At 7:00 A.M., the first of May, a train leaves Grand Central, chugs somewhat hesitantly through the crowded suburbs, slowing for crossings every fifteen minutes or so before it passes through the Shawan-gunk foothills and descends into the lowlands of Dutchess County. In a more determined fashion it moves north along the Hudson, slipping in and out of the shadows of the Catskills and eventually veering west at Albany. As it wends its way through the deep valleys and along upland pastures, cows lift their heads just long enough to watch it pass, ruffed grouse and pheasant and jacksnipe cower in the hedgerows, and once in a while some carefree cottontail hops across the tracks, catches its paw beneath the rail, and is turned to blood and gristle in an instant. Onward the train goes, over the high plateau that extends across the state, the landscape defined aeons ago by the continental glacier, which formed moraines and gouged out waterfalls, turned aside streams and scraped mountains into rounded hills as the ice receded. To the north of the tracks, the orchards of the Ontario plain are covered with the snow of white blossoms; to the south, beyond the Mohawk River, the overlapping greens of hickory and chestnut and pine color the hillsides, and the pastures are dappled with buttercups and violets. Farmhouses built on nearby hillocks seem to watch the train, and occasionally a child stands on a front porch and waves, but the train passes without so much as a toot, intent upon its mission, fancying itself indomitable, as oblivious to the world as it is to the diverse lives inside its cars.
* * *
Gusts from the wheels tip the cattails toward the swollen river, reminding Peg of hundreds of slender-legged birds positioning themselves to drink. Hard to believe that she is going home, though, truth be told, in her four months away she never really understood why she’d left home at all. Nonetheless, in good Griswood fashion, she tried to make the best of the situation. Somehow she managed to find a job at the Dome Hotel on East Fifty-sixth Street, a job that kept her occupied twelve hours a day, seven days a week. When she wasn’t working she was either asleep or at a picture show, often both, since she found it hard to stay awake in a dark theater, even when the audience was howling at Harold Lloyd steering the city’s last horsecar into the side of a truck.
The other maids at the Dome figured her a snob because she insisted that she had no stories to tell about herself or her family. She went about her chores without complaining, changed stained sheets, scrubbed toilets, wiped up pubic hairs from bathtubs, and whenever an unwanted image tried to push into her consciousness, she’d dull it with the effort of mindless work, a skill inherited from her mother. Of course, she knew that she’d been raped, just as she knew that she’d grown up at a place called the Manikin, where her mother was the housekeeper. But she recalled these things as distant and unimpressive facts. She convinced herself that she didn’t much care one way or another about her past experiences, including what she’d felt for Lilian Stone. So at one time in her life she’d been enamored of a stylish young woman. So what? What mattered, all that mattered, was that she collect her weekly check and save for the future.
She reassured her mother in her letters that she was fine, even better than fine with her ample salary, room and board included, the picture shows and window displays and parks. Even when she lost her job without warning and had to ask her mother for money, she’d made her troubles seem as uneventful as if she’d rolled over in her sleep. It didn’t occur to her that Ellen herself might be revealing even less, and when the last letter arrived with a ten-dollar bill stitched to the paper, Peg read it so carelessly that she didn’t realize what her mother was telling her until Sylva’s note arrived the next day.
Peg stares out at the land, the flat terrain bending up to the foothills above the Mohawk Valley. She sees a goshawk perched on a fence post and immediately thinks of Lore Bennett. Thanks to him, this countryside is the subject Peg knows best, or at least knows effortlessly. Look what happened when she tried to leave it behind. She will be in Kettling, twelve miles from home, before five. This proximity makes her feel strangely aware of her body. The dry air of the train’s interior scrapes against her skin, making her shudder, and she listens to the crank of wheel shafts and the sound of metal against metal silencing the rest of the world. Peg Griswood, daughter of a housekeeper and, formerly, second assistant maid at the Dome Hotel on Fifty-sixth Street. Funny how fate can match up coincidences—Peg lost her job, wrote to her mother for money, and within a fortnight she was summoned by Sylva to the Manikin. Whether or not she’ll succeed in dissuading her mother from marriage remains uncertain. Sylva believes that Peg is the only one who can influence Ellen. Perhaps. But Peg has never known her mother to retract a commitment.
