“It’s nice to see you looking so well, my dear,” she said. Her voice was quite strong now. “I’ve missed your visits this summer.”
“We’ve had our hands full with the children’s visitors,” Gretchen said sweetly. “Such mobs you never saw.”
And of course Peter hasn’t been around, I thought, which lessens the incentive to visit cranky old ladies considerably.
Micah turned his head and looked at me, and I saw the amusement dancing in his eyes, even though he kept his face straight, and knew that he knew precisely what Gretchen meant and what I did not say. I rolled my eyes slightly, and he did grin then, faintly.
Still holding Mother Hannah’s hand, Gretchen straightened up and turned to me. The lazy green gaze took in Micah and Tina, dressed almost identically to every other man and woman at the yacht club, and then made a slow tour of the assemblage on the porch, to be sure she had their attention. She did; both the presence of the Willises in this veritable Holy of Holies and her carelessly tossed “Mother Hannah” had assured it.
“Well, Maude, I wish you’d let the committee know that you were bringing guests,” she said creamily. “We could have held some porch chairs for all of you. As it is, I’m afraid the only seats left are out back. But we’re glad you brought your friends. We’ve all worried that you’re lonely these summers when Peter’s not here. It’s nice to have someone to…take up the slack.”
There was silence. There could not have been any words. There was simply no mistaking what she meant; she did not even have to let her eyes linger on Micah Willis. I felt fire rush from my neck into my face. The furious heat literally choked me for a moment. All the summers of alienation and loneliness here, of the painfully gradual, hard-won acclimation I had clawed out, of Micah Willis’s unfailing courtesy and decency in the face of my mother-in-law’s coldness, of Gretchen’s gratuitous malice, boiled up in me like a storm tide into a blow hole. I struggled for breath enough to lash back at her; saw Micah’s sunburnt face whiten and then go blank and still, and Tina’s small, soundless gasp of hurt; saw, too, my mother-in-law’s eyes widen and then narrow and her hand disengage itself from Gretchen’s.
Before I could speak, Mother Hannah did. It was her old voice, the first one I had ever heard, sweet and precise and stinging.
“As a matter of fact, Gretchen,” she said clearly, “Mr. and Mrs. Willis are my luncheon guests. Today is our regular date, and I thought, since it fell on regatta day, it would be a change for them from my dark little dining room. You’re sweet to think of it, and we’ll accept those chairs with the greatest of thanks. It’s getting hot already, don’t you think?”
Blue eyes held green for a long moment, during which I fancied that no breath was drawn on all that porch and lawn, and then Gretchen dropped her eyes and murmured, “You’re very welcome to the chairs,” and turned and went back up onto the porch and gathered up her cocktail things and herded her muttering children before her down the steps. My breath came rushing back. I will love you for the rest of my life, no matter what you do or say to me, I told Mother Hannah silently with my eyes, and thought that her flinty blue ones crinkled just a bit. She turned to Micah and Christina Willis then.
“Micah? Tina? Shall we?”
I looked at the Willises; their faces were as smooth and closed as marble. Oh, please, I pleaded silently. Please. I know it was awful. I know you’d like to spit in all our faces. But please. Just give her this. You don’t know what it must have cost her. Give me this.
“Nice spot to watch a race,” Micah said solemnly, and took her arm and bore her up the steps to the cluster of rockers. I felt as if I would faint with relief and joy. I closed my eyes and then opened them. He was looking back at me patiently, as if waiting for a lagging child, and beside him, Tina was smiling her serene smile. Lightly as a girl, I ran up the stairs and took my seat in the remaining rocking chair, and the day broke and flowed on, as it had, on this old cape, for a hundred years.
And so it was that Micah and Tina Willis had Bloody Marys and lunch on the porch of the Cove Harbor Yacht Club as if they had done it every summer of their lives, and though they never did so again, I know they could have if they had chosen to. For a powerful taboo was shattered that day, and shattered by the only one who could have done it: my mother-in-law, Hannah Stuart Chambliss, doyenne of Retreat Colony on Cape Rosier, Maine, in full possession of all her senses and all that her title entailed. It was, I think, because of her and that one stabbing, diamond-edged moment on the steps of the yacht club that morning that the next year Caleb Willis joined the club as a matter of course and with unanimous approval, and years later his son Micah was commodore.
