Guy sent Rose a hand-drawn postcard of a bear holding a sprig of oats. It was October again; the seasons had revolved a year since they’d met.
Going to bed each night, she stepped out of her sweater and overalls in the frigid barn, boosted herself into the hammock in her underwear and socks, zipped up the sleeping bags, opened her legs, and brought her-self to climax, the quickest way to get warm and drop off, and nothing to do with love. Oh, maybe she thought of Guy while she touched herself, but in the light of day she wasn’t even answering his letters.
The harvest wore on, constant motion, no pause. Each day was shorter, each night longer, though sleep was brief in the chilly house and in the even chillier barn, which seemed to Rose with each passing night less of a shelter. Wilma lent her an old muskrat coat, which she laid over the top of her sleeping bags and arranged and rearranged throughout the night, covering her face with fur to warm it, uncovering it to breathe. Even so, she awoke stiff-necked, her lips chapped and her nose nearly blue with cold.
She always woke first and so took the chore of ringing the farm bell before dawn to summon everyone for a wash and quick breakfast and then to the garden or orchard to make the most of daylight. Rain turned them indoors to shell soybeans, hone tools, and caulk windows. Breeding time for the goats arrived and, as they kept no bucks, they had to transport their goats to a breeder. One of the goats failed to get pregnant and kept going into heat, bleating, twitching, mounting the others, and had to be returned to the breeder again and again.
Rose learned to rest on her feet—sitting down, she risked nodding off. She had no time to write letters; her hands were full with the harvest and the two hours of music with Lila each day, bleak but constant, and her hands were full with Natalie.
Evenings, they sagged into the sauna exhausted, all except for Natalie who sat pert and lively, presiding over her belly. Natalie, of course, could not perform farm labor.
When the late apples were crated and stored, Rose turned her mind to leaving the farm. But she couldn’t just walk away, not with Natalie happy there. Rose fretted for her sister. Her swollen shape proved that human love, however deluded, was itself designed for harvest. But, pregnant and unpartnered, Natalie was, Rose thought, the loneliest thing alive.
But she seemed not to know it. Despite her ungainly belly, Natalie moved with ease. Her hair was so long she could sit on it, and there was so much of it, it seemed to shed light around her. She would lug the rocker around the common room to follow a patch of sun and her laughter cascaded tunefully over all.
She had her own rhythm, a routine of sorts. She awoke mid-morning when Rose brought her a cup of tea. Still in bed, she did leg lifts and pelvic tilts while Rose held open a naturopathic text on pregnancy to which she matched her poses. Next, she brushed her hair, chatting amiably about how life had been and how it would certainly have to be in the future, while Rose struggled to keep her eyes open. Rose was, of course, used to her sister. She saw herself in the tilt of her sister’s head and took comfort in her voice, a voice she’d heard, after all, every day of her life as a child. Sometimes Natalie reached for her hand and Rose came alert, reminded of the catastrophe of her own pregnancy, and had to take care not to grip back too tightly.
At eleven in the morning, Natalie snapped into focus when she walked down the lane to the mailbox, which, on two occasions, yielded small checks from the pharmacist which she used to buy skeins and skeins of yarn. It seemed Natalie had learned to knit. A fine thing, Rose told her, but even if she wasn’t able to do farm labor, couldn’t she pitch in to keep the rooms tidy and perhaps wash a dish or two? Their mother had never enforced routine; she’d left that to Rose. What else could Rose do now but play Rose Red again to Natalie’s drifty Snow White and do things for her sister? Rose addressed herself to chores with energy enough for two, she hoped. Or for three—the baby was eating by proxy. She doubled her deposit to the farm account. But it was a little strange that Natalie should be so unaccommodating to the strangers who had taken her in and so very relaxed about plans for the future. Rose had expected worry and at least some physical discomfort. Instead, there was the laughter and all the blonde hair.
Rose noticed her own hair becoming a bother and asked Wilma to cut it all off one night—to hack it down to an inch. With winter coming on, she’d lose the warmth of it, but no matter how tightly she braided it or tied it up in her bandanna, she was finding the weight of it bouncing on her neck bothersome. Natalie stood and watched, appalled, as the hair came off, fifteen inches dumped unceremoniously into the trash. What Rose had left was not a crew cut, as Natalie termed it, but a nice, neat cap of dark hair, twin to Ursula’s. Rose took pleasure in scandalizing her sister for a change.
