My dearest Peg,
Having received your latest correspondence, I shall postpone the washing and write an immediate reply. First, here is the sum you requested. More will follow if you need it. I am sorry to hear about your troubles at the hotel. Doubtless you were designated the scapegoat by some wicked fellow worker. Do you have any suspicions as to the identity of the true culprit? We had a similar incident here long ago, when Mrs. Webster was still alive. The item missing was a silver wedding goblet with the Craxtons’ names and the date of their marriage engraved on the base. I was wrongly accused and given notice. I expect you were too young to remember much about this scandal. Suffice it to say that before nightfall, justice was achieved. The second maid, a seventeen-year-old girl named Jesse, confessed and returned the goblet. Mrs. Craxton apologized to me. I wonder whether the incident had something to do with my speedy promotion following Mrs. Webster’s departure three months later. You see, oftentimes there is an opportunity for reparation. Perhaps you will be rewarded for your difficulties should the truth be revealed. For now, I hope this money will help. If you cannot find another position soon, please, Peg, return home. It seems that Mr. Craxton expects to retain possession of the estate after all, and I have decided to stay on, though in what capacity I am not certain. You will be interested to learn that Mr. Craxton has asked me to marry him. I am thinking it over. My beloved daughter, you are always welcome here no matter what, and if you have an opinion regarding Mr. Craxton’s proposal, please let me know. As always, Mother
This is the letter Ellen will never write:
My dearest poppet,
So they’ve accused you of stealing, have they? No surprise. Every woman who works as a maid will be accused sooner or later. It is one of the hazards of the job. Virtually the same happened to me right here at the Manikin, way back when I was new on the staff and working under Mrs. Webster. Luckily, the true thief came forward, and I was exonerated. But I learned my lesson, you may be sure. A domestic servant is easy game. The trick, then, is to make your employers dependent upon you. Make them incapable of doing anything for themselves. Make them love you. But you could tell me a few things about the nature of such love, couldn’t you, Peg? You know what it is to win the heart of your superior. Let me just say that I am sorry for reading your diary without permission and I want you to come home. We’ll leave it at that.
Home, yes, it is my home, more mine than Henry Craxton Junior’s, you may be sure. Remember Mr. Craxton? Well, he woke up early this morning shouting and blubbering, making all sorts of commotion (you recall that his bedroom is directly below ours). Being the only other resident in this cavernous house, I rushed down to help, thinking he’d fallen asleep with a cigarette in his hand and set himself on fire. I found him lying on the floor in a heap of blankets, his eyes open but his mind still asleep. I’ve seen it before, Peg. When you were a wee child, you had the night terrors most every night. So I did to Mr. Craxton just what I’d do to you. I wrapped my arms around him and whispered, “Hush, hush now.”
But Mr. Henry Craxton Junior wasn’t still asleep as I’d thought. He was wide awake, scared by nothing but a stuffed owl left on his table by some prankster. And he wasn’t so confused that he couldn’t tell it was Ellen Griswood holding him. Ellen Griswood in her nightgown, nothing on underneath, for you know I like to air myself out at night. So he huddled in my arms, his teary face pressed against my bosom, his whole body trembling, and he sobbed, Ellen (understand, there was no presumption here, since yesterday I gave him permission to address me thus), Ellen, he cried, Ellen, I love you. Imagine that! Henry Craxton Junior in love with his housekeeper! If that’s not unreasonable, I don’t know what is.
If you were still here at the Manikin, Peg, I would have had a different response to Mr. Craxton’s overtures, you may be sure. I would have picked myself up off the floor and marched straight back to my room. Our room. Your bed is there for you, should you want it. But without you I find myself less concerned with manners. In your absence I have let myself go. I am no longer respectable. I am dissolute, without purpose. I am only interested in pleasure, and for this I deserve a good whipping! And what do I get instead but an avowal of love. It’s not that I’m unworthy. Hah, quite the opposite! I am too good for such a man! And still I held him and let him cover me with kisses. And I have no regrets.
For here’s the thing, Peg: he loves me, no denying. What do you think accounts for it? I’m no beauty. Never was. I’ve got no special talents. I have no more education than what my aunt Lila took the time to give me. I wager he is more affected by his mother’s death than he’d like to admit and is looking for comfort. She was quite mad toward the end, I’ve come to realize. Mr. Craxton feels confident that he can invalidate her will on grounds of insanity. I predict that he will come to regret his maneuvers. This house is more of a burden than he realizes.
