The Endless Forest

by Sara Donati

  His voice came hoarse. “No.”

  “Of course not. She’s been biding her time these years to come back here and get even with all of us. She’ll tear Martha apart if that’s what it takes to get what she wants.”

  “If that’s true, you think I can stand back and watch it happen?”

  “It’s not your concern,” Lily said. “It’s Da’s. He’s her guardian, and he’s more than equal to Jemima. Let him handle it.”

  “I could,” Daniel said. “But I don’t want to.”

  That, finally, reached her. Lily closed her eyes briefly and produced a strained smile.

  “Is it that far gone?”

  Daniel wouldn’t allow himself to look away. “Yes,” he said, and he realized that he had made a decision. “I keep thinking of the day you told Ma and Da about Simon and Angus Moncrieff, that connection. Da said Simon had proved himself and that was good enough, and Ma agreed. Doesn’t Martha deserve the same consideration?”

  “No,” Lily said shortly. Her color, already high, deepened.

  “And why not?”

  “Because,” she said. “Because Angus Moncrieff is dead, and Jemima is very much alive.”

  “Once you trusted me,” Daniel said. “When did that change?”

  “I trust you,” Lily said, tears in her eyes. “You aren’t the one who worries me.”

  Daniel leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

  “You take care of you and yours,” he said. “And I’ll do the same.”

  On his way back to the village, Daniel crossed paths with Ethan.

  “You look somber for a man on his way to a party,” his cousin said.

  Daniel shook his head. “I just had one of those talks with Lily.” He didn’t need to explain any further; Ethan knew Lily’s ways as well as Daniel did.

  “You’re not going to let that spoil things, are you?”

  “No,” Daniel said. “I’m not. But I do need some time to think. Ethan, would you do me a favor? Please take Martha my best wishes and ask her if she’ll join us for the ice-out party. I’ll meet you all up there.”

  With Daniel gone off to invite Martha Kirby to ice-out, Lily found herself at a loss. The thing that would have settled her—a long, hard walk—was out of reach. Simon would have been able to distract her, but he was off, working on the Blackhouses’ barn.

  She put a hand on her belly.

  “Your uncle Daniel,” she said. “What should we do about him?”

  She heard the little people come into the hall and she called out.

  “Eliza, would you call Ma for me please? Ask her to come if she can spare the time.”

  Eliza’s head appeared in the doorway. “Are you all right, Auntie?”

  She spoke in Mohawk, which took Lily by surprise and delighted her all at once. In the same language she said, “Nothing wrong with me. I just need Ma.”

  —

  For the rest of the afternoon Lily kept herself occupied with her mother’s first drawing lessons and exercises in line and perspective. While the preparations for the party went on around them, Lily concentrated on paper and the pencil and explained as she drew.

  Her mother sat back and put her fingers to her mouth, clearly trying not to laugh.

  “What?” Lily said.

  “Geometry,” her mother said. “How you resisted learning it, the arguments and rationalizations—they were really very creative. And here you are teaching the practical application of geometrical principles to me.”

  Lily’s own mouth twitched at the corner, because really, it was rather funny. She did remember those discussions, carefully worked out with dramatic gestures for emphasis. Much as Birdie had made her case about school at the supper table.

  “I suppose the really odd thing is, all the while I was avoiding learning geometry from you, I was practicing it on my own.”

  “You had something to prove to yourself,” Elizabeth said. “And now will you please show me again how to find the vanishing point?”

  Within an hour she was drawing boxes in three dimensions, her mouth pursed in concentration. Working like this in the soft afternoon sunlight, Lily could see more clearly than ever that her mother had aged. The gray in her hair, the softened line of jaw and throat, the network of lines, most distinct at the corners of mouth and eyes.

  “You study me very closely,” she said. “Am I to sit for a portrait?”

  And so Lily took out paper and charcoal and worked at catching her mother’s likeness as her mother worked on the very simplest exercises.

  She was as serious a student as she had always been a teacher. When she wanted to understand something, Elizabeth Middleton Bonner had no pride; never would it occur to her to pretend that she knew more than she did. She asked questions, listened closely to the answers, probed for weak spots, and asked more questions. Out in the world—anywhere, really, that wasn’t Paradise—ladies did not show such an interest in politics or philosophy, architecture or history. And that, Lily recognized once again, was why her mother had found her place here, so far from all polite society.

  Now she had set herself the task of learning how to draw, and she would not leave off until she had satisfied her curiosity and come to the limits of her own abilities, or to the end of what Lily had to offer. There was no doubt that her enthusiasm was completely sincere, which really did do something to lift Lily’s spirits while the others went about getting ready for the ice-out party.

  The little people ran back and forth in wild high spirits—their parents were going off for the whole night, and they could all stay together here with their grandparents and Lily and Simon. Even Birdie was in high good spirits. Since she had got her way about school she was much less irritable and kinder to her nieces and nephews.

  From the kitchen came the sound of Curiosity’s voice raised in mock outrage, followed by high giggling that only ended when the door shut abruptly.

