"This is going to be my room," Lydia told him.
ccOh?55 "Mine and Becky's and Susan's. Mother will take that one." She pointed behind her.
"Have you talked it over already?"
"No, but Mother pretty much always lets us have our way."
"She does, does she?"
"Pretty much. Unless it would hurt somebody, or be bad for our minds. We want to stay, so I know she'll say yes."
"Why do you want to stay?"
"Because we have a grandmother here, and cousins and Aunt Grace and Uncle Elfred, whom it's time we got to know., and because there's an opera house here which Mother says we'll frequent, and exceptionally fine schools, and if you attend high school here you don't even have to be tested to go into college, they just let you in. Did you know that?"
Amazed by her spiel, Gabriel cleared his
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throat. "No, I didn't. "
"Mother says education is paramount." Mother does, does she? Gabriel studied the precocious child. She was no higher than his armpit and rather the ragamuffin in scuffed brown high-top shoes with knots in their strings and a sacky brown pinafore-shaped dress whose patch pockets sagged. Her sandy braid was in disrepair; a fringe of hair had worked loose from it and she frequently shoved it back from her temples. Her nails were dirty. But her cheeks were rosy and her eyes as bright as a tern's. Moreover, her vocabulary and elocution put Gabe's own to shame. He peered at her more closely.
"How old are you?" "Ten. "
"You
"Mother
speak awfully well for a ten-year-old." reads to us a lot, and encourages us
to be inquisitive about words, and to create." "Create what?"
"Anything. Music, poetry, plays, essays-, paintings, even botanical exhibits. Once we wrote an opera."
"An opera," he repeated in undisguised surprise.
"In Latin." "My goodness."
"Well, we tried it in Latin, but we made so many mistakes that Mother got tired of correcting them, so we changed it to English instead. Do you have children?"
"Yes, I do. I have one daughter, Isobel. She's fourteen.
"Susan is fourteen. Maybe we'll all be friends. "
"I'm sure Isobel would like that."
"And Rebecca is sixteen. Susan and Rebecca do everything together, but I'm the baby and sometimes they won't let me. But at least they let me put on plays. Well, I'd better go now."
She swung around and collided with her uncle Elfred, who had just reached the top of the stairs.
"Oopsy-daisy!" he said, sidestepping.
She looked up. "I'm sorry, Uncle Elfred. I was just going to find Mother."
"She's downstairs on the front porch with your sisters. "
Lydia clattered off down the steps and Elfred joined his friend in the rear bedroom. "Well, what do you think?" he asked, stopping beneath the unlit light bulb and reaching into his vest pockets for a cigar.
Farley rose. "About the house or about her?" Elfred trimmed the cigar with his teeth. His burst of laughter sent the brown nubbin flying toward a mopboard.
"Take your pick," he said, striking a match with a thumbnail and puffing to light the stogie.
At that moment Roberta had climbed halfway up the stairs and was being followed by her girls. She swung around and shushed them with a finger to her lips and motioned them to stay where they were. Keeping to the edge of the steps where they wouldn't creak, she tiptoed to the top and flattened herself against the wall,
straining to hear what she could.
Farley said in a lowered voice, "She doesn't care much what she says, does she?"
"Or how she looks," Elfred added. "Or how her children look."
"She's got plenty of what a man likes to get his hands on though, and that's all that matters, eh, Gabe?"
Farley chuckled. "Well, I did get over here pretty fast, didn't I? But, hell, I never met a divorced woman before. I was curious."
"So was I. So I . . . " Elfred harrumphed. The smell of his cigar smoke drifted out past Roberta.
"So you what, Elfred?"
"Well, you know This slyly. "I tested her a little bit. "
"Tested her? Why, Elfred This with teasing approval. "And you a married man." "It was just in fun."
"What'd she do?" Farley was nearly whispering. Though she heard no answer from Elfred, she imagined an off-kilter grin implying whatever a randy mind wanted to imagine, before Farley replied in elongated tones, "Elfred, you devil you. 11
And both men laughed.
