"Have they seen the Eiffel Tower?" Maggie sighed, her mind wandering across the sea.
"Yes. We'll all be going to the Paris Exhibition to see it. When it's finished, it will be the tallest structure in the world."
"Imagine going to Paris, France--or going anywhere!" Maggie envisioned such places as she had seen them in books. "What must it be like to see beauty greater than most people ever dream of?"
Andrew gazed at her and said, "It's like seeing you."
Maggie blushed.
She was not sophisticated enough to be indifferent to beauty--or flattery. For this he envied her. She still found wonder in life. Andrew smiled, and then grew suddenly somber. "Maggie?"
"Yes?" She saw in his eyes a look of urgency. He opened his mouth to speak. She waited, while he seemed to struggle for words, appearing not to realize that he had stopped walking. Maggie was acutely aware of the number of families and couples all around them, walking and talking in a haze of muted tones. She noticed another couple approaching. Reaching to take his arm, she tugged gently to guide him out of the way.
"Andrew?"
"Oh. Excuse me," he offered in apology to the other pair for blocking their way.
Andrew led Maggie off the path and under the limbs of a tree. He assumed a formal stance, which made Maggie uncomfortable. His new awkwardness worried her. She braced herself for impending heartbreak.
"Maggie."
Her heart sank. He had tired of her. And why not?
Andrew quickly glanced away. He peered off into the distance, as though making a study of how the smoke billowed from the stacks of the Iron Works and dissipated before reaching the mountains.
"I...I'm not sure how this has happened. Since I've met you, at some point, I think..."
Maggie could not breathe.
"I've gone mad."
Maggie refused to let him see the turmoil he caused her. She said glibly, "I'm not accustomed to walking out with mad men."
He grinned uncomfortably, but shook it off. He offered his arm. "Let's keep walking."
Maggie stood still. "I believe I just told you, I don't go out walking with mad men." She grinned, and it seemed to disarm him.
"I think you must drive all men mad."
Maggie peered at him. "I beg your pardon?"
He paled. "I didn't mean that."
"No?"
"No. What I meant was--"
Maggie was stunned, and a little confused. He was flustered.
"I'm mad. To be with you..."
"Oh." The blow struck her hard. Of course, he was too good for her. Why had she thought--hoped--? Maggie quietly said, "I see. I'd like to go home." She took his arm. When he failed to move, she said, "Please?"
Andrew followed Maggie's eyes to three women nearby who were looking at them. She knew them from school. They'd grown older, but they had not changed. One mumbled something to the others, and they all stared at Maggie. If she left Andrew there and walked home alone, they would talk without mercy for days. At last, in response to her request, Andrew led her away. All she wanted was to go home and to hide in her room for a good cry.
As they walked, he said, "I'm not usually like this."
"Insulting?"
"In love."
Maggie stopped, or perhaps her knees gave out beneath her. For whatever reason, Andrew gripped her arm as though she needed steadying.
She tried to sound casual. "With whom?"
He stopped and stared at her. His mouth spread into a broad smile. "With you!"
Maggie's features relaxed to a blank stare.
Andrew's near laughter faded to stunned confusion. He glanced down, then away, uncomfortable with the silence. "I'm sorry. I thought--I don't know what I was thinking."
Maggie felt as though everyone had stopped, and stood now, staring, mouths agape. But she looked about and found that people still walked by, and children still played. Horses continued on their journeys. It was only for her that time had frozen.
"I'll take you home." Andrew was unaccustomed to such uneasiness. He touched her elbow lightly. "Maggie?"
Maggie was not ready. Perhaps she was the one who was mad. She was not ready to speak it. It was so soon. Her feelings were fragile. In love? She was in awe. And she ached--but whether it was for Andrew or for love, she wasn't sure. She didn't think that she'd have to be sure, not yet. But she knew he was different from anyone she'd known. In love. With her. She had dreamed of it. And yet, now, she looked into his eyes and lost sight of herself.
She stammered. "I'm...I...have similar feelings."
He looked puzzled. "Similar feelings?" He searched her eyes.
Maggie gave a slight nod. She could not seem to speak. "Of love," she said, sounding as though pleading for mercy. Constrained by the openness of this public place, they stood at arm's length. Andrew took her hand in his and held it between his palms. They stood staring at their hands. People walked by. Children played. Horses continued on their journeys.
Jake sat on the front porch swing and idly played his fiddle so softly a passerby would have to have strained to discern the melody. "O'Neill men are fiddlers," his father used to tell him. "When the mines drag you down, the music will bring you back." Jake thought of the many nights he had sat, as a child, by the fire listening to his father play the plaintive tunes from back home in County Donegal. The old airs had always brought Jake peace, but not today--not today, nor any day since Andrew Adair had walked into Maggie's life.
Jake reflected upon matters that he would have handled differently over the past twenty years or so. He thought through everything--including one little grammar school incident, which still made him laugh--but he could not shake from his mind the anger he felt over losing his Maggie. Only she was not his Maggie anymore. She belonged to someone else, someone who could give her a better life than Jake could ever hope to give her. Did he love her enough to let someone else give her happiness? It didn't matter. He would let her go because he had to, and because he did not have her to begin with. He could hold her only in his heart. A strident twang broke into his rumination. He looked at the violin, from which a broken string dangled uselessly. He quietly let out a bitter laugh.
Leaning back in the porch swing, Jake propped his legs on the porch rail. He was weary from pain and drowsy from drink. Memories of the past and failed future hopes tortured his mind. Passing footsteps and horse's hooves soothed him, until they were accompanied by Maggie's voice. He would not look. But he did.
In the gray of dusk, Maggie and Andrew seemed to sparkle with a light that hurt Jake's eyes. Jake closed his eyes and wished he had not seen Maggie's joy.
Maggie closed the door and walked into the kitchen. Beth looked up from her business at the stove long enough to see Maggie's flushed cheeks and shimmering eyes.
"Maggie?" Having once been in love herself, Beth recognized the signs.
"Hmm?" Maggie responded with a secretive smile.
"Be careful. Don't let your heart outrun your reason."
"He loves me, Beth." She waited for a response, but none came. "He loves me." She seized her sister's hand. "Oh, please be happy for me, Beth!"
"I am." Beth smiled, concealing her apprehension.
The door slammed. Beth flinched. Robin stopped singing, and sat in the corner, her doll lying idly at her side. With trembling fingers, Beth scooped up pencils and paper and scurried to put them away. Hank rarely came straight home from the mill. His tromping footsteps halted. Beth looked up as she closed the broom closet door behind her.
"Where's dinner?" He dragged the chair out and landed in it, staring at Beth with oafish regality.
Robin looked up.
"It won't be a minute," said Beth.
Robin returned to her play.
"I'm hungry now." Hank flattened his hands on the table before him.
Beth busied herself with meal preparations. With an artificial lilt, she said, "You're home early today."
"Early? I put in a full day's work and you're telling
me I'm too early to expect my dinner on my table?"
"I didn't say you were too early."
"What have you been doing? You're here all day, like some lady of leisure, and you can't find time to make a damn dinner?"
Beth kept her eyes focused on her tasks, while Maggie pulled some flatware from the drawer and set it on the table. A pot lid rattled against the pot. Beth held the knob with a wadded up towel and lifted the lid as froth spilled over the edge.
She pulled a roasted chicken from the oven, but it was not nearly ready. Beth was well on the way to serving a full meal of meat, potatoes and steamed vegetables, lacking only fifteen or twenty minutes for the chicken to cook through. Until then, she would try to remain busy so as not to provoke Hank to anger. She picked up the broom and began to sweep in a gentle and quiet rhythm. She worked her way to the back door, but decided to leave the dust pile rather than draw attention by opening and closing the door.
Hank thrust his paper onto the table and walked outside to wash up. Beth prayed that the water would cool his temper. A movement in the distance caught her attention. Far beyond the back fence, at the edge of the trees, sat a solitary drifter on a tree stump. Perhaps not. As she examined him further, he seemed too well dressed to be a drifter, although it was difficult to tell from such a distance. He held something in his hands. It looked like it could be one of those cameras she'd seen in the newspaper advertisements. She watched him stop, then move to another position and pause again, aiming his camera toward the mountain.
"Hey!" The muscles in Beth's neck tensed at the familiar bark of Hank's voice as he strode inside, but she managed to appear unaffected.
"Dinner's not ready yet?"
"I'm sorry, Hank. The chicken just needs to cook a few more minutes."
"Is it too much to ask--?"
"No, Hank."
He muttered, "You're so goddamn useless."
Beth opened the closet to put the broom away, and out fell the sketch she had been working on when he'd arrived home. She hastened to push it back into its hiding place, but Hank was too quick. He snatched it from her hands and held it out to scrutinize.
"Well, look here."
He held up a rather detailed rendering of the view from the backyard, with Robin playing in the foreground.
"You've got all the time in the world for scribbling on a paper, but you can't manage to put a damned meal on a table!"
Beth cringed. This was not the first time Hank had voiced a low opinion of her artistic inclinations. He had nothing against art. There was nothing wrong with Beth's little pictures. But art was not for people like Beth. In fact, anything that did not contribute to Hank's home and Hank's comfort was of no use.
"It's a waste of money," he said, his words endless echoes from which Beth had learned to remove herself.
"And it's a waste of your time and my money."
"Hank, please." Beth stepped slowly toward him. With great pleasure, Hank dodged out of the way and bolted for the door, where he stood blocking the opening, the drawing suspended from his hand over a watery puddle.
"Hank," she whispered in weak protest.
"No dinner, no picture."
Grease sputtered in the oven as Beth stood motionless.
"You want it?"
Beth said nothing.
He turned and shouted out the door. "What am I bid for this fine work of art?"
Hank's voice echoed into the hills.
"How about you, Beth? What's this worth to you?"
She would not play his games, for they could not be won.
He released the paper and watched it float to the ground. Before the last corner came to rest on the mud, Hank snickered and returned to his seat. Beth walked over to the oven and pulled out the chicken. She decided it was done enough on the outside. She sliced it and served it, along with the rest of the meal, much to Hank's eventual satisfaction.
"Now that's all I want--just some meat and potatoes," he said as he pushed his chair back from the table. "Good food and a clean house, that's all a man needs from a wife," he said with a magnanimous smile. "Well, almost all." Hank reached out and grabbed her hips and pulled her to him. "That's my girl."
Beth forced a smile, and then Hank slapped her on the behind and sent her on her way.
Hank dispensed with the food on his plate with his usual haste. Beth cast a furtive glance toward Hank as she scraped some food onto a plate and carried it to the back door.
"What's that? I work hard to buy food to put on the table. What're you doing?"
Beth's voice was soft and calm. "It's table scraps; food we don't eat."
"Then throw it in the compost heap."
"I was only leaving it for--"
"Damn it, Beth. Every bohunk comin' down the pike'll be stopping at our door."
"They're hungry."
"Then let ‘em work hard and earn it, like I do."
"They don't always have a choice."
"Well I do!" Hank pounded his fists on the table and pushed himself to his feet. He caught up to Beth on the back stoop and yanked the plate from her hand. Towering over Beth, he cupped her chin in his hand and squeezed it to distortion. "If those bums don't want to work for their food, they don't have to. But they can't have mine. Understand?"
A struggled nod was all she could manage in Hank's grip. With a push, he released her and tossed the tin plate onto the yard.
Maggie stood by, helpless to do anything. She had learned that speaking up only made it worse for Beth later. Beth had begged her to stay out of these quarrels and, for her sake, Maggie tried. Robin watched from her chair, with her doll hanging loosely by her side.
"What're you looking at?" Hank shouted to Robin.
Robin looked down at her doll's dress until the calico print became a pastel blur.
Hank turned his attention toward the table, where he sat down and piled a second helping onto his plate. Beth sat gently down and prayed silently over the meal while a mollified Hank loaded and reloaded his fork.
Pushing his plate away, Hank lumbered out of the room. As he left, the tension lifted like thick factory smoke while Beth, Maggie and Robin cleared away the dinner dishes. Remembering the tin plate, Beth opened the back door. There by the stoop was her drawing. She sat and numbly wiped the paper dry with a corner of her apron. Although smeared with mud and wrinkled with water, she could still make out the drawing of her home and her daughter. It was her life, mud and all. It was no longer clear or pretty, but she'd made it. She glanced up toward the surrounding mountains. In the distance, a stranger walked with an uneven gait into a thicket of trees and out of view. Beth picked up the plate and went inside.
Chapter 8
Andrew climbed to the top of the cottage stairway. A line of flickering candlelight shone beneath Allison's door. He hesitated outside her door, but thought better of it and continued to his room.
Allison heard his approach and looked up, alert and listening. Not until she heard Andrew's door close did she return to her task.
D,
I once married a most suitable gentleman whose overt devotion so effectively masked his private contempt, that love seemed to mock me. My heart withered, and nobody knew.
But a strong man with a gentle touch made my heart whole. Your touch! That I must hide its effect is the cruelest of fates.
I yearn for you.
A
Allison placed the letter inside an envelope, and then tucked it into her drawer. Dimming the oil lamp, she stood by the window and watched the stars, feeling no longer alone in the darkness.
On an impulse, she retrieved the letter and hastened through her bedroom door and down the stairs. The house was dark and quiet. Softly treading so as not to awaken anybody, she proceeded stealthily through the back door and onto the porch. She exhaled in relief at having made it out of the house, the most difficult part of her short journey.
"Trouble sleeping?"
Allison's body sprang up as her heart plunged. She heard herself gasp. "An
drew! Don't scare a person like that!"
"I'm sorry. I thought you saw me."
"No. I didn't."
"I think the post office is closed now."
"What?"
Andrew nodded toward Allison's hand. "That letter in your hand--it's a little late to be running to town to post it, don't you think?"
Allison looked at her hand and saw the letter there. "Oh, this? It's--I was just going to finish writing--"
"In the dark?"
"I was going to light a lamp." Allison feared her confusion showed on her face, but hoped the darkness would conceal it. "What are you doing out here in the dark?"
"Thinking."
"How unlike you, Andrew." Allison was relieved to have deflected the attention from her letter, which was now tucked inside her sleeve.
Andrew grinned wanly. "How do you know if you've fallen in love?"
Allison was unprepared for the question.
Misreading her reaction, he said, "I'm sorry. That was stupid of me."
Confused, it took Allison a moment to realize he'd referred to the fact that she was, after all, a widow in mourning. He must have thought he had injured her feelings by speaking of love.
"No," Allison reassured him, "It's alright. I don't mind." She reflected and softly repeated the question. She eyed her brother with suspicion. "Why do you ask? Have you..."
"No." He answered too quickly. "I don't know." Andrew looked at his sister with consternation. "It's too early. I'm a fool even to think..."
Allison's eyes sparkled with mirthful pity. She took a breath, and studied her brother. "If you have to ask, you probably haven't."
"That's it?"
"That's what?"
"That's all you can say? Well, thank you for that erudite analysis."
"Andrew, when you fall in love, you'll know it."
"Everyone says that."
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