Sweet Everlasting

by Patricia Gaffney

  “That’s not what I meant. I swear that’s not what I meant. Do you think I care who’s touched you before me?”

  “No. I know you don’t.” She sidled around him, desperate to be gone.

  “Wait, Carrie. Wait!”

  Lou started barking and dancing around his feet. Carrie saw her chance and walked away, as fast as she could without running. She heard Ty curse, and hoped he hadn’t tripped over the dog. He called to her one more time, but she kept going and didn’t answer.

  14

  THE LAST RAYS OF the sun warmed a line of limp laundry hanging in the cabin’s side yard—yellow work shirts and wide-waisted denim trousers; towels and pillow cases and three narrow sheets; a cotton nightgown, long, skinny stockings, a woman’s drawers. Tyler approached the cabin slowly, tired from the climb; he’d come on foot, wanting the time to put his thoughts in order. The smells of hot pine and bleach and wet earth mingled in the humid air. Beside the porch, the flowers and low shrubbery were dark and wet—from a recent dousing with wash water, he surmised.

  He stopped with his foot on the porch steps when he caught sight of Carrie through the screen door, seated in profile at the table, poring over something. She didn’t see him; the hand she was resting on her temple shielded him from sight. Something about her still posture, her fluid angularity or the long, gracious curve of her neck, arrested him. Sexual heat engulfed him in a fast, spiking wave, taking him by surprise. Small, soft, helpless young women had attracted him in the past, rich men’s pampered daughters who flirted and promised secret things with their eyes. Carrie was nobody’s daughter, she couldn’t flirt, she wasn’t helpless, and her elegant body was sleek and reed-slim, practically boyish. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anyone. She wasn’t a “maid,” she’d said. Who had her lover been? His curiosity was as low-minded as it was uncontrollable.

  She lifted her head. When she saw him, she laid down the pen she’d been using and stood up. “Hello,” he said from the doorway. She didn’t answer, only watched him. “Is your stepfather here?” he guessed, in a different voice. He hadn’t considered that possibility, even though it was Saturday.

  But she said, “No, he went into town.”

  “Ah. May I come in?”

  “Yes.”

  The spare, small room was shadowy; it was time to light a lamp. It smelled of soap and furniture oil; the bare floor looked freshly swept. There were no pictures on the walls, no ornaments or mementos anywhere. If he didn’t know her, he might have made the mistake of thinking that Carrie’s spirit, the vital, imaginative center of her, was as barren as this room.

  He moved toward her, uninvited by her manner, drawn anyway by a sudden ungovernable tenderness. She didn’t retreat, but behind her smile he glimpsed a remnant of the half-wild wariness he’d thought was gone between them for good. He reached for her hands, resisting the urge to embrace her because she was skittish, and because of the news he’d come to tell her. He’d sent her enough confusing messages; now, clearly, she was the one paying for his confusion.

  “I was writing you a letter,” she murmured, sidestepping, sliding out of his hands like a cool, slippery fish.

  “Were you?”

  She gestured toward the table. “It’s not finished.” She brushed a wayward lock of reddish hair behind her ear. She was tense, but she looked aimless and indecisive; something had gone out of her.

  “Do you want me to read it?”

  “It’s not finished,” she said again; then, “Yes, if you want to.”

  “I’m sorry about last night, Carrie,” he blurted out. “Even though you don’t want to hear it. What happened was entirely my fault—again.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” she said gently. Her eyes hinted at some dark awareness that disturbed him. He wanted to argue, but she glided past him to stand in the doorway, leaving him alone. He picked up her letter.

  Dear Tyler,

  Thank you for the loveliest summer of my life. Dreams fade when you wake up, even the magic ones you think you’ll hold on to forever, but this was a dream I’ll never forget, even when I’m an old, old lady.

  I don’t want to write about last night except to say that many things got clearer to me afterward, and the main one is that it’s going to get harder and harder for me to be with you anymore. This has nothing to do with you. I’ve been not seeing what I didn’t want to see. I took your kind friendship and pretended it was something else, and I embarrassed you. Always you say you’re sorry, but the fault is really mine.

