Leaving Lucy Pear(9)

“You look worried.”

Lucy came without warning, swinging her hammer silently against her palm.

Emma removed her teeth from her lower lip, attempted another smile. “No,” she said, “not worried.”

Lucy knelt down next to Emma’s stump. “Josiah Story’s not coming, is he.”

“He’ll come,” Emma said. She reached to ruffle Lucy’s hair as if to comfort her, though it was Emma who took comfort in this gesture, the dark mass of Lucy’s curls surrounding her hand like a nest. Josiah Story was the other problem. A week had passed but he had not delivered the money, as he had said he would. They had the boards, but everything else they needed his money to buy. And not only the press and the jugs and barrels and paper for a roof but something the pamphlet called a scratcher, to pulp the pears. Emma had not known to mention a scratcher in his office. She had known almost nothing. They had only ever taken pears from the Eastern Point orchard—some for eating, most to sell to the perry maker. Yet here they were, planning to hit four fields in West Parish, three in Essex, and one as far as Ipswich. Emma and Lucy had consulted maps. They even had a Schedule of Ripeness drawn up, based on the exposures of the fields. “We intend to wet the cape in it,” she had said. It made her queasy now, the ignorance of her ambition.

Lucy set down her hammer. She took the pamphlet from Emma’s lap and began to page through it. “What’re tannins?”

“I don’t know,” Emma admitted. “I haven’t gotten that far. And they likely don’t explain it.”

“What about bacteria?”

Emma shrugged. “We’ll figure it out.”

They were quiet as Lucy read. Joshua whined. Maggie laughed. The boys’ shovels scraped in rhythm. Emma watched a male cardinal—the first of the season—flit into the fading tangle of a forsythia bush, poke around, and fly off again.

“If you look at this, it seems like they’re saying it won’t be ready until next year.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“I know now. I didn’t know before.”

Lucy freed her hair from Emma’s hand and stood. “What about Da? He’ll be back before we get it in the barrels.”

“I’ll handle that,” Emma said, though she had no way of predicting when Roland might return. The boat he had left on was heading for the Grand Banks, but only after it dropped Roland and a couple others in Eastport, Maine. There, they planned to night fish for sardines and herring. More lucratively, they would provide shore watch for the speedboats running whiskey in from the mother ships anchored at the twelve-mile line, just beyond the Coast Guard’s jurisdiction. Roland might be gone as many as ten weeks, or as few as six. He would come back on a different boat—they wouldn’t know he was coming until he walked in the door. “We’ll take the long view,” Emma said. She pulled Lucy into an awkward hug, the girl’s hip against her ear. “It’ll be okay.”

“Maybe,” Lucy said, standing stiffly in Emma’s embrace. Her hip had grown a little curve, which Emma felt against her ear. How, Emma thought, had she not noticed this? “If Josiah Story ever comes.”

“He’ll come,” Emma said again, though she wasn’t sure at all.

But he did come, the next day, in a butter yellow car half the length of the Murphy house, with a wad of cash he slipped into Emma’s hand. He talked business: Where would Emma buy the press and how many barrels were needed, and didn’t the boys want the jobs he’d offered? But when it was time to go he reached into his pocket again and, taking Emma’s hand as if to shake it, slipped into her palm a silver chain, one of a dozen or more—they all looked the same to him—that Susannah Story kept in a little box she almost never bothered to open. Emma didn’t know where the necklace came from. She felt it shiver coolly against her palm, felt her palm break instantaneously into sweat. She was too surprised to refuse. Even if she hadn’t been, the children were watching. All she could think to do as he drove off was wave, and call, “Thank you!” and wave some more, a stilted wave, her hand fisted around the necklace as it wiggled. But the other one was full of money, so she didn’t have a choice.





Three




In 1915, tired of buying and selling railroads in the Middle West and West, Caleb Stanton stood upon a parcel of land overlooking the Essex River and told the brokers and lawyers and architects gathered around, “To live here would be to live in a painting.” He smiled. His throat ached. He was dismayed not by the land—the land was perfect—but by himself. He still had ideas about hunting lions in Africa, or sailing to the Galapagos. He could do those things now—he hadn’t remarried, his younger son was at Harvard, his older one quietly taking over his own railroad company, Susannah sixteen and willing to travel with him anywhere—yet here he was, looking at the painting that was to become his life. He understood then that he was like his father: his hands were small, he couldn’t grow a full beard, he was too practical to be truly reckless, and he preferred staying over going. His father had stayed in Maine, and now Caleb would stay in Gloucester. His adventure would be to purchase a rock ledge—a most immovable thing—and blow it to pieces.

The place, for the most part, had brought him pleasure. The view was a gentle one: the far dunes rising to form the mouth of the Essex River, the double hump of Hog Island’s furry ridge, the beached dories of the clam diggers out at the flats, the salt marsh unfurling like a rust-colored carpet. The estate itself was laid out in the English style, with a slight, but only slight, asymmetry. There was a rose garden, a carriage house, a gardener’s shack, a crescent-shaped swimming pool, and a bathhouse. There was Caleb’s house, and the house he built for Susannah. There were a dozen old pine trees he had not cut down, and lawns running down to the rocks. It was easy to look out at his gracious bay and manicured land and see the logic of it all. It was easy to feel at peace.