Eliza wakes in a strange bed, her eyes blurry, and her memory gauzy.
How did I come to be here?
The unfamiliar room fills with weak winter sun; two overstuffed chairs in front of a large bay window look south over the strait. The grey and green paisley pattern reminds Eliza of her aunt’s stuffy guest bedroom in St. Charles. On the sturdy dresser next to the bed she spies an enamel washbasin and pitcher. Eliza touches the nubby chenille, a light green to match the wallpaper.
A real bed. A real room. A real house.
A dull stabbing pain in her left leg assaults her senses, and Eliza sinks into the pillow and crawls backwards in her mind to reconstruct events.
I slipped and broke my foot, and then I rowed to Orcas for help. Crossing Hart’s Pass was hazy at best.
She hears a faint bustling downstairs and tries to remember where she is, and why.
Was there a man? Or was that a figment of my imagination? And how did I end up in a strange bed in a strange room in a strange house, my left leg encased in rough plaster?
“Ah, Mrs. Stamper, youse finally awake,” a male voice sounds from the doorway. Eliza turns her head. She recognizes Old Steiner’s voice and the blurry outline of his form, near-sighted as she is, and without her spectacles.
“Mr. Steiner! How . . .”
“I know, my dear. Terrible shame. That ankle of yours was broke almost right through the skin. Doc Thatcher said it was the worst he’d seen. But I reckon you don’t remember much. The doc’s been mighty generous with that laudanum.”
Old Steiner shuffles closer to the bed, and Eliza draws up the covers to her neckline. She realizes with acute embarrassment that someone has changed her clothing; she now wears a long cotton nightdress meant for a much smaller woman.
Old Jennie!
“If it weren’t for my nephew, I don’t know rightly if you’d have come through. He spotted youse out in the strait, adriftin’, and on New Year’s Day! Most people would have been sleepin’ it off, as they say. Good thing it was daylight, or you’d have been a goner.”
Eliza strains for words, but words do not come.
“It’s alright, now, don’t worry yourself. Youse welcome here for as long as it takes, don’t nevermind. My nephew, Alph—Alphaeus, that’s his Christian name—is helpin’ me with the store now. He’s the one who found youse. He’ll be up directly. I’m sorry that Jennie ain’t here to help youse along. Youse just gotta bear with us old bachelors.”
“Thank you ever so much. Can I trouble you to ask what day is it?”
“It’s the sixth of January, Ma’am. Day of the Magi, if I remember from my Sunday School days.”
Six days!
Eliza has slept on and off through six days, without memory. Her mind floods with questions, but she is too tired to think. She drifts in and out of sleep. When she wakes next, she hears two male voices, as if muffled by dense fog. Eliza makes out Doc Thatcher’s low baritone.
“It’ll be two, three weeks before she’ll be able to walk, even on flat ground. I don’t reckon she’ll be ready to go back to Cypress and live on her own anytime soon. Plus, it’ll be weeks before she weans off the laudanum.”
Eliza does not recognize the second voice.
“Why does she live there like that, and alone? My uncle said there’s maybe a handful of people still there, what after the epidemic and all. He said Mrs. Stamper must be a stubborn one, not wanting to leave her dead child there.”
“I don’t ask questions. Guess she’s got a right as any to do as she pleases. It wouldn’t be for me, that’s for sure, and besides I wouldn’t have any clientele!”
The men laugh. Their backs face Eliza and she scoots uncomfortably to a sitting position in the four-poster bed. Again, she draws the covers high to her neckline.
“Doc Thatcher! Many thanks to you, and to you . . .”
She trails off.
The men stand and take several steps closer to the bed. Thatcher places his large hand on the bedpost. The other man—who is he?—comes around to the side of the bed, but keeps his distance.
“The name’s Alphaeus Steiner, Ma’am. I’m the one who brought you here. You were near delirious when I found you. I hope you don’t mind my putting you up here in my bedroom. I’m not inconvenienced if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ve slept on pallets and bare ground more nights than I care to remember. The cot in the kitchen is plenty comfortable for me, and warm.”
Eliza squints toward the pair, and realizes the younger of the two men is the man who rescued her from the strait. There is no mistaking him. Alphaeus Steiner possesses a strong face, with penetrating blue eyes, a substantial nose, and long, white teeth. His unkempt sandy hair falls unevenly over his ears, and he wears the stubble of a beard. He is undoubtedly the most handsome man Eliza has ever seen, with or without glasses. Her cheeks flame. She shifts in the bed and winces from the pain in her leg.
“Better get you some more of that medication,” Thatcher says. “Thank God Alphaeus spotted you out there on the strait, Mrs. Stamper. Another hour, and you would’ve been sleeping with Poseidon, as they say. Count your blessings, young lady.”
Thatcher spoons a dark liquid onto a teaspoon and offers it to Eliza. She swallows and sinks again into the pillow. Thinking will have to wait. Overcome with drowsiness, Eliza cannot join one coherent thought to another. She has no choice. The drug runs rampant through her veins and sentences her to another deep and dreamless sleep.
Eliza anticipates Alphaeus’s visits. A steady footfall on the wooden stairway signals his imminent arrival to the bedroom. He dishes up the most delicious, although simple, meals: full breakfasts, hearty lunches, and for supper, soups: julienne, white vegetable, pea.
Alphaeus wears dark corduroy trousers and white linen shirts, covered with a long white apron tied in the back. His hair hangs low, over his eyes, as he bends to deposit a simple wooden tray. Eliza admires the way he swings his hair out from his eyes and back behind his ears as he steps back and away from the bed. Large veins protrude from his forearms.
He is ever so strong.
