I wandered from room to room, remembering the times I’d spent here, nursing Elizabeth through an illness, helping her can the bounty of her garden. The last room I entered was Elizabeth’s sitting room, and it was as though time had stopped. On the wall hung a sketch of her cat, the paper yellowed and curling around the edges, my childish signature embellishing the bottom right corner. I couldn’t believe she’d kept it all these years.
In the morning, I watched the sunrise from our bedroom window and then made breakfast in our new kitchen from fresh eggs Solina and I gathered from our own chickens. What fun for her! I made toast from bread Timmy’s wife had brought over the night before. I spent the rest of the day unpacking, necessities first, but I couldn’t resist sneaking in one special box that would make this house feel as if it belonged to me. Carefully, I stripped away one piece of wadded newspaper after another and at last I held it in my hands. A vase I’d made at Arequipa, my own design with maple leaves and seed pods. Our farm had a pair of maples that turned glorious gold and orange and burgundy in fall. My mother would help us rake the leaves into a pile and then Timmy and I would fl ing ourselves on top, relishing the crisp textures that crumbled beneath the pressure of our bodies. We inhaled their smoky fragrance while our mother untangled broken fragments from our hair. Th e vase would always remind me of those joyous childhood days when my mother watched over us with such love. Reverently I placed the piece on a credenza in the dining room.
The home now felt like my own.
San Francisco, 1920
Of all my pieces, the maple leaf vase generated the most interest because people mistook the seed pods for angel wings.
“You should just go along with them and agree they are wings,” Mindy said. “There would be a bidding war for it.”
I would never sell the only piece I still owned from my days at Arequipa, yet it could be that the ladies who saw an angel’s presence in the vase weren’t entirely wrong. During its creation, I yearned for my mother’s comforting touch, a longing I’ve felt all my life whenever I was ill. I had wanted so badly to heal and go home to my family, perhaps my mother’s spirit had hovered over the sanitarium and blown in a kiss to make me better. Perhaps her love had grazed my brush.
A steady flow of guests filtered through Mindy’s gallery. Many of the newer pieces I’d made already had “SOLD” tags beside them. I had shipped them to Mindy well in advance of the show. Alexandra had exorbitant price tags by several of the pieces she owned, because, I overheard her tell a guest, she didn’t really want to sell them since they had been made by her dear friend. Fiddlesticks! If even one sold at those prices, it would drive the value of all my pottery up, which she well knew.
For over an hour, Solina wandered through the gallery with Nellie. I had told her no champagne—she was far too young—but I noticed Nellie let her have several sips when she thought I wasn’t paying attention. At last there was a gap in people demanding my attention, and Solina and Mindy approached.
Mindy held out her arms as though she was ready to embrace the world, her honeysuckle perfume dispersing with the graceful movement. “The turnout is better than I could have hoped for.”
“Mama, I’ve heard many of those ladies talking about the newspaper articles. Why don’t you tell them what that scoundrel did to you?”
I could, I suppose, give a speech, but many would not believe my version anyway. People liked to gossip, to think the worst of others, especially a woman who talked openly about family planning. “I won’t give them the satisfaction of thinking their opinion matters. Let them have their fun.”
Solina crossed her arms and pouted. “It’s not fun when I hear them say such dreadful things. It’s embarrassing.”
Mindy laid a well-manicured hand on Solina’s shoulder, again sending such an overpowering dose of perfume my way that I held a handkerchief to my nose to suppress a sneeze. “Honey, always look for the blessings the good Lord has chosen to provide. Those articles, dreadful as they may be, brought all these people into the gallery. Why, we’ve never had a show open to such a large crowd. We were on the verge of bankruptcy. Your mother’s show is going to save us. Not only have we sold a lot of her pieces for record prices, other artists’ works have sold tonight as well. Hallelujah!”
