The Sabbathday River (4 page)
Read The Sabbathday River Online
Authors: Jean Hanff Korelitz
But that was later, Naomi thought, feeling her car tip down the steep drive to the A-frame, the rocks spattering beneath her wheels. In the beginning, the house had been Daniel's manifesto of the New Family, a theoretical entity that did not subdivide into individual rooms for individual people but lived
together
in the truest sense. Thus, their house had boasted one great amorphous room with “areas” rather than walls, mattresses on the floor, cinder-block bookshelves, Mexican rugs in odd places and at odd angles. The smells of the stove invaded the bed linen in a cozy, denlike manner, the bare bulb of Daniel's late-night-reading corner bored into Naomi's sleep like a miner's light descending a cavern, and the woodstove in the center of it all gamely chugged away in a doomed effort to heat the whole thing. Eventually, the privy Daniel had originally built was replaced, but only by an Indian batik cloth strung up on clothesline around a compost toilet he had imported from Maine. The cloth was a pseudo-barrier that did nothing to muffle sounds or interfere with smells, but even this illusion of a barrier Naomi had had to fight for.
together
in the truest sense. Thus, their house had boasted one great amorphous room with “areas” rather than walls, mattresses on the floor, cinder-block bookshelves, Mexican rugs in odd places and at odd angles. The smells of the stove invaded the bed linen in a cozy, denlike manner, the bare bulb of Daniel's late-night-reading corner bored into Naomi's sleep like a miner's light descending a cavern, and the woodstove in the center of it all gamely chugged away in a doomed effort to heat the whole thing. Eventually, the privy Daniel had originally built was replaced, but only by an Indian batik cloth strung up on clothesline around a compost toilet he had imported from Maine. The cloth was a pseudo-barrier that did nothing to muffle sounds or interfere with smells, but even this illusion of a barrier Naomi had had to fight for.
It stood to reason, then, that when Daniel left some nine months ago, Naomi had immediately embarked on a frenzy of Sheetrock, carving out areas not much larger than area rugs and moving from room to newly demarcated room in a swoon of defined habitation. The batik cloth and compost toilet were swiftly replaced with actual walls and plumbing. The new three-sided closet was dubbed an entryway or, less grandly, a mudroom. In the new dining room, the long table sat perennially laden with tasks abandoned and pending, and there was now an actual guest room, in case she ever had an actual guest. Then, once this was accomplished, she had declared the conceptual termination of
her marriage by hiring Ashley Deacon to build
out,
indulgently tacking a den (with television! with stereo!) and a home office onto the original structure. Rooms upon rooms, Naomi thought. Rooms for sleeping and peeing and eating. A room for eating more formally than in the other room for eating, even a room expressly for looking at television, that most shameful of solitary acts. A room for Flourish, filled with electronic objects not even imagined when Daniel had first hauled her down into this damp and wooded hollow and waved the bill of sale in her face. Subdivided so ruthlessly, the house had imploded into virtual nonexistence: a maze through which to weave, the dark wood in the middle of her life.
her marriage by hiring Ashley Deacon to build
out,
indulgently tacking a den (with television! with stereo!) and a home office onto the original structure. Rooms upon rooms, Naomi thought. Rooms for sleeping and peeing and eating. A room for eating more formally than in the other room for eating, even a room expressly for looking at television, that most shameful of solitary acts. A room for Flourish, filled with electronic objects not even imagined when Daniel had first hauled her down into this damp and wooded hollow and waved the bill of sale in her face. Subdivided so ruthlessly, the house had imploded into virtual nonexistence: a maze through which to weave, the dark wood in the middle of her life.
