“Did you know,” Ida began, “that your father could raise up ships from the bottom of the sea?”
There came the Oliver look. “What ships?”
“Ships that sank in storms. Or hit a rock. Or collided with another one. Sometimes a ship would have an explosion—”
“An explosion?”
“If they carried fuel, like coal. That exploded a lot.”
“How did he raise them up?”
“Different ways. Sometimes he plugged the hole and pumped it out. Sometimes he built a second bottom on top of the first. Sometimes he just emptied the cargo and it floated up to the surface by itself. If he couldn’t raise the ship, he’d just salvage the cargo.”
“What’s salvage?”
“Save.”
Oliver thought. “Was he the only one who knew how to raise up ships?”
“No, there were others.”
“Did they raise up the ship my father was on when he drownded?”
“Drowned. No, they didn’t.”
“Why didn’t they?”
“Well, they never found the ship.”
“Then how did they know it sank?”
“Things washed ashore out on the back side of Cape Cod. A life preserver with the name of the ship on it. The ship’s wheel. Furniture.” Bodies.
Oliver watched the sheep in silence for some time. “Maybe something of my father’s washed up. Maybe we should go look.”
Too late, it occurred to Ida that she should have saved some article of Ezra’s clothing to give to Oliver. She pondered what else of Ezra’s she might have but could think of nothing but the whiskey bottle. Then she remembered. “Wait here.”
Ida dashed inside and up the stairs, into her studio and past her unfinished sketches of Lem, Henry, Oliver, even Ruth and Hattie. She pulled Ezra’s little atlas off the shelf and thumbed through it; a color image of every state and country graced its pages, along with minute notations of its square miles, its topography, its crops and manufacturing, its railroads, its harbors. Would a boy like Oliver find such things of interest? He would, Ida guessed, if it was all he had of his father’s. But would Hattie—or Ruth—take the time to read it to him?
Ida returned to the pasture fence to find Oliver missing from it. She found him at the dog yard, reaching through the slats to allow Bett to lick his fingers. Ida released the dog but stayed close; when Bett ran off after some unseen animal Ida handed Oliver the atlas.
“This was your father’s,” she said. “He’d have wanted you to have it. I know you can’t read the words—”
“I can too!” Oliver snatched the book, opened it. Frowned. “Some words.” But he dropped to his knees and began turning pages. He looked up. “Did he go to all these places?”
“Not all of them.”
“Just the ones with the mark?”
Ida knelt beside the boy and looked where he pointed, to a couple of pencil marks on the page marked Massachusetts, one on the Rhode Island page, others at New York, Connecticut, Maine. “Yes,” Ida said, understanding as some others might not the value of such communication from the dead. “And here’s where he signed his name.”
Oliver stayed bent over the meager little book for so long that Ida contemplated buying a man’s watch and claiming it was Ezra’s just to have something more substantial to pass on to the boy, but she wouldn’t—couldn’t—add anything more to the pile of Ezra lies.
22
May came, the typical island May, one day cold as winter and gray as dawn, the next day pierced straight through with rays of light that might not yet warm the skin but did brighten the spirits. With the lambing done, Ida could relax some; she still circled the pasture daily and found the occasional lamb caught up in the briars Ezra had neglected to clear or a ewe with a hard, hot bag—a sure sign of mastitis—but for the most part all was quiet. She had time to bicycle to the Seamen’s Bethel to meet with Rose, where they sat and composed a list of women who might be interested in attending a suffrage meeting. What that actually meant was that Rose composed a list and Ida contributed one name: Hattie’s. She mentioned it one day when Hattie delivered Oliver.
“I’ve been working with Rose Amaral on a campaign for women’s suffrage.”
“Here?” Hattie laughed. “Better change the name to sufferage.”
Hattie had a point; Ida couldn’t, in fact, see women like Grace Luce, Emmeline Tilton, Ruth joining the discussion. And why start a thing Ida wouldn’t be around to finish? But Hattie would be here.
“You’ll join us?”
