It really was green. It led to the back house, crammed with bulk foods and animal feeds, which itself led to the barn, so crowded it seemed as if whole farmhouses had been disassembled for parts and packed away here. Clothes were in the basement (Whit Chase had to show you the way himself), and the attic was divided between hunting and fishing things and regulation supply for the National Guard (Whit was a colonel). The farther in you went, the more vast and the more plentiful, but getting what you needed out of Tom and Whit’s required a kind of stubborn, homegrown Zen. For just about everyone else, it had got to be a pain, driving to Hanover or even Peytonville just for the same grocery run the whole rest of the world had around the corner.
Heather parked on the road and scooped Polly out of her car seat. She was stirring, making little puckers with her mouth, slowly formulating the concept of what she wanted next from life. There was avid interest as she crossed the porch, and Heather agreeably showed the baby, turning to the “Oohs” around her as she threaded through the Adirondacks to the front door. “What a cute bitty thing,” one woman said, leaping to her feet. Unbidden, she tickled Polly’s chin, then poked at her tummy through the baby blanket. Polly, wide awake now, gaped in mute disbelief. “What is she, two months?”
“Two months,” Heather confirmed.
“What a sweetheart!” said the woman. “I’ve got a little grandniece the same age.” She poked again. “And what a sweet little dress.”
“Thank you,” Heather said warmly. “I made it. I make all her clothes.”
“Well, my word,” the woman said. Her hair was the color of brass, and—it looked tike—the texture. “My niece, she couldn’t sew a button! Y’all from around this town?” She peered at her companion, a rotund man in a new down jacket zipped up tight. He sat in one of the Adirondacks reading USA Today. “What’s this town?”
“It’s Goddard,” said Heather. “Yes, I’m from Goddard. Well, from Goddard Falls.”
“Why, you lucky thing,” the woman said. “Imagine living in a sweet town like this. You lucky thing.”
“Thank you,” Heather said, though she wasn’t quite sure that she was authorized to give thanks on behalf of the town. Polly turned her head to nudge Heather’s chest. “Excuse me,” she told the woman.
The first thing Heather saw when she went inside was Celia Trask’s behind, large and upturned as Celia rummaged in a box under the coffee table. The second thing she saw was one of her own baby samplers hanging in the corner next to a hooked “Welcome” rug and a large notice inviting tourists to stop by the mill. She hoisted Polly a bit and stepped over to the corner.
It wasn’t her original sampler, which had been photographed and returned and was now back home, hung by a nail over Polly’s crib. It was the second or third she had done for Naomi, about 20 by 20 inches, with “A is for Apple” leading off in the top left corner and a name—Olivia Michelle Kuenne—in the lower right. She remembered this one especially because she had thought the name was beautiful, and because a photograph had been sent with the order: a little girl, dark-eyed and lighter than air, coaxed for an instant into a smile larger than herself. Heather had thought the sampler was long gone to Princeton by now, and yet here it was, still in Goddard.
“That yours?” Celia said, behind her.
“Yuh,” said Heather. “I was just wondering what it was doing here.”
“It’s been up for a week or two. Naomi always has something up.” She rolled her eyes. “You wouldn’t believe how many tourists go straight for that corner. I told Whit, we ought to start charging for directions to the mill.”
“That’s great,” said Heather, who supposed it was.
“Well,” Celia said, a little grudgingly, “it’s a good piece of work, that sampler.”
“Thanks.” Heather smiled. “Stephen well?”
“Yuh,” she sighed. “So, you need something?”
“Milk,” said Heather. “And I thought I’d have a little coffee and sit out.”
Celia looked at her. “Out?”
“Out there.” She used Polly’s head to point. “You know, like them.”
Celia frowned. “But why?”
Heather couldn’t think of why, precisely. She took her coffee from Celia. Polly was butting at her, getting antsy.
“It’s just,” Celia said, “you know, Whit and Ann just stepped out. They went up to the bank. They’re coming back.”
