THE MORNING AFTER her daughter ran sobbing from the house, Barbara took her statue of Saint Barbara from its hiding place. Her mother had given it to her as a confirmation present when she was eleven—the year before her parents had taken her out of school. She had always kept the statue secret from her daughter, taking it out only when things were so bad she wanted to throw herself down and never get up again. She didn't pray to the saint so much as silently pour out her grief. Saint Barbara had more mercy for her than anyone else, more than God or Jesus. Saint Barbara knew exactly what her namesake had suffered. Her face was stern but compassionate, and in her outstretched hand she held a miniature tower with three windows. The saint's heathen father had locked her in that tower. When she converted to Christianity, he tried to beat it out of her, then turned her over to a judge who had her tortured. Finally her father took her to a lonely mountaintop and beheaded her. On his way home, he was killed by fire that rained down from heaven.
Whenever people asked Barbara about her family, she'd say they all died in a blaze when their barn, full of hay, was struck by lightning. Of course, the truth was that her parents lived on unpunished, but the story gave her comfort. Sometimes she wondered why they had named her Barbara. Had they done it on purpose, knowing what would happen?
Barbara had named her own daughter Penelope because she liked the sound of it, because she didn't have any relatives with that name, and because it wasn't a saint's name or a name from the Bible. To her knowledge, there was no story of martyrdom attached to it. Yet still she had managed to make her daughter run away.
"Bring her back." She fingered the saint's head, the smooth sweep of her black hair. Penny was all she had, the only person she loved.
Before going down to make breakfast, she washed her face and put a witch hazel compress on her eyes so Mr. H. wouldn't notice she had been crying. As it turned out, she could have spared herself the trouble. When she handed him his plate of bacon and eggs, he didn't meet her eyes or touch her fingers. It seemed he was afraid that Penny would burst into the kitchen at any moment. How long would it take him to figure it out? Men confounded her sometimes, the way they failed to notice simple things. But it was better this way. He wouldn't demand an explanation. And maybe Penny would be back soon. Maybe after one night away she'd want to come home.
After he left for work, she washed the dishes and swept the kitchen floor. The broom fell from her hands when she heard someone coming up the porch steps. "Penny?" She wrenched the door open to see Dr. Lovell holding his hat to his chest. The contrite expression on his face made her cry out. Something had happened to her daughter.
"Mrs. Niebeck, I came by to thank you."
Dazed, she shook her head.
"It was very good of you," he said, "to send your daughter over to check on the Maagdenbergh woman."
The Maagdenbergh woman. Barbara felt herself shrink, air escaping her lungs.
"I asked Penny to stay and take care of her for two weeks. If you don't mind, of course. It was a difficult birth. She lost a lot of blood. That woman was as ill-mannered and contrary as contrary can be, but Penny kept her head on straight. I don't know how I could have managed without her."
Barbara could not even begin to take the pieces of what he had told her and put them together.
"I know a lot of people don't care for that Maagdenbergh woman," he said, "and she doesn't exactly welcome help and friendship, but Penny stepped right in there and did her Christian duty. A true Samaritan. You must be very proud of her."
"I tried to raise her right." Barbara became aware that her legs were shaking. Dr. Lovell slipped past her into the kitchen and pulled out a chair for her. "Penny wanted to go over there," she told him as she sat down. "It was her idea." She clasped her hands in her lap and stared at the linoleum.
After the doctor left, her belly filled with a pain strong enough to make her double over. She hoped Mr. H. wouldn't come home in the middle of the day and surprise her. Even in this heat, she made herself a hot-water bottle to press against her cramping uterus. The clots that came out were as thick as gooseberries. She soaked the soiled rags in a bucket of cold water and vinegar. If he came to her, she would tell him she was feeling poorly—wasn't that the truth? If she saw him coming through the back gate, she might even creep out the front door and pretend to go to Renfew's. She could hardly imagine telling him to his face that she had the curse.
A week after Penny's departure, the Maagdenbergh woman was seen in town again, driving her pickup, dressed in her overalls and work boots. But Penny did not return. Gradually the word went around. Dr. Lovell told his friends, including Mr. H., with whom he played chess once a week. Even the deliveryman who brought the ice for Cora's icebox had a hand in spreading the news that Penny had gone to live at the Van den Maagdenbergh farm. When Penny didn't come home after Cora recovered, people really started talking. That's when her staying ceased to be Christian charity and became a choice.
"She's doing it for the money," said Mrs. La Plant, sitting at the counter at Renfew's. Her fork hovered a few inches above her half-eaten piece of plum coffeecake. "I'm sure the Maagdenbergh woman had to bribe her to get her to stay."
