Blackbird House (15 page)

“Okay?”
 
Dorey asked the older woman.

Violet West nodded.
 
Really, she wanted to cry.
 
She thought about how stupid Bobby was, and how she loved him, and how she’d gotten so old in the blink of an eye, too old to stand without help from this woman who was sleeping with her grandson Lion, the one person on earth she would have traded her life for if need be.

“My father was a farmer, and he had a stubborn horse.
 
I used to stand on a fence post and jump right onto his back.”
 
Dorey hadn’t told Lion much about her family.
 
She preferred to let him think she truly believed what was lost was gone forever.

“Is there anything you can’t do?”
 
Violet asked.

They had to hike up a hillock that didn’t seem steep unless you were exhausted and freezing and barefoot.

“I can’t have children,” Dorey said.

There were icicles hanging from the pear tree, and from the needles of the scrub pine, and from the roof of the house, which needed to be reshingled.

“They did that to me.
 
I tried to tell Lion, but he doesn’t want to listen.
 
I can’t change it, or make it different, or fix it.
 
I can’t wish it away.
 
I can’t will it away.
 
He’ll probably wind up hating me for it.
 
And for everything else.”

They got back to the house and took off all their clothes in front of the woodstove.
 
Even with her failing vision, Violet West could see the scars.
 
They had turned purple, almost red, from the icy cold, the color of the pears on the tree in the yard, the color of blood that can’t be washed away and of things that can never be undone.

“He wants you to come and live with us.”
 
Dorey seemed perfectly at ease with no clothes on.
 
Anything she had to hide was deep inside. “He told me last night.
 
He’s worried about you being on your own. What happened now will only make him more convinced he’s right.
 
You know Lion.”

Violet West never expected to be standing in her own kitchen, naked, with a complete stranger.
 
She never expected the ice would be so thin.

“What is it you want?”
 
she said.

“I told you.
 
I want to share him.”

Dorey got dressed in some old clothes of Lion’s blue jeans, a white shirt then she heated up the kuchen in a pan on top of the stove.
 
She added a few extra spoonfuls of honey and some vanilla she found on a shelf.
 
It was her mother’s recipe that she used, one she’d memorized and repeated to herself night after night, the way some people repeat a lullaby or a charm.
 
The kuchen was hot and ready to eat before Violet packed up the few belongings she had that still mattered to her.
 
It was a simple dish, after all, and the two women were nearly finished when Lion walked through the door.

THE WEDDING OF SNOW AND ICE

IN 1957, ON THE VERY RIM OF THE CAPE.

a small town often didn’t feel small until the first snowfall of the season.
 
In those muffled first moments, in the hush and stillness before the flakes began and the anticipation of the mess there’d be to dig out afterward, people congregated in the general store, there to stock up on candles and flashlights, franks and beans, and loaves of bread.
 
People regularly knew each other’s business; now they could also recite what was in their neighbors’ refrigerators and cupboards.
 
Then and there, the world shrank and became a smaller thing, simple as a driveway, a red wicker basket filled with bread and milk, a cleared road, a light in a neighbor’s window, a snow globe on a child’s shelf.

At the Farrells’, they were taking down the barn, and when the first big flakes began to fall, all work had to stop.
 
There was no point in risking a slip on the roof and the possibility of a broken arm or leg.
 
The Farrells, after all, were a cautious breed.
 
The father, Jim, and the two boys, Hank and Jamie, trooped into the kitchen, their faces ruddy, hands frozen in spite of woolen gloves.
 
Grace Farrell had been listening to the weather reports on the radio and had made tomato soup from the canned tomatoes left from last August’s garden.
 
The bowls of rich broth were so hot and delicious it made tears form in Jim’s eyes, although, frankly, the boys preferred Campbell’s.

Still, at fourteen and seventeen, the Farrell brothers knew enough to compliment their mother’s soup.
 
When they’d foolishly made their preference known in the past, their mother, mostly easygoing but with occasional frightening spikes of passion that surprised one and all, had spilled the entire contents of the pot down the drain.
 
She, who liked things homemade and was known for her grape jam and Christmas pudding, announced she didn’t know why she bothered with any of it. She might just get herself a job, and then where would they be?
 
Eating bread and butter and soup right out of the can.
 
She’d been a nurse when Jim Farrell met her, and she’d given it up to take care of them, and did they even appreciate what she’d sacrificed?
 
Why, next summer she might even let the garden go wild if that was how little they thought of the work she put in.
 
The garden was a trial anyway, a constant war against the naturalized sweet peas, vines so invasive Grace Farrell yanked them out by the handful.
 
In the early fall, she’d had the older boy, Hank, hack down the vines with an ax, then build a bonfire.
 
The smoke that arose was so sweet Grace Farrell wound up crying.
 
She said there was smoke in her eyes, but she got like that sometimes, as if there was another life somewhere out there she might be living, one she might prefer despite her love for her husband and sons.

The sweet peas in the field were thought to have been set down by the first inhabitant of the house, Coral Hadley, who lost her husband and son at sea.
 
Coral was said never to look at the ocean again after that, even though it was lit’ tie more than a mile from her door.
 
She dug in tightly to the earth, and there were people who vowed that her fingers turned green.
 
When she walked down Main Street acorns fell out of her pockets, so that anyone following too closely behind was sure to stumble.
 
Coral certainly did her best to cultivate this acreage.
 
All these years later, her presence was still felt; odd, unexpected specimens popped up on the property, seeming to grow overnight.
 
Peach trees where none belonged.
 
