A Piece of the World

  The answer surprises us both.

  “I think of myself as a girl,” I say.

  1914–1917

  Everybody in town seems to know about the envelopes postmarked Massachusetts. I can tell that Bertha Dorset has been gossiping by the way she smirks and lifts her eyebrows when she hands me the mail. When I mention it in a letter to Walton, he writes, “I’m sorry that anyone should bother you with their curiosity,” and offers to use Ramona as a foil—she can address the envelopes from Boston, he says. “Then they wouldn’t know that I was writing. But I’m afraid they would hear of it some other way.”

  I decide not to let it bother me. People will always talk. At least now they have good reason.

  In one of his letters, Walton says that he has tried, and failed, to grow sweet peas, his favorite flower, in his Cambridge apartment. In April, months before he is due to return, I send away for mail-order sweet pea seeds and ask Al to build a trellis. When the packet arrives, I soak the seeds overnight in water, drain them and chip one end with a sharp blade, then plant them in the manure-rich dirt. I feel like Jack anticipating his beanstalk.

  Sprigs sprout, grow into skinny stalks, and race up the lattice. By mid-June, when strawberries are ready to harvest, the sweet peas begin to flower. Though Walton has written to let me know the week he’ll be back, and though Sam reports an in-town sighting, I am startled to see him coming up the path on a warm morning with a cluster of sweet peas in his hand and a wide grin on his face.

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes!” he says when he arrives at the kitchen door, pulling me into a quick embrace. Handing me the bouquet, he says, “I know how much you like sweet peas,” and I want to say, no, you’re the one who likes them; you know how much I like you. But I am oddly touched that he has conflated his feelings with mine.

  “I have a surprise,” I tell him and make him close his eyes before leading him to the trellis. “Open.”

  He gives me a rueful look. “I’m sorry. Owls to Athens.”

  “Great minds,” I say. “I grew these for you.”

  “For me?”

  I nod.

  He moves closer, grasps my hand. “There’s enough beauty here to lure me without sweet peas.”

  Welcome back, I think.

  I’VE NEVER PAID much attention to how I look, but all of a sudden I’m acutely aware of it. I notice the soiled patch on my blue chambray dress, the frayed sleeves of my muslin blouse, the dirty hem of my skirt. I run my fingers through my hair, separating it into oily strands. The entire family bathes on the third Monday of each month in the same water in the kitchen, oldest to youngest (though in the summer the boys, never much for baths to begin with, get by with a swim in the lake or the ocean). Every few days I wash my face and under my arms with a wet cloth dunked in a pot of water warmed on the range. But that, I decide, isn’t enough. I drag the old galvanized tin tub from the woodshed, with Al’s help, and we fill pots with water from the pump in the pantry and carry them to the range to heat. When the water’s close to boiling, we dump it in the tub and add buckets of cold water. Then I send him out of the room.

  In the tub I rub castile soap across my arms, my legs, my pale stomach, the downy fur under my arms and between my legs. Dipping my head, I wet my hair and run my soapy hands through it, my fingers strange on my scalp, like someone else’s. After rinsing my hair, I pour apple cider vinegar into a cupped hand, as Mother taught me, and run it through the strands until they squeak. The water is soothing on my knotted muscles and floating arms, free of gravity’s pull. My legs are floating too. When I was younger, I would bathe in the pond with my brothers sometimes, reveling in the weightlessness, the momentary release from pain. Now the bath is the only place I can find this relief. I shut my eyes, savoring it.

  Leaning back against the cold tub, I fantasize about what it would be like to leave this place. I envision the moment as if I’m a character in a story: A young woman rises while the rest of the house is asleep, gathers some items into a bundle, makes her way down the stairs as quietly as she can (as she is accustomed to do, waking before the others to stoke the fire and prepare breakfast). She laces her shoes in the shadows of the front hall and opens the door to the outside. Light on her feet as a ballerina, weightless as a butterfly, she slips down the steps and around the corner, beyond the house and the barn to the automobile that waits out of sight, a young man behind the wheel. (Walton, of course. Who else would it be?) He takes her bag, tosses it over the seat. In her bag: a chambered nautilus, an empty picture frame decorated with shells that awaits a moment worth remembering. Almost everything else she leaves behind, bits and pieces of a life outgrown. Whatever she’ll need in the future can be found where she’s going.