She let herself in through the new annex now and climbed the half flight of blond steps to the main A-frame. In the kitchen, Naomi dug out a teabag of Constant Comment and lit the gas beneath her kettle. She eyed the oven clock, immobilized at 3:24 a.m. since some unnoted morning in some year of the previous decade. Then, somewhat inappropriately, she felt herself smile. Given the queer circularity of fate-all fate, perhaps, though clearly Naomi'sâthis wasn't even her first macabre brush with the river. The event which she and Daniel had taken to callingâwith prescient self-importanceâthe “Sabbathday Affair,” or in more sardonic moments, their genuine
Deliverance
experience, had taken place the first autumn of their VISTA year. They were still living at Bailey's Motel then, their damp wooded plot and the extension of their tenure not even vaguely formed intentions. Bailey's, long since derelict, was mouse-ridden, and its crumbling cinder blocks gave shelter to a breathtaking array of insect life, but bad conditions were a badge of honor back then, mindful as one was of one's fellow VISTA volunteers in Appalachia, in the Deep South, and on the blighted reservations. For this reason Naomi and Daniel seldom did their laundry, preferring to recycle worn clothes or, if absolutely necessary, to run especially offensive articles under the cold-water tap (they both ran cold, really) and lay them over the towel bar for a week's dank drying. So perhaps it was with a sense of adventure in the making that they had gone into town one Saturday evening that fall, their army surplus duffels crammed to bursting. The Laundromat was empty and they filled every washer.
Deliverance
experience, had taken place the first autumn of their VISTA year. They were still living at Bailey's Motel then, their damp wooded plot and the extension of their tenure not even vaguely formed intentions. Bailey's, long since derelict, was mouse-ridden, and its crumbling cinder blocks gave shelter to a breathtaking array of insect life, but bad conditions were a badge of honor back then, mindful as one was of one's fellow VISTA volunteers in Appalachia, in the Deep South, and on the blighted reservations. For this reason Naomi and Daniel seldom did their laundry, preferring to recycle worn clothes or, if absolutely necessary, to run especially offensive articles under the cold-water tap (they both ran cold, really) and lay them over the towel bar for a week's dank drying. So perhaps it was with a sense of adventure in the making that they had gone into town one Saturday evening that fall, their army surplus duffels crammed to bursting. The Laundromat was empty and they filled every washer.
This left an hour to kill, and something of a dearth of possibilities with which to kill it. There was the tavern, of courseâa dubious establishment called Woodstock'sâbut Naomi wasn't a drinker and even Daniel understood that, in the tavern at least, the town's suspicion of
them bubbled over into plain dislike. And there was the porch at Tom and Whit's, which afforded a decent observational post for the teenagers cruising their parents' cars along Elm, the main street through town. But heyâthere was the river, tantalizingly close through the patch of woods behind the Laundromat, close enough to hear when you stepped outside and beyond the range of the chugging washers. And it was hot, too, one of those September weeks when Indian summer threatens to sink back to the steamy weather no one in New England ever quite admits to. And they were young, after all, and had taken the precaution of marrying before they came here to live, and they were outsiders without a decent reputation to sully, and in any case, it was hardly anyone else's business, was it, and even if it
were,
it was hardly likely that anybody would see them, would even know that they had gone to swim on this nearly moonless night.
them bubbled over into plain dislike. And there was the porch at Tom and Whit's, which afforded a decent observational post for the teenagers cruising their parents' cars along Elm, the main street through town. But heyâthere was the river, tantalizingly close through the patch of woods behind the Laundromat, close enough to hear when you stepped outside and beyond the range of the chugging washers. And it was hot, too, one of those September weeks when Indian summer threatens to sink back to the steamy weather no one in New England ever quite admits to. And they were young, after all, and had taken the precaution of marrying before they came here to live, and they were outsiders without a decent reputation to sully, and in any case, it was hardly anyone else's business, was it, and even if it
were,
it was hardly likely that anybody would see them, would even know that they had gone to swim on this nearly moonless night.
And so they gathered at the river and shed their clothes on a boulder, and the Sabbathday was frigid and pure with its meager sliver of lunar light, and they went in slowly at firstâan ankle, a kneeâand then yelping at the cold and hurling palmfuls of water at each other so that each would be as chilled and as sodden as the other. The current wasn't strong in that part of the river, but it tugged at them, and after the first moment of resisting, it felt easier to let it push them downstream a bit, so they moved, crouched in the water, feeling with their feet and never quite losing their balance, and in the low light they rounded the river's sharp corner to a stretch where they could not have looked back and seen their abandoned jeans and flannel shirts and sneakers laid across the boulder even if there had been light to see them by, and there-memory differed on this point: Daniel insisting; Naomi, who didn't remember much later anyway, resolutely disbelieving, attributing the claim to Daniel's need to dramatize, or to Daniel's being a man and thus needing to add sex to any scenario which challenged his manhoodâthey either kissed or actually had sex, half-squatting in an eddy. And afterward they clasped hands and led each other upstream again to their point of entry. It had been, maybe, twenty minutes in all. Maybe even less.