Natalie had started teasing Rose about the farm. Oh, Natalie loved the river, the land, the buildings; but the people? No, it wasn’t the lesbian sex. She was all for love—found it “cute” that Dinah and Peggy “got it on” and observed that Lila’s beard “fit her personality.” What she didn’t get was why they were all working themselves to death. Oh, the tension, the furious effort, the striving. She raised herself up from her pelvic tilt on Rose’s old bed and made marching motions; she brandished an imaginary hoe; she mopped the imaginary sweat of her brow. Rose tried to shush her, but she was funny and knew it.
Rose wrote a sonata to welcome the baby and made the mistake of mentioning it to Natalie, who started bringing her knitting—peculiar little sweaters and booties in rainbow colors and a big scarfy tube of a thing she called a baby sling—out to the gazebo when Rose and Lila were at their music. Rose was, at first, flattered, but then saw that Natalie was looking for entertainment. She began to make a game of Lila’s demeanor. Behind Lila’s back, she frowned and nodded and sawed one knitting needle against the other.
Rose ignored her. One afternoon, however, Lila wheeled on Natalie.
“Yes?” she demanded icily.
Natalie folded her hands innocently over her knitting, but Rose sent her back to the house.
“I’m sorry,” Rose told Lila, who shrugged and smiled halfheartedly, staring off at Natalie’s retreating back. Rose realized with guilty relief that the burden of critical scrutiny had passed from her to Natalie. Still, she felt responsible for keeping Natalie out of trouble. And as the days passed, this proved more and more difficult.
Coming back from Quaker Meeting, the one time in the week she had to herself, she came to expect to find discord: Natalie and Peggy in a screaming fight over blonde hairs left in the kitchen sink, Peggy too furious to listen to Rose’s peacemaking, Natalie placidly pointing out that the only mirror in the house was the one over the sink.
Wilma took Natalie aside to suggest ways she might make friends at the farm. Natalie reported this with a secretive half-smile, and Rose felt her hopes rise, imagining a change of heart in her sister and then, perhaps, in the others. But when Rose went to thank Wilma, she shook her head, calling Natalie “a hard nut to crack.”
And so Rose was at first relieved when Guy drove down one evening and, on meeting Natalie, seemed to take a shine to her. Spotting the truck, Rose charged out to greet him. He pulled abruptly out of her embrace to examine her head.
“What have you done?”
Natalie sat on the steps, watching as he turned Rose’s head from side to side and tugged at her short hair disconsolately.
“This is Guy,” said Rose. “My sister, Natalie.”
Guy looked over. “Hi,” he said unsteadily.
“I feel as if I know you,” said Natalie and smiled and cast her eyes down to her belly. What did she mean, know him? Rose hadn’t mentioned Guy to Natalie since some crazy phone calls way back when Rose and Guy were first courting, more than a year before.
Dinah stuck her head out the door. “How many extra for dinner?”
“One, two,” Natalie told Dinah, indicating herself and Guy.
“Just one. We feed you every night, I believe,” said Dinah and banged the door shut. Natalie staggered up from the step and Guy hurried to her. She allowed herself to be supported into the house, where he held her chair for her and scooted her in and, in afterthought, gripped Rose’s chair back and then, observing the roomful of women already seated, laughed helplessly and sat down. He turned back to Natalie.
“You’re having a baby.”
“Mmm-hmm,” she said, beaming at his idiocy. “Due any day now.”
Rose was startled. She’d imagined it was still a while off.
“I wouldn’t trust due dates,” said Wilma. “It may be some time yet.”
“The hospital all ready for you?” asked Guy.
“Hospital!” said Natalie. “Better the woods or the open field.”
“Oh, really?” said Rose.
“They all think once I’m in labor, I’ll be helpless and they can cart me off to the hospital.” This was surprising to hear, as no discussion had taken place. But that was, in fact, Rose’s plan.
“Indigenous women did it themselves, you know,” Natalie went on. “Gave birth in the field, cut the cord with their teeth, tied it off, expelled the placenta, wrapped the baby in a sling, and went on back to work.” She didn’t mention to Guy that she actually never went to the field or did any work besides knitting.
“She’s kidding,” said Wilma and cast a worried eye in Rose’s direction.
“You just watch me,” said Natalie.
Guy toasted her with his apple cider. “You’re out of your mind,” he told her. “I’m going to build you a cradle.”
“I wouldn’t encourage her,” Rose told him when they’d gone out to the barn for the night.
“I would never have guessed you two were sisters. She’s a strange creature,” he said. They fluffed up straw, laid down the tarp, and spread the sleeping bags over them.
“She’s a lunatic. You said so yourself.”
Guy kissed her but, despite the long string of lonely nights that had preceded his visit, she could not bring herself to make love. She felt she had to confess about Lila, her night with Lila. Not that she and Guy had any kind of agreement, but she thought he might sense something.