I don’t think he will regret what he said to me this morning, though it is my fault for taking him in my arms there on the floor, the morning light filling the room like murky water, just the two of us, Mr. Craxton and Mrs. Griswood, as opposite as night and day, melting together into the dawn. Now I’m inclined to tell it to you in a roundabout way, to hint and hope you guess it on your own because the truth is like a pin piercing my modesty, what with it being so sudden, so unexpected. But you’re my daughter, so I’m going to come straight out and tell you what Mr. Hal Craxton has proposed, astonishing as it will seem, and it is astonishing, unbelievable, really, so I’m not going to try to convince you that it’s true. You decide whether I’m pulling the wool over your eyes. Or maybe I’m the one who has been duped, which is the far more probable scenario, I should point out, and maybe Hal Craxton is merely buying time by falsely offering me a future when in fact he’ll have forgotten his proposal by noon today when we meet for lunch; rather, meet at lunch, for he has not invited me to share his table with him again, so I will simply carry the plates and refill his wineglass and watch his face for some sign of affection, some indication that he meant what he said to me this morning and that I should take seriously his proposal.
Simply put (though it’s not simple at all, is it, Peg? It’s not just a matter of a poor woman saying yes to a kindly benefactor, what with Mr. Hal Craxton’s questionable history regarding women …), Mr. Craxton has offered his hand in marriage. Of course, there’s a chance it could be just hokum and nothing has changed. I will continue in my position as housekeeper and Mr. Craxton will continue in his position as employer, I will scrub the floors and he will pay the bills, and we will pretend that what happened never happened. Or else—and this possibility will seem the more unlikely because it is the more difficult to imagine—by the time you return home your mum will be Mrs. Henry Craxton Junior. And then the question becomes, Do we want this? We including the both of us, Peg, you and me, for though you’re a working girl now you still have some growing to do and I wish you’d do it at home, our home, where I will be the mistress of the manor and you without a care in the world. You’ll come home if I marry Hal Craxton, won’t you? You’ll come home to money, or you won’t come home at all. Your taste for luxury was acquired on the sly, Peg, I had my back turned, but now it’s too late to do anything about it, so if with a single word I could lure you back to me, then I will say that word, I will shout it from my attic room. Our room. There will be no doubt about my meaning. I will scream “Yes!” at the top of my voice, and Henry Craxton Junior will look up from the magazine he is reading in the library and know that he has a wife.
How could I refuse him, given what is at stake? And whatever complaints I might have about Hal Craxton, they pale when I consider his love for me. That’s if he truly loves me, of course, and though it’s hard to believe, I think he does love me, Peg, he can’t help it, though it’s come over him as fast as a fever. This morning he confessed his love not to deceive me but to persuade me. And he did not try to take advantage of me in a moment of weakness. That he feels compelled to make his love legitimate convinces me that he is a changed man, less vain, more responsible. And I have changed, too. I have had feelings I wouldn’t have dreamed of allowing myself six months ago. I can’t say honestly that I love Mr. Craxton, but when I consider the benefits for you, my poppet, I am convinced that they far outweigh the losses. I hope you agree and will come home to share in my good fortune. As ever, Mother
Lore is not a trophy hunter. Never has been. Doesn’t give a damn about antler points or unperforated hides. Come spring, he even starts to wonder why he doesn’t just leave the pesky creatures alone. With the grouse underfoot, the fawns like speckled shades following the does, the otters teaching water dances to their young, Lore feels like an intruder, a trespasser in this bountiful world. By fall he’ll be carrying his rifle again, to be sure—somehow the sharp smell of cold in the air makes killing seem as sensible, as necessary, as harvesting. But as daylight stretches out and the world revives, Lore has little appetite for blood.
Now his only business is to groom the land and make it presentable. He spent the morning cropping the box hedges below the Manikin’s front porch—Sid’s old job. When he’s being honest with himself, Lore knows that there aren’t many chores Sid Cheney did that he can’t cover on his own. Still, he misses the gardener’s company. With Junket’s help, he’s devoting the afternoon to clearing the main trails of branches and trees toppled by winter storms. Usually he enjoys this work, but today he’s got a bothersome tooth that sends a shiver of pain through his head with every pull of his handsaw. Not that the pain is anything to complain about. There’s no reason to lose a tooth if the pain isn’t unbearable, so he’ll wait months before he drags himself to the Millworth dentist. And in his present mood, the pain in his jaw even seems fitting—not deserved, exactly, but appropriate.