They were nearly on top of their boulder before they saw him: thin, his dark face outlined by darkness, and as naked as they were. They crouched, gaping, as he pulled their clothes out of the water. In his voice, a trill of hysteria. “She threw your clothes in,” he said.
“Who's
she
?” Naomi heard herself ask.
she
?” Naomi heard herself ask.
“What the fuckâ” It was Daniel, more perplexed than outraged.
The man straightened. His penis, at Naomi's eye level, flashed white. She looked away instinctively and saw the girl, slight in shorts and a T-shirt. Naomi didn't see her face. She never saw her face.
“Don't nobody move or I'll shoot,” the girl squeaked, and Naomi almost smiled, since the line was so trite, since she herself might have thought of something so much better were she the one holding the gun, her arms straight, glaring at three naked people in a river.
For a long moment they all peered through dimness at each other. This is what a holdup must be like if you're blind, she thought. She had lost the use of her body anyway and could not have moved even if so inclined. Suddenly she was furious at Daniel for bringing her here, though she could not have said whether “here” was the river or Goddard itself.
“Oh
shit
,” the man said, though on instant replay the “oh” sounded more like “ow.” Naomi heard the actual shot at the same moment, and then somebody else's voiceâDaniel's, on further reflectionâyelping the phrase “Oh please God Oh please God ⦔ as he grabbed her hand and hauled her up on the bank. Behind them the man fell, cursing, but she herself was running, thinking only of broken bottles, of poison ivy, of roots twisting up out of the ground to trip her. There was another shot and then, curiously louder than that, an outraged voice: “You
cunt
.”
shit
,” the man said, though on instant replay the “oh” sounded more like “ow.” Naomi heard the actual shot at the same moment, and then somebody else's voiceâDaniel's, on further reflectionâyelping the phrase “Oh please God Oh please God ⦔ as he grabbed her hand and hauled her up on the bank. Behind them the man fell, cursing, but she herself was running, thinking only of broken bottles, of poison ivy, of roots twisting up out of the ground to trip her. There was another shot and then, curiously louder than that, an outraged voice: “You
cunt
.”
The tavern was lit like a beacon through the trees. Daniel let go of her hand and plunged into the back door, disappearing inside. Naomi went behind a tree. She had been deafened by the wind tunnel of her own breath. The tavern seemed unchanged by the naked man who had run inside. She looked down and saw her own nakedness and was abruptly consumed by that, as if there weren't a wounded man somewhere on the riverbank behind her or a girl with a problem and a gun, perhaps, in the forest. Off to one side, in the next lot, a trailer withâoh, fortuneâa laden clothesline. Naomi lunged for it, flinging her shaking arms into the arms of a pink housecoat which would not close over her chest. Amid panic, humiliation. She threw it off and jerked a man's shirt off its clothespins. It came to her waist only, leaving her naked from there down. A towel thenâthin and faded but large enough, and just in time: men swarmed out the tavern door, the sickly white of Daniel's white chest in their midst, the unmistakable rumble of laughter in their wake.
The man had been shot in the hip. His girlfriend, fourteen and pregnant, went to live with cousins in Maine. And all of that had long been forgotten when, years later, they were still telling how Daniel Roth had streaked into Woodstock's one Saturday night, leaving his wife stark naked in the woods. See what you can expect of people like that?
As for Naomi, the one thing she failed to grasp was why Danielâwith whom she had groped through rebellious agnosticism into the comfortable and eminently mature atheism of their respective parents-should, at his moment of crisis, suddenly have invoked a God he otherwise utterly disavowed. But Daniel would never admit that he'd called to God in the first place.
Taking her tea to the bathroom, Naomi ran scalding water into the tub, stripped off the clothes she'd so carelessly thrown on in the prehistory of that very morning, and stepped cautiously to the mirror. The arc of her day, from guilty exercise dilettante to bearer of death, from murder suspect to, at the very least, unintentional obstructor of justice, wore itself in the indigo smudges beneath her widely spaced eyes, and this, unbidden, brought the image of the infant back to her. She felt herself move forward to the image and could not pull away, until it seemed to hover before herâa ghost image transparency separating her from the world.
Steam gradually claimed the mirror, but she knew what she looked like; the decrepitude of age apart, indeed, she had always looked precisely the same andâtruth in advertising, she thought ruefullyâprecisely as she
was.
