Sunny. Healing nicely. Reading volumes.
Eliza spends her days reading and napping. She asks Alphaeus to bring her magazines from the store, in hopes of finding more stories by Mrs. Chopin, or reading of far-flung adventures. She devours yellowed newspapers in hopes of finding new recipes or reading of the growing women’s suffrage movement. Legislators in Washington State have entertained several attempts to franchise women. The votes to date fall short for needed passage.
I can’t even leave this bed, she thinks. Not even to do my business. This is the most distasteful part of the arrangement.
But Alphaeus does not flinch as he empties Eliza’s chamber pot. The subject is not spoken of, nor acknowledged. Eliza feels stronger by the day.
Soon I can go back home.
Alphaeus brings stacks of Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and The Ladies Home Journal to Eliza and deposits them on her nightstand. He thumbs through the publications as he takes the stairs two at a time. Stories. Recipes. Advertisements. Alphaeus finds the advertisements most interesting: ads for kitchen aids and products, and the more titillating ads touting brassieres and female powders.
Eliza finds numerous articles by Mrs. Chopin, and reads them again and again: “The Father of Desiree’s Baby,” “Ripe Figs,” “Dr. Chevalier’s Lie.” She relates to the woman abed in the aptly named story, “The Recovery.”
She was a woman of thirty-five, possessing something of youthfulness. It was not the bloom, the softness, nor delicacy of coloring which had once been hers; those were all gone. It lurked rather in the expression of her sensitive face, which was at once appealing, pathetic, confiding.
For fifteen years she had lived in darkness with closed lids. By one of those seeming miracles of science, and by slow and gradual stages, the light had been restored to her. Now, for the first time in many years, she opened her eyes . . .
And how beautiful was the world from her open window!
Eliza adjusts her spectacles and strains to take in the whole vista from her vantage point on Steiner’s bed. If she could only get a bit closer to the window she would see a sweeping view of Hart’s Pass south toward Cypress. If only she could stand, she could almost see her cabin.
Some days fly; others drag. On weekdays and the ever-busy Saturdays, Eliza overhears a bustle of activity. She listens for conversations outside the window, or the whinnying of horses and the short clipped commands of their masters. She marks another week when she hears the chugga chugga chugga of the Jubilee, and its long horn signaling its approach to the dock on Thursdays. Helpless in her condition, Eliza remains unable to get up, unable to fully see or hear the world continuing at its normal pace.
One morning during the third week of her restless recovery, Eliza hears a loud crash downstairs followed by a scuffle.
She hears Old Steiner, his voice raised beyond its usual limits.
“And what the hell are you going to do about it, old man? Do you think I want to be here?”
Eliza hears feet shuffling and then a whoomph.
“What do youse think youse doin’, beatin’ up on an old man?”
“Get out of my way, Pops. I’ll clean it up. You’re helpless as a nanny goat.”
“Don’t youse go shootin’ your mouth off at me, boy. I’m the one brought you up here to these parts and I can let youse go anytime.”
“Gladly! Just might light a shuck one of these days and be gone, just like that.”
Once, twice, and then again, Eliza hears Alphaeus raise his voice toward his uncle. Eliza cannot reconcile her discomfort. Eliza wonders how a man can be so gruff one moment, and so kind the next. The fact that Alphaeus caters to Eliza yet is brash toward his uncle renders Alphaeus disingenuous. She’s reminded of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel she read just a year ago. That one man could possess two distinct personalities frightens her, like Dr. Jekyll and his alter ego, Mr. Hyde. She resolves to keep her distance from Alphaeus, at least as much as she can in her compromised condition.
After three weeks confined to the bed, Eliza begins a long, laborious walk around the bedroom, first using the bed to steady her, and over time, using a cane to pick her way to the bay window and back. She also makes her way to the makeshift privy behind the bedroom door and covers the basin with a towel after she eliminates. She reddens, picturing Alphaeus disposing of her waste.
By the fourth week she navigates the stairs to the main floor slowly, her right leg leading. She practices going up and down the stairs when Old Steiner and Alphaeus are busy in the store. When she can manage the stairs both up and down handily, she makes her decision. On the first morning in February, Eliza wakes early, packs her meager belongings into a makeshift bundle, and descends the stairs one step at a time, favoring her left ankle. Eliza will not outstay her welcome at Doe Bay.
“Doc Thatcher says youse almost good as new.”
Old Steiner and Eliza sit at the dining table and attack plates of steaming scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, and bacon. Eliza savors each bite.