We did not speak of it, we four. At least not directly. After lunch, Mother Hannah announced that she was tired and wished to lie down for a bit, and we made our stately progression back to Liberty in a wash of affectionate and, I thought, admiring chatter. I did, when I settled her down for her nap, say to her, after a couple of false starts, “Thank you.”
She waved an impatient hand. She was white and pearled with sweat, but her face quite simply shone. I thought, on the main, that the day was as nearly perfect a one as she might have wished for. Not only was she received as a queen; she was allowed the opportunity to pronounce a queen’s edict. The triumph shimmered on her like wildfire.
“Well, it was a wonderful thing to do—”
She held her finger up to her lips, and I stopped. She looked at me for a long time and sighed.
“You’ve not had an easy time up here, Maude,” she said. “I know that. And I know how it feels. But you’ve stayed with it; you’ve made a life for yourself up here. You could have simply stayed away; I know that too. Peter would have done that for you. Don’t think I’m going to change much in my dotage; I’m still going to give you a piece of my mind when I think it’s called for, and Happy and Petie as well. And I’m always going to think that Peter…your Peter”—and she smiled faintly—“could have married someone more suited to the way he was raised to live. But Gretchen exceeded herself by far today. I will not permit that sort of thing. Not to my daughter-in-law, and not to Micah and Tina Willis. They are good and abiding people, and I have treated them badly over the years, Micah especially. I don’t for a moment think one lunch on the yacht club porch makes up for that, but it’s the best I can do at this stage.”
She lay back against the pillows and was so still I thought she had fallen asleep, and I had begun to tiptoe out of the room when she said, “You could do worse than have Micah for a friend, Maude. Lean on him when you must; you can trust him. Peter is…Peter is like his father. Both of them sometimes simply sail away from you, and often they stay away quite a long time. Oh, they always come back, but there are times when you will need an arm, and his won’t be there. Take Micah’s. A woman alone becomes hard and afraid. I know.”
Did she know, then, about her husband and Sarah Fowler? Did she not? What a lot of secrets swirled in this old house.
I started back toward her, thinking to hug her, but she shook her head on the pillow and closed her eyes again.
“Tired now,” she said.
And so I did go out of the room this time, saying softly as I shut the door, “Thank you, anyway.”
“You’re very welcome, my dear,” floated after me as I turned away into the kitchen.
Micah was there, piling wood into the kitchen woodbox, but Tina was nowhere to be seen. We looked at each other, and then both of us grinned broadly and began to laugh.
“Micah,” I began, “I just want to say—”
“Nothing to say,” he broke in. “Had lunch on a danged shingle porch with three middlin’ nice ladies, and drank a fancy drink and watched a race or two. I’ve seen better and worse, and that goes for all three. Haven’t seen much better than the way your mother-in-law routed Gretchen Winslow, though. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving lady.”
“I know,” I said ruefully. “I hope you didn’t take it too personally. It’s
me she was after. She’s been at my throat since the first day I met her.”
“Ayuh,” he said. “She wants what you have and knows she’ll never have it.”
“You mean…Peter?” I said, blushing and hating it.
“No. Well, maybe, but that’s not what I meant.”
“What then? I can’t imagine what on earth I could possibly have that she wants, besides that.”
“Maude, you bring a kind of spring to the air around you,” he said, looking down into the woodbox. “Gretchen brings winter. She can’t change that, but she must be powerful cold all the time. Makes her mean. Makes her hate the spring carriers…. You got enough wood to last for the week; I’ll bring some more when I come to trim the hedges next Monday. Thanks for the grub and the company. Tell Mrs. Chambliss for us.”
And he was gone out of the kitchen, leaving the screen door banging softly on the spring that never quite worked.
Mother Hannah did not want any dinner, so I left a sandwich and a glass of milk beside her bed, and Happy and I ate an early dinner ourselves, and I was in bed rereading Wuthering Heights when the telephone rang. I sat down on the top step of the stairs in the dark and in my nightgown and answered it.
“Ma?”
“Petie?”