  AS THE SUMMER progresses we fall into our routines from the year before: boating with the Carles, clambakes on the rocks by Kissing Cove, picnics in the meadow. One day, as we’re meandering down to Bird Point, he says, “It would be terrific if you could come to Boston this fall.”

  I feel a surge of pleasure. “I would like to.”

  “You could stay with the Carles, I’m sure. And . . .” He hesitates, and I hold my breath, hoping he’ll make the invitation more personal—“perhaps you might see a doctor for your affliction while you’re there.”

  I stop walking in surprise. We haven’t ever explicitly talked about my condition, though I’ve come to rely on his arm under mine. “You want me to see a doctor?”

  “These country physicians are well meaning, no doubt, but I doubt they’re conversant in the latest advances. Wouldn’t you like to find out what’s wrong with you?”

  “Wrong with me?” I stammer. My skin feels cold.

  He taps his forehead with two fingers. “Forgive me, Christina. ‘What ails you,’ I should have said. You don’t complain, but I can imagine how much you suffer. As one who cares about you . . .” His voice trails off again, and he grasps my hand. “I’d like to see if something can be done.”

  These concerns are reasonable, even logical. So why do his gentle entreaties make me want to put my hands over my ears and beg him to stop? “You are kind to want to improve my welfare,” I tell him, striving for a neutral tone.

  “Not at all. I only want for you to be well. So will you consider it?”

  “I would prefer not to.”

  “Said Bartleby.” He flashes a smile, breaking the tension.

  Bartleby. From the recesses of my school brain I dredge the reference: the obstinate scrivener. I smile back.

  “I only want what’s best for you, you know.”

  “You’re what’s best for me,” I say.

  AUGUST IS EXQUISITE agony. I want each day to last forever. I am fretful, fevered, perpetually irritated by everyone but Walton, to whom I’m determined to show my best self. It’s a peculiar kind of dissatisfaction, a bittersweet nostalgia for a moment not yet past. Even in the midst of a pleasurable outing I’m aware of how ephemeral it is. The water is warm but will cool. The ocean is a sheet of glass, but wind is picking up, far across the horizon. The bonfire is roaring but will dwindle. Walton is beside me, his arm around my shoulder, but all too soon he will be gone.

  On our final evening as a group, sitting on the beach, making conversation, Walton mentions the almanac’s prediction of a hard winter ahead, and Ramona says, “Will Christina ever know anything except a hard winter?” She doesn’t look at him when she says it, but we all know what she’s asking: if, and when, Walton is going to offer a way out.

  He seems oblivious. “Christina’s not like us, Ramona. She likes the cold Maine winters. Isn’t that so?” he asks me, squeezing my shoulders.

  I look at Ramona, who shakes her head slightly and rolls her eyes. But neither of us says anything more.

  FLOWERS FADE, FREEZE in an early frost, wither on the vine. Trees burst into flame and burn themselves out. Leaves crumble to ash. All the things about life on the farm that once contented me now fill me with impatience. It has become harder to tolerate the months after s
ummer ends, the plodding regularity of my daily chores, the inevitable descent into darkness and cold. I feel as if I’m on a narrow path through familiar woods, a path that goes around and around with no end in sight.

  I spend the early fall canning and preserving and pickling: tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries, blueberries. Shelving the jars in the shed. Alvaro slaughters a pig, and we carve and cure and smoke every last bit of it, from hoof to curly tail. We trowel up and store unlovely root vegetables, rutabagas and turnips and parsnips and beets. Pluck apples and lay them out on a long table in the cellar for the long winter ahead.