Hedges of lilac of a variety extinct even in England.
 
Roses among the nettle.
 
The two-acre field rampant with those damned sweet peas, purple and pink and white, strong as weeds, impossible to get rid of.

Grace Farrell had stated publicly that she would swear old Coral Hadley came back from the dead just to replant anything that had been ripped up.
 
Surely a joke, considering that Grace was one of the most sensible individuals around, the last woman you’d ever expect might believe in ghosts, the first a body could depend upon in times of trial and strife.
 
She’d had her hands full with those boys of hers: Hank was the dreamer who didn’t pay attention to his schoolwork.
 
Jamie was the wilder one who simply couldn’t sit still.
 
In grammar school the fourth-grade teacher, Helen Morse, had tied Jamie’s left arm to the desk in an attempt to force him to improve his penmanship by using his right hand, but Jamie had simply walked around the room dragging the desk along with him.
 
He remained victorious, stubbornly left-handed.

He certainly had energy, that boy.
 
He had to be kept busy for his own good as well as for the peace of mind of those around him. Fortunately, they didn’t have to think up projects.
 
There were endless tasks around the house.
 
The shaky old barn pulled down for safety’s sake, for instance, though the boys had loved to play there when they were younger, swinging from a rope in the hayloft, nearly breaking their necks every time.
 
New kitchen cabinets had just been put in, and Jamie had helped Jim with that job as well.

He’d been just as helpful when the dreadful stained carpeting was at last taken up, exposing the yellow-pine floors that were said to be soaked with Coral Hadley’s tears.

There was always something gone wrong with a house as old as this one.
 
Maybe Grace should have said no when Jim first took her to see the place.
 
It was the week before their wedding, and Grace was still living with her parents up in Plymouth.
 
She had recently given up her job at the hospital.
 
Isn’t it gorgeous?
 
he’d said of the farm.
 
It looked like one of those tumbledown places you saw in the news magazines, with hound dogs lazing around the front door.
 
The fields were so thick with milkweed back then that a thousand goldfinch came to feed every spring.
 
Anyone wishing to reach the pond had to use a scythe to cut a path.
 
All the same, the look on Jim’s face had made Grace say, Oh, yes.
 
It had made her throw all good sense away.
 
For an instant the house did look beautiful to her, all white clapboards and right angles; the milkweed was shining, illuminated by thin bands of sunlight, an amazing sight if you looked at it the right way, if you narrowed your eyes until everything blurred into one bright and gleaming horizon.

Jim Farrell had grown up in town.
 
His father had been a carpenter, and Jim, wanting steadier work, was the chief of the public-works department, the chief of three other men, at any rate.
 
He was a good man, quiet, not one to shirk responsibility.
 
People said he could smell snow, that he could divine a nor’easter simply from the scent in the air.
 
The biggest storms smelled like vanilla, he’d confided to Jamie, the small ones like wet laundry.
 
Tonight, Jim seemed antsy.
 
He got like that when he simply couldn’t tell what the snow was up to, when the whole damn thing seemed like a mystery.
 
His job, after all, was a cat-and-mouse game against nature and fate.
 
Did he get the town plows out early?
 
Did he conserve sand and salt for the next snowfall?
 
Would the storm carve away at the dunes, which were already disappearing all along the shore?

When Jim had finished his soup and taken his bowl to the sink, he stood at the window facing west.
 
The field of sweet peas was already dusted white.
 
Snow made him feel like crying sometimes just the first flakes, the purest stuff.

Behind the hedge of holly the Brooks house next door was dark.

“Do you think I should go over there with some soup?”
 
Grace had come up behind her husband.
 
She liked the way he looked at snow, the intensity on his face, there when they made love, there whenever he was concentrating and trying to figure things out.
 
“Hal might be away.
 
I think he might still be working on that house in Bourne.
 
She might be alone there with Josephine.”

The Brookses were their closest neighbors, right there on the other side of the field, but there was no camaraderie between the families.
 
Hal Brooks was a shit, there was no other way to say it, and even Grace, who was offended by bad language, would nod when someone in town referred to her neighbor that way.
 
Lord, he’d been a mean snake all his life, the way Grace had heard it.
 
Even as a boy, he’d shoot seagulls for sport, and once or twice a stray dog had disappeared on his property, only to be found strung up from one of the oak trees. Hal hadn’t changed with age, and people in town all knew what was going on over there.
 
You could see it when the Brookses’ name came up.
 
A nod.
 
A stepping back.
 
Some people had seen what went on with his wife, some had heard about it.
 
The rest would simply cross the street when the Brookses were in town.

“If she needs something she’ll come and get it, won’t she?”
 
Jim said, although they both thought this probably wasn’t true.

The boys were in the living room watching the new TV; they would watch anything that flickered up in front of them, and for a while at least Jamie, always so restless, would settle down.
 
The boys didn’t need to know what went on at the Brookses’.
 
When Grace and Jim had first moved in, Arly Brooks was the only occupant, a widower, a hardworking fisherman who kept his boat out in Province-town.
 
Hal had inherited the house from his father, and had come to claim it after the old man died.
 
He’d arrived home from the Navy with this wife of his, ready to make enemies left and right no matter how many welcome baskets were brought to the door or how many women in town sent over pies.
 
Jim Farrell didn’t want his wife next door for any reason, not even to take over a pot of soup.

“Stay away” Jim told Grace.
 
“We all decide our own fates, and what they do is their business.”

“Well, of course I won’t go over.
 
But I might send the boys to shovel snow.”