The Sabbathday River

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

  Naomi dreaded having to tell Heather about the sampler. It had been an alphabet sampler, one of Heather’s best, with an outsized A of deepest red in the upper left corner of its vintage linen and the subsequent letters flowing from it with a momentum of inevitability until the honest H. Pratt—1985 following the final Z. Such an order would have taken her a good week, Naomi knew, since Heather would not part with a piece until she was happy with it, even as orders lengthened in their queue, waiting for her. She had been in the Flourish collective for only a year and a half, but she was by far the most skilled embroiderer Naomi had found thus far, not to mention the only one under sixty. Heather’s work, perhaps more than anyone else’s, appeared to be benefiting from customers’ word of mouth, and it seemed to Naomi that an entire generation of Scarsdale and Shaker Heights babies were currently occupying nurseries adorned with her name samplers and needlepoint birth announcements. How many times, Naomi sometimes mused, had Heather rendered the exotic names of her contemporaries’ offspring in florid or classically restrained letters, informing the world that Alyssa or Chloë or Brittany had arrived? Heather—who, as far as Naomi knew, had never left New Hampshire—had been asked for by name from as far afield as Palm Springs. But maybe, she thought ruefully, that was the whole point.

  Heather was Goddard Falls-born, to a mother who had gone off to Boston and come back pregnant. That in itself was the sum total of what Naomi knew about the mother, since she had either died or otherwise departed long since, and Heather had been in the care of her grandmother from a young age. Now, except for Polly, a child so lovely she made Naomi’s heart clutch, Heather was alone.

  Stephen Trask had brought Heather to her or, more accurately, had brought her work, two pieces she had made as gifts for his children. He said that the girl had been some kind of a manager at the sports center but was needed at home now. He had seemed anxious to recommend Heather, offering testimonials to her sweet nature, her conscientious habits, but Naomi, gazing at the exquisite work Trask had brought her, was already so amazed that she would have taken Heather on if she had been Medea herself. There were two pieces, silk thread etched on linen, one an interlocked ABC that moved with the subtlest alchemy from deepest red to palest yellow, the other a row of demure but sweetly plump apples with the prim text beneath them: A is for Apple. Naomi was charmed. The grandmother, Stephen said, had been gifted in this way; probably she had taught Heather a long time ago. Heather was always pulling out something during her breaks at the sports center, crouching over her lap with it. It hadn’t worked out at the sports center, he said, but not for anything the girl had done—Stephen wanted Naomi to know this, though Naomi couldn’t have cared less—she was a good girl, he said. He said it again.

  Winter after crushing winter the tilting gray house on Sabbath Creek Road remained impossibly upright. There was no land to speak of, just a back field already returning to forest from lack of attention. She doubted the grandmother had left much behind in the way of an estate, and what Heather made from her samplers wasn’t Naomi’s idea of a sufficient income for a very young mother alone in the world, but then again she had finally—and after considerable effort—gotten out of the habit of wondering how most of the citizens of Goddard Falls supported themselves. It seemed a non-issue for the people in question, after all. They themselves were too busy just getting on with things, and taking the long view was the useless activity of folks with too much time on their hands to begin with.

  In front of the house, a row of humble sunflowers bent low, as if—Naomi thought, shifting her station wagon into park—she were some kind of royalty, pulling up to a stately home with its line of servants in attendance. This fairly absurd association afforded her an unanticipated moment of levity, because her errand, after all, nudged at the core of Naomi’s lingering depression. The alphabet sampler she had picked up only last week and placed gently on the back seat of her station wagon —the first stop on its journey to the comfortable home of an appreciative new owner—was bloodstained now, at least symbolically. It was in a box probably, Naomi thought, in the terribly organized possession of that awful man Charter. Exhibit A, she thought bitterly. A is not for apple.

  She climbed down from the car and fished out the order slip: Michel, Menlo Park, California—one alphabet sampler, traditional colors, no figurative designs. Then she set her jaw and followed the fraying clapboards of the farmhouse to the front door, steeling herself. But the front door was open, and it was Naomi whose eyes widened in baffled concern. “Oh no,” she heard herself say. “What happened to you?”

