Open Secrets (9 page)

“You do not shoot the muskrats?” said Mr. Speirs.

No, no, said Dorrie. She trapped them. Trapped them, yes, said Mr. Speirs, and Dorrie described her favorite trap, on which she had made little improvements of her own. She had thought of taking out a patent but had never gotten around to it. She spoke about the spring watercourses, the system of creeks she followed, tramping for miles day after day, after the snow was mostly melted but before the leaves came out, when the muskrats’ fur was prime. Millicent knew that Dorrie did these things but she had thought she did them to get a little money. To hear her talk now, it would seem that she was truly fond of that life. The blackflies out already, the cold water over her boot tops, the drowned rats. And Mr. Speirs listened like an old dog, perhaps a hunting dog, that has been sitting with his eyes half shut, just prevented, by his own good opinion of himself, from falling into an unmannerly stupor. Now he has got a whiff of something nobody else can understand—his eyes open all the way and his nose quivers and his muscles answer, ripples pass over his hide as he remembers some day
of recklessness and dedication. How far, he asked, and how high is the water, how much do they weigh and how many could you count on in a day and for muskrats is it still the same sort of knife?

Muriel asked the minister for a cigarette and got one, smoked for a few moments and stubbed it out in the middle of the Bavarian cream.

“So I won’t eat it and get fat,” she said. She got up and started to help clear the dishes, but soon ended up at the piano, back at the “Polovtsian Dances.”

Millicent was pleased that there was conversation with the guest, though its attraction mystified her. Also, she thought that the food had been good and there had not been any humiliation, no queer taste or sticky cup handle.

“I had thought the trappers were all up north,” said Mr. Speirs. “I thought that they were beyond the Arctic Circle or at least on the Pre-Cambrian shield.”

“I used to have an idea of going there,” Dorrie said. Her voice thickened for the first time, with embarrassment—or excitement. “I thought I could live in a cabin and trap all winter. But I had my brother, I couldn’t leave my brother. And I know it here.”

Late in the winter Dorrie arrived at Millicent’s house with a large piece of white satin. She said that she intended to make a wedding dress. That was the first anybody had heard of a wedding—she said it would be in May—or learned the first name of Mr. Speirs. It was Wilkinson. Wilkie.

When and where had Dorrie seen him, since that supper on the veranda?

Nowhere. He had gone off to Australia, where he had property. Letters had gone back and forth between them.

Sheets were laid down on the dining-room floor, with the
dining table pushed against the wall. The satin was spread out over them. Its broad bright extent, its shining vulnerability cast a hush over the whole house. The children came to stare at it, and Millicent shouted to them to clear off. She was afraid to cut into it. And Dorrie, who could so easily slit the skin of an animal, laid the scissors down. She confessed to shaking hands.

A call was put in to Muriel to drop by after school. She clapped her hand to her heart when she heard the news, and called Dorrie a slyboots, a Cleopatra, who had fascinated a millionaire.

“I bet he’s a millionaire,” she said. “Property in Australia—what does that mean? I bet it’s not a pig farm! All I can hope is maybe he’ll have a brother. Oh, Dorrie, am I so mean I didn’t even say congratulations!”

She gave Dorrie lavish loud kisses—Dorrie standing still for them as if she were five years old.

What Dorrie had said was that she and Mr. Speirs planned to go through “a form of marriage.” What do you mean, said Millicent, do you mean a marriage ceremony, is that what you mean, and Dorrie said yes.

Muriel made the first cut into the satin, saying that somebody had to do it, though maybe if she was doing it again it wouldn’t be in quite that place.

Soon they got used to mistakes. Mistakes and rectifications. Late every afternoon, when Muriel got there, they tackled a new stage—the cutting, the pinning, the basting, the sewing—with clenched teeth and grim rallying cries. They had to alter the pattern as they went along, to allow for problems unforeseen, such as the tight set of a sleeve, the bunching of the heavy satin at the waist, the eccentricities of Dorrie’s figure. Dorrie was a menace at the job, so they set her to sweeping up scraps and filling the bobbin. Whenever she sat at the sewing machine, she clamped her tongue between her teeth.
Sometimes she had nothing to do, and she walked from room to room in Millicent’s house, stopping to stare out the windows at the snow and sleet, the long-drawn-out end of winter. Or she stood like a docile beast in her woolen underwear, which smelled quite frankly of her flesh, while they pulled and tugged the material around her.