  Do you think we could be friends the way Dr. Stoneman and I are friends? We could see each other every once in a while, and sometimes I might write you a letter—just a note to say how I am doing and so forth. You know a secret about me now, but you should understand that that doesn’t mean you have any responsibility for me. I know that you will keep the secret, even though you don’t know and have never asked—

  That was as far as she’d gotten. He reread the second paragraph, amazed at how completely she’d turned everything around backward. Now it was her fault she was miserable—she’d misread his “kind friendship” and “embarrassed” him. He was embarrassed, all right, but by his own selfishness, and his arrogance in thinking he could control a volatile situation involving Carrie’s deepest feelings. He crumpled the letter in his fist and stuffed it into his pocket.

  She started at the violent noise. The anxiety in her storm-gray eyes made him cross the room to her in four long strides. Everything in him clamored to comfort her, tell her he was free to give whatever she needed from him. Failing that, he just wanted to touch her, and tell her anything that would take the tragic shadows out of her face. Last night he’d told her she was too young—cravenly skirting the real issue, of course. She looked much older now, almost worldweary, and disillusioned by her ruined hopes. The dream had indeed died, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could say—truthfully—to resurrect it. Worse, what he’d come to tell her would bury it deeper.

  She was resting her chin on her clenched hands, watching him, waiting for him to decide whether or not they could be “friends.” His discomfort made him say, too harshly, “Carrie, that’s all rubbish and you ought to know it.”

  “What do you mean, Ty?”

  “I mean nothing was your fault, you didn’t do anything, and taking all this on yourself is ridiculous. You make me angry.”

  She said, “Oh,” and tried to escape, but he prevented it by putting his arms around her. He couldn’t help himself.

  But she was inconsolable; her slender back stayed poker-stiff, her forearms crossed over her breasts to keep him away from her. It occurred to him that it might be more charitable to tell her the truth immediately, not ease into it gently with reassurances that would be shown up soon enough for the lies they were. Her body felt brittle, untouchable. Nevertheless, he kept her in his embrace as he gazed out across her pathetically neat yard, to the dark line where the pines and hemlocks started, and told her the worst.

  “Carrie, love, I’ve come to tell you that I’m going away.” He kept talking, even though he could feel the tension draining out of her like grain from a sack. “A letter’s come, offering me a chance I can’t turn down. An opportunity to do what I’m best at.”

  “A letter?” Her voice was muffled; she had her hands over her mouth.

  “From George Sternberg—he’s the U.S. surgeon general. He’s asked me to serve on a commission charged with investigating the causes of infectious diseases in Cuba. That means yellow fever. It’s what I’m trained for, my best hope of doing anything worthwhile with my life. Carrie, I can’t say no.”

  She nodded her head in agreement. He didn’t think she was crying, but he wasn’t sure.

  “It’s the kind of work I’ve wanted to do for a long, long time. To be asked as a civilian by the surgeon general—do you see that it’s an honor, a—”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Sternberg says he read my paper on erysipelas and asked Major-General Wood about me—Wo
od’s in the Army Medical Corps; he’s military governor in Cuba now, and he was Roosevelt’s superior in the war. I’m sure it was Roosevelt who told him to recommend me. And,” he tried to laugh, “I imagine it didn’t hurt that I’ve had yellow fever and survived it. I’m an ‘immune’—a handy man to have around on a board investigating what causes it.”

  She pushed away from him at that. Her dry-eyed, grief-stricken face alarmed him. “Oh, Ty, I’m glad for you,” she said, with heartbreaking sincerity. “Of course they want you, you’re brilliant, the only mystery is why they didn’t ask for you sooner. Will you be an epidemiologist?”

  Her careful pronunciation made him smile. “I’ll be a sort of junior pathologist, I imagine, who does everyone else’s dirty work.” It was true, but he doubted Carrie would ever believe it. “The board’s headed by Major Walter Reed—he’s in Havana now with the rest of the team. They’ve been there since June.” He was letting his excitement show through, he realized with a guilty start. But it was hard not to: Sternberg’s summons was his own dream come true.

