As I open the lid and prop it against a beech tree, I am expecting to find camping equipment, or maybe fishing line, lures, and bait. But the interior is filled with heavy rope, straps and belts, and a folded canvas tarpaulin, none of which immediately makes sense. I lift the tarpaulin. It is heavier than I expected, and I hold it by the corners, allowing its contents to spill out. A large, many-pronged hook lands in the underbrush, and I make the connection between it and an object I heard described many years ago.
At the academy, when I was still in the little school, a girl called Mary Morse, whose father was the local undertaker, told me about grappling hooks. “Like a fishhook,” she said, “except big.” The sister supervising our dorm had nodded off, and the cane with which she struck the floor to silence us had slipped to her feet. Mary wriggled to the edge of her bed closest to mine and asked whether I was awake. She went on to tell me about a body—she called it a floater—her father had recently nailed shut inside a pine coffin. She said it had been in the river at least a week. No one could say exactly how long, but great gobs of flesh were missing; the skin was too rotten to withstand the tug of the grappling hook dragging it to shore. The picture I conjured was terrifying and nearly complete—a stark white body, folded at the waist; a V being dragged through the river; arms, legs, and a mass of hair trailing behind.
“Your father has one?” A grappling hook seemed the right sort of paraphernalia for a man who regularly shaved corpses and forced eyelids shut.
“The man who pulls out the floaters does,” she said. “He brings them to the back door. Mother says he can’t come in.”
“Why not?”
“Mother says he’s the worst sort, waiting at the river day and night, hoping someone will throw himself over the falls, just so he can get drunk as a skunk.”
I muddled up my face.
“Father pays a bottle of rye whiskey for a floater,” she said, “and the town pays him fifteen dollars to bury it.”
Isink to the forest floor as images fill my head: hands easing free a grappling hook jammed between a pair of ribs; a naked breast tattered by an errant toss; a bulky tarpaulin slung over a shoulder, the juices from within soaking through to the jacket beneath.
So this is something Tom does.
Isabel had said a shopgirl could do better, and all we had known then was that Tom rode the trolley and wore the clothes of a workingman. Kit had guessed at his livelihood, becoming ever more dubious, even when he appeared something as harmless as a fisherman. Mother had not wanted him coming to the door back when he only seemed a regular fellow, nice enough to help with a trunk. Had they known then what I do now, their distaste would have been tenfold, a revulsion that matches my own.
Tom is one of those men, bleary-eyed and lecherous, waiting at the whirlpool for a floater to turn up. Never mind the rotting flesh, the smashed skulls, the severed limbs. Snag the floater. Haul it in. Cart the bloated, sloppy, stinking mess all the way to Morse and Son, and use the back door. Collect the bottle of rye whiskey. Knock back a swig, and then another. And another after that, because who wants to remember a pair of eye sockets nibbled empty by the fish?
Dickens is correct: Every human creature is a profound secret and mystery to every other. It seems the saddest thing in the world to know he is right. And I want to cry, to drum my fists upon the earth, but more than that, I want to be rid of this place.
I resume my climb up the track, one heavy foot in front of the other. When I reach for my rosary, I find my pocket is empty. The rosary is in my bedroom, forgotten, hidden beneath my underclothes.
I do not look up from the ties and know I am out of the gorge only when the tracks come to an end. Forsaking the whirlpool, the gorge, the river below, I step onto River Road. Chin still tucked to my chest, I stride toward home.
But when I arrive, there is no solace to be had, only red-faced Mother, continuing to bellow even as she sees me cross the yard, her words tangled and hardly making sense, also Father, his shirtfront dribbled with the rye whiskey–stinking vomit pooled on the veranda steps.
There is still the offer from Edward. Good, kind, sober, set-for-life Edward, who can save me, my family, from the wrecks our lives have become.
