Lady (24 page)

She took a place beside me, leaning back against the tree trunk, her eyes sparkling as she explained that she, like me, was out for a walk on this day of days, and had been following me as I came into the woods from the pond. Not having seen her since the awful day she cut her hair, I stared at her, trying to imagine what it must look like now. She sensed, rather than saw, my curiosity, which I tried to disguise, and she slipped the cap off, dropping her head a bit as she ran her fingers lightly around behind, then lifted her face. "You said I'd look good with short hair. Do I?"

She looked wonderful. In place of the familiar twist or knot at the back, there was now a short roll, with soft waves at the sides, and lightly sweeping down at the temples, leaving the brow clean. It was a striking change. Then I noticed something that had escaped my eye before: here and there were strands of gray. Ruthie Sparrow had sworn for years that Lady touched up the color, but we knew what dyed hair looked like, Mrs. Pierson being witness to that, and Lady's seemed of quite another sort. But here she was, turning gray. It hardly seemed possible, and I remembered that pitiful cry, "Old, old, old, old." But she wasn't old, of course, only the littlest bit gray, and on this day she was young both in face and in spirit, the complete and final rejuvenation of the Lady of the winter past.

After we had talked for a while in the manner of people becoming reacquainted after a separation -- the weather, friends, the price of eggs in Denmark -- we resumed our walk together. From her talk and her manner I could tell that she was feeling the magic of the day, glorious as if all the things that had gone before, all the bad things, might be forgotten, and that hope, as the poet said, truly did spring eternal.

Still, within me I felt that surge of things not understood, of wishing -- what? Wanting -- what? Needing -- whom -- ? I turned away, staring down at the stream where it rushed fast over some rocks, and a pair of catfish nibbled at the waving grass near the bank. Presently I felt her light hand on my collar, and the finger touching my ear was warm.

"What is it?" she asked gently. I shook my head, trying to press my ear next to her finger. She cupped my chin and turned my head, looking at me with those dark, sparkling eyes. "You can tell me if you want to."

"Blue Ferguson's never coming back."

"How do you know?" Her voice was gentler still.

"I just do." I became suddenly angry at the thought of Blue's having put everything behind him, of having struck out on his own, of having gotten out of Pequot, of having left me there, abandoned, frittering away my time. "Blue Ferguson can go to hell," I added hotly.

"Let's hope he's not gone quite that far. But wherever he's gone, you'd like to go, too, wouldn't you?"

"Sort of." I thought my grudging reply would put her off, would be enough of an excuse, but she continued her gentle probing.

"There's more, isn't there? More about Blue? About Blue and Lilah Pierson?" The words came out so unexpectedly and with such frankness that I pulled away. She came a little around to face me. I felt a flooding of embarrassment, that she of all people should have brought up the subject.

"I saw it all, you know." I stared in surprise, and she nodded. "From my hall window. You were getting a pail on the back steps. Blue's market basket was there. He came out of a snowdrift, and drove away. You took the basket out behind the garage." I silently concurred in her recollection of the events. "Where had Blue come from?" she asked.

"He jumped out the upstairs window."

She put her hand over her breast and laughed in dismay at such a ridiculous picture.

"Did you tell?" I demanded.

"Heavens, no, not I. His secret was safe enough with me." She laughed harder at the thought, then grew suddenly grave, as she often did. "Whom do you feel badly for? Blue? Mrs. Pierson? How do you feel about Blue's being in the house that day?"

"It wasn't just that day! It was lots of days. Lots and lots. When Mr. Pierson was away. Upstairs with her, in the back room. Everybody knows -- at the barbershop, the firehouse. They're laughing at him. It must have been Dora Hornaday who told -- everyone's laughing and -- and --"

"And it's dirty."

I blinked at her in shock. Surely she wasn't going to -- I felt more embarrassed, more ashamed, and growing angrier I wrenched myself away from her.

"Is it?" she insisted, reaching for my hand. "Is it dirty?"

"Sure it's dirty. Like Lily Marini in the bushes -- like the girls at River House."

"Why?"

"Everybody knows what
they
do."

"And you're disappointed in Blue, that he could do dirty things."

