Harvest Home

“A token appearance might not be a bad idea, just to grease the skids a bit.”

She turned, brightening. “Have you noticed? They seem to be changing. Don’t you think they are? Toward us?”

We had arrived outsiders, city people, not wanted on the voyage. “They” had been aloof-not unfriendly, but as remote from us as their village was from the roads and highways. After our arrival, in my infrequent forays about town, I had met with singular indifference. Then, happily, and for no apparent reason, I began getting friendly nods, a word here and there.

Fred Minerva would come around to offer some canny advice about insulating the house or to dump a load of fresh manure for the new lawn; Edna Jones would stop by with a begonia cutting, some kale or Swiss chard from her kitchen garden. Suddenly I felt we had neighbors, friends, that we were at last becoming a part of the life around us and were not merely interlopers.

“It must be the Widow, don’t you think?”

I was forced to agree. At least I could see no other answer. The Widow Fortune had become our benefactress. Robert Dodd, our next-door neighbor, had said she was the oldest inhabitant in Cornwall Coombe, a sort of matriarch whom all the villagers respected to the point of reverence, a local antique. She was the woman I had spoken with on the church steps on Planting Day, and she was the first to arrive, in her buggy, at our kitchen door. I suspected Beth was right: after her had come the others. The Widow Fortune-I had told myself her name was lucky.

I beckoned to Beth, and she came and sat on my lap. I could smell the sweet, natural fragrance of her hair, the lingering aroma of the Pears’ soap she always used. “Is It O.K., sweetheart? You’re not sorry we came?”

“It’s O.K. And I’m not sorry we came. It’s just-it’s difficult getting used to their ways.”

“If we want them to get used to our ways, we’re going to have to get used to theirs. It’ll be all right, you’ll see.”

She got up and spun a little happy turn. “I love my new kitchen.”

“Beats Chock Full o’ Nuts.”

“Ned-you never had to eat breakfast at Chock Full o’ Nuts!”

“Only kidding, sweetheart.” Listening for Kate’s footsteps overhead, I watched Beth as she scrambled eggs, browned sausage, took rolls from the oven, dropped bread into the new toaster. Her movements were deft and economical, and she moved about the various work areas in a planned pattern, with no wasted motions. I found her extraordinary-but then I always had.

“Are you going to sketch after breakfast?” she asked.

“I’d like to finish those tombstones; then I thought I’d walk out to the Lost Whistle Bridge.”

“All that way?”

“It’s not far.” With my right forefinger, I felt the small lump that had recently formed on my left third finger, a wart which seemed the result of continual pressure from my various drawing instruments. “It’d be good for Kate to be seen in church, don’t you think? Wouldn’t hurt us, either, getting in good with the-”

“Natives? Maybe. But I don’t think Kate wants to spend Sunday morning listening to Mr. Buxley preach. It’s difficult enough-”

Still no sound from upstairs. Kate must be sleeping late- not unusual; she didn’t rest well at night. A violent asthmatic since the age of nine, our daughter had been subject to even more vicious attacks since coming to Cornwall Coombe. At that very moment, we didn’t know what condition she would appear in, whether, in fact, she would be able to go to the fair at all. Or want to. Kate was difficult. Still, we offered ourselves the pretense that all was well, and hoped we were right.

While breakfast cooked, Beth brought things from the refrigerator and began making the picnic lunch, stuffing plump chicken breasts with a tempting mixture from a blue-ringed mixing bowl.

I squinted at her, reducing her figure to a silhouette, taking in the series of curves and angles, the splash of dark hair falling over one eye. Bethany Constantine, nee Colby; thirty-seven years old; Scotch-Irish-English ancestry; Miss Kemp’s School, Boston; Bennington, Liberal Arts major. Measurements: 35”, 28”, 32”; trim, neat body; a full mouth, perhaps a little too wide for the triangular face; a pussycat sort of face, quick to smile, not so fast to frown.

But thinner. And dark smudges under the eyes; a brittleness to her posture betraying the fatigue that caused her extra effort in standing straight.

“Aren’t you eating?”

“Certainly.” She was snitching bits from the pans on the stove while she continued working. She found a paring knife in a drawer, pulled out the chopping board, and began chopping chives. She made an exasperated sound as she stopped and drew her thumb over the edge of the knife blade.

“Honestly, I paid Jack Stump thirty-five cents for this knife, and I don’t think it would cut warm butter.” She laid it aside and finished the job with another. “I swear he could sell ice to an Eskimo.” Jack Stump was an itinerant door-to-door peddler who regularly came bouncing his cart up to the kitchen door, trying to soft-soap Beth into buying the latest cooking gadget or housewife’s convenience.

“Haven’t seen Jack in a while,” I remarked.

“I know. Hasn’t been around in days. Thank God for small favors. I never heard a man talk so much.”

Movement upstairs: Kate was awake. Beth heard the sounds, too. She looked at the ceiling, glanced at me, then returned her attention to the chives.

“More coffee, darling?”

“Um-hmm.” A woman in Ohio had drowned her baby in a bathtub. Someone had done the same thing the day before. I looked at the date on the newspaper. “This is yesterday’s!”

“Paper didn’t come yet this morning.”

“Didn’t?”

“No. And Worthy’s usually Johnny-on-the-spot. You don’t suppose he’s sick?”

“I saw him in the drugstore yesterday.”

Beth brought a cloth and napkins from a drawer, the checked ones she had found when we were in Paris. I took a cinnamon bun, my cup and saucer, yesterday’s paper, and went through the open doorway into the bacchante room. From the kitchen I could hear pleasant domestic sounds: the slam of the refrigerator door, running water, the garbage disposal, Beth humming along with the radio. I got a pencil and began the crossword puzzle. Presently she came in and leaned over the back of the sofa to raise the window behind me. “What a lovely day.” She straightened the things on the piecrust table, and pulled a few leaves from the flower arrangement on the sideboard. “It’s such a nice room, isn’t it? Such a nice house. Aren’t we lucky Tamar Penrose decided to sell!” She kissed the top of my head. Remembering what the place had looked like when we moved in, I inwardly winced and thought back over the endless weeks of renovation: the torn-up rooms, the paint smells, the insidious silt of plaster dust on everything, our tired bodies dropping into bed at night. Now the work was almost done. New kitchen, new bathrooms, new hardware, new screens and awnings. The insulation men were finished, the floor men, the electricians, the heating men. The house was painted inside and out, the dining room papered; Lawson Colby’s furniture, a collection of good antiques, had been brought from storage and arranged in the rooms. Among the remaining jobs were the terrace wall and the skylight in the studio. But our mainstay, Bill Johnson, was leaving next week to spend the autumn and winter in Las Vegas, and we would have to look elsewhere for a handyman.

“I think she’s got designs on you.”

“Huh? Who?”

“Tamar Penrose. I see her making goo-goo eyes at you when we go in the post office.” Tamar Penrose had designs on me? I recalled the way she would manage to stretch across the post-office counter, or sling her hips while lounging at the postal scales. Still, designs? We’d hardly exchanged two words.

“Half the village is named Penrose, from what I can see,” I said.

“It’s awful the way they’ve inbred. They’re all direct descendants of the original family. ‘Once or twice removed,’ cousins marrying cousins-that sort of thing. Some of them are a little-you know.” She tapped her temple. “Like Amys.”

“Amos who?”

“Not ‘A-m-o-s’,’’ she spelled “‘A-m-y-s.’ He’s that marvelous old curmudgeon who sweeps the streets and