Lightkeeper's Wife

by Sarah Anne Johnson

  “I don’t want to hear it. It doesn’t matter to me why you’re drunk. I can’t trust you, and I want you out of my house.” The anger Hannah felt upon saying these words startled her. How could Billy do this when Hannah had to go to her husband’s funeral? Even though Billy didn’t know about John yet, Hannah felt especially hurt.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Billy held Hannah’s furious gaze and tried not to look away.

  “You can leave in the morning,” Hannah said.

  “I can leave right now.”

  “Don’t be foolish,” Hannah said.

  “So now I’m foolish? After everything I’ve done around here you’re going to kick me out?”

  “You can stay in the barn tonight. Be gone in the morning.”

  Billy knocked over a chair on her way out of the house. Hannah didn’t bother to pick it up.

  ***

  Hannah prevailed upon Tom to take care of the lighthouse while she went to Barnstable. Her family held a private, graveside service. John’s parents couldn’t afford to make the journey, and so sent their sympathies along with money for a wreath. Hannah stood beneath the bare oak trees, their branches etched against a silver-gray sky as if in charcoal, and tried to connect the casket perched by the grave with the man who’d been her husband. Her father had identified John’s body and discouraged her from viewing him to say good-bye. After so many months in the woods, he was no longer her husband. The wind rushed over the Paine family and stirred up the odors of moist earth, rotting leaves, and fresh-cut wood from the new casket. The minister read from his Bible, and they stood with heads bowed, but Hannah didn’t hear his words. When the minister stopped talking, she was grateful for the quiet. Her father dropped a handful of dirt into the grave, but it wasn’t until Hannah released dirt from her own hand onto the casket that she fully realized the extent of her loss. She started to fall onto the ground, but her father caught her by the elbow. He wrapped his arms around her until she let go a sob that shook her body.

  Her parents’ friends stopped by, delivering beef stews, whole chickens, vegetable casseroles, and pies. They wanted to talk with Hannah about John, what a fine man he was, how they’d searched and come up empty, and now this, by chance. They wanted to talk about what could’ve happened to him, like the townspeople gathered onshore after shipwreck, endlessly trying to figure out how the ship could’ve gone aground. Hannah tried to avoid these people with their good intentions and occasional tears. She said, “Thank you,” and took her leave and nobody questioned her or thought she was rude.

  Every day was like every other day—one after the next. She cried and ate the food her mother prepared from the offerings of friends. Her parents were always close. They moved around her tentatively, as if testing for injury, and she let them. Why not let them take care of her? She felt sick, worse than sick. She wanted to turn herself inside out and empty out her grief once and for all, but it lingered and broke free at unpredictable moments. One night, her mother reached across the table and placed her hand over Hannah’s, and Hannah broke down. One night, she woke to the sound of her own sobbing.

  The next morning, her father asked her to help with the lobster traps. They bundled up in the cold and wore gloves with the fingertips cut off so that they could mend the nets. Hannah retied the torn nets with twine and replaced broken wood slats as easily as she’d done it as a girl. She moved from one trap to the next, lost in the network of twine.

  Her father worked slower, his fingers arthritic and stiff. When he went for his liquor bottle by the woodpile, Hannah ignored him.

  “It’s my back,” he said. “I can’t bend over like that for long.” He sat and drank for a while without working.

  The broken traps made Hannah think of the flotsam John used to gather after a storm. He often called her out to the barn to view his collection: a broken oar, a block and tackle severed in a storm, or a frayed length of rope. Garbage, she thought, but she watched his meaningful gaze and said, “You’ll figure it out. You always do.”

  He used the block and tackle to rig the system for hauling sailors and gear up from the beach. And now Billy used a scavenged lifesaving ring for the ship-to-shore rescue device. There was a use for everything, just as John had told her. She could hear his voice as clearly as if he were speaking over her shoulder, but she kept herself from turning around. Her fingers in the net held her focus. There was no way back to a place where John existed.

