Caroline: Little House, Revisited(86)
How well he knew her, shape and size. When she rested her elbows on the rocker’s arms, they did not pry her shoulders upward. The seat’s depth precisely matched the span between the small of her back and the bend of her knees. Beneath her the floor seemed to rise to meet her feet at each forward swoop. Even the Big Woods rocker she had mourned all this time had not fit so well.
That chair Charles had fashioned as much out of awe as wood, honing and polishing until he had created a frame worthy of the image he carried in his mind of his wife and child-to-be. Empty, it had been a beautiful thing to look at.
This chair was another kind of gift. Five years had passed, and Caroline knew he had never stopped looking at her. Indeed, he had only looked more closely. He had seen—and remembered—how she rocked on tiptoe, the way she sometimes slipped her elbows from its arms to rest her shoulders as she nursed or sewed. From those memories he had woven a chair that held her as effortlessly as a pitcher holds water. And he had done it by measuring with nothing more than his gaze.
Charles lifted Carrie from the bed. Caroline reached for the baby, hands already curving to her shape, softening in welcome. When their skins touched, it was like a kiss.
As she leaned back Caroline’s elbows settled into the curling arms of the chair. All the crosspieces of her body seemed to loosen. With a sigh she looked at Carrie, and the child smiled up at her. Caroline’s breath hitched. Carrie’s eyes were still so big in her peaked little face, but her cheeks had shown a flicker of roundness. A feeling like a spreading of wings brushed Caroline’s womb and she pulled Carrie closer, rocking deeply now, as if the motion might keep all that she felt from spilling over.
With a thud, the floorboard bounced beneath her feet. Caroline nearly spilled the dishpan. She whirled toward the sound and saw a watermelon rolling just inside the doorway. Charles sank down beside it.
“Charles! Are you all right?”
“Thought I’d never get it here,” he said, slapping the melon. “It must weigh forty pounds, and I’m as weak as water.”
A strange mixture of dread and desire fluttered Caroline’s stomach. “Charles,” she warned, “you mustn’t. Mrs. Scott said—”
He only laughed. “That’s not reasonable. I haven’t tasted a good slice of watermelon since Hector was a pup. It wasn’t a melon that made us sick. Fever and ague comes from breathing the night air. Anyone knows that.”
Caroline tucked her fingers into her palms. They itched to spank that fat melon as Charles had, to hear its delicious green thump. In her mind she could already taste watermelon rind pickles, with lemon, vinegar, and sugar; cinnamon, allspice, and clove. Her thoughts seemed to cartwheel over each other, she was so eager to talk herself into it. She only half believed Mrs. Scott’s proclamations about watermelons and ague, and Charles’s logic could not be denied. None of them had so much as laid eyes on a melon since Wisconsin. Caroline glanced at the girls, and all her eagerness fell flat. The very fact that they were playing quietly indoors on a day such as this reminded her of all the ague had cost them already. The consequences were more than Caroline dared chance. “This watermelon grew in the night air,” she countered, then bit her lip. The argument was so weak, it had the ring of a joke.
“Nonsense,” Charles said. “I’d eat this melon if I knew it would give me chills and fever.”
Caroline knew that tone. There would be no persuading him. “I do believe you would,” she said.
He heaved the watermelon up onto the table and sank the butcher knife to the handle into its deep green skin. He steadied it with one hand and levered the knife downward until his knuckles brushed the oilcloth. The melon creaked apart and lay rocking on the table, red and sparkling. The broken edges of its flesh looked crinkled with frost. With his jack knife, Charles prized a perfect little pyramid from the center and offered it to her.
Caroline shook her head. “No, thank you, Charles. And none for the girls, either,” she said.
“Aw, Ma!” they cried together.
Caroline did not scold them. They were so disappointed, she could not stand to look at them. Never in her life had she denied her girls good, fresh food. Caroline hated the sound of every word: “Not so much as a taste. We can’t take such a risk.”
Charles shrugged and licked a dribble of juice from his wrist. Then he popped the whole piece of melon into his mouth. It bulged his cheeks and made him purse his lips to keep the juice from spurting out. The sound of his teeth crushing each cool bite was more than Caroline could bear. “Take it outside, please, Charles. It isn’t fair for the girls to watch.” He went, Jack trotting behind.
The girls returned to their play, but they were quiet and sullen about it, not quite sulking. Caroline knew they could picture Charles as well as she could: sitting on the stump behind the woodpile with his elbows braced on his knees, hunched over a giant crescent of melon. With no one watching, he would spit the seeds, gleefully as a boy. Caroline stopped herself. Her mouth was watering. Another minute of that, and she’d be glowering like Mary and Laura. She swallowed and blinked the image away, finished the dishes, then mopped the puddles of juice from the table and wrung out the dishcloth. She picked up Carrie and went to her rocker.
It was hard to feel bereft of anything in that chair, with the baby in her lap. Caroline pressed her thumb into Carrie’s palm and rubbed a slow circle. It was a trick she had learned early on, when she could not get enough of touching Mary’s silken hands and feet, that made all of her babies go limp with pleasure. But now Carrie grabbed hold of Caroline’s finger and pulled it to her mouth. She gripped fist and finger with her gums, testing the strength of her jaw. Then her eyes widened and her toes splayed. She gave a little chirrup and sucked and sucked at Caroline’s fingertip.