Brookland (15 page)

Johanna was napping by the fire when they returned to the house, her mouth a gash of large yellow teeth and the spaces where teeth had formerly been. “See?” Tem whispered. “She didn't even notice you were gone.”

Pearl appeared unconvinced. She placed the mussel bucket by the table, and took another bucket out to the pump for water in which to boil them. Prue brought up two fistfuls of parsnips from the cellar. When the door banged shut behind her, Johanna awakened, rocking upright in her chair and gripping her dress above her heart. “Who's that?” she asked.
Her eyes were, by then, completely filmed over with cataract, for which Dr. de Bouton could do nothing. It made them gleam like opals. Prue thought something looked strange about Johanna's face, but assumed it was a trick of the firelight.

“It's Prue,” Prue said. As Johanna still look frightened, she shouted, “Prue! Preparing supper!”

“
God in Den Haag!”

Prue placed a wooden bowl on, the table to catch the parsnip peelings. Pearl brought the water in and dumped it into the cauldron. She took the paring knife rather brusquely from Prue. “Hey,” Prue said.

But Pearl was cross about something. With the knife still in hand, she made a wringing gesture, which Prue took to mean she was to leave her with the parsnips and go wash.

“I was thinking of frying them in butter,” Prue said.

Pearl nodded as she began to pare. The skins flew in an expert arc into the bowl.

Tem went out wandering the minute their supper was cleared from the table; and Prue thought she herself would never have been allowed out after dark, at nine years old.

When the dishes were done, Prue went upstairs to retrieve the book she was reading, and Pearl followed close behind her.
May I shew you something?
she wrote, touching Prue's arm before holding the slate out to her.

Prue sat down on her bed, her index finger folded into the book.

Pearl tucked the slate into her waistband and pocketed her chalk, crouched down beneath the table under the eaves, and began to pry up the nails holding the loose plank to the floor. The hole held the sisters' few treasures: rounded bits of sea glass, shells, buttons scavenged from the British officers, and Nell, now that both Tem and Pearl considered themselves too old to play with her. From the hole Pearl brought up a slender, leather-bound volume, with golden lettering on its spine:
Les chefs-d'oeuvres d'art franfais, Tome I
.

“Pearl,” Prue said. She hadn't seen this book before, and knew it was ill-gotten. She put her own reading down and took it from her. Unlike the penny editions she and her father often chose, this book had marbled endpapers, and the edges of the pages were gilt. Its text was dense, apparently in French, but here and there were steel engravings as finely detailed
as any Prue had seen, of fat nudes, and heroic figures, scantily clad, in poses of action. She could not help giggling over it. “Great God, Pearl, where'd you get this?”

Pearl winced but looked at her sister hopefully, as if she might somehow expiate the sin.

Prue handed it back to her. She felt the very roots of her hair tingle with the intoxicating idea Pearl had done something bad, and with the fear it was somehow her own fault, both for inaugurating Pearl's life with a curse and for not calling her back from the fray at the landing. “You shall have to give it back, then.”

Pearl shook her head no.

“Pearl—”

She drew out her chalk and slate.
I'd have to say I stole it
.

“Well, you did steal it. You must return it.”

Pearl looked at Prue as if it were impossible she should thus be scolding her.
He'll be so angry,—Moth
^r
& Fath
^r
,—

“Of course they'll be angry,” Prue interrupted. She meant to keep her temper, but her voice was starting to rise. “All the more reason—”

Pearl quickly erased with her sleeve. “Shh!” she hissed. It was one of the only sounds she could make, occurring, as it did, not by action of the vocal cords but between the tongue and teeth.

But it was too late. “What's that?” Roxana called up the stairs. She was halfway up before Pearl could fit the book back into its hole, and when she stepped into the room, Pearl was crouched guiltily in the corner. “What are you doing?” Roxana asked. She looked to Prue. “What's she doing?”

Prue was accustomed to reporting on Tem. Pearl had never been on the wrong side of this arrangement, but of course knew of it, and glared at her. Prue wondered if her mother had even known about the hole. She continued to look at both girls.

“Give it here, then,” Roxana said, as if they'd stood stalemated for hours. She knelt down, her knees popping, and extended her hand.

