Sherbrookes: Possession / Sherbrookes / Stillness (American Literature Series) (55 page)

“It’s been a long time, Mrs. Sherbrooke.”

A woman appears in the hall. Maggie stops.

“May I call you Maggie?”

“You’re Jeanne Fisk.”

Jeanne laughs. She puts her hand to her hair. “Surely it hasn’t been
that
long,” she says.

“No. How’s your chamber music group? How are the Sage City Players?”

“Two years,” she says. “It’s been two years. I saw you once with Jane. She was toddling then—you know, the way that they do, as if every step is both the first they’ve ever taken and will turn out to be the last. It was by the Post Office.”

“Yes. Well.”

“I remember the stroller,” Jeanne says. “Orange.”

The mirror at the stairwell’s crest lets Maggie see the villagers. They have clustered to Peacock’s gold-plated spittoon; they examine the framed piece of iron and a splinter from the
Merrimack
.

“Jane’s growing up so poised,” says Jeanne. “So much the little lady. My girls adore her.”

“How are they? The twins.”

“Fine.” Jeanne nods her head, as if to offer reassurance. “They’re fine.”

“If you’ll excuse me,” Maggie says. “I ought to say hello downstairs . . .”“Of course. But bring Jane for a visit someday soon. We live on North Street, Ian knows which house. The girls would love to see her. Please.”

The cross upon a Christian door is meant to keep deviltry back. Where the white junction of the elevator door approaches (Maggie nears it, focusing, forcing herself to determine that the vertical slat is uninterrupted, five feet from base to top, the horizontal members cut to fit, not nailed athwart it, forcing herself to hear how the ruckus in the stairwell is a group of convivial friends), she briefly rests her head. Then she walks down the long corridor, hearing Jane and the twins in the room with the mannequins, and steadies her breath and descends.

“March 3. Snow. Temperature at six o’clock, seventeen degrees. Wind northerly, and it howled like a banshee last night. I walked to the bank through our fields and back again in my own tracks. Right foot turns out. Recognizable. Harriet broke her porcelain bowl at lunchtime; I reprimanded her, urging her to be more mindful since she is five years old by now, and she burst into tears. Unseemly. Why this heaviness about my heart, this stench about my body like a dying beast? Teeth hurt. Shipment from Havana damaged in transit. Leakage. ‘The man also that writeth Mr. Badman’s life had need be fenced with a coat of mail, and with the staff of a spear, for that his surviving friends will know what he doth . . .’ ”

“I’ve got to be going,” says Miles. “Did you see my family?”

“They’re upstairs. Do you want me to get them?”

“No. I’m due at the office. Just tell them when they come.”

“You walking?” Ian asks. “I could lend you the truck . . .”

“No, I’ll walk.”

There is something almost furtive in his attitude: a hurry to be gone, an eagerness that Ian has not seen before. Miles buckles his parka and pulls on his gloves. He tips his hat back rakishly, says, “Nice to meet you, Andrew,” and departs. There is a cold wind at the door, but the snow has stopped.

Maggie appears. They stand together, watching her. She steps down as if buoyant, rising. “Well, well,” says Andrew.

“Ian,” Maggie starts to say, then sees Kincannon and stops.

“You know each other,” Ian says.

“But how did you get here?”

“Just now,” Andrew says. “I drove up.”

He bends to kiss her hand. She stands two steps above him and offers the hand as if coached. “Did you come from New York?” Maggie asks. “Was the driving difficult?”

“The last few miles . . . I thought Vermont was famous for the way it kept roads clear.”

“Not on Thursday afternoons.” Maggie indicates the dining room. “That’s when the road crew visits and everybody’s welcome here. On Thursday afternoons they don’t clear roads, they come inside instead.”

“You haven’t changed,” says Andrew.

“No?”

“No. You look wonderful.”

“And you. You always did lie through your teeth.” At the word “teeth” Maggie falters, and Ian steps forward to help; it is as if this first false note rings true for him, the sound of his mother’s distress.

Andrew says, “I thought I might pass by, since I was in the neighborhood. I hope you don’t mind . . .”

“Mind?”