The convex ark of her nose, for example, or the set to her jaw, the thick waves of hair practically hollered
direct from the steppes of Russia!
to anyone who cared to know. For years she had felt older than her age, with whatever beauty she had begun with utterly worn away, like a clock run so far ahead of itself that it had forgotten its own time. It always surprised Naomi when she caught some man's look, because some men did look, and so the looking, in the end, she attributed not to herself, but to what she represented, at least to them. After all, having grown up in a community of people exactly like herself, it had taken her years to catch on to the fact that she was an exotic to most people, thatâtethered to history by tribal umbilicus, as it wereâshe walked among the pale and civilized people of Goddard like something earthy and sensual, a swoon of seductive otherness.
was.
The convex ark of her nose, for example, or the set to her jaw, the thick waves of hair practically hollered
direct from the steppes of Russia!
to anyone who cared to know. For years she had felt older than her age, with whatever beauty she had begun with utterly worn away, like a clock run so far ahead of itself that it had forgotten its own time. It always surprised Naomi when she caught some man's look, because some men did look, and so the looking, in the end, she attributed not to herself, but to what she represented, at least to them. After all, having grown up in a community of people exactly like herself, it had taken her years to catch on to the fact that she was an exotic to most people, thatâtethered to history by tribal umbilicus, as it wereâshe walked among the pale and civilized people of Goddard like something earthy and sensual, a swoon of seductive otherness.
She felt herself grimace; then, lightheaded, she braced her forearms
against the white porcelain of the sink. All of it, her life and marriage, the child who might have been born by now, her work, the friends who had receded from her and the ones who did not approach to take their places as a circle widened around her, leaving her abandoned: the center who could not hold, the woman left holding the bag, the bag left holding the baby, the baby thrown out with the bathwater.
against the white porcelain of the sink. All of it, her life and marriage, the child who might have been born by now, her work, the friends who had receded from her and the ones who did not approach to take their places as a circle widened around her, leaving her abandoned: the center who could not hold, the woman left holding the bag, the bag left holding the baby, the baby thrown out with the bathwater.
The baby in the river, Naomi thought.
The emptiness in her belly heaved again, and again she felt herself double over. This time she wept not for the child but for herself, and for the injustice of it having to be herself after all. That it should have been she, and not even a summer person. That it should have been she and not Sarah Copley or Ann Chase or any of the other town stalwartsâfrom the Harvest Festival committee, and the school board, and the granite stock sunk generations into this rigid New Hampshire soil. That it should have been she, the encroacher, entrenched in her foreignness, her otherness, her Communism-by-any-other-name ideas about business, her glorification of women's work, her hatred of men! How small this was, Naomi thought, to feel sorry for herself this way, when someone was dead. And yet there was a sweetness to it, too.
Surprised, she looked up, wiped the mirror to find her own eyes, and saw it there, unmistakable. In one motion the force that had turned her head, drawing her gaze to the still white object in the Sabbathday River, had also rent the cloth that bound Naomi Rothâwho was also immobilized, who was similarly dead. She could not mend it now, any more than she could return to set the baby back into the river. The same river twice, so the saying went, and nothingâshe saw this nowâwould be left unaltered in its wake.
Pad of the Evidence
TO A NEW ENGLANDER, THE NORTHERN HARDWOODS' annual shedding of their chlorophyll was not precisely the inauguration of beauty, the ecstatic cacophony of landscape-induced endorphins, that it was to the gaping outsider; rather, this predictable explosion of wild reds and speckled oranges, staunch evergreens and punctuations of yellow running the hillsides in their stripes and patches, was a starting pistol for the brief season in which substantial money might just possibly get made. Goddard, like any other town within striking distance of Boston and New York, assumed a communal and rictus-tight happy face, beginning now and lasting until the last leaf fell, after which anyone wandering into town would have the same chances as a local of finding a neighbor in a good mood. The Unitarian church at the north end of Elm, a dingy building adorned with the steeple of its predecessor on the siteâthe one element salvaged from a fire in 1968 âalways attained an illusory sheen at this time of year, a hit of bone-white against the hillside of leaves rising behind it, as if newly skimmed with paint for an annual show. Downtown homeowners engaged in genially
competitive decoration, lashing cornstalks and spent sunflowers to the doorposts and loading up their front steps with pumpkins and mums, as if each resident were intent on advertising his own personal harvest. The flatlanders loved it. Tom and Whit's alone looked like the cover of a getaway guide to New England, with its cleverly peeling rockers, each endowed with a cleverly rocking urbanite in a red down vest or a rag sweater purchased in Harvard Square, each balancing a steaming coffee on the armrest and a fat Sunday
Globe
in his or her blue-jeaned lap. For this seasonal blink, the motels were full, even in mid-week, and the most unlikely of stores was crowded with the most unlikely of customers. Naomi herself was inundated with drop-ins at the mill, not a few of whom clutched their catalogues, which made her very happy. People walked straighter, conscious of being observed and thought typical of themselves. There was an inhalation of collective pretension. It wouldn't last, but it wasn't supposed to last. And naturally it all had to happen right now.