Pearl gave the book over, then sat looking up from beneath her fringe, her eyes round as saucers. Roxana flipped the book back and forth and frowned at it. “Your father didn't buy this for you, I take it?”

Pearl had left her slate on the bed. Instead of passing it to her, Prue said, “It fell out from the new minister's things.”

Roxana flipped it over again. “Matty?” she called into the hallway. “Can you come up?”

“Just a moment,” Matty said. Prue could hear him depositing his pipe on the hob and his newssheet on the chair.

Roxana met him at the top of the stairs with the book. “Reverend, Prue says the new minister lost it somehow, and Pearlie picked it up. I didn't even know he'd arrived.”

Matty Winship was in his house shoes, but even so, the two large steps he took to enter the girls' room were fearsome. “You were part of that mob?” he asked Pearl, his tone restrained but obviously displeased.

Prue held Pearl's slate out to her, but she neither took it nor made any other sign of response. “She—”

“I'm speaking to Pearl,” Matty said. “Answer me.”

Pearl retreated farther beneath the table.

“Answer me!”

“She doesn't have her slate,” Prue said, and continued to hold it out to her.

“She doesn't need a damned slate to nod,” he said. He grabbed Pearl's upper arm and pulled her out to the middle of the room. Whether or not he'd actually hurt her, she was twisting violently from him, and exhaled a long, rasping breath that must have been a shriek. “Answer me, damn you!” He wrenched her around and slapped her cheek. Her small face froze in surprise.

“Matty—” Roxana said.

He held up his palm to her in warning. “No. I did not raise them to—Christ! Answer me, Pearl: Did you swarm the minister?” He shook her. “Did you pick like a scavenger through his goods?”

She continued to twist away from him and was, by then, howling almost silently and had begun to cry. Prue had never imagined he could handle one of his daughters so roughly; she could see his behavior confused Pearl as much as frightened her. Prue tried to think of something to say that might induce him to let her sister go, but her mind was blank.

“It is too much, Pearl. Do you hear me?” he yelled. His voice was beginning to go hoarse. “Too much!” All of a sudden he released Pearl's arm. She crumpled away from him, and held her hand over the spot he'd gripped. “I have never once raised a hand to you, not
once
, because I have never known a sadness such as I felt at your birth.”

“Matty,” Roxana said again.

“No, Roxy.” Prue realized her father was not hoarse at all—he, too, had begun to cry. “You have no idea how much your trouble pains me,” he said to Pearl. “If I were a religious man, I'd have been on my knees every day of your life, praying God to make your lot otherwise. But Pearl, if there were a God, could He have done this to you? No. No God would let little children be maimed. No God would give you a life in which you'll never be free to leave this house or have a family of your own.”

Prue could hardly believe her father had said all this aloud, and wished he might retract it. She thought her mother's blank expression indicated similar disbelief, though it might also have been shock that Matty Winship, the household's only blithe spirit, had lost his temper. Prue coaxed Pearl into her lap. Tem would have spilled out in all directions, but Pearl still fit snugly, nursing her upper arm.

Matty wiped his nose on his sleeve. “I'm sorry, Pearlie. It's nor here nor there, is it? This is your lot. Tem and Prue will carry on at the manufactory, and they love you. They'll look after you.”

Roxana sighed and sat down wearily on Prue's bed.

“It's only the truth, Roxy.”

“She's ten years old.”

He once again gruffly wiped his nose. “So, very well. I cannot give you an easy life, nor meaningful work, as I can give your sisters. What matters most to me, then, is that you should grow to be a good person.”

“She is good,” Prue said.

“Good enough to steal from a man who's just buried his father and come to live among strangers?”

Pearl flailed in her sister's arms. Prue first tried to contain her, then realized she was grabbing for the slate, which Prue reached down from the bed and handed to her. Pearl took it, and heaved a sob.
I'm sory
, she wrote, though the chalk skipped over the spot where a tear had fallen.

“It was a gross incivility, Pearl. And what for?” He took the beautiful book from Roxana and opened to a page. “This book isn't any better than those I bring you, though it's prettier bound. I give you the best I can. You don't even read French.”

