Ida wrote to Henry.
I’ve been to the constable about Ezra but am not confident anything will be done. I’ve been to my lawyer here and told him to stop work on estate matters on my behalf. He’s submitted a bill to me that I’m unable to pay at present. Hattie and Lem are marrying in December, and Ruth is giving them the farm. I plan to leave for Boston right after the livestock sale—I should realize enough from the sale to at least afford a room. I tell you these things only so you’ll know.—I.
Henry answered:
Please send me the lawyer’s bill or preferably give it to me in person—I will be back on the island at week’s end. You have made clear you no longer have any personal interest in me and I will honor your wishes in that regard, but in my role as executor, and considering the new developments, I do feel we should meet to go over the ramifications regarding the “estate.”—H.
At the bottom, in a less defined hand, as if induced by either alcohol or fatigue, he’d added:
Twice I tried to tell you. I pushed you away only until I could tell you. But with what words? I had no words. And finally at Makonikey. It was so much easier just to follow the joy down.
Joy. That he should use the word that had once defined him in Ida’s mind, the word that had so eluded Ida until she’d discovered that bicycle . . . and, admit it, Henry. Ida fetched the lawyer’s bill and a blank piece of paper, but as she sat staring at the paper she realized Henry was right. There were no words. She folded the bill into an envelope, addressed it to the carriage shop in New Bedford, and set it out on the table to be mailed in the morning.
August. The days crisp and hot or damp and hot, the sky a dense blue that Ida could never quite master in paint or a sodden gray mass that she could. The calendar was much on Ida’s mind; two weeks and Ezra would be gone. But August was also weaning time, and as if to prove a point, the day Ida and Lem picked to do it was as hot and sticky as any August day got anywhere. Lem assembled the pens again, and Bett and Ida drove the sheep through two at a time, allowing for Lem to divert the lambs into the smaller pen. It was tiring and unpleasant work and the din of the lambs and ewes calling back and forth put Ida thoroughly out of sorts. She’d said little if anything to Lem and he’d said less back, but once they’d gotten the sheep sorted into the two most distant pastures she said, “I’m getting out the whiskey.”
They sat on the porch and drank without talking. After a time Ida said, “I suppose I need to say congratulations.”
“Not if you don’t want to.”
“Well, I don’t. What I want to say is you’re quite the old secret keeper. I wonder how many other secrets you’ve got in there.”
“No other secrets.”
“I suppose Hattie’s told you he’s alive.”
“Yep.”
“I suppose you knew all along.”
Lem set down his glass. He slid himself sideways in his chair, took Ida’s glass from her and set it next to his on the floor. He took her two hands in his and leaned forward as if afraid his words would drift off before they reached her if he left too much room between them. “Ida, what did I tell you? I’m the best friend you have. Would I have kept something like that from you? Would I have let you go on thinking you were a widow when all along—”
“Henry did.”
Lem dropped her hands and leaned back. After a time he said, “I guess he had his reasons.”
Ida shifted back in her seat. “So. Hattie and the farm. Will she keep on at the exchange?”
“Of course not.”
“I guess she’ll be busy enough with the farm.”
Lem took a good swallow. He looked over at Ida once, twice. “Hattie said Ruth was talking about selling the place once you left for Boston. This keeps it in the family.”
“But—” She wanted to say but Hattie? Even with the drink she knew that wasn’t the right thing to do, that she’d already stepped way, way, way out of the bounds of decorum. She changed course to the thought that had been in the forefront of her mind most of the afternoon. “Did you know about the gold from sea water?”
“Not as a fact. I knew he’d gotten something going up there in Maine that sounded like more than salvage. Something he didn’t feel just right about sharing with me.”
“You didn’t ask him?”
“I don’t make a habit of asking after things I don’t want to know.”
They drank some more. Ida could tell by the way Lem looked at her glass when she refilled it that it concerned him, this woman drinking hard liquor in the middle of the day. She tried to picture Hattie sitting on the porch beside Lem, listening to that din, drinking whiskey, and could not. “I wonder,” Ida said. “When you still thought Ezra was dead, did you ever think about asking me to marry you?”
Lem chuckled.
