Tree By Leaf (16 page)

Lou didn’t say anything. Thinking of the room Lou had made for herself at the farmhouse, and how contented she had seemed there with them, Clothilde asked, “Maybe you’ll come back.” She looked at Lou’s pale face. Lou looked right back at her: Lou grieved, alone, inside herself, Clothilde could feel that, grieved for what she would be leaving behind, places and people, silences and light; Lou’s future pressed down hard on her like a huge rock, always pressing harder, with a perpetual clattering grinding noise like the mills working. Clothilde didn’t know how any one person could stand being pressed down by that weight. Just imagining it made her feel as if she couldn’t breathe in enough air to live. “You have to come back,” she said.

“I don’t think so,” Lou said. “But I don’t mind thinking mebbe. I’d like it fine, yuh.”

Clothilde couldn’t do anything more, except be helpful. She dried the plates Lou had washed, and stacked them up. More people arrived, the Grindles left to call on Mrs. Twohey, who was, Mrs. Grindle
said, “devastated by this blow,” and Clothilde pumped up water into the bucket from the well outside, heated it on the stove, went back outside to empty the dirty dishwater, and did what she could. People brought food and company. They offered help for the move. Mr. Dethier offered his wