That summer, Effie Hussey waddled into his shop, buttoned cloth purse pinched in her fist. She was a weary woman with thickened joints and thinning hair, pale skin, a life of hardship and sorrow having washed much of her colour away. Glancing about, she immediately went for the rocker, plunked herself down, sighed.
Leander tried to dissuade her from purchasing the chair, but Effie had insisted. “It’s a wonderful comfort,” she had said, as she’d closed her eyes, rocked. “It feels like home.”
“What are you making?” Stella was seated on the cushioned chair, one knee over the other, foot swinging.
“Kitchen dresser. Pine. For Mrs. Tilley.”
“Oh yes, I’d forgotten.”
“She gave me exact dimensions.”
“Like she would.”
“Fairly shallow, but right wide against the wall. Wants the rack to be yellow, base to be dark blue.”
“Yellow? That’s odd.”
“Well. For eleven dollars, I’d paint it in stripes if that’s what she wants.”
He sanded the edge of a length of wood, blew the dust, held it up to his eye.
“Got some bones from your sister. Should be a nice soup.”
“Loves soup, I do.” Rubbed his ribs with his left hand. “Bones to warm your bones.”
When the light began to drain from the room, Leander lit both lanterns, hung them on hooks where the ceiling slanted.
“These are my favourite days,” Stella said. “Stormy days. Don’t feel guilty for doing not much of anything.”
A crack of thunder from overhead, and the droplets tumbled down, slowly at first, then a thousand thumbs drumming on the roof. Leander laid the length of wood on a bench, looked out the window. Rain criss-crossed it with driven madness, like streaks of translucent lightning.
“Will you look at that?” He was behind her, hands encircling her waist. “We might never get home.”
“Stuck out here all night.”
“Could be a flood. We’d float away.”
“Just the two of us.”
“Yes, my love.”
“Wouldn’t be so bad.”
“Not bad at all.”
“Wonder where we’d end up.”
“Probably right where we belong.”
“Here, you think?”
“Yes. We’d be lost anywhere else.”
“Lost.”
That night, they stayed in the work shed. They didn’t have to, by any means, as the storm had mostly blown over, rain only tinkling above them. But they decided it could be a miniature adventure, an imaginary excusion, and they were still rather young, untethered, and equally foolish.
Around eight o’clock, Stella and Leander dashed into the house, returned with the pot of soup, bowls, bread, a rum bottle filled with cool milk, gingersnaps in a tin. They sat cross-legged, ate until they were warm and full, then snuggled in between layers of quilts piled on the dusty wooden floor. A few feet from their heads, the dying fire emitted the occasional half-hearted snap or pop.
Dreamy voice, Leander whispered, “Lard, if anyone could see us, they’d think us mad.”
Stella opened one eye, peered out at her dozing husband, his forehead glimmering in the firelight. “Let them think,” she whispered back. “’Tis an honest quality, if you asks me. A teeny bit of madness.”
On her wedding night, Stella had been uncertain about what to expect in relation to romantic love. Several weeks earlier, when Nettie was visiting, Stella had hinted a question about the experience of it, but never asked outright. Nettie, slurping milky tea and shoving gooey date squares in her mouth, had rubbed her belly bump, said, “’Tis the only time I gets a proper rest. Gus don’t paw me when I shows.” This was followed by awkward high-pitched twittering, and Stella never pressed for additional information.
Mrs. Hickey had taken it upon herself to offer some advice. “Women idn’t meant to be noisy creatures. Not like men is. We needs to keep ourselves prim. Modest.” Stella must have looked confused, as Mrs. Hickey continued without abating. “Sometimes a married woman got to put up with a few things. Dirty business. Dirty habits.” Stella nodded. “Don’t make a big show, just accept that we woman don’t stop toiling after the sun goes down.”
After the wedding supper, Percy left the thin-walled house. He went to stay with a widowed uncle for an undetermined period of time, and he blushed, did not look Stella in the eye when he said, “You youngsters don’t need me skulking around, casting shadows. Get your lives started. Good lives.” His eyes fluttered, and he blinked hard. “Long lives. Stella. Leander.”
On the counsel of Mrs. Hickey, Stella had ordered two silk slips, one white and one ecru, and a full-length cotton nightgown. Wearing the white slip, she sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for Leander to return from the outhouse. He had told her his stomach was queer, all the angst of the day catching up on him. After twenty minutes, she went to the porch, stared out into the breezy summer night. And with the light from a near-full moon, she could see Leander a good distance from the outhouse, pacing back and forth, hands bouncing as though he were talking, trying to cajole himself to come inside. Stella could clearly see he was nervous too, and his sudden timidity calmed her.
When he finally returned, his eyes widened when he saw her seated in the rocker.
“Thought you might’ve dozed off.”
Stella smiled. “Thought you might’ve too.” She moved the rocker slowly with her foot. “Tea?”
“All right,” he said, and sighed, sat down.
With the metal handle, Stella lifted the largest burner from the stove and dropped in a handful of splits. Flames soon flicked up, and she replaced the burner, moved the kettle over top.
“How’s your stomach?”
He put his fist underneath his ribs, said, “Worse, I believes.”
“Oh?”
“Though I don’t want you thinking it had something to do with the lovely food. Was beautiful, the meal. Right grand. Everyone thought so. ’Tis just I got a few things clouding up my mind.”
“Anything you want to talk over?”
“No. Well, yes. Well, no. Well. Lard, I don’t know.” He rubbed his face with his hands.
“Just say it.”
“’Tis old foolishness, is all.”
“Sure, there’s no one else listening.”
“I knows.”
“Well?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about tonight a lot, well not a lot, not all the time or nothing, like someone crazed, but I’ve been thinking about it enough to know it should be a real special night for you, and I had my mind set on how I was going to be, a certain sort of way, all polished and stuff, but I don’t know how to act like that, and now I’m outside traipsing around in the potato beds, which needs trenching up, by the way, and I’m thinking up stuff to say, and now none of it comes out, only this old garbage, and that’s not near what you deserves, and if I was you, I wouldn’t have nothing to do with me, kicked out before morning, the nerve, now, crawling back in here, half hoping that you’re already fast asleep.”
“My goodness.” Kettle hissing on the stove, she moved it to a cooler place, spooned loose tea into a pot, added boiling water. “Well, that’s a lot to be thinking so late at night.”
Leander took the full cup she offered, set it on the table before him, stared into the steam. “You looks real pretty, by the way.”
“I do?”
“I thought so right when I came in.”
“I ordered this from the catalogue. Mrs. Hickey told me to.”
“Mrs. Hickey?”
“Yes.”
For some unknown reason, the thought of this made both of them laugh, and they stared at each other’s smiling shiny faces in the kind lantern light.
“Good old Mrs. Hickey. What would we do without her?” He unwrapped his hands from the teacup, pushed it away, then lifted the glass on the lantern, blew out the flame.
“No light?”
“Don’t want to waste
is all.”
Stella considered that he might not want people in the village to see a glow radiating from the window. What might a newly married couple be doing in the kitchen at such an ungodly hour? Such a light might suggest to others that Stella and Leander were struggling, or else the very opposite. Neither conclusion was respectable.
“How about we goes on to bed,” he said. “What do you say?”
Stella nodded, stood, shyly walked towards their room. As she moved through the darkened spaces, the home felt different with the absence of her father. Not empty like she’d thought it would be, just foreign. There was something exciting about that, having the whole place just for herself. Even though everything was identical, the ice box, the parlour chair, the picture with the frame of carved wooden shells, there was a sense of newness, as though she were experiencing it all for the first time. She wanted to tell Leander, though she doubted he would understand.
As she moved, static built up in her slip, and she was mortified when she glanced down, saw it bunching and clinging, crawling up over her legs on its own. She tugged at it, worried that Leander might notice, might consider her (or her slip) too eager. She glimpsed over her shoulder, but Leander seemed oblivious, concentrating on shuffling down the hallway without bumping into anything.
Nestled in the bed, they both couldn’t help rolling together into the middle dip, the mattress exerting its will. Then, as though he had read a procedural manual on the subject, Leander moved his hand in a prescribed but jilted manner, bent his knee as though it were a conscious act. That was, until Stella shifted in her fully charged slip. In the darkness under the sheet, the fabric emitted a shower of static sparks, and Leander creaked backwards on the bed, exclaimed, “That’s all I needs. First night married, and my bride sets herself on fire.”
They both giggled, and he pulled her close, hugged her and kissed the hollow near the base of her neck. In what Stella believed was an instant of bravery, he tugged at the silk slip, and another flicker of jagged sparks flashed as she slid one knee over the other. “That’s a hazard if I ever seen one,” he whispered, then slipped it off her shoulders, down over her hips, and tossed it to the end of the bed. “An honest hazard.”
Stella felt as though she could lose herself in these moments. Her mind was no longer tethered, and she imagined a whetting stone pressing against an eager blade in a rhythmic slide. As Leander moved above her, she considered the pleasures of cutting cold meat with a newly sharpened edge. She thought of butter, how she liked to indulge herself, let a flick of it melt over her tongue. Coating the back of her throat. So sweet it was, satisfying some deep-rooted craving from a source she could not identify. Finally, she thought about Mrs. Hickey and her tangled suggestion that women need be in a perpetual state of readiness. Available for the dirty business that particular night might bring.
Lying side by side, Stella searched her mind for words, a witty phrase or some earnest comment on her emotion. But she could think of nothing to say, could not unscramble it all. Leander was silent as well, and she wondered if he was feeling her rush of exhilaration or if he was disappointed. But then, hand resting on his heart, he said, “Can you believe it? We got married. That’s something, Stell. Really something. I won’t ever forget that.”
“That you got married?”
“No. You knows what I meant.”
Stella smirked in the darkness.
“I’m going to grow old with you,” he said through a yawn, wide like a trap door. “Love your face even when it looks like a, like a. . .” Yawned again.
Stella stayed awake long after she heard gentle puffs of air, intermittent snores from pursed lips. Their sides were touching, and he lay straight in the bed, arms and legs neatly arranged, never straying or kicking. She believed he would be a considerate sleeper. Stretching her leg, she ran the arch of her sole over his cold twisted foot, her mind already venturing forward to the following evening.
