Painting the Light

by Sally Cabot Gunning

  “You leave him alone.” She turned to Ida. “How did it go?”

  Ida shrugged. “I gave him an orphan lamb to feed. I was hoping it would help.”

  “Better hope it doesn’t die,” Ruth said.

  20

  The lambs kept coming. Two living. One dead. Four living. One missing, presumed dead: Lem arrived one morning to find Ida examining a bloody spot just outside the field shelter. “Hawk,” he said, pointing to the wing marks in the dirt where the bird had touched down, snatched the newborn lamb, and lifted off.

  But by April Ida could look out over twenty-two snow-white lambs bouncing among the oat-colored ewes, a pair of ram lambs roughhousing, and a hundred different shades of living green shoots poking through the winter dead. She’d made it through winter. She’d lost only four sheep. She would receive her full payment. She should be—she could be—she would be happy.

  There was one ewe left to go. Ida watched it circling, pawing, circling; she stayed guard at the fence until the animal’s water bag broke and she made her decision. The lamb would come soon now; Oliver had seen newborn lambs but not one coming, and here was his last chance. She raced up the hill to fetch him.

  The three Peases, or rather two Peases and one Nye, were sitting together eating breakfast, which Ida took as a good sign. That Oliver didn’t run from the room when he saw her she took as another. “Who wants to see a lamb born?” Ida asked.

  Oliver looked at Hattie. “You do,” Hattie said.

  Admittedly, there was a certain risk involved. If something went wrong it wouldn’t be the joyful experience Ida was hoping for, but then again, it would be a shared experience, more shared than Ida had anticipated. Hattie and Ruth came too.

  When they got back to the field the ewe was lying on its side and clearly paining. Ida left Hattie and Ruth at the fence but took Oliver by the hand and led him behind the sheep. She lifted the tail and saw two feet and one nose. She breathed easier.

  “Grab hold of the feet,” Ida told Oliver. “The ewe will try to push the lamb out and when she does you pull ever so gently. Really, you’re just going to keep it going straight, that’s all.”

  Oliver looked up at Ida. “Like reins?”

  “Just like reins.” Ida helped Oliver place his hands but kept hers lightly covering them. She could feel the push. “Feel it?” Oliver said nothing, but his hands drew back with the impetus of the lamb. “Now pause. Okay, here she goes again.” Oliver and Ida pulled twice more, and the lamb slid to earth in front of Oliver’s knees. Oliver looked up at Ida again, beaming now. The ewe licked away the sac, the lamb shuddered its first breath and struggled to its feet. It was going to be all right. By the time Ida and Oliver had stood up and brushed off the dead grass, the lamb was feeding, tail moving in ecstatic circles.

  “Its name is Bett-see,” Oliver said.

  “It’s a boy.”

  Oliver thought. “Ben-jie.”

  When they joined the others at the fence, Hattie gave Oliver a big hug of congratulations, but Ruth turned to Ida. “Lucky for you. Four dead already.”

  Ida smiled sweetly.

  Oliver fed Betty and while he did so he chattered on with more words than Ida had heard from him since he’d arrived, none to do with his fairy-tale father, some of it mere padding, using the expedient of one particular word stated over and over. Betty was really really hungry. Betty had gotten really really big since he’d last seen her. Betty really really really wanted to meet her brother Benjie. Ida held Betty up by her forelegs so Oliver could feel the full belly, and when he was forced to admit Betty was really really full, he gave her a final pat and trailed after Ida up the hill.

  At the door to the house Ida said, “I won’t come in. But I did want to tell you one more thing. That farm belongs to your aunt Ruth now, but it was once your father’s. He’d be proud of what you did today.”

  “I made a lamb!”

  “You helped it be born.”

  “I made it.”

  All right, Ida could let that one go. “One more thing, Oliver—I have some pretty good stories about your father. You just let me know if you ever want to hear one.”

  By now Ida was prepared for the first three parts of Oliver’s standard response: the look, the pause to think, the skittering away, in this case up the steps to the door. The fourth part was always the wild card: silence, or a follow-up question, or some other tall tale about his father. This time Ida got the silence, but it was followed by a second look over the shoulder that Ida took for a good sign.