“I don’t know. There’s work. Oliver. My mother.”
“We can—”
“I said I don’t know, Ida. There are other matters to consider.”
“What matters?”
“I said I don’t know. Now let me get to my work. I’m not a woman of leisure like some others.”
Did she mean Ida? Ida opened her mouth; closed it. Opened it again. “Rose wants to call a meeting at the library.”
Hattie had already started down the track. She called something over her shoulder that Ida couldn’t hear, but it didn’t sound like I’ll be there.
And yet, when Ida mounted her bicycle it seemed all things were possible if she only did as she did on the bicycle: pumped the pedals hard, one at a time. She rode to Cottage City and felt the strength in her legs; felt her courage; reveled in the miles of smooth concrete from which to choose her direction. The late-day sky had been banded by a pinky-gold flourish at the horizon that Ida hadn’t yet managed to capture; it wasn’t the same gold as a woman’s necklace, or a tawny fleck in an eye, or any silk or satin she’d encountered. It wasn’t the color of any paints in her palette. But as Ida rode home she thought she was wrong in that. The colors were there; all the colors were there; she just hadn’t mixed them right. Tomorrow she would try adding some magenta to that wash of orange.
On the way home Ida stopped at Luce’s and collected another letter from Henry. Delayed in New Bedford, he wrote and went on to explain about a potential order for three new carriages and his frustrated attempts to arrange a meeting with the purchaser. The rest of the letter was about the seven automobiles he’d seen in Newport and the three in New Bedford.
Two and a half days of rain kept Ida—and Oliver—indoors. Ida took out the Nine Men’s Morris, but soon abandoned the rules and left Oliver to fly about the board willy-nilly, to declare himself the winner. Ida was just pondering how much easier her life might have been if she’d taken that tack with Ezra when the sun and Hattie arrived together.
“I’m late,” Hattie said, and rushed Oliver out the door. So she didn’t want to talk, which was fine with Ida; it allowed her to get back to her mission of the golden light. She gathered her supplies and set off along the pasture wall, heading for an old, gnarled pear tree that stood guard against the wind at the far corner. She’d decided she didn’t want to remove Henry’s father from the orchard, so she needed to practice her trees. She set her sketch pad on her knees, the picture of Henry’s father propped up between the pages, and sat staring at the figure. Oh, she knew that man, the unique dark/light coloring, the long bones, that loose-jointed way of standing. She imagined the man in the photo would move as effortlessly as Henry did.
As he was doing now, propelling his bicycle up the track.
Henry let go of the bicycle and broke into a gentle jog along the pasture wall, scattering the sheep to the far side. Ida slid off the wall and moved toward him, her own pace too fast, too eager. She slowed. As Henry approached her he too slowed, the things they’d last said to each other now leaving an arm’s length between them.
Ida turned, and they continued together toward the house. Recalling Henry’s last letter but one—I’ve been thinking a good deal and should very much like to speak with you—Ida waited for him to start, but Henry seemed more intent on the sheep.
“You’ve got a fine flock there, Ida.”
“Yes.”
“You did well.”
“Fai
rly.”
Silence.
“I hadn’t expected to see you,” Ida tried.
“This time I got tired of waiting. I told her I’d be on the Vineyard and to send word when she’d corralled the party in question.”
They reached the house. “Supper?” Ida asked. What else could she ask?
She made them eggs, potatoes, and sausage; she served up the two plates with the neutral subject of Oliver and his chess game, waiting, waiting, for Henry to turn the topic.
“How are your neighbors?”
“The same,” Ida said, although she didn’t think Hattie was, but she didn’t want to linger on that topic.
“All’s well with the farm?”
“All’s well.”
Henry pushed his plate back. “Thank you. Again.”
He was going to leave. He should leave. Ida knew this. And yet she said, “I wonder what you think of women voting.”
Henry settled back into his chair. “The same thing I think of men voting. Some will cast wisely, some will cast irresponsibly, some won’t cast at all. But they should all be allowed to cast or not as they choose. And you?”
