NO ONE PROMISED IT was going to be easy.
But whereas in Boston, Finn could flee the house—and often did—in Hampton, there was nowhere for him to go.
They spent a long time debating who was going to take which bedroom. Seven bedrooms, eleven people, much argument, heated discussion. It seemed to go on forever, but when Finn checked what day it was, it was still January 1st!
Finn and Vanessa took the master bedroom on the first floor in the back, but who would take the two adjacent rooms? They had been built for children, but the children wanted to share one of the large rectangular bedrooms upstairs with a view of the fields and the faraway river.
Walter settled the issue. He didn’t want to walk up the stairs, so he and Lucy took the two downstairs bedrooms, since they slept separately.
Upstairs, Finn’s girls took the large room in the back and Finn’s parents took the large room in the front, which left three people for the two remaining smaller rooms: Eleanor, Monty, and Isabelle. Monty said under no circumstances would he share a room with his mother.
Finn said, “Who asked you?”
Junie said, “Monty, would you prefer to share a room with Isabelle?”
Monty turned tomato red and hid in a different part of the house.
Eleanor wanted her son to have what he wanted. Finn said that was Monty’s biggest problem: irrespective of other people’s needs, Monty got what he wanted. Eleanor said it was her father’s house. Walter told Eleanor not to be a prig or he would make her sleep in the canning shed. Isabelle, peacemaker as ever, said she didn’t mind sharing a room with someone.
“Who, Isabelle?” Finn said. “My father and mother? Walter, maybe? Lucy? Or would you and Eleanor like to be roommates?”
Eleanor said she wouldn’t mind that. Eleanor!
“Daddy, Isabelle should share a room with you and Mommy,” Junie said. And she and Isabelle laughed like clowns in a circus.
“Some things are worth argument, but not this,” Isabelle said to Finn who stood with his arms crossed, waiting for her to finish the hilarity with his daughter. “Monty takes one room, Eleanor other, and I sleep next to furnace. I found myself secret room.” She beamed. “Want to see?”
The family, minus Vanessa, piled out past the pantries, the canning room, and the shed. In the shoveled-out side yard, near the coal bins and across from the root cellar, was a door that led to a walled-in intimate space. It had an alcove big enough for a full-size bed and a raised, built-in platform with deep drawers and a mattress. There was a round table in the corner by the window, a narrow wardrobe, a counter with a washbasin and a mirror over it as if for shaving. There was even a tiny bookshelf. It looked lived in, as if this might have been where John Reade stayed when he renovated the farm. It had hooks in the plaster walls, a mud grate for boots, set into the bluestone floor, a rug, and even curtains! As soon as the children saw it, they jumped onto the high bed and shrieked in protest. They all wanted to live in the secret room—even Finn.
Because in Finn’s new life, he now shared a wall with Lucy Adams, the mother of the woman Finn occasionally claimed marital privilege with. Talk about a flue dragged shut on the weak-tea fire of his under-siege passion.
“Seven bedrooms plus secret cave and still not enough?” Isabelle said when he was sulking as they unpacked their dry goods in the pantry.
“I wonder how you would feel if your mother slept next door to you and Mirik,” Finn said. “Or worse—his mother.”
“My mother did sleep next room to me and Mirik,” said Isabelle. “Until 1924 when we built her separate house. After you build me smoking bench, maybe you should build house for Walter and Lucy. How are you with hammer and nails?”
“This is why I can’t talk to you,” Finn said. “You’re always teasing.”
“Look at my face—do I look teasing?”
He left the pantry.
The next day, a blizzard dumped two more feet of snow on the farm. Finn longed for the snow to melt, for the earth to show itself, for spring to come, for life to begin. To him every January day felt as long as a year.
John Reade had done a good job with the renovation. But the water in the cisterns was frozen, and consequently there was no water inside the house except for what they could melt on the stove. There was barely any water to wash with, and all the heat came from the fireplace and the woodburning oven, which Isabelle fed nearly around the clock, until they came dangerously close to running out of wood.
Finn had to wade through the snow with her to the tree line to chop down a tree. When they were out by themselves, Finn confessed to her that he had never held an axe in his life and had no idea how to chop down anything. Isabelle teased him for five minutes and then showed him how to hold and swing an axe. She kept correcting his hold on the handle, but he got the job done. The tree came down, he fumbled with the saw, managed to cut the wood and then split it.
“I did well, right?” he said, admiring the pile in the snow.
“Very good,” she said. “But you keep putting thumb in wrong place. Like you never grip wooden shaft before.”
“Um—”
“I keep showing you. Thumb under and around, not over and on top. That’s proper hold. See? Do you want me to show you again?”
Finn could think of nothing polite to offer in reply. “No, thank you,” he managed, keeping a straight face. “I got it.”
The girls and Monty joined them in the forest and were duly punished for their boredom when Isabelle directed them to carry logs to the lean-to and to collect small branches for kindling. After that day, while most of the adults sat in the house and read, the three children went outside with Finn and Isabelle, to shovel snow, carry wood, build snowmen. One afternoon, they slogged all the way to Cornelius Brook at the back of the property. Isabelle used a pickaxe to break a hole in the ice and taught the kids how to ice fish. They caught six small river perches! Finn thought Vanessa would require hospitalization when Mae and Junie returned, boasting that Isabelle had shown them how to gut and clean fish.
Restless and impatient, Finn and Isabelle cleared the snow that kept falling, organized the rusted farm tools and guns in the barn, searched for ammunition, discussed hunting rabbits, inspected the stables and the outer buildings, and made a running list of all the things they needed to get when spring came. Meanwhile, when Walter and Earl got tired of sitting around, they painstakingly melted the ice inside the cistern and the furnace tank. Finally, they bled the radiators and threw coal into the combustion chamber. The radiators hissed to the family’s applause, the house became cozy and warm, and everyone took turns having a bath.
But January was a long month to live inside a snowed-in house, no matter how cozy it was. There was little wood, a shrinking supply of food and candles, dwindling coal, one deck of cards, and a mother- and sister-in-law whose main preoccupation was fretful agitation, salted by negative griping and petty grievances.
There were plenty of books, though. Like, all of them.
For entertainment, Finn’s children unpacked the books and spent days arranging them by color in tall stacks on the floor. When they got tired of that, they reordered them by subject, and when they got tired of that, they arranged them by thickness. The one thing the girls did not do was alphabetize them, almost as if they wanted to provoke their mother.
The family had no access to radio or newspapers. Another war could have started. Jobs could have come back. The stock market could have rebounded. Prohibition could have been repealed. Isabelle’s family could have arrived by boat. How would they find her when she was snowbound with no communication with the outside world?
“Don’t you worry, Finn,” Isabelle said. “If Mirik come, I promise you Schumann will find way to get in touch with me.” The supply of cigarettes fell so drastically, Finn and Isabelle had to share one when they stood out in the snow and smoked, discussing what else they could ration before they walked three miles and called Schumann from a public telephone at the general store to ask him to visit with some supplies.
But when Schumann finally came—by train and taxi—he brought cigarettes and newspapers but no news from overseas.