A Piece of the World(11)

That if it doesn’t work, Papa will be even more disappointed in me.

“I won’t go! You can’t make me!” I wail, wrenching away from him and running down the street.

“You are a mulish, pigheaded girl!” he yells bitterly after me.

I hide in an alley behind a barrel that smells of fish, crouching in the dirty slush. Before long my hands are red and numb, and my cheeks are stinging. Every now and then I see Papa stride by, looking for me. One time he stops on the sidewalk and cranes his neck, peering into the dimness, but then he grunts and moves on. After an hour or so, I can’t take the bitter cold any longer. Dragging my feet, I make my way back to the buggy. Papa is sitting in the driver’s seat, smoking his pipe, the blue wool blanket around his shoulders.

He looks down at me, a grim expression on his face. “Are you ready to go to the doctor?”

I stare back at him. “No.”

My father is stern, but he has little tolerance for public displays. I know this about him, in the way you learn to identify the weak parts of the people you live with. He shakes his head, sucking on his pipe. After a few minutes, he turns abruptly, without a word, and jumps down from the buggy. He lifts me into the back, tightens Blackie’s harness, and climbs back into the driver’s seat. For the entire six-hour ride home he is silent. I gaze at the stark line of the horizon, as severe as a charcoal slash on white paper, the steely sky, a dark spray of crows rising into the air. Bare blue trees just beginning to bud. Everything is ghostly, scrubbed of color, even my hands, marbled like a statue.

When we arrive home, after dark, Mother meets us in the foyer, baby Sam on her hip. “What did they say?” she asks eagerly. “Can they help?”

Papa removes his hat and unwraps his scarf. Mother looks from him to me. I stare at the floor.

“The girl refused.”

“What?”

“She refused. There was nothing I could do.”

Mother’s back stiffens. “I don’t understand. You didn’t take her to the doctor?”

“She wouldn’t go.”

“She wouldn’t go?” Her voice rises. “She wouldn’t go? She is a child.”

Papa pushes past her, removing his coat as he walks. Sam starts to whimper. “It’s her life, Katie.”

“Her life,” my mother spits. “You are her parent!”

“She threw a terrible scene. I could not make her.”

Suddenly she turns to me. “You foolish girl. You have wasted your father’s day and risked your entire future. You are going to be a cripple for the rest of your life. Are you happy about that?”

Sam is starting to cry. Miserably I shake my head.

Mother hands the squalling baby to Papa, who bounces him awkwardly in his arms. Crouching down in front of me, she shakes her finger. “You are your own worst enemy, young lady. And you are a coward. It is senseless to mistake fear for bravery.” Her warm breath is yeasty on my face. “I feel sorry for you. But that’s it. We are done trying to help you. It’s your life, as your poor father said.”

AFTER THIS, WHEN I wake in the morning, I spread my fingers, working out the stiffness that creeps in overnight. I point my toes, feeling the crimp in my ankles, my calves, the dull sore ache behind my knees. The pain in my joints is like a needy pet that won’t leave me alone. But I can’t complain. I’ve forfeited that right.





MY LETTER TO THE WORLD





1940


It’s not long before Andy is at the door again. Awkwardly lugging a tripod, sketchbook under one arm, paintbrush like a bit between his teeth. “Would you mind if I set up my easel somewhere out of the way?” he asks, dumping his supplies in the doorway.

“You mean . . . in the house?”

He nods his chin toward the stairs. “I was thinking upstairs. If you’re okay with it.”

I’m a little shocked at his nerve. Who shows up unannounced at a virtual stranger’s house and practically asks to move in? “Well, I . . .”

“I promise to be quiet. You’ll hardly know I’m here.”

Nobody’s been upstairs in years. There are a lot of empty bedrooms. And the truth is, I wouldn’t mind the company.

I nod.

“Well, good,” he says with a grin. He gathers his supplies. “I’ll try to stay out of the way of the witches.”

His footsteps are loud as he thumps up the stairs to the second floor. He sets up his easel in the southeast bedroom, the one that once was mine. From the window he can watch the steamers pull away from Port Clyde, heading to Monhegan and the open sea.

Through the floorboards I hear him muttering, tapping his foot. Humming.

Hours later he comes downstairs with paint-stained fingers, the corner of his mouth purple from sticking a brush in it. “The witches and I are cohabiting just fine,” he says.

BETSY COMES AND goes. Like us, she knows better than to interrupt Andy while he’s working. But unlike us, she has a hard time sitting still. She gets a towel and a bucket of water and washes the dusty windows; she helps me feed the wet laundry through the wringer and hang it on the line. Donning one of my old aprons, she crouches in the dirt and plants a row of lettuce seeds in the vegetable garden.

On warm evenings, when Andy has finished for the day, Betsy shows up with a basket and we picnic down by the grove, where Papa built a fire pit long ago and wedged boards between tree trunks for seats. Al and I watch Betsy and Andy collect driftwood and twigs to make a fire in the circle of rocks. From the campfire, the fields that separate us from the house in the distance look like sand.