“So you lay in bed with her. You didn’t do anything.”
“Well, no. If you want to look at it that way.”
“Learned your lesson, I guess,” he said. She couldn’t argue.
Lying wrapped up with him, she was for once warm enough in the barn, but too tired for anything but sleep.
He had to go the next morning—there were only a few warm days left to mix mortar. He was working atop a scaffold now; his walls were nearly ten feet tall.
“You ought to see it,” he told Rose. “My stone house,” he explained to Natalie, who’d come out while they were saying good-bye. As he drove out, Natalie followed his truck the length of the driveway, waving energetically, apparently no longer needing to be supported. Rose came with her and waved to Guy with even greater strenuousness, satirizing her sister.
He returned a few days later with a newly varnished pine cradle. Natalie was beside herself. At the sight of the cradle, she ran and kissed Rose and, tilting her head against Rose’s, peeked shyly out through her hair. “What a boyfriend you’ve got,” she said, loud enough for him to hear.
That night in the barn before sleep, Guy observed that the farm girls seemed to lack sympathy for Natalie. “You all could be nicer to her,” he advised Rose.
“Us all?” She couldn’t imagine what more they could be doing for Natalie. Weren’t they feeding her and sheltering her? Didn’t Rose, herself, wake her sister every day, bring her tea, and get her on her feet while listening to her prattle to the point of stupefaction, while everyone else was hard at chores?
“They could let her help out in the kitchen,” Guy suggested.
“Ah, but she breaks things and sets things on fire. And she’s not really a ‘helping out’ kind of person. She only ever goes her own way.”
He frowned. “Well, anyway, I told her to stick up for herself.”
“Wonderful,” Rose groaned. She’d noticed Natalie at supper, sitting quietly with her back straight and a glint in her eye.
Rose was, again, too tired to make love, and the next morning she woke, still fuming. Wasn’t she paying Natalie’s way, in money and in labor? Didn’t she hustle to soothe ruffled feelings all around because, despite Natalie’s stated wish to stay on the farm, she’d made trouble there, as she always did?
“Okay,” said Guy. “What do I know? I’m just a lonely man on a rock pile.” He pulled her to him, but she had to get up—she was late to ring the morning bell.
And then he had to go.
On a morning soon after, while Rose was rinsing breakfast dishes, Peggy paused in her recitation from the ledger, the spiral-bound farm log that was read from aloud each morning: chores, requests, and reminders to note, add to, or cross off. It hung on a nail on the side of a cupboard, available to all.
“Who wrote this?” said Peggy. “I can’t read it.”
Wilma tried. “Something ‘the flubbing’ . . . ‘morning.’ I don’t know.”
Rose dried her hands and went over to see. It was Natalie, sticking up for herself.
“What does it say?” insisted Lila.
Rose laughed uneasily and read aloud: “In case you haven’t heard, morning does not begin until fucking nine o’clock, you maniacs. Keep the noise down.”
Rose took a breath. The others were not to trouble themselves; she’d see to Natalie. They went on to the next item and soon enough scattered to the day’s work, Rose to rake dead cucumber vines from the hill behind the tool shed.
Natalie had declared war, had she? Rose let ten o’clock pass, when Natalie would expect her tea. Rose heard the mailman come and go. A little before lunchtime, Natalie appeared behind the shed where Rose was raking, and, gathering up a heap of vines for a cushion, plopped down, calm, rotund, and self-satisfied.
“So, what did they say?”
“Sorry?”
“About what I wrote in the Big Book.”
“No one could read your handwriting.”
“I’ll bet you could.”
Rose turned her back and dug her rake into the hill.
“Okay. I’ll write my message over again in block letters.”
“Natalie,” said Rose sternly, “do you really think your needs should rule the farm?”
“It’s not just my needs, it’s a normal need. Sleep is. People go a little crazy without it. Take a look around.” Natalie cast a sly glance toward the garden where Lila was on her hands and knees, pulling mud-caked car-rots, while Josie struggled up the row with a bushel of squash. Rose fought down the urge to shout at Natalie. Taking a breath, she listened to the distant crush-crush of a cabbage head on the kraut grater. It was a calming pulse.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she told Natalie, “we’ve got work to do and we don’t have much time. There could be a hard freeze tonight.”
“Come on, Rose. No one needs to slave like this. You know how much sauerkraut costs in the store? Ninety-eight cents a quart. And potatoes this time of year? Thirty cents a pound. Nobody has to bake bread any more. Nobody has to leap out of bed at five A.M. to dig potatoes. This is not pioneer America. We are not fucking Giants in the Earth!”