Eliza notes a smell of alcohol on Steiner’s breath, even in the morning. But Eliza is not one to damn; men are men, and that is that. She thanks him and watches as he turns to leave the room. She wishes he would stay to talk, but knows that customers and chores top his list. She turns her attention to the contents of the tray and digs straight into her breakfast, a steaming potato omelet and potato biscuits.
“You must share the recipe for these delectable potato biscuits!” she calls after Steiner.
Eliza devours each meal like a hawk. Over the course of her recuperation, a full month plus a day, she gains a full six pounds.
POTATO BISCUITS
Three good-sized potatoes boiled and mashed fine, one tablespoonful sugar, one-half pint boiling water. Add pinch of salt.
When cool, add one tablespoon yeast dissolved in one-quarter teacup warm water with pinch of sugar or drop of honey, then add three and one-half teacups flour to knead; knead for fifteen-to-twenty minutes and set it to rise again before baking.
After rising, if needed, add sufficient flour until desired consistency.
Roll into three-inch balls and set to rise again on greased baking sheet. Bake until golden.
THE POTATOES ELIZA UNEARTHS FROM HER GARDEN PLOT ARE often hard and pocked. To make a mash for herself, she needs three or four of the small, deformed root vegetables, carefully peeled and quartered before the boil. She often nicks her rough fingers and draws blood, and brings the injured knuckle to her mouth and sucks it clean. The potatoes on Orcas taste soft and creamy, no doubt because they are mixed with a generous amount of milk, a luxury Eliza does not have on Cypress.
Before bed each night, Steiner brings Eliza a large cup of warm, steaming cocoa. Eliza loves cocoa even more than coffee. Steiner sits on one of the armchairs he has dragged nearer to the bed. He knows it is highly unusual that he attend to a woman—a single woman, he now knows after conversations with his uncle—but out of necessity, he is the one attached to the detail. Doc Thatcher comes by just once per week now, and Old Steiner can barely make it up the creaky stairs to bed and has, of late, taken to sleeping on the cot in the kitchen. This situation allows Steiner the use of the other upstairs bedroom across the landing from the room Eliza occupies. Many nights Steiner mentally calculates that Eliza sleeps not five or six yards from his bed.
Steiner remains until Eliza drains her cocoa. She delays finishing the last sweet drop. She swirls the cup and leaves a scant mouthful to drink later. He hopes she will start a conversation. Steiner and his uncle don’t have much to talk about. Feed prices. Supply runs. Or talking about customers. Conversations with Eliza are more meaningful and evenings mark the only time they spend more than a few minutes trading pleasantries.
“You were born in Pennsylvania? I hear the Quaker State is truly beautiful,” Eliza says. “I cannot say that with authority, as I have not been to Pennsylvania. But there is no doubt that there is much beauty in this wide country of ours. You must have seen so for yourself when you came out by train.”
Eliza catches Steiner off guard at the mention of the railroad.
“Indeed, Ma’am. This country’s full up with sweeping beauty. I, too, was taken by the mountains. The Rockies, that is. Worked the railroad. Long, tiring work. But that was many years ago. Of course, there are no mountains of that magnitude in Pennsylvania.”
“Nor in Missoura!” Eliza says, pronouncing her home state like a local. “Missoura’s flat like a pancake. I think I shall never go back there.”
“I traveled through Missouri, once,” Steiner says. “You might say I’ve been traveling most of my life, from Ohio through the Middle West. Once it gets in your blood—traveling, I mean—well, it’s hard to think of stopping. I wonder if I’ll be able to put down roots here.”
“I thought you’d be here for a long while now that you’re helping your uncle with the store.”
Eliza trails off, and looks away from Steiner.
“What of your family?” Steiner begins, all at once regretting that he mentioned the word, “family.” He winces.
“My family is all but dead to me,” Eliza says. Eliza does not mention her dead husband or dead son.
“My father is deceased, and my mother and sisters have all but disappeared from my life. I haven’t had a letter from them in more than two years. I don’t even know if they are still in Columbia; perhaps they are now in St. Charles. The last letter I had from my sister was postmarked from there—St. Charles, that is—informing me of our father’s death, by his own hand. It is shameful to think of it.”
Steiner wonders how Eliza’s father had ended his life, but declines to ask. Eliza takes Steiner’s silence as the question he wished to pose.
“He hung himself, if you are wondering. My mother and sisters were away in St. Charles, and received the message by courier. Seems he did not get a judgeship he anticipated.”
In a moment of compassion, Steiner’s hand reaches for Eliza’s. Her eyes widen as she feels the shock, electric. She pulls her hand back. She hasn’t felt the touch of a man in so many years.
“Pardon me, Ma’am,” Steiner stumbles.
Eliza places the cup on the tray next to the bed and deflects his overture. She turns away from Steiner so that he cannot see her flushed face.
“Excuse me, but I am so very tired.”
“’Night, Ma’am.”
Steiner gathers up the tray and exits the room in silence. He kicks himself for mentioning family to Eliza. The subject obviously caused Eliza distress; that he could see plainly. Steiner undresses and lies on the bed in the adjacent room. He hears Eliza’s gentle breathing through the wall. His heart pumps wildly in his chest and he wills his heart to slow.
He wonders if the time has come to settle down. His uncle has handed him the perfect opportunity. He and Eliza could set up house and shop in Doe Bay, and maybe start another family. Steiner knows Eliza in a more intimate way than he has ever known any woman before, save the coupling. From what he has gleaned from many conversations, she can cook and bake and tend house and garden. And he enjoys her company, and the forthright flow of her words and hands that punctuate the air as she speaks. He hungers for their time together, more and more.
After a quarter-hour, restless, Alphaeus gets up and peers into Eliza’s room. He is tempted to sit by the bed again as Eliza drowns into sleep. Her breathing regulates, slow and bottomless. He resists the urge to stay, to touch her just once again.
He wonders if he has finally found his bride.