Dovetail: A Novel(18)
He exhaled and said tentatively, “Grandma?”
She didn’t feel like a grandma, especially to a guy old enough to shave. Maybe it would be different if she’d known him from the beginning, but she’d missed his infancy and toddler years, had been kept away during his schoolboy days, and hadn’t gotten to witness his teenage antics. Now he was man-size, and having him call her Grandma didn’t fit.
She said, “How about you just call me Pearl?” Was it her imagination, or did he look relieved?
“You wouldn’t mind?”
“No. I think it will make things easier. You don’t know me as a grandmother. We’re strangers, really. You call me Pearl, and I’ll call you Joe. Does that work for you?”
“Yes, it does.”
“Well, that’s settled, then.”
“So why don’t you and my father talk? Why did he tell me you died?”
She shrugged. “Wishful thinking? Or maybe he says that because I’m dead to him, metaphorically speaking. As for the reason he cut me out of his life, this is it: I made a big mistake, and he’s never been able to forgive me.”
Joe leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “What was the mistake?”
Pearl paused for only a second. She was getting too old to sugarcoat things, so she just came out with it. “Your father believes that I killed someone.”
The statement clearly took him by surprise. Joe appeared dumbstruck for a moment, and then he asked, “Did you?”
“Not on purpose.”
CHAPTER TEN
1916
In the parlor, the younger girls clustered around John Lawrence in a way Pearl found irritating. Little Daisy parked herself right next to him, her arm draped over his elbow, and the twins took turns trying to impress him, first playing the piano and then telling him about the new kittens out in the barn. Helen and Emma sat nearby, twittering at everything he said. Pearl herself barely got a word in edgewise, and just when she began talking about the lake, trying to get a chance to tell him about the rowboat, Alice called her into the kitchen to help.
If Pearl didn’t know better, she’d think Alice was trying to keep her from putting her mark on him. But that wasn’t like Alice, and the truth of the matter was that getting a big Sunday dinner on the table was a lot of work. Why go to so much trouble? Pearl couldn’t figure it out. Alice had worked up a sweat cooking all day in a hot kitchen, and in no time at all, the food would be eaten and there’d be dishes to do. Cooking was the work that created more work, and for what? The next meal would come around soon enough, and it would start all over again. Pearl had long ago decided that when she was famous and wealthy, she’d have servants to handle all the cooking, and all the housework too, for that matter. Unlike Alice, her nose would never get burned from weeding the garden, and her hands would stay soft and ladylike.
As dinnertime came closer, Alice pulled Emma and Helen into the kitchen as well and assigned all of them chores—putting food in serving dishes, setting the table, lighting candles, pouring milk for the children and water for adults. Pearl was glad to see she was included as an adult and given water instead of milk. Until recently, her father hadn’t seen her that way. Pearl tried to stay in the dining room where she could keep an eye on John, her father, and the younger girls.
Howie and Mrs. Donohue arrived, Howie carrying a covered pan containing his mother’s famous cobbler. “I had to use the apples I canned last year. I would have used fresh if they weren’t out of season right now,” Mrs. Donohue said apologetically as Howie carried the pan into the kitchen. On the other side of the swinging door, Pearl heard Alice exclaim over the treat. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“We don’t mind,” Emma said and then turned to John. “Mrs. Donohue makes the best cobbler. We all love it.”
Mrs. Donohue looked over her glasses at him. “You must be John Lawrence, here to help at the mill this summer.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m Mrs. Donohue from down the road. My son, Howie, and I will most likely be seeing a lot of you.”
“I certainly hope so, ma’am.” He smiled. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”
Later, after they were all seated around the dinner table and Alice had served the food, the questions from Mrs. Donohue to John began. Inwardly, Pearl groaned at the nosy way she kept probing at him, interrogating him under the guise of polite conversation. “So, Mr. Lawrence, you’re from Gladly Falls, north of here, is that right?”
John’s fork stopped halfway between his plate and his mouth. “Yes, ma’am.”
Her father spoke up. “We’re lucky John was able to come and help us, what with Wendall being laid up for the next few months.” Wendall had worked for their father at the mill all Pearl’s life. He was a good-hearted fellow but not all that swift in the head, and he had a fondness for the drink, far beyond what was usual for the men in their town. As of the week before last, he was laid up with a broken arm, a damaged shoulder, and a cracked pelvic bone, injuries that came from falling off the roof of his mother’s house. The doctor said he was lucky to be alive. Pearl secretly wondered if he’d escaped death because he was so pickled that he’d tumbled down gently instead of crashing to the ground.