The Language of Paradise: A Novel (24 page)

GIDEON AND SOPHY
were married three days later, on the Saturday following the funeral. A number of women in the congregation called it disrespectful, a mockery of decent mourning, and speculated about the reasons for such unholy haste. Mrs. Hedge was adamant. The Reverend had favored the match, she said; he would have wanted them to bring joy out of sorrow. And there were practical matters to be considered. Sam had to get back to his family in Lowell, and Parson Phelps, who had officiated at the Reverend’s services, would need to return to Andover.

Gideon wondered privately if Fanny thought he was not sufficiently snared—that he would flee if too much time elapsed, now that the Reverend’s talons of righteousness were permanently withdrawn. In her grief Sophy leaned on him, often literally: in the midst of muted frenzy as the household prepared for the funeral, she would stop and rest her head against his chest, and he would hold her. He felt at these moments that his mission in life was to be strong for her. Still, he was aware, with the reverberating awe of a man sprung from the noose, that he’d been liberated—released from his obligation to live out the role that the parson had written for him. His future was his own again, though he wasn’t sure what to do with it. He had not expected that the freedom he’d longed for would leave him floundering and disoriented; in some primal way, exposed. It was as if the ceiling overhanging the earth—the firmament of Genesis—had been lifted by divine fiat, leaving only a gaping void. He hardly dared ask himself whether this was what it meant to lose a father.

The wedding resided in all their minds as the final act of the funeral: a denouement, or worse, an afterthought. They assembled in the parlor where the Reverend had so recently made his last appearance. Flowers from the funeral shed petals on the mantel and side tables. The room was empty except for the family and the minister, a meek man, resolute only in his effacement of personality. Sophy’s wedding dress had been folded with care and put away in a chest—“for you might have a daughter,” Mama said. The black they wore set their paleness in relief, and accented their weariness and strain. James had sunk so far into himself that he was barely present at all. He stood at his mother’s left and Micah on her right: pillars of support, though a stranger intruding at that moment might conclude that Fanny was holding both of them up. Sam, off to the side, kept glancing out the window, perhaps anticipating his return to the comforts of his own unswept hearth. Gideon and Sophy had the same thought, though neither ever shared it with the other: that the wedding party looked like a clutch of bedraggled crows after a thunderstorm. The vows were read, the responses given, and it was done.

CHAPTER 20

____

ONE

N
OT THE FIRST NIGHT. NOT THE FIRST WEEK, NOR THE
second. The house is too quiet and they are too tired. He puts his arms around her, and she nestles into him, and they sleep. Over a month has passed—long enough to stamp a pattern. She thinks they could go on this way for years, which would be tolerable if only they didn’t wake as strangers each morning, setting their feet down on opposite sides of the bed and turning away from each other as they dressed. Papa said there was no such place as Limbo, but she and Gideon seem to be residing there now. Married, yet not.

Living at home doesn’t help. She wonders how it would be between them if they had done as he wanted and moved to another house or town, instead of another room. The boarder’s bedroom is not a congenial place for love. It was furnished to meet the passing needs of guests, and Mama hasn’t had time or heart to transform it into a nuptial chamber. The mattress sinks in the middle; the boys used to joke that it discouraged long stays. Sophy can’t forget the strangers who have slept here: seminary students and visiting clergy, hard-luck parishioners, harvest help, the listless queue of schoolteachers. And who knows what snatched glances Mr. Unsworth hoarded beneath the covers, what humid thoughts he brought to bear upon the linen? It isn’t to be dwelled on.

Gideon was sick in this room. She had no qualms then about lifting his nightshirt to bathe him, but would never be so bold now, though she has a right.

It is hard to put aside their single selves when the rest of the family treats them as though nothing has changed. The household is struggling to right itself after Papa’s death, and they must do their part. James and Micah have taken on the heaviest burden, laboring in the barn and fields for much of the day; her little brother grows older by the minute, his shoulders already bowed. Gideon helps where he can—where they let him—but the boys tire of explaining tasks that are as elemental to them as eating. He isn’t used to farmwork, or suited to it. While the parish debates his candidacy, he wanders about like a lost soul, seeking a place to attach himself.