"Yes."

"And you can't forgive him."

"I hope he never comes back, I hope I never see him --"

"Oh, my dear, you mustn't use that word."

"Why not?"

"Because never is a long, long time. Longer than we may know. Come, let's sit a minute."

Taking my hand, she brought me to a pile of timber and we sat side by side on the sawed logs, our fingers entwined together in her lap. I could not possibly reconstruct the words she used in this troubled moment, but whatever hurts I had suffered -- the disappointment in Blue, and the contempt I felt for his having been caught doing dirty things with Mrs. Pierson -- were salved, and the thoughts that were causing me turmoil lay where they could be examined and, possibly, understood.

She talked about the incalculable differences between men and women, not only the physical, but those others that are harder to analyze. She talked of love between them, and of how there was a vast difference between what Blue had been doing in the back room with Mrs. Pierson, and the love a man may have for the woman he sets his heart on, and she for him. It was not at all like that -- firehouse smut and beer-hall jokes. And the River House girls -- she knew a thing or two about that. It was not necessary to mate as animals, but as human beings, one to the other. Never did she employ such pat tritenesses as "One day, when you are old enough . . . you will understand." I was old enough on that day, at that hour and minute, and if I chose, she told me, I could understand it at that precise moment, not waiting until I "grew up" or "came of age." And though she spoke of serious matters, of things I had never talked or scarcely thought about before, she did so with such a light touch, with such color and emphasis, yet with such warmth and humor, that I realized that the circumstances of the Ferguson-Pierson intrigue were no more than the joining of two forms for immediate release and profit.

Lady looked down at my hand lying in her palm, enclosed it with her other one, and pressed it warmly. "This you must believe," she said, holding my gaze with an intent and profound expression, her eyes searching mine, "this you must absolutely believe if you will ever believe anything I shall ever tell you. It is not the coming together or the parting of two people that counts, or where or when, but those two people themselves, and in what manner they are joined. And if it is not with hate but with love, not with impatience but with understanding, and never with boredom but with interest, then nothing can be wrong with their being together, no matter how wrong it may seem to others. But those others, they do not count, they must not be permitted to count, for it is only between the two persons themselves that it must have meaning. It is not so difficult for people to arrange their lives sensibly if they behave sensibly, but to arrange their lives happily, that is a far, far different thing. Can you understand this?"

It was a lot to understand, but I tried, and she saw that I tried, that I knew somehow it was in that moment most important that I should understand.

"You cannot hope to do it all at once." She lifted her top hand again and traced the lines in my palm with her fingernail. "It can only come with time. But if you will try to start believing this now, when you are just so old, it will be easier and more profitable to you when you are ready."

"What will I be ready for?"

"You will be ready to love someone in the way that you can hope to love someone, with all of yourself."

She plucked a leaf from my sleeve, and absently ran her fingertips up and down. "You see, life is hardly ever one thing or another, and things don't ever stay the same. Perhaps that's one of life's tragedies. But who knows, perhaps it's one of life's blessings as well. And blessings, as we know, always come mixed. But meanwhile -- isn't it a beautiful world? Look at that sky, doesn't it make you feel
good
? It's not such a bad place, is it?"

"What isn't?"

"The world. It's not our enemy, you know, but we treat it so badly. And the same with people. And you will have your share of mixed blessings, l'il Ignatz."

Later, we walked back up Talcott Hill together, and standing at the crest we looked back upon the scene, the pond and pasture, the Paulus farm, others more faintly distant, the woods where we had walked, where winter had become spring, where the whole sense of change was apparent to the eye. And I sensed, even if I was not completely aware, that in the farmhouse and the barn, in the field and the meadow, there were pain and joy and hurt and love, all the good things and the bad, too, all those mixed blessings of life; but that where the sky could look so blue, the grass so freshly green, there lay hope as well, that the human heart was lifted and that God was inclined toward it.

"It could all be so beautiful," she said as we turned to go, "if people were just kind." I said I thought she was very wise. She laughed and tugged my ear. "Ah," she said, taking my hand again, "what is more wise than to be kind? And what is more kind than to understand?"