Prue heard Tem walking softly up the stairs, unlike the usual way she clambered. She must have sensed something amiss.

“There's nothing for it but to march you up to the minister to make your apologies.”

Pearl sat bolt upright and wiped her slate.
No
, she wrote.

“No?”

“We can do it for her,” Roxana said.

He turned to his wife with his lips parted in amazement. “What good would come of that? She'll apologize herself.”

Pearl wrote,
UNFAIR
, and held the slate out before her, her head turned to one side as if, by not seeing him, she could render herself deaf to his command.

Matty shook his head no. “You may agree to go peacefully in the morning, or I shall drag you there right now. But you will go.”

Pearl held up her word again, and Matty let out an exhausted breath before grabbing her out of Prue's lap. The slate slipped from her hands.

“Put your shoes on,” he said. Prue had never seen his face so mirthless. He tried to force Pearl's feet into a pair of clogs by the door, but she hissed and spat, wriggling in his grasp like a trapped fox. Half her hair had come loose from her braids and hung around her like the strings of an old black mop.

“Those are Tem's,” Prue said. Tem herself was standing, weirdly quiet, out in the hall. She was still in her work boots, with her loose-fitting coat unbuttoned over the leather vest. “They won't fit her.”

“I don't care if they're Louis Philippe's. Put them on.”

Pearl was bawling by now, but she put her feet in the shoes, which were too large for her. With the book in hand, their father marched her from the room. The shoes rang like a volley of gunshots across the hall and down the stairs, and both Tem and Prue winced when they heard Pearl stumble on the bottom step. Matty cursed under his breath as he pulled on his boots; then the door slammed shut behind them. Tem stood unusually still. Their mother reached a hand up to the nape of her own neck and closed her eyes. “I am so sorry you witnessed that,” she said.

Prue was uncertain what to say; if it would be worse to ask her to explain what had transpired or to let it pass. She watched her mother rub the base of her own skull.

After what seemed an age passed, she straightened up, and Prue could see from the glaze over her eyes how exhausted she was. She looked at
Tem as if she hadn't noticed her previously. “Where were you?” she asked, her tone too flat to convey any accusation.

“Down at the Remsens'.”

Roxana nodded, as if this were where Tem ought to have been after dark. “Why don't you both wash your hands and come sit by the fire with me till Daddy and Pearl come home.”

Prue said, “You should lie down.”

Roxana smiled as she sometimes did when she was sad—the corners of her lips dropped, but the expression was more tender than a frown. “I'll rest in the parlor. But I'll have to speak to your father when he returns.” She reached over and rubbed the spot between Prue's bony shoulder blades, as if she were a baby in need of soothing. Then she patted her and made her way toward the stairs.

The girls still had water in their pitcher from the morning. Tem sat without even fidgeting while Prue rinsed her face. Tem gave her a towel and asked, “What happened?”

Prue sat down beside her. “Pearl pinched a book from the minister's things.”

Tem's mouth became a delighted
O
.

“Nay, don't,” Prue said.

“I know it isn't funny, but I'm glad, for once, she got to do something rotten.”

“I am, too,” Prue whispered. She was also still disturbed by the scene she'd witnessed. At long last she took her volume of Vasari downstairs.

Despite the rumpus, Johanna was snoring in her room off the kitchen. Pearl's sleek mottled cat stood coiled up facing a corner, its tail switching behind it. Roxana was in the parlor, with her stocking feet up on the arm of the divan. Such a scene—in which there were no games to play—would ordinarily have made Tem shout out in complaint, but she took up her father's newssheet and tried to apply herself to it.

The clock cycled through more than an hour before the kitchen door opened and shut. Prue knew it would have been polite to remain reading, but she had not learned a thing about Simone Martini, though she'd dutifully turned her pages; and her mother and sister also sprang up to crowd through the hallway to the kitchen. Pearl was so pale she looked almost gray, but their father had neatened her hair. She stood looking at the floor until her cat came and rubbed against her leg. Tears filled her eyes at
once. She picked the cat up and carried it upstairs, its yellow eyes over her shoulder reflecting the firelight as she ascended. Matty poured himself a dram of gin, drank it in silence by the fire, and said, “He wasn't angry.”