14

… the love of a wife (such as I have got) grows stronger and stronger every day, and cannot be bought for any money.

James Lorin Chapin
Private Journal, Lincoln, 1849

“Look at it rain!” said Betsy Bucky to Carl. “Oh, Carl, you know what I’m going to do this afternoon? I’m going to start that bedspread. I’m not going to wait another minute.” Betsy hopped up from her chair, dragged it over to the refrigerator, climbed up on it, and reached for her pattern books, which were lying in a heap on top.

Then she gave a little shriek. “Oh, Carl, I dropped it. I dropped the instructions behind the refrigerator. You’ve got to pull the fridge away from the wall. I can’t make my pretty new bedspread without the instructions.”

Carl looked up from his lunch and stared at his wife in horror. “Listen, Betsy, I can’t move the refrigerator.”

“Don’t be silly, honeybun.” Betsy hopped down from her chair and ran over to the stove. “Here, have another plate of spaghetti to build up your strength. Then you can do it. I just know you can.”

Rosemary Hill had risen that rainy morning more tired than when she went to bed. After breakfast she had gone back upstairs to take a nap, but she still hadn’t been able to sleep. Now she sat in her bathrobe at the telephone table in her front hall, talking to Ed Bell, letting it all out in a flood.

But Ed interrupted, obviously stricken. “Oh, Rosemary, I’m so sorry. Have you been to another doctor? Are you sure?”

“Oh, yes,” said Rosemary. “I’m sure. But that’s not the point. The point is—listen, Ed, dear.”

And Ed listened while Rosemary went on and on, faltering, explaining. In the end, he said why didn’t they get together at his house and talk the whole thing over. And Rosemary said what about Thad Boland, he’d be interested, and so would George Tarkington, whose emphysema was so bad, and Rosemary had heard a rumor about Eloise Baxter.

“Well, certainly,” said Ed. “Let’s all get together. What about three o’clock this afternoon at my house?”

And then Ed hung up and set his mind to the new task. It looked very hard. Rosemary and Thad and George and Eloise would come into his living room at three o’clock, and they would all sit down and look at each other, and then somehow they would have to begin to talk. The moment would present itself, and he would have to face it. Ed had no fear that he would not be able to say something. The right words would float into his mouth, his tongue would shape them, his ears would hear them coming out of his lips. He had only to wait for them and expect them, and they would be there.

By midafternoon the sky had cleared. On Lowell Road, Arlene Pott had spent the rainy morning fighting with her husband. Then she had tried to make up by preparing his favorite lunch of tacos and beans.

“Wally?” said Arlene, knocking on the door of his den. “Lunch is ready.”

“I’m not hungry,” growled Wally through the door. Arlene could tell by his voice he had been sleeping on the couch.

She went back to the kitchen, slapped the tacos into the garbage disposal, crashed the dishes into the sink, and wept a little. Then as the sun came out, she collected herself and decided to spend the afternoon in her vegetable garden. Putting on her old slacks and galoshes and a pair of gloves, she went outdoors.

Immediately she felt better. She was pleased to see all the yellow flowers on her tomato plants. Her zucchinis were rioting all over the ground. Arlene tore out the old pea stalks and staked her beans. How amazing, she thought reverently, that all this lush greenery should have come from a few tiny seeds. She weeded everything, kneeling on the wet ground, getting her slacks dirty. Her garden was going to be a showplace. It was already a solid comfort, a solace for her bruised soul.

The Kellys, too, had a vegetable garden, a ratty-looking plot rescued from the forest underbrush on Fairhaven Bay. When the rain stopped, Mary went out in her rubber boots, pushing through the drenched weeds to find the ingredients for a ratatouille, half a dozen baby zucchinis, some summer squash and green beans, an eggplant, a green pepper. The tomatoes were still a month away. She would have to buy some at Jerry’s supermarket.

Mary had spent the morning with Claire Bold, and now Joe Bold was coming to supper. To be so much in company with the wife’s courage on the one hand and the husband’s anguish on the other was a peculiar kind of burden, a strange hiatus in the normal progress of Mary’s days. It was as though she had been shunted into a waiting room in some abandoned train station, an old railroad depot with a littered floor. There she sat with Claire in the half-light, waiting interminably for a train that never came, that would pull in at last to stop for Claire, then move away slowly, its iron wheels grating and screaming on the rusted track. She could wait forever, thought Mary, among the broken benches and empty gum machines and dirty windows, and pray that the train would never come.

The meeting at Ed Bell’s house, the one inspired by Rosemary Hill’s urgent problem, began tentatively, in a mood of self-conscious embarrassment.

“Well, here we are,” said George Tarkington, sitting back in his small chair, looking around at everybody, his hands on his knees. “Here we are.”

“I just thought we should all get together,” said Rosemary. Reaching into her sewing bag, she jerked out a rag and began jabbing it with pins.