“Yeah. Me. Listen. I have something to tell you. I…we…listen, Sarah and I thought we’d get married this fall. Maybe around Thanksgiving, in the chapel at school, if you think you could manage that. Just a little wedding, families, you know…. Ma?”
My ears rang. Here it was, what I had come to hope would happen, the call I had listened for half in dread and half in joy…and I could not speak. No, my heart was shouting in rage. No. You’re too young, this is foolish, I can’t let you go….
Yes, my head said. Good for you. You will be safe with her. I will be safe with her. And what in the name of God did I mean by that?
“Ma? Are you there?”
“Yes, darling, I’m here. Well, my old Petie. Married. Oh, my. Let me get my breath.”
“You do like Sarah, Mama?” It was a question, tremulous.
“Oh, darling, yes, of course I do. Of course. I’m delighted, really. And of course, the chapel at Thanksgiving, anything you all want. Oh, wait until I tell Gramma and Happy…. Have you told Daddy yet? Oh, Petie, what made you decide?”
He laughed, I thought in relief.
“A: wait awhile on Gramma and Happy, until we tell Sarah’s folks. B: no, I haven’t told Dad yet. We just decided tonight, and he’s making a speech in Brookline. And C: Sarah told me that if I wouldn’t marry her so she could have you for a mother-in-law and spend all her summers in Retreat she would never speak to me again. What choice did I have?”
I was silent. Of course, Sarah Forbes would not only be Petie’s wife, she would be my daughter-in-law. Of course, they would spend their summers here at Liberty, where Petie always had; what had I thought they would do? I saw, suddenly, all the years ahead in this old shingled cottage: two women, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, only now it would be I who was the former, and this small, brown, determined girl I did not know who would be the latter. Waiting, waiting, for her turn….
I wanted it for myself for a little while, I thought desolately. I wanted it just for Peter and me. Just for a few summers. I do not want this strong young woman coming here to watch me, and serve me, and wait….
“Let me put Sarah on,” he said. “She wants to talk to you—”
“Darling, Gramma’s calling, and she’s really not well,” I said hastily. “I’m going to have to run check on her. Kiss Sarah for me and tell her how wonderful I think everything is, and I’ll talk to you again after you’ve told Daddy. Call me tomorrow night and we’ll all talk.”
“Well, we both love you,” he said.
“Me too, darling. ’Bye, now.” I replaced the telephone, and for a long time I sat on the top step in the dark, staring at nothing, hearing in the silence downstairs voices that had not yet spoken.
Mother Hannah had not called, of course, but I went to her door anyway and opened it softly and peered in. She lay on her side, mantled with the old Hudson Bay blanket that had always lain at the foot of her bed. The window was open and the faraway sound of the surf was close and clear, like breathing. A little wind, smelling of pine and salt, stirred her hair. Her stationery box lay on the floor beside the bed, and I saw that she had eaten the sandwich and drunk the milk. I shut the door again. Let her sleep. Time enough tomorrow to tell her about Petie and Sarah. I did not know, now, if she would be pleased or not. She would not have, before, but the old woman asleep in that quiet room was not the same one I had known in summers past. She was not even the same one who had come to Retreat this summer. Nor, I thought, trudging back upstairs, the old painted floor sticky and chilly under my bare feet, was I.
When I found her the next morning, going in rather late with her breakfast tray, I was not surprised. Shocked, yes; shaking uncontrollably with shock, and racked with a grief I had never thought to feel, but not surprised. The woman I had known all my married life had left me earlier. The old woman who lay still and lifeless in her bed was in almost all ways a stranger to me. I knelt down beside her and took her hand in both of mine. Cold. It was very cold, and her still face was cold, and so was the loose, silky skin of her throat.
“I wish you hadn’t gone,” I whispered. “There was so much I had to tell you.”
And I got up and walked to the downstairs telephone and called Amy Potter in Braebonnie. And the slow, formal old pageant of death in Retreat began once more, this time for Mother Hannah and so for me.
