Painting the Light

by Sally Cabot Gunning

  “I have under half an hour if I want to catch that boat, but I couldn’t go without saying—” Whatever it was, he couldn’t seem to say it. Ida took a step toward him but for a second time he gripped her arms and stood her away from him. “Don’t, I beg you, or I’ll never leave here.” But as he spoke he pulled her to him and kissed her with a kiss that spoke as much of desperation as passion. After the door shut behind him Ida closed her eyes, attempting to recapture all the rest—the warmth of his body, the tenderness in his hands, the agony in his eyes—but in the usual perverse way her mind now worked, it called up Ezra’s eyes instead, in particular the look in them she most remembered, as if he wanted to gut and flay her. But that was when he looked at her at all.

  Ida had helped Oliver feed Betty and the chickens, water Ollie, and dig in the garden, but they still had two hours to go until Hattie collected the boy again. Ida looked out over Oliver’s crop of hillocks and holes and recalled the date; well past frost and she hadn’t yet put in her kitchen garden. It wasn’t the best day for it—raw, gray, damp with the kind of damp that was bound to turn to actual wet before it ended; in Boston Ida would have stayed inside sketching. But if they could get some seed in the ground it would be just the weather the garden needed. Ida went out to the barn and collected the metal cans of seeds she’d harvested the previous fall. She grabbed a ball of twine, drove stakes at each end of the garden, and ran the twine between them while Oliver watched at first, then hopped up and followed, then began with the questions.

  “What are you doing? Why are you putting that stick there? Why are you making those lines with the string?”

  That Oliver saw the string as lines was a good sign. Ida handed him the can of radish seeds. She took the trowel and filled in a few of Oliver’s holes. “They’re too big,” she said. “Watch me now.” She poked a tiny hole in the earth with her finger, dropped the seed in, covered it with dirt, and gently tamped it down. “Pretty soon it will be a radish.”

  By the time Hattie arrived to collect Oliver a row of radish seeds and half a row of carrot seeds were in the ground, but a good deal of the ground was on Oliver. Fortunately, Hattie didn’t seem to notice; her eyes were fixed on the bicycle leaning against the barn. “Hey, Oliver,” Ida said. “Want to help me teach your cousin to ride that bicycle?”

  “No,” Hattie said. “He doesn’t. Come along, now.”

  Ida was standing at the pasture gate looking out at the grass, trying to decide if it was time to move the sheep to a new pasture to protect the tender shoots, Bett lying at her feet awaiting direction, when the dog’s ruff stood on end and she growled low. “What, girl? What is it?”

  Bett crouched, taut on her haunches, ready to leap. Ida followed her gaze and saw a stranger on horseback coming up the track.

  “Down.” Bett lowered herself imperceptibly, but Ida could feel her own hackles rise as the man drew up and dismounted.

  “Mrs. Ezra Pease?”

  “Who’s inquiring?”

  The man took out a leather wallet and removed a card. When he took a step forward to hand the card to Ida, Bett rose to her feet, the rumble growing louder. The man stepped back.

  “Bett. Stay.”

  The man looked from the dog to Ida and back to the dog. “Does that dog do what you tell it?”

  “Mostly.”

  The man stayed where he was. Ida stepped forward and took the card. dermott hale investigations. Yes, that was what she could see in his posture, a man comfortable in situations where he wasn’t invited. But he was in the wrong place.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in Newport?” she asked.

  “Not if you’re Mrs. Ezra Pease. Are you?”

  “I was. He’s dead.” It seemed important for her to establish that fact. She was not the adulterer.

  The eyes flicked as if making a mental note: Ezra Pease, dead. “I’d like to ask you a few questions, if I may.”

  If I may allowed the option of Ida saying no, but Ida found she didn’t want to. The sooner she redirected the man the better. “If you’re looking for the Barstows—”

  “Pease. I’m looking for Ezra Pease. But he’s . . . dead, you say.”

  “Dead. Drowned. He went down on the Portland. You’ve heard of the Portland?”