Muriel had taken charge of clothes. She knew what there had to be. There had to be more than a wedding dress. There had to be a going-away outfit, and a wedding nightgown and a matching dressing gown, and of course an entire new supply of underwear. Silk stockings, and a brassière—the first that Dorrie had ever worn.

Dorrie had not known about any of that. “I considered the wedding dress as the major hurdle,” she said. “I could not think beyond it.”

The snow melted, the creeks filled up, the muskrats would be swimming in the cold water, sleek and sporty with their treasure on their backs. If Dorrie thought of her traps, she did not say so. The only walk she took these days was across the field from her house to Millicent’s.

Made bold by experience, Muriel cut out a dressmaker suit of fine russet wool, and a lining. She was letting her choir rehearsals go all to pot.

Millicent had to think about the wedding luncheon. It was to be held in the Brunswick Hotel. But who was there to invite, except the minister? Lots of people knew Dorrie, but they knew her as the lady who left skinned rabbits on doorsteps, who went through the fields and the woods with her dog and gun and waded along the flooded creeks in her high rubber boots. Few people knew anything about the old Becks, though all remembered Albert and had liked him. Dorrie was not quite a joke—something protected her from that, either Albert’s popularity or her own gruffness and dignity—but the news of her marriage had roused up a lot of interest, not exactly
of a sympathetic nature. It was being spoken of as a freakish event, mildly scandalous, possibly a hoax. Porter said that bets were being laid on whether the man would show up.

Finally, Millicent recalled some cousins who had come to Albert’s funeral. Ordinary respectable people. Dorrie had their addresses, invitations were sent. Then the Nunn brothers from the grocery, whom Albert had worked for, and their wives. A couple of Albert’s lawn-bowling friends and their wives. The people who owned the mink farm where Dorrie sold her groundhogs? The woman from the bakeshop who was going to ice the cake?

The cake was being made at home, then taken to the shop to be iced by the woman who had got a diploma in cake decorating from a place in Chicago. It would be covered with white roses, lacy scallops, hearts and garlands and silver leaves and those tiny silver candies you can break your tooth on. Meanwhile it had to be mixed and baked, and this was where Dorrie’s strong arms could come into play, stirring and stirring a mixture so stiff it appeared to be all candied fruit and raisins and currants, with a little gingery batter holding it together like glue. When Dorrie got the big bowl against her stomach and took up the beating spoon, Millicent heard the first satisfied sigh to come out of her in a long while.

Muriel decided that there had to be a maid of honor. Or a matron of honor. It could not be her, because she would be playing the organ. “O Perfect Love.” And the Mendelssohn.

It would have to be Millicent. Muriel would not take no for an answer. She brought over an evening dress of her own, a long sky-blue dress, which she ripped open at the waist—how confident and cavalier she was by now about dressmaking!—and proposed a lace midriff, of darker blue, with a matching lace bolero. It will look like new and suit you to a T, she said.

Millicent laughed when she first tried it on and said, “There’s a sight to scare the pigeons!” But she was pleased.
She and Porter had not had much of a wedding—they had just gone to the rectory, deciding to put the money saved into furniture. “I suppose I’ll need some kind of thingamajig,” she said. “Something on my head.”

“Her veil!” cried Muriel. “What about Dorrie’s veil? We’ve been concentrating so much on wedding dresses, we’ve forgotten all about a veil!”

Dorrie spoke up unexpectedly and said that she would never wear a veil. She could not stand to have that draped over her, it would feel like cobwebs. Her use of the word “cobwebs” gave Muriel and Millicent a start, because there were jokes being made about cobwebs in other places.

“She’s right,” said Muriel. “A veil would be too much.” She considered what else. A wreath of flowers? No, too much again. A picture hat? Yes, get an old summer hat and cover it with white satin. Then get another and cover it with the dark-blue lace.

“Here is the menu,” said Millicent dubiously. “Creamed chicken in pastry shells, little round biscuits, molded jellies, that salad with the apples and the walnuts, pink and white ice cream with the cake—”

Thinking of the cake, Muriel said, “Does he by any chance have a sword, Dorrie?”