They know so little about each other, really. Less than ever, since Peg has been away. Ellen would never guess what happened to her daughter after she left the Manikin, and Peg has no intention of telling her. And from her side, Peg can only presume that Ellen has been bewitched. In Peg’s judgment, widowhood entailed as much responsibility as housekeeping. So how could Ellen, the most responsible of women, throw it all away for the likes of Hal Craxton? The trap must have been ingenious, the seduction so casual and quick that Ellen forgot to be cautious. And Peg is supposed to save the day by turning her mother against the man she has come to love—if such corruption can be called love. At least Peg’s mother can make her love legitimate, unlike Peg, who, on the basis of her one romance so far, tends toward the same sex, in particular, toward modish and sly young ladies. But that’s all over, and if Peg ever falls in love again—something she’s determined to avoid—she’ll keep the relationship safe and respectable. No more hanky-panky with beautiful heiresses for this girl, no ma’am, Peg is on the right track, she’s going home, traveling back into her childhood, to a time before she’d met Lily, a time when her body felt whole and independent and it hadn’t yet occurred to her that love could be so perilous.
That Peg can fool herself into such a state of nostalgia has more to do with the motion of the train than her own personality. This journey home seems an immense yet simple accomplishment—immense because she had to pass through Kettling and spend four months in the city before she could return, and simple because she’ll be home by dark, without much effort. But why did she leave home at all? She has tried to blame her mother for reading her diary—without this intrusion, Peg and Lily might be meeting covertly to this day. Peg wouldn’t have been at Kettling on Christmas night if it hadn’t been for her mother, and in all likelihood she still wouldn’t know that Lily had another lover.
But even before Peg had fallen asleep in the Kettling station, she’d already decided to return home, a decision lost in the terror of that terrible night and remembered now, as the train slows past warehouses and grinds into the city of Rochester. She lifts her suitcase from the compartment beneath the seat and steadies herself against the jolts of the train. She’d like to blame her mother for everything awful that has happened to her—after all, she is a teenage girl, with the usual mix of petulance and pride, and anger is one of the most refreshing of emotions. But she feels more helpless than angry and wishes she could tell her mother the truth about what happened in Kettling and let Ellen heal her with comforting words.
On the train to Kettling she listens to the wheels pounding, the cars dragging as the engineer eases the train forward, then slows again for a junction. Beneath every car—passenger and head-end cars alike—the double metal shoes press against the wheel treads and fill the air with slaughterhouse squeals, and Peg discovers that she’s been clenching her fists as though to squeeze the brakes even tighter. She releases her hands as the train picks up speed. Soon, too soon, they arrive in Kettling, where there are no demons, only local residents waiting for visitors, grocery boys sent to collect provisions, two postal workers, and the manager from the movie theater here to pick up this week’s three-reel entertainment. Peg avoids walking through the station. Instead, she hurries along the platform and into the parking lot, where a single taxi idles. She’d intended to take a taxi home, to arrive at the Manikin in style, but at the last minute she changes her mind and sets off on foot. It is four-thirty on a pleasant May afternoon. If she keeps up a good pace she’ll be home before dark.
Home. This is what Ellen has wanted for herself and Peg, just a home where they can live regardless of the whims of an employer. Hal Craxton must have seduced her with the Manikin, given her the opportunity to experience it as a mistress rather than a housekeeper. A magnificent home somehow being wrested back from charity into the Craxton family. Peg understands the lure and could forgive Hal Craxton almost everything if he would write her mother’s name on the deed to the Manikin. But she can’t forgive him for choosing Ellen Griswood as his wife, since he can have no honest reason. He is taking advantage of her poverty and plainness in order to gain a woman to tyrannize. A simple purpose, so obvious that Peg wonders why her mother doesn’t suspect it, though she doubts that at this point such an accusation would alter Ellen’s plans.
Still unsure what she will say to influence her mother, Peg leaves Kettling behind and starts the long trek to the Manikin. Ankle-high stalks of corn carpet the fields, red-winged blackbirds chatter in drainage ditches, and the crows swoop from treetop to treetop. Peg swings her canvas suitcase to clear the thick clouds of gnats. How crowded and busy the fields seem on this late spring afternoon. So the contrast is all the more disturbing when the open land gives way to forest. Immediately, Peg is struck by a disturbing lifelessness. The trees look freshly painted, their young leaves like pieces of wax, moss upholstered to their exposed roots, the forest floor synthetic, the whole scene beautiful, perhaps, but too colorful, too silent. How strange and dreamlike in its proportions, with the massive trees shrinking Peg to a miniature. Perhaps it is the effect of the late afternoon sunlight or the newness of the leaves, or maybe it is the result of four months in the city, but the forest seems a man-made replica of itself, as useless as an old stage set.