competitive decoration, lashing cornstalks and spent sunflowers to the doorposts and loading up their front steps with pumpkins and mums, as if each resident were intent on advertising his own personal harvest. The flatlanders loved it. Tom and Whit's alone looked like the cover of a getaway guide to New England, with its cleverly peeling rockers, each endowed with a cleverly rocking urbanite in a red down vest or a rag sweater purchased in Harvard Square, each balancing a steaming coffee on the armrest and a fat Sunday
Globe
in his or her blue-jeaned lap. For this seasonal blink, the motels were full, even in mid-week, and the most unlikely of stores was crowded with the most unlikely of customers. Naomi herself was inundated with drop-ins at the mill, not a few of whom clutched their catalogues, which made her very happy. People walked straighter, conscious of being observed and thought typical of themselves. There was an inhalation of collective pretension. It wouldn't last, but it wasn't supposed to last. And naturally it all had to happen right now.
Only three days after she had found the dead baby in the Sabbathday River, the drive into Goddard was slow, the road dense with creeping cars. Naomi, whose mood was foul anyway, could practically hear the “oohs” from inside the Connecticut Taurus she followed. She drove with one dull eye on the plate (RT 2 LIF) and another on the summit of Moosilauke, or a portion of its humpbacked summit, which loomed, by increments, into view, lurking like some bald and homely uncle at a family party. Moosilauke, so unlike those furry green mountains across the river, she thought nowâincredibly, for the first timeâthose smooth Vermont mountains, like warm undulations in the landscape. Why couldn't
their
mountains be like that? Here were only jags and bare patches of rock, unapologetic and uncivil. Green Mountain versus White Mountain, she mused. Marble versus granite. Well, what did you expect? In New Hampshire the mountains had nothing to hide; like their appointed spokesman, the Old Man himself, they showed their plain faces to the wind. She supposed it was time for her to show her face, too.
their
mountains be like that? Here were only jags and bare patches of rock, unapologetic and uncivil. Green Mountain versus White Mountain, she mused. Marble versus granite. Well, what did you expect? In New Hampshire the mountains had nothing to hide; like their appointed spokesman, the Old Man himself, they showed their plain faces to the wind. She supposed it was time for her to show her face, too.
She pulled into the mill's driveway, the right wheels of her station wagon dipping violently into a ditchâa remembrance of mud seasons pastâas she rolled toward the front door, and the motion made her bite her tongue. Cursing softly, if gingerly, she stamped up the steps and across the porch, then went inside.
“Let's call Ashley,” Naomi said. “We've got to get that ditch filled. And the banister to the attic is jiggling again.”
Mary Sully at the front desk was nearly obscured by mail, but not quite enough to hide her stare. “Uhkay. But ⦠Miss Roth?”
Naomi,
she almost said. But she had given up. “Yup?” She set down her bag and automatically began turning over the order forms: Hawaii, Arizona, Connecticut. South Dakotaâa first. There was a message from Heather, still down with stomach flu, who would need an extra week with her orders.
she almost said. But she had given up. “Yup?” She set down her bag and automatically began turning over the order forms: Hawaii, Arizona, Connecticut. South Dakotaâa first. There was a message from Heather, still down with stomach flu, who would need an extra week with her orders.
“Is it true? About you and that baby?”
Naomi's face fell. “Yeah. My luck, eh?” Mary looked horrified. Naomi, in defeat, could practically hear her remark ricochet around the town. “I mean, it was terrible. God, I was sick about it yesterday. Couldn't eat a thing.”