  Hale gave no indication whether he had or hadn’t. He pulled out a notebook and pencil and made a few quick, slashing marks. For the most part he kept his eyes fixed on Ida’s, just as Ida fixed hers on his, noting their blankness, the kind that came from either an honest lack of thought or long practice at keeping thoughts hidden.

  She tried again. “You were sent by Mrs.—”

  “Where was your husband headed, Mrs. Pease?”

  “Portland.”

  “And from there?”

  Passamaquoddy, she might have said. “I don’t know,” she said instead.

  “And for what purpose?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How long had he intended to be in Maine?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know what plans he made for his return?”

  “No.”

  “Or his purpose in going to Maine?”

  “No. As I said. What’s this in aid of?”

  “Some questions have been raised about your husband’s activities.”

  “Who by?”

  “The people who hired me.”

  “Not Mrs. Barstow?”

  “I don’t know a Mrs. Barstow.”

  “Who hired you, Mr. Hale?”

  He made no answer. The questions went on: about Ezra’s finances, his friends, his recent absences, detailed questions there about times, destinations, duration. Ida continued to answer I don’t know to all, whether she did know or she didn’t, and even though her equanimity—whatever there was left of it—had fled, she let the questions go on, thinking Hale would come to one that would explain himself and his purpose. Every so often Ida attempted to ask her own questions, but she might as well have questioned Oliver. I can’t say. I’m unable to answer that. I’m not party to that information. Ida pictured a small wheel clicking around inside Hale’s head, randomly pulling out one or another of those answers and dropping it into his mouth.

  At length he pointed to the house. “Mind if I take a look around?”

  But there Ida had had enough. “I would mind. Yes.”

  Hale took a step anyway, as if to circle around her, but Bett stood, the rumble in her throat boiling over. A single word, wait, would have settled her back on her haunches, but Ida chose not to give it. “If I were you, I’d back up,” she said.

  Hale backed up.

  “You only force me to come back again with the constable.”

  “We’ll be here,” Ida said. “Both of us.”

  The three of them sat at the kitchen table, hovered over the little atlas, Hattie reading out loud from it, Ruth chiming in with the occasional correction. Oliver looked up as Ida came in and beamed. “Massachusetts has manufactering! And deep sea and coast fishes.”

  “Fisheries,” Ruth said.

  “It has more than half the fishing bustles in the United States!”

  “Vessels.”

  “It has two million people!”

  “You like your father’s little book?” Ida asked.

  Oliver nodded. Paused. “What other stories?”

  “About your father? Well, let’s see. He never missed the ferry. It was like he had a clock ticking away inside his head.”

  “Never?”

  “Never.”

  “I never missed the ferry.”

  “See, just like your dad.”

  “Just like?”

  “No, not just like. But it’s never a good idea to be just like.”

  “He’d be lucky to be just like,” Ruth interrupted. “And if you want to hear stories—”

  “Maybe you could tell him some,” Ida said. She nodded toward the parlor, but Ruth didn’t bite. She did, however, grasp Ida’s intention.

  “Olive
r, go fill the kindling basket.”

  Once Oliver left, Ruth said, “What. Assuming you came traipsing up here for a reason.”

  Ida told them about the investigator. “I’m wondering if he came up here.”

  “No,” Hattie said. “No one came here. You didn’t see anyone, did you, Mother?”

  Ruth shook her head.

  Ida looked back and forth between the two women. It occurred to her that she trusted neither of them.

  But Hattie asked, with what seemed to be genuine puzzlement, “What on earth did he want?”

  “He asked about Ezra. His work. His finances. He wanted to search the house, but I declined the offer.”

  “How dare he invade—” Ruth started, but Hattie cut in.

  “He didn’t invade anyone, Mother. Ida saw to that.”

  “No one’s talking to you, Harriet.”

  “I’m talking to Harriet,” Ida said. “I’m talking to both of you. The man threatened to come back with a constable and a warrant; if there’s something shady about Ezra’s dealings, I’d like to be told. I’ve already found out he had a son that you, Hattie, seemed to know all about, and you, Ruth, no doubt suspected. What else? What else do you think is not my business or of no concern or too embarrassing to talk about? It’s time you tell me of it.”