Sophy feels a bit like a lost soul herself. Now that Papa is gone, Mama has deserted the house for the garden, which has become her occupation and solace. Sunup to sundown, in all but the worst weather, she is outside with her spade and hoe. She works her grief into the soil, talks to the ground as she won’t talk to them. Some days she won’t come in at noon, and Sophy brings her dinner in a basket, as if she were a farmhand. The domestic tasks that once filled Mama’s days have fallen to her, who has no natural gift for them. Sorrow hasn’t dulled Mama’s sharp tongue. The eggs are too hard, the bread is too soft, the meat too tough. Even the boys are kinder.

Mama has shared one secret with her. Reuben sends money, gleaned from Papa’s properties in the city—or so he tells them. James mustn’t know. He would call it blood money and forbid them to spend it; he would fall into one of his black moods and disappear for days. Micah followed him and found out where he goes. The half-built house.

Once Gideon is ordained, he will take Papa’s place in the pulpit and draw his yearly stipend. This is the expectation, the only obstacle being Deacon Mendham and two of the elders, curmudgeons who bewail Gideon’s youth and inexperience and extol the virtues of the two venerable preachers who spelled for Papa while he was laid up. No one in the family thinks to ask whether Gideon wants to assume the mantle. Mama takes comfort in the thought that her son-in-law will carry on her husband’s work. “It was always what he intended,” she assured Gideon one night, having swept Mendham and his obsequies out the door, “though who could know you’d be called so soon?” She lifted her chin. “The gall of that Judas, asking after my health with thievery in his heart. If he tries to rob me of my widow’s mite to line the pocket of that milk-face Phelps, he’ll have the Reverend’s anointed to contend with.”

Sophy alone sees what a pall the prospect casts over Gideon. He avoids speaking of it, even to her. “I must get back to the study,” he tells her. “Make some order while I can. What would the Reverend think of me if I abandoned the Lexicon?”

She knows too well what will happen. The work will draw him in, and soon he’ll be lost to her, a citizen of that country he longs to return to. In the early days, when she was fresh to him, he’d invited her to come along. Now she has what she could only covet then: the two of them joined in the sight of God and man. But if the marriage doesn’t take, how can she be sure the link between them will hold? A rope not tightly twined can easily be pulled apart.

ON SUNDAY, GIDEON STAYS
late after meeting, at the elders’ request. At table with the others, Sophy can’t eat the dinner she has overcooked. The beef is tough and gristly and won’t go down; the morsel she swallows sticks in her throat. She puts a napkin to her mouth and runs to the kitchen. The gray day, the dry sermon, the dregs of grief mixed with disappointment, the bleak life ahead—the mass of it coiled in a lump in the center of her chest. She heaves over a bucket, her insides clenching, and for all this effort brings up nothing but a few tears.
Sick at heart
, ladies say, fluttering their fingers over their bosoms. A flowery malaise, it sounds like, until it afflicts you.

Mama rushes in. “I knew that beef wasn’t fit to eat.” She grasps Sophy’s shoulder with one hand and thumps her back vigorously with the other. “Out with it, you’ll feel like a new person when it’s gone.”

“I just need to lie down,” Sophy says, pulling away. The nausea is ebbing, but her legs are shaky under her.

“Look at you—pale as a ghost and twice as wobbly.” Mama claps a hand to Sophy’s forehead. “No fever as yet, though one may be rising. Get to bed now, and I’ll bring you a nice cup of chamomile to settle your stomach.”

The tea is sweet, the hay-and-meadow taste brightened with a little honey. Sophy takes small sips, leaning back on pillows Mama plumped, tucked to her chin in the quilt Mama made. The best comfort is Mama herself, planted on the edge of the bed, blowing gusts into her cup to cool it. Sophy can’t remember the last time they sat together, sharing a quiet moment. Even in the old days, Mama was never one to linger—when did she have time, forever called away to another task, another crisis?—yet, somehow, she was always there when needed. Sophy feels a twinge of guilt for favoring her own flighty mother over this solid, dependable presence. When Mama sets her cup down, she says, “Stay with me awhile. Please.”