  “When …” She trailed off. He started to answer, but she got the rest of it out. “When will you come back?”

  It wasn’t the question he’d been expecting. Consternation tied his tongue. “I—Carrie—it’s—”

  That was answer enough, and what was left of her composure collapsed. Her face turned bright red. She hurried to the cold fireplace and stood before it with her back to him, and he had to close his eyes against the painful spectacle of her bowed head and the incessant, aimless pressing of her fingers against the mantel’s edge. Your fault, you bastard, he swore at himself viciously. It could have been worse: at least he’d stopped short of seducing her. If they’d become lovers, this moment, agonizing already, would have been intolerable.

  She said something; he went closer. “I didn’t hear you. What did you say?”

  Her husky voice sounded thick, gluey. “I always knew that you would go away someday. I didn’t think it would be this soon.”

  “I didn’t either. I’ll advertise for the practice,” he told her, for the sake of something to say. “But I’ll have to go whether anyone buys it or not. If not, I’ll turn it over to Mueller or somebody to sell for me. I won’t just let it go, though—the town needs another doctor.”

  “When will you leave?”

  That was the question he’d expected before, but the answer wasn’t any easier. “As soon as I can manage it—a week or two. Carrie, you do see that I have to go, don’t you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  The clomp of hooves and the creak of harness leather sounded through the open door.

  “Artemis,” she whispered, stiffening. “He’s back.”

  Tyler swore. He went to the table and got his hat, stood rotating the brim in his fingers. “I’ll write to you.”

  Her smile wobbled. “I’d like that.”

  He whispered, “I’ll never forget you,” and her shadowy gray eyes darkened. “Carrie—meet me somewhere,” he said rashly. “Meet me tomorrow in the wildflower meadow.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Carrie—”

  Artemis stomped up onto the porch and halted abruptly in the doorway. Whatever he’d been doing had caked his shoes and his coarse trousers with mud, and stained wide crescents of dark sweat under the arms of his dirty work shirt. His brutish body struck Ty as an encroachment, a profoundly inappropriate invasion of Carrie’s pristine cabin, and her innocence, and the gentle essence of her. He saw Ty, and his small, berry-black eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What’re you doing here?” he asked, without a trace of welcome.

  Tyler hesitated, unsure how he should answer. “I’ve been visiting with Carrie,” he said evenly.

  “Why, she sick?”

  “No.” Tension hovered in the air; he couldn’t get a grip on it, couldn’t fathom what it meant. Artemis squinted at Carrie while she looked at nothing, hands fidgeting at her sides. Tyler moved toward the door reluctantly. “How’s that foot these days, Mr. Wiggins?” he asked, stalling, trying to sound like he gave a damn. “Giving you any trouble?”

  “No.”

  “Good, glad to hear it.” Something was wrong, but for the life of him he couldn’t define it. He watched Artemis go past him to the table to light the lantern. He tried to catch Carrie’s eye, but she was staring fixedly at her stepfather. “Well,” Tyler said. “Good evening to you.” Artemis looked up once from the lantern and nodded, dismissing him. Carrie shot Ty a lightning-fast glance, but he missed the message, if there was one, because he was distracted by the white flutter of her hands, a quick rise-and-fall gesture that disturbed and confused him. In its wake, her face was completely expressionless.

  At the way down the mountain he pondered the indecipherable gesture, haunted by its veiled urgency, and by the persistent worry that he had missed something. Twice he stopped short in the middle of the darkening track and debated going back. His helplessness ate at him. But it was a fitting punishment; she’d said it herself—he wasn’t responsible for her.

  “I’ll never forget you,” he’d told her, in his infinite arrogance. It was true as far as it went, but how much worse it was going to be for her—abandoned, dropped back into her silent world like a too-small fish. Carrie was an unfinished story, and what he’d just told her, what she’d just forgiven him for, was that he had more important things to do than stay around to find out the ending.