“I couldn't imagine.” Mary shook her head, the faintest ripple in her full, pale cheeks.
Naomi couldn't either, despite the fact that it had happened to her.
“Was it ⦠I mean, the paper didn't say. Was it a boy?” Mary asked, her voice thick with dread. She had two herselfâone in school, the other still in diapers.
“No,” Naomi said with a thin smile, happy, at least, to deliver this wisp of good news. “A little girl.”
There was the briefest instant of relief on the woman's face. Then she summoned her horror again. “What's going to happen?” Mary said. “What are they going to do?”
Naomi fell into the nearest chair and grimly eyed the dust beneath Mary's desk. Behind her, the murmurings of women had given way to blaring silence. Whatever she said next, she knew, would have to be loud enough for everyone to hear.
“I don't know any more than anyone else, Mary,” Naomi said. “You know, it was only chance that I was there. It doesn't give me any special insight into what it means or what's going to happen.” In the stillness, they waited for her to go on. “I do know,” Naomi said firmly, “that the police are taking it very seriously, as they should. The D.A. I met, well, he's very determined. He came down from Peytonville to run the whole thing, and I don't doubt that he'll do whatever he feels is necessary. I'm sure he'll find the ⦔ She glanced at Mary's face, tight with keen, if guilty, interest. “The one, you know, who put her there.”
“The murderer, you mean.”
Naomi looked up. Ann Chase was in the doorway. A half-completed rug featuring a dopey spaniel hung limp from her wrist, rendering her own harsh expression vaguely comical by association. Ann, once lithe and blond, had let age both thicken her and darken her hair and was now, blandly, “of certain years” and an indeterminate hair color. She wore pants the hue of river mud and a white sweater. She was glaring at Naomi.
“I suppose.”
“Suppose, hell. She murdered that baby.”
“She,” Naomi managed. “Meaning?”
“What are you, dense? That baby wasn't just
put
in the river. What I heard, she was cut up like a pumpkin. The motherâ”
put
in the river. What I heard, she was cut up like a pumpkin. The motherâ”
“Now you don't know that!” Naomi's voice rose in alarm. “You have no way of knowing it was the baby's mother!”
“Not the mother?” Ann Chase said shrilly. “Okay, then, where
is
the mother? Why don't we hear her yelling and screaming about her baby's gone missing and who took it? Somebody takes your brand-new baby out of its cradle and you're on the horn to Nelson Erroll before the door slams, you know as well as me. Now where's the mother if it wasn't her?”
is
the mother? Why don't we hear her yelling and screaming about her baby's gone missing and who took it? Somebody takes your brand-new baby out of its cradle and you're on the horn to Nelson Erroll before the door slams, you know as well as me. Now where's the mother if it wasn't her?”
“Ann,” Naomi said, “it might have been the baby's father, did you think of that? Maybe he was mad about it. Maybe he didn't want to be a father.” Even saying the words made her numb.
“Fine,” Ann said, her voice suspended between airy and arch. “You want to pretend it isn't true? You go ahead. But that doesn't
make
it not true.”
make
it not true.”
Naomi sighed heavily. She eyed the stack of orders on Mary's desk with something like longing, imagining herself flicking on her computer, setting down her coffee mug. Mary sat stiffly, her eyes averted. In the mill room, the shuffling of feet, but no voices. Ann, with a huff, turned and went back in, and Naomiâalmost against her willâfelt herself rise and follow. She laid a palm on Ann's white sweater and the woman stopped, rooted. Behind her an arc of six or seven, rugs spread over their laps, faces rapt. They had abandoned the pretense of not listening. “What?” Ann said.
Naomi swallowed. “Do you know something? I mean, you seem ⦔ She glanced at the ring of heads. “If you know something, you should go to Nelson, or this D.A. from Peytonville. If you knowâ”
“If I
know
?” Ann said, smiling unaccountably. “I was born here, Naomi. You think I don't know my neighbors? You think I don't know who lives here?”
know
?” Ann said, smiling unaccountably. “I was born here, Naomi. You think I don't know my neighbors? You think I don't know who lives here?”
Baffled, Naomi simply stared.
“You think we're in some big city and you can get away with thinking it's a stranger?”
