After Alice Fell(37)

I stare at my hands. Turn them over to trace the heel of my palm and the small scar from falling off a low limb of the front tree I’d started to climb to retrieve Alice, who was far too old to do so. She lay on her belly three branches up, arms and legs flailing like a capuchin monkey, hair tangled with grass and bits of leaf.

“Serves you right,” she said. “For trying to catch me.”

I sucked at my palm, tongue surprised at the metallic taste of blood, and stared up at her. “I’ll wait.”

“You can wait all night; I don’t care.”

“I don’t care, either.”

“I’ll climb to the top, and then what will you do?”

“I’ll call Lionel.”

“He won’t come,” she said. “It would ruin his suit.”

“Then I’ll wait until you’re bored.”

“I won’t get bored.” She swung a foot, catching my shoulder. “I don’t get bored.”

“I’ll wait anyway.”

“Nothing will happen.”

“Something might.”

“Mother’s dying.”

“Yes.”

“Papa doesn’t see her anymore.” I heard the rough scrape of her shoe on the bark as she changed positions. “He sleeps downstairs.”

I closed my eyes and pressed a hand to my mouth. My breath was warm against my palm. Mother was bone and skin; her lips thinned and curled against her teeth, her eyes sank and turned away from the world. Morphine no longer gave comfort. The doctor no longer gave hope.

I wanted her to die. Every night, my final prayer was for her to stop living. Stop suffering. Stop.

“Can’t you fix it, Marion?”

“No.”

When the air grew chill, she reached down and took my hand. “I was afraid you’d gone.”

“I won’t ever.”

But I did.

With a squeeze of my fist, I follow the reverend as he descends the pulpit steps, one finger digging at his sweat-discolored collar.

I will meet Kitty Swain.

The meetinghouse echoes with the doors to the pews opening and latching shut, with murmurs and thuds of books to the backrests, with the rustle of skirts and then the clank of the front doors as they are opened to release us to the common yard.

Orinda Flowers passes our pew, her jowls bumbling around as she nods to us.

Cathy steps close to me, her arm pushed to my back. “Mrs. Flowers. How is the fundraising? For the statue?”

But Orinda has passed by. Cathy lets out a hiss and says, “And your stupid fountain.”

The churchyard slopes from the meetinghouse to Sumner’s Brook. The grass is sharp and crackles under our feet as we amble to the buggy, one in a line with the others. Lionel has gone ahead. He checks the horses, busies himself with the traces, straightens out the reins, tests the brake.

Toby holds my hand, and he hums and blows out his lips, then trills and hops. One foot three times, the other one six. Then again in the same pattern.

“Please stop.” Cathy taps his arm.

He spins around, letting go my hand, and glowers at her as he walks backward. Toe, heel, toe, heel. He’s egging her on. I see the challenge in his eyes, hard as flint. And it hits me like a flash that he knows she is not his mother. Because just at the edge of that flint is the frayed edge of loss.

He opens his mouth wide. “Wah wah wah.” Then he lifts his hands as if he holds his bow and mimes shooting her with an arrow.

She flinches. Her cheeks blush. We are just upon Orinda’s carriage, and she has watched the entire event.

“Good Sunday,” I say to her but do not slow.

Cathy drops her gaze, as if she is most interested in the tips of her shoes as they peek from her skirts, though her eyes sneak glances at those we pass. “Good Sunday,” she calls, loud enough to catch the attention of each group, to receive a lift of a hat or a nod from under a parasol before the groups close into themselves. And close us out.

It is the taint of the Snow family. It is a familiar feeling. Like living inside a bell jar.

Toby’s been sent to his room. Cathy locks his door, then crosses the upstairs landing to her own room and draws the door shut. I glance at Lionel in the parlor, already napping, his legs hooked over the arm, a newspaper sprawled on his chest, a snore that will grow louder as the afternoon lengthens and warms.

I continue down the hall, undoing my collar buttons, fanning myself and making my way to the yard to find a breeze. My shoes clatter down the steps to the kitchen, glad for the sound of it. Plates and bowls are stacked on the center table, an empty milk jug, forks and spoons. All in preparation to bring upstairs for the afternoon meal.

I push open the back door, trail the steps to the kitchen garden, and lift the pump handle. The water splashes on the ground, and over my scooped palms. I dash it to my face. It’s cold and I flinch as the water slips down my chest. I shake my hands. The water beads catch the sunlight and fall in dollops and drips to the dirt. I look beyond the kitchen garden, following the neat rows. Out at the boundary is the proper garden.

Mother tended both Blush Noisette and tea roses, pearls and pinks. Snipped and arranged throughout the house in summers and pressed between the covers of books to remember in the chill of February.

Lydia added a wooden bench under the weeping willow. Planted gardenias and camellias, a lilac bower. In winter, the camellias bloomed in wild cherries and pinks, and at Christmas, Alice and Lydia and I littered the house with bowls of blooms. The bench sits there still, but the camellias have been removed, the bower taken down. Dahlias and black hollyhocks. Delphiniums and tree mallow. The willow branches tangle and scrape the ground.