Mindy’s approval of the news articles stunned me. We had been such good friends—how could she receive joy from scandal that was causing my daughter such pain? Mindy drew my daughter to the other side of the room to introduce her to a young man near her age, surely a welcome distraction from the ugly gossip. As I watched them, Mindy’s words echoed through my mind. Th is was the first inkling I had that her gallery was failing. I had assumed it was as successful under her as it had been under her father. Until this moment, I thought perhaps the reporter had come across someone who knew Jack and had seen him in Seattle. Or that Alexandra had been communicating with him—he had been a beneficiary of her modern marriage. If Mindy had known of Jack’s shenanigans, I might have suspected her of planting the stories to draw a crowd, but I had never told a soul except for Val and Nellie. Certainly Val had told no one. That left only one possibility.
I marched across the room. “Nellie, could I have a word?” I drew her into a small storage room where the crates and boxes were kept. “I keep wondering how that reporter knew Jack was still alive. I know you wouldn’t have told the reporter, but did you let it slip to someone else?”
Nellie’s face crumbled and she wept. “I’ve been so afraid you would find out, and I love you so much, I never would have done anything to hurt you, you know that.”
I hugged her. “Yes, I know you love me, and I love you too, but did you let it slip to someone?”
She hid her face in her hands, a handkerchief pressed to her eyes. Between sobs, she gasped out her confession. “Mindy and I were talking one day over tea, you know how it is, and it just popped out, how terrible he’d treated you. But Mindy adores you. She would never have told your story to a reporter.”
Oh, yes, she would. Mindy valued our friendship, but that was nothing compared to the love she had for her father. She wanted to preserve his legacy, his gallery. And she was one of the few people who knew about the family planning meeting and who also knew where I was staying.
All this time, I’d been thinking evil thoughts about Alexandra, that she had known Jack was alive and tried to wound me by publishing my secrets. I thought my enemy had spread the ugly rumors; instead, it was my friends.
I couldn’t stand to see Nellie cry. “Dry your eyes. Everything’s going to be okay.”
When we returned to the gallery floor, Mindy was conversing with a reporter. “Rosella isn’t a bigamist—far from it. Her first husband deserted her. His grave is in the Oakland Cemetery—empty grave, I should say. Wouldn’t that make an excellent photo to accompany your story?”
During our women’s vote campaign, I had witnessed Mindy’s knack for marketing. Hosting the Equality Tea at the Emporium and stenciling ‘Votes for Women’ slogans on napkins in ice cream parlors—those had been her ideas. Time had only sharpened her skills. I had underestimated her cleverness, her cunning. From the beginning, she had the gallery’s publicity campaign all mapped out to the last detail, a plan to keep the story on the front pages until my show closed. Nothing like scandal to sell newspapers. Or pottery, apparently. All sunny smiles, she turned and caught sight of me.
“Here she comes now,” Mindy said. “She’ll tell you herself.”
The reporter and I shook hands, and I affirmed that Jack had faked his death. Across the room, Solina traced her finger absently over the slip trail that ran down the face of a blue pot, her shoulders slumped.
I was going to forgive Mindy, I knew that. I had her to thank for the impressive turnout, but also for my daughter’s glum appearance on what should have been a fun trip to the city of her birth.
I would forgive Mindy, but I intended to make her squirm and grovel first.
Clarksburg, West Virginia, August 17, 1920
Solina screeched and swiped her arm to fling off a corn earworm, an unwelcome gift deposited by Michael. She stomped her feet a dozen times, screaming, “I’ll get you back, you miserable little pest.”
Michael hooted with laughter and the chase was on, between two long rows of corn until they disappeared around the corner of the house. Another three weeks until school started. It couldn’t come soon enough. Those two were going to drive me crazy. I still couldn’t get used to seeing my daughter’s cropped hair. For all her insistence that she didn’t care for Lydia Underwood, she had persuaded Nellie to lop off the long curls of her childhood. Her hair would never lay straight, so she adopted a finger-wave style that made her look quite the young lady, even if she didn’t always act it.
