A Violet Season (6 page)

“Who will you marry, then? What kind of a man?” Alice asked.

“Maybe an older man
would
be nice,” Claudie said. “Not much
older. But don’t you think an older man might be more . . . solicitous?” She said this with a flicker in her eyes that suggested she meant something more, and Alice laughed. Despite the difference in their fates, Alice loved Claudie. She wished that she could stay on this porch forever, talking with no care in the world except keeping her stitches even and close.

“Well, who do
you
like?” Claudie asked.

“No one,” said Alice. This wasn’t entirely true. She had listened attentively to Joe Jacobs’s voice when he had read the Scripture a few weeks ago. It was warm and calming, not cold and curt, like her father’s. Since then she had helped Mr. Jacobs at the farm, and they’d exchanged some friendly words. But it was foolish to even think of him; he was older and had been to college and would never consider a farm girl like her.

“Honestly! Who could you possibly think of having come to call?” Claudie said.

“All the young men think the world revolves around them,” Alice agreed.

“Because it does!”

“That will never change.”

“Mrs. Brinckerhoff thinks it will,” Claudie said. “She and Mr. Brinckerhoff were here to dinner last night. The men didn’t leave the table to have their own private conversation. They stayed right there, and Mrs. Brinckerhoff joined in, and so did my mother and I.”

“I don’t know,” Alice said. “Someone has to stay home and run the household, and you don’t imagine men will ever do the laundry!”

“If a woman invents a machine to do it, they might.”

“I can’t wait for that,” Alice said. “My parents are going to marry me off if I can’t get paying work soon.” She was surprised to feel a lump like clay in her throat, and she kept her head bowed to her work so Claudie couldn’t see her face.

Claudie dropped the needlework in her lap and began rocking her chair hard as if to work out a problem. “Maybe the war hero will marry you when he gets home, and then we can be sisters and sit here sewing together all the time.”

“Maybe,” Alice said, though she felt certain that having all the pretty things in this house and Claudie as a sister, too, would still not be worth marrying Avery or any other headstrong boy.

*   *   *   

Ida was in her garden that afternoon when she heard the commotion and ran through the gate with Jasper behind her. William and Alice had just pulled in the driveway behind George Ellerby, on his sandy bay. The young man reined his horse in hard at the barn, shouting for Oliver, but already Ida could see the news was good, not the crisis she had feared.

When Oliver and Norris came out of the barn, they all heard George’s shouted news: American forces had captured the hills outside the city of Santiago and destroyed the entire Spanish fleet as it attempted to leave Santiago Bay.

George turned his horse and galloped on to the next destination, leaving Oliver and Norris jumping and whooping in the barnyard. William gave Alice a hand out of the rig, and she scurried to the house to avoid the boys as they ran in circles, shouting and dancing and setting the chickens to frenzied clucking around the hen yard. Oliver banged two sticks overhead as he ran, and Norris seemed to have forgotten that he was a junior partner in the family business and a man of responsibility; he did a ridiculous dance in the bed of the wagon, then leaped in front of Oliver each time he passed, as if initiating a surprise attack. Perhaps if he thought war would be so much fun, he should enlist, Ida thought as she returned to her weeding.

Oliver was still fired up when, after dusk, she asked him to sit at the kitchen table, where she and Alice were sharing the newspaper.

“I can’t sit, Ma,” he protested. “Lemme go up and see what Norris is doing.”

“You sit a minute and listen,” Ida said. She slid the newspaper in front of him. “Have you read this yourself?”

Oliver dropped his head back in aggravation, then looked at her. “No, ma’am.”

“Then I would like you to read it, just the headline story there, before you go off gallivanting. I don’t care for the celebrating when two hundred men have lost their lives.”

“That’s what soldiers do, Ma! They die in battle.”

Ida thought of Avery and Alan and wondered whether they were in danger. Or whether they were alive. “It’s not such a glorious thing,” she said.

Oliver glanced toward Frank, who was sitting in the rocking chair, but he was at least half asleep and paying no mind to their conversation.

“Ma,” Oliver said. “A new century is coming, and the U.S. of A. is going to be the biggest power in it.”

“Power,” Ida began, intending to protest her son’s view of the world. But the word stopped her short.