She was saved from responding by Polly, who chose this moment to open her dainty mouth and wail. Heather dropped coins into the basket on the coffee table. “See you,” she told Celia. She stepped outside and kicked the door closed with her foot. There were two Adirondacks free now. She put her coffee down on the armrest of one and sat, maneuvering Polly. She hadn’t really done this in the open before. Some things had to be pushed aside, others pulled down, and others raised. Polly arched. The man with the USA Today glanced up, gaped, reddened, and looked stiffly away; his wife read a map of the White Mountains. The baby sucked hard, the world subsumed. Heather felt the familiar jolt of pain on the edge of pleasure and closed her eyes before smiling, so that no one would see her. Polly’s mouth pulled the milk away, tireless and determined, her fist beating the breast to make it come faster. Heather drew her jacket across the baby, so that the only part that showed was that small place where they connected. They sat that way as the minutes passed. She had never felt more peaceful, or more modest.
The cold air hit her nipple as Polly released her. She rummaged under her jacket, moving her clothes around, then shifted the baby to her other arm and the open shirt over her other breast.
“Oh my God. Whit, for Christ’s sake!”
Heather saw to the baby first, then she looked up.
Ann Chase was back. She stood beside her husband’s truck, staring in disgust. Whit was climbing out the driver’s side. He didn’t hear his wife the first time, so she said it again.
“For Christ’s sake, Whit. Do something.”
Whit didn’t seem to know what to do. Heather, realizing that she must be near enough this outrage to see it for herself, looked around, but everything seemed normal. The tourists, who had been reading or rocking or both, were starting to look up. Now, inexplicably, they were starting to look at Heather.
Heather looked at herself.
At her elbow, the coffee still steamed. Polly’s soft head moved, but more slowly. Soon she would stop altogether and turn one sleepy cheek to the nipple. She liked to drift off this way, with this moist thing abutting her, pressing her cheek into her toothless mouth. It was a posture that expelled any notion of wrongness, that was so opaquely good that Heather could not seem to make a connection between the ugliness of Ann Chase’s voice and herself—the apparent irritant.
“Well, sweetheart,” said Polly’s earlier admirer suddenly, “don’t you think y’all ought to do that someplace warmer?”
Whit Chase was climbing the steps, his livid wife behind him. “You cover up, young miss.” His voice was tight.
“I’m sorry?” Heather found her voice.
“You should be,” said Ann.
Heather heard Celia open the door to the shop.
“What’s the matter?” said Heather.
“You think this is some kind of street corner, is that it?” said Ann, who was shaking now.
“No,” Heather said. Then, somewhat in disbelief: “Street corner?”
“You advertising your wares?”
“I’m feeding my daughter,” Heather said, declaring the obvious.
“Whit,” snapped Ann, without turning her head or breaking her stare, “get Nelson on the phone.”
Heather, who did not know who Nelson was, didn’t react to this.
“She was hungry,” she said instead. “Look, I’m almost finished.”
“You’re finished now,” Ann hissed. Whit moved past them and slammed the door.
The tourist, who had watched this exchange, put her White Mountain map in her handbag. “Come on, honey.” She too
k hold of her husband’s arm. “We’re leaving.”
Ann glared at them, too, as they stepped by her; then she turned back to Heather. “Who told you you could do that on my porch?” She took a step closer to Heather, who was holding her jacket across Polly’s head.
“Well, no one,” Heather said truthfully. “But it didn’t occur to me there’d be a problem. I mean”—she gave Ann a cautious smile—“you kind of have to do it when they want it, not when it’s convenient. Even if you’re in public, you know?” She noted, and resented, the supplicatory tone that had crept, uninvited, into her voice.
Ann was shaking her head. Her wide cheeks were ruddy now, and her straw-yellow hair was motionless in the light wind. Vaguely, Heather wondered how she managed that. “I’ll tell you what I know, young lady.” Her voice was low and clear. “I know you can’t bear to do a damn thing unless it’s in public. It’d never occur to you to do something if the whole world isn’t there to see you do it. You think we want to see you takin’ off your clothes and stickin’ out your chest like something in a zoo?”
There was a little smacking sound as the baby released her. Heather wanted to pull down her sweater, but she suddenly cared more to hide her baby than to hide her breast. Ann’s eyes dropped and she grimaced. Heather was abruptly enraged.