I cupped a hand at my brow to shade my eyes from the blinding rays of late afternoon sun. Sweat patches were plainly visible around my armpits. A cool bath would be in order before dinner, if I could make time for one.
Thomas, bless his heart, continued to harvest green beans from the little patch he’d planted himself in early summer. He picked carefully, methodically, joylessly, dropping each bean into a small basket. Not that I wanted more squabbling, but I longed for the day when he would join Solina and Michael in childish pursuits. I hoped the little fellow would eventually move past the sorrow of losing his parents —though I certainly knew how difficult it was to lose those you loved. Grief took hold of people in different ways. It left at its own speed, not because someone else told you it was time to move on. All I could do was offer a safe space where Thomas could grieve and grow, a space where he felt loved and cared for, a place where he belonged.
Michael and Solina came tearing around the other side of the house, making enough racket to raise the dead.
I pulled another brown-tasseled ear from a stalk and tucked it into my basket, not bothering to turn around. “Don’t you come trampling through the garden, you hooligans! Solina, what boy is going to want to look at you if you don’t settle down a little? You’re too old for this nonsense.”
“I didn’t start—” she broke off. “Mama, someone’s here.”
A stranger, I heard it in her voice.
Looping my arm through the basket handle, I turned.
I knew at once—yet didn’t know at all—the tall figure that stood still, hat in hand, watching the house, watching the children, watching me. For years I had expected, had dreaded, that this day would come. Across a crowded city street or stepping around a tall building, my breath would catch and I would imagine I’d caught a glimpse of him. It never was. I’d shake my head to dispel the eerie sensation and go about my business. This time, his flesh occupied space too solidly to be easily dismissed. This was no ghost, no optical illusion.
For some moments, we both stood still, silent. Even Michael was quiet for once.
As he approached, Jack swept one arm wide as if to embrace the scene or some memory, and the fragrance of apple-scented tobacco drifted toward me. The sound of my name in his mouth was dangerous, as it always had been, his cheeks dimpling, the gold specks in his eyes glimmering, threatening to upend my hard-won sensibility once again. The love, the hurt, the grief—they all flashed over me, inundating me in a rush of memory. As quickly as these came, they dispelled, hardening into anger I thought I’d let go of long ago.
“Jack. Or should I call you Arnold. What do you want?”
He winced slightly, before calling up that lopsided smile that had once won my heart. “I came to see my aunt’s house, to see you.”
I felt so cold toward him, this man I had once burned for. “So you’ve seen us both.” Implying, quite clearly, I thought, he should go back to wherever he’d come from.
He moved closer, clutching his hat. “I was hoping we might talk.”
“Nothing to talk about.”
“I think there is. I still have feelings—”
“Stop right there.”
“Fear made me fold when I should have hung in there.”
How like him to treat marriage like a bad hand of cards. When I didn’t respond, he changed tactics.
“Elizabeth was my aunt. I have fond memories of this place.” His eyes swept over the swing, the fresh paint, the garden. “You’ve kept it up real nice.”
“I take care of what’s mine.” So that was it. He was after the house. “Solina, please go in the house and fetch the letter from my attorney. It’s tucked into the side of the coat rack.” For once, she did as I asked without argument, and Michael went with her. I had kept the documents handy ever since moving into Elizabeth’s house, certain Jack would one day appear just as suddenly as he’d disappeared.
His eyes darkened as if a cloud had wiped out every trace of green and gold.
“She was my aunt.”
“She left the house to me, not you. She had her reasons.”
“She was old. Her faculties weren’t that sharp anymore.”
The screen door banged and Solina returned with the documents from the attorney. I proffered them to Jack. He opened the envelope and began to read. I didn’t wait for him to finish. He could peruse the rest at his leisure.
“I made certain before I moved back here that her will is absolutely incontestable. Since your aunt knew you were still alive but couldn’t be bothered to visit her on her dying bed, she asked her lawyer to specify you could never inherit a dime from her. I think you had better leave.”
