Blessings (11 page)

“Let her cry it out,” Mrs. Blessing had said when he’d made the mistake of mentioning it the next day. “That was the belief when my daughter was small. Otherwise they’ll be terribly spoiled.”

Skip hadn’t said anything. He thought everybody needed a little bit of spoiling, particularly when they were no bigger than a groundhog.

He looked down at her sleeping, and he filled up with the simple fact of her, that she was alive and breathing and getting bigger day by day with nothing and no one but Skip Cuddy to care for her. Sometimes she seemed as though she was trying hard to see him, although the books said she couldn’t really focus her eyes yet. In the evening, he would take her outside for an hour or two, take her to the far end of the pond and lay her down on a blanket folded double so the damp earth wouldn’t touch her romper. “Charles,” Mrs. Blessing complained, “it’s far too damp down there. Bring her up closer to the house.” But sometimes he just wanted to have her all to himself. The bats would make loop-the-loops
above them, and the birds would trill to one another, hidden away in the top branches of the darkened trees. He wished he could bring her out into the sunshine more instead of keeping her curled up in the chest carrier so much. The books said sunshine was good for newborns. His next day off he’d drive somewhere far away, a half hour or so, and find a park and push her around in the stroller. If anybody asked, he’d say he was her father. He’d actually practiced in front of the mirror. “I’m her father,” he’d say. “Four weeks. Yeah, a girl. Oh, about ten pounds. Good baby, sure, really good baby.” He’d looked pretty good until he remembered he was alone and felt like a moron.

When he’d given her a bottle, put her down on her side in her Portacrib, and put on a clean shirt, he knocked at Mrs. Blessing’s back door. Nadine brought him to the living room. It reminded him of a class trip he’d gone on in sixth grade to George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon.

There was a big oil portrait of a man over the stone fireplace, and some watercolors of flowers on the far wall. Mrs. Blessing was sitting in a wing chair between the fireplace and the window, her binoculars on the piecrust table next to her. A teacup was there, too, and a newspaper with a magnifying glass atop it. She was wearing what she usually wore, a white blouse and a long blue skirt. In the light from the window he could see her scalp through the thin waves of her silver hair. Jennifer was sitting at the piano. It looked like no one ever sat on the living room furniture, except for Mrs. Blessing.

“Nonsense,” Mrs. Blessing was saying to Jennifer. Skip had noticed that it was one of her favorite words.

“Well, it’s only my first year,” Jennifer said. “At the end of next year maybe I’ll have a better idea of what to do.”

“You should be at a fine four-year college,” Mrs. Blessing said. “One of the Seven Sisters, perhaps.”

“People mind their business,” Nadine muttered behind him, but loud enough so that the woman and the girl turned and saw him.

“Charles,” said Mrs. Blessing. “This is Jennifer Foster. Nadine’s
daughter. I trust her implicitly.” She laid a hand on Jennifer’s shoulder, the white thrown into relief by the golden skin of the girl. The bones of Mrs. Blessing’s hand were articulated, each one clear through the spotted skin, as though she were being whittled down by the constant pressure of the years. It was one of the first things Skip had noticed about her, that, and the fact that the only jewelry she wore was a wedding band. On the piecrust table was an old black-and-white studio photograph of a young woman in a white dress. He could see that as a girl Mrs. Blessing had not been girlish: straight nose and mouth, large eyes and forehead, nothing rounded or soft, as though she had been designed specifically to age gracefully.

“We know each other already,” Jennifer said. “We knew each other at school. Except for the Charles part.”

“It’s Skip,” Skip said, feeling the heat in his face.

“Charles, before it slips my mind,” said Mrs. Blessing, “I am unhappy about what you’re doing to that willow tree. There’s no need for you to prune that. That tree has a particular shape. It’s not like a maple, or an elm. The weight of a willow tree goes down, not up. I would like to look at that tree before you do any more work on it. My father planted those trees. They are not replaceable.”

“Yes, ma’am. But you’d better look at it soon. Half the branches on that tree are dead wood. There’s all this poison ivy vine that’s wrapped itself around the dead branches, that you can’t see from here with the binoculars. The woodpeckers are having a field day, and if we have a good-sized storm anytime soon, which we will have, since it’s July, it just might take off the good wood with the rotten stuff. That’s what happened during the July fourth storm. If it happens again, your father’s whole tree’ll wind up in the pond and I’ll be pulling it out with chains and the tractor.”

