
Lyddie stood up. “Thank you, Dr. Fessey.” She limped to the door and opened it. The doctor set down his glass but remained seated.
“All right, then, Widow Berry, if you won’t take the help that’s offered you—”
“I would take this. In your journeys through town if you hear of someone in need of nurse or housekeeper—”
The doctor leaned back in his chair and drained his glass. He got up and closed the door, but with himself still inside of it. “Let me tell you something, Widow Berry. There are those in town who take a thing like the Indian in one way, and those who take it in another. Myself, I don’t let such details bother me. I’ll go to meeting when I can, but if I can’t, if someone else’s physical need happens to outweigh my own spiritual one, I don’t let it trouble my sleep. Now, as it happens, my wife has entered a frail state and I find myself in need of what you might call some housekeeping. You’re a fine, strong woman, and me being the sort of man not greatly troubled by a woman’s past, being the sort, in fact, who sees some advantage to a certain openness of character, if you take my meaning—”
Lyddie did.
She opened the door. “Good night, Dr. Fessey.”
The doctor’s face, one minute happily rounded with lust and hope, emptied and lengthened. “Oh, the devil.”
He stepped onto the stoop but blocked her closing of the door with his arm. “I’ll tell you another thing free of charge, Widow Berry. The person in town who’ll want nursing is your daughter. She’s not near the stuff of her mother.” He walked off.
Lyddie closed the door, the dark, pulsing fear that had dozed in her chest for her daughter now fully wakened. What had Dr. Fessey meant, not the stuff of her mother? It was true, she supposed, that the fate of her children had not been caused by any physical weakness in their mother. She’d suffered long but unremarkable travails in each birthing, entering each childbed with a fierce determination to make the next babe live and breathe. She’d never suffered from fever, she’d been able to return to her kitchen within days of each of the births, but once she’d lost the first living boy, the fear had overtaken her. When the second girl passed her dead brother’s age Lyddie took her first clear breath; when the second boy passed the dead sister’s mark she knew better. But for the last precious boy to go all the way to five, to run and play with such vigor, to put her mind so near to rest and then to die…Was God about to make Lyddie pay for her recent sins with the life of her last child?
If ever Lyddie wished for a prayer she wished it then, but still the words would not come for her.
31
The knee swelled and throbbed all night and throughout the next day, Lyddie’s head keeping time with its own pulsing. When Eben Freeman arrived he looked at what must have been a hollowed-out, shadowed face and said, “Widow Berry! Are you ill?”
Lyddie hobbled away from the door.
“Good God, you’re injured.” He caught her arm and helped her into the chair. “All right, then. What’s happened?”
Lyddie told him most, if not all, of her recent adventures, finishing with “And I’ve not slept in days and I’ve a great headache as well.” She meant the words as explanation of her disinterest in any lengthy visiting, but Freeman appeared to take them as something more pathetic.
“Come,” he said. One arm slid behind her back and the other under her elbow; she rose out of the chair with greater ease than she’d done all day; he helped her to the bed and settled her on the coverlet. “This is where you need to be. Leg up, head down.”
“I’ve the cow yet.”
“I’ll tend the cow.” He disappeared and returned with a piece of flannel, dipped, from the smell of it, in vinegar. He began to bathe her temples.
“Mr. Freeman—”
“I think, considering we now share a bed, you’d best call me Eben. But I shouldn’t take it amiss if you decided to fall asleep.”
She smiled, trying to imagine Sam Cowett, or Dr. Fessey, or anyone, putting her at similar ease in such circumstance. She closed her eyes.
When she opened them he was gone, and so was her headache. She sat up, and he appeared in the door. “Ah! She wakes!”
“Did I sleep long?”
He checked his watch. “Near two hours.”
“And you’ve been here all that time?”
“I made good use of it, relearning how to milk a cow.” He pointed to his stained breeches. “And how do you feel, Widow Berry?”
“I feel better. In spirit as well as body.”
“Because you slept. There’s no greater drain on the spirit than lack of sleep.” He came into the room and sat down again on the bed.
“As you’re feeling so much better I have a proposal for you. I’ve reached an age where the vigors of the court circuit are taking more out of my body than they’re putting into my wallet. Brother Shubael wants to sell his little sloop and buy a bigger one, to leave whaling for trading; he wants me to take half shares with him. If all happens according to plan, I’ll be spending more of my time back here in Satucket—what would you say if I bought this house from Clarke?”
Lyddie stared at him. “And where would you have me go?”
“Well, you’d have two choices before you. You could stay in your third while I occupy the remainder, or you could marry me and we could share the whole together.”
He might have put it in another order, thought Lyddie. Or did he think she’d need the house secured before she’d consider the second offer? But, in fact, the minute both halves had been placed side by side on the table a queer sensation overcame her, as if someone had just dosed her with warm brandy, or, perhaps more aptly, bathed her temples in vinegar.
“I see you don’t cringe,” Freeman said, “but beyond a certain look of surprise, I see nothing more. Can it be you don’t know how it is with me? Well, then, perhaps I should put my case another way.”
He lifted a hand to her face and brushed back the damp, vinegared hair. He raised the other hand and laced his fingers through to her scalp. He drew her face toward his and kissed her. It was nothing like Edward’s first kiss—Edward had begun as if he’d long known all about her; Freeman began as if he unde
rstood he had much to discover. But either the dead wife or the tavern girl had taught him well; in no time he’d brought up the heat in her.
He pulled away. “Well, Lydia? Aye or nay?”
It suddenly seemed a very long time since anyone had kissed Lyddie. It seemed longer still since anyone had called her Lydia. Curiously, Lyddie’s daughter had never liked her nickname Hitty and in her adulthood had reclaimed her full name of Mehitable. Thanks to Freeman, Lyddie and her daughter might at last share a common trait. And as she thought about it, if she married Freeman, she and Mehitable might share even more. If Lyddie married Freeman, Nathan would get his money for the house and rid himself of his mother-in-law, all in one neat deal. In that case, surely, he would no longer object to Lyddie’s presence at her daughter’s travail.
But what of Eben Freeman? What of this angular man with the circular mind? What of a self-containment that could not conceal the large heart? What of a man who dared speak of someone like Otis to someone like Clarke?
Whatever Freeman was, Lyddie had come to depend on him in a way she’d depended on no one since Edward’s death, not as someone to keep her, but as someone who mattered to her, someone she mattered to in return. To matter. What more in life was needed? But there was more, she must admit it, an eagerness, a quickness, which shot through her whenever he appeared at her door. Lyddie had been either too long widowed or not long enough widowed to be able to trust any name she might put to that last thing, but she knew that it helped her live and breathe and move from day to day. She tried to imagine her day without Freeman’s knock on her door, and the thought of it washed her in a paralyzing fatigue, which brought her to another realization. She was tired. Not just a one-day kind of tired, but a months-long kind of tired, a sleepless woman’s kind of tired. An image of future nights pressed close against that long, taut body brought first a quickness, but then a restfulness so complete she felt restored by just the dream.
The widow's war Page 16
