Bell Weather

by Dennis Mahoney

  “I will keep her out of sight.”

  “Like a mistress or a whore?”

  John stood and scraped the chair, violently erect. “It was you, was it not, who conceived the false marriage?”

  “A necessary ruse.”

  “Did you really think your sister would be bound to you forever?”

  “Evidently not,” Nicholas replied.

  Was it injury or shame that marred her brother’s countenance? His features fell, softening his eyes to leave them fuller, and his cheekbones lengthened, and his brows seemed to frown. He was plain as any page she’d ever had to translate but written in a dialect she didn’t understand.

  “The three of us could move wherever we like,” Molly said.

  “My work is here,” Nicholas said.

  “And mine is north,” John agreed.

  Nicholas crossed his legs and locked his fingers over his knee. He turned to Molly and said, “You needn’t wrestle with the choice between your brother and your lover. You chose many weeks ago. Nature saw it through. You and John must go. I will stay here in Grayport.”

  For weeks, Molly had tried to think of practical solutions. Uncle Nicholas. Her brother and her lover at her side, with the baby, starting over in an unfamiliar home. Impossible, impossible. She had to go with John. But he was virtually a stranger, much as she adored him, and to live without Nicholas, her brother and her mirror—it was almost too foreign and unthinkable to stomach.

  “Your absence will be noted,” Nicholas reminded her. “I’ll say that you are caring for a relative in need. A sister with paralysis, perhaps, or sudden blindness. But Kinship is far too near,” he said to John. “You will have to take her farther to the north or overseas.”

  John bridled at the order, sitting down but leaning forward. He mastered his distress and said, “I’ve spent the last three months establishing my livelihood.”

  “A season,” Nicholas said. “Scarcely time to grow a fetus. You will sever ties with Kofi—”

  “Kofi Baa will know the truth.”

  “And he would probably embrace you. But everything I have is built upon trust. Would you scar the reputation of your new wife’s brother? Molly,” Nicholas said. “Would you willingly destroy me?”

  Molly gripped an armrest, fighting down nausea.

  “Kofi cannot know,” she said.

  John remained stoically attentive to her brother but his eyelids sagged. “The man is like my father.”

  “You are now a father,” Nicholas replied. “Take another three months and carve a niche where no one knows you.”

  John’s thigh muscles flexed as if preparing for a lunge but he stayed within his seat. Nicholas turned to Molly. He was seated near the fire and his left cheek was pinker than the right. He leaned toward her.

  “You’ll be showing soon,” he said. “I will take you from the city. We will stay in isolation through the autumn and into winter. As soon as John is settled, I will see you to his side.”

  He was tearful when he said it. Molly had rarely seen him cry, and though she trusted that he loved her and believed she had wounded him, she wondered whether the light was playing tricks with her eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The plan proceeded as agreed, dissatisfying all. John Summer traveled by riverboat to Kinship, there to uproot himself again and extend whatever prospects remained to distant Burn, a glorified hamlet—nearly at the border of New Rouge—that was surrounded by a palisade to fend off wolves. It was to be Molly and John’s frigid, permanent home in a matter of months, and in the interim Nicholas took her out of Grayport to a cabin in the north to await John’s summons.

  The isolated dwelling, rented from one of Nicholas’s contacts in the city, was situated in the wilderness east of Kinship, accessible only by a pitiful road and, for the last ten miles, a fur trappers’ path through the untamed forest. It stood in a leaf-strewn clearing near a gorge with a creek. Thirty feet long and fifteen wide, the log cabin was a single story with a peaked roof, a door and window at the front, a stone chimney, and a crude puncheon floor. The room around the hearth comprised most of the interior. A loft along the back held Nicholas’s bedding, and a dividing wall afforded Molly her own chilly space with a proper bed and—though the room’s doorway had no door—a modicum of privacy. Still it seemed severe, even punitively spartan.

  “Could we not have simply hidden in a well-furnished house?” Molly asked.

  “We have everything we need,” Nicholas replied.