  The sun bore down on them through the cold. Hannah unbuttoned her coat and stretched out her fingers, relieved when her father began talking about boats bought and sold and who was bringing in the biggest catch, anything to distract her from her own thoughts.

  “I don’t suppose Tom told you his news, not with everything that’s going on.”

  Hannah looked up from her work, her fingers tying a knot into the net.

  “He’s been courting Cassandra Wainwright.”

  Hannah couldn’t breathe for a moment. Even though he’d warned her, she couldn’t stifle her surprise. “Cassandra Wainwright? Isn’t she kind of prim?”

  “Seems an unlikely match, but I’ve heard they’re seeing quite a bit of each other,” her father said.

  “But he just—”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” Hannah said, stunned.

  Hannah couldn’t think of what to say. She felt betrayed, even though she’d turned him down. She’d known Cassandra growing up. She was everything that Hannah was not: wealthy, conventional, and well-mannered.

  “She’ll be visiting Dangerfield soon. I’ve heard she’s quite curious.”

  “Well, I better rescue Tom from the lighthouse. He’s got business to attend to, I’m sure,” Hannah said. How was she going to manage the lighthouse without Billy, and with Tom focused on a new woman? She pulled a knot of twine tight and cut the end with a rigging knife. After weeks in Barnstable, and her father’s traps mended and stacked, it was time to go home.

  ***

  The ride took all day, and Hannah was exhausted as she put the horse up in his stall. She wanted a bath and to go straight to bed, but she didn’t have the energy to get the tub or heat the water. Her body ached from the ride, and from crying. The passageway from the barn was dark, and she dropped her bag on the floor as if she was releasing a burden heavier than her suitcase. In the living room, she threw her coat onto a chair and sat before the fire. The heat eased her muscles and she closed her eyes. Tom must be up tending the lights. When she heard him come around the corner, she turned, but it wasn’t Tom standing in the half-light.

  Billy stepped into the room as if waiting for Hannah to kick her out again, but Hannah was relieved. After her trip to Barnstable, and Tom’s upcoming marriage, she wanted something to stay the same.

  “May I come in?” Billy asked.

  “You might as well,” Hannah said.

  Billy sat in the chair beside Hannah and stared into the fire, silent, as if preparing what to say. “I want to prove to you that I can do this,” she said. “You need the help.”

  “I can’t rely on you when you’re drinking.”

  Billy turned to face Hannah, and with the utmost earnestness, she said, “I promise you, Hannah, that I will not take a drink so long as I live under your roof.”

  “You’ve promised that before, haven’t you?”

  “It’s different now. I’ve got a stake in things here.”

  Against her better judgment, Hannah wanted to believe that Billy could work on the lifesaving rig and help her succeed with the rescues. She didn’t want to give up when they were so close. “We’ll see how it goes,” Hannah said.

  20

  Cassandra Wainwright arrived in Dangerfield with all the pomp of royalty. Her sister Freda chaperoned the excursion, and they traveled in a black cabriolet with red piping and two yellow streamers trailing in the wind. The driver wore a black suit with a
white blouse buttoned to the neck and held his hands before him in a formal posture, guiding the horses by flicking the reins lightly on their backs. Billy was in the southwest corner of the yard when she heard the wheels straining over holes in the road. The driver pulled back on the reins to slow the horses and keep from jostling his passengers and their cargo. Five trunks stacked in successively smaller sizes bounced on the back of the buggy, pressing against the leather straps and creating a precarious rumble. There had been some dissension among the girl’s family about her making the trip without a chaperone. Cassandra, a fiery if sheltered twenty-three-year-old, had refused her mother’s company, and after days of quarreling had settled on Freda, a spinster of twenty-nine years old, but a good companion for the long ride. She’d pay respectable attention to the goings-on between the couple but wouldn’t stick her nose in where it didn’t belong.