Dorrie said, “Who?”

“Wilkie. Your Wilkie. Does he have a sword?”

“What would he have a sword for?” Millicent said.

“I just thought he might,” said Muriel.

“I cannot enlighten you,” said Dorrie.

Then there was a moment in which they all fell silent, because they had to think of the bridegroom. They had to admit him to the room and set him down in the midst of all this. Picture hats. Creamed chicken. Silver leaves. They were stricken with doubts. At least Millicent was, and Muriel. They hardly dared to look at each other.

“I just thought since he was English, or whatever he is,” said Muriel.

Millicent said, “He is a fine man anyway.”

The wedding was set for the second Saturday in May. Mr. Speirs was to arrive on the Wednesday and stay with the minister. The Sunday before this, Dorrie was supposed to come over to have supper with Millicent and Porter. Muriel was there, too. Dorrie didn’t arrive, and they went ahead and started without her.

Millicent stood up in the middle of the meal. “I’m going over there,” she said. “She better be sharper than this getting to her wedding.”

“I can keep you company,” said Muriel.

Millicent said no thanks. Two might make it worse.

Make what worse?

She did not know.

She went across the field by herself. It was a warm day, and the back door of Dorri’s house was standing open. Between the house and where the barn used to be there was a grove of walnut trees whose branches were still bare, since walnut trees are among the very latest to get their leaves. The hot sunlight pouring through bare branches seemed unnatural. Her feet did not make any sound on the grass.

And there on the back platform was Albert’s old armchair, never taken in all winter.

What was in her mind was that Dorrie might have had an accident. Something to do with a gun. Maybe while cleaning her gun. That happened to people. Or she might be lying out in a field somewhere, lying in the woods among the old dead leaves and the new leeks and bloodroot. Tripped while getting over a fence. Had to go out one last time. And then, after all the safe times, the gun had gone off. Millicent had never had
any such fears for Dorrie before, and she knew that in some ways Dorrie was very careful and competent. It must be that what had happened this year made anything seem possible. The proposed marriage, such wild luck, could make you believe in calamity also.

But it was not an accident that was on her mind. Not really. Under this busy fearful imagining of accidents, she hid what she really feared.

She called Dorrie’s name at the open door. And so prepared was she for an answering silence, the evil silence and indifference of a house lately vacated by somebody who had met with disaster (or not vacated yet by the body of the person who had met with, who had
brought about
, that disaster)—so prepared was she for the worst that she was shocked, she went watery in the knees, at the sight of Dorrie herself, in her old field pants and shirt.

“We were waiting for you,” she said. “We were waiting for you to come to supper.”

Dorrie said, “I must’ve lost track of the time.”

“Oh, have all your clocks stopped?” said Millicent, recovering her nerve as she was led through the back hall with its familiar mysterious debris. She could smell cooking.

The kitchen was dark because of the big, unruly lilac pressing against the window. Dorrie used the house’s original wood cookstove, and she had one of those old kitchen tables with a drawer for the knives and forks. It was a relief to see that the calendar on the wall was for this year.

Dorrie was cooking some supper. She was in the middle of chopping up a purple onion to add to the bits of bacon and sliced potatoes she had frying up in the pan. So much for losing track of the time.

“You go ahead,” said Millicent. “Go ahead and make your meal. I did get something to eat before I took it into my head to go and look for you.”

“I made tea,” said Dorrie. It was keeping warm on the back of the stove and, when she poured it out, was like ink.

“I can’t leave,” she said, prying up some of the bacon that was sputtering in the pan. “I can’t leave here.”

Millicent decided to treat this as she would a child’s announcement that she could not go to school.

“Well, that’ll be a nice piece of news for Mr. Speirs,” she said. “When he has come all this way.”

Dorrie leaned back as the grease became fractious.

“Better move that off the heat a bit,” Millicent said.

“I can’t leave.”

“I heard that before.”

Dorrie finished her cooking and scooped the results onto a plate. She added ketchup and a couple of thick slices of bread soaked in the grease that was left in the pan. She sat down to eat, and did not speak.