Skip could feel Jennifer Foster watching him. He loved that tree, too.

“That tree has done fine without you for sixty-odd years, Charles,” Mrs. Blessing said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And it will be fine for sixty more.”

“No, ma’am, it won’t. I called the county extension service and they said that by rights I should prune a third of the small limbs on that tree every year. And there’s one more thing. There’s a repair that needs to be made to the roof of the barn, right near the door to the hayloft. It’s that place where the lightning hit during the storm. It has—”

Mrs. Blessing got to her feet. When she moved, her clothes gave off a sharp powdery scent, like the lavender in the beds by the boathouse. “Take care of it,” she said, moving toward the piano and riffling through the sheet music on its stand.

“I think it’s probably too big a job for me. Someone was shooting off a gun in there, maybe shooting pigeons or wood doves, and then the rain made—”

She did not stop or turn back toward him, and there was a certain grave dignity to the precision of her slow and labored movements. Skip suddenly realized, looking at her curved back, that when she was younger she must have been a tall woman, nearly as tall as he was.

“Have it taken care of,” she said.

Jennifer Foster followed him outside and across the driveway turnaround. She stopped by her little blue car. A straw handbag was on the seat, and a pair of sunglasses. There was a stuffed panda on the dash wearing a little shirt that said “Number 1 Daughter!” Skip figured it had come from her father.

“It sounds as if you can cut back the willow tree,” she said. “If she doesn’t object outright, then it means she agrees. If she really objects, you’d know about it.”

“You translating?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Jennifer said, smiling. “I’ve known her a long time. I remember I wanted to cut my hair in sixth grade. She said, ‘I won’t hear of it.’ And when I said I was going to Mason County Community, you should have heard her.”

“She wanted you to go to State?”

“She wanted me to go to Wellesley. Or Smith.”

“Never heard of them,” Skip said.

“Waiting!” Nadine screeched from the kitchen window.

“Sorry,” Jennifer said. “I have to go back in and play the piano. She says it saves on tuning.” She smiled again, and squinted up at him in the sun. “You should just fix the barn. You don’t even have to ask her about the barn when there’s a problem.”

“How long have you known her?” Skip asked.

“For as long as I’ve been in Mount Mason,” she replied. “She had my mother bring me over in the beginning to satisfy her curiosity, I think. And then she wanted to make sure that I wasn’t being allowed to speak Korean at home. Americans should be American. That’s what she always says. She obviously doesn’t know my mother. My mother wouldn’t let me speak Korean on the plane, much less in Mount Mason.”

“So you think of her as like a grandmother?”

“Not exactly. It sounds weird, but I think we’re friends. She started out wanting to arrange my life, the way she arranges everything around here, you know. She still tries to do some of that. But then I think she got to like me. She must like you.”

“Why?”

“She lets you in the house. I’m not even sure the Fosters were ever allowed in the house, except to serve meals or lay the fires in the fireplace. She’s funny that way. And since you’ve been here she’s seemed livelier, I guess I’d say. More tuned in than she has been.”

“I’m not sure she likes me. I think she thinks I do a good job.”

“With her it comes to the same thing. You should just fix the roof. It’ll be fine.”

“The thing is, I can’t do it myself. It’ll take a professional roofer. You need special ladders and scaffolds. It’s not a one-person job.”

“Then you should hire a roofer. She’ll complain, but she’ll pay for it. She never goes down to the barn, but she likes it kept up. Her father had it built for the cows, and her daughter used to stable her horses there.”

“It seems like a waste. Nobody uses it.”

“She doesn’t care. She just wants it kept up. Her brother died down there. There’s a stone, right where there’s that big clump of lilac bushes. When they’re in bloom I always cut her a big bouquet. The first time I ever came in the living room was to put the vase on the table.”

“I didn’t know you were allowed to just bury people on your property.”

“I’m not sure he’s buried there. Anyhow, Mrs. Blessing is allowed to do whatever she pleases. My father says she can make straw into gold and water into wine. Like Grimms’ fairy tales or the Bible.”

“Do you really think that’s true? Not the straw, but that she can do what she wants and get away with it?”