  Heather stepped back, opening the door. She seemed to lean back against it for an instant, before straightening and pulling off the briefest of smiles.

  “Stomach bug. I caught it from Polly, I guess. I feel terrible.”

  She looked terrible, too, Naomi observed. Her normally pale cheeks were a stark white, and her thick brown hair, loose to her shoulders, gave off an unmistakable and almost animal odor. She wore a large and limp green sweater over gray sweat pants, and looked hot. Her forehead, in fact, was shining.

  “You have a fever,” Naomi observed.

  “No, not anymore, I think.” The girl’s voice was thin. “I did, till last night.” She shrugged, embarrassed. “Sorry, I’m sure you’re not interested.”

  Of course I am, Naomi almost said, but did not say. The truth was that she was never entirely certain where she stood with Heather, whether they were in fact friends, and if so, what it was that bound them in friendship, beyond the obvious fact of Naomi’s willingness to be Heather’s friend—something that plainly set her apart from the rest of Goddard. There were times, oddly enough, when Naomi found herself actually envying the women who so shunned this girl, for their certainty about Heather’s character, for the solidity of their opinions. In her own defense, Heather said nothing, and in her autonomy, she was unknowable: a girl without friends who refused to experience or, at any rate, to manifest, loneliness, a girl without beauty (and even Naomi—who had, over the years, worked hard to expand her definition of female beauty beyond the socially endorsed limitations of white, slender, and blond—had never considered Heather Pratt to be beautiful) who nonetheless had some irreducible quality that could not be gained at a makeup counter or shaped in a gym. Heather’s sensuality—never flaunted, never even consciously displayed—was nonetheless palpable. She could see why the women hated her. Naomi, in her celibacy, sometimes nearly hated her, too.

  She smiled to cover her silence. “Of course I’m interested, Heather. You should be in bed.”

  “I feel better moving around, actually,” Heather said. “I’ve got Polly in the kitchen. You want some tea?” She turned, walking stiffly, Naomi following.

  The baby was in her high chair, doing fairly stomach-churning things to a fistful of hamburger. Even this, however, could not do much more than briefly obscure her beauty. For all that she was a child of sin, Naomi thought, Polly was also a child so radiant that there seemed some alchemy of rightness in her making. Naomi walked to the kitchen table and bent down to stare into her bottomless blue eyes. She was just over one year old, plump and avid, with a brushed thatch of white blond hair and a single, demure extra chin. She looked at Naomi, utterly focused and utterly serene. Then, happily, she extended her mashed and masticated dinner in an open hand.

  “You said on the phone there was some problem about the last order,” Heather said. She was filling a stainless-steel kettle at the tap and placing it on one of the stove’s electric coils, where it hissed. She gave the stockpot beside it a stir, and a drift of apple and cinnamon reached across the room to Naomi. The kitchen was softly bright, painted white, the floorboards rosy peach. Heather had not turned around, and now reached into a cabinet for teabags, her sweater riding up to show, briefly, a band of skin, pale around a shapeless middle. She’d never managed to get her figure back after Polly, Naomi thought. Too young to be plump for the rest of her life, she clucked to herself. What was Heather, anyway? Twenty? T
wenty-one?

  “Just sugar, please,” Naomi said. “That smells great. Is it applesauce?”

  “Pick’s recipe,” Heather said, giving the pot a stir. “Every year I kept after her to make it less sweet, but every year she came up with some reason to add more sugar. Last year she said the baby wouldn’t eat it if it wasn’t sweet, but it’s just cause she liked it that way herself.” She shook her head at the syrupy apples. “I don’t know why I’m bothering. I’ve still got some of last year’s batch down in the cellar.” She turned and smiled weakly at Naomi. “Just couldn’t stand seeing the apples out back. She always made a point of getting them in on time.”

