Leaving Lucy Pear(49)

She prayed, under her breath, for the whistle buoy’s removal. Then she left the herring and went to bed.





Nineteen




The dismantling of Ira’s bed was dismayingly easy—two pulls and it split into parts. Bea didn’t understand exactly how Emma had been charged with the decision to move the bed downstairs, but she also didn’t consider herself deserving of an explanation. She was embarrassed by her willful defiance of the facts, which now appeared plain: Ira had not been pretending lameness. He couldn’t walk.

Emma and Albert had already carried down the headboard with its sizable posts, inflicting scratches and dents upon the walls as they went. Now Bea, trying to prevent more damage, was directing the journey of the footboard.

“There. No, there! This way, Emma! Albert, not there . . .”

“Bea! This is completely unhelpful.” Albert set his end on a stair and dragged his forearm across his brow. “Did I never teach you left and right?”

Emma laughed. “Don’t tease her.”

Albert grinned up at Bea. “Why don’t you pour us some ice water? It’s hot as hell.”

There wasn’t space to get down around them, so Bea went back up, through the halls, down the back stairs, and into the cool of the kitchen. Like all the rooms in the house that had been built for servants, the kitchen faced north to little sunlight, and Bea found herself retreating here often on hot days. She pressed her forehead against the cabinet glass, letting Albert and Emma’s banter trickle through her. She was in love with the sensation of being their hinge, despite knowing that their light, sweet talk was meant to soothe and keep her calm. She resented their eggshell treatment. So the night of July third had been a disaster. So she’d had another fit. Nearly two weeks had passed—why should it still stand shadowlike behind her, making everyone itch? Yet Bea understood. Bea couldn’t shake it either. Even when she succeeded in forgetting, the absence of the whistle buoy reminded her: on a breezy day like this one, she tensed for a cry that never came.

All Lillian would say about that was “Your nerves suffered, I pulled some threads.”

The icebox opened with a squeal, closed with a thud. (Vera had bought a refrigerator the year she died, but it had no freezer compartment, so Ira still had his ice delivered, and stored it in a seaweed-insulated chest.) Bea set the glasses on a tray, tied on an apron, and walked out upright and bright-eyed, calling, “Come and get it!”

Albert and Emma stared. She couldn’t remember now what she’d intended with the apron—to show that she could tease herself, too? To prove that she was fine?

She rattled the tray down onto the nearest table. “I’ve got to get to work,” she said with a sigh, though she felt no actual regret. Her work steadied her. The speech for Josiah Story was still not finished, but that would sort itself out. The point was to drag herself back to her room, sit in the chair, and try. When she had woken on July Fourth in the sludgy wake of her wailing the night before, and Emma’s aseptic green eyes, and her exit, the door’s heavy thud, even the door knowing its place better than Bea, all she could think to do was dress as Beatrice Haven Cohn, walk to her desk, phone the chapter as if they might convince her of her credibility—it was closed for the holiday, the operator reminded her—and get to work.

Before that, though, she had burned the Radcliffe Quarterly that had given her such trouble the night before and now mocked her from the trash bin, its pages spread obscenely. In retrospect, burning the Quarterly had been a mistake. The ashes in the waste bin made her look truly crazy. But that morning, it had seemed reasonable: if she couldn’t make herself throw it away, she would destroy it.

“You can’t work now,” Albert said. “We need you on the frame.”

This was a relief. Bea didn’t actually want to work. Albert carried one end, Bea and Emma the other. It was a heavy bed, made of oak for Vera and Ira’s wedding. Bea had suggested having a new one delivered to the parlor, where Ira would be set up, but Ira had said he wouldn’t sleep in another bed and Emma had told him not to worry, they would make it work. Incredibly, when Emma said that, Ira stopped worrying.

“Let’s take a break,” Albert said. He looked at Bea, whose corner was sagging.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“You’re fine, I’m fine, let’s take a break.”

They rested halfway down the stairs.

“Ira!” Albert called. “Could you bring us some water?”

“You’ll excuse me, Mr. Cohn,” said Emma, “but that’s not a funny joke.”

“I disagree!”

They began again. Bea, who got little regular physical exercise apart from walking, was astonished by her weakness. That she could lift the bed at all seemed due merely to structural facts: her arm bones hung from her shoulder bones; her finger bones locked under the frame. When they finally set it down, she sat on top of it, watching her legs shake under her skirt. Her eyes swam with sweat. Emma brought more water and Bea drank—still, it took some time before she felt she could stand again. She propped up the headboard, then the footboard, as Albert and Emma put everything back together. Assembled, the bed made the parlor feel small, the seven-foot posts carved with pineapples and vines a sudden woods. They stood, regarding it.

“Why didn’t you tell me he was so diminished?” asked Albert.