Mr. Renfew looked thoughtful. "It stands to reason that she'd want to earn her own money. I'm sure every cent she made at the Hamiltons' she had to hand over to her mother."
"I think she's just too young and foolish to know what she's getting herself into," said Mrs. Deal. "Alone on that farm with that woman and her gun."
Mrs. La Plant threw her friend a despairing glance. "Oh, Edna."
Mr. Renfew wiped the counter. "Well, I'm hoping that everything works out for the best. Maybe having that girl around will make the woman a little more agreeable. People develop strange habits when they live alone."
"Still, I'm surprised her mother let her go there." Mrs. Deal swirled the broken ice in her glass of Hamilton's orange pop. "What kind of mother would let her daughter live with such an odd woman?"
Barbara feared her daughter's defection and the gossip it raised might get her fired. If everyone in Minerva was talking about Penny, then they would also talk about her, and about Mr. H., too. Everyone knew his daughters were off at camp. Penny's unexpected leave-taking drew attention to the fact that she and Mr. H. were alone in the house. People might begin to surmise. Although she avoided the subject with him for as long as she could, one morning before breakfast he asked her why Penny had left.
"You sent your girls away," she reminded him. Cutting a loaf of bread, she concentrated on making the slices even. "I decided it would be best for Penny to try her own wings for the rest of the summer." She wouldn't allow him, of all people, to paint her over as a failed mother.
"You sent her to the Maagdenbergh woman." The disapproval in his voice was plain. Although she tried not to let him intimidate her, she felt a prickle of fear. In the bedroom she might be his master, but here in the kitchen she was just his cleaning woman. His eyes were so sharply inquisitive that she made herself focus on the red mark where his tight collar chafed against his neck. "Why did you let her go there?"
"She's fifteen." In spite of herself, Barbara felt her face go miserable and hot. "She has to learn for herself. Make her own way in life."
"But the Maagdenbergh woman..."
"She might be an oddball." Barbara tried to squeeze past him in order to carry the breadbasket to the table. He stood firmly planted, not letting her by. "But she's harmless," she said, addressing the tight knot of his brown tie. "And she pays well. Besides," she said, using the same excuse she had given to Dr. Lovell, "it was Penny's idea." What goddamn business did he have asking her these questions? Since he wouldn't let her pass, she laid her hand on his arm and felt the heat rising through the thin fabric of his shirtsleeve. This was a bold gesture, and one she had never before wagered outside their hours in the back bedroom. "It's for the best." Staring into his eyes, she watched his expression turn from sober to bashful—no longer that of an employer but of a guilty lover.
"If you say so, Mrs. Niebeck." He drew away from her touch. "You're her mother." Abruptly he turned, heading past the breakfast table and up the back stairway. He only went up the back stairway for one reason.
Fists clenched, she went up after him. Tears pricked at the back of her eyes. She couldn't make herself walk slowly this time, couldn't force him to wait. She was at his heels, shutting the door as soon as he had stepped into her room, yanking his ridiculous tie loose before he could reach her bed. She went after him in a fury, extracting her pleasure from him until she cried out, over and over, her neck jerking back, her head thrashing, her hair falling in her face. She was not going to let him dismiss her and leave her no choice but to go back to the Commercial Hotel and clean up after the traveling salesmen who thought they could feel her up for free. She would not let him cast her off like that. Finally she collapsed on top of him, her body covering his. His heart beat hard against her breast as their sweat welded their bodies together. Tentatively at first, his arms wrapped around her. She felt his hand stroking her hair, his breath in her ear as he whispered, "Barbara."
He had never called her by her first name before, and she had never called him by his, even to herself in her private thoughts. He had always been Mr. H., her employer, Hazel Hamilton's husband. She tried to make her face a mask, as stern and otherworldly as her statue of Saint Barbara. A woman as pure as a frozen waterfall. Yet her hand trembled as she smoothed back his hair and traced his eyebrows and the line of his jaw.
"Laurence," she said. Her voice astonished her. It was soft, not hard. Sweet as water falling.
Two hours later Barbara went to buy groceries at Renfew's. She never stepped out the door in her housedress and worn-down mules, the way some women did, but always put on a fresh dress, her good shoes, and white gloves before slinging her shopping basket over her elbow and heading down the alley. Before Penny had taken off on her bicycle, Barbara had cycled to the store, but now she was obliged to walk in her two-inch heels, which threw her hips into a swing she could not avoid. Walking to the store took twice as long as cycling and gave the men driving down Main Street a better chance to eyeball her. Well, let them stare, she thought.
When she reached Renfew's, a bunch of women were jabbering away.
"Sadie Ostertag from over near the railroad yard," Mrs. Fisk was saying. "She lived in that little house with all the potted geraniums."
