BARBARA STIRRED a huge pot of simmering tomato sauce. Neatly laid out on the kitchen table were freshly sterilized canning jars, lids, and rubber rings. Everything was clean and ordered until the flies came pouring through a hole in the screen door, more flies than she had ever seen, their furry legs twitching down her arms, her sweaty neck, the back of her knees. Their bodies tumbled into the tomato sauce, plumping up like raisins. Flies covered the canning jars and lids. It was so hot in that kitchen, everything seemed to warp and collide, the flies swarming around her too fast to swat away. She became aware of someone standing behind her, breathing down the back of her dress with hot, measured breaths. Locked in her terror, she couldn't move. Her tormentor stepped forward. She could not see its face, could not tell if it was male or female. The faceless thing took hold of the bubbling pot of tomato sauce and tipped it. Barbara fell writhing to the floor as the scalding red sauce rained over her.
In the darkness, Barbara awoke with a cry and clutched herself. Nearly every night that week, she'd had dreams that wrenched her awake, shivering and sobbing. The night before she had dreamt, for the first time in years, of her father. Her father chasing her with a shotgun, hunting her down like a deer.
Climbing out of bed, she groped her way to the window. She could have turned on the light, but she was afraid of catching her reflection in the mirror, afraid of how ghastly she must look. Pushing up the sash, she let in a stream of frosty September air that made her shiver even harder. At least the fresh air made it easier to breathe. Some nights she dreamt she was suffocating, an unbearable weight pressing down on her, forcing the air from her lungs. She inhaled deeply before feeling her way to the dresser. Opening the top drawer, she rooted around until her fingers located the half-empty pack of Lucky Strikes and the box of household matches. In the past weeks, she had taken up smoking; on nights like these, a cigarette was the only thing that could soothe her nerves and slow her racing heart. She felt her way to the chair by the window, struck a match, and lit up. Her bare feet found the chipped old teacup she used to catch the ashes. Taking a deep drag, she filled her lungs with smoke and breathed out. Gradually her hands stopped shaking. She calmed down enough to pay attention to the night noises. The roof creaked and settled. Swaying elm branches scraped against the windows while her skin goose-pimpled in the draft. People used to have a lot of superstitions about elm trees. Her mother had told her it was the coffinmaker's tree. Nonsense, she told herself, sucking hard on her cigarette. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she caught herself staring at her daughter's empty bed. Something throbbed behind her temples until she looked away.
Hazel Hamilton used to sing ballads. Out of nowhere, Barbara recalled a snatch of melody and the words that went with it. What cannot be cured, love, must be endured, love. She commanded herself to take stock of her situation. She still had her beauty. She had the money she had saved. She could move on, forget this place, start a new life somewhere else, the way she had planned all along. It wouldn't be that difficult to find another man. But right now she couldn't imagine another man. She had thought her heart was a dead thing, yet now it pounded inside her, giving her no peace. She had come so close to leaving after the fiasco with Irene's bicycle. Slipping out the door with the suitcase would have been an easy escape. Except that she had fallen in love with him, breaking her own rules.
And how could she ever abandon Penny? Even though the girl lived twenty-one miles down the road and never spoke to her anymore, she was still her mother, would never stop being her mother. She couldn't bear the thought of leaving her behind. She wanted to keep track of her at least. Know that she was happy and getting an education. What if Penny missed her and wanted to come home?
She needed to go back to bed and try to sleep. Every morning she was up at six to fire up the stove and make breakfast for Laurence and the girls. Midmorning, when the girls were at school, he came home from the pop factory and led her upstairs. The affair had not ended, after all, even now that his girls were back in the house.
Then, like a passage in one of her less frightening dreams, her door opened noiselessly. He slipped into the room with the silent grace of a ghost. No floorboard creaked beneath his feet—it was as if he were weightless. Stabbing out her cigarette, she set her makeshift ashtray on the floor and sat up straight in her chair. His face was in shadow, but the moonlight silvered his hands. His beautiful hands. Neither of them dared to even whisper at first. He knelt so that his face was level with hers. The moon illuminated the planes of his cheeks and forehead, the curve of his mouth. He leaned against her, his lips to her ear. "I heard you cry out. Did you have another nightmare?"
She took his face in her hands. When he kissed her and rocked her in his arms, she bathed in the warm illusion of being protected. His hands moved over her breasts and under her nightgown. Between her thighs. She closed her eyes and let herself dissolve. The more tense and on edge she was, the more extreme her pleasure when she allowed herself to succumb to it. She half feared she would knock herself off the chair and sob aloud. He stroked her until she was sodden, the thin fabric of her nightgown sticking to her thighs.
She struggled to find the words to tell him it was time to put an end to this. He, more than anyone, knew that. Unlike her, he had so much to lose. They both knew it had to stop, but neither of them could make it stop. She had learned not to look at him when his daughters were present for fear that even little Ina would be able to see the love in her eyes. Love. She scarcely believed its force as it seized her. That it had taken her thirty years and the loss of her only child before she finally came to experience a man's love.
She touched his erection, but he gently pushed her hand away, signaling that it was time for him to return to his room. After silently kissing her, he crept out the door. She rocked herself and wept, for it was the first rime a man had given her pleasure without asking for anything in return. The memory of his hands bloomed on her skin as she made her way to bed. What price would she pay if she allowed herself to be romantic, surrendering to the force of their love? It was always the woman who had to pay. But he had come to give her comfort. She embraced the pillow as though it were him lying beside her. Something stronger than fear unfolded inside her as she fell at last into an untroubled sleep.
Two doors down the hall, Irene lay awake. She had not detected her father's footsteps, but she heard the elm branches knocking against the windows and outside walls. And she smelled the cigarette smoke, which moved through the house like poison gas. That treacherous smoke made her throat so tight and sore, she thought she would start to scream and never be able to stop.