He indicates the library. Someone has broken out sherry and glasses; Samuel Coffin holds the bottle and is pouring drinks. He bends above the serving table, scrupulous, apportioning the levels so that each glass holds the same. “You’ve got a party going on,” says Andrew. “I wasn’t exactly invited . . .”

“That isn’t true,” says Ian. “Yes, you were.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Maggie says. “What counts is you’ve arrived.” She takes the final step and stands between them on the landing, gathering the lamplight for her entrance—poised between escorts and perfectly dressed. She smiles a smile so brittle Ian asks, “Are you all right?”

Samuel Coffin sees them and puts the sherry down. “Mrs. Sherbrooke,” he says. “Margaret. No fooling. You look younger every day.”

“Why thank you, Samuel.”

“No fooling. Every time I see you I’m reminded.”

“This is my day for compliments. I’ll have to save them up.”

“Fact.” The old man turns to Andrew. “If I was your age again . . .” He offers his hand. “Name’s Coffin. Samuel Coffin.”

“Will you excuse us?” Maggie says. “We’ve got such a lot of catching up to do.” She smiles at Samuel, then Ian. “Run along and give your tour. We do want all our visitors to get their money’s worth.” She swivels and presents her back, shuts her eyes an instant, then puts her hand on Andrew’s arm. “You naughty man, you could have sent a postcard. Where have you been keeping yourself?”

In the final months of Judah’s life, they attended the church oyster supper. He had been doing so, he said, since 1946. It wasn’t the Sherbrooke church, wasn’t even local, was twenty miles of dirt road into the next county and down by Hoosick Falls. But Judah said they served the best oysters from here to kingdom come, and it didn’t matter where you lived and didn’t much matter what faith you professed in order to have faith in this: Ralph Andersen knows oysters and where to order them cheap. He, Judah, cherished raw oysters. He’d be a double-dyed Baptist on Saturday, he announced, if they allowed only Baptists inside; if born-again Christians get second helpings, he’d be born again.

But though the congregation had first licks at the first feeding, there was always enough to go around. They sold tickets to the supper six weeks in advance. By two weeks thereafter they were sold out, and Judah was part of the list. He’d buy up a table’s worth anyhow, and take Hattie and Samson Finney and Maggie, if she were willing. If the table was part empty, so much the better, Judah said, that means there’s extra for us.

The feast was in September, and the afternoon was bright. They waited in a pew. Ralph Anderson announced the numbers, calling them off in tens, meanwhile trying to sell cranberry bread and fudge and relish in the vestibule where the ladies displayed baked goods. Maggie looked around her and was shocked. How could they all have grown so fat, she asked herself, so old in the years since she’d last attended, so blue-haired and bedecked with rhinestone finery? The ladies smiled and nodded. The men waved. The carpenter from Shady Hill had a new set of teeth. His mouth made appreciative separate motions as he praised the oyster stew. There would be raw oysters, then stew, then scalloped oysters, then pie. There were mashed potatoes and squash and rolls and coffee provided gratis, Hattie said, so all the Baptists had to pay for were the oysters brought north in bulk.

Their numbers were called. She helped Judah downstairs. He made space for himself, as always, and seemed the largest person there, though his gait was shambling and his bulk had been reduced. He busied himself, as he did always, assessing the evening’s probable profit—the total take at five dollars a head, minus expenses. He worked out the figures aloud. “One hundred thirty-seven folks at a sitting,” he said. “Four sittings, right? That’s five forty-eight times five—twenty-seven forty. Not counting those who eat free. They clear fifteen hundred easy, maybe eighteen hundred, depending on the freight.”

Their waitress knew the Sherbrookes; she filled their water cups. She told Judah how well he was looking, told Maggie it was wonderful to have her back again. She bet Finney he wished it was vodka or gin, told Hattie how the day before they’d had a hepatitis scare and thought they’d have to cancel—how someone down in Chesapeake had called up Adam Chamberlain and said these oysters came from beds the state had put in quarantine. “Not fit for local consumption,” she said. “But okay to ship out of state—can you imagine?” So Ralph had been up half the night checking out the accusation, making certain there was nothing to it, making certain what they had were prime-grade oysters with no question mark attached. “Truth is,” she said, “if I’d have to get sick, this isn’t the way I would like to. Catch me eating them raw . . .” She shook her head and topped up Judah’s plastic bowl. “Cholesterol,” she told him. “Heavy on cholesterol, that’s what oysters are.”

