Painting the Light

by Sally Cabot Gunning

  As soon as Ida opened the door he cried, “Come out! I’ve solved it. I know how to teach you. I was disgusted with myself the other day; how could I not manage to teach this simple thing? Come. Come out!” He stood, already half-turned away in his hurry, a child wanting to play, grinning at Ida as if life held nothing but joy, had never held anything but joy, would hold nothing but more joy ahead. Oh, what Ida wouldn’t trade for a mind that could focus so completely on one joyful moment! But why was it so joyful for Henry Barstow? Why should he care a single pin whether Ida learned to ride a bicycle? But if Ida were truthful with herself, she didn’t care a single pin why or what or how—she wanted to learn to ride that bicycle. She grabbed her jacket and hat and gloves and went out.

  “All right, new rules,” Henry said. “You won’t pedal this time, you’ll push.” He wheeled the bicycle to the hard dirt at the top of the track and swung aboard, long legs kinked up on either side. He stamped the ground with one foot. “Nice and dry and hard. Perfect.”

  “Especially if I fall on it.”

  “No, no, no, there will be no falling!”

  It was as if Mr. Morris had materialized out of the island mist. No, no, no, don’t stop!

  “Now watch me,” Henry said. “This is how we begin. Not pedaling. Pushing.” He pushed himself along the ground with his feet, then lifted his feet and coasted a few yards, letting the bicycle wobble as it would. He pushed again, lifted again, coasted again. He turned left and right. He got off and waved Ida on. The seat had been lowered even more, she noticed, which explained the extreme insect effect when Henry rode up, but the result of the lowered seat was that Ida’s feet could now rest more securely on the ground when needed, and immediately her confidence rose. And yes, she could push with her feet and move the bicycle along as Henry had, but what was the point?

  “This is how you find your balance,” Henry said, as if she’d spoken her question aloud. “Push harder! Now lift those feet and coast. Yes! Do you feel it? Feel the balance?”

  This time Henry didn’t trot with her; he put no hand on her; he stood, tall and straight as a mast with arms folded and eyes alight with confidence. Ida took a breath, inhaled that confidence; pushed; lifted; coasted. She began to relax. The hard-packed area dropped off into the downhill track, forcing Ida to turn often to keep from rolling down the hill into town, and she discovered it was true what Henry said; her hands might direct the handlebars, but her body did the main job of turning. She wasn’t actually riding a bicycle, but she was having fun; she turned to look at Henry and wobbled dramatically, but she righted herself with ease, and in the righting she felt it. Her balance.

  He left the bicycle with her. Ida attempted to protest, but Henry insisted, and in truth Ida wanted that bicycle; she wanted it so badly she couldn’t bring herself to object over an excess of delicacy about accepting a gift from a man, and, come to that, a gift that belonged to the man’s wife.

  “I’m going to New Bedford tomorrow,” he said now. “I’ll be back on Saturday for lesson two.”

  Saturday. Five days away. Ida’s disappointment dragged on her like a tub of wet sheets. But she said only, “That would be lesson three.”

  “Your lesson two. That first day was my lesson on how not to teach someone to ride a bicycle.”

  After Henry left, Ida stashed the bicycle in the barn to protect it from the weather, latched the barn door, and immediately unlatched it to look inside.

  A bicycle. In her barn.

  At least until Henry’s wife wanted it back.

  Ida woke the next day with the remains of the week’s plans fully in place: do the farm chores, clean the house, make bread, call Lem about Ezra’s clothes, paint the chairs and table with that brick red. Instead she pushed herself around on the bicycle, feeling that balance, coasting longer and longer, until she came to the right level spot at just the right speed and put her feet to the pedals. She was so elated to be flying along under her own power she forgot what Henry said about the coaster brakes and had to stop herself by steering onto the grass and falling over. She didn’t care. She fell again because the coaster brakes worked better than she thought, but a little practice while clinging to the stone wall took care of that. She began to feel her muscles, to feel herself growing strong, and as she grew strong she grew confident. She fell again because her skirt got caught in her boot heel, and that night she rifled through her wardrobe, picked out a faded wool skirt with a full cut, and shortened it a foot.