  This was not strictly true. Her brother had hired a man named Edgar to carry their meager belongings and deliver supplies throughout the season. He had a grizzly black beard and the power of a bear but was short and compact: a miniature giant. Molly had failed to engage him in conversation on their way to the cabin, and he had left without a word as soon as he was able, under orders to return in two weeks’ time.

  After the early days of tidying and nesting, Molly had little to do but read in front of the hearth and watch her brother studying and writing at a table.

  “Practice patience,” Nicholas said, teaching by example as he answered her complaints. He dipped his quill and started a letter by the sunlit window. “Recall our conversation from this morning,” he continued.

  Heaven help me, Molly thought. Was it only just this morning?

  “‘Occupy my mind, and the hours take wing,’” she said, quoting his advice with overearnest pomp. She flapped her arms gracefully and walked around the cabin, gliding to his side before returning to her rocking chair, her twice-read books, her unchanged view of her unchanging brother with the leaves falling softly and eternally beyond him. Her mockery and flapping hadn’t ruffled him at all.

  At least her baby grew active as her womb began to swell, hiccupping and somersaulting, wonderfully alive. She noted every kick and dreamed of little heels. She made a long list of names she encountered in her books, hummed lullabies at night, and often read aloud.

  She made her brother move his table to the middle of the room so she could sit beside the window, admiring the view. The weather was peculiar, captivating her and Nicholas alike with pale green sunsets, snow that seemed to pause and reascend before it settled, and temperature swings the likes of which she’d never known in Grayport or Umber. Nicholas said the continent was rife with strange phenomena, especially in the mountains and the Antler River Valley—a region even lifelong Florians considered mysterious—but no belly rolls or otherworldly storms could distract her from the fact that John had left her waiting.

  Edgar came and went every two weeks. He delivered fresh supplies and kept Nicholas in contact with Grayport and Kinship, trudging through the snow once winter had arrived and speaking only to her brother in a baritone muffled by his beard. If she talked to him directly, he would pause and turn away.

  “Have you told him to ignore me?” Molly asked when he was gone.

  “He is terrified of women,” Nicholas said. “There was a marriage, I am told, involving Edgar and a harridan—”

  “I don’t trust him. Are you certain he is checking every avenue of mail?”

  “Edgar is reliable. Remember it is winter and the way to Burn is treacherous. It’s likely John has written and the letter is delayed.”

  She sensed her brother had more to say—disparaging remarks on John’s fidelity and character—but was keeping himself quiet so as not to start a row.

  Wind whistled through the walls, challenging the fire. Both liveliness and deathliness inhabited the sound. She could linger indoors but the day called her out. She could venture outside but the cold would drive her in again. She sat in her chair and said, “I want to go to Kinship.”

  Nicholas dipped his quill and started writing at his table.

  “What harm could it do?” she asked.

  “We are supposed to be tending your bedridden sister. You can’t be seen carrying an unwanted baby.”

  Even the baby seemed nettled by his words, kicking twice.

  “Furthermor
e,” he said, “snow has blocked the way.”

  “Edgar makes the trip.”

  “Edgar is not with child.”

  “Uh!” Molly said. “And I defended you when John thought little of your nerve.”

  He put down the quill and set aside the letter. She couldn’t read the words but saw that he had quit mid-page, having made some mistake, and she was satisfied, at least, to have gotten some reaction. She read to quiet her thoughts but couldn’t concentrate and laid the open book upon her stomach. Her rocking chair’s creak went from grating, to hypnotic, to a rhythmic and incessant combination of the two. She felt the woods around the cabin, leagues of pine and lonesome white, and the creek still surging underneath the ice. Just today she had visited the nearby gorge, where the cold, hidden water made her think of Mr. Fen, his body long since devoured by the fishes and the crabs.

  John Summer seemed as distant as a man beneath the sea, her love for him a thing turned watery and vague. What if his memory of her had similarly faded? But she didn’t let him go; he was often in her thoughts, and she believed—as she believed in magic weather—he would summon her.

  Molly felt a chill, turned to Nicholas again, and asked him to add a log to the fire. He stared at her and finally seemed to view her as a sister, not a person asking questions, not a burden at his side. He studied her belly with equal care and looked toward the hearth. The wood rack was empty near the feebly burning fire.