"I don't believe it," Mrs. La Plant said.
"Her house," said Mrs. Fisk, "was always so clean."
"It's right here in the paper," Mrs. Mader said. "Read the paper if you don't believe me."
"How could she do that to her own children?" Mrs. La Plant began to cry. "She must be a monster."
Barbara froze, a sick weight in her stomach. "What are you talking about?"
Everyone looked at her. She saw the corners of their mouths crimping, their faces suddenly aloof. At the counter stood Miss Ellison, Irene's piano teacher, that forty-year-old spinster who had her sights on Mr. H. She seemed to claw at Barbara with her eyes. It was almost as if Miss Ellison could smell the perfume of lovemaking rising from Barbara's skin. The thought made Barbara smile. He'll never marry you, she wanted to shout. Not even if his wife drops dead tomorrow. Then she heard Mrs. Mader speak in a voice as dry as sawdust.
"Sadie Ostertag took an ax to her children. All four of them. Then she tried to hang herself, but she couldn't finish the job."
Mrs. La Plant wiped her eyes. "Only a monster would raise a hand to hurt her own babies."
"An ax murderess," Mrs. Deal said. "Who'd have thought we'd have our own ax murderess?"
Barbara had seen Sadie Ostertag every Sunday in church. Her thin, silent husband was a railroad mechanic. Sadie had appeared all fluttery in her ruffled dresses, her hair frizzed from the crimping iron. She'd made matching sailor outfits for her children, who had marched behind her into church like ducklings. "Maybe there were things going on that we didn't know about," Barbara said.
Miss Ellison gave her a cold, appraising look. Barbara held her head a little higher. She wasn't tall, but her heels gave her an extra two inches, so she could look down on Miss Ellison.
"She was such a kindhearted girl," old Mrs. Lansky said. "Never talked too loud. Her children were so nice."
"Will they hang her now?" Mrs. Deal asked. "Or put her in the electric chair?"
Everyone was silent. Even Barbara bowed her head until Miss Ellison finally spoke.
"Don't be ridiculous. They send people like that to the asylum." Though she spoke about Sadie Ostertag, her eyes rested on Barbara. Something about the calculated way Miss Ellison pronounced the word asylum made Barbara shiver.
At church on Sunday, Barbara sat on the hard oak pew and stared at the empty place where the Ostertag family used to sit. Sadie's sin, of course, was the subject of Father Bughola's homily, but Barbara could hardly concentrate on his words. Instead she scanned the church for Penny. Surely the Maagdenbergh woman would at least be decent enough to drive Penny into town for Sunday Mass, but three Sundays had come and gone with no sign of her daughter. Barbara decided that she would have to beg one of her fellow parishioners to drive her out to the Van den Maagdenbergh farm. The logical person to ask would be Mr. Wysock, who was dozing across the aisle from her. When she glanced at him, his wife, Lucy, stuck out her wattled turkey neck and glared. Barbara looked away. No, she wouldn't ask the Wysocks.
Who else could she ask? No one but the Wysocks lived out the Maagdenbergh woman's way. It was too far for anyone to drive her unless they really wanted to help her. Supposing she walked all those miles, getting herself dirty and disheveled, and arrived at the door looking like some tramp? Supposing Penny didn't want to see her? She would just end up humiliating herself for nothing.
Mrs. Wysock was still staring at her sideways. Barbara tried to sit up straighten It was hard to breathe, wearing her new black crêpe de Chine dress in this heat. The jet bead choker squeezed her throat. Mrs. Wysock smiled smugly as if she knew Barbara Niebeck's secrets—that under her good clothes, she was nothing. Inside her there was something rotten and wrecked beyond all mending.
When she came home from church the house was empty. Creeping into the parlor, Barbara slipped her fingers into the porcelain vase containing the key that unlocked Mrs. Hamilton's old roll-top writing desk. Keeping the desk locked had been Irene's idea. That girl acted as if her sick mother were a saint and her possessions holy relics. Barbara turned the key in the lock, then pushed up the top. Tucked in the cherrywood pigeonholes were envelopes and writing paper. She found a gold-nib fountain pen and a bottle of rose-scented ink. In her head, she had already composed her letter. Dear Penny, I'm so sorry. Come home. I miss you. You don't have to live at that woman's house. I want you back. Love, your mother. But since she wasn't used to writing with a fountain pen, the ink smeared all over the fancy paper. Crumpling up that sheet, she took out a pencil and a fresh leaf. Deer Penny, I am so sory. Her letters were awkward, misshapen, like the scribbling of a child. She recalled the grocery lists she used to write. "Your mother's stupid," she had once heard Irene tell her daughter. "She can't even write." Penny used to snatch the lists away and write them over again, correcting Barbara's mistakes.