“I want to apologize ’bout all that fuss the other mornin’.”
Old Steiner drops his knife on his near empty plate.
“’Scuse, me, Ma’am. Youse see, my nephew and I don’t see eye to eye, youse might say. He had it rough, he did, growin’ up an orphan boy. My brother’s wife, she died when Alph was just a boy, youse see, and my brother—God rest his soul—couldn’t care for the rascal. Alph was sent off to one of those boy’s homes, somewheres up Michigan way, if ’n I remember right. From what I hear, those places ain’t fit for the likes of children. I’m afraid Alph’s been fightin’ since he were a young’un.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Alphaeus walks by the back window without looking into the kitchen. Eliza feels the hair on the back of her neck prickle. She feels a familiar flush creep into her cheeks.
“I’d be a fool not to. I think my nephew’s grown sweet on youse, and there’s more’n a few skeletons hiding in his closet, if ’n you know what I mean.”
Eliza takes Old Steiner’s comment with a grain of salt.
Sweet on me? No. Alphaeus did what any Christian man would do, attending to an injured and helpless female. And who in his right mind would be attracted to someone whose slop he disposed of ? No. Alphaeus is not sweet on me. And I most certainly am not sweet on him.
She dismisses Old Steiner’s remarks as quickly as she wolfs down her breakfast.
No time to think on such nonsense.
After the meal, Eliza takes Old Steiner’s arm and walks out through the front door of the Doe Bay Store and left to the end of the tender dock. Alphaeus stands at the end of the dock, his apron flapping in the wind. He bends over the Peapod, packed with extra supplies and a sure surprise—a nanny goat—tied and harnessed to the front bench seat of the skiff. He braces the goat while Eliza steps over the transom and settles herself into the dory.
“Thought you’d like fresh milk, now that you’re used to it.”
Alphaeus winks at Eliza.
And who am I to disagree, seeing as I have devoured mug after steaming mug of cocoa each night?
Eliza is anxious to push off. Old Steiner’s confessions of Alphaeus’s intentions nag at the edges of her mind. Alphaeus lingers, arranging Eliza’s belongings so the weight distributes evenly in the boat.
“I’d be happy to follow you, at least through the pass.”
“No, no need, but thank you, Mr. Steiner. I am more than capable, especially now.”
Eliza tamps her left leg on the bottom of the dory to reinforce her statement.
“I would feel more comfortable knowing you had made it home safely.”
“Really, no need. But thank you again.”
Eliza diverts her gaze and mentally assesses her cargo, the goat dazed and fear-stricken lashed sideways in the bow. The goat bleats a mournful cry and Eliza pats its quivering head.
“Looks like I’ll be having company now,” Eliza says. She quickly realizes that perhaps Alphaeus will interpret her comment as an invitation to visit. She regrets saying anything.
“Well, off you go, then. I’ll come looking after you in a few weeks’ time.”
Alphaeus unties the lines and casts Eliza off.
Three short miles until I’m home.
Alphaeus watches Eliza row, stroke after stroke, away from Doe Bay. The dock is littered with mounds of supplies and it’ll be after dark before he’s through unloading, stacking, and sorting. As much as he desires to follow Eliza today, he’s nailed down a fool-proof plan, one that has knit together slowly and seamlessly over the past month. He fingers the garnet in his trouser pocket.
Steiner turns heel, up the ragged planks away from the water. He’s tempted to look backwards to see Eliza, but doesn’t. He strides up the dock and around to the back of the store. He heaves a large flour sack over his shoulder and kicks the back door open. He hefts the load to the row of drygoods and plops the sack to the floor. He lifts the heavy wooden lid of the flour bin and funnels a steady stream of grain into the near empty container, wafts of white steaming off the top of the newly formed powdery pyramid. He remembers the moist oatmeal raisin cookies his mother laid out for him after school, three to a plate, when he was six or seven. He had dunked the warm cookies into a full glass of warm milk, still with froth. His mother had been beautiful, with slender, cool hands.
He shuts the lid with a heavy thump. A small amount of flour has escaped the bin and circled the barrel like a halo. Steiner reaches for a thick stiff-bristled broom, not the thin-handled shop broom propped by the counter. A sliver imbeds itself into his large palm.
“Damn it!”
He kicks the flour barrel then, steel toe to iron casing. A drift of white escapes the seams of the barrel. He swears again, and leaves the mess. His boot prints remain, shadowed in white behind him on the pocked fir floors.