Private Life (3 page)

married a man named Yerchikovsky. It's their grandson I'll work for. I'll be an old family

retainer. Vassily, they think I am.He told her this as if she wouldn't care, as if nothing

about it was of more than idle interest to her. The noise of the engine swelled again, and

then the ferry docked with a bump, and they drove off it.It was not quite three when they

got to her house. As soon as they opened the door, she saw the telegram on the floor,

where it had landed when the delivery boy pushed it through the slot. She picked it up.

Stella was barking in the backyard.Pete took one of her hands. Let's have a look at the

pictures. I would like to see the ones Sei did for you. He meant Mr. Kimura. She took off

her hat and set it on the hall table. The pictures were in the closet. She got them out, then

went into the kitchen and turned on the gas under the kettle.When she came back, Pete

was standing in front of the rabbit. The animal looked nearly vaporous today, a rabbit

made of mist crouched down beside stalks of luminous green bamboo. The bamboo

reminded her more vividly of Mr. Kimura than the rabbit did--she remembered the exact

way that his fingers held the brush and seemed to press the leaves of the bamboo out of it,

one by one. That was decades ago now. Mr. Kimura had been dead for two years. They

were all so old. Pete set aside the rabbit, and there were the coots. The rabbit was a sketch

that Mr. Kimura had given her, but the coots she had commissioned. He had painted it on

the north end of the island, not far from where they got on the 37 that very morning,

though she hadn't been there in years. Now she gazed at the curve of the far edge of the

pond against the higher curve of the hillside. Far to the left, a solitary chick swam so fast

that he made ripples. To the right, the other chicks clustered together, picking bits of

things off the surface of the water. Their lives had been so brief that they never even lost

their red heads, but Mr. Kimura had caught their friskiness perfectly. Then she could

hardly see the painting for the tears in her eyes. Pete, don't go away!He put his arm

around her, squeezed hard. He knew, of course, that she adored him, or admired him, or

whatever it was. He was one of those sorts of men that women were wiser to stay away

from, men who took an interest in women, and observed them, and knew what they were

thinking.Darling, I should have been a different person. But I'm not.And Margaret felt

herself almost say, Me, too. But she didn't know how to say it, because she hardly knew,

even as old as she was, what person she had been.The teakettle was whistling in the

kitchen, but they wouldn't be drinking any tea. Pete, staring at the coots, leaned forward

with an intent look on his face, and the whistle of the kettle rose in pitch, as if in

desperation. She said, You take it. I want you to take it.He stood straight up and looked at

her, refusal written on his face, but then he relented. His smile came on slowly, and he

kissed her on the forehead. She stepped forward, took the picture, and placed it in his

hands. It wasn't terribly large, though it had always seemed to be. She said, The teakettle

is going to burn up.While she was in the kitchen, Stella entered through the dog door, her

tail wagging, but Margaret went out without greeting her, and closed her in the kitchen.

In the hall, Pete had his hat on, the picture under his arm. She walked him the step or two

to the door and opened it. As he went out onto the porch, he pressed her hand.Thank you,

he said, then again, thank you.She stood on her porch and watched him walk to his car,

get in, and, with a wave, drive away.

1883

FOR A WHILE, they lived in town. She had a particular and vivid memory of

that time: she was running, as it seemed she always did, back and forth from one end of

town to the other. She was fast and gloried in it. She wasn't racing against anyone or

getting into trouble, she was just running and looking at things. She ran fast enough so

that she could feel her heavy blond hair stream out behind her, subside across her back,

stream out again. She passed one house after another.

At the far end of town, there was a pleasant large house where some ladies lived,

though they never talked to her, nor she to them. She remembered how, one day, she

came to a halt in front of this house and one of the ladies, a tall beauty, was standing on

the porch, wearing an elegant white embroidered gown with a snowy eyelet skirt.

Margaret stared at her, and the lady smiled. Margaret thought that she had never seen

anything as beautiful as that dress in her life, which at the time seemed rather long. When

the lady wafted back into the house, Margaret turned and pelted home, where she found

her mother in the back parlor, sewing. As soon as Margaret entered the room, out of

breath, she saw that her mother was sewing a copy of the dress she had seen on the

beautiful lady. She exclaimed, "I saw that! I saw that dress today!" Then she went up and

touched the eyelet. Her mother, Lavinia, didn't reprimand her, but finished the seam she

was sewing, and broke the thread between her teeth. Then she said, "Perhaps you did. But

don't tell your father." It was years before Margaret realized that the pleasant house at the

far end of town was a brothel, and that, from time to time, her mother sewed for the

ladies, to make a little extra money. In Margaret's mind, these dresses were always white.

When she was older, though, and recalled this, Lavinia said that it hadn't happened, it

couldn't have happened; Margaret must have read it in a book.

What

had
happened, what Margaret should have remembered, was that her

brother Lawrence, who would have been thirteen then, had left the house with her one

day and taken her to a public hanging. No one had stopped him, because Lavinia was

giving birth--to Elizabeth--and her father, famous all over town as Dr. Mayfield

(Margaret thought of him as "Dr. Mayfield," too, he was that imposing), was attending

the birth. Lily, the housekeeper, was occupied with Beatrice, who was two. It was said

that Lawrence and Margaret left the house and were gone for hours before anyone

noticed. But no one suspected that Lawrence, a studious boy, would have taken her to the

hanging. Ben, yes--Ben was rowdy and adventuresome, though two years younger than

Lawrence. The whole episode was a family legend, and part of the legend was that

Margaret didn't remember a thing about it. "Margaret looks on the bright side," said

Lavinia. "As well she should." From time to time, though, Margaret had a ghostly

recollection of this bit or that bit--of her hand reaching up into Lawrence's hand, or of

him handing her a bit of a crab apple, or of her bonnet hanging over her eyes so that she

couldn't see anything except her feet. He might have sat her on his shoulders--he

sometimes did that when she was very young. Nevertheless, it was a fugitive memory,

however dramatic.