“I don’t think men should be allowed to vote at all.”
Henry burst into laughter.
“Ezra thought it wasn’t worth his time discussing because it would never happen. No man would vote to let women in.”
Henry pondered. “How impossible it is. A man must vote a woman permission to vote.”
“But some men will. You will.”
“Now we only need a few more.”
We.
Ida tipped her head.
Henry stood. “I’d best go.”
No. “Yes.”
Henry moved to the door, turned. “Ride tomorrow?”
No. “Yes.”
They rode out along the county road, Ida’s basket packed full with paper, pencils, paint, a jug of water, and two pieces of mince pie wrapped in napkins. Henry carried a pack on his back. He led the way, turning them onto Lambert’s Cove Road, then off it onto a dirt road not unlike the one to the Pease farm, but this road was overgrown; some of the trees, like the beeches, had already leafed out, but others, like the oaks, stood bare-branched against the sun, making the ride one of dappled cool and warm in alternating layers. At length the trees turned to scrub and grass and Henry dismounted. He motioned for Ida to follow and set off through what looked like a deer path until it opened up into a gap in a dune topped with beach grass as spare as an old man’s scalp. Ahead Ida heard, smelled, and at last saw a rollicking line of surf.
Henry took Ida’s hand and they slid down through the space between the dunes until the beach came into view. Ida looked to her left along the pristine sand glistening in the sun, a flock of winded gulls resting at the edge of the surf the only sign of life. Ahead the Elizabeth Islands chain sat like a smudge on the horizon; to the right more empty, scoured beach until a large building and wharf cut the view short. Well done, Henry, she thought. She pointed to the building. “What’s that place?”
“The Makonikey Hotel. Now abandoned.”
Henry opened his pack, pulled out a blanket and spread it on the sand in the shelter between the dunes, added two bottles of beer and a loaf of bread.
“I have pie,” Ida said, remembering, “back at the bicycle.”
“I’ll fetch it.” Henry jogged off.
Ida stepped onto the beach and started walking toward the old hotel as if toward a mirage, but the shapes never wavered or shrank. By the time she got close enough to see the fancy turret she could also see the absent windows, the missing shingles gaping like lost teeth. She turned to face the sea and saw that the wharf too had the appearance of dereliction, several of its pilings askew, the boards splintered or buckling.
Her mother’s wharf. Ida had stood many times on the Union Wharf and had never thought of her mother; that wharf was too much the busy thoroughfare, too crammed with people and horses and carriages and carts and all the boxes and barrels and trunks they carried. No one could have walked unseen off Union Wharf with pockets full of stones, but this wharf, with its air of desolation and despair, this wharf was different.
As if compelled by an invisible hand, Ida stepped onto the planks and walked out. A violent rage overwhelmed her. What had her mother been thinking? How could she not care? How was it that Ida wasn’t enough to hold her? Would it be possible that someday Ida would look around and find nothing to hold her? Ida approached the edge of the wharf and looked down at the swirling sea, at the way it danced around the pilings, sucking everything into its maw. In that last minute before her mother stepped out into nothing, had she hesitated, doubted, thought of Ida even at all? If she had, had it caused her to reconsider or was it already too late? Had the clutches of gravity already captured her? Was she, in essence, already dead at that first step?
The whirling of the sea water had begun to make Ida dizzy; she wanted to step back from the edge, she tried to step back, but she’d lost her sense of which way was ahead and which way behind. She lifted a foot and swayed, tottered, toppled over the edge.
Cold. Salt. Something gripping at her clothes and pulling her downward. She began to thrash uselessly, just as she had so many times in her dreams, her mother either always just out of her reach or grabbing hold of her and keeping her from regaining the surface. She was unable to tell up from down, unable to identify the goal. She heard a muffled, tinny sound; saw a shape like a pale jellyfish above her; felt someone’s hands on her, strong hands, pulling her. Ida lashed out at the hands; she was not her mother! She would not be pulled down! But those hands, how strong they were, how sure, how skillfully they pinned her arms and hoisted her out of the water, stood her on her feet! But they still held her, pinned her. She fought free of the hands, sloshed through the water toward the shore, felt herself being grabbed from behind, lifted. She clawed. Kicked. Tore free again. Ran up the beach. Heard the dense thunk of heavier footsteps hitting the sand behind her, felt those hands catch hold of her again, shake her.