  15

  ARTEMIS DIDN’T GO TO work at the mill the next day. Instead, all morning long, he kept on doing what he’d done most of the night before: stare at Carrie. Last night she’d stood it for as long as she could. At nine o’clock, before it was even full dark, she’d crawled into her alcove and pulled the curtain across it to escape his black, steady watching. She’d lain awake for hours worrying about Artemis and crying because of Ty. It wasn’t until ten o’clock when she heard Artemis snoring that she finally felt safe, and even after that she lay sleepless till nearly dawn.

  Now, washing his breakfast dishes at the basin, she could feel his eyes on her again, from the table where he sat mending a piece of Petey’s harness. She wished with all her heart that he would say something, go ahead and accuse her of whatever it was he thought she’d done. They habitually spent their days and nights together without speaking, so why was this silence so different? She knew: because he suspected her of something. But what? What could he know?

  A soapy plate slipped out of her nervous fingers, clattering in the sink. She’d better get out of the house. She’d work in the garden, she decided, stacking the last dish and drying her hands on her apron. To reach the door, she had to pass behind Artemis’s chair. He had his head down for once, scowling at a knot in a strip of rawhide. She was almost by him when, quick as a snake, he twisted around and grabbed her wrist, yanking on it to stop her. Her heart hammered from shock—and then from realizing how close she’d come to crying out. Trying to pull out of his grip got her nowhere; he was too strong. He hauled her up against his chair until her hip touched it and her breasts were grazing his shoulder.

  When he spoke, his lips rolled back over his big yellow teeth in a snarl. “What’re you up to? Huh? What’re you up to, you and that doctor?” He jerked her so violently, her arm ached in the socket. “You keep away from him, you hear me?” She nodded quickly, embarrassed by her fear and the hot tears spilling from her eyes. “I won’t tolerate filth in my house. I see that devil around again, I’ll shoot him for trespass, and I’ll beat hell out of you till you’re clean. Understand me? Understand?” She nodded again, not able to look at him any longer for fear he’d see how much she despised him. He shoved her away, and she ran for the door.

  She spent the rest of the morning in the vegetable garden, weeding and watering, one eye on the cabin to see when he left—because she wasn’t going to go back inside until he did. The August sun beat down on her hatless head, baking her; by noon she was sweating and tired. But by one o’clock he still hadn’t come out, except
once to use the privy. She had a dozen chores to do in the house; she couldn’t stay out here much longer. Had he fixed his own dinner? What was he doing in there? What did he think he knew?

  He frightened her. Her wrist was livid and sore; how could she have forgotten how strong his hands were? The look in his mean black eyes when he’d held her and railed at her was that same look of crazy fury she hadn’t seen in years but would never forget, not if she lived to be a thousand. Crouched between two rows of peppers, she wrapped her arms around her knees and rocked. Please don’t let it be starting again. Oh, Mama, help me—

  She caught herself and broke off the pitiful half prayer, made herself unwind, sit up straight on her knees, and not cower. She wasn’t a child anymore, she was a woman. She’d written a book. And she had friends now, she could get help if she needed to. Whatever happened, she had to keep remembering that she wasn’t little Carrie anymore, thirteen years old and terrified.

  The cabin looked the same, silent and squat and surely harmless. But her unwillingness to go inside was growing, not diminishing. She tried to tell herself she was silly, she was letting her imagination run wild. Artemis is taking the day off that’s all. He’s in there reading his Bible right now. He was angry with her about Tyler because he’d never seen her with a man like him before. He was jealous. Why, even a real father, a normal father might have feelings like that if he saw his daughter changing before his eyes into a woman.

  But how could he know, how could he tell so fast that she and Ty had been something more than friends, at least for a little while? Did it show?

  She stored her tools away in the shed, dawdling at it. Stalling. Quit being foolish, she scolded herself. He can’t drive you out of your own house. At the well, she pulled up a bucket and splashed water into a copper can to take in with her. Straightening up, she squinted at the cabin, shielding her eyes with her hand. Nothing to see. Don’t be a baby. All the same, it felt like walking through molasses to put one foot before the other and go in her own front door.