Authors: Noelle Carle
“Do you think he’ll
be okay?”
The chaplain
grinned. “It only grazed his head. Thank the Lord. I hear you found
him…again.”
Aubrey pulled inside
himself, as if cringing a little. “Sometimes I just get the feeling I need to
do something. So I go do it.”
The chaplain studied
the young man a moment. “I know that feeling,” he answered. “But that’s why
they’re thinking of sending you home. You can’t keep leaving your post. Or is
it something else?”
Startled, Aubrey sat
up straighter, his dusky cheeks burning. “What do you mean?”
“Some people have a
death wish. They feel like maybe they’ve done some things that were pretty
bad, like they ought to be punished or would be punished for if anyone knew.
They think they can earn something by punishing themselves, or can make things
right by some kind of self-imposed system of justice. Maybe you feel that
way. Maybe you don’t understand that God forgives, even the worse things we
can think of.”
Aubrey ran his fingers
through his hair, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He sighed
deeply. “Maybe. Maybe God forgives but usually people don’t.”
Chaplain Hudson
nodded, agreeing with him at this insightful statement.
Standing, Aubrey
looked again at Sam. “You’re wrong about one thing, Chaplain. I don’t have no
death wish, but I got a life wish…for him.” He pointed at Sam, then walked
away.
These Deeply Momentous Things
As soon as it was
needful in the spring, Alison would journey with her teacher to her former home
in Pennsylvania where they would stay until the baby came. Mrs. Reid planned
to adopt that baby, sending Alison back home with no one the wiser that the
baby was Alison’s.
Aunt Pearl knew and
approved of this plan. Although she couldn’t think how they would explain the
fact that Alison was accompanying Mary or that she would largely be invisible
in the community by then, she had no better solution. Her brother knew nothing
of it yet, but Pearl realized it would be impossible to keep the truth from him
as Alison’s pregnancy progressed.
Mary was suppressing
her excitement, tempering it as she saw how Alison was struggling with not only
the thought of a child, but the violent nature of its conception and the
changes it would cause in her life.
“You said God helped
you after your husband died. Couldn’t God have prevented this from happening?”
she spat out one afternoon as they sat alone in the school. “I’m feeling
terrible! I have no energy. All I want to do is sleep. Why did this happen
to me?”
Mary stopped her with
a hand on her arm. “Alison. This was done to you, yes. It is unjust, yes.
But God will see that good is worked out of it. That’s his way.”
Alison stared back at
her teacher, her mouth clenched tight, fighting back the tears that seemed so
close at hand these days. She sighed. “Good for you, maybe.”
“Alison!”
The girl shook her
head. Hatred surged through her. She hated this baby. She hated Aubrey
Newell, and she almost hated Mary Reid. Ever since she was raped she felt like
a different person; ugly, dirty and marked by what he had done to her. She
couldn’t bear to be around Esther who was planning her wedding. She couldn’t
write letters to Sam that didn’t seem to her stilted and unnatural. She
loathed going to school, seeing her friends in their simple lives; innocent and
unaffected. She felt apart from her family, from her friends and her home.
Life went on in its simple routine, but she felt outside of it, lost in a tiny
but ruthless maelstrom inside her head.
When they learned
that Robbie Bell had died, there was mourning throughout the village. Alison
immediately wrote to Sam, to somehow reassure herself that he was alive. They
held a memorial service on a balmy warm day in early March. The children filed
out of school that afternoon and saw the black clad procession moving towards
the church. Alison burst into tears at the sight of Robbie’s father, his usual
stoic features crumpled into such pain. Davey came to stand beside her, holding
her hand, and Owen stood in back of her, one hand heavy on her shoulder. “I
want to go,” Alison murmured to her brothers.
“I’ll come too,”
Davey said, a catch in his voice. Owen followed along behind them until Reg
Eliot stopped them.
He was dressed for
the funeral, but in his hand he held what looked like letters. Cleo ran up to
him, then seeing his face, she turned away without a word to him. She passed
by Alison and said, “I’m sorry,” in an almost inaudible voice.
“Miss Granger, I’d
like a word with you,” Reg said. Alison liked Sam’s father. He was quiet and
solid, like she knew Sam would be when he got older. He was sometimes gruff
with the children, but never cruel. And he loved them. She could see it in
his eyes when he watched them in the playground or running about the trees in
their yard. He was gentle with their friends too. He always called her Allie,
so the “Miss Granger” confused her.
Then he seemed to
notice her brothers there, so he took her arm and said, “In private, if you
don’t mind.”
Alison looked back at
Owen. “You go on ahead,” she said. The boys turned towards the church where
they met Aunt Pearl just going up the steps. Alison’s heart sounded so loud in
her ears she feared she wouldn’t hear what Reg said, but his words were very
clear when he spoke.
He held out two
envelopes. The handwriting was Sam’s and she saw they were addressed to her.
Reg pulled them away as she reached for them. “You will not write to my son
anymore. And you will not be getting anymore letters from him.”
Alison drew her hand
back as she swallowed. “Why? What happened?” she asked. She realized then
that Sam’s father was enraged. His lips were drawn into a straight line, and
his hand, when he moved it back to his pocket, was trembling. He stared at
her, anger and sorrow pulling his face into a tight mask. He shook his head
slowly.
“I know,” he almost
whispered, ‘what’s inside you and I know it can’t be from Sam.”
A gasp escaped Alison
and she began to tremble. “How do you…?” She couldn’t finish. She moved
away, only to have him grasp her arm.
“I’ll not tell Sam,
at least not yet. He needs his wits about him just now, not a..a…betrayal like
this!”