“The Philippines are going to be our gateway to Asia, and we’re going to get Hawaii, too—”

“At least you’re learning some geography.” Ida leaned across the table and slipped the paper closer to him.

“—and I’m not going to sit around on this old farm growing weeds out my ears!”

At this, Frank gave a heavy grunt. Ida pulled back her ink-stained hands and regarded Oliver, her sweet boy almost grown, and saw that she was in danger of losing him if she didn’t take care. “Go see what Norris is doing,” she conceded. “But tomorrow I want you to read the newspaper.”

Irritated, Alice yanked the paper from him and slid into better light to read it, while Oliver bent to kiss Ida’s cheek on his way out.

Later that night, well after midnight, they were awakened by a pounding at their door. Ida stood fearfully in the shadows of the bedroom doorway in her nightgown and shawl, while Alice stood a few steps up from the bottom of the stairs. Frank opened the door to find Mr. Harris holding Norris and Oliver by their lapels, one in each wiry fist. Mr. Harris gave a push, and Oliver stumbled into the kitchen. The cloying smell of whiskey followed him.

“Should’ve been paying better attention to my barkeep,” said Mr. Harris. “My apologies.”

Oliver had groped his way into a kitchen chair, and Frank nodded at Mr. Harris. “Said they were celebrating the liberation of Cuba,” Mr. Harris continued. “I got a boy sitting down in Tampa waiting to go off and fight. You,” he said, staring at Frank, “got a boy looking for any excuse to drink.” He waited a heartbeat or two, expecting Frank to say or do something, but Frank stood firm. “I’ll take the other one up the hill, then,” Mr. Harris said, and because Frank appeared to be about to close the door in his face, Ida called out, “Thank you kindly, Mr. Harris. It won’t happen again.”

Frank closed the door quietly—too quietly, Ida knew—and then said, “Ida, Alice, go back to bed.” They did as they were told, and Ida covered her head with a pillow, attempting to block out the sounds of Frank in the yard, slamming Oliver against the side of the barn. Finally, astonished at the force of Frank’s anger and unable to bear the noise any longer, Ida rose and called out from the doorstep to stop, please stop! Oliver had already staggered away from his father, who was kicking the barn door as if it didn’t matter what he was fighting. Ida helped her boy into the house and washed the blood from his split lip and tended his back with a hot compress. Frank had whipped him on occasion with a strap, but never had he beaten him like this, like a man.

H
ow the world had changed. The year Ida and Frank were married, 1875, there had been no electric lights or telephones. No one had ridden bicycles or taken their own photographs, and riding the train as newlyweds had been an exciting new adventure. President Grant had been nearing the end of his second term, and no one in politics had yet heard of William McKinley. Twenty-three years ago today, Ida and Frank had married in her father’s parlor on Dove Street in Albany, with her father, her sister Grace, several neighbors, and a dozen friends from church in attendance. Ida had worn a lavender silk gown of her late mother’s, remade for the occasion, and her mother’s pearls, both of which she had left behind for Grace, knowing she herself was setting out for a life as a farmer’s wife and would have no need of fine things. Though she had been in love with Frank, her wedding day had been among the saddest of her life. She would never forget watching her father and sister and closest friends wave goodbye from the street as she and Frank drove away in his buggy. Her departure had felt like a death. She had seen her father only once more, on a trip he had undertaken to meet the newborn Oliver two and a half years later. Grace had married shortly after Ida and moved to Ohio, and though they corresponded regularly, they had not seen each other again.

Ida and Frank didn’t usually celebrate this date, but she always noted its passing. Today she thought she would bake his favorite dessert, blueberry pie. As she worked her hands through the flour and lard, adding cold water a few drops at a time to improve the consistency of the dough, she thought of that first year of marriage. Frank had been entirely devoted to Ida, always pointing out her virtues to others, sometimes to the point of embarrassment, buying her trinkets, delighted and proud to be with her. When she’d suffered an early miscarriage toward the end of their first year, he had nursed her faithfully himself.