He is cutting a thick maple branch into stove wood, his face squinched from the effort. Back his arm plunges, and the saw sinks deeper into the bark; forward, and dust wafts up and coats the edges of his nostrils. It feels as though he is scraping his own teeth through the wood, and he saws faster to be done with it. Sweat drips down his cheek and into the corner of his mouth. When he tastes the salty moisture he stops sawing, thinking for a moment that he has been weeping without realizing it and has swallowed a tear. But no, the wad of straight hair hanging like a loose sock over his forehead is drenched in sweat, his eyes are as dry as chalk, and if he felt a momentary sadness over lost possibilities, he feels just fine now, a little breathless from the effort of work but certainly not undone by a woman who will never love him.
Here, she’s in his mind, Mrs. Griswood herself vying for space in his consciousness while the pain from his tooth tries to push the thought of her away. As though to settle the dispute, Lore heaves his boot down on the branch, breaking through the last wedge of wood and sending it crashing to the ground. With it the pain from his molar bursts and spreads like a thick, warm liquid behind the surface of his skin. He is surprised to hear a moan escape from his throat, and when the pain has subsided to a dull throbbing, he glances around, half expecting to see his son hurrying toward him. But Lore would prefer a woman’s solace if he had a choice, Mrs. Griswood’s steady, sympathetic hand.… And here she is again, a nuisance of a woman buzzing inside his head.
He would never have guessed that Ellen Griswood was so interested in material fortune that she would encourage the advances of Hal Craxton. Apparently, she’s been harboring a secret, greedier self all along, sustaining this side of her until an opportunity arose. That’s the way it is with women—they can’t be trusted. Better to leave them alone. Now Lore is alone and Mrs. Griswood is yielding to the ministrations of the laziest son of a bitch Lore has ever known.
In the distance he hears the tear of underbrush—Junket must be hard at work while Lore wastes time pondering a woman’s deceit. But she never swore she’d turn away other men, and though that’s what Lore expected, he can’t accuse her of breaking a promise she hadn’t made. And if after so many years he finds himself able to imagine Ellen Griswood as his own, it’s not because he’s been inspired by jealousy. Rather, her new romance has made Lore dissatisfied with old routines. For ten years Mrs. Griswood went about her work with quiet efficiency, and Lore depended upon her to stick to her routine, just as he depended upon his reflection to meet him in his mirror every morning. Suddenly he’s lost his reflection, whether to the devil or to Hal Craxton it hardly matters. What matters is that he’s lonely.
The sound of his son at work serves to emphasize that they are intruders here—the only way they can exist on the land is to destroy it, rip it apart like an obsolete map and scatter the pieces. Lore kicks away a stone, feels a jab from his rotting molar, kicks again. He was taught early in his life to give up nothing but shit and piss to the earth, to hoard even his breath and always sleep with his head under the blankets, for the warmth from breathing equals the warmth of a buffalo hide, according to his father, a man whose temper calmed only when he was sleeping out in the open air on a mountaintop, lying with his head to the wind, blankets folded under his feet. Then his temper would fade with the embers, and he’d tell Lore about places neither of them had ever seen—tamarack swamps, canyons, salt deserts where the surface was as thick and soft as pudding. And though Lore has always treated nature more generously than his father would have liked, in his present mood he regrets every breath that he let dissipate into the air. He should have taken his father’s advice to heart. The natural world is a lovely adversary whose beauty may never be trusted.
His father finally decided that he couldn’t live without his beloved rival, so he packed up his camping gear and left home for good. Lore was Junket’s age at the time, old enough to understand his father’s reasons. His mother didn’t understand, though—for months she kept setting a place for her husband at the dinner table, and he didn’t show.
Sometimes it seems to Lore that he sees his father’s wildness in his son’s eyes, a wildness that is ultimately self-destructive. What Junket needs is a mother, preferably a hardworking mother like his own, or like Ellen Griswood, yes, Mrs. Griswood would do just fine, that’s been the truth all along, even if Lore hadn’t been able to admit it. But he’s desperate enough to convince himself of it now, and for Junket’s sake he will fall down on his knees before the woman he never bothered to love and plead with her to forget Hal Craxton and consider him, Lore Bennett, instead. Yes, Junk needs a mother, and his need will serve neatly as Lore’s excuse.