Though Leander worked with wood his entire life, he was not always a furniture maker. He had spent several years training to become a cooper. Mr. Jones, the local expert, had taught him the art of forming barrels and wooden buckets. After a very short time, Leander was able to fashion a barrel that did not leak, not even a drop. As he sawed and planed and sanded and shaved each individual piece, he had a sense when the angles were correct. A feeling of rightness in his stomach. And when he held the pieces together, knocked the hoops down over onto the wide section of the barrel, the joints closed, practically invisible to fingertip or eye.
“Jaysus,” Mr. Jones had said. “No doubts you’ve done this before.”
“Not really,” Leander had replied, rubbing his hands over the wood. “Only learnt from you.”
“Nope, you’ve done it before, my son. Maybe not in this lifetime, but you’ve done it before.”
In no time, he mastered the trade, fashioning barrels for salt meat and liquor, used soft pine for barrels holding apples or grain, and casks for dried fish. His tubs and barrels were in demand. Practically everyone in Bended Knee owned one of his specially designed butter churns. He tried to incorporate a dash of art into each churn by turning the tops of the paddle handles with the lathe.
As a wedding gift, he used his keenly honed coopering knowledge, and made Stella a small wooden tub from various shades of wood. The inside of the tub was sanded and polished until it was so smooth and shiny, in bright sunlight it would offer up a distorted reflection. Like no other tub, the lip of this one curved slightly, perfect for resting working arms, or the most vulnerable neck. Just the right size for bathing a newborn child.
By its rope handle, Stella had hung it on a hook in the porch. At first she dusted it regularly, and sometimes Leander would arrive home for lunch and find her seated in the porch, tub in her lap, her hand running round and round the bottom of it. But as the months went on, the care of the unused tub waned. Leander noticed she stared at it less often, and after two years dissolved between them without a child, her eyes were no longer wistful. Now coats and sweaters often shared the hook, covering the tub, hiding the reminder of her perceived barrenness.
Stella was right to conceal it, let it hang there and warp with the changing seasons. What else could she do? He certainly didn’t want her to focus on what was missing from her life instead of feeling the continual warmth of what was already there. So, he never said a word, never moved an article of clothing. But still, it hurt. He couldn’t shake the connection that covering his best work was akin to giving up. Forgetting their plans for a large family. A large happy family. The satisfaction he derived from fashioning perfect barrels and seamless tubs began to wane. One leaked. A woman complained of splinters. It was time to move on to something else.
Once Stella and Leander were married, Percy visited every Saturday, slowly easing his way down over the hill from his widower’s roost with his uncle. During warm summer afternoons, he and Leander would sit out in the front garden, two chairs crouched deep amid a tangle of lilac shrubs and unkempt grasses, lupines and goldenballs. Percy often slouched in his chair, knees a mile apart, dangling a strand of wild wheat nipped between his teeth. He’d grin when Stella brought out tall glasses of lemon crystals dissolved in water, ice chips.
Sometimes, when it was particularly warm, Percy and Leander would doze together, like father and almost son. Then they would eat an early supper, Stella languid on a quilt before them, cold meat and pickles, whole wheat bread, maybe a few caramel squares relaxing on a plate, liberating their brown sugary ooze.
Leander had always considered Percy to be a stern man. Stolid, even. Never had he seen his father-in-law smile, or nudge another in the ribs after a good joke. But in the years after Amos went off to war, Percy gradually emerged from his depression a looser man. Untroubled. Stella even dared to suggest content. She told Leander she believed his mind was “going soft,” and Leander agreed. Losing practically everything could do that to a man.
Every Saturday, he would arrive in the kitchen, stare at
Stella with glossy eyes and sing with unconcealed fondness, “How lucky, how lucky, how lucky is I. To see my star outside of the sky.”
She always beamed and blushed, replied, “Now, Dad, don’t be so foolish.”
“If only he’d stay just like this,” she’d said to Leander as they watched him make his way up the lane in an awkward cane-reliant skip. “I even seen him lollygagging over Miss Fuller. Wouldn’t that be lovely? They gets on well, gets married, and perhaps she’ll forgive us our credit.”
“Folks says she idn’t right in the head. A few rooms unpapered.”
“I never noticed.”
“And besides, that’d mean you’d have her son as a brother.”
“Who? Alistair? He seems perfectly fine.”
“That’s because you don’t know him like the men do.”
“Well,” she had replied, “I was only teasing anyways.”
Percy spent hours in the red flaking shed with Leander, showing him how to turn a leg or sand in the direction of the grain. “You have to love the wood,” Percy had said the very first time he’d taken Leander into his tiny workshop. “Respect it. Each tree yearns to be something, I always thought. But I weren’t much good for figuring it out.”
“I seen your work,” Leander had replied. “’Twas fine. I minds you made a high chair once for Mother.”
“I don’t remember ever making no high chairs.”
“Well, she said ’twas the most solid piece of furniture in the house.” Leander picked up a length of wood, smelled it.
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