  Nicholas retrieved a blanket from her bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. He walked outside without a coat, passed the window like a shadow in the wince-white snow, and returned with an armload of wood from the sheltered supply beside the cabin. The cold had shocked his lungs, and although he had remained healthy thus far, he trembled when he added a log and coughed with terrible force. He poured a cup of water from the kettle at the hearth, added a spoonful of tea, and placed it in her hands. It was merryweather tea, which she used to drink with John. The growing fire blew a shimmer of July across her cheek.

  Nicholas stood above her with his back toward the window; the glare seemed to make him translucent at the edges. He knelt and put his palms very softly on her stomach. At moments like these, their life together bloomed and she remembered what a loss she would face when he was gone.

  “I have sent Edgar north,” he said, “to speak with John directly.”

  Molly’s heart bumped up like a movement of the baby. “You have? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought it wrong to raise your hopes. You must be calm,” he said. “Let me do the worrying for now.”

  She rocked and sipped her tea until the warmth reached her toes. The fire rose and Nicholas returned to writing letters. Molly watched the snow glitter gently past the window, regretting how distrustful she had been of Edgar and imagining his long, cruel journey in the cold. Then a draft from a chink curled around her ankles and she wondered why her brother hadn’t wanted to raise her hopes.

  * * *

  In the final month of her pregnancy, when Molly’s impatience, even unspoken, emanated such a constant vibration that Nicholas too seemed constantly distracted, Edgar returned after an absence of many weeks. He had fought through the snow with a monstrous horse and sledge, and he had only just dismounted and reached the cabin door—beard frozen stiff, cheeks flaky raw—when Molly rushed toward him and said, “Did you speak to John Summer?”

  Nicholas blocked her way and raised a hand: Give him room.

  Molly acquiesced with blustery reluctance, pacing the floor beside the doorway as Edgar, in his time, dropped a sack beside the table and returned outside to finish emptying the sledge. After the bread, meat, cheese, sugar, wine, vegetables, clothes, lamp oil, books, medicine, and sundry supplies were inside, he opened his coat and produced a sheaf of papers wrapped in oilcloth, spread it on the table, and handed Molly a wax-sealed letter addressed to her.

  She snapped it from his hand and kissed his shaggy jowl. He tasted like a dog, like a dear beloved cur, and shrank away as if she might have venom on her lips.

  “You saw him?” Molly said. “You spoke to him yourself?”

  Edgar grunted in the negative.

  “Then how did you get the letter?”

  “’Twas delivered to a public house in Kinship,” he said.

  “Did you not go to Burn?”

  He bit his gloves off and clawed the frozen mucus off his beard, and then he sniffed and cleared his throat and looked to Nicholas, ignoring her.

  “Read it,” Nicholas told her. “You have answers in your hand.”

  She did so at once, shivering from excitement and the repeatedly opened door, while Nicholas paid Edgar for his work, handed him a packet full of letters and instructions, and sent him off without a drink or even a minute by the fire. Molly was too distracted to regard Edgar leaving, and the horse and sledge were already disappearing into the woods before she thought to call him back. She was speechless and immobile.

  “What news?” Nicholas asked.

  The frigid winter air had met the swelter of the fire and her body felt both, as if afflicted by a fever. She might have fainted if the baby hadn’t woken up inside her. The letter sagged open in her outstretched hand. She could barely hold it up. It might’ve weighed a hundred pounds.

  Nicholas took the sheet and read it by the hearth. His shadow, long and warped, moved gently on the wall. She had memorized the letter as fast as she read it, hearing John’s voice, and smelling his skin, and recognizing quirks in the style of his script: the undulating M’s and overgrown I’s.

  Dear Molly,

  Forgive me. I write this heavy-hearted on the eve of my departure overseas, embracing opportunities that failed, despite my efforts, to materialize in Burn. I cannot remain destitute in Floria or gamble my advancement on the risk—and we would risk it all our lives—of someone recognizing you as Mrs. Smith from Grayport. I commend you to your brother’s care and vow to send, when fortune allows, what money I can spare to you and your baby.

