rings the church bell. The one Kate calls ‘vinegar puss.’ And the Widow’s husband was a Penrose on his mother’s side.”
“Was he-?” I tapped my temple.
“Oh, I don’t think so. How old do you think she is?”
“Who?” I was trying to think of a four-letter word for “decree.”
“The Widow.”
“Dunno.” I wrote in “fiat.”
“I suppose she could be anywhere from sixty to ninety. Maggie Dodd says it’s the best-kept secret in the village.” She carried my empty cup into the kitchen.
“How long a widow?” I said through the doorway.
“Ages. Maggie says it was quite a love match. It’s the honey that does it, I guess.”
“Makes love matches?”
“No, dopey. It’s the Widow’s honey that keeps all those old farmers young. Mr. Deming must be eighty, and he looks-”
“Seventy.” Ewan Deming was chief among the village elders.
“The same with Amys. Half the farmers in the village are over sixty and they still work a whole day.”
“How do you account for it?”
“The Widow calls the body the human house. She says to stay healthy, watch the cows. Cows have common sense and know what to eat. Like lots of people don’t,” Beth continued from the kitchen.
I heard the sound of Kate’s feet on the stairs, then glimpsed her as she passed through the front hall beyond the dining room; in a moment she was with her mother.
“Hi.”
“Morning, darling. Sleep well?”
“Nope.”
“Don’t forget your vitamins, dear. All set for the fair?”
“Guess so. Bet it’ll be corny.”
It was going to be one of her smarty days. “C’mon,” I called, “it’ll be fun.”
Carrying her orange juice, Kate came in and kissed me. “Hi.”
“Hi, sweetheart.” Her hand trembled as she drank from her glass, and I could tell she’d had another bad night.
“It’s not every day you get to go to a real country fair.”
“Cut the commercial, Daddy.” She stared out the window, popping the vitamins between gulps. Her sleepy face looked doleful and lethargic. Kate with her unmanageable hair, her urchin’s face, her sandpapery voice-poor knobby, angry Kate. Her eyes were red and puffy, her face pale.
“They sure got a lot of yokels around here.”
“Yokels?”
“And some of ‘em are crazy.”
“Who’s crazy? I haven’t seen anyone crazy.”
“Missy Penrose is crazy.”
“Darling, don’t say that,” Beth said from the kitchen. “Missy’s not crazy; she’s a little unusual, that’s all.”
“And she’s a bastard.”
Worse than smarty; mean. When these moods came upon her, a result of lost sleep, it was difficult to know how to handle her. “Lots of children are illegitimate, but it doesn’t mean they’re any less or any worse than we are. People can’t help the circumstances of their birth.”
“She’s still crazy. She hardly ever talks, she mumbles, and when she does talk she says nutty things. And she goes into the woods to trade looks with the boys. And her mother’s a sex fiend.”
Through the doorway, I caught Beth’s eye as it flashed a humorous look at me behind Kate’s back:
“Not hungry.”
“Kate, you’ve got to eat something. I’ve got scrambled eggs and sausage. Honestly, with people-”
“-starving in India; I know.” Kate ambled into the kitchen and I heard a chair scrape the floor as she sat at the table. “What are we having for lunch?”
“Darling, try to think about your breakfast first, huh? We’re having vichyssoise with chopped chives, chicken breasts stuffed with crab-”
“What’s for dessert?”
“Mousse au chocolat.”
“Are there any extras?”
“No. And you’re having fruit cup, anyway. You know what the Widow said about sweets. There are four mousses-two for your father and me, two for the Dodds.”
“Rats.” There was a pause while Kate munched a piece of toast, then: “Daddy, you know what an oracle is?”
“I have an idea-”
“Like they have at Delphi, right? And it tells you things, right? Well, Missy Penrose is supposed to be an oracle.”
“Is she filled with revelation, then?” I managed to suppress my smile by turning it into a yawn.
“Don’t laugh. They really believe it. You know about the Minervas’ barn?”
“Kate,” Beth put in, “that’s just a story; nobody believes it-”
“Sure they do. They really do. Yokels.”
Fred Minerva had been having a run of bad luck, all of which had stemmed, or so the villagers maintained, from his stumbling in the dance at Spring Festival. Soon after, he stepped on a rake and got blood poisoning; then his barn had caught fire in a July electric storm.
“But before it burned,” Kate went on, “he asked Missy Penrose if he should build a cupola and have a weather vane, and she told him, ‘Save wood, save iron.’ She was telling him a cupola and a weather vane would be a waste because the barn was going to burn, and it did.”
“Haven’t they ever heard about lightning rods?” Beth said.
“They don’t have them,” I said. “It’s not permitted. Nor insurance.”
“But it only stands to reason-”
“They’re not interested in reason, sweetheart. It’s the custom.”
“See? Yokels.” Kate put down her fork and went to the refrigerator. Beth said, “Darn, I’ve forgotten the picnic hamper. Now, where did I see it last?” She went out through the hall. Kate was rummaging in the refrigerator freezing compartment.
“Kate, are you happy here?” I said.
“Sure. I guess so.”
“Are you looking forward to school?”
“Um.” She closed the refrigerator and got a spoon from the drawer.
“We can always move back to Seventy-Eighth Street.”
“Aw c’mon, Daddy.” She ate for a moment. Then: “You said I could have a horse.” Angry, resentful.
“Sorry, sweetheart, you know what-”
“The doctor said. I know.”
I felt guilty about the horse. Unthinkingly I had promised it before we left New York, not realizing then the serious allergic effects of animals on Kate’s asthma. The doctor in Saxony, who had been treating her, had told us to keep her from direct contact with any four-footed creatures, but the trouble was far more serious than a mere allergy.
Since the age of nine, Kate had suffered from a congenital condition known as status asthmaticus, which continually imperiled her life. After years of treatment, to little effect, we had learned from a new doctor that the symptoms were self-induced, a form of psychosomatic asthma, whose origins had been eventually traced to the trouble Beth and I had had between us six years ago. It was, the doctor said, Kate’s unconscious way of getting even with us. Once, she had almost died, and only the respirator from the fire department had saved her. It became