  “Sometimes,” said Lily’s mother, “I think of this house as it was when I first came to Paradise. When my father was alive, and your uncle Julian. I wonder what my father would make of things as they are today. His grandchildren and great-grandchildren.”

  “Would he be shocked?”

  “Oh, certainly. This is not the life he imagined for me.”

  Lily thought for a moment. “Do any of us have lives as you imagined?”

  Her mother looked up, her expression thoughtful. “There are things I wanted for you, and ways I imagined that those things might come to be. You are the closest, I think, to what I hoped.”

  “Because I went off traveling.”

  “Because you went off to find your calling, and you were persistent, and look what has come of it.” She put a hand on a pile of drawings. “And because you and Simon are so well matched and clearly happy together.”

  “And Gabriel?”

  This time her mother put down her pencil. “Gabriel is not so much my child as your father’s, if that makes sense to you. He belongs here, and would be happy nowhere else. Birdie, on the other hand—Birdie, I think, will not be satisfied to stay in Paradise. She will end up in Manhattan or Boston.”

  “In the short term,” Lily said. “But eventually she will settle much closer to home than that. She is as attached to you and Da as Gabriel is to the mountain.”

  “I would like to believe that you are right,” her mother said. “But my reasons are very selfish. I like having all of you nearby. Not necessarily here in Paradise, but within a day’s travel. You are working your way around to Daniel, Lily. What do you want to know?”

  She should have known that her mother would hear the things that she did not say directly.

  “I’m worried about him. I know we’ve all been worried about him since he went off to join the militia, worried about his health and state of mind. But this is different.”

  “You are concerned about Martha Kirby’s connections.”

  Lily pushed down the first flush of irritation. “I am worried about his health and st
ate of mind, now as before. I don’t understand how he could have fallen in love so quickly.”

  Her mother studied her own folded hands. “There was a time,” she said, “when I thought he might take his own life.”

  Lily jerked in surprise.

  “I believe you were in France then,” her mother said. “The pain was much worse, and he came close to despair. Your father was with him quite a lot, and they talked. I think it was those talks that got Daniel through the worst of it.”

  “You never wrote to me about this. Why did you not tell me how badly off he was?”

  “Because I didn’t want you to come home for that reason. Daniel would have been very distressed if you had. He didn’t want every decision we made to be about him. I believe at one point he convinced himself that it wouldn’t be right to marry, and that’s when he asked your father and Ethan to help him build himself a homestead in the strawberry fields. He needed a lair, a place where he could retreat and tend to his own needs.

  “Little by little, he did find a way to live again. He put all his intelligence and energy into the school, and he worked at learning how to hunt with knife and tomahawk. In time he started visiting friends, and going to Good Pasture once or twice a year. But there were things that never mended in him. His sense of humor. His teasing ways. He was such an open boy, with such a joyous nature, and there was nothing left of that. Until Martha came back to Paradise.”

  “I came back too,” Lily said and she was immediately ashamed of her childish tone.

  “And he is as delighted as the rest of us are to have you here,” said her mother. “But that day of the flood when he came into the kitchen and saw Martha—I happened to be looking at him in that moment. Something came back into his expression I had almost forgotten about.”

  “Do you mean he was attracted to her?”

  Her mother’s brow lowered, the look she reserved for times when her students were being studiously oblivious.

  “I mean hope,” she said. “I mean that something he had closed off in himself and given up on opened up without any conscious effort.”

  Lily said, “Surely you must understand, Ma. Her connections scare me. They must scare you too.”

  “Does Martha scare you herself?”

  Lily looked up in surprise. “No, of course not. I like her.”

  “That’s all that’s required of you,” her mother said. “That, and showing some faith in your brother’s ability to make his own decisions. Now, I want to fetch the drawings you made in Paris and Geneva and those northern Italian villages. I think they will provide some more insight into this issue of multiple vanishing points.”

  The folder she got out of the desk was full of sketches that Lily barely remembered doing. Many of them from the first few years in Europe when they stayed no more than a month in any one place. Bruges, Paris, Lyon, villages along the Rhine, and then the mountains in Switzerland. The long journey from Lake Constance to the sea coast and into Italy, where villages had been carved, so it seemed, out of the rock face and clung there stubbornly. Vineyards in the fall. The mountains that ran down Italy like a spine, the valleys that echoed with the bells of grazing sheep. Florence and Umbria, circling around Rome to visit ruins at Pompeii, and into the villages perched high enough to look out over the Middle Sea, the whole world a gauzy, hazy blue. The village called Porcile where they had stayed for weeks in a house built of stone, rented from the mayor, who was also the owner of all the orchards, a man who desperately wanted to discuss politics though he had little English, and their Italian wasn’t equal to the task. How cool it was in the dim rooms at the height of the day, and how in the evening the air was ripe with the smell of olives crushed underfoot and sun hot on tile roofs. And then finally Rome. The shock of it. The thrill of standing before the Coliseum. The little house with its gardens and grape arbor and the bed where she had conceived and lost and lost again.