  I have too much time to think. I torment myself. All I do is work and think. I feel like the mollusk in Mamey’s nautilus, grown too big for its shell. A woman my age, I think, should be laboring for her own husband and children. All around me, friends and classmates are becoming engaged and getting married. The boys I went to school with are settling into lives as farmers and fishermen and shopkeepers. The girls, Sadie and Gertrude among them, are setting up house and having babies.

  When I trudge through my tasks, Mother chides me—“Pick up your feet, my girl; life is not as tragic as all that”—and Al looks at me sideways, and I know what they’re thinking, that it might have been better if Walton had never come along.

  But Walton’s letters are hot-air balloons, lifting me out of melancholy. He writes about his classes, his teachers, his thoughts about his future career. Though he’s been training as a journalist, news about the war raging in Europe dominates the papers, making it a hard time to break into domestic reporting, he says. He has decided to shift his sights to teaching. Teachers are always needed, whether a war is raging or the stock market is falling. It’s not lost on me that he could be a teacher anywhere—even in Cushing, Maine.

  WINTER PASSES AS slowly as a glacier melts. Christmas and New Year’s provide momentary distraction before we settle into months of ice and snow. Walking back from the post office in the late-afternoon gloom of a February day, I am tucking Walton’s letter inside my coat when my shoe catches on a protruding chip of ice and I crash to the ground. I prop myself on an elbow, noting with strange detachment my torn stockings, the thin coating of blood on my shin, a throbbing pain in my right hand, the one I used to break my fall. Tentatively I extend my left arm and begin to hoist myself up. I pat my jacket. The letter must have flown from my pocket when I fell. I feel around on the ground, muddying my skirt even further, my blood pinking the ice. Several yards away I spy the envelope and limp over to it. Empty. The sky is darkening, the air is cold, my shin is throbbing, and still I continue, as desperate as an opium addict; I can’t leave until I find it. And then I see the folded pages, fluttering in the ditch.

  When I reach them, I find that the ink has run; the letter—mud spattered, water soaked—appears to have been written in a diabolical code designed to drive the recipient insane. I can only identify every fourth or fifth word or phrase (entertaining . . . I am glad to say . . . beginning to enjoy), and after straining to make out the letters with increasing exasperation, I hold the pages flat against my dress, inside my coat, hoping they’ll be legible when dry. The walk home is slow and painful. When I step into the house, I open my coat to find the bodice of my chambray dress tattooed with ink. A permanent reminder of how important his words have become to me.

  SUMMER AGAIN. WHEN I answer the door one June morning in 1915 to find Walton standing there, he gives me a huge smile and presents me with a package of butterscotch candies. “Sweets to the sweet,” he says.

  “That’s an old line,” I tell him. “You’ve said it before.”

  He laughs. “I obviously have a limited repertoire.”

  Soon we fall back into our familiar routines, seeing each other nearly every day. We stroll the property, sail in the afternoon, picnic in early evening with the Carles and my brothers Al and Sam down by the grove. I see Ramona watching as Walton and I go off together to collect driftwood and twigs to make a fire in the circle of rocks, as he pulls me behind a tree and kisses me. At the end of the evening we sit on the rough benches Papa made and watch the cinders crumble and settle. The sky changes from blue to purple to rose to red as the sun sinks like an ember into the sea.

  When Walton gets up to talk to Alvah on the other side of the fire pit, Ramona comes to sit beside me. “I need to ask,” she says quietly. “Has Walton discussed the nature of his commitment to you?”

  I knew this question was coming. I’ve been dreading it.

  “Not exactly,” I tell her. “I think our commitment is—understood.”

  “Understood by whom?”

  “By both of us.”

  “Does he say anything?”

  “Well, he needs to establish himself before—”

  “I am prying, forgive me. I’ve tried to keep my mouth shut. But my goodness, this is the third year.”

  It’s not like she’s articulating anything I haven’t thought myself, but her words feel like a punch in the gut. Walton is a scholar, I want to say, studying the classics and philosophy; he cannot make any decisions until he is done with school. Nobody seems to understand this.

  I’m not sure I understand it myself.

  “It’s really not your business, Ramona,” I say stiffly.

  “It’s not, you’re right.”