  Billy stood from where she was bent over a long trunk of oak. Once it was planted six feet down into the ground, this would act as a mast to test the lifesaving rig. Standing over the pole where it lay on the ground, Billy tried to envision the ropes running up to a crossbar where Hannah would wait like a shipwrecked sailor. She laid two pieces of wood on the ground to form the crossbar, and then set supports coming in at an angle. She bent over the mast pounding nails.

  Tom walked up and startled her from the swing of her hammer. He wore his best wool trousers and a fine cotton shirt beneath a black frock jacket. In his gray work overalls and fishing boots, he’d blended into the landscape. Now his life edged beyond the peripheries of their yards and past the town lying between the lighthouse and the harbor.

  “I thought you were entertaining your lady friend,” Billy said. “How’s she like the place?”

  “Good enough,” he said, his lithe frame swaying in his clothes as if the sea rolled beneath him, but it was only nerves and the desire to move. “I painted some of the rooms, bought new linens, curtains, things like that. Hannah’s mother helped choose fabrics. Of course it must seem pretty rough to Cassie, still.”

  “It’s a comfortable house,” Billy said.

  “She’s used to more company.” Tom eyed the mast, hands shoved deep in his pockets now. He hadn’t worn an overcoat and his jaw clenched against chattering. “Hannah home? I want to ask her if we can come by for a visit.”

  “Yep.”

  “You’ll let me know if you need a hand getting this thing in the ground?”

  “There’s something else I need.” She told him her idea for installing a ship’s bell at the top of the stairs, with a rope handle running down to the beach that Hannah could use to signal that she was okay, or if she needed help.

  “That’s the best idea I’ve heard in a while,” Tom said. “You have a bell?”

  “Yep.”

  ***

  Billy washed her face and neck in the kitchen sink. She rubbed the dirt from her hands and dried herself before removing her sweat-soaked shirt and unwrapping the bandages that held her breasts flat. Once released, she stretched her back and the feeling returned to her breasts. Without the bandage her breath came easier, her ribs rose and fell in normal rhythms. Her reflection in the mirror surprised her, her pale breasts released from their wrap, the imprints of the cloth a lattice of smooth marks.

  Since the wreck she’d gained weight so that she was no longer all muscle and bone, and her breasts began to look like a woman’s again. Small, tiny even, but still a woman’s. Only when she was naked did she feel completely like a woman, no confusion of gender in her small breasts or what lay between her legs. When she dressed and stepped into the world, her disguise not only compensated the privations of her sex, but also protected her most private self. She’d fought hard on the Intrepid for the privilege of working the sails and navigating the ship. She’d battled the men on the Alice K for her survival until she proved herself one of them. William Pike had taken shape inside her as a means of survival. Now the swagger she’d learned with the pirate crew, and the men’s clothes she’d donned in Jamaica, felt as much a part of her as the color of her hair or the blue veins that rose on the back of her hands. This strange tilting between sexes left her feeling like neither one nor the other, but a combination of both that she couldn’t fully decipher, but it was her, the real her, William Pike.

  She tossed the dirty water out the window and stood for a moment with the cool air on her skin, rubbing the feeling into her breasts, feeling them there so strange and forgotten.

  When Hannah broke the spell of her privacy, Billy turned from the window. They watched each other, spry as cats. The air in the room weighed on them in spite of the cold breeze until finally Hannah stepped forward to break their silence.

  “What is it like?” she asked. “Is it uncomfortable?”

  Billy picked up the bandage and rubbed it between her fingers to show Hannah.

  “It’s another kind of corset,” Hannah said. She took the strap but didn’t take her eyes from Billy’s taut stomach, her nearly flat breasts.

  Billy turned to get her shirt. She folded the towel onto the counter by the sink and put the soap in the dish. Every one of her movements vibrated through Hannah, and she tried to not watch, but she was transfixed. Billy turned from the counter and shrugged her shirt on. She placed her hand on Hannah’s arm, as if to say I know.

  “I need to feed the chickens,” Hannah said, and abruptly left the room. She didn’t know what she was feeling, this strange mixture of dread and desire. How could she have feelings like this for Billy? In the yard, she turned and stared blankly toward the barn. Oh yes, she needed to feed the chickens.

