More Than You Know (30 page)

Idaho. Mountains. Trout fishing. Why not?

“Time for the merry-go-round,” said Connie. He led me toward

the rides, where the calliope and the barkers made more noise than

anywhere else. We stood in line with little children, feeling like Gul-

liver with the Lilliputians.

“Which do you want?” Connie asked me as children rode past

on bears and camels and swans. I couldn’t decide. Neither could Earl

or Eleanor. When at last it stopped and it was our turn to get on, I

decided to take the place of a country lady in a flowered dress who’d

ridden a horse in a decorous sidesaddle seat. I had watched her staring

straight ahead as her painted steed carried her round and round. Conary

lifted me onto the horse and mounted the ostrich next to me.

This was my first merry-go-round. What I loved was that our

beasts stayed side by side. I rose, Connie fell, the landscape whirled

by, but always we were hand in hand, side by side. With my other

hand I held Eleanor, while Connie showed Earl the sights. A little boy

on a camel managed to grasp the brass ring, and everyone clapped.

2 2 6

M O R E

T H A N

Y O U

K N O W

We tried another ride, one where you sat in swings hanging from

a pole that began to spin. You whirled up and up and out far over the

fairground while music played. I had to hold on rather hard, in fear

of the height, and a little girl behind me started to cry. Conary loved

it, as I could see from his shining eyes when we came down to earth.

“Want to do it again?”

I shook my head. I could feel the fried potatoes rioting in the

pit of my stomach. I could also feel the shadows of the day beginning

to lengthen.

“How much money do we have?” I asked suddenly.

Conary led me away from the crowd and took his cash out to

show me. I didn’t count it, but I was surprised at how much there was.

I guess he was paid in dollar bills. Anyway, he must have brought all

he had, in case . . . in case we didn’t go back? Was there enough there

for train fares? Surely.

Connie put it carefully away, then took me in his arms and kissed

me. There was something so bittersweet in his kiss that I almost started

to cry; I didn’t know if it was the first kiss of a life we were beginning,

or if it was good-bye.

When he let me go, he took my hand and said, “Now, the Ferris

wheel.”

I went right with him. We stood in the line, and I craned my

neck looking up to the top of it. It seemed higher than a skyscraper.

Connie was excited; I could feel it in him.

“Frightened?” he asked, looking down at me. I shook my head.

A lie. He put an arm around me and held me close to him. “I’ll take

care of you,” he said. I nodded. I knew it was true. He would always

take care of me the best he could.

The Ferris wheel began to let people off and take new people

on. The line moved forward swiftly; it was so big it could carry more

people than I imagined. Soon it was our turn.

2 2 7

B E T H

G U T C H E O N

We were buckled into a swinging seat, and the ground whooshed

away from us. We stopped again, dangling just above the heads of the

crowds as people got into the car behind us. Slowly we ascended in

this way until we were nearly at the top.

“Isn’t that something?” Conary said. “Look—you can see past

the city, way up the river—I bet you can see farther than you could

walk in a day!” I looked, and nodded. I was clutching the edge of

the car with one hand and Conary’s hand with the other. I couldn’t

look up and out; I was looking at all the bolts and rivets or what-

ever they were that held the thousands of parts together. I was

thinking how easily one might fail—shaken loose during the long

trip to the fairground, how could you check them all? What if the

man who checked got drunk, or had a fight with his wife? What if

one cog slipped and we were dumped down down down into the

machinery . . .

“And look, here comes the moon!”

And it was true; slipping up into the sky in the evening light

came the same baby moon he had sung to me about in the burial

ground. It was older now, and we were far away. On our way . . .

Conary kissed me. For a moment I forgot to be scared. We had escaped

from everything, even gravity.

When it was finally over and we had been put back onto our

feet again, Connie led me toward the shadow of the grandstand, around

behind the shed where they were judging prize squashes and afghans.

He found a place where we were out of sight and held me.

“I love you,” he said.

“I know.” I did.

“But I have to take that car back.”

For a long moment, I couldn’t tell what I felt. Then, I felt the

obvious: that it was the right thing to do. Then, dread. Of Edith. Of

how soon we would be apart. Of how long it would be before we

2 2 8

M O R E

T H A N

Y O U

K N O W

could meet again and make our plans, how hard they would make it

for us . . .

We kissed. I cried a little. Connie was sorry but calm; it was the

only thing he could do.

“You understand?”

I nodded. A big part of me was screaming inside, that if we

missed this chance we’d never get away, but I didn’t say it. I didn’t

know for sure it was true, and I did know that this was the only choice

Conary could make.

There was a roar from the grandstand above us; the trotting races

had started.

“We better go,” Connie said. “They’ll have the law out on us

again if I don’t get you home before dark.”

It shouldn’t be that one moment can change your life, alter or

end all your chances. Life shouldn’t be so cruel, but it is. You slip

and break your neck, you step in front of a runaway bus. Everything

that was possible a minute ago is gone, for years or forever.

We drove home in the gathering dusk, chattering some, still

laughing from time to time. Connie had to put Earl and Eleanor in the

backseat and speak to them sharply to keep them from quarreling. We

turned on the radio (a radio in a car!) and at first got nothing but static,

but then a voice came in quite clearly, KDKA fifty-thousand-watts

clear channel from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A band began to play,

and then a girl to sing, “More than you know, more than you know,

boy of my heart, I love you so . . .” We listened to the end of it. That

was the only song we got. A man began droning about the stock

market, so we turned the radio off.