“Lonely, are you? I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what ails you. I’ve been neglectful, moping in the garden all day and leaving you to cope with the house, and never a kind word when I come in.” She picks at a loose thread in the quilt. “I believe I was jealous, Sophy, for you had your new husband to keep you company, and I’d lost mine. The Reverend used to say that some women make a banquet of their grief and choose to dine alone. I ask your pardon, daughter. I should be thinking more of others’ sorrow and less of my own.”

“There’s nothing to forgive.” Sophy’s eyes fill again, the tears spilling over. Mama never calls her “daughter” to her face; the ownership goes to her heart. “It’s nothing to do with you, or with missing Papa.”

“Not due for your monthly, are you?” A new thought pricks. “Can you be . . . ? There’s no shame in the condition, however soon it comes. I can testify, nature is no respecter of brides. With Sam, it was a matter of weeks. I’d scarcely put the last stitch in my wedding dress when I was cutting squares for nappies—”

Sophy swings her head from side to side like a child learning no, reduced to pantomime because she can’t find words that Mama will understand. Mama with her faith in nature, her belief that all men are alike in their throes.

“The opposite,” is all she can muster.

There is a silence as Mama holds this fragment to the light, squinting. She nods dolorously. “And what else can be expected? Rushed into marriage. Starting life in a house of mourning. Oh, Samuel, I have much to answer for, I don’t deny it. But how was I to occupy my right mind when you left so sudden?”

Sophy follows Mama’s gaze across the room, where, for all she knows, Papa’s shade may be casting his woeful pulpit gaze over them both.

With a corner of her apron, Mama dabs at Sophy’s streaked cheeks. “Enough of this. What’s done can’t be undone, and we’ll have to make the best of it. Now, throw off those covers and wash your face and run a comb through that bird’s nest before your husband comes home. It’s early days, still. A little time alone might be all that’s needed.”

AN EXCURSION IS PLANNED
—the first since Papa died. Mama and the boys are going to the village to do a few errands and call on old friends who have been kind. Gideon is quick to claim those hours for the study. He doubts he’ll have time to do more than blow the dust off the pages and sweep the floor, but it’s a beginning.

“I don’t know why you won’t go with them, Sophy,” he says. “You need to look at something beside these four walls. Put some roses in your cheeks.” He touches her face tenderly, his eyes already distant.

Sophy wakes early on Wednesday and plunges into her chores. By the time she waves her family off in midmorning, she has made them breakfast, packed food for their lunch, cleaned and swept, weeded the herb garden, punched the bread dough down once and covered it for its final rising. At the door she whispers to Mama, “Say a prayer for us.”

The glint of mischief in Mama’s eye is unsettling. “Now, Sophy,” she says, “don’t trouble the Lord when you can do the job yourself.”

As soon as they’re out of sight, Sophy rinses her face and hands at the pump, and walks quickly toward the study. The sun is hot today, summer setting in early. She cherishes these few precious weeks when outdoors is more sheltering than the house, the biting New England air turned mild, cradling the skin. Today she can’t linger to bask in it. Gideon promised Mama he’d do some weeding in the vegetable garden. If he leaves early and gets to the study before she does, the opportunity will be lost.

A moment of painful suspense as she opens the door: the wood has swollen and she has to lean into it while working the knob. The room is vacant, but not empty, steeped in stillness. She has always found churches most holy when unoccupied, eternity thick in the air, and she has that feeling in this temple of thought. If Papa is anywhere, he ought to be here, but she doesn’t sense his presence—not even in the widened way that people call the spirit. One of his tomes is lying open on the desk at the place Gideon left it on the night of the accident, a magnifying glass resting atop a word he was exploring. Papa was in the world when that glass was laid down. Where is he now?