Leaving Lucy Pear(76)

Mrs. Cohn nodded. “It wasn’t what you were hired for. You shouldn’t f—”

“I shouldn’t what. Tell you how I enjoyed your dismay when you couldn’t find something? How I despised you when you admonished me, making jokes you thought I wouldn’t understand? The pillowcases and lions looking for their mates? You of the pure marriage.” Emma remembered Lucy, and saw that her eyes were swimming. She was younger, Emma realized, than Emma had been the day she found that bird. In a calmer voice, she said, “There are other things I would like to say to you.”

“I understand.”

“Imagine me saying them.”

Mrs. Cohn watched Emma as if in a trance. She nodded slowly, her face bobbing in and out of the light. From the scratcher came the grainy sigh of a pear stem puncturing another pear.

“What can I do?” Mrs. Cohn’s voice was barely audible, her eyes dark, sorrowful pools. Emma’s wrist throbbed. She remembered Lucy, as an infant, looking up at her with those eyes. Lucy’s claim on Emma had been so surprising, so complete. And the others had known. Roland especially had known. Roland, perhaps, had been the most jealous. Lucy’s mouth had been full, her suck steady, bottomless, drawing Emma down into a quiet room where her muscles went soft. She was used to feeling like a kitchen table, at the center of everything yet barely noticed, a repository for hunger and want, but in the quiet room with Lucy she was seen. And the other children, her children, had waited while she stayed there, often longer than necessary, after Lucy was full. They must have been confused, perhaps hurt. But they had been patient. They had made way.

“You played piano,” Emma said. “I read about it. You were supposed to have become a pianist. You were supposed to have been very good.”

Mrs. Cohn nodded, barely. Her eyes appeared to cross slightly, as if she were trying to retreat.

“So that’s what you’ll do.”





Thirty-one




Susannah was not home. Josiah was late enough she should be home. She was home almost always. She didn’t go anywhere unless it was to swim, or if Caleb drove her to the quarry, but she swam in the mornings and Caleb’s car was here, parked in front of his house. At this hour, five o’clock, Susannah waited for him. She dressed for supper and waited, reading or pacing, until Josiah walked through the door. Then she was there, kissing him, handing him a drink, asking him to tell her the latest news from the quarry. He hated telling her about the quarry! He should be relieved that she wasn’t home, he thought, asking him about the price of paving stones, or whether he’d instituted a company lunch on Mondays, as she’d suggested after the strike, to keep the men happy, by which she meant quiet. But he was not relieved. He needed to tell her about Emma. He had screwed her like an animal this afternoon. He had wanted to smash her for his helplessness, for the fact that he couldn’t stop going to her even after the strike, after his apology and Susannah’s forgiveness. He needed Susannah to stop him.

He took the stairs two at a time. Their bedroom was empty, as was the room with the twin beds, where he had slept since the last miscarriage, a full month ago now. The third bedroom was empty, its double poster bed as tightly tucked as ever. He knocked at the bathroom door. Sometimes Susannah took a bath after a swim. He pushed his way in. The tub was empty, and dry, with no stray hairs—it had not been used since the housekeeper came that morning. The silence of the house oppressed him. He pressed his hands together and brought them to his nose. They smelled of Emma. He turned on the sink faucet, then turned it off. He would not wash them. He would stick them in Susannah’s face if he had to!

But where was she?

He walked to Caleb’s house and opened the door without ringing. “Susannah?” No one came. He pressed his ear to Caleb’s closed office door. Nothing. (Caleb snored softly, a true gentleman.)

She was not at the bathhouse, or in the pool, so Josiah started down the path to the bay. Maybe he should have confessed to Caleb on the day of the strike, be done with it then, out of a job, out of his marriage, out of waiting for a baby. He might go back to Mason Street. He would live with his parents, work with his father, listen to his mother sigh each evening: Oh, what does our Jo-Jo want?

He did not know! He didn’t know what he wanted any more clearly than he had when he was a boy. He strode quickly among the stunted trees that grew close to the water, the ground brittle under his feet. He could not remember the last time it had rained. Stepping out from the last cover of the cedars, he shielded his eyes. “Susannah,” he said aloud.

He saw her robe, in a heap on the dock, and next to it her towel, laid flat to catch the sun. It was the first week of September, the bay already cooling—just standing here thinking of it made Josiah shiver. Thick tangles of seaweed floated up from the rocks. When the tide was low, Susannah headed up the river’s narrow channel toward Conomo Point. But it was high now—she would have swum up the creek that wound through the marsh. The tide was very high, Josiah saw, so high she would have been able to swim straight across the grass in places, a thing she loved to do. He didn’t know how she could stand it, any of it, the grass against her skin, the seaweed, the crabs and fish and dead things she couldn’t see. Josiah had seen deer skulls wedged into the mud of the creek at low tide.

He squinted up the creek, but didn’t see her.

He sat on the rocks and waited. She could not swim for more than thirty minutes, he didn’t think, and she was fast. She would be back soon.