When a passing driver stops to offer her a lift, Peg declines, preferring to continue on foot despite her fatigue, hoping to see some sign of life, to catch a glimpse of a deer, a fox, even one of the fat groundhog pups so common along the roadside. On the train she’d felt as though she were returning to a simpler, more authentic place, but now she feels as though she’s left reality behind.
Three hours later she is standing in the dust on Hadley Road and wearily contemplating the Craxton gatehouse in twilight. She slips inside the gate, closing it quietly behind her. If Junket and Lore are inside the house, they don’t notice her pass, and Machine is nowhere to be seen, so Peg continues up the drive alone. It is right that she has arrived at this hour of transformation, with the cooling breeze perfumed with wild honeysuckle and the Manikin itself looking so picturesque and yet so secretive. And it is right as well that for the first time on the Craxton estate she hears the whine of a small plane flying overhead. She watches as it passes out of sight over Firethorn. The fading sound of the engines signals to Peg a mournful finality, warning her that since she’s chosen to come back, she will never be allowed to leave.
* * *
“Tell me, Peg.”
“You were asleep, Mother. Everyone was asleep. I’d gone down to the library. It was so quiet in the library at that late hour. But he found me there. I thought he’d gone to bed. Mother, are you sure you want to hear this?”
“Tell me.”
“He kissed me. That was all right. But then he was leaning against me, pinning me in the chair. I don’t know why I didn’t scream. Maybe it was because I thought I deserved it. I’d given him ideas, what with the dress and all. Lily’s dress. I was still wearing Lily’s dress. Mother?”
“Go on.”
“Sylva?”
“Tell us, honey.”
“He pulled me to the floor. I couldn’t stop him. It felt like, like he was holding me under water, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t save myself. When he was through he took twenty dollars from his wallet and left it on the table.”
“Lord Jesus.”
“Dear little poppet.”
“I bought my ticket to New York with that money.”
“You shouldn’t have run away. Your mama was sick with worry.”
“I was ashamed, Sylva.”
“My poor girl.”
“You won’t marry him, Mother?”
“Never.”
“I’m sorry.”
Many years later, Peg will tell the truth to her mother. She will look up from her cup of five-cent diner coffee and without warning she’ll say, “Hal Craxton didn’t rape me.” And while Ellen stares in speechless wonder, Peg will tell her what really happened—not on Christmas Eve but on Christmas night, not at the Manikin but in the Kettling train station. And though Peg will try to explain why she felt compelled to lie to her mother and blame Hal Craxton for a stranger’s crime, Ellen will just shake her head, momentarily overwhelmed by the thought of the different life she might have led if Peg hadn’t deceived her. Mrs. Henry Craxton Junior. That she could ever have been tempted by such a man will astound her into speechlessness, so when Peg asks, “Do you forgive me?” Ellen will just stare in wonder. And then she will see the dismay in her daughter’s eyes, and she’ll grab her hand and begin kissing it with all the fervor of a starved dog gobbling a shred of meat.
But for now, the lie is intact, and the amazing relief that Ellen felt when she saw Peg coming in through the pantry has been replaced by a horror nearly equal to what she would have felt had she witnessed the assault herself. She hugs Peg’s head, strokes the hair thick with dusty tangles from a day’s journey, pets Peg with the flat of her hand to calm her sobs, murmuring as gently as she can, “My poor little poppet, my poor little poppet,” even while she tries to calm herself.
The pressure of Sylva’s hand on her shoulder reminds her where she is: in the kitchen of the Manikin, and out there in the dimly lit depths of the library, Hal Craxton sits waiting for his evening coffee, surely impatient by now, since Ellen left to make a fresh pot over half an hour ago. But he won’t ring for her now that she’s his fiancée—he’ll have to wait for Ellen to bring the coffee in her own good time. Two cups, of course. He doesn’t know that Peg has come back, though he’ll know soon enough, Ellen tells herself, strengthened by Sylva’s touch. At last she understands why he wanted her for his wife—still wants her, since he doesn’t yet know what she knows. Marriage was his foolish penance, a way to make up for his crime by sharing his property—property that doesn’t yet rightfully belong to him. But jail is another way of doing penance. The idea of justice is a small but invigorating comfort. Yes, Hal Craxton will pay for what he did to Peg.