The screen door banged shut behind us again. Michael tramped down the steps toting the breechloader. He stopped beside me. The shotgun, thank goodness, was angled toward the ground, not at Jack’s gut.
“My mama asked you to leave.”
I had never heard my eight year old sound so stern. Obviously Solina had regaled Michael with every detail of her San Francisco visit. She was as incapable of keeping secrets as Nellie.
“Whoa, son, take it easy. Is that thing loaded?”
“Yep.”
Jack looked at me. “I don’t suppose he knows how to use it.”
“Quite a few squirrels and birds and one deer would tell you different,” I said.
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I never meant to hurt you, Rosella, never meant you any harm.”
Solina stepped forward, her voice seething with fury. “But you did hurt her. I hate you for what you did to her!”
Michael raised the shotgun. “I hate you, too.”
Alarmed, I pushed the barrel back toward the ground. There would be no murder on my front lawn. And if there was, I would be the one to do it.
The carriage house door opened and our contentious tableau paused. Out limped Thaddeus Haynes, followed by Val, his step boisterous, as usual.
“Thanks, Doc. That ointment’s fixed me right up.”
“Glad to hear it, Thaddeus. You stop by again any time you need more.”
“’Preciate it mightily.” Thaddeus slogged down the street, elbows bent, bow-legged, in his jeans and plaid flannel shirt, Val watching until the old man moved out of sight.
“I heard you’d married Val Martin,” Jack said. “Have to say, your first husband was a far better looking chap.”
“My first husband lies in a grave in the Oakland cemetery.”
He tried to smile, but the attempt wobbled and disappeared. His eyes roamed over our house with what I interpreted as longing, whether for the past, prompted by his memories of Aunt Elizabeth, or a longing for a future he could never have, a safe and warm family life inside this solid white house.
“Okay, then. I just wanted to check on you, see how things were.”
“A little late for that,” Solina said.
He looked as if he might leave, but hesitated, his weight shifting back toward us. “Look, my finances are a bit underwater right now. I would appreciate it if you could see your way to loaning me—”
I squinted, my lips curled in, and I swear I was close to taking that shotgun from Michael and pointing it at Jack’s gut myself.
My expression se
rved answer enough, and Jack turned and strode up the street, disappearing in the same direction as Thaddeus Haynes. At last I allowed myself a deep breath.
Val made his way across the lawn to us. “Who was that?”
“No one important. We sent him on his way.”
I knew the children would eventually relay every little detail of the encounter anyway. “Michael, put that shotgun back where you found it now—make sure it’s not loaded.” The gun was darn near as long as Michael was tall. He was too young to learn to use it, but Val insisted all boys in West Virginia learned to hunt at his age, child-rearing advice he’d gleaned from his patients. I disagreed, but I had learned to pick my battles. I couldn’t win every time.
“Why was the shotgun out? It’s not a toy,” he hollered to Michael’s back.
“He wasn’t playing with it, but we will have a talk about using it safely again.” I put my arm around Solina and she leaned into my embrace. “My children did me proud today.”
My children—where was Thomas? My stomach contracted and I spun around, my eyes searching for some sign of him. Where had I last seen him? I dashed to the garden and found his basket abandoned by the bean patch. “Thomas!” I shouted. Where had he been during the commotion? “Solina, help me find your brother.”
We searched the house, the yard, and then Val knocked on neighbors’ doors. No one had seen him. Where would he have gone?
At last Michael thought to look under their bunk bed. “Mom, I found him, but he won’t come out. Want me to pull him out?”
I charged up the stairs, ordering Michael not to forcibly remove his brother. Solina and Val began to follow me up the stairs, but I motioned them away. I wanted to see Thomas alone. When I got to the boys’ room, I thanked Michael for finding Thomas. “You’ve been such a big help to me today already, I hate to ask you for anything else, but could you go shuck that corn? I have a hankering for one of those sweet ears tonight, and you’re the best corn shucker around.”
Buried Seeds Page 27