"Yessir . . . " She could tell from his speech that Elfred had the cigar clamped in his teeth. "She's a fiery one, Gabe. Regular little spitfire." He must have removed the cigar from his mouth as he went on in the confidential tone of one worldly stud helping out another. "A word of advice, though. Warm her up a little first. She's
got a belligerent side."
"Thought you said you only tested her." "This was over the house."
"The house?"
"She blew a cork when she saw the condition it was in and jabbed me in the gut with my own umbrella. Damnable temper on her. Damnable."
Farley laughed. "My guess is you deserved it. And I'm not talking about the condition of any house. "
Roberta had heard enough. With her face afire she stomped squarely into the room and confronted the two men. During that moment of arrested motion when everyone present knew exactly what the whispering and snickering had been about, she fixed her glacial eyes on Farley.
"When can you begin work?"
Farley hadn't even the grace to blush. "Tomorrow."
"And, Elfred you shall pay. " Her manner gave second meaning to the statement that nobody could mistake. "And you shall make sure Grace knows about it, so there's no trouble later between her and me."
"I'll make sure."
"And you" - she skewered Farley with contempt in her eyes, putting a distasteful subtone in the word - "shall make sure you complete the job and get out of here in the shortest time possible, is that clear?"
"Yes, ma'am," he said. "Anything you say." She executed an about-face as regally as if
dressed in hooped taffeta_, and headed for the door. "The drays are here with my belongings. Would you please help the teamsters unload."
It was far from a request: It was an order issued in the tone of one whose disgust is so complete she can cope with it no other way than to turn her back on the subjects of that disgust.
When she was gone, Gabe and Elfred exchanged silent messages with their eyebrows, then snickered once again.
X A
3
ER furniture was as ill kempt as she, a lackluster collection of pieces that H
would serve the purpose of holding people or possessions, but would do nothing, aesthetically, to enhance their lives.
"Oh, don't worry about the rain," she told the draymen, "just bring it right in here!" "Perhaps you should stay with us tonight, Birdy," Elfred said.
"Not on your life. What would you do with four of us?"
Elfred didn't know what they'd do with four of them. He had suggested the polite thing but was, in fact, relieved she didn't take him up on his offer.
"This is our house. These are our things. We'll get along. Well, don't just stand there, Farley, make yourself useful! You too, Elfred."
Elfred got soaked. It gave Roberta a vindictive lift to see him gazing down at his wet wool suit, worrying about it shrinking two sizes. Farley, still in his brown-colored oilskins, fared much better, so she made sure he helped the draymen carry the heaviest pieces, including the upright piano that she hoped would leave him with a hernia the size of a turnip.
Whisper, would they?
Damned foul species. Let them haul like beasts of burden: That much men could do.
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But in Roberta Jewett's book, they were good for little else.
Elfred quite disliked being put upon to do such physical labor and decided he needed to get to his office the moment he could conveniently scramble off.
Farley went, too.
Roberta sent the girls upstairs with instructions to unpack some cartons of clothing and bedding. She went into the living room and perused the collection of crates and trunks stacked in one comer like a Chinese jigsaw, wondering where she might find kitchen equipment in all those boxes. It was nearly midday and the girls would be getting hungry. She should go find a grocery store and put in some supplies, light a fire to take off the chill, attempt to unearth her teakettle and the washbasin and some buckets, rags and towels. Suddenly it seemed too overwhelming to face. Besides, the air coming in the open front door - though damp - brought the smell of the ocean and of the earth greening and lilacs budding, and the sound of gulls and distant bellbuoys, which she'd always loved. So she located the legs of the marble-and-claw-foot piano stool sticking out of the mountain of crates, removed a bunch of cartons from in front of the piano, opened the key cover, sat down and played 'Art Is Calling for Me' from Naughty Marietta. She lit into it with robust energy, and ten bars in heard the girls begin to sing upstairs.
"Mama is a queen ... and Papa is a king ... so I am a prin cess an d I kn o w it.
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Suddenly Roberta Jewett felt incredibly happy. She had her girls, and a place to keep them,
and a job waiting. There was no husband to take what was hers or to make a fool of her anymore. Beyond the front porch the view of the harbor waited for her to enjoy anytime she wanted to lean against the doorjamb and bask. She had made a new start, and she and her girls were going to be very, very happy from now on.