“I don’t understand your problem, Mrs. Chase,” she said tersely. “Breast-feeding’s good for the baby and all. I mean,” she said, clarifying herself as if she were explaining things to a child not much older than Polly, “it’s natural.”
“There’s nothing natural about this baby,” Ann said. “Don’t you hide behind that. You think you can get away with whatever you feel like. Well, it’s a free country, I guess. But don’t you kid yourself that the rest of the world is just going to look the other way. There’s plenty of people who care about decency, even if you’re too busy being natural to think about such a thing.”
Heather, shocked, wanted to hit her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw more colors. More people, still and listening to them.
“I’m sorry if I’ve offended you,” she said, shrugging her jacket closed. Polly was asleep, but her jaw still moved in rhythm, nursing at some dream-breast. Heather made to pick up her bag.
“Oh no,” said Ann, stepping up beside her and placing a claw on her arm. “No, you don’t. You’re waiting for Nelson.”
Heather stared at her. “Who’s Nelson?” she asked. People seemed to be collecting at her feet, streaming toward her, from all the corners of the world, in their cars. One stopped as she watched, a rusted white pickup with two hunters in front and a big matted mutt in the back.
“You won’t listen to me, that’s fine,” Ann was saying. “You won’t listen to your own conscience, cause you don’t have one, fine. I’ll even go so far as to say maybe it isn’t all your fault. Your mom wasn’t much of an example. But you’ll sure as hell not make a spectacle of yourself after this.”
“God, you’re a bitch,” Heather said. She said it thoughtfully, because it was a kind of discovery, and quietly, because she only meant to say it to herself.
Quick as water, Ann reached out and hit her with an open hand. The blow landed flat on Heather’s cheek.
“Now, Ann.” A broad white hand reached out and took Ann’s hand away. Heather’s cheek flared with heat. She pressed it with the hand that wasn’t holding Polly. The man standing between them now was pale and soft, with a face that was kind even as it frowned. “Ann, I came right over,” he said to her, his voice soothing. “Now, what’s up?”
“She’s up,” Ann said, a ribbon of hysteria threading her voice. “She’s up on her damn throne, like she’s some kinda queen and we all have to pretend she’s not just your average whore. Flouncing around like she owns the ground under all our feet!”
For the first time, the man glanced at Heather. He wore a tan uniform with dark brown cuffs and a collar. The pin over his left breast read: Erroll.
“I’m not,” Heather said, pointlessly.
Ann turned to the people grouped on the stairs and at their foot. “She had her shirt up!” she yelled. There was a general clucking. Heather stared at them.
“Well …” Nelson said. He was red and seemed to be considering. “Ann, this sounds like something that ought to be taken care of in private.”
“Hear! Hear!” someone said, laughing, from the street.
“I couldn’t agree more,” said Ann. “Now, we have a public decency law, don’t we?”
Nelson bit his lip. “Well, I don’t really know, to tell you the truth.”
Heather looked at him. “I can’t believe this! I was only feeding my baby.” She glared at Ann. “Maybe you don’t want me to feed her at all. Maybe you’d like me to just smother her or something, or get rid of her.”
“There’s no call for that,” Whit said from behind her, but down on the street there was a distinct clap.
And then Ann’s voice again, low and calm and almost confidential, so much so that Heather really listened to her. She said, “What right do you have to be so arrogant?”
Heather looked down at the people before her. There were fifteen or twenty now, a veritable crowd by local standards. They were what loosely passed for her neighbors, though they were far from what she knew neighbors were supposed to be. She knew their faces, or most of them, or she saw in their faces other faces that wore some version of their features. They were pasty and roughly edged, and they looked queerly the same, it seemed to her, like the faces of television, though naturally less perfect, with unremarkable eyes and average noses and chapped mouths that called no special attention to themselves, except that just now they were all arranged in angry expressions. It occurred to her that people were supposed to be different, that everyone always spoke about different people, and how different people were supposed to be brought together in spite of their differences, but when you got right down to it, there was only this angry sameness to almost everybody she knew. That they stared so hard at her made her abruptly, perversely elated, because it must mean that she was not one of them, and her daughter was not one of them. And this, she thought to her pleasure, was how she came by her arrogance. Because there was simply no one worse than these people, and that meant that she was better.