Jennifer Foster shrugged. “The point is, if she needs something done, she can find a way to get it done. And she wants you to find a way to get it done, too.”

“I get that,” he said. “I meant to say before, your car is idling low. I could tune it the next time you’re here, if you want. If you want, I mean.”

“Thanks,” she said, in the voice girls like her always used for guys like him at school. “My father owns a garage, so he usually does it.”

“Oh. Yeah. I knew that. Stupid.”

“No, no. Thanks, really.” There was a spear of silver from the porch window. “Don’t look now, but she’s watching us.”

“Did you cut your hair in sixth grade?” he said.

“Are you kidding? Of course not.”

W
ith a faint sense of irritation Mrs. Blessing realized that someone had invented many things that made having a baby infinitely easier than when she’d had a baby herself. Instead of the ungainly pram with its big stiff wheels there was this sling contraption that allowed a person to carry an infant around everywhere, hands free. Instead of the papers of enormous safety pins with Bakelite heads of pink or blue, there were these tapes to hold the paper diapers fast, printed with little dancing characters of some kind. Even the bottles were different, the nipple squared off, the inside lined with plastic bags. It reinforced her feeling that the young women of today had it easier than she had.

On the other hand, she was rather proud of her pink KeepSafe baby monitor. Skip had handed it over with an air of resignation, the compromise between leaving the baby alone and letting her sleep in the big house when he was out and about. “You can hear every noise she makes,” he had said. “But don’t overreact. Sometimes she’ll just make a little sound and then go back to sleep.” Mrs. Blessing switched the monitor on. “I don’t hear a thing,” she said.

“Listen real carefully,” he said.

She pressed the receiver to her ear. In response she could hear faintly the sound of shallow breathing, in and out, in and out.

“That’s her,” Skip had said proudly. Shyly he added, “Her name is Faith.”

Mrs. Blessing pursed her lips. “I like it,” he added. “It’s not one
of those made-up names that everybody has nowadays, like Summer or Whitney or whatever.”

“There are children named Summer?”

He nodded. “There’s a guy I know, his girlfriend had twins. Summer and Autumn.”

“Dear Lord,” Mrs. Blessing had said. It was the closest she ever came to profanity.

“What about Faith?”

“I’m sure it will do nicely,” she said.

“It just came to me,” he said.

He had had to go out as soon as Nadine pulled away, to try to get to the motor vehicle office before it closed, to register Mrs. Blessing’s Cadillac. “She just got fed and changed,” he had said through the screen door to the living room. “She should sleep until I get back. Can you hear her?”

Mrs. Blessing held the monitor to her ear. “Perfectly well,” she said.

Ten minutes after he pulled out she heard a faint snort and convinced herself that it was her responsibility to check on the child. It was an effort for her to climb the steps to the apartment, and when she arrived at the top she was perspiring and her shoulder ached. She realized that the other sound she heard on the monitor was the sound of the fans going. Perhaps she should buy an air conditioner for the apartment. Then she snorted herself. Another indulgence for an indulged age. She remembered how the baby nurse had given Meredith cool sponge baths on July days like this one. The baby had splashed spastically, sneezing when the water got into her eyes. Lydia had been afraid always that her child would slip beneath the surface and drown.

This baby looked sturdier somehow. The deep pleat in the fat at her elbow made her arms look muscled. Her mouth moved in a sucking motion. She was in the small vinyl Portacrib Skip had unloaded from the truck, along with a swing and a car seat. “I always wondered who shopped at garage sales,” he’d said. “Now I know. I got all this great stuff for ten bucks.”

Mrs. Blessing liked economy, particularly in those who couldn’t
afford to be profligate. But something sad stirred within her at the sight of the baby, who was becoming quite pretty in that puffy pink baby fashion, in the slightly shabby, slightly faded pastel print of the folding crib, a crib some other child had used when it was new. She laid her hand, which always trembled slightly now, atop the head and felt her fingers mold themselves automatically to the small skull. It was her favorite part of an infant because it seemed strongest, not as vulnerable as the wobbly trunk or flailing arms. There was a small mobile of mice hanging, grinning, from colored umbrellas; when she took her hand away she knocked it, and the first three notes of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” were sharp in the quiet half-darkness. The baby stirred, moved her head to the side, and brought a fist to her slack mouth.