  We sit in silence, the air between us bristling with words unsaid.

  After a few moments, she sighs. “Look, Christina. Be careful. That’s all I’m saying.”

  I know Ramona means well. But this is like telling a person who has leapt off a cliff to be careful. I am already in midair.

  IN LATE AUGUST, Walton and I make a plan to sail alone to Thomaston. Since my conversation with Ramona I’ve been acutely aware of how deftly he evades any talk of commitment. Maybe she’s right; I need to raise the issue directly.

  I resolve to do it on our sail.

  It’s early evening, and the air is laced with cool. He stands behind me, unfurling a big wool blanket and wrapping it around our shoulders as I steer.

  “Walton—” I begin nervously.

  “Christina.”

  “I don’t want you to leave.”

  “I don’t want to leave,” he says, wrapping his hand over mine.

  I slide my hand out from under his. “But you have things to look forward to. All I have is months of winter. And waiting.”

  “Ah, my poor Persephone,” he murmurs, kissing my hair, my shoulder.

  This irritates me further. I pull away a bit. For a few moments we are quiet. I listen to the mournful yawp of seagulls overhead, as large as geese.

  “I want to ask you something,” I say finally.

  “Ask.”

  “Or—well—tell you.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I love . . .” I start, but my courage fades. “Being with you.”

  He pulls the blanket tighter around me, enveloping us in a cocoon. “I love being with you.”

  “But . . . what are we—what are you—”

  His hands move up my sides, resting on my ribs. I arch my back, leaning into him, and his hands move to the front, cupping my breasts gently through the fabric. “Oh, Christina,” he breathes. “Some things don’t need explanation. Do they?”

  I decide I will not ask him, press him, insist. I tell myself it’s not the time. But the fact is, I am afraid. Afraid that I will push him away, and that this—whatever it is—will end.

  AL AND I are clearing the dishes from supper one evening when he says, “So what do you think is going to happen?”

  “What?”

  He’s bent over the plates, scraping leftover potatoes and yams and applesauce into a bucket for the pigs. “You think Walton Hall is going to marry you?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.” But Al must know this is a lie.

  “All I’m saying is . . .” He is strained and awkward, unaccustomed to the intimacy of speaking his mind.

  “‘All I’m saying is,’” I mock him impatiently.
“Stop hemming and hawing. Spit it out.”

  “I’ve never seen you like this.”

  “Like what.”

  “As if reason has left you.”

  “Honestly.” Feeling a flare of annoyance, I handle the pots recklessly, clanging them into each other.

  “I’m concerned for you,” he says.

  “Well, don’t be.”

  For a few minutes we work silently, clearing the table, scooping the cutlery into a bowl, pouring warm water from the kettle into a pan for the dishes. As I go through the familiar motions I get even angrier. How dare he—this cautious man-child who has never been in love—pass judgment on Walton’s motives and my own good sense? Al knows as much about the nature of our relationship as he does about sewing a dress.

  “What do you think?” I blurt finally. “That I am an imbecile? That I have not a thought in my head?”

  “It’s not you I worry about.”

  “Well, you needn’t worry. I can take care of myself. And besides—as if it’s any of your business—Walton has been honorable in every way.”

  Al lowers a stack of plates into the washing pan. “Of course he has. He likes the diversion. He doesn’t want to give it up.”

  Clutching a fistful of forks, I turn to him. For a brief moment I contemplate striking him with them, but instead I take a deep breath and say, “How dare you.”

  “Come on, Christie, I don’t mean to . . .” Again his voice falters, and I can see, given how unnatural it must feel for him to confront me, how important he considers this. And yet I find him irritatingly simplistic. All the things I ordinarily admire about Al now strike me as deficits: his loyalty no more than fear of the unknown; his decency, merely naïveté; his sense of morality, prim judgment. (How quickly, with a slight twist in perception, do people’s strengths become flaws!)

  “What I’m saying is that . . .” He swallows. “His options are many.”

  It’s no use trying to explain to Alvaro what love is. So I say, “You might say the same about Papa, when he courted Mother.”