Maggie picked and chewed. There had been bowls of cocktail sauce and crackers, jugs of vinegar. The oysters seemed stringy and thick. She had difficulty swallowing; the mixture adhered to her throat. Those in the group around her asked for second helpings; Maggie blew her nose. In the next instant, with her handkerchief still at her mouth, she blinked to clear her eyes. She could not see. Then Maggie saw the room as if through water, with the steel columns turned to kelp and the many-fingered children waving at her languidly. There were solemn-eyed strangers like fish, snouting up against their plates. There was coral all around her, and its edges were knife-sharp. The light above was like the light through water impossibly deep. She pressed her nose and fought for air.

Samson had a pocket flask. He uncorked it and poured whiskey in her coffee cup. “Good for what ails you.” He winked. “It makes Irish coffee, is all.” Upstairs the next set of celebrants waited. The minister waved broadly at Pete Ellison, whose boy won last week’s football game with an interception, but said he had to practice late and therefore skipped out on this meal. “You know what practice makes,” said Pete, “that Soskins girl, she’s perfect—so I’ve got this extra ticket here if anyone’s still buying. Practice makes perfect, get it?”

Maggie drank. The coffee failed to warm her but it cleared her sight. That instant she knew she didn’t belong here and would have to leave. She hadn’t known it then, of course, had only just returned. She’d thought life with Judah might last. Then when he died she thought to mourn him in the proper context; then she was pregnant with Jane. In the sixth month of her pregnancy, she dreamed nightly of escape, but there had been nowhere to go. Then for a while it seemed that staying would be pleasant and convenient; then her inertia mounted and she could not move.

Yet these faces and bodies repelled her, this white flesh wandering from feeding perch to feeding perch, these up-country citizens who hated her and would hate Jane. They inserted their new sets of teeth after the curried oysters and before the bread. They were her enemies. Their names were Harrington and Cooper and Hall: names on the stones outside that would be incised soon again. “If this is the salt of the earth,” she said to Samson Finney, “I’m going on a salt-free diet.”

He studied her, concerned. “They’re good folk,” Samson said. “They may be dull and pious and whatnot, but they’re law-abiding folk.”

Maggie checked her face in her pink compact mirror. “Bad for business,” she said. She had tried to humor him, but he was unamused. These people would brand her if they dared, had branded her in their mind’s eyes already, would run her out of town except she owned the town.

This last phrase is theatrical. She does not own the town. That was being proved. Nor do they bother her or call except on Thursday afternoons while she hides in her room. But they roil about beneath her like carp after bread, they lurch and snap and swallow indiscriminately. Jane cannot live here, she knows. Jane will have to leave, as she and Ian left. When the gong sounded and the five o’clock set-to arose, shuffling, scraping back their chairs, swallowing as if in unison that last chunk of lemon meringue, Maggie thought she would not make it, not climb up the stairs behind Judah—he needing no help now but striding, hands in his pockets puffing out the flannel, fetching his cigar case and telling Finney, “We might as well have us a smoke.”

“Did you hear the one?” asked Finney, “about this king in Africa who got himself a modern house with all our foreign aid? So he had this fancy chair, see, with jewels on the headrest and leopard-skin pillows, and they looked through the picture window and saw it and deposed him. Killed the king.” He paused. “Which only goes to prove,” he said, “that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t stow thrones.”

Judah laughed. He threw back his head and repeated the punch line: “Stow thrones.” His white hair was fluffy with washing; it bunched at the back of his neck. He winked down at Maggie and asked, “You ever hear that one? Stow thrones.”

“She’s heard it,” Finney said.

The men bit cigar ends and spat. Hattie had excused herself, drifting off to visit with the Conovers. Judah and Samson traded jokes the way they traded cigars. They’d been doing so for decades, and Maggie scarcely listened, and she wondered if they listened to each other anymore—they must have known the repertoire by heart. It wasn’t as if they collected jokes or told them well, it was more a ritual observance, a way of stating fellowship.