“Uh-huh,” said Rose. “Did you know that I’m the first one up every morning? I’m the one who rings the bell?” Her hands on the rake handle trembled. She was going to lose her temper.
Natalie was genuinely startled. “Oh, really? Why?” she asked. “Can’t you sleep? What’s the matter with you?”
Rose’s anger died. It was the first time since Natalie had come that she’d asked Rose about herself and, for a crazy moment, Rose was tempted to confide in her. But about what? About Lila? About how the farm had seemed in the spring and how it was now, how she had loved it and how she despaired of it now? She did despair of it. If she was the first up every morning, it was only because she was too cold to sleep. She’d imagined it a world apart and a new way of life, but underneath, it was as tangled as anywhere else, the people strange and the work arbitrary. They lived here, nonetheless, she and her sister; it was their home, their shelter of the moment. Rose felt the start of tears.
Natalie waited, her blue eyes sunstruck, her hair a gold corona. “Oh, I forgot,” she said and reached into her pocket. “You got a letter.”
Ursula, Rose thought. She had managed since her downfall with Lila to write one letter—a letter to Ursula, a dread confession, quoting the last written words of Admiral Scott before his death from cold and starvation: “the causes of the expedition’s failure are these. . . .” She’d admitted to Ursula, at least, that the farm hadn’t worked out and that she was stalled there until she could see Natalie though childbirth and figure out what to do with her and the baby. Once she’d sent Ursula the letter, she found she couldn’t wait for a reply and so had driven to the phone booth in Cosmos a couple days later and had hazarded a call.
“I’m on my way out the door,”Ursula had said.“Oh, shit, Rose. Call back?”
“Sure.”
“But you won’t.”
“The phone’s in the middle of the common room, remember? There’s no privacy.”
“Yeah, yeah. Listen up. Is she getting prenatal care? Is Natalie seeing a doctor?” Rose had hesitated. “Right. I have to say, I don’t get you, Rose, inviting Natalie.”
“I didn’t really have a choice.”
“Right. Only Natalie has choices. Fucking Natalie,” she growled. Ursula did have some experience of Natalie, who’d visited Rose in grad school and run up the phone bill, alternately cooing to and arguing with some boyfriend back home—the pharmacist, Rose now realized. Once, to Natalie’s wide-eyed astonishment, Ursula had untangled Natalie’s hair from the phone cord and hung up for her, mid-call.
“You hold on,” Ursula had commanded Rose as she stood in the phone booth. “I’m coming.”
“You can’t afford it,” Rose protested. “Not the time off and not the money.”
“You came to me in my time of trial,” declared Ursula. “I’m coming to you in yours.”
“Is this my time of trial?” Rose was beginning to suspect that all her times were of trial, and it touched her that Ursula might come. Maybe friendship wasn’t such a shuck after all.
A letter from Ursula would at least offer further advice on how to manage Natalie.
Rose knew, however, as soon as she closed her hand on it, that the letter was not from Ursula. The paper was heavy and textured, and the envelope’s return address was embossed.
The Minnesota Composer’s Guild. Dear Rose MacGregor,We are pleased to inform you—and Rose read no further. She’d grasped what it meant and was shouting.
The grant she’d applied for—she’d gotten it. She’d won. There’d be money to hire musicians for a whole concert of her music in the Cities. She was going back to the city. She was going to be somebody after all. The charming little farm was about to be a memory. Natalie would give birth soon, but so? A wild young girl gets knocked up—ordinary life, unremarkable. Natalie would need to be settled someplace, but Rose was on her way now. She’d written the sonata for Natalie; she would put her sister’s name in the concert program. Natalie was lucky, really, to have an about-to-be famous sister.
“What is it?” demanded Natalie.
But Rose wouldn’t let Natalie be the first to hear. She ought to rush to Lila, but she didn’t want that either. Anyone could see Lila had let her career go, retiring to a farm way off in the middle of nowhere. She’d be one of those musicians of brief fame. Lila had talent. It was sad. She was probably lucky to have met Rose; maybe she’d be a footnote.
Rose saw herself on Guy’s arm at her concert. What did it matter if they were or were not lovers? He’d be her escort—he owed her that much. They’d be the handsome pair. He’d have to buy a suit. No, a tux. Gripping the letter, she backed away from Natalie, who looked at her strangely and let out a nervous laugh.
Rose didn’t know where she was going, but she couldn’t stand there a minute longer. She turned and ran to her car. The keys were in the ignition. She started up, backed around, and drove out, gazing into the rearview mirror where she saw, with a shivery stab of satisfaction, Natalie standing dumbstruck, exactly where she’d left her.