Alison wrenched her
arm away and ran. She ran past the store and the public wharf, past the
Alley’s boat repair shop and the outbuildings, past the bait shacks that lined
the shore. She ran as she hadn’t run in months until her legs were burning and
her lungs were straining with the effort. She didn’t realize she was sobbing as
she ran until she stopped and felt the tears sliding down her chin and neck.
She was at the top of the point where the harbor began. A meadow ran along the
side of the road where the Gilman’s grazed their sheep. The road ended at the
cliff that stood perhaps seventy-five feet above a tumble of boulders. The sea
moved among these rocks languidly, making chuckling noises as the tide rose.
Alison stood
immobile, panting to catch her breath. Then she collapsed to her knees. She
felt again a cold numbness take hold of her. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t
begin to probe the meaning of what Mr. Eliot had just said. What loomed ahead
of her was a loss so complete that Dickens’ words in
Our Mutual Friend
–
a
blank life
- ran through her mind over and over. She stared down at the
rocks below her and repeated them out loud. “A blank life.”
Into her mind came
the dark thought of what it would feel like to fall onto those rocks and lie in
that chuckling water, to stop thinking and worrying and dreading what was
ahead. Some tiny part of her clung to life, whatever it held, and she just
sobbed and recoiled at the thought of dying. Her tears continued until her
stomach felt sick and the day was beginning to fade. As she attempted to stand
up, to start for home, she felt a trembling in her lower abdomen that rapidly
blossomed into a flare of hot pain. She hurried through the pasture, scaring
the sheep into a tight little cluster. She crossed the north road and
stumbled through the clumps of the Gilman’s potato fields, stopping twice to
kneel down and grip her stomach, so grinding was the pain now. Finally she
climbed the stairs to her father’s office and staggered through the door.
Relieved to see his waiting room empty, she crossed it just as she realized her
legs were wet and her skirts were bloody.
She pushed through to
his examining room where he and Pearl, still in her funeral dress, looked up in
surprise at her presence.
“Papa! Something’s
wrong with me!” She had time to see the dawn of concern on his face before she
fell to the floor.
The rest was lost to
her, except for a brief snatch of time when she felt herself surfacing from the
depths of pain. She felt a hand on her forehead and knew it was Pearl’s.
“Don’t tell Papa,” she implored, forgetting he was right there.
Daniel Granger was a
sickly gray color and his eyes were glassy as he tried to stop the lifeblood
flowing from his daughter’s body. He fixed his eyes briefly on his sister.
They held such distilled anguish that Pearl flinched. “You should have told
me,” he hissed.
Pearl nodded,
realizing her mistake.
Alison lingered in a
seeming twilight for days. There were two or three moments of confused
consciousness, when she heard murmuring and felt gentle hands at work on her.
Her mind felt foggy, until, like the light over the water, there was one bright
illuminated moment of clarity when she heard her father’s despair and Aunt
Pearl’s sobbing. She thought she was dying then, and she cried out in her
mind, “I don’t want to die. Please, God. It’s not my time.” She prayed then
as she’d never prayed before, to a God who seemed more real and close than
she’d ever imagined. And her fear ebbed away. If she ever doubted again that
God could hear her, she would remember this moment of perfect calm and curious
joy. She slept then.
When she woke up one
morning to the sun spilling through the window, it was with a peculiar sense of
loss that she realized the baby was gone. The emptiness in her body was
disconcerting.
Aunt Pearl sat by her
bed, dozing in her mother’s old rocking chair. Looking at her sleeping face in
the surge of sunlight, Alison could see how thin the skin under her eyes had
become. Tiny lines like the wrinkles in crepe paper made her look fragile and
old. Her mouth sagged open and Alison could hear the even puffs of breath that
caught a little at the back of her throat. Her hands loosely held knitting
needles. Never content to sit idle, her knitting was her constant. She made
sweaters for all of them, and mittens for everyone in the village. Her afghans
were gorgeous, done in patterns of her own making, and given as gifts to each
newly married couple. Lately she’d been knitting nothing but socks and
sweaters for the troops in France. Alison had noticed Aunt Pearl stopping to
spread out her fingers, or to rub her wrists. Alison knew that her aunt had
been at her side all these long days and nights. She remembered her arm around
her shoulders, helping her drink eggnog. She could recall the feel of her hand
on her forehead, or her gently changing the linens around her. Such a current
of affection ran through her that she reached out her hand and laid it on Aunt
Pearl’s arm.
Pearl slowly lifted
her head, stiffly as if her neck hurt. Her eyes focused and she smiled a
little when she saw Alison was awake. “Hello, darling. Are you back?”
Alison drew in her
breath. Nodding, she answered, “I think I am.”
Pearl moved to sit on
the side of the bed. She laid her fingers on Alison’s forehead and brushed the
hair back. She seemed reluctant to meet Alison’s eyes, but focused instead on
the tiny ministrations; snuggling up the blankets, taking a damp cloth and
stroking it across her already cool brow. “Folks think you’ve had influenza.
There have been some cases of it. Some real bad.”
Alison sighed,
heavy-hearted to think suddenly of her teacher.
Aunt Pearl finally
met her eyes, her busy hands reaching for Alison’s. “You lost the baby, dear.
Do you know that?”
In a small voice
Alison answered, “I know.”
Pearl drew her lips
together. “Your father was furious…with me,” she hastened to add. “I tried to
explain to him how strongly you felt about him not knowing. He’s always been
so…” she hesitated, searching for the right word. “Open with you. You’ve
never kept a secret from him.” She smiled unexpectedly. “I remember how you
told him what he was getting for Christmas one year because you couldn’t bear
to keep it from him.”
She ran her hands
across her face, rubbing her eyes. “I think he feels hurt, and then to have
you hemorrhage like that. It reminded him of your mother, when Davey was
born.”