Harvest Home

“Who do you think? When I came into our bedroom, you had been watching, hadn’t you? I mean, you’d seen?”

“Seen what?”

“Whoever it was that came out of the cornfield.”

“No. I didn’t see anyone. I was waiting for you. I was-”

“What?”

“Dreaming, I imagine. Ned, listen. Some things are better left not talked about. Some things are better left-”

“Unsaid.”

“I like it here. You’ve liked it here. Kate does, too. It’s the first time I’ve felt-”

Safe. I saw it then. In Cornwall Coombe she had found a place. She was secure. And not only secure, but changed. It had become more and more apparent. Not only city mouse into country mouse; she seemed in some way on the brink of something, as though poised for some indefinable leap. I saw her as she had been, blazing with unfulfilled yearnings, something she had been searching for. Baby-loss-

There are things women long for, and longin’, ought to be given their way.

The Widow, Edna Jones, Asia Minerva, Ruth Zalmon.

Mothers. All of them, all mothers. For her. Mothers. And the Mother.

“You don’t like me very much, do you?” I said the words before I realized it.

“I love you,” she replied simply.

“It’s not the same, is it? It’s not the same at all.”

“You make all the decisions,” she said, “You always decide what’s to be done. Even about coming here. You decided. I’d like to do my share.”

“Is that what you want, to run things? Go ahead.” I finished my drink. “Or do you want to run me? Some women do.”

“I’m not that kind.”

“Make sure you’re not, or go find another fellow.”

She gave me a long look, then drew out her needle again. “How was the rest of your afternoon?”

“All right. I-went for a swim. Can you beat that? This time of year.”

“What happened to your lip?”

“Huh? Oh, I must have hit it on something. A rock, maybe.” Remembering how I must look, I started quickly for the kitchen. “Guess I’d better change. What’s for dinner?”

“Crab casserole. Ned.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to sound like True Confessions, but tell me it isn’t true.”

“What?”

“That you raped Tamar Penrose.”

“Ohh-listen-Beth…” The Widow in her buggy. And I had thought the old lady wasn’t interested in gossip. Beth was returning my look, waiting. I tried to fumble an explanation. I had no defenses. How could I explain what had happened? What excuse could I make? “Beth, listen to me, it’s not the way you think. It’s not that way at all. It happened- but it didn’t happen that way.”

“She says you raped her.”

“It’s not true! Beth, listen.”

“I am.” Her tone was weary, as if she weren’t really interested. I pushed the table aside and crouched, took her hands in mine. They felt unresponsive, lifeless. I had so quickly run out of anything to say. She faced my imploring look quietly with no sign of emotion.

“Why did you promise?”

“I meant it. I meant that promise. Honest to God I did.”

“Then. But not now.”

“Beth. Don’t listen to them. Don’t listen to what they told you. Let me tell you what they’re like. I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want to tell you. Because I know how you feel about her.”

“About whom?”

“The Widow. Mary Fortune. But she’s not like that at all.” Now the words came spilling out, and I told her about Jack Stump, about the attack, about the paper from the One-B Weber’s tea box, about finding the shears. She tried to pull away and I held her by the wrist, forcing her to listen. “And that’s not the worst. They killed Grace Everdeen. Murdered her.”

She pulled away again and jumped up. “Don’t talk such rubbish!” I had never seen her look so angry. “After what she has done for us, after saving our child’s life, after the days and weeks she’s spent in our house looking after us, cooking for us, helping us, you try to make me believe such things! You must take me for a complete fool. You made me a promise. Which obviously was impossible to keep. You had to have her. Not just have her, but against her will-”

“It wasn’t against her will-”

“And then to get out of it you tell terrible things about the Widow. Everyone knows who attacked Jack. Everyone knows Grace Everdeen committed suicide-”

“She didn’t. I can prove it. The Widow-”

“Stop. I don’t want to hear any more about the Widow. Not another single word.” Her face was drained of color, her mouth was pulled down in an angry curve, her body trembled. “Just because you’ve had a lark in the woods with the town slut and you’re sorry-oh, yes, you’re sorry, not sorry you did it, but sorry you were found out. Did you think she’d never tell? Never say anything? And just because you were found out, you try to turn the facts all around, you try to besmirch the name of the finest woman who ever walked God’s green earth.”

“She murdered Gracie Everdeen. She and Tamar and the rest of the women. On Harvest Home.”

“Don’t speak about Harvest Home. You don’t know anything about-”

“‘What no man may know nor woman tell?’” I could not resist the taunt. She started forward, then managed to restrain herself. I could not believe what was happening. I fought down a feeling of panic. She was going to tell me again-as she had that other time-that she was going away, that she wanted to leave me, to take Kate, get a divorce. Just as it had happened then.

Still I could not resist. “They’re murderers.” The word hung there, sounding ridiculous. Murderers were people you read about in the paper, in New York or somewhere-not in Cornwall Coombe. I looked at her, then away, through the dining-room doors; my eyes absently traveled the Shanghai Tea Party-ships in the harbor, coolies with pagoda-shaped hats-familiar and curiously real. I looked back. I went on. “I can bring you proof.”

She was making visible efforts to keep herself calm. She pressed her palms together again, rotating one against the other. “Bring it. It won’t prove anything.” Her eyes were wet; her chin took on the stubborn tilt that had been her father’s. “I will have the child… I will… I will…” In the blind and futile assertion, I sensed a kind of withdrawal. At that moment she looked quite strange, not only in her features but in her whole manner, her being. A sudden flash went through my mind that she wasn’t Beth at all, but someone else entirely.

She stared back, saw, failed to recognize me. The stranger-husband. Each of us now was imprisoned behind the bars of mistrust, of doubt, of disappointment. What could heal the breach? For no apparent reason, I thought of the rainbow we had seen on that first day, bridging us between the life we had known and the life that was to be. This was the life that was to be. This room would be peopled with ghosts, not of others who had inhabited it, but our own, future ghosts, relic-specters of a might-have-been. At that moment I knew we were doomed. She had already retreated from me spiritually; now it would be physically as well. She would leave me.

“I will… I will…”

With her free hand she struck the flat of her stomach. “If there is no child here, it’s be’cause you couldn’t put one there. I’m not the barren one-you are.”

I looked at her again, backed away to the door. “Murderers,” I said; said again I would bring proof.

Upstairs, Kate’s door opened; her footsteps sounded along the hall. I opened the front door and stepped out. Kate was coming down the stairs. Closing the door, I heard from the other side the whispered word.

“Mother…”

But it was not Kate who whispered it.