“Ida! Ida! It’s me. Henry.”
He’d brought the blanket with him. He kicked open the rotting hotel door and helped her out of her skirt and coat and boots, the wet ties and buttons defeating her. He wrapped the blanket around her, went to the fireplace, looked up the chimney, found somewhere a tin of matches, lit the logs already lying behind the andirons. He draped her sopping clothes over the fire screen and positioned it to the side so it wouldn’t block the heat from reaching Ida. He returned to where she sat on the banquette, dropped to his knees in front of her and began to rub her trembling arms and back and shoulders until the trembling eased.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She wanted to explain that fierce drive to get herself out of that water, the conviction that it was up to her to get herself out, the certainty that the hands that reached for her could only pull her under, as they always did in her dream. “I don’t know what happened,” she said instead.
Henry sat back on his heels, his eyes black, burning. “You pitched off the bloody dock, that’s what happened. Let loose with a god-awful howl and went right over the edge! And then practically clawed my eyes out when I tried to help you.”
“I’m sorry,” Ida said again. “It didn’t occur to me that you were trying to help me.”
“What the bloody hell did you think I was trying to do?” He was breathing hard, as hard as she was. Harder.
“Don’t be angry.”
“Angry! Scared to death, more like. Bloody hell, Ida.” He got off his knees, slid around beside her on the banquette, opened an arm. Ida slid inside it, letting him hold her hard against him, wanting him to hold her hard.
“My mother drowned herself,” Ida said. She began to tremble again. She now knew exactly what had happened to her mother, how she’d have been pulled down by the stones just as Ida had been pulled down by her clothes; even if Ida’s mother had changed her mind, even if she’d clawed the stones from her pockets and fought to regain the surface she’d
have been disoriented, unable to tell up from down. How insidious that pull was! If Henry hadn’t been there . . . If only Ida had been there . . . If Ida’s mother had only talked to her about her despair . . .
Ida’s eyes began to stream, as if they were emptying the water from her mother’s lungs. “She put stones in her pockets. Stones. She walked off the dock with stones in her pockets. My father and brothers drowned at sea and so she walked off the dock. But I was still here. Why didn’t she remember me?” Ida spoke through ugly, gulping sobs, things that no one should attempt to speak through, and yet Ida kept on. All three on the same boat . . . waited and waited . . . stopped waiting . . . Walked to the wharf with the stones . . . alone . . . Where was I? Where was I?
Ida’s tears, her gulping, slowed. She pulled away from Henry and dried her face on the blanket. “It was like she was pulling me down,” she said. “It was like she had me by the ankles and was pulling me down. You can’t know—”
Henry pushed Ida’s wet hair from her face; kissed her brow. “I can’t know what it was like. I can only know how desperately I want to erase it for you.”
Yes, erase. Or if not erase, replace, with something besides pain. When Henry’s mouth touched her temple again she lifted hers to intercept it, but again, she felt that resistance in him. That wall.
“Ida. Wait.”
“Why? I don’t care about your wife. I don’t care about Ezra.” She didn’t care about Ruth or Lem or any of them. She pulled at Henry’s coat. He resisted her some more, but somewhere along the way he stopped resisting, and somewhere after that he forged ahead of her, and somewhere after that Ida stopped thinking and started feeling, things she hadn’t felt in a long time, or rather had never felt, and couldn’t imagine never feeling again.
23
Later it struck Ida that it was as if Perry Barstow had been watching them on that wet, sandy banquette at Makonikey; a telegraph arrived summoning Henry to Newport the next day. He walked up the hill and stood stiffly, somberly in her kitchen.
Painting the Light Page 18