  “Do you miss Rome?”

  They were studying a drawing of one of the hundreds of Roman side streets. A flight of stairs that curved up a hillside, flanked by clay flowerpots on every step. The houses on either side had their shutters closed against the sun. The hottest part of the day, when everyone retreated until the late afternoon. In those first years she hadn’t even felt the heat, and she liked having the city to herself.

  “No,” she said. “Or maybe I should say, there are things I miss about it, but I’m glad to be home.” She did not say, safe at home.

  For that moment Lily was keenly aware of the curve of her belly. She willed the baby to move again, but Jennet was right; she was at its mercy and had no control at all.

  The little people appeared in the open doorway to report on progress in the kitchen and tell tales on one another. Adam wondered aloud if Auntie Lily might be willing to teach anyone else how to draw, and the girls informed him that he wouldn’t need to borrow charcoal or a pencil, he had so much dirt under his fingernails. This sent them running to the kitchen again, where they would all insist on scrubbing their hands. What one must do, so must they all. Her own child would join in these games, and the one Jennet would birth this summer.

  “Now that it’s getting warmer you should be spending at least part of the day in the air,” her mother said, bringing Lily up out of her thoughts.

  Lily didn’t answer, because she wasn’t required to. There was always talk in her presence about where she should spend her time, the right combination of sleep and sunlight and interaction, tea and milk, red meat, new greens. They were worried for her and she loved them for it, but sometimes it did grate. Except today. Today she could bear any amount of coddling. Her baby was alive.

  “They’re going!” one of the boys called from the front porch.

  “Not yet,” Hannah said, coming into the doorway. She was dressed for the walk up Hidden Wolf, but she carried a tray that she set down where Lily could reach it. Covered plates and bowls, and lovely smells.

  “My share of the party?”

  “There’s more in the kitchen.” Hannah’s gaze moved over her face and torso. Her doctor look, brow lowered to a sharp V. Lily didn’t like to think too much about what went through her sister’s head. The calculations she went through, every day, on Lily’s progress toward bringing this child into the world.

  Hannah said, “We’re off in a minute.”

  Elizabeth said, “Will you tell Gabriel and Annie that I expect them for supper next Sunday? And whoever else wants to come from Lake in the Clouds. Where is Daniel?”

  “He’s gone ahead.”

  “With Marrrrthaaaaaa,” called Isabel from the doorway in a long singsong that ended in a giggle.

  “Silly geese,” Hannah said. “Martha is going to walk up with us.”

  She kissed Lily on the cheek and smiled at her, but Lily found it hard to return the smile.

  27

  They set out for Hidden Wolf when the first hint of dusk was in the air. They were on foot and everyone carried a basket or box. Ethan had a keg of cider strapped to his back, which was odd indeed. If Martha were to ask Lily to draw him like this and she sent the drawing to Manhattan, no one would recognize him. He had shaken off that other person, the city version of himself, and he seemed healthier if not happier for it.

  The procession on foot was part of the ice-out tradition, Jennet told Martha. And in truth Martha didn’t mind the long walk. It would give her time to gather her thoughts and try to sort out exactly what was going on.

  Callie had been gone not a quarter hour when there was a knock at the door, and Martha went to answer it with her heart in her throat. But it wasn’t Daniel, as Callie had predicted. Instead Ethan had invited her to Lake in the Clouds for the ice-out party. Ethan had accompanied her dozens of times before—to recitals and museums and receptions—and this invitation felt no different. Friendly, detached. She asked for a half hour to get ready, and spent the whole time wondering where Daniel was.

  She shifted the basket she carried over her arm. Again she wondered
if she should have brought gloves, warmer boots, a scarf, and again she reminded herself that there was no cause to be so nervous. This was a party, after all, and she would be among friends. Certainly there would be pelts enough at Hidden Wolf to keep everyone warm, even if the weather should turn.

  Up ahead of her on the path there was talk and laughter, but Martha moved more slowly. It had been such a long time since she had come this way, and with every new view she found herself stopping to look out over the river valley that ran away to the east. As the gloaming came over the mountains every tree seemed to be outlined with light, while behind her the shadows stretched through the woods like the gentle touch of a mother’s quieting. Thrushes and finches were settling down for the night while the nightjar and owl roused themselves. Grouse scratching in the underbrush, and the cooing doves, the bark of a fox. It was so beautiful, and somehow she had simply forgotten what it was like. What it was.

  Hannah called her name and Martha hurried to catch up, casting a glance back over her shoulder. Still no sign of Callie. The full impact of the afternoon’s conversation had not hit her until an hour later. Then she sat, trembling hands folded tight in her lap, and tried to reason her way through what had happened and what she was feeling.

  It was no use; there was no way to put a better face on what had passed between herself and the person she still thought of as a sister. The memory wouldn’t be denied or even put aside for very long. Martha pushed it down once again, Callie’s anger and hurt—there was nothing else but to admit that somehow, without thinking, she had caused Callie great hurt—and once again it rose to leave a sour taste in her mouth.