  “Ida, honestly, I don’t know of anything,” Hattie said. “This is as much a puzzle to me as it is to you. Do you think he’ll come back? I wonder what he was after, really. Maybe he wanted to extort money from you or—”

  “Yes, Ida,” Ruth said. “That’s the first thing you do. Ask that man about his business instead of answering questions about Ezra’s.”

  “I didn’t answer his questions. But neither did he answer mine. Whatever Ezra’s done—”

  The door banged open and Oliver tumbled in with an armful of twigs. He dumped them into the wood box and slid into a chair next to Ida. “What other stories?”

  Ida gave up. She told Oliver a now-comic, then-terrifying tale of getting lost in the woods and Ezra sending his old dog Moe to herd her home. She resurrected another of Ezra blowing “Camptown Races” on a cider jug while Mose—and Henry—sang, Mose poorly, Henry . . . Ida pushed Henry away, or tried to push Henry away, but as she did so it occurred to her that it had been some time since she’d heard Henry singing. She returned to Ezra. She got Oliver to dissolve into the first she’d heard of real little boy giggles when she imitated Ezra’s imitation of the ox: she stood motionless in the middle of the room and slowly, a half-inch at a time, swung her head left and right.

  Ida looked at the boy’s shining face. Oh, Ezra, she thought, what a hero you could have been. What love you could have claimed. What joy you could have nurtured.

  24

  But Ida discovered it wasn’t that easy to push Henry away. He’d wakened her physical self and abruptly gone off, leaving behind an ache like a phantom limb. Add to that, she’d finally begun work on his father’s portrait and was forced to spend a portion of each day staring at another kind of phantom. She’d set out her supplies and mapped out her canvas, the haze of apple trees in the distance, the single gnarled trunk in the foreground, the man leaning against the tree, so utterly comfortable in his skin. The hand hooked on his belt conveyed an air of knowing just what to do with it next; the arm propped against the tree looked both strong and relaxed; the eyes linked to an intimate half-smile aimed at the painter. Or, rather, the photographer. And yet the eyes Ida painted were the eyes that had gazed down on her at Makonikey.

  Ida tried again to push Henry away but in his place marched the investigator. Why had he wanted to see the house? What did he think he’d find? The gold came first to Ida’s mind. If it was stolen, and this investigator had somehow gotten wind of it . . . but why an investigator and not the law? Why was the constable held out as a threat only as a last resort? It made no sense to Ida, but sense or not, the man wanted something.

  Ida began to look, searching all the hollow places she could access, but other than a dead mouse, an embarrassing array of cobwebs, and some whiskey bottles so frosted with dust they surely predated Ezra, she discovered nothing. She went through Ezra’s desk again but found nothing that she could possibly imagine meant anything beyond that card from the assayer of gold. That, and the keys to the buildings on Main Street: office, warehouse, apartment. If the investigator had attempted to call at the office he’d have found no one there, but that didn’t mean whatever he was looking for wasn’t there. Ida pocketed the keys and mounted her bicycle.

  The building in its emptiness felt desolate, cold. Henry had done some clearing out, and while it helped that the floor was no longer piled with pieces of old chain, lanterns, and spittoons, it did nothing to cut through the desolation. She began by unlocking the desk drawer but slammed it shut when someone came down the stairs.

  “I thought I heard something,” the woman said. “A rat, I presumed. What are you doing here?”

  It took Ida a full five seconds. The person. The place. The person in the place. The person with Henry’s keys jingling in her fingers. Either a trick of the light or a trick of the mind made Perry Barstow’s hair seem more brilliant, her skin more luminous. Even her voice sounded more knifelike.

  Ida took a final second to make sure her own voice came out strong. Cool. It was the voice she used to call up in the face of any verbal assault from Ezra. Not that there was any assault here. “Shouldn’t that question more logically be directed at you?”

  Perry walked over to where Ida had left the bicycle leaning against the wall. She ran her hand over the seat, lifted it, wiped it on her skirt. “Henry told me he lent you my bicycle.”

  “I understood you wouldn’t miss it. I was told you’d . . . gone off it.”