  “Well,” Naomi said uncomfortably, “I’m sure she’d be happy you’re keeping up the tradition.” She took a breath. “Listen, Heather, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but I—Your sampler was damaged. I’m sorry. You’ll be paid, of course, but …”

  “Oh.” The girl turned. “Well, no harm. Accidents happen. Don’t apologize, Naomi.” She ladled applesauce into a white bowl, blew on it, and brought it to the baby, who laughed in unqualified delight. Heather put the sugar bowl on the table, and the cups with their teabag tails. The hot water turned orange, then amber.

  “You know about the baby,” Naomi heard herself say.

  She looked into Heather’s face.

  “The baby,” Heather said. Her voice was flat.

  Back on the stove, the puckering of applesauce at its slow boil. Its wafting sweetness made the air suddenly thick. Naomi had just assumed.

  “I’m sorry, I just assumed,” she said.

  “Assumed?” said Heather. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

  “I found a dead baby. Saturday morning, in the river.” The girl’s eyes widened. Naomi saw abruptly that she hadn’t known. Heather was stunned silent. Her short fingers held her teacup at the rim, gracelessly, as the liquid steamed.

  “Where?” she finally said. The word came out a kind of sputter.

  “Down by Nate’s Landing. I was jogging on the path.”

  “Nate’s Landing?” This appeared to shock her even more. “But that’s almost into Goddard.”

  Naomi frowned at the non sequitur. Heather bent forward over her teacup and sipped. She swallowed. Then she took a gulp of air and straightened. “It’s terrible, but what does that have to do with me?”

  Naomi frowned. “Well, nothing. But your sampler, you see. It was in the back seat. I wrapped her up in it.” She paused to shake the baby’s face from her thoughts. “I had to. It was the only thing I had to cover her with. She was so … She had been cut, too. Somebody cut her, or stabbed her or something.” She closed her eyes. That curiously bloodless puncture, the Roman wound in the medieval painting. “I’ve never seen anything like that.” She was speaking less evenly now, the tinge of panic returning to her voice. She looked at Heather—for comfort, she realized—and then was suddenly ashamed of her need.

  The girl’s eyes were wide. She was not looking at Naomi at all but at Polly, who pushed the remains of her dinner across the tray of her high chair with a solemnity the activity hardly deserved. Heather reached out and touched her daughter’s cheek. Just touched it, as if to make sure it was still there. She frowned. “I don’t understand. You mean, somebody actually killed the baby? It wasn’t just, you know, the baby was born and it was dead or something?”

  Naomi shook her head. “I guess the coroner will decide about that,” she said, suddenly very tired. “I’m really just trying not to think about it right now, actually.” Out of courtesy, she took a long drink of her cooling tea. “Anyway, that’s what happened. I wrapped her up in your sampler. I’m sorry, Heather. And then it was part of the evidence, you understand? So the police had to take it away with them, for their investigation. There was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t ask for it back.”

  Heather was staring at the tabletop. “Part of the evidence,” she intoned. She looked up and met Naomi’s eyes. “I don’t want my sampler to be part of the evidence.”

  Naomi looked surprised. “Well, we don’t exactly have a choice about it. This man running the investigation, he’s very much in charge, and frankly I didn’t think it was important enough to argue about. The truth is that even if I’d managed to keep it … I couldn’t, you know, I could never just send it to the customer. Not after that. So we’re just going to have to make another one.” She looked at Heather’s face. The girl might be on the mend, Naomi thought, but she still looked unwell. Shit, Naomi hoped she wouldn’t catch whatever flu this was. The last thing she needed now was a bug that wiped you out with such evident efficiency.

  “Heather,” she heard herself say, “you take a few days and rest up. I’m going to write to the customer anyway, tell her there was an accident or something, all right? You just get better, then you can have another whack at it, okay?”

  Heather nodded. “Okay. You bring me another kit?”

  Naomi fished it out of her bag and handed it over.

  “Want some more tea?”

  It was a formality, easily deflected.

  “No, thanks. I’ve got shopping to do. Another time.” She shrugged on her coat. “Take care of yourself, Heather. I’ll give you a call next week, see how you’re getting on.” She paused. “Look, I’m sorry I told you if you didn’t know already.” Naomi smiled weakly. “The whole town seems to know about it. I figured you would, too.”

  “We don’t see too much of people,” Heather said plainly, without sadness. “I guess I would have heard sometime.”