Margaret remembered other things that she would have preferred to forget. She

remembered that when Ben was thirteen he went with some cronies down to the

railyards. They found a blasting cap, which one of the fellows attached to the end of a

short length of iron rod that they had also found. Employing this rod, they rubbed the

blasting cap against some brickwork to see what might happen. When it exploded, the rod

flew out of the boy's hand and entered Ben's skull above the ear. He was killed instantly.

None of the other boys was hurt, and they carried the body home as best they could. Dr.

Mayfield met them at the door, and this was the first news they had of the death of Ben.

That winter, Lawrence contracted measles, which led to an inflammation of the

brain. The source of the original infection was what Lavinia had always feared, a child

who was brought to see Dr. Mayfield. Elizabeth, Beatrice, and Margaret succumbed as

well. But they were fairly young, and Lawrence was almost sixteen at the time. They

lived and he did not.

And then, one evening about six months after the death of Lawrence, for reasons

of his own that Lavinia later said had to do with melancholic propensities, Dr. Mayfield

retrieved Ben's rifle from the storeroom behind the kitchen and shot himself in his office.

Lavinia found him--she had thought he was still out with a patient, but, upon awakening

very late, she heard the horse whinny out in the stable. She went to Dr. Mayfield's office

to investigate and discovered the corpse. Margaret remembered that night--the sounds of

running feet and doors slamming, the whinny of a horse, and a shout either half rousing

her or weaving into her slumber. What she remembered most clearly was that when she

and her sisters got up in the morning, there was once again a large closed coffin in the

parlor. Their father was gone, and Lavinia, who had been sickly from so many

pregnancies and so much grief, was a different person, one the girls had never known

before. She was entirely dressed, her bed was made, and from that day forward, she never

complained again of the headache or anything else. Margaret was eight; Beatrice had just

turned six; Elizabeth was not quite three. On the day after the funeral, which Margaret

also remembered, Lavinia moved the girls to her father's farm--it was the practical thing

to do, and Lavinia said that they were lucky to be able to do so. She told Margaret,

because she was the oldest, that death was the most essential part of life, and that they

must make the best of it. Margaret always remembered that.

GENTRY F ARM, not far from Darlington, down toward the Missouri River, was

famous in the neighborhood, a beautiful expanse of fertile prairie that John Gentry and

his own father had broken in 1828. Before the War Between the States, Lavinia's father

and grandfather owned thirty-two slaves, quite a few more than was usual in Missouri-they raised hemp, tobacco, corn, and hogs. When Lavinia was twelve, John Gentry gave

his oath to support the Union, unlike several of his neighbors. Two of his cousins went

off to join the Confederacy. After the war, John Gentry's loyalties were questioned all

around, and so he married his daughters to suitors of unimpeachable Union sympathies.

Martha married a man from Iowa who fought with the Fourth Iowa Infantry; Harriet

married an Irishman from Chicago; Louisa married one of those radical Germans from

the Osage River Valley, who, though her grandfather never liked him, was a rich man and

an accomplished farmer. And after the war, John Gentry managed to hold off the

bushwhacking Rebel sympathizers by being well armed at all times and a notoriously

excellent shot. They did burn down his corncrib once, and steal two of his horses. He

knew them, of course. Boone County, Callaway County, and Cole County were wild

patchworks of Union and Rebel sympathizers, and though blood didn't run as high there

as it did out to the west, your neighbor could always tip his hat to you during the day and

come to hang you that same night. John Gentry said that you would think that Lincoln, a

man who knew both Illinois and Kentucky, would have given going to war lengthier

consideration than he did, but those folks from Massachusetts and New York, who didn't

have a thing to lose, got his ear, and that was that for a place like Missouri, which

remained a stew of differing loyalties and long-standing resentments for many years.

Lavinia never expressed opinions about the war--for her, the three girls were

occupation enough. She was frank--their assets were few--and as they grew into young

ladies, her principal task was to cultivate them. John Gentry had a piano, and so Beatrice

was put to learning how to play it. Lavinia had a sewing machine, and so Elizabeth was

put to learning how to use it. Dr. Mayfield had left quite a few books, and so Margaret,

never adept with her hands, was put to reading them. Quite often, she would read while

Beatrice practiced her fingerings and Elizabeth and her mother sewed. Margaret liked to

read Dickens best--
The Old Curiosity Shop
was a great favorite, and
A Tale of Two

Cities
. Her grandfather, sitting in the circle smoking his pipe, enjoyed
Martin Chuzzlewit

for Dickens's faithful portrayal of the sad life of those folks who lived over by Cairo,

Illinois, a spot on the map as different from the Kingdom of Callaway County, Missouri,

as white was from black. She also read
Ragged Dick
and
Marie Bertrand
, which were, of

course, by her mother's favorite author, Mr. Alger. They were most excited to receive a

copy of Mr. Alger's
Bob Burton, or, The Young Ranchman of the Missouri
, as a gift from

Aunt Louisa, but though they did read it, John Gentry was dismayed to discover that the

Missouri River in question was in Iowa, and was not their Missouri, the real Missouri,

which was in the state of Missouri and, he always told everyone, the true main branch of

the Mississippi, and therefore the longest river in the entire world. Another book that

came to mean a good deal to Margaret was
Two Years Before the Mast
, by Mr. Dana. She

read it to her sisters twice, all the while making bright pictures in her own mind of the