Then Thad Boland started on a rambling story about his septic tank, a saga that had no point and no relation to anything they had come together to talk about. The rest of them listened patiently, as though they too were unable to confront the thing that sat invisibly among them in the center of the braided rug.

When Thad’s story finally petered out, they all sat silently staring at the rug until Ed spoke up and took the creature by the throat.

“Look,” he said, “we’re all going to die someday. Some of us just happen to know more or less when it’s going to happen. That’s bad in some ways, but maybe it’s good in others. It gives us control over circumstances. It means we can get ready for it. We can help each other through it. Perhaps we can even do more than that.”

“More than that?” said Eloise Baxter, trembling.

“More than that, right!” exclaimed Rosemary. Clashing her scissors in the air, she slashed at the rag in her hand. “If anybody thinks I’m going to die in the hospital with tubes going in and out of me, and losing control of my bladder, and going in and out of comas, they’ve got another think coming.” Fiercely she ripped her ragged piece of cloth down the middle.

“Oh, I see,” said Eloise, putting pale fingers to her mouth.

“Yes, yes,” said George. “I know what you mean. I worry about it all the time.”

When all of them had had their say, Ed ended the meeting by reading the twenty-third Psalm. They all joined in, murmuring the well-known phrases about green pastures and still waters and the valley of the shadow of death, and the words penetrated very deep, and Eloise wept, and they all embraced and said goodbye and went home.

As the meeting at Ed’s house broke up, the dinner guest at the Kellys’ house was just arriving. Joe Bold drove down Fairhaven Road, took a wrong turn, drove back, took another wrong turn, tried again, then arrived at last at the steep descent beside the river. Cautiously he inched his car down the slope and pulled up beside the house, then climbed out to say hello to Homer and Mary as they came running down their porch steps to greet him.

He had arrived early, and therefore supper was early. And after supper there was still so much light that Homer said, “Look, let’s go to the hospital by the river.”

Mary and Homer pulled the canoe down among the pickerel weed, and Homer climbed in. Then Mary hung on to one end while Joe got in awkwardly after putting one shiny shoe deep in the mud.

“It’s a good thing Homer’s paddling has improved,” Mary said, giving the canoe a big shove. “You should have seen him in the old days. Remember, Homer, the time we had to paddle with a lunchbox? Goodbye, you two.”

“I remember the snapping turtle,” growled Homer. “See that?” He showed Joe his scarred thumb. “She thought it was funny. She laughed fit to kill.” Picking up his paddle, Homer turned the canoe silently in the shallow water and headed into the slow current. The mosquitoes pursued them. It was the night of the full moon. As the sun set downstream, the moon’s pale shield rose over the low hills behind them. Pulling out into the middle of the river, they rested their paddles and drifted, gazing at the ripples under the aluminum prow, at the fireflies flickering in a sloping field, at the jet trail high in the failing light, turning from rose to gray, at Venus, a spark above the sunset.

Homer glanced over his shoulder at the moon. “There was a certain moment Thoreau used to watch for, the moment when the light of the rising moon took over from the setting sun. He tried to catch it, that little interval of time when night began. It’s too early right now, I guess.” Homer paddled steadily, lifting his blade straight out of the water, making purling seams that curled away behind them, while Joe talked about his day at the Divinity School.

“The students were interested in something they call the life of the spirit,” he said bitterly. “The life of the spirit is really big there now. Of course it’s a good thing. I mean, when I was a student it was all rationalism and the social mission, and I was sort of odd man out. But now it’s spirituality they want. I don’t know, Homer, somehow it left me cold. They were all so radiant.” Joe’s paddle splashed and clanked against the metal side of the canoe. “I confess I felt more and more disgruntled.”

The hospital loomed in front of them, its windows alight. “Well, maybe you’re on the right track,” said Homer. “Maybe disgruntlement is the correct attitude toward the universe.”

Joe shook his head vigorously. “No, no, it’s not. I know the correct attitude. It’s plain as the nose on your face. The right attitude is Ed Bell’s. He comes into the hospital to see Claire and tell her funny stories and make her laugh, and once in a while he says something about the good Lord. He has this nice simple faith. He trusts in God in the most natural way, as though his good Lord were one of the family. Well, I believe in his God, but only for Ed, not for me. As soon as Ed leaves, his good Lord goes with him.” Joe dipped his paddle savagely, turning the canoe toward the shore. “The church would be a lot better off if I resigned and Ed Bell took over.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Homer, looking around at Joe in astonishment. “Besides”—Homer gesticulated excitedly with his paddle—”Ed Bell probably doesn’t know Leviticus from Exodus. He doesn’t know Noah from Nicodemus. He doesn’t know the Archbishop of Canterbury from the Patriarch of Jerusalem. He doesn’t know the Defenestration of Prague from the Donation of Constantine. He doesn’t know—”

“Look, Homer,” said Joe, gazing up at the sky, which had darkened to a deep greenish-blue around the high walls of the hospital. “It’s now, right now.”

“So it is,” said Homer softly. “The moon’s in charge from now on.”