11
Collapse of Table Rock
Ithrow myself onto my bed without bothering to remove my soiled dress and cry facedown into the coverlet for a solid half hour, trying all the while to dispel from my thoughts an ugly image of Tom heaving a grappling hook. Will Mother come and put her arms around me like she did yesterday? It is nearly ten o’clock, and surely she has noticed I have not yet had my biscuit and tea. Maybe she thinks I am lingering in bed after a sleepless night. Maybe she thinks the odds of me accepting Edward’s proposal go up with each hour of rest I am allowed. Or maybe she has no time for my nonsense, not with Isabel and Father and the five perfect dresses she must produce every week.
When knuckles rap my door, I do not respond, but the door creaks open anyway, as I had hoped, and then there is a hand on my back.
“Bess?” It is Isabel.
I sniffle, and she presses her handkerchief into my palm and then strokes my hair, which only makes the sniffling worse.
“Tell me,” she says.
But what is there to tell? Father drinks. Mother sews and sews, her foot on the treadle having become a vice of sorts. Isabel already knows. She knows, too, that her own body is still bitterly thin, that she eats only enough to keep Dr. Galveston away, only enough to appease those counting the spoonfuls entering her mouth. And I will not tell about the bloated bodies the river gives up, or the grappling hook Tom uses to haul them to shore, or the bottle of rye whiskey with which payment is made. But I want her to stay with me. I want to prolong the gentle tug of her fingertips in my hair. “I could go on for hours,” I say.
“Is it Edward? Mother told me he proposed.”
“I won’t marry him if you say I shouldn’t.”
“He’d make a fine husband. And, Bess, don’t worry about me. It’s easy to see that it’s you he wants. I never stood a chance.”
I sniffle and uselessly wipe the wet from my cheeks. “He must be blind.”
“I don’t think so,” she says. “I think he sees remarkably well.”
“Should I marry him?”
“If it’s what you want.”
“I’ve given up,” I say.
She shifts, moving closer, and rests a cheek between my shoulder blades. We lie still a long while, until the rise and fall of my back is in perfect unison with each breath she takes. I am in that place just before slumber when she speaks. “Me too,” she says.
In early afternoon, I telephone the Atwells’ and Edward picks up. “Hello,” he says.
“Hello,” I say back, but he is silent and stumped, until I say, “It’s Bess.”
“Oh. Yes, Bess.”
“I’m calling to accept.” The line goes quiet for a second time, and I think I will have to lay out exactly what I mean by “I’m calling to accept.” But then he says, “I’d like to come over. I have a gift,” and I see it is only that I have short-circuited the bit of ceremony he had planned.
“Yes, come,” I say. “I should have waited to tell you.”
Then I hear muffled voices, as though his hand is over the mouthpiece of the telephone. I make out “It’s Bess” and “She’s said yes,” before a round of dampened shouts and claps and shushes begins.
Suddenly Kit is on the line. “Hurray,” she says, as though she has forgiven that I called Edward a compromise.
I manage only a quiet thank-you before Edward is back, saying, “I’ll be there lickety-split.”
And so it is done. I am to be his wife. How different the coming year will be from what I had just months ago assumed. I will not attend chapel in black wool each morning or listen each evening for the bell signaling lights out. I will not be able to say with much accuracy just what I will be doing at any given hour. And yet I feel tranquil, much as I did sitting in my window seat, ga
zing at the mist. Though different, maybe my days will again be comforting in their predictability.
After hanging up the telephone, I climb the stairs to the sewing room. Mother would have heard my footsteps stop at the doorway; still, she remains focused on turning a velvet collar right side out. Once she completes the finicky work of making the points precise by poking a crochet hook into each from the inside, I clear my throat.
She takes in my soiled, rumpled dress, and I wait to be scolded, but she only inhales a deep breath and says, “Can you press these for me?” and holds out the velvet collar and a pair of matching cuffs. “I don’t want the pile crushed, so just put a piece of damp muslin on top of the stove and pass them through the steam.”
“I’ve said yes to Edward. Just now, on the telephone.”
Her fingers let go of the collar and cuffs, which drop first onto her lap and then onto the floor as she stands. “How wonderful, Bess.”
