It became a routine; on the days that Hattie worked she dropped Oliver with Ida on her way to the exchange and picked him up on her way home. Ida tried twice more to give Hattie a bicycling lesson, but each time she refused. “I have Oliver,” she said the first time, even though Oliver was deep in the barn attempting to get the ox to smile, and “I’m tired to the bone,” she said the second time, but then ran up the hill after Oliver.
Ida didn’t mind caring for Oliver, but she did find the boy troubling, in part because of her lack of experience with children; neither brother had lived long enough to provide Ida with nephews or nieces and there had been no child during her marriage to Ezra. Ezra had been convinced the fault lay with Ida and Ida had been too unsure of her scientific ground to counter his claim, but she hadn’t minded her childless state; Ezra, the sheep, the chickens, these had been enough to tax her, and she was quite sure if she did have children it would put an end to her ever getting out her paints.
The second reason Ida struggled with Oliver was the boy himself. Why was his head always down? Why did he eat as if it were a punishment? Why did he speak so little? Why did he dig all the time? Ida did find ways to lure him out of the ground: he was fascinated by Bett and the ox and the sheep, and she’d managed to interest him in the chickens to the point that he would scatter their corn and hunt for eggs, but if the schedule held any gaps, he filled them with holes.
The days of icy winter rain were hardest. One such day when Oliver had returned from the window for the eighth time to declare on the basis of nothing that it was stopping now, Ida took out her sketch pad and pencils and attempted to teach him his letters. Oliver had just announced that he hated letters and supposedly accidentally snapped off the point of his pencil when the telephone rang: Henry Barstow, with a question about a notation in one of the ledgers.
“What does EMS mean followed by various numbers?”
“I haven’t the first idea. Oliver, stop digging at that plant!”
“Sounds busy there.”
“I’m teaching Oliver the alphabet. We’ve mastered O.”
“You’ve gotten all the way to O? Impressive.”
“We haven’t gotten all the way to O, we began with O. I’m teaching him his name.”
“Oh.”
Ida laughed, ridiculously cheered. “And now he’s lost his pencil. Oliver, leave that plant alone! What time is it?”
“Ten to two.”
Ida sighed. “Two hours and ten minutes to go. Ah well, the odds were good I’d have killed that plant anyway. Is it still miserable out?”
“Extremely.”
“Ah, well. Stay warm.”
“And you.”
The knock came at five after two, startling Oliver and Ida both. Ida opened the door and Henry whooshed in shaking off the rain as Bett would do. “The perfect rainy day to visit friends indoors.”
“I hate rain,” Oliver said.
“I wonder how you feel about chess.”
“I hate chess.”
“Ah, that’s too bad, as I was in the mood for a game. Ida, what about you?”
“If you’d teach me.”
“That’s one of my favorite things to do.” Henry reached into his pocket, pulled out a small case, flipped it open, and tipped out what looked like dozens of tiny pieces made up of bits of horses, people in odd hats, and broken turrets. Or bedposts. He arranged the pieces on the table in front of Ida, demonstrating how each one moved. “The queen has all the talent but only the king matters. Unfair, I know—”
Ida sneaked a look at Oliver at the window; no child could have resisted the miniature kingdom that Henry had produced, and sure enough, Oliver had turned around and fixed his eyes on the board. When Henry finished demonstrating how the pieces moved and a bare minimum of rules he pointed to one of the pawns. “All right, Mrs. Pease. Which way does he move?”
“Straight!” Oliver shouted, plopping down at the table.
When Hattie arrived to collect her charge, a slightly frayed Henry and an obstreperous Oliver were sprawled on the rug in heated argument over why a knight couldn’t carry a pawn on its back when it jumped, and Ida sat perched on the sofa, attempting to sketch Oliver. She hadn’t been pleased with the efforts thus far—her usual subjects didn’t go from kneel to crouch to belly flop in rapid succession, and parts of him were a blur. As Hattie approached, Ida closed her sketchbook.
“Mayn’t I look?”
“No,” Henry said from the floor. “Or so she told me. I attempted one peek and that’s when she exiled us to the floor.”