Sad Songs

It seemed a new beginning, but perhaps it was only an old ending, the end of innocence merely, not a beginning at all. I had thought I had learned something, had advanced a stride or two in the painful process of maturing, had responded in measure to Lady's summons to my awareness of that greater and more enigmatic life at work around me, but in this I was to be proved wrong. Understanding does not necessarily come with the accumulation of years, but with a willingness to understand, and when my chance came I was unwilling, and thus incapable; and through this stubborn unwillingness a breach opened between us that was to alter our relationship forever.

But, for the moment, her reappearance in our lives was a sort of epiphany, for like the spring itself, she in her full-flowering way had shone forth again, once more to establish herself as the center of our lives, and for a time all proceeded in what appeared to be our normal fashion. Yet there were signs indicating that though things might seem the same, in truth they were not. Changes in people, external changes, do not immediately make themselves apparent to children, yet children, with those sensitized antennae they develop for their own protection, are often aware of things no one gives them credit for. They perceive things unnoticed, they are privy to small, unspoken bits of knowledge which they hoard like misers, fitting one bit to another and forming a picture which suits, or sometimes fails to suit, their needs. And so, though I was not even into my teens, I saw, or thought I did, changes in Lady which troubled me. She had often seemed vague, preoccupied, even melancholy, but now, although she was much in evidence around the house, around the Green and the town, the symptoms appeared aggravated by who knew what causes. Whenever I went over after the day of our spring walk, as I had come to think of it, I noticed that she was particularly nice to Jesse, as if in apology for her harsh words and bad behavior; was especially nice to everyone. But there were other things. She developed a habit of unconsciously rubbing one palm against the other in a light, circular motion, then spreading both palms in her lap and idly staring at them. Her hands were always one of her greatest beauties, and Aggie said that a woman's age often shows itself first in the extremities. Perhaps it was only that; but I didn't think so.

One day, in the summerhouse, she lifted her hand, inspecting its back closely, and I thought she was distressed by the liverish-colored spots that had begun appearing there. Then I saw it was a small insect that had captured her attention.

"Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home," she softly recited, "your house is on fire, your children will burn. . . ." She flicked the insect with her nail; it parted its spotted carapace as it sailed upward, spreading little transparent wings which bore it away into the blue of the sky. When it had disappeared, she turned her hands over and studied her palms.

"Are you reading your future?" I kidded.

"Read the future?" She looked at me blankly, then folded her hands and brightened her tone. "Palmistry is an inexact science, darling. Better you should look there and play gypsy." She pointed to the gazing-globe, which stood in the center of the brick circle at the opposite end of the walk from where we were sitting. The gazing-globe had appeared shortly after the hair-cutting episode, and seemed to have some special, if undisclosed, significance for Lady. Bought from Mr. Marini, it was a handsome ornament: the large silver ball crowned a curved stone pedestal cast in the ornate Italian fashion, and gleamed brightly amid the green foliage and white flowers behind it. Lady's immense fondness for the globe was manifested by the extended periods she would spend looking at its curved reflection, and, as now, her glance was often directed to it while we sat in the summerhouse and conversed quietly and the dusk came on and the bats flittered in the pine boughs and the fireflies started.

Still, she appeared so jumpy and nervous that people other than myself or Jesse and Elthea began noticing it. Ruthie Sparrow took it upon herself to bestow a few ill-chosen words, and for her pains got what she might have expected: the hack of Lady's hand -- figuratively speaking. Capturing her briefly while Lady was out with Honey for a stroll, Mrs. Sparrow had advised her "sensibly," as she later put it to Ma, that what Lady wanted was a change, that she ought to go away ("for her health, poor dear") and take a nice trip. (Paris France or Venice It'ly immediately suggested themselves.) These humble profferings Lady had accepted with her usual grace and good humor, but then Mrs. Sparrow went a step too far, saying that in her opinion Lady was dwelling too much on the long-ago past; what she really ought to do was lock up all of Edward's pictures and the war medal, and his clothing in the chifforobe should be got rid of, and she should accept one of Colonel Blatchley's oft-repeated proposals and make a December-December marriage.