“He’s on his way over,” I say. “He said he has a gift for me.”
“You’ll have to call Father, then.”
“At the Windsor Hotel?”
She nods, unfazed by the mention of the hotel, then takes me by the hand and leads me into the bedroom she and Father share. She lifts a small box from his chest of drawers and hands it to me. “Look inside,” she says.
I open the lid and find a pair of cuff links, each with a sapphire set in a mother-of-pearl disk ringed with gold.
“You can give them to Edward,” she says. “A woman I used to sew for gave them to Father when we got married.” When my fingers hesitate just short of picking one up, she says, “Your father won’t mind. He insists on that awful aluminum pair.”
In the sewing room she wraps a length of grosgrain ribbon around the box holding the cuff links and ties it in a knot. She cuts the ends of the ribbon on an angle and tells me to sew a couple of beads onto it. “Quickly,” she says, leaving the sewing room. “You need to change.”
She is back in a moment, with the fine, cutwork dress I wore the day I found Isabel on the chaise with her tea dress hiked nearly to her knees. The pale pink corset I pledged never again to wear is tucked under Mother’s arm.
I submit to the corset, to the brush she tugs through my hair, to her suggestion that I drag my teeth across my lips until they flare red, also to the telephone call to the Windsor Hotel.
“May I speak to Mr. Heath?” I say into the din carried across the line.
“Speak up, darlin',” says a male voice, mercifully not Tom’s.
“Mr. Heath, please.”
“Hang on,” the voice says, and then, a whole lot louder, “Heath-ee, it’s for you.”
“Hello,” Father says, a moment later. “Who’s calling?” He sounds somewhat stricken, satisfyingly so.
“It’s Bess,” I say.
“What is it?” His anxiety has risen a notch.
“I have news.”
“Tell it, then.”
“I’m going to marry Edward,” I say, and then think to add, “Edward Atwell.”
“Ah, Bess,” he says. “Things just have a way of working themselves out.”
“He’ll be here any minute.”
“Splendid,” he says. “I’m coming home.”
After we say good-bye, but before the line is cut, I hear my jolly father announce a round of rye whiskey, on him. I stand in the hallway a moment, imagining him leaning up against the bar, talking of grand schemes and his daughters, both Loretto girls, while the men around him nod and swallow the round that he bought. Once he leaves, the men huddle together. “I wonder if his missus will still be making pretty frocks,” they say. And “Loretto girls! His youngest hasn’t finished and already he’s packing her off.”
Edward crosses the yard with a small, silver box shaped like a heart as I wait on the veranda, my own prettily decorated box held behind my skirt. I hold it out to him when he nudges his box toward me, and he makes a great fuss over the few beads sewn onto the grosgrain. “I like that you bothered, for me,” he says.
But the beads were for Mother, sewn into place because I am trying to be good, to do what I am told.
He unties the grosgrain, carefully, and coils it into a tidy cylinder, then lifts the lid of the box. He insists on wearing the cuff links then and there, and holds up one wrist after the other while I replace his plain, silver pair. It strikes me as intimate, this ritual between man and woman, husband and wife. He kisses me then, quickly, awkwardly, which is my fault because I inadvertently turn my head.
As I open the heart-shaped box, I am prepared to feign enthusiasm equal to his, no matter the contents. But inside is the most exquisite choker I have ever seen. The centerpiece is made from small diamonds and seed pearls arranged in swirl upon swirl around a large central pearl. More pearls, strings of them in neat rows, form a band an inch wide, which extends right around to the clasp at the back. “Oh, Edward,” I say.
“With the war it wasn’t the easiest thing to find. Kit and I went to Toronto, to Birks-Ellis.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“I want you to be happy,” he says.
“I know,” I say, my voice breaking.
He sets the coiled grosgrain on the chaise and faces me, placing a hand on each side of my waist. I lift my arms to his shoulders, my fingers holding the choker at the nape of his neck, and he responds by gingerly sliding his hands upward along my ribs. I feel something then. I am almost sure my breath grows short, as it did in the shadows of the Lower Steel Arch Bridge.