This, Naomi thought, was somehow meant to refer to herself, but what it actually meant she found she ardently wished not to pursue.
Ann smiled, showing an equal display of ivory denture, canary tooth, and coral gum. Then she stalked to her seat, smoothed the burlap across her lap, and, with the murmured assent of her company, yanked a vicious length of wool through her unfortunate spaniel's paw. Naomi, for once relieved at the way the circle had closed, shutting her out, swung shut the door to the office and, beneath the fretful looks of Mary Sully, addressed her own work. That she knew fully well the unspoken lines of the conversation just past did not give her any comfort, but having spent the previous days pushing from her thoughts the dead baby in the river, Naomi found that little more effort was required to push this from her thoughts as well.
The mood in the mill did not improve. Indeed, when Ann Chase headed home around lunchtime, and Naomi might reasonably have expected a dissipation of the tension, it seemed to grow even worse, as if, without their self-selected spokesperson, no one quite knew what to say to her and, not knowing, said absolutely nothing. A few times she had ventured into the back room, flashing a newly poured and steaming cup of coffee as if to advertise her willingness to talkâeven to talk about
that.
But the heads stayed bowed over their work and nobody would look at her.
that.
But the heads stayed bowed over their work and nobody would look at her.
Not, in itself, a very unusual state of play. What Naomi missed most about being married to Danielâpossibly, apart from sex, the only thing she
did
missâwas a level of conversational intimacy that dipped below the strictly ephemeral. Over the years she had felt the ties between herself and her women friends elongate into intangibility. There were such recognizable trajectories to their lives, she thought from her distant berth in the north country; they had entered professions, found mates, produced and nurtured children. Their heads were full of play groups and dissertations and organized protests and endless gatherings to talk and talk and talk. They did not talk much to Naomi these days. It had been two years since the last one had ventured upcountry to campâ
with her two adopted Vietnamese childrenâin the amorphous “space” of the A-frame. Naomi's friends were naturally happy to hear from her when she called; they were happy to learn that her business was doing well, that she was adjusting to living alone. But they had new friends nowâfrom work, or seminars, or the playground. Naomi understood that they found it difficult to consider her own circumstances when they neither knew nor could begin to conjure the personalities involved. There seemed less and less to say about any of it.
did
missâwas a level of conversational intimacy that dipped below the strictly ephemeral. Over the years she had felt the ties between herself and her women friends elongate into intangibility. There were such recognizable trajectories to their lives, she thought from her distant berth in the north country; they had entered professions, found mates, produced and nurtured children. Their heads were full of play groups and dissertations and organized protests and endless gatherings to talk and talk and talk. They did not talk much to Naomi these days. It had been two years since the last one had ventured upcountry to campâ
with her two adopted Vietnamese childrenâin the amorphous “space” of the A-frame. Naomi's friends were naturally happy to hear from her when she called; they were happy to learn that her business was doing well, that she was adjusting to living alone. But they had new friends nowâfrom work, or seminars, or the playground. Naomi understood that they found it difficult to consider her own circumstances when they neither knew nor could begin to conjure the personalities involved. There seemed less and less to say about any of it.
Meanwhile, there were no rap sessions in Goddard, shockingly enough. Few consciousnesses had ever been raised in the church basements or around the kitchen tables of Flourish's knitters and hookers. Naomi, for her part, would gladly have been open with themâshe had never been a secretive person, especiallyâbut here there was no one to talk to. These women showed each other little enough of their lives, and yet they seemed to find ways of revealing even less to Naomi. It was barely possible to worm from them the names of their husbands, the ages of their children, let alone the nature of their various distresses. Now and then she might be able to glean some crumb of coded information, a morose reference to the Woodstock Tavern (which was the local dialect for My-husband-is-drinking-again) or a chilly reference to a sibling, signifying a lifetime of pained acrimony. When they spoke, it was to deflect attention from themselves or to condemn one another outright. When they laughed, it was at someone else's failing. They did not view their own lives as mysteries to be unfurled, perplexities to be distilled, imbibed, and benefited fromâthe word “feeling” came from a foreign dialect; it simply had no meaning. The notion of emotional exploration, let alone directed counseling orâGod forbidâpsychiatry, was infinitely suspect. Even Heather, with whom Naomi engaged in a sort of pantomime of friendship, kept so much back that Naomi inevitably felt the scrim of distance between them.
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