Barbara tore up the letter, hiding the fragments in her apron pocket, and locked the desk. If she sent her daughter a letter, Penny would either just laugh at it or else be ashamed of her. Retreating to the kitchen, Barbara heated up the iron on the stove. She had a whole basket of Mr. H.'s shirts to iron. She pondered the look he had given her when she touched his arm the other day. What lay behind that fleeting glimpse of vulnerability? He's lonesome, she told herself as she sprinkled water on his shirt, then guided the iron over his sleeve. Lonesome, just like she was.
That night Barbara jerked awake and sat up, her chest heaving. There were footsteps coming down the hall, stopping outside her room. She held her breath, staring at the golden ribbon of light under her door. "Barbara?" The voice was barely louder than a whisper. Had she been a deep, peaceful sleeper, she never would have heard it.
She called out, her mouth dry, the darkness rushing past her face in a dizzying blur, and then the door opened. The light from the hallway streamed around his body. He was still dressed, must have just come home from the Fisks' dinner party.
In his stocking feet, he entered the room and knelt beside her bed. With clumsy hands he touched her face, then tugged at her hair. In a second, the sheet was off her and his hands were under her nightgown. This wasn't the way it was supposed to be. In her shock, she forgot she had to push him away, run to the bathroom, and insert her diaphragm. How could such a thing be possible, his seizing her in the dark like some demon lover? I must be good, she thought as the bed began to buckle and creak. Good as some high-class whore. Gave him back his manhood. Wasn't that why he'd been paying her so much? When he finally grunted out her name, he was trembling. His wet face rubbed against hers until she tasted his tears. As he kept kissing her, she could almost taste his grief.
"Shh." Stroking his back, she tried to comfort him, though she scarcely knew where to begin. His sadness was a ghost that stalked him wherever he went. It followed him when he came to her bed. The best solace she could offer was flimsy and over too soon. He hadn't asked for any of this. Before his wife had fallen ill, he had been a faithful husband, hadn't even looked in Barbara's direction. He and Hazel used to go cycling together, used to sing duets while Hazel played the piano. Once Barbara had come up the stairs with a stack of clean folded linens and found them kissing on the landing like two lovesick kids.
He hadn't asked to be locked in this cage of secrets any more than she had. Silently she began to cry with him.
Night after night, he stole into her bed. It became necessary to insert her diaphragm before turning in. He was gone before she awoke, but he always left behind a crisp ten-dollar bill on the dresser. Barbara hid the money under her bed in an old cigar box. As the stack of bills grew thicker, she bound them with rubber bands.
***
Laurence Hamilton spent most of the day away—at the pop factory, the Rotary Club, rehearsing with the Presbyterian church choir. Barbara passed her solitary hours scrubbing floors, washing windows, doing his laundry. Sometimes the silence was too much. She carried on imaginary conversations with Penny. In her daydreams, she could refashion herself into a storybook mother. She put her arm around her daughter, smoothed back her hair, and announced they were leaving Minerva forever.
While dusting the parlor, Barbara regarded the souvenir plate from Santa Barbara, where the Hamiltons had gone on their honeymoon. She could only laugh at the name, but the scene painted on the plate was so tempting. A city with lovely white bell towers that rose against a backdrop of purple mountains and a deep blue sky. Once she got to California, she would find a job as a waitress or coat-check girl in some respectable establishment where she could meet a man who would woo her by daylight, no more hiding and sneaking around. Turn me into an honest woman, she thought, her mouth twisting into a smirk as she dusted the Hamiltons' wedding portrait. Mrs. H.'s long veil swirled around her bridegroom's feet like a sticky web.
One evening when Mr. H. was at his Rotary Club meeting, Barbara slipped inside Hazel Hamilton's old dressing room, where her clothes still hung from padded hangers, neatly arranged, as though she would return any day. She traced a silk sleeve, drawing a faint film of dust onto her finger. Mr. H. kept all his things in a separate, lesser closet. The only one who went here anymore was Irene. Like the writing desk she kept locked, this was another shrine she kept for her mother. With any luck Irene would grow out of this nonsense soon.
Barbara shook the dust out of a fragile gown of blue voile. Then, hesitating only a moment, she shrugged off her housedress and put it on. How soft the voile was, how gracefully it draped over her shoulders and hips. It was five years out of fashion, but it wouldn't take too much work to redo the dress in the modern style. Positioning herself in front of the dressing room mirror, she hitched the skirt up to her knees. Her hand reached out and fingered the sleeve of a hunter-green traveling suit, which would be perfect for Penny. The color would set off her daughter's hair and eyes, her dark freckles. When she left town, Barbara intended to take a few of these items with her. Hadn't she earned them?