  I console myself believing that we never truly loved. A summer’s dream, lost in fall. We were not meant to be.

  Sincerely,

  John

  She felt him moving off as if his hand had left her breast. Again the baby moved and John was with her, in her body. Was he right? Had she fooled herself in loving and believing? She had loved him as he’d been and yet the letter proved him other: not the kind John Summer, not her own John Summer, but the real John Summer, who had panicked and betrayed her. She was pregnant from a figment—from a commonplace lie.

  “I’ll ruin him,” Nicholas said, crumpling up the page.

  He tossed it into the fire. Molly wanted to retrieve it—even now it seemed precious, like the petal of a dream—but her weight wouldn’t let her and she settled in her chair. She watched the paper flare and curl. It feathered into ash. She wished she could have read it one last time and seen the angles of the words, the evidence of ink. There was something of the sender’s own body in a letter. She had learned it when their father used to write them from the war, when the letters seemed a physical extension of his presence. Something in the memory would not leave her mind.

  “Can he think we care a jot for his advancement?” Nicholas said.

  He looked at her, apparently amazed at John’s gall, but whatever he discovered in her face dulled his edges, and he came to her and held her, pulling her cheek against his shoulder, knowing not to speak or offer consolation. Molly stared across the room until a film blurred her eyes. She hugged her brother from the chair but he didn’t feel solid. He was no more present in the room than John’s words, as if by burning them he’d burned her last connections to the world.

  She didn’t speak the rest of the day. Nicholas kept the silence. He organized their newly arrived supplies and studied his own many letters. Molly neither read nor ate but sat in her chair, and looked out the window, and daydreamed and napped until dozing and waking scarcely seemed distinguishable. Snow fell, evening fell. Sun lit the woods in orang
es and purples till the drifts turned gray, then pearly from the moon.

  “We must agree on what to do,” Nicholas said across the room.

  Molly’s skin felt glued to her unchanged clothes. “He’s gone,” she said, her voice like a disembodied whisper.

  “The babe is half Aquarian, of caramel complexion. We cannot claim the child as our own,” Nicholas said.

  Molly stood. She locked her knees but her feet were numb and prickly. It seemed that all her blood had settled in her legs and now her heart, like a bilge pump, was struggling to move it. “We’ll say that we adopted it.”

  “You wish to raise a child in a false marriage?”

  “I wouldn’t live at all in a false marriage!” Molly stomped across the room, grown heavy in her pregnancy and cradling her womb as she approached him in his chair. “You said it wouldn’t last and we would move when we were ready. Surely we have means to live somewhere else. We’ll try another city, another country—”

  “Molly.”

  “We’ll be brother and sister with a baby we adopted. Nobody will question us. Nobody will find us.”

  “No,” he said firmly, standing up to meet her. “It is abominable the way John Summer has abandoned you, but I will not bear the burden, much as I adore you, and compromise our lives for the sake of an unnecessary weakness.”

  She cried to see him harden so but didn’t wipe her eyes. “You call my baby an unnecessary weakness?”

  “Is there any vulnerability greater than a child? A living, growing secret, one that might be turned against us. We would struggle for control and ultimately lose, just as I lost you when you and John set against me.”

  Dense snow creaked the roof, bearing down above them, and another gusty snowfall blacked out the moon. There would be no getting out for at least another week—maybe longer, given the drifts and Molly’s low, heavy carriage. Simply standing hurt her back. Self-support made her wobble.

  “I’ll go alone,” she said.

  “A new mother with a bastard at your breast. How would you live? You could not hold employment with your days so encumbered. Even if you could, would you call yourself free? Would it not be far worse than what we had in Grayport, a life you couldn’t tolerate—a life you called a prison? We are young and have the whole map of years spread before us. We are all we have left and no one else will help us. Remember when I gave you this,” he said, raising a pinky to his chipped front tooth. “Father tried dividing us. So did John Summer. The baby is a wedge driving us apart. But together,” Nicholas said, “we’re the strongest people in the world.”