Soon enough Father is on the veranda, clapping Edward’s back and shaking his hand. “We’re delighted,” he says, “to unite our families, to welcome you to ours.” Then he cups my chin in the palms of his hands and leans in close enough that I can smell rye whiskey and tobacco on his breath. “Well done,” he says. Then his arms are around me, and he rocks me back and forth, muttering in my ear, “Bess. Bess. My sweet Bess,” with a distinct slur.
Over his shoulder, I glimpse Mother on the far side of the screen door, watching, sizing up. She steps onto the veranda. “Edward,” she says, “we’re so very pleased.”
After seeing Edward off, I take my time crossing the yard to the veranda, watching as Mother puts her hands on her hips, then reconsiders the posture and brings them together at her waist. Father drops to the chaise and sets his elbows on his knees and his forehead against his palms. When I am within earshot, I hear her say, “Please, just stop, at least until the wedding,” and I know she thinks he might cause me to lose Edward, but I know he cannot. She pulls open the screen door. “I’ll put on some coffee.”
I am set to follow her indoors when Father says, “Hang on a moment, Bess,” and reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket. He pulls out a sealed envelope. “A fellow who works at the hotel asked me to deliver his congratulations.”
Working to keep my voice steady, my face unchanged, I say, “Who?” though I know that boasts of my engagement accompanied the round of rye whiskey Father bought, that Tom poured the round. “Edward’s a fine lad,” Father would have said, loudly enough for all to hear. “And well-positioned, too.”
Father hands me the envelope. “Tom Cole. He said he carried your trunk, and I wouldn’t doubt it. He’s as strong as an ox, never even bothers with a dolly when he changes the keg.”
“It was the night I came home from Loretto,” I say, moving my hands behind my back so he will not notice the envelope trembling.
“He’s Fergus Cole’s grandson. You remember—the giant, the fellow who saved half the town the day the falls stood still, and then a handful of men when they were knocked from Ellet’s bridge. He had the nasty task of dealing with the floaters, too.”
Isit on the edge of my bed, smoothing the envelope over my thighs. The decent thing to do would be to toss the envelope into the oven, reducing its contents to ash. How could there be anything important inside when there is nothing of consequence he can say? Still, I slide a fingertip under the corner of the flap.
The hand
writing is different from the careful script of the note he left on River Road, tucked between the rocks. It is sharp, hurried, and the paper on which it is written looks as though it were scrunched into a ball and then pressed flat as an afterthought. When I read “Bess,” it is his voice I hear: low, soft, the rumble of the Niagara from far away.
Bess, Is it true? It must be. But why? I don’t understand. I thought you felt like I did. Two days ago you let me kiss you. No, more than that—you kissed me back. Was I only your entertainment for an afternoon? I want to think differently but I cannot.
Tom
It was right to read the note, to see the harm I have done. My head in the clouds, I added yet another wretched episode to his already miserable life, and no one deserves that. It sets more firmly my resolve to do right by Edward, to be a good wife. I fold the note in quarters, slip it into a sachet of lavender, and return the sachet to its place, alongside my rosary, beneath the underclothes in my chest of drawers.
A while later I venture into the hallway and meet Mother coming from her bedroom with a coffeepot and an empty cup. She mouths the word quiet and with a quick tilt of her head signals for me to follow.
I take the coffeepot and cup from Mother in the kitchen and set them on the counter. I shake soap flakes into the sink and wait for her to say whatever it is, and become anxious when she does not. When she finally speaks, she says, “Father told me about the envelope.”
“I burned it.” What else can I say? To tell her a smidgen of what it said would mean to explain about the roadside stones and ferns and notes, an afternoon circuiting the gorge, a misbegotten kiss.
“You’re finished with that nonsense, then?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” she says.
12
My eyes open to weak morning light, and I see Mother standing over me, saying words I cannot immediately make out. I lie there, looking up at her stricken face, eventually sorting out what she has said. “Have you seen Isabel?”