He had been Ida’s prize—the wanderer hired by her father to build a set of bookshelves who had so charmed Ida and Grace that he’d been invited to meals, then given more and more work in the following weeks. He was quiet, and onto that blank slate Ida and Grace had drawn what they’d imagined—Heathcliff, Rochester, Darcy. They had known a few young men from their neighborhood and from church, but this one was different. He was from somewhere else, he was handsome, he was a mystery. They found themselves competing for him, teasing each other as they lay in bed at night about which of them he would prefer, though not really teasing at all. And he had chosen Ida.

It wasn’t until much later that she’d begun to understand the way things would be for them on the farm. Early in their marriage, she’d been oblivious to the negotiations among the men about the conditions under which she and Frank would be allowed to stay. Any rough patches in that first year, she’d chalked up to being a new bride in a new family. She and Frank had been allies with a bright future.

But once Oliver had arrived and her attentions had been diverted, Frank had become sullen with her, even angry at times, not understanding the demands of caring for an infant. It was as if he were competing with the baby, and for the first time she’d seen how childish he could be, always needing to be recognized,
always needing to be in charge. The death of their second baby three short days after his birth had set them further apart. Frank had mourned that baby in his way, but he had never let Ida feel that her grief was permitted, not in front of him. She had found that hard to forgive.

After twenty-three years, she knew just how hard the shell of him was and where the tiniest cracks were. No one else, not even the children, had found those cracks. Sometimes they had fallen into one by accident when something they did struck him as funny, and he dropped what he was doing to scoop them up and toss them in the air, his finest display of affection. She had never seen him do this with Jasper. Sometimes it shamed her that Jasper hadn’t come as the other children had—a hoped-for child in his own right, or a gift sent by God—but, rather, as a necessity born so she could nurse other women’s babies. Still, he had been wanted, unlike some babies, and though Ida wouldn’t dare allow the thought to surface for fear he would be taken from her, she loved him best of all, the one person who needed and loved her wholly and unequivocally.

But Frank. This evening, she promised herself, she would work on remembering the things about him that she had loved. They weren’t so easy to see anymore. Lately it had been nearly impossible to get even a word out of him, and he’d spent several days in the city over the past few weeks. He said he was visiting the wholesalers, though she wasn’t certain he’d been sent by Harold and William. Sometimes she worried he might not come home.

She poured her sweet blueberry filling into the waiting piecrust and rolled out a second plate of dough to cover it, then fluted the edges with her thumbs and pricked holes in the top with the tip of her knife. By the time the others arrived home for supper, the aroma of pie had filled the house. At the table, when Frank asked about it, she took the chance to tease him. “Do you recall what day it is?”

“Monday,” he said gruffly.

“It’s the anniversary of our wedding. Twenty-three years,” Ida said, and Frank nodded. “After dinner, I thought you and I could take a walk.” Frank didn’t say yes or no, but after the dishes were cleared and the pie was set before him, his face softened, and he caught her arms and kissed her quickly in front of the children. She imagined she felt again that fierce devotion in the firmness of his grip.

“I’ll clean up and watch the babies,” Alice offered.

Ida changed into Oliver’s old boots, and Frank put on his hat, and they set off on an evening walk. “Let’s go up Halfway Hill,” she suggested.

They climbed the lane toward the Mortons’ farm, then continued to the low ridge, pausing to admire the river when it came in view, throwing thousands of sparks of light from its surface. One of the old sloops sailed languidly along the far shore, its sails barely catching a breeze.

A hundred yards over the ridge, the path up Halfway Hill cut off to the left, and they took it with long strides, Ida holding her skirts out of the dust as they pushed their way up the first fifty steep feet. Then they settled into the gentler curve of the path as it wound around the shaded east side of the hill, followed by another steep climb over some natural granite steps. After ten minutes of silent walking, they reached the majestic top of the hill, where a bold farmer had once planted a field of corn that now was a meadow of swishing timothy grass accented by Queen Anne’s lace and chicory, buttercups and thistles, and that favorite old oak tree, which Frank said his father’s father had remembered climbing as a boy.

From up here, the true breadth of the river could be seen. It commanded the landscape at this, its widest stretch. Despite the advent of the railroad, the river was a busy corridor of commerce, and they counted no fewer than half a dozen schooners, three barges, one with a tug, and a steamboat, though not the
Mary Powell,
plowing its waters in both directions. Someone was also fighting his way across in a canoe, a crazy undertaking amid the north-and-south traffic.