How faint, almost impalpable, the pain in his jaw. How distant, the sound of his son’s labors. How ridiculous Lore Bennett will seem to Ellen Griswood when he courts her, as ridiculous as a grown man imitating an ape. But he’s willing to put dignity aside, to debase himself in order to save his son from the wildness. And in the process he’ll save Mrs. Griswood from Hal Craxton. That bastard couldn’t really care for her, not in the way she deserves. Craxton’s out to win a competition with himself, to add another X in his list of seductions, and despite what Ellen Griswood may think she wants, Lore is her only honorable hope.
While he hesitates, he observes the life of the woods. A yellow finch spills like a drop of brightly colored paint from the heights of an oak and flits away, a bluejay clings to a knob of a crab apple, the young leaves of a sugar maple glisten in the sunlight, and the creamy white flowers of an ash tree dapple the background. Junk must be resting—Lore hears only the light drumming of a woodpecker hidden inside the foliage. The boy will come looking for his father any minute, but Lore would prefer to go back to the Manikin alone, so he calls out his son’s name, calls twice more before he hears an answer.
“I’m going down to the house for a bit,” Lore shouts, and though Junk remains out of sight, he calls back, “See you later, then!” and Lore answers, “See you.” He stomps away, trying to make his footsteps sound confident, even cheerful, when in truth the task ahead fills him with a peculiar dread. What if Ellen refuses him? But Lore won’t spin out answers to what if. Instead, he repeats the lie that inspired him in the first place: he is acting on behalf of others. His son and Ellen Griswood both need his assistance, they need to be saved from accidents of passion, and by the end Lore will be the celebrated hero of this story. Hey ho, away he goes to rescue the woman from a terrible fate.
No buckskin fringe flutters in the wind as he strides along, no musket graces his shoulder, but still he feels like an anxious pioneer, each step carrying him ten years forward in time until he reaches the collar of lawn surrounding the Manikin. Only then does he falter. The long grass reaches inside his trouser cuffs and tickles his ankles, and he reminds himself that he should mow the lawn. Wild crocuses dot the green, and he stoops to pluck one, plucks another, collects a handful of flowers as he approaches the house.
The windows are like dark pools of water, undisturbed by any motion. The odd stillness gives the impression that the occupants have fled in panic, taking nothing with them but the clothes on their backs. Lore enters through the backdoor, emerging from the pantry into the kitchen, where steam rises from the stove’s hot-water reservoir and a pot of soup simmers unattended. Everyone has gone away, Lore assumes, his logic distorted by fear. They have fled, leaving Junket and Lore behind. What made them go? Lore is the only sentient presence in the house, and everything—the crocuses in his hand, the braid of garlic hanging beside the window, the statue of a woman bent over the table, her face hidden in her hands—everything has turned to stone.
“Sylva!”
“Dear God, you startled me!”
“I didn’t see you.”
“I’m sitting right here in front of your eyes, Lore.”
“You were so quiet.”
“I was thinking.”
“Thinking?” Lore is still baffled by the sudden emergence of life in this tomb, and it takes him a minute to orient himself. He sinks back into a chair and lets the flowers fall in a little heap on the table.
“You doing all right, Lore?”
“Fine, fine, just out of breath.” He forces himself to pant a bit.
“Well, here’s something that’s gonna take your breath away altogether, Lore Bennett.”
She’s right—Lore finds it hard to catch his breath, for though he’s not sure what Sylva is preparing to reveal to him, he perceives from her tone of voice that his disappointment will be great. Only then does he notice Sylva’s two boys hunched together with crayons and paper at the far end of the room, away from the hot stove, and the little one, Gracie, too big for a cradle now, sleeping on a quilt in the corner. As though the baby can feel the force of Lore’s stare, she opens her eyes with a start and begins to cry. One of the boys calls, “Mama!” without looking up from his picture, and Sylva says tiredly, vaguely, “I know it,” and goes to the baby, scoops her up, rubs her hand in a spiral on the child’s back. Lore watches her hand as Sylva murmurs comfort. “You’re awake now, honey, you must have been dreaming, dreaming about monsters for sure, but your mama’s here, your bad dream is over, and you know I wish I could say the same about another bad dream, but this one’s just beginning, a dream about monsters. Can you guess what I’m after, Lore? Lore?”
He looks up when she repeats his name—he’s hardly been listening and doesn’t understand the question.
“Course you can’t guess it, the way it came out of the blue like that. There’s sickness in this house, Lore. Mr. Craxton brought it with him. Took his mother’s life. Now Ellen…”
It must be grief choking her. Lore leaps from his chair, finishing in his mind what Sylva hasn’t finished saying out loud. “Ellen…” He can’t say it either, but he understands that she’s out of reach forever, that she’s dead, Ellen Griswood is dead!
“No, no,” Sylva bursts out, “it’s not … oh, she’s fine, Lore, there’s nothing wrong with Ellen, nothing wrong with her body at least, but her soul…”
“What are you saying, Sylva?”
“I’m saying that Mr. Craxton asked our Ellen to marry him. And she’s up and accepted.”
Now the baby is crying again, and the boys erupt in a tussle over a picture that’s been ripped in half. Lore helps out Sylva by grabbing each boy by an arm, and somehow he manages to hold them while Sylva gives them a dressing-down. Still the baby is crying, and Lore wishes that just for a second or two they’d all turn back to stone so he can think about what Sylva has just told him and try to understand.
* * *
It is up to a woman to know the affliction in her own heart, but only God knows the hearts of all his children, so Sylva tells herself that she mustn’t interfere in Ellen Griswood’s affairs, except to say a prayer for her and ask the Lord to open Ellen’s eyes and help her to recognize the sickness and mend her ways by withdrawing her promise to Mr. Craxton. But maybe Ellen prefers ruin to widowhood and has accepted Hal Craxton out of desperation. She looked desperate enough as she announced her plans to Sylva and Nora while they were preparing lunch: desperately pleased with herself, and with desperate coyness she wrote out her consent on a piece of paper, which she folded and tucked into Mr. Craxton’s wineglass. He was losing patience, Ellen claimed, though he’d proposed to her only hours earlier. She feared that if she kept him waiting, he’d find himself another bride.
Though it shouldn’t be her business, Sylva couldn’t help speaking her mind to Peter far into the night, until he grunted his last agreement, turned his face into the pillow, and fell asleep. Now Sylva has pretty much finished her talk with God and there’s just the little one inside her to listen, and if it doesn’t understand, so much the better. A woman can’t help sharing thoughts with an unborn child. It’s listening now and wants to hear more, judging from the impatient prods. Sylva slips her hand under the blankets, lifts her nightgown, and molds her palm around the right quadrant of her swollen belly, feels a rolling motion and then three determined kicks: knock, knock, knock.
Are you there, Mama?
I’m here, child. Thinking. Just thinking about a poor woman who’s been blinded by the dazzle of money. We’ve got to pity her, child.
What is pity, Mama?
Pity is forgiveness without knowing.
Her little one blinking, stretching, quickening, kneading her belly from the inside. Are you there, Mama?
I’m here. Thinking about a white woman who’s beset with a sickness only God can cure. Foolish Ellen. Won’t even take the time to think twice about it. Must be she loves the house because no woman in her right mind would love Hal Craxton. But she’s not in her right mind, and if there were roots to cure her, I’d find them. But there’s nothing I can do now but pray, and when I’m done praying I’d better mind my own business and let Ellen Griswood mind hers, and if she truly wants to get married before the end of the month like she says, I’ll prepare such a wedding feast she’ll think it’s all a dream.
What is dream, Mama?
You are, little one.
On through the night the child tumbles, punches, kicks against its confinement, and Sylva keeps her hands on her belly to catch the imprint of its motion on her palms. And though she hardly sleeps even an hour, when she finally leaves her bed early in the morning she feels refreshed, or more precisely, unburdened, having decided at some point during the night that there is still one person who can save Ellen. So while Peter and the children sleep, Sylva kindles the stove and settles at the kitchen table. She has to steady the rickety pinewood table with her elbows while she writes, and she uses only those words she is sure she can spell. As she finishes she hears Gracie beginning to whimper down the hall, so she folds the paper, slides it into an envelope, and copies the address from the back of a postcard she received last month and ever since has kept tacked to the kitchen wall. The card shows an aerial view of Manhattan. Peg’s joke on the back of the postcard was for the benefit of the boys. She’d written: I live at the top of a skyscraper and on a clear day can see across the ocean to France! Come visit me sometime. And though Sylva knows better, that’s where she has pictured Peg: in a fancy penthouse apartment, smoking and laughing and presiding over the world. Such a willful, fun-loving girl, not too old for a spanking, Sylva thinks with more than a little indignation, but whether Peg is mature enough to recognize her mother’s foolishness and hightail it home remains to be seen.