  The next day that long, sloping track called. Ida approached with clammy palms in the winter cold; she straddled the bicycle and pushed off. At first the grade helped her reach the proper speed and kept her from wobbling, but at the next drop her speed began to alarm her. She should brake. She could brake. And yet before she’d quite made up her mind to do it, the most remarkable feeling came over her. She was flying! Escaping! She was unstoppable, unbeatable, unsinkable, unafraid. She was up to date.

  The feeling lasted until Lem’s wagon rounded the curve. Ida backpedaled hard, which stopped the bicycle but didn’t stop Ida; she went over the handlebars in one unlovely arc. The track was harder than the grass, but she’d come down on her shoulder and instinctively rolled with the blow. She sat up, struggling to cover her exposed limbs.

  Lem bent over her. “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” she lied. Her shoulder. Her neck. Her hip.

  “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

  “I went too fast.”

  Lem picked up the bicycle and put it in the back of the wagon.

  “I don’t need you to—”

  “Get in.”

  Ida got in.

  “What kind of a fool thing—”

  “Mr. Barstow is teaching me to ride a bicycle.”

  “He gave you that machine?”

  “Loaned it.”

  “And you take it upon yourself to charge down the hill on it.”

  “I was planning to brake.”

  “And were you planning to land with your skirts around your neck?”

  “I wasn’t planning to land at all.”

  “Things happen you don’t always plan on. You of all people should know that, Ida Pease.”

  “It was worth it.”

  “What was?”

  That feeling of freedom. Of invincibility. Of joy. How long since Ida had felt joy? She looked sideways at Lem’s stony profile and wondered when he’d last felt it, if he’d ever felt it. And there was Henry, so full of it. If he could teach Ida that too . . . But Ida could say none of this to that stone face. They rode the rest of the way in silence. When they reached the house Lem didn’t get down from the wagon seat, either to help Ida down or to help her bike out. She jumped to the ground nimbly enough and yanked the bicycle out of the wagon bed if not gracefully at least effectively, but as she wheeled the bicycle past Lem where he sat at the reins she peered sideways at him. This wasn’t like him to hold himself so aloof, to begrudge her a possible—although debatable—error in judgment. Or maybe it was.

  “Lem,” she said.

  He wouldn’t look at her. His face looked as gray and rocklike as she’d ever seen it, and he kept his eyes on his boots, curled up like a man twice his age.

  “Get out of my way,” he said. “I’ve got work.”

  Ida watched him wheel the wagon around and retreat down the track, which was another odd thing, because until he’d almost run over Ida he’d been heading up.

  By the time Henry returned, a spider had cast a web across Ida’s broom closet door, but she’d managed to barrel safely down the track six times. She’d also removed the stays from her corset. For some reason Ida felt as shy about sharing her exploits on the track as she did about sharing the information about her corset, which she never would share, of course, but why not the track? Perhaps it was because Lem had been so appalled at her, and after all, it wasn’t her bicycle. Perhaps she had been reckless. So they began the second lesson with Henry walking beside her, his hand on her thigh, demo
nstrating how pressure on one pedal gave rise to the other, how to balance the give and take between the two muscles. But after a few turns of the wheel Ida couldn’t bear it; she shot out from under his hand, partly because she wanted to show off, but partly because . . . that hand. She rode to the top of the track and turned to see Henry grinning all the way to the edges of his face. She came to a not entirely graceful stop, and he laughed out loud, which made Ida laugh out loud, and that was what they were doing when Hattie and Oliver came down the hill.

  Oliver looked at the bicycle. Hattie looked at Ida’s shortened skirt.

  Hattie said, “What on earth—”

  “It’s a bicycle,” Ida said. “Want to try it?”