“Too soon for showing,” Ida said, but in truth her pencil had slid from Oliver to Henry as if of its own volition and she was afraid of what that meant, afraid of the echoing sadness she kept mining in his features. Was he recalling playing chess with his daughters? Or with his brother? Or had he been one of those lonely boys who’d played by himself? Even more troubling was the fact that she’d dared take out her sketch pad in front of Henry in the first place.
“Come along, Oliver,” Hattie said.
“It’s my turn.”
“Game over,” Henry said. “I have to play with Mrs. Pease now.”
Hattie opened her mouth but closed it without speaking. She collected Oliver and left.
Henry packed up his game and stood. “Did I cause trouble for you just now?”
“How?”
“If Hattie tells her mother I was playing with Mrs. Pease—”
“Too late. Ruth’s already told me to stop riding around with you. So did Lem Daggett.”
Henry studied her. “And are you?”
“I was until they said that. Tea?”
“Tea,” Henry said.
Tea led to Ida’s offering Henry a bowl of chowder. The chowder led to Ida thinking—and talking—of Mose. “He used to bring us clams,” she said. “In exchange for a bowl of chowder. He approved of my chowder. He approved of anything I put in front of him, come to that. He said he could smell my chowder at the bottom of the hill.”
Abruptly, Henry stood up and carried his bowl to the sink. “It’s grown late. I’d best go.”
So Henry didn’t wish to talk of Mose. Although Ida had had no desire to talk of Ezra, she’d imagined Henry would have a different feeling about his brother, that he might like to remember and talk of him with someone who had cared for him too. How desperately she’d wanted to talk of her brothers, but after her mother drowned, Ida had had no one to talk to about them. Even so, if it proved too difficult for Henry, Ida would respect that and move on. If he ever happened to stop by again.
He stopped by two days later. The rain had dissipated but the clouds hadn’t; they hovered, pressing the sky low. Ida had been standing at the window making a study of the clouds, attempting to learn what they predicted, but she’d managed to draw few consistent conclusions when Henry wheeled into view. He approached the house carrying an odd, deep, flat-sided basket trailing two leather straps. “A basket for your bicycle,” he explained. “So you can carry your sketchbook.”
Ida took the basket and looked at it. She looked at Henry. She thought of piling her paint box and paper into the basket and riding . . . where?
Anywhere. That was the joy of it. “Thank you,” she said.
She went after the clouds. They rolled over her as she checked the sheep, danced above the trees as she untethered the ox from the wood and led him back into the barn, followed her as she wheeled the bicycle into the yard. Her charcoal and paper fit so neatly in the basket it was as if Henry had measured, and she flushed with purpose; she was an artist, not a sheep farmer, not a scandal. Ida kept an eye on the clouds as best she could between watching out for ruts and stones, plotting the shapes and values that would best define the mood of the day.
When Ida reached the lighthouse, she was blissfully tired and fully warmed. She sat, happy to wait for the right combination of clouds and lighthouse, shadow and light, gentle and hard, soft and stark—the redbrick column had recently been painted white and it should have taken well to her black and white charcoal on the toned paper but her fingers felt stiff. Awkward. She felt she’d gotten the lights and darks of the clouds just right, but she’d somehow missed on the shapes; for one thing they didn’t stay still, as Oliver didn’t stay still. But just as a familiar tightness gripped her brow she remembered another one of Mr. Morris’s classes. He’d stopped at her easel to study a drawing that had already turned Ida hot and impatient and out of sorts.
“There’s nothing right about it,” she said. “It can’t be saved. It doesn’t belong in this room with the others.”
But Mr. Morris only reached down into the pit where Ida wallowed and fished her out. “Never attack one’s own drawings. Acknowledge only and move on.”
Ida looked and acknowledged that the problem wasn’t so much the lack of stillness in the clouds but that in her rendition they looked too solid, too stuck. She flipped over the paper and tried again, refusing to pack up until she’d created the looseness, the soft edges she was after. She rode home half pleased.
Ida topped the hill to find Lem standing at the fence looking out over the sheep. The sight of him caused her to wobble, but she managed to leap free and land upright.