  When Ida returned to the house she found a letter waiting from Henry:

  It appears the second party in question is not in town at present—I’m told he’ll be returning at the weekend. In the meanwhile I’m making a dash to New Bedford to see my daughters but plan to be on-island again by Monday. I’ve been thinking a good deal and should very much like to speak with you then.—H.

  Ida read Henry’s letter through twice; it was perhaps the most unsatisfying letter she’d ever received, and the second reading didn’t improve it. Was she supposed to hang suspended in air till Monday when Henry told her whatever he wanted to tell her? Well, she would not.

  Ida looked out the window. Lambing was over. She could breathe now. She could see now. The colors of spring had begun to intensify, to saturate the view: a new, vibrant green pierced the ground in the pastures; a mauve wash in the trees hinted at young buds sucking up the revitalized sun; a new clarity had appeared in the sky. If Ida were going to hang suspended over anything, she decided, it would be the seat of her bicycle. She changed into the proper clothes, put her sketch pad in the basket, added her paint box and a jar of water, and set off.

  But where to? Time to try a new direction. Ida turned off the main street onto the county road and kept on pedaling until her thighs began complaining, until she looked aside and saw a large pond alongside a greening meadow, a salad of greens and blues and silvers and golds with a dark strip of ocean beyond. Ida knew how to paint a woman’s skin whether it be pale or blushing; she knew a man’s bearded face or a razor-chafed clean one; she knew silk and linen and muslin and wool and what happened to those fabrics and shapes when a man’s or woman’s shoulders and thighs pushed against them. She knew everything there was to know about hands folded, hands clasped, hands at rest, hands gripping cloth in an attempt not to show their owner’s nervousness. She knew brown and green and hazel and blue eyes and knew how many different colors went into each of them. She knew lamplight was warmer than window light; she knew the problems a strong, slanting window light could cause when it struck a subject. What didn’t she know? Grass. Pond. Ocean.

  Ida wheeled her bicycle into the meadow and lay it down on its handlebar. She removed her jacket and, using it as a blanket, sat and stretched her legs out straight, her paper laid out flat across her knees, her paint box and water jug at her elbow. A few quick lines gave her the suggestion of her composition; why, this was easier than a sitting or standing person, with four limbs and a neck and so much clothing to account for! Sky first, Ida decided; that soft but strengthening blue could cause few problems. She wet her brush and streaked it back and forth across the paper, wetted the brush again, picked up ultramarine and a dot of yellow ochre and cadmium red, and there it was. Or wasn’t. Too much ochre. Too dark at the horizon. Ida hastened more wet onto the page, but an intrusive breeze had already dried out the paint and now her too-wet brush had caused an unwelcome bloom in her sky. Perhaps a cloud . . . Ida squinted off at the sky: no clouds. Ida didn’t want her first plein air painting to be a dishonest one.

  Ida did better with an egret that was poised on a rock nearby. “There is no such thing as white,” Mr. Morris had lectured her. “You think that cloth white? Look! Look!” And Ida had looked and seen that indeed what she took for white cloth was in fact full of purples and golds and yellows, and so it was with the egret. Ida gave it a lavender cast in the cool shadows and sat back, pleased, until she noticed the rock it stood on floated over the pag
e untethered; Mr. Morris had taught her better. She amended this with a wash of yellow green to suggest the spring marsh grass and felt happier, felt the truth of what Henry had said to her but now added a second level of understanding to it: as she painted to honor herself she also honored Mr. Morris. The feeling lasted until she attempted the pond; the colors were the right dance of greens, yellows, golds, and silvers, but the water just sat there; it didn’t dance, and all Ida’s efforts to enliven it only turned it muddier. Perhaps she honored no one, after all.