  ***

  It was rare to get visitors from Barnstable. Hannah stood in front of the mirror and admired her fine skirt, rose-colored plaid on a background of sand, a burgundy velvet bodice with covered buttons. She ran her fingers over the ivory stitching as if to assure herself that every last thread was in place. Her dark hair spun easily into a bun, and the white nape of her neck shone pale against the rich colors and textures of her clothing. The last time she’d worn this dress was in Barnstable when she first met John, but it wasn’t the loss of John she felt. It was the loss of the possibility of a marriage to Tom. He’d given up on her finally and left her to contend with her feelings for Billy. She’d turned him down, but how could he choose Cassandra Wainwright of all people?

  Cassandra had grown up in Barnstable not a mile from Hannah, but they had never met. Hannah was four years older and the difference in age kept them apart. Cassandra’s father, Charles Wainwright III, owned a fishing business with concerns as far-reaching as Boston and New Bedford, not to mention the fleet he ran out of Barnstable harbor. Hannah knew many of the men and boys who worked in the fleet, but none of the Wainwrights themselves bothered with the stink of fishing.

  As Hannah pulled at the tight bodice of her dress, she realized that Cassandra would be a new neighbor, possibly a friend. Anyone who interested Tom had to be worth knowing. She would have news of Barnstable, and maybe of Hannah’s family and friends. Since John’s disappearance, her feeling of connection to her past had all but washed away. John had met her family and spent time with her in Barnstable, so that coming to Dangerfield had felt an extension of her world more than a departure. With John gone, the tie was frayed. She wanted to reach back and grasp her past firmly in both hands, but she didn’t want to give up anything of her life in Dangerfield.

  Hannah chose a cameo necklace, the ivory silhouette of her maternal grandmother atop a faded ebony oval. She fastened the gold chain about her neck so that the pendant rested in the center of her chest, and she pressed her hand to it as if to calm her heart. Cassandra would know the story of John’s disappearance, that he was dead. Hannah didn’t want sympathy. She didn’t want to discuss John or wear a widow’s black attire. She was getting along just fine. That’s what Cassandra could tell people when she returned to Barnstable. Hannah Snow is getting along just fine.
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  She rubbed salve into her hands, wishing her skin wasn’t rough from work, the creases in her palms not stained with oil. What about Billy? What if Cassandra went back to Barnstable and told people that Hannah was living with a strange man in her house? Or what if Billy couldn’t pass as a man now that she’d filled out a little around the hips? She couldn’t help feeling that she was hiding a secret more frightening than the fact of a strange man living in her house.

  Would the women sense the familiarity she had with Billy? What would they think? Why wasn’t she afraid of Billy’s naked body in her kitchen? She was more intrigued than frightened, and this troubled her. She shuddered at the thought of being found out. Billy sat in the front room with one foot propped on a chair as she spliced a piece of rope around the lifesaving ring, which looked huge in the middle of the floor. The swish of Hannah’s skirts preceded her, and Billy could not take her eyes from the lift of her breasts captured in the bodice, the shimmer of burgundy velvet, the soft sheen of fabric over baleen hoops. Hannah’s lips appeared fuller, the depths of her eyes brighter.

  “They’re going to be here soon. You can’t do that in the house,” she said, gathering discarded clothing from the furniture and piling it in her bedroom. “I’ve been giving it some thought.” Hannah adjusted the cameo back and forth on her chest, though it sat perfectly centered. “Cassandra and her sister are expecting a widow in mourning.”

  “You’re not even wearing black. You’re dressed to impress someone you don’t really know.”

  “I do know them. They’re Barnstable women, and they won’t understand how we live. They’ll gossip.”

  “What are you saying? You want me to leave?”

  “It’s just for a little while, so I don’t have to lie or make up explanations. You have to be Billy, my hired man. Keep your place when they’re here and don’t be too familiar.”