  A light switched on somewhere behind Hattie’s eyes. She looked down at Oliver. “Another day, perhaps?”

  Ida nodded directly at that light in Hattie’s eyes. A promise.

  Henry spoke to Oliver. “I’m afraid this isn’t the right size, or I’d have you try too.”

  “My father already got me one of those,” Oliver said. “It’s purple.” He paused. “And gold.”

  Ida said, “Mr. Barstow, this is Master Nye, digger of holes.”

  “How do you do, Master Nye. I’ve dug myself into a few of those a time or two.”

  “My father’s a ocean digger,” Oliver said.

  “I thought he was a river digger,” Ida said.

  “A ocean digger.”

  “Did he start out as a hole digger too?” Henry asked.

  Oliver thought. “A hole digger then a river digger then a ocean digger.”

  “Come along,” Hattie said. She caught Oliver by the hand, and they proceeded down the hill.

  Henry looked after them. “Who was that?”

  Ida told him—Hattie’s cousin, something removed; she began to tell him the rest; the dead mother, the unknown father—but at the word mother her voice turned unreliable. She’d been about to ask Henry to stay for supper as a thank-you for the bicycle lesson, but now he looked at her too keenly. She cast about for a change of subject, but Henry found one for her.

  “I never did commission that portrait of my father. Would you look at the photograph and consider the job?”

  Ida nodded. As Henry moved away she called after him, “Thank you. For the bicycle. For the lesson.” For the joy.

  Ezra had attempted to teach Ida something once. One evening, still in the hopeful period of her marriage, Mose had stayed to dine; after Ida had cleared the table the men pulled out the Nine Men’s Morris board and the whiskey bottle while Ida retreated to the parlor to tackle her mending. It was late spring and Ida had opened the window, the welcoming breeze making her feel hopeful that she would come to be part of this new place, that the salt prickle in the air would become a friend she would welcome over many more springs. But that night she found herself distracted by the calls of “mill!” and “pounded!” and “break!” that filtered her way through the parlor door.

  So, Ida asked Ezra for the lesson. Mose was in New Bedford visiting his brother and his family, and Ezra had pondered heading off to Duffy’s. Conscious of a dangerous bifurcation creeping into her marriage, Ida had plucked from the shelf the Nine Men’s Morris pegboard with its gleaming brass pegs and set it on the table. “Stay,” she said. “Teach me to play this.” But because she held out little hope that Ezra would agree, she also sent him a suggestive smile that contained a touch of challenge. “Winner gets to pick the next game.”

  But the game, which had appeared so simple, was not, and Ezra’s patience ran dry ten minutes in. “Not there! You can’t move there. What’s wrong with you? You can’t break up my mill.”

  “You broke up mine.”

  “But only when there were no other men to remove. How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “Once would be nice.” Ida replaced the illegally captured pin and moved again.

  “Now what do you think you’re doing?”

  “Taking your man. A legal one. Which puts me up two.”

  Ezra pointed, counting, but seemed to come to the same total. He frowned, picked up one of his men, and leap-frogged it over Ida’s.

  “Wait, what are you doing? You said you can’t jump over men.”

  “It’s called flying. It’s only allowed when one player is down to three men.”

  “And when was I to learn about this flying?”

  “I told you about flying, Ida. Pay attention, for God’s sake. It’s your turn.”

  So Ida flew too, and by her calculation won the night, but Ezra cried foul on her particular method of taking flight and declared an end to the game.

  Later, in their bed, Ezra pushed into her so preemptively, so violently, that she gasped.

  They never played Nine Men’s Morris again. Thinking of that night and its aftermath, Ida would have to say that had been more than a gentle drip of snowmelt.