  But Ida kept at it till the rising cold and damp had worked through the double thicknesses of jacket and skirt deep into her flesh and bone; she pedaled home encumbered by an old frustration she’d have once blamed on Ezra. But in truth, didn’t it still belong to Ezra? Ezra was the one who had spent all her money, sold the farm to Ruth. Ezra was the one who had trapped her here and cost what little time had remained with her mentor. But no. Ida was the one who had agreed to the marriage. Ida was the one who had agreed to the move. She’d been happy enough to leave her sorrow behind, and if in her befogged state she hadn’t quite understood what else she was leaving behind, she could not, in that, blame Ezra. Oddly, to shoulder blame instead of shoving it off on Ezra felt freeing.

  Ida parked the bicycle in the barn, fed Betty, and went to the paddock to check on the lamb. The lamb was fine, but there was something wrong with the ewe; she stood against the wall with head down, sides heaving; she walked in jerky circles, throwing her head back along her flank as her eyes jumped wildly. Ida let herself into the paddock and sidled closer; she stripped off her jacket, reached under the ewe for the far leg, pulled it forward and tipped her. She felt inside and sure enough, there it was: a second, retained lamb, the wrong end facing outward. Ida ran for the house, the phone, Lem, but no one answered; Ida returned to the sheep and found her still on her side, panting. Ida reached in and pulled a back leg forward; she pulled another; the lamb caught at the hip and would come no farther. What would Lem do? The ewe was fading, her breathing gone shallow; which to save, ewe or lamb? By now Ida doubted the lamb was even alive. She took hold of both legs and threw the whole of her weight backward against the grip of the ewe; she fell flat on the ground, but the lamb came with her.

  Dead.

  Number five.

  Ida sat, breathing hard, taking stock. This fifth dead lamb was the one that would cost her, unless . . . unless she said nothing about it. Ruth had no idea this particular ewe had carried twins; in fact, she’d witnessed a successful birth only a few hours earlier and had likely put the numbers out of her head till the next season of lambing. All Ida need do was put them out of her head. The Peases all had their secrets after all: Oliver, the farm, the gold. It was about time Ida carried a secret of her own.

  21

  At last, Lem arrived to carry Ezra’s trunk of clothes to the Bethel.

  “Care to come along?” he asked Ida, surprising her.

  “Yes,” she said, surprising herself. She’d been wanting to see Rose Amaral but had never found it in herself to make that effort, had in fact been a little fearful of what she might find in a meeting with the apparently fierce Rose Amaral. This would be a safe way to do it—a brief exchange with the excuse on the ready of Lem’s wagon waiting to take her home again. Ida climbed into the wagon beside Lem.

  They bumped along saying little, so little that Ida felt the weight of the silence. “My bicycle rides smoother than this wagon,” she offered.

  “This wagon won’t dump you out on the ground spread-eagled,” Lem said. The way he said the word spread-eagled made it sound like something Ida had done on purpose.

  “You don’t approve of my cycling, do you, Lem? At first I thought it was just my bicycling with Henry you disapproved of, out of respect for Ruth’s view on the matter, although why you should care so much what Ruth thinks I don’t know. But it isn’t Henry, is it? Or maybe it is Henry, but even without Henry, you don’t think women should exhibit themselves like that in public.”

  “It doesn’t show you to advantage.”

  “Whose advantage?”

  “Yours. You’re not planning to stay a widow forever, are you? Someday you’ll want to find a decent gentleman—”

  “‘Decent’ meaning one not divorcing. ‘Decent’ meaning one who doesn’t let his wife go off bicycling.”

  “In trousers. Knees flashing in the wind. Knees and whatever else turns wrong side up. I’m not going to tell you what I saw that day on the track.”

  “I was in a skirt that day. If I’d been in trousers you’d have seen a lot less.”

  Lem sat silent. He rattled onto the wharf and pulled up in front of the Bethel, coming around to help Ida out, but Ida didn’t move.

  “When I came here with Ezra, you were the first person I met. You stepped out of the barn as if you lived there, and you didn’t even smile at me, but there was something in the way you looked at me, at the way you came up to me and took my bag, that told me I might find a friend in this godforsaken place after all. I knew—I already knew—that I was going to need one. Aren’t we friends anymore?”

