A Piece of the World(55)
We are all quiet for a moment, contemplating this. Except for the time with Walton—which seems to me now like a fever dream, hallucinatory and indistinct, unrelated to my life before or after—I have lived in this house like a mollusk in its shell, never imagining that I might be separated from it. I’ve taken for granted my existence here—the worn stairs, the whale-oil lamp in the hall, the view of the grass and the cove beyond from the front stoop.
Mother rises abruptly from her chair. “This house has been in my family since 1743. Generations of Hathorns have lived and died here. You don’t walk away from a house simply because someone offers to buy it.”
“Fifty thousand.” Papa raps his misshapen knuckles on the table. “We will not see an offer like this again, I can tell you.”
She tugs at her dress, her jaw clenched, the veins on her neck like rivulets of water. I have never seen the two of them in conflict like this. “This is my house, not yours,” she says fiercely. “We will stay on.”
Papa’s face is grim, but he doesn’t speak. Mother is a Hathorn; he is not. The conversation is over.
Papa will spend the next fifteen years confined to a wheelchair in a small room on the ground floor of the house he was so eager to sell, rarely venturing outside. Al and I, with the help of our brothers, will scrape and save, learn to live with even less. We’ll manage, just barely, to save the farm from bankruptcy. But sometimes I will wonder—all of us will wonder—whether it would have been better to let it go.
IN JULY OF 1921 Sam, laughing, gathers our family together in the Shell Room. Clasping the hand of his bespectacled choir-leader girlfriend, Mary, he announces that he has asked for her hand in marriage.
“Of course I said yes!” Mary beams, holding out her left hand to show us the modest engagement ring she inherited from her grandmother.
This news isn’t a complete surprise: the two of them met in Malden, where Mary grew up, when Sam stayed to work for Herbert Carle, and have been together for several years. I watch as he moves closer and whispers something, as she blushes and he brushes her hair behind her ear. “I’m so happy for you both,” I tell them, and though I feel a pang of sadness for myself witnessing their casual intimacy, I mean it. Dear kind Sam deserves to find love.
Sam and Mary’s wedding is held on the “lawn,” as Mary calls it, though we Olsons have never thought of it as anything but the field. Al and Fred build a pergola and set up two rows of twenty chairs borrowed from the Grange Hall. Over several days I bake rolls, blueberry and strawberry pies, and a wedding cake, Sam’s favorite: lemon with buttercream frosting. Mary wears a lacy dress and veil; Sam is dashing in a dark gray suit. A three-piece band from Rockland plays on the bluff above the shore, where Fred has organized a clambake at the water’s edge.
After their honeymoon, the newlyweds move into our family homestead to save money for a house of their own. I like having another woman around, particularly one as young and friendly as Mary, who is solid and kind and laughs easily. She is good company in the house, helping me cook and clean.
Sam and Mary settle into a bedroom on the third floor, away from the rest of the family, and soon enough, Mary is with child. Unlike Ramona—as reported in her letters—she has no morning sickness. We sit by the hearth as she knits blankets and I sew frocks for the baby, talking about the weather and the crop yield and the people we know in common, such as Gertrude Gibbons, who was married recently herself. (She sent an invitation to the wedding, but I didn’t go.)
“That girl’s got some border collie in her blood. Can’t help herding and nipping. But she’s all right,” Mary says.
The image makes me smile, both because it’s exactly what Gertrude does and because Mary says it so matter-of-factly, without rancor. I don’t mention my waspish comment to Gertrude at the dance. It’s hard to feel proud of that.
MONTHS LATER, WOKEN in the middle of the night by a low moan, I lie in the darkness of my bedroom, my breathing the only sound. Sitting up, I strain to listen. Minutes pass. Another moan, louder this time, and then I know: it’s time for the baby to be born. I hear Sam’s heavy footsteps down two flights of stairs and out the front door. The Ford engine revs; he’s on the way to get the midwife.
I bend and unbend my legs, as I do every morning, and carefully swing them over the side, holding onto the spindle frame as I reach for my dress on the peg on the back of the door. In the darkness I pull on stockings and lace my feet into shoes, then make my way downstairs, leaning on the banister. Papa is in the foyer in his wheelchair, bumping around, muttering under his breath in Swedish, trying to navigate the doorways to get to the kitchen. He must’ve roused himself from bed, a task Al usually helps him with.
I fill the kettle from the urn of water on the floor, fire up the Glenwood, and take out oats for porridge and bread for toast as the sun rises in the sky. After some time, I see the car pull up in front of the house. The midwife steps out, carrying a large tapestry bag. Then the back door opens and Gertrude Gibbons emerges. What is she doing here?
“Look who I found,” Sam says, stepping into the kitchen. “Mary thought it might be useful to have another set of hands.”
“How are you, Christina?” Gertrude says, just behind him, smiling brightly.
“I’m fine, Gertrude,” I say, trying to keep my voice neutral. We haven’t seen each other since that long-ago dance, and it feels stiff and awkward between us.