“We’ll go to the sheriff,” Ellen mutters.
“Promise me—no, Mother, promise me…” Peg is suddenly scrambling out of her sorrow, and both Sylva and Ellen try to hush her. But Peg is desperate. “Don’t you … don’t you understand? I let him do it to me. I didn’t try to stop him. I could have screamed. I didn’t scream.”
Although Peg has been saying this from the start, only now does Ellen comprehend. She remembers Lily’s sequined dress, pictures it in a little heap on the floor of the bedroom. The memory of the dress somehow conveys better than Peg’s words the meaning of her protest: Hal Craxton will go free.
But he’ll go alone, thanks to Ellen. She yanks Peg up by the arm, no less sympathetic to her daughter than before but so eager to be rid of Hal Craxton that she needs to confront him this minute. So without a word she drags Peg out of the kitchen, hitting the door with such force as she goes that it continues to swing for a long, creaking minute.
Left behind, Sylva catches glimpses of the mother and daughter as they cross the dining room, Ellen lunging forward, Peg stumbling to keep up. Then the door settles in its place, and Sylva doesn’t bother to open it to take a peek. Instead, she stares at Ellen’s empty chair and thinks to herself that if Henry Junior were a colored man, he’d be dead by now.
* * *
He might as well be dead. The woman he loves—yes, he has come to love her, to need her—despises him. “You disgust me!” are the words that accompany the unkind expression on her face, and she thrusts her daughter in front of him as evidence.
Such a sweet, young, firm-breasted thing. He kissed her once, didn’t he? Tasted her with his wicked tongue. Mrs. Griswood won’t forgive him. Just like his mother. His mother never forgave him, though he’s not sure what he did in her lifetime that offended her so. His own mother. Sad, how she lost her mind in the end. Oh, he’s had to stretch the truth a bit with Boggio’s help. But it’s all for the best, his mother would agree. All he ever wanted was her forgiveness. Once, long ago, he’d made her furious. What had he done? Now Mrs. Griswood is furious. He loves her like a mother—no, instead of his mother. His mother is dead, he knows that, he can tell the difference between truth and hallucination. He had been confused the other morning, but that wasn’t his fault. Blame it on the owl. The owl came out of nowhere. Scared him silly—now he knows what it feels like to wake up into madness. But he’s grown rather fond of the creature and yesterday he took it upon himself to nail the trophy to the wall above his bedroom door. The owl will protect him against evil. What he really needs is protection against himself. Here he had the opportunity to make things right and live out the rest of his days in peaceful domestic splendor married to a tidy, reliable, docile woman, and he’s managed to make a mess of things. He gambled with the daughter and lost. Mrs. Griswood will never marry him now. No one will marry him. In his dream his mother was supposed to fetch a rope and save him. Where is that rope? Where is his mother? She was buried on the last day of last year, lowered into a hole torn out of the frozen ground. Hal himself wants to be cremated at death, his ashes scattered. Wants to stay dispersed on Judgment Day. Wants to play hooky. That’s an odd thought, and it brings an inappropriate smile to his lips. Only seconds have passed since Mrs. Griswood and her daughter entered the library. He realizes too late that he shouldn’t have smiled. They have disappeared in a huff, leaving him alone.
His mother was alone when she died. He wonders if she suffered much pain when she slipped from this side to the other. His father, according to the pathologist who did the autopsy, was killed instantly, his head crushed by the truck’s rear tire. We should be born with knowledge of our death so that we can spend our lifetime preparing ourselves. He wonders whether he would have died in his sleep last week if he hadn’t woken just before he hit the river. That’s what they say: if you die in your dream, you’ll never wake up. Then Mrs. Griswood had appeared, hushing him, not because he’d been naughty but because he’d felt so frightened. He fell from his dream into her arms. This wasn’t love based upon attraction. This love was as spontaneous and necessary as the first breath a newborn takes. Gone now because of an innocent kiss. If Mrs. Griswood had more experience of the world, she wouldn’t take a single kiss so seriously. Just a kiss planted on the irresistible lips of a young girl. Not even love involved.