  Lem blinked. “To my way of looking at things, I’m the best friend you’ve got.”

  “No matter the—”

  “No matter anything, Ida. That’s just how it works. I might get disappointed in you now and again same as you get disappointed in me, but that’s also how it works. Now are you going to come in or you going to sit there?”

  Lem went to the back of the wagon, hoisted the trunk, and carried it into the Bethel. He’d hoisted it all the way down the stairs at home without effort but now he paused halfway to the door, set it down, took a couple of breaths, hoisted it again. Ida scrambled out of the wagon and followed him in.

  By the time Ida caught up, Rose Amaral had already opened the trunk. When she saw Ida she came around and grasped both her hands.

  “Mrs. Pease. I’m grateful for this. You can’t know the need. I’m so sorry about your husband. Such an old story on this island, and yet each time I hear it, especially perhaps this time, since I don’t know you . . . but here, we can fix that. I have a pot on; come and sit and we’ll have that talk.”

  Sit and we’ll have that talk; such a gentle suggestion and yet it caused Ida’s chest to tighten. But what was she to do? Rose Amaral had already started across the room, assuming Ida would follow her.

  Ida turned to Lem. “Thank you for the transport. I’ll walk home.”

  “You’ve suffered such a loss,” Rose began. “I’ve many times thought how ill-equipped I am to comfort anyone widowed—my fisherman husband has tempted his fate more times in that boat of his and every single trip—”

  “Five,” Ida said.

  “I . . . five?”

  She’d lost five. She could no longer hear the word loss without taking the full count; Ezra was the last and least, but the number was five. Five. The room began to recede; Rose began to recede. Ida needed to shift the subject, fast. She looked around the enormous kitchen and spied a poster tacked over the sink:

  For the work of a day

  For the price we pay

  For the laws we obey

  We want something to say.

  VOTES FOR WOMEN!

  Ida pointed. “You’ve heard of Julia Ward Howe?”

  Rose’s eyes, already warm, grew warmer. “I’ve read of her.”

  Ida relayed her conversation with Howe in Boston and watched warm turn to flame. “I’ve wanted to get up a group here for the longest time. This is all I needed—someone like you to egg me on. We start by asking everyone we know. I have several who would do it; you must know some. We could meet at the library, write up a piece for the paper, maybe get Mrs. Howe to speak to us.”

  Ida doubted Mrs. Howe would use up her valuable time with a trip to such an outpost, but Rose’s energy flowed over and through her like a stiff current, reviving Ida, putting the room back where it belonged. As she looked at the animated Rose an idea occurred to her. She would paint Rose’s por
trait; this she knew how to do. A lot of burnt sienna in the hair with a touch of purple, a hint of that burnt sienna in the skin, the eyes one of Ida’s darker mixes of complementary colors. She would paint her right there, seated at the Bethel’s stove, the warmth in the eyes reflecting the warmth of the stove . . .

  “I’d like to paint you,” Ida said.

  “How kind of you to say so, Ida.”

  “May I?”

  Rose smiled sweetly. “No.”

  After they’d talked awhile longer Ida tried again, but there was no shifting Rose. On the other hand, by the time Ida left, she’d not only promised Rose she’d compose a list of women likely to attend a suffrage meeting, but she’d agreed to volunteer at the Bethel.

  “What stories?” Oliver asked. He and Ida were standing at the fence watching the sheep; Ida could make a case for some warmth from the sun on her back, but her hands and face were knotted with chill. Oliver had already run in sharp zigzags over the ripening grass to see if Betty would follow him, which she did until he’d fed her, but now she careened after the other lambs with that burst of energy only the first sun and a full belly could provide. Ida knew right off which stories Oliver meant, but the fact of it was that although she’d made her offer in good faith, feeling obligated to replace a long string of fairy tales with at least a few true ones, she couldn’t think of a single story about Ezra that Oliver should hear. Who was Ezra? A fortune hunter, in every sense of the word. An adventurer, she supposed, always ready to sail off in search of the next great treasure . . . Treasure.