Been? Where had I been?
I had forgotten. With Tamar Penrose. Even in my innocence, I felt a flood of guilt. Beth was clutching my shirt. I looked down at it: lipstick, two buttons gone, spatters of chicken blood. I opened my mouth to say something, but she went into the other room-past Maggie, who stood in the doorway.
Maggie took a glass from the cupboard, found the Scotch on the shelf, poured a stiff shot, got ice and soda, then set it on the table. She pulled out the chair and gestured for me to sit. I did as she indicated, taking the glass she handed me. Absently I stirred the cubes with my index finger. Maggie pressed my shoulder, then took another chair, and sat across from me, offering me silent comfort. I could hear the faint, insistent effervescence of the soda in my drink. We waited. I could hear the low voice of the Widow Fortune.
Then, after a little while, I could hear Kate’s voice, too.
18
I completed a painting of Fred Minerva’s barn in less than four days, working at the site during the day, nights in the studio. When Beth’s village activities required her elsewhere, I interrupted my work to stay by Kate’s bedside, sitting in the club chair, which I had moved up from the bacchante room. We would talk, or play games, and sometimes I would sketch her, or objects in the room, or views from the window. Some noontimes the Widow would come in her buggy and fix lunch for me, thus relieving Beth of the extra duty. While I ate in the kitchen, I could hear the creaking of the club chair as she sat beside Kate’s bed, and the low intense tones of her voice as she talked. Sometimes Kate would laugh, and that made me feel good. Sometimes the Widow would stay the entire afternoon, and then I could devote more time to my easel. She would often cook dinner for us, and through my open studio window I could hear her bustling among the pots and pans while tantalizing cooking smells drifted out to me. I decided she must be cooking for herself as well, for I would see her packing part of the meal in her wicker basket, first wrapping it in foil to keep it warm, and covering it with a linen napkin. Then, promptly at five, she would hurry off to where other important things demanded her attention.
Worthy Pettinger did not leave, as I had expected him to, and when he heard of Kate’s illness, he came regularly after school, scheduling his visits to coincide with the Widow’s departure, when he would go up and visit with Kate until Beth came home.
When the barn painting was done, I sent it off to the gallery in New York. Some days later, I got a call saying it had been sold and a suitable check would be forthcoming. Before beginning the portrait of Justin Hooke, I immediately set to work planning another for the gallery-Jack Stump’s bait shack by the river. The peddler’s latest trip must have taken him up into Vermont somewhere, for we had seen nothing of him for weeks, and I had still had no opportunity to talk with him about my discovery of the screaming skull in Soakes’s Lonesome.
On the Friday following Kate’s attack, I came into the kitchen shortly after five to find the Widow Fortune still at the sink, washing up the pans and bowls she had used to prepare dinner. Through the glass window of the oven I saw a leg of lamb on the rack, several slices cut away from the joint, which she had doubtless wrapped and put into her basket. She was filling a thermos with hot soup from a pot that simmered on the stove.
“Now, that’s what I call soup,” I said when she had let me taste from the ladle. “What is it?”
She laughed. “I don’t think you’ve yet come to trust my cooking. That’s nothing but mushroom broth.”
“Ah,” I said.
“With a little borage thrown in. And some purslane. And a bit of chervil.”
“Ah,” I said, tasting again. “That’s it, is it?”
“Of course it’s not. Think I’d tell a fellow-even a good-lookin’ one-everything I put in my soup?”
“Or in your mead?”
“Here, go wash your hands-you got smudges all over ‘em.”
I cleaned up the sink, while she sat down heavily in a chair. She looked tired tonight, and I knew her care for us was taking its toll of her strength. She smiled, a small smile of gratitude, which seemed to say,
Suddenly I was on my knees beside her, my arms around her waist, my head in her lap.
“Here, now-here, now,” she said. “Come, don’t do that.”
“Thank you,” I murmured into the folds of her long apron. She patted the top of my head, then down my cheek, then pushed at my shoulder, half pleased, half embarrassed by my display.
“Nothin’ wrong with sentiment, if it’s what you truly feel. That’s the trouble with folks, they’re too afraid to show what’s inside ‘em.” As I rose, she gave my hand a solid squeeze, then looked toward the door behind me. “Evenin’, Worthy. Late, en’t you?”
Worthy Pettinger stood in the doorway, looking disconcerted at having come upon us at such an intimate moment.
The Widow rose and went to him, brushed his hair from his eyes. He submitted to her careful scrutiny, squirming as she took his chin in her hand. “Thinner you are, and peaked. No, don’t move.” She opened the black valise. “Spoon,” she said to me. I fished one from the drawer and handed it to her. She took a bottle, unscrewed the cap, and poured. Worthy’s eyes rolled as she put the spoonful of liquid to his lips and made him swallow. “Another.” She dosed him again, pushing the spoon at him while he bent back against the sinkboard. Then she capped the bottle, returned it to her valise, and rinsed the spoon.
“Don’t take on so, boy,” she told him shortly. “Go and bring the buggy for me-the mare’s hitched to the garage doors.”
When he had gone to do her bidding, she set the valise beside the splint basket and went up to tell Kate goodbye. In a moment I heard the station wagon pull up, and I opened the front door for Beth. Our greeting was constrained as she laid her things down on the hall table and took off her coat.
“How’s Kate?” It was always her first question.
“O.K. Want a martini?”
“Afterward.” She hurried up the stairs. Kate’s bedroom door opened, then closed. I could hear the exchange of greetings and the drone of the women’s voices. The kitchen door slammed and in a minute I saw Worthy hunching in the shadows at the opposite end of the hallway.
“You all right?” I asked before stepping past him into the kitchen.
Silently he followed me in, watched while I got ice from the automatic dispenser, the glass martini pitcher, the gin, and the vermouth. Soon I heard the Widow’s footstep on the stair. I mixed the drink, poured it into a stem glass the way Beth liked it, and put it on the refrigerator shelf.
The Widow came in tying up the strings of her bonnet. As she smoothed her skirts, I noted her shears were not in their accustomed place at her side. She turned to Worthy, who stood behind the table yanking his finger joints, which cracked loudly. “Why such a long face, boy? You look like you was off to Armageddon for the final battle.” She picked up the black valise.
Again I felt compelled to express myself. “Thank you for your prayers.”
“Try some of your own. Sunday’s Corn Tithing Day. Worthy, don’t shirk your duty to your Lord. You want things, come to church and ask for ‘em.” He looked down, still cracking his knuckles. “Leave off them anatomical detonations and hand me my basket, I’m late.”
He came around the table and gave her the splint basket. She folded the linen napkin over its contents and went to the doorway, then turned.
“Sunday. Church. Tithing Day. Don’t forget.”
“
I whirled, shocked at Worthy’s tone. He stood with his shoulders hunched, the lock of hair falling down over his brow. He made no move to push it aside; his hands hung limp at his sides, and I could see the muscles in his jaw working as he glared angrily at the Widow.
“Very well,” she replied evenly, and went out. The buggy springs creaked as she mounted; she clucked up the mare and the wheels ground along the drive. Worthy went to the sink tap, filled a glass, and drank.
“Bad taste,” I remarked, meaning the two herbal doses he had swallowed. He nodded, wiped his mouth.
“Are you still planning to leave?”