“Pretty late to be out riding alone,” he said.
“If that’s your way of asking if I was riding alone—”
“It’s my way of telling you it’s near dark. If you can’t see the road—”
“You’re right,” Ida said. “I struck a stone just there, did you notice? Come inside. I’m freezing.”
Once inside, Ida pondered and discarded the idea of asking Lem if he’d like a whiskey, fairly sure that even if he’d like one he wouldn’t like the idea of Ida liking one. Christmas punch was one thing; straight whiskey in the middle of the week was something else. And she was damned if she was going to sit there and watch Lem drink it. “Tea?” she asked.
Lem nodded. Ida fed wood into the range and pumped up water for the kettle. She kindled a blaze in the open fireplace and tapped the back of the chair most recently occupied by Henry. Lem sat down. The wrong kind of silence fell, as if someone were awaiting an apology. Ida could think of no reason why she owed one but could think of a reason why Lem did; such thinking did nothing to soften the silence.
“His wife’s divorcing him,” she said finally.
“So you go riding when she does. If she does.”
“I don’t care what people say.”
“Your aunt cares.”
“She’s not my aunt.”
“Ezra was her nephew, one of her two remaining kin. She thought the world of him. She thinks you disrespect his memory.”
“The two of you talk about this?”
“There’s another rumor that Barstow gave you that bicycle.”
Ida could feel an old rage building, her mother’s voice ringing. No, you can’t drive the carriage. No, you can’t go hunting with your brothers. No, you may not ever accept a gift from a man . . . Even when the gift in question was a box of fudge. With nuts.
Ida went to the pantry for the whiskey bottle and poured a good dollop into her teacup. She held up the bottle to Lem, ignoring the stiff neck that greeted her. “I’m chilled straight to the bone. You?” Without waiting for him to answer she poured an equal dollop into Lem’s cup. “I wanted to learn to ride a bicycle,” she said carefully. Calmly. “Henry Barstow loaned me this one. He felt—and I must say I agreed—it’s difficult to learn to ride without one.”
Lem didn’t smile.
“But the basket might be considered a gift, although since I’ll have no use for it once I return the bicycle, I’ll probably give that back too. I love that gift—I can carry my art supplies now. I rode to the lighthouse and worked on clouds. Come to think of it, I might keep the basket. When I get to Boston I plan to buy a bicycle of my own.”
Lem stood up. “I’d best go.”
“Go, then.”
After he left, Ida sat where she was, drinking her tea, alternately flushing and paling as the conversation with Lem ran through her mind. She didn’t know what she’d expected; Lem had been one of the few people on the island who’d seemed to accept her, welcome her, but maybe he was just like the rest, closing themselves up like daylilies whenever a stranger appeared. Ida finished her tea, reached for Lem’s, and drank it down. If only she had money. She needed to leave the place before it was too late, before she turned into a whiskey-drinking recluse who could paint nothing but clouds. If only she had money. Ida peered into the teacup, but nothing was left beyond a pale gold wash. A pale gold wash.
Ida got to her feet and took to the stairs. She fumbled the trunk away from the wall, pulled out the newspaper, and dropped the golden nuggets onto the bed. A case could be made that perhaps Ezra had come by this gold honestly, using some means Ida couldn’t fathom just yet, that he had hidden it in the closet for nothing but safekeeping, and if that were the case Ida did have money. But how much money? Not knowing for certain how Ezra had come by it, Ida was reluctant to flash it around the island.
Ida returned to the parlor, yanked open the desk, and hauled out the business cards she’d stuffed into one of the cubbyholes. She flipped through the sheep shearer and the dentist and the wheelwright and any number of illegible dirtied cards until she came to it: Samuel A. Greave, Assayer of Fine Metals, 271 Bowdoin Street, Boston. Boston. The homesickness hit her like a northeast blow. And no matter the provenance of the gold, the first step—certainly the first step—was to find out its value. And Ida had memorized four dates on her almanac, the four dates Julia Ward Howe would be speaking at the Horticultural Hall in Boston; the first was March the second, which was Thursday next. The lambs shouldn’t have started yet. Could it be that it would all work?