With a nimble arpeggio she finished the song, spun around on the piano stool ...
And found herself face-to-face with Gabriel Farley.
He was relaxed against the doorjamb with his hands tucked under his armpits as if he'd been there awhile.
Her face soured. "I thought you were gone." "I was. I came back."
"Well, you might have knocked." She spun back to the piano, slammed the key cover and spiked to her feet.
"I did, but you didn't hear me above the racket. "
"Racket?" Over her shoulder she quirked an eyebrow at him. "Why, thank you, Mr. Farley. How gracious of you."
Farley had been standing in the doorway for a full minute, watching and listening and wondering what kind of woman kept her front door open in the rain while she sat at the piano and ignored a mountain of moving crates that needed unpacking, and the fact that she was stuck with a wreck of a house that needed mucking out and scrubbing down before it was
fit for human habitation.
"Actually, I rather enjoyed it. Your girls sing very well. "
From upstairs Rebecca called, "Mother, who's here?"
"It's Mr. Farley!" she called back. "What does he want?"
"I don't know." Then to him, "What do you want, Mr. Farley?"
He boosted off the door frame and came in. "Thought you could use a little help with the heavier boxes, maybe take a look at your stovepipes, make sure they don't have any squirrels' nests in 'em."
"No, thank you." She marched over to the mountain, selected a box and hefted it down. "We'll manage. "
He came and lifted it out of her hands while they were still in midair, his height advantage making it effortless for him to pluck it from her.
She turned and gave him a dirty look. "Haven't you got some work to do somewhere?" "Ayup."
"Then why aren't you there?"
"Got my own business, me and my brother. He's working at a job out by the Lily Pond and he'll get along fine till I get there. Where do you want this?"
The carton held her cast-iron frying pans. He handled it as if it contained nothing more than a thimble keep.
"In the kitchen."
He took it there and she followed3 watching
as he set it on the floor beside the iron cookstove.
"Look, Mr. Farley." She lowered her voice. "I heard you whispering and tittering with my brother-in-law upstairs. I think I have a pretty good idea of what that was all about, so why don't you just leave the unpacking to me and my girls and take your leave? I'm not the kind of woman you think I am, and you're not going to gain any advantage by hanging around here acting indispensable. I've got my piano inside. That's all I needed you for, and I thanked you for that. "
He straightened his spine by degrees, angling her an amused expression.
"Why, Mrs. Jewett, you do me an injustice," he said, brushing his palms together.
"No " Mr. Farley, you do me an injustice. I told you before, I'm not a stupid woman. I know men and their ways, and I know perfectly well what preconceived notion the word divorced brings to their minds. Shall we at least agree that I'm bright enough to have figured out what you and Elfred were whispering about upstairs?"
Farley considered her for some time. By Jove, he'd never met a woman like her before, and if truth were told, he wasn't sure why he was hanging around here. Nevertheless, he decided an admission of his first mistake would put them on friendlier terms.
"Very well. Please accept my apology." "No, I will not. "
Farley couldn't decide whether to chuckle or gape. Never having had an apology flung back
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in his face before, he gaped. And thrust his chin forward as if he'd just swallowed a horsefly. "You won't?"
"No, I won't. Because it was rude and embarrassing what you did, and since I have no wish to further our acquaintance, I choose not to accept your apology."
A few beats passed before he muttered, "Well, I'll be damned."
"Good," she said, turning away with her nose in the air. "That would please me very much." She disappeared into the living room, leaving
him to gape further. He whipped off his cap, scratched his head (which didn't need it), looked around the kitchen, felt his curiosity about her gather steam, hooked the cap back over his temple (lower than ever) and followed her.
From the doorway between the two rooms he watched her clamber onto a packing crate and reach for a bandbox from high on a stack. The back of her skirt was a wrinkled mess, and the back of her hair was just u1. When she _plain awf
leaned forward the heels of her black high-top shoes lifted off the carton, and they, too, were scuffed and worn down so there was no sole left on them. He assessed her and made no more offers of help.