  Perry Barstow laughed. “That does sound like Henry. Gone off. Like a bad piece of meat. No matter. I gave up riding the thing once I saw what it did to my calves.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Perry Barstow looked down at the desk and picked up the pens, one at a time. “Henry and I have come to something of an understanding. I’m here to collect a few of his things.”

  “He’s not here?”

  “Heavens, no. He’s at home with our girls.” The woman looked harder at Ida. Henry had labeled his wife’s eyes emotionless, but Ida saw enough in them to burn a hole through the desk. She turned for the door.

  “Wait!” Perry Barstow called after her. “I remember now, you’re that artist. The one Henry admired.”

  Idiotically, Ida flushed, not over anything she’d done or said but over the fact that even this empty-eyed woman had noticed in her husband’s eyes or heard in her husband’s words his admiration for Ida. No, not Ida, she corrected herself. Ida’s painting. She mustn’t mistake the two. But at least that admiration had been real, then, had been visible to another besides Ida, or even more disconcerting, perhaps Henry had actually mentioned his admiration to his wife. But when? Then? Now?

  “I am that artist,” Ida said.

  “I believe I spoke to you then about a portrait. Do you know, the more I think on it now, I think it a fine idea. I could sit for you while I’m here, a gift for my husband. He’s always wanted my portrait done.”

  “I’m already working on a portrait for Mr. Barstow.”

  “Oh, how lovely! May I see it? What photo did he give you? What have you put me in? I hope not white. I so hate a white gown. Like a shroud. Green is impressive against my hair. Or rather, my hair is impressive against green.” She laughed.

  “I’m sorry,” Ida said. “I should have explained. The portrait I’m working on is of Mr. Barstow’s father.”

  They stood eye to eye in silence, Ida unwilling to turn her back until she’d given the woman a fair chance to reply, the woman apparently unable to form one.

  “I’d best go,” Ida said at last.

  “Did you find what you were looking for? I wonder Henry hasn’t locked this place up. Oh well, I’ll do it for him before I go.” She jingled t
he keys in her hand. Henry’s keys.

  “Thank you, then I won’t need to,” Ida said, holding up her own keys. Ezra’s keys. She jingled them much as Perry Barstow had done and stepped through the door.

  Ida slept poorly, her head full of the flinty shards of Perry Barstow’s words. Something of an understanding . . . Home with our girls . . . A gift for my husband. In daylight Ida had managed to dismiss the words as those of a spiteful wife, one who would rip up her paper dolls rather than let another child play with them, but at night the words chimed in a different tone. Henry could have gone home, seen his girls, changed his mind, and come to “something of an understanding” with the girls’ mother; Ida could only imagine the pain of leaving his children behind. But even if all of that had happened, would the Henry Ida thought she knew and trusted send his wife to collect his things and never explain, never even say good-bye? Or was that desperate kiss in her kitchen his version of good-bye? She didn’t know.

  But Ida knew Henry. Trusted Henry. Or did she? She tried to think back to the days when she’d felt she knew and trusted Ezra, but she could no longer remember what those days had felt like. And if she’d been fooled by Ezra, why not Henry? The same old mistake only played out with a different man. But was it the same old mistake? Ida thought back to that night at the Boston town house, at Ezra pushing his agenda for lying with Ida before they married, at Ezra overriding her objections. She thought of her bedroom the night she’d shown Henry the hiding place for the gold, of Ida’s pushing her agenda, of Henry standing her away. She thought of Makonikey and how again that had been Ida’s agenda, how Henry had even then been reluctant until she’d carried him too far along for any going back . . . In the dark, alone, Ida’s face burned.

  A long time later—or so it seemed—Ida had almost fallen into sleep when beside her in the bed Bett went rigid, growled low in her throat, leaped to the floor. Over time Ida had stopped hearing noises but now she was instantly on guard again, although it took her a few seconds longer to hear what Bett heard—a commotion among the sheep. Ida raced to the window and through the moon dark saw what appeared to be the entire flock stampeding toward the gate, a dark arrow behind them, another in among them, bringing one of Ida’s flock violently to the ground.