It wasn’t until that evening, with Peter and Petie on the way and Happy farmed out to Priss and Tobias Thorne and their mild-tempered girls, that I found the letter she had left me. It lay inside her stationery box; I had picked it up, finally, from the floor and the top had fallen off, and I saw the sealed envelope with my name on it. Whenever she had stopped breathing, and for whatever reason, she had had time first to write this. I did not think she was in pain when she did it, or felt any reason to hurry; the letter was fairly long, and the handwriting was round and precise and pretty, the confident copperplate hand of her youth.
Maude. I need to tell you this and do not think I can do it in person. I am ashamed of that, but the worm can turn only so much, and we have never taken each other into our confidences, you and I. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes it simply too hard to speak of this to you. So I shall write it, and when it is necessary you will read it.
I have left Liberty and everything in it to you. My will, in Boston, will bear me out. I do not know how Peter will feel about this, but I hope you will not find it necessary to tell him my reasons. They do not flatter him. You are the strong one, Maude; I have always known that, and have not always liked you for it. I wanted Peter to be that. But it is you, and so you must have Liberty, and you must keep it what it is, and see that Petie’s wife after you does the same. Take care of all of it: this house, this place, this world. It is all we have, we women.
You will see great change in your life; I sincerely thank God I will not. But I know that you love Retreat and the cape and this house in your own way, and it is only you who will have the strength and so the ruthlessness to keep it as it is, for a while at least. Maybe no one can do that for very long. You are strong, Maude. I could not break you, just as I could not be broken. I salute you for that. I am sorry for much that I put you through, but I had to know that you would endure.
Take care of Peter. Keep this place safe for him, as well as for you. He needs it like air and water but will not always have the strength to stay and guard it. His father did not, either. But neither can Peter leave it, just as, in the end, his father could not.
I think the cottage must go from you to Sarah Forbes. I see in her what I did in you when you were very young, though I can’t say I like her very much. Petie can’t keep it, and I doubt very much poor Happy can, either. So it must be Sarah, or a woman like her. You
will, won’t you, see to it that Petie gets around to asking her? You can do that. He will do anything you say.
Thank you for this afternoon and for many things, Maude. Never forget that Gretchen Winslow is not your friend, and I think it would not be a bad idea to kick her in the behind every now and then, just on principle.
The letter was signed formally, Hannah Stuart Chambliss, and dated. I read the last sentence over again and began to laugh, and then I put my face into my hands and wept for my beloved enemy.
* * *
Very late that night, after Peter and Petie had come in, and the ambulance from the hospital in Castine had come for Mother Hannah, Amy and I walked down to the yacht club and sat on the porch. Peter had ridden with his mother, and Petie was on the telephone to Sarah.
We rocked silently in the moonlight for a while. Out on the silver-stippled bay the dark bulks of Spectacle and Osprey Head seemed limned in light, and, farther out, Western and Hog islands and Fiddlehead seemed to float on air instead of water. Stars blazed and swarmed. There was no wind, and no sound except the steady creaking of the old willow rockers. Presently Amy reached over and took my hand.
“It’s us now, you know,” she said.
“Us what?” I said. I was tired to mindlessness, tired beyond surprise and curiosity. The warmth of her hand felt good, though.
“Us on the porch. Us with the right to the rocking chairs. We don’t get up for old women any more. We’re the ones with porch privileges.”
“Oh, Amy,” I said, tears starting again as they had first that morning, when I had held another hand, a dead one, in mine. “Oh, Amy. I never wanted to get there.”
Chapter
Nine
This afternoon, from the porch of Liberty, I heard for the first time in many years the sharp, querulous whistle of an osprey. I heard it quite distinctly, despite the fact that my hearing has for some years been a source of annoyance to me and no doubt those around me. But this piercing cry was clear and close, though as I have said, sound is strange here by the water, and the fog that shrouds the colony this evening had begun to creep in by then, so I could not really tell where the cry came from. Not, I know, from Osprey Head. It has been a long, long time since the ospreys nested there. The eagles who came to take their place are wonderful birds, heart-stopping in their magnificence, and the colony at large is far more protective of them than they ever were of the ubiquitous ospreys, but I have always missed those first fierce and faithful settlers. They endured so much for the sake of their nests and nestlings; they never gave up and never left until it was simply no longer possible to stay. I have come to admire that fierce familial loyalty above everything else. One could live a life for it, as the ospreys do.
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