She watched a patch of yellow sun drift across the meadow, all the while considering how easily she had lost control of her life. Rooms full of emptiness opened before her: she alone in a dreary Boston apartment; alone in childbirth, the baby yanked away by a scowling nun; she and the child in a bare room, with no heat and little light, wondering where their next meal would come from. She shivered despite the warm day. “I suppose we should have thought of that.”
“You should have thought of that,” he replied. “You were the one who wanted me at your pleasure. You demanded that I have sex with you.”
The truth of his words pierced her. She ached with hurt, but wanted him out of the house, out of her life forever; however, she realized that Kurt controlled her life now. Although she carried the child, his decision was the one she must abide by for she had no other choice.
“I should slap you again,” she said, her voice icy, “but I won’t.” She walked to the front door and opened it. “You’re lucky my father is dead—if he were here, I’d have him thrash you. Get out!”
He walked past her, onto the wide porch filled with white wicker furniture, and down the steps before looking back. “I know you too well, Emma. You’d never have your father thrash me—you’re stronger than that.” He put on his cap to ward off the sun. “I’ll walk to the Lee train station. The exercise will do me good.” He shouted from the lane, “If you need money, let me know. Think of your reputation.” He strode away and soon disappeared, his body concealed by a wooded bend.
Charis meowed and rubbed against her legs.
She collapsed on the sofa, reluctantly picked up the cat, and stroked him until he decided it was time to jump down from her lap. The curtains swirled in the breeze; moving in and out from the window as if they were breathing.
A half hour later, the sky darkened under the threat of an afternoon storm. The clouds obscured the sun on the meadow and the breeze suddenly stilled. Past the neighboring farms, behind the distant mountains of blue, lightning speared the ground and thunder cracked in echoes across the valley. Emma bowed her head, uncertain whether to cry or pray. What she thought of as love, so certain, so assured, had crumbled around her.
* * *
The end came with tomb-like finality. Alone. Complete and utter desertion. Bitterness and hatred accompanied her dissolution, Emma blaming herself and then Kurt, and, ultimately, deciding both were at fault. Her mother was ignorant, never knowing her daughter had conceived a child outside of marriage. Emma hid her pregnancy and physical ailments well with clothing and medicinal stomach powders, and found the deception easier because of her mother’s cold lack of interest in her life.
Still, the feverish hours alone in the house stung her. She wondered what Kurt might be doing in Swampscott, or at school in Boston, while she languished in the Berkshires with a child growing inside her. Why couldn’t he be more considerate? Why had she pushed him away when he was all she had? These and a hundred other questions plagued her as September drew to a close. She was able to send one letter to Kurt, asking to meet on a specified date.
Emma convinced her mother that she must travel to Lowell Normal School, a teachers’ school for women, on the pretext that she might start a new course of study—a respected one that would allow her to earn an independent living. Her mother showed more interest in her than she had in months, apparently thrilled that her daughter would be abandoning the less honorable world of art.
She spent a day on the train traveling to Lowell, not knowing whether Kurt would be at the station. If not, she had decided to make the trip to Swampscott to find him.
He was there, sitting on a bench, looking grim and dissatisfied, as if she had torn him from an early bed after a late night. They left the station and walked near the steep banks of the Merrimack, past the river’s watery boulders and adjacent red-brick textile factories that puffed smoke into the air.
“I want no more to do with you,” he said when no one was near, his face turning crimson.
Emma flinched, hearing the dreaded words. “So, there’s nothing more to discuss? I came because I thought you might change your mind, but I see you haven’t.” She struggled to speak over the river, its white foam splashing over the embedded rocks. “I can’t believe you would desert us. Leave me and the baby to fend for ourselves.”
“You have your mother and the funds your father left the family,” he said. “I have nothing but my name and the promise of a career. If I fail my studies and can’t enter law school, I fail at life. I won’t risk my future because of a child and family commitments. I have no money, only my brain and nothing more.”
“Certainly you have no heart—only for yourself,” she said.
His tone softened. “Face facts. What can I offer you?” He stopped, snapped off a maple leaf from a tree in the first blush of crimson and crushed it like paper in his hand.
The chill of fall, not fully arrived, hovered in the air and almost overpowered Emma with its prescient smell of death. “For months we’ve kept up this façade,” she said. “I went to bed with you in Vermont because I love you, not because I want to control you. I was so afraid of losing you—that’s why I cut myself. It