  11

  February arrived with an unusual stillness to the air and warmth to the sun. To add to that rare gift, Ida looked out to see Henry coming up the track on his bicycle, singing. What was that song? Not “Arkansas Traveler.” Not “Shenandoah.” It blew across the still air with the tempo of a rollicking sea chanty, but just as Ida recognized the tune—Buffalo Gals, won’t you come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight —the song broke off hard as Henry neared the door, and it occurred to Ida that there was something private about Henry’s singing, something he held to himself that was not to be invaded. But he’d come on a mission. Or rather two missions. First he held out the photograph of his father.

  Ida took the photo and studied it. Henry’s father stood to the left of two others, one arm extended to lean against an old apple tree, one leg crossed over the other. She noted the fair hair, like Henry’s, the dark eyes, like Henry’s, the long nose balanced by the high cheekbones, also like Henry’s. She took note of the same long torso, the same narrow hips, but something more workmanlike in the father’s legs. Ida had never attempted a portrait from a photograph before, but she’d have help with this one; she need only look at Henry.

  “I’ll try,” she said.

  Henry exhaled happily.

  “Now to my next question. West Chop Light. By bicycle. It’s only a mile and a half, a flat shell road with few houses along it.” He appeared ready to say more but Ida was already off for the stairs. She changed into her shortened skirt and warmest jacket, adding hat, mittens, scarf. Sun or no sun, it was still February.

  They rode side by side, away from town, Henry keeping a wheel’s distance back to allow Ida to set her pace. They passed sun-and-salt-bleached grass and farmhouses closed down tight against February, their chimneys puffing translucent smoke. They passed the occasional wagon or carriage, and Ida noted the bend in the necks as the occupants struggled to identify the odd pair out recreating in winter. Ida wobbled, of course, but grew steadier as she rode, feeling her muscles and her nerves and yes, her balance; feeling the sun and the air and the pure joy of it.

  At the lighthouse they stopped to rest, leaning against the sun-warmed lee side. They didn’t speak, Ida content in the silence—so oddly content in the presence of this little-known man who felt so known. That contentment lasted until she looked at Henry’s profile.

  “What do you think of so intently?” she asked.

  Henry shook out a smile. “How nice it is.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think it nice?”

  “I don’t think that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Henry said nothing for a time. “The lawyer handling the estate is compiling papers,” he tried. “But I must urge patience. It may take some time.”

  “Mr. Littlefield warned me. But you don’t mean to pretend that pondering estate lawyers’ papers has turned you so glum.”

  “I’m married,” Henry burst out.

  “I know that. And I can’t think why you feel it necessary—”

  “My wife’s in Newport with another man.”

  Well, I
da didn’t know that.

  “I’m to go there and discover them so she can get a divorce. Apparently Newport is the place one goes for that.”

  “But you don’t want to go?”

  Henry paused. “I confess I didn’t want a divorce. I don’t know why. It hasn’t been . . . happy. It just seems to me people should keep their promises. But I suppose when there are no promises left to keep—” He fell silent.

  Ida thought of the woman who’d wanted her portrait painted in the “Sargent style,” who attributed Ida’s artistic accomplishments to nothing more than an abundance of free time. She’d taken no liking to her, but she couldn’t say that now, didn’t dare say that now, especially not while the sight of Henry’s anguished face, of his careful hands retying his scarf, caused a physical pain somewhere just above her breastbone.

  “Sometimes it’s hard to give up what one knows for something one doesn’t,” she said.

  Henry swung around to face her. “Like Boston? You’re thinking of Boston. Or . . . of course. You’re speaking of Ezra.”

  “I’m speaking of your wife.” All right, yes, her tone was . . . well, a tone. Ezra was right about that. She pondered this, then added, “I wonder if I’d ever have found the nerve to leave Ezra.”

  “Divorce isn’t an easy thing to accomplish.”

  “Leaving is.”

  Henry swiveled to stare at her.

  “I only mean to say, thinking to myself that is, thinking of myself, that at the basest level, what could be easier? You open the door and walk through it. But of course I’ve already admitted to the thing I lacked in order to open that door. Nerve.”