“Well, think of it. You could have saved yourself the trouble of getting out the wagon in the middle of the night to go shoot dogs. You could have rolled over and fired out the bedroom window.” Oh, she was seriously out of bounds now.
“And what about Boston?”
Yes, what about Boston? At the moment it seemed far away. If Lem had asked, and she’d said yes, and if she’d gotten any money from the buildings, she could have given it to Lem, and he could have bought the farm. She could have stayed and helped him work the farm; she’d have been a whole lot better at it than Hattie.
“And besides,” Lem went on, “I don’t like arguments.”
“What would we have to argue about?”
“Well now, let’s think back over a few things.”
“The bicycle’s gone.”
“But not those damned trousers.”
Ida looked down. It was true she was wearing the trousers now; in truth she wore them so often she hardly noticed anymore when she had them on. Lem would never say anything about the absent stays, the corset that had in fact now become more of a camisole, but she was sure he didn’t approve of that either.
“And I know you, Ida. I do something you don’t like and you’re going to say something about it, just the way you said something about it to Ezra. And I don’t like something you’re doing, I’m going to say something about that, just like I do now. Pretty soon we’d be fighting out of habit, over things neither of us even gives a hoot about.”
“Name me one thing—one other thing besides bicycles and trousers—we would ever fight about.”
“Well now, Hat tells me you’re agitating to vote.”
“I’d like you to give me one logical reason why women shouldn’t vote. They work for you, grieve for you, lie down for you, bear your children for you, love you—”
“See, now?”
Ida started to laugh. She laughed till the tears ran, until they’d turned to real tears, and then she stopped, wiped her eyes, sat up. Yes, Lem had chosen right—in the end Hattie had declined the bicycle, dismissed the trousers, denied any interest in ever placing a vote. She lifted her glass. “Congratulations,” she said.
The middle of August, when Ezra was supposed to sail for France, hung heavy over Ida before it arrived, but once it came and went, Ida felt no different. She didn’t know how to feel. Was he gone or wasn’t he? She was moving the ewes to fresh pasture, intent on looking over the flock with the livestock sale in mind, but she couldn’t seem to look past the aggregate, as Henry had called it, in order to focus on the particular; Bett had condensed the sheep into a single mass of iridescent white cloud, and Ida stood as if blinded. After a time, her artist’s eye singled out the way the light backlit a translucent pink ear or turned a black eye to a glistening marble, but she was still standing there when Constable Ripley pulled up the hill in his official wagon.
He climbed down and waited at the gate until Ida had settled the flock and corralled Bett, but even when she reached the constable he seemed in no great rush.
“Nice place you’ve got.”
“It’s Ruth Pease’s farm.”
The constable’s eyebrows rose. “Is it, now.” This seemed to change something in his thinking; he pondered, studied Ida, looked out at the sheep, nodded out at the sea. “I have a couple of questions for you.”
Ida crossed her arms and waited.
“When was it you took that trip to Block Island?”
“Near the end of June. The seasonal visitors were just arriving.”
The constable nodded again. “I’ve been making inquiries. Whoever was living in that shack out there at Grace’s Point has cleared out and gone. They found a fellow owns a lobster boat admits to hiring himself out to take someone to New York on August the fourteenth. His description of the passenger sounds like Ezra Pease.”
“Does it, now.”
The constable squinted. “I might recommend you take a look to your attitude, ma’am. You walk in and present as wild a tale as I’ve heard in my lifetime and then once I take it up you balk at a few questions. I’m here to tell you I looked into your wild tale and right now it’s not seeming so wild after all.”
All right, fair enough. “Now what?”
“That’s the better question. We got on to the shipping lines late, I admit to you, and the ship had sailed, but there was an Ezra Pease on board.”
So Ezra was gone. Then why didn’t the weight of him leave her? Why did she still feel the crush of it settling into the lines of her face, moving down to her shoulders, her hips, her heels, rooting her to the ground?
The constable must have observed her sinking. He spoke in a more even tone. “I can’t see any hope in trying to chase your husband down, Mrs. Pease. You could file for divorce on the grounds of abandonment; in a year’s time you should have the paper in hand and be able to move along.” He paused. “Or you could wait for that ticket to arrive.”
Ida laughed.
“If that ticket does arrive—”
“I’ll be sure to let you know.”