  Naomi showed herself out and rounded the muddy yard with its hunchback sunflowers, back to her station wagon. It was getting dark now, though it wasn’t yet six. The weekend past she had thought of as Indian summer, she remembered. A T-shirt and shorts to jog in, not even a sweatshirt on the morning she had found the baby. Only two days had passed, but already, in the early evenings, there was the preemptive chill of winter. She reached for the heating lever on her dashboard and gave it its first nudge of the season as she started the station wagon down the drive. She was nearly at the road when a flash of light drew her eyes to the rearview mirror, then made her turn in her seat and peer into the gloom. She shook her head. Heather, in her green sweater, was walking across the field behind the house, weaving through big stones and jumping ruts, a flashlight slapping at her hip. She shouldn’t be outside, Naomi thought crossly. How did she expect to get well again if she refused to take care of herself?

  Chapter 6

  Lilith in the Garden

  THE GODDARD STOP & SHOP WAS LOCATED IN A strip mall just north of the town center, wedged on the unimaginative concrete between a Hallmark card shop and a video rental place that did a brisk business in Schwarzenegger but was, Naomi had discovered early on, decidedly unlikely to carry the latest Woody Allen. The supermarket gave the word “monopoly” a whole new meaning, comprising, as it did, the sole large food outlet within fifteen miles of Goddard, and more or less determining, as a result, what Goddard and Goddard Falls inhabitants were going to eat—a diet primarily manufactured by Hostess, Wonder, Coca-Cola, and Procter and Gamble, as near as she could tell. Years earlier she had attempted to interest the management in the nutritional benefits of whole foods, the advantage of developing relationships with local farmers and start-up specialty providers, but these efforts, amazingly, had been resisted. She did still give in to an emergency expedition into Hanover now and then, making a run on the gourmet store on College Street to buy up everything in sight (including pounds and pounds of the bagels they swore were flown in from H & H on the Upper West Side of Manhattan). Mostly, however, she had buckled under years ago. She had to eat. She had that in common with her neighbors.

  She even ate meat now. Back in college, Naomi had embraced Daniel’s vegetarianism like a dowry, which it was in a way. Daniel considered the consumption of meat to be the primary distorting force in the web of ecological balances, and the primary pollution of the human body. Daniel favored grains cooked
to the texture of sawdust, casseroles of parboiled vegetables baked with grated cheese, a rainbow of teas that stretched from malt brown to celadon. Chicken was permissible on special occasions, but only organically grown chicken, which—given where they lived—neatly cut down on the consumption of chicken. He liked beans and always had a pot of them soaking. He collected bottles of condiments whose labels were in Sanskrit or Chinese and whose contents she was secretly afraid would poison them. He went through two copies of the Moosewood Cookbook and had just bought a third when they separated. He replenished his supplies from the bins at Tom and Whit’s and the garden plot he rented from the dairy farmer next door. As far as Naomi knew, he had never entered the Stop & Shop.

  She took her cart from the rack near the automatic door and began her rounds: hormone-laden milk, nominally whole-wheat sliced bread. Recycled paper goods? Please. She needed toilet paper and couldn’t last the week it would take Seventh Generation to ship some over from Vermont, so it was time to squeeze some Charmin like the rest of the world. A man in a hunting cap was staring at her, down by the aluminum foil at the end of the aisle. She knew him, not by name—somebody’s husband—and smiled and waved. Sarah Copley came by her, almost passed, then turned around.

  “Naomi.”

  “Sarah,” Naomi said, stopping her cart. She was waiting to see which way the wind would blow.

  “This is a mess. There was an article in The Boston Globe. My sister telephoned from Dedham.”

  Naomi looked up and nodded. “I guess that makes sense.”

  Sarah Copley placed a proprietary hand on Naomi’s shopping cart. She had graying hair suspended in blondness, part natural, part bottled. The shade had grown increasingly discordant as she approached sixty, and now was beginning to seem downright silly. Sarah was a quilter, retired from her job in the town clerk’s office a year or two earlier. She and Naomi had a bond of civilized mutual tolerance.