“What do you think will happen next?” Connie asked me when

we had gone about halfway.

2 2 9

B E T H

G U T C H E O N

“Edith wants to send me to boarding school. She doesn’t want

to deal with me by herself.”

“Do you know where?”

“No.”

“How will you let me know?”

I pictured the post office. If I wrote to him, Mrs. Foss would

just hand the letter to Mr. Crocker when he came in. “Conary’s got a

letter from Massachusetts, Tom,” she’d say to all and sundry.

“Bet he can’t even spell Massachusetts,” Kermit or someone

would add, and everyone would have a laugh.

“What if I wrote my address to Mrs. Pease? Or Mrs. Sylvester?”

“I don’t know . . .” I didn’t either. It was one thing to like me

and Conary, quite another to keep secrets from our parents.

“Bowdoin?”

We both thought about that. Bowdoin was a possibility. Bowdoin

knew a great deal more about everything than he ever told anyone.

He might hold a piece of paper from me to Conary and hand it over

when asked for it. He might not too, but at least I didn’t think he’d

tell.

“Wherever they send you, I’ll find you. Wait for me,” he said.

“I’ll wait for you,” I said. “But I’ll be the loneliest person in the

world.”

He smiled at me. We rode a long way in silence, with a piercing

sadness sinking deeper and deeper in us. I felt so shot through with

love that it was like quicksilver in my veins.

We could see the familiar rise of the back of Tenney Hill. The

air was full of violet shadows; we had only minutes more together

before home, and the warm bright clatter of closed-in evening rooms

would make separate prisoners of us.

On the road ahead lay the long downward slope past the burial

ground, and then the Pottery, and Miss Leaf’s gardens, the library and

2 3 0

M O R E

T H A N

Y O U

K N O W

the village. I wanted this moment never to end, to just lengthen into

eternity.

Up ahead I saw a glimmer of white at the side of the road, a

figure. It was just that hour of evening when your eyes begin to fail

you and headlamps don’t yet do much good, but in another moment

I saw there was a woman there, all alone near the road, in a flowered

dress, with arms nearly bare, and maybe feet too—something utterly

wrong in her demeanor; something must have happened to her. She

turned to the sound of our car with an air of such desperation, waving,

that Conary pulled up beside her. Before he could ask what help she

needed she had opened the door and gotten in behind me.

“Careful you don’t sit on Earl and Eleanor,” said Conary. He

put the car back into gear and started down the hill. I believe it must

have been at the same moment that we looked into the rearview mirror

and saw the horrible featureless face right behind us, staring at us with

eyes like dry ice with pinprick pupils that had no need of light to see

with, and understood what we’d chosen.

2 3 1

Mercy’s Manuscript

Almighty and most merciful Father,

We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep.

We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. . . .

And there is no health in us. . . .

Spare thou those who confess their faults.

Restore thou those who are penitent.

2 3 2

For a long time, I couldn’t understand what was happening. Mrs. H lived in a

world of her own. She didn’t know others could be hungry if she wasn’t. She didn’t
know there were any feelings besides hers. I don’t know what she thought the rest of us
were. She could eat the same food at every meal eight days in a row and never notice
or care, as if it were stage food in a play, and the rest of us were actors in a story she
was watching. I was hungry all the time I lived in that house.

Once she put a pan of milk on the stove and then went to her weaving. When

she found the pan burnt black at suppertime, she yelled at me. I cried and went upstairs;
I hadn’t touched the milk. I hadn’t even been there. Days later when she asked me why
I shied from her, I told her it was because she had been so angry with me about the pan.

She looked amazed. She expected me to love her. I think she thought I
did
love her.

Mr. H was a walking bad mood. He wasn’t pleasant, but you could understand

him. Nobody loved him. Nobody liked him. He was heavy and sour and smelled of fish,
and yet he didn’t deserve what life was serving him. Not such utter disdain and loneliness.

Miss H

2 3 3

Miss C was in the schoolhouse preparing her lessons. Miss C was young and had

never lived from home before. She lived with the H family, because her aunt had fallen
sick and couldn’t keep her. The H family were nothing like people she knew at home and
they made her unhappy and she was always hungry there, but

2 3 4

Miss C was in the schoolhouse preparing her lessons. It was her first time living
away from home and she boarded with the H family. It was spring and had been raining
it seemed for weeks. Also Miss C had not been feeling well. Something had happened that
she could not explain and did not wish to tell her mother so she was not sure where she
would go when school was over.

Miss C was young and pretty and dreamed of

2 3 5

Miss C was in the schoolhouse one afternoon when Miss H came in. Miss H

was older than Miss C, and very brave, and reckless, people said. Miss C admired her,
but was worried by her headstrong nature. Miss H was in love with a handsome artist
named Raoul. He was popular and gay, and flirted with other girls besides Miss H, but
everyone believed they were engaged. Miss C believed it. She boarded with the H family,
which consisted of the mother, the father, and the daughter. There had been a son but he
died.

Mr. H was an angry and sad man. He was crosswise with everybody but

especially his daughter. He was always telling her she couldn’t do this and couldn’t do
that, when it just made her rail at him, and didn’t stop her. She did what she wanted.

Miss C couldn’t see why he did that; he couldn’t seem to help himself. Show him a way
to be kind and another way to make everybody mad, and he seemed to have to do the
mean thing. Tick, tock, tick, tock, as if someone were winding him up and setting him
off to go lumbering across the landscape. He was very lonely too.

2 3 6

Miss H came into the schoolhouse and she was crying. Miss C knew she had