Then, as she looked out over the crowd, she saw him, in his bright red car, pulled over to the opposite side of the road and idling while he watched her. She couldn’t see him clearly, because there was glare on his window, but it seemed to her that he must be proud of her, seeing her like this, refusing to betray him, or herself, or their child, by feeling the shame they seemed so determined to make her feel. And she felt, to her surprise, suddenly beautiful then, taller than she was, and with the leanness she no longer had. And with this new, remarkable idea, she looked again at some of the men in the road and saw plainly that, even at this moment, they wanted to put their hands on her. She smiled at them, to let them know she knew, then she turned to the policeman. “I want to go home,” she said. “Can I go home?”
He looked relieved. “Well, sure,” he said in his kind, baffled voice.
Heather took a step. Ann objected.
“What do you want me to do?” he said in exasperation. “Put her in prison? For breast-feeding?”
Ann sulked. “Can’t you give her a fine?” Her voice rose to outrage again. “You think it’s okay what she did? You think it’s okay for her to come up on my porch and take her clothes off? This is our busy season, you know! We’ve got a business going on here. Do I have to let her use my business to make a display of herself?”
“I don’t think—” Nelson started, but Heather, incensed, started moving off. The men let her brush them as she passed. She held Polly a bit aloft, to keep her clear. A single hand—unmistakable—touched her breast.
“Fuck you!” Heather snapped over her shoulder.
“Hey!” said some indistinct woman. “You watch—”
“Can’t you just leave us alone?” said Heather.
She stepped onto the road and looked up. She was glad he was gone. Someone edged in front of her, a human impediment.
“I’m just trying to get home,” said Heather.
But she was already home. That was the point, entirely.
Chapter 18
Polly Catches Cold
HE WAS IN AWE OF HER. HE AS MUCH AS TOLD her this. She did it all well. She made it seem effortless: her mothering, her beautiful work, her strength, and above everything, this—her consummate lyricism with the instrument that was his body. How deeply they were connected, he as much as said, trying to touch that place, that specific place, where they met. These were the only times, Heather thought later, when she was not confused. He banished the imprecise with his fingertip. He made her the very things he said she already was.
That first foray into Goddard had left her depressed, but oddly energized once the depression wore away. This was how it was to be, after all, Heather reasoned, and after all, it wasn’t so bad. She had lost no actual friend, at the end of the day, or the good opinion of any person whose good opinion she particularly valued. Now that the ice was broken—weil, shattered—she began to bring Polly along on more frequent excursions: to the sports center, where she dangled her before Martina, who cooed reassuringly over the baby even as she avoided Heather’s eye; to the Stop & Shop, where she nodded placidly to her neighbors and then pointedly ignored them.
And to the mill, where Naomi did indeed have a playpen up in the attic, though it had not been much used. They had gone up together, the first time, Naomi leading, chatting backward over her shoulder about how she’d hoped to have more kids around, she liked kids, but after a year of its sitting vacant, taking space in the workroom, she’d stowed the playpen here. The banister jiggled. Polly was in the office, asleep in her car seat under the glare of Mary Sully. The attic was jammed with overflow brochures and crates of order forms, filled but unfiled. Also a mountain of shopping bags and supermarket cartons of material: old woolen pants, torn sheets, shredded quilts. “I know, I know,” Naomi groaned. Heather was staring. “I’ve got to get it all sorted out. Maybe after the holidays. What I want,” she told Heather, “is to build a whole wall of shelves here”—she spread her arms. “I mean, have it built. Then I’ll go through everything and sort by color. For restoration work, it’s the only way. Now it’s a nightmare. People are wasting all their time rooting around in these bags for what they need. It isn’t Ashley’s fault.” She frowned, hands on her wide hips. “He says he’ll do it whenever I’m ready, but I just can’t face the mess. Out of sight, you know.” She smiled. “Well, I think I see it.”
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