He can tell the difference between love and not-love, thanks to Mrs. Griswood. Thanks for nothing. Who would have thought that such a woman—a mere housekeeper, a widowed housekeeper—would refuse him because of a single harmless episode involving her teenage daughter? The wedding had been set for the following Wednesday, and Hal had already picked out a diamond wedding ring from his mother’s jewelry box. Now Mrs. Griswood will never wear his mother’s ring, nor will she have any further claim to his estate. This latter thought gives him some satisfaction. Good riddance. Better to be alone than to be compromised by an uneducated, penniless widow, a domestic servant no less. That she would give up so much because of one little transgression suggests to Hal that she didn’t understand the extent of his sacrifice. Didn’t understand the consequence. The loss of stature. His punishment: the peculiar mocking ire of the leisure class. A housekeeper for a wife? That would have been reason enough for his wealthy acquaintances to exile Mr. and Mrs. Henry Craxton Junior into the netherworld of the unpopular. No more invitations to country houses in Sussex, to Tuscany villas, to Greek islands. By marrying Ellen Griswood, Hal Craxton would have made them both pariahs.
He has been saved from such an awful fate by the future Mrs. Craxton herself. He is free to pick up where he left off. He has never been more free. His mother is dead, and he will remain a bachelor. That he should have desired otherwise perplexes him.
Yet even more perplexing is that he still desires it. To be forgiven. He will do what he should have done when his mother was still alive—he will fall down on his knees and beg for her forgiveness. Prodigal son. He shouldn’t have kissed the daughter. He is sorry for it. He will tell her he is sorry. His mother. No, his mother is dead. Mrs. Griswood is the one he wants. Mrs. Ellen Griswood: He thinks of little else these days. He offered her his name. How could she refuse it? He will persuade her of the advantages. He will promise never to kiss her daughter again. There is still hope—the living can always change their minds. He wishes he could change his mother’s stubborn, unreasonable mind and persuade her that he is deserving. Short of that, he will work on Mrs. Griswood and try to convince her of his noble intentions. He is sorry for kissing her daughter. He will never do it again.
He fortifies himself with another sip of port. Over the course of the long winter he has drunk up half of his father’s wine cellar. By the end of summer the Manikin will be dry. They’ll have good reason to move to the Continent then. Together. Mr. and Mrs. Henry Griswood Junior.
Craxton! His name is Craxton! It’s been a long, confusing week, and a resolution seems only a distant possibility. Mr. and Mrs. Henry Craxton Junior. He will offer her money. The title to the house, pending the resolution of Craxton v. Craxton. His life. Ah, here’s something no woman could ignore—he will threaten to take his own life unless she marries him. If she refuses, his blood will be on her hands. Murderess! This ivory-handled paper cutter will do the trick, he will hold it to his throat and make Ellen Griswood understand the depths of his need. There is no refusing a man so violently, irrevocably in love.
And so he wiles away the evening pondering the potent idea—suicide, or at least the threat of suicide. He broods instead of sleeps and sips his port. Hal continues to sit in his library, contemplating his next move but unwilling to disturb this temporary peace, time sliding by, his beard sprouting, his fingernails growing. He could go on like this and bother no one. He doesn’t even feel hungry. Days will turn into weeks, weeks into seasons, in the blink of an eye it will be winter again.
But first the night has to peak. His mother’s clocks announce midnight in a tumble of clashes and chimes and cuckoos, and out of the clamor arises another ruckus, a hammering at the library door. Who’s here at this ungodly hour? A thaumaturge come to make things right? If it’s anyone else, tell him to go away.
Hal rises from his chair to greet his visitor, discovers that he is more than a little unsteady on his feet, and holds an armrest to regain his balance. Before he can manage to take a step forward, the door opens and the room is full of people, dark-clothed bodies, their faces shadowed by the single lamp he has kept burning. Is this a celebration in his honor? Why, everyone’s here, he sees on closer inspection: the groundskeeper, the Negro cook and her husband, even Mrs. Griswood. And at the front of the group stands the ringleader himself: crazy old Boggio, preening, straightening his collar, and laughing silently between clenched, crooked, saffron teeth.
Hal can’t guess what they want with him, so he just stands dumbly and waits for someone to explain. Finally a voice arises from the pack of servants, a woman’s voice, Mrs. Griswood’s voice. Hal recognizes it and feels more at ease. Then he realizes what she is telling him.
“Leave us.”
What?
“Go.”
The word is followed by a ripple of murmurs as the servants close in, surrounding Hal. For a second he thinks they are going to start beating him with their fists. Instead, the library fills with hissed commands. “Go away,” they are telling him, “you don’t belong here, leave us, go on, get out.” He feels the hard grip of an old man’s fingers around his wrist. Boggio’s fingers. Hal Craxton knows of no one uglier than Boggio, no one more bestial. Now he understands. Boggio is the devil, undisguised, and Hal stupidly made a pact with him. Boggio is here to lead him to hell. The servants have come to see them off. “Go away, leave this house, get out, get out, get out!” Out of his own house? Well, it’s not quite his house, not entirely, not yet. Pending resolution. What will be resolved? Craxton versus Craxton, servants versus master, the devil versus man. Hal doesn’t stand a chance. He’ll be lucky if he escapes with his life, his wits intact. “Get out! Get out!” All right, then, he’ll go, yes, he’ll leave willingly, no time wasted. “Go on!” He’ll go tonight, right away, if that’s what they want.
He rushes past the servants and out of the library. His first impulse is to run out the front door and down the drive, to keep running through the darkness until he drops in exhaustion. But he has just enough sense left to know better, so he stumbles upstairs to pack his bags.
* * *
Appropriate that the stroke of midnight brought justice, for this is Astraea’s hour, the end of a day, the end of a golden age. The goddess was the last of the divinities to leave the earth, and since her departure, any act of justice has been at best a courageous hunch and at worst a conviction inspired by hatred. The servants of the Manikin acted courageously and gambled with their livelihood in order to treat Hal Craxton to their kind of justice—a fair punishment for what they all believe he’d done to Ellen’s Peg, who slept soundly up in her garret bedroom while her mother and Sylva assembled a troop five strong, a troop as powerful as a band of dead soldiers, fleshless, full of vengeance. Hal Craxton won’t bother their children anymore. The confrontation will probably cost them their jobs, an even exchange, given the stakes. Hal Craxton had to be punished, and they were the only ones who could do it.
Afterward, they gather in the kitchen, huddling around the table while Sylva boils water for tea. No one is sorry for what can only be called a mutiny, but they need time to think about the consequences, since it had been arranged in such haste. They hadn’t even rehearsed. The report of Craxton’s offense was passed by Sylva to Peter to Lore and finally, on impulse, to Boggio. Without quite knowing what they would do, they buttoned their coats around their nightshirts and went up to the kitchen, where they heard in full from Ellen the story that Peg had told earlier that evening. Then they took their curses into the library.
Five against one. Hal Craxton didn’t stand a chance. Where he will go from here they can’t predict. They know only that he will leave and until he returns they will stay here and maintain the house and grounds just as they’ve been doing for years. This is as it should be, even though they hadn’t any strategy when they entered the library. It was Ellen who said the first words, inevitable words, they believe now: Leave us. Yes, they agreed at once, Hal Craxton must leave the Manikin—they would have expelled him by force if necessary, but luckily he has chosen to leave of his own accord and right this minute is carrying his suitcase down the stairs with a thump-thump-thump, across the hall, and out the front door into the frosty spring night.
The servants gaze at one another over their cups and listen to the clatter of gravel as the garage doors swing open. But no one speaks, not even when the engine of the La Salle coughs awake and the automobile slides out, swerves in reverse across the drive, skids to a halt, stalls. The engine turns over and over, catches, and the La Salle moves down the drive. Hal Craxton, a dangerously inexperienced driver, is driving off into the night. Only a guilty man would be that desperate, and if there was ever a question in anyone’s mind that Ellen’s Peg might not have been telling the truth, the sound of the La Salle as it chugs off dispels all doubt.
Hal Craxton is gone—the length of his absence depends upon the depths of his guilt. Until they are sent away the servants will remain here and continue with their work as though nothing has changed. This consensus is implicit somehow, and they finish the soothing tea in meditative silence, then one by one they head back to their beds—first Boggio goes, then Sylva with Peter immediately following, reaching for his wife’s free hand as she opens the kitchen door, leaving Ellen and Lore facing each other, their features like the hollow apertures of masks in the light of a kerosene lamp set at the near end of the table. Now that they are alone, the silence that had been acceptable grows awkward, the space between them vast, and Lore has to squint to see Ellen’s eyes, which narrow in return as though to deflect Lore’s gaze, to stare him down. A long minute passes while they engage in this subtle battle of wills, neither of them uttering a word, until the competition becomes so tense that Ellen, exhausted by the events of the night, finally cuts the game short with a question obviously meant to embarrass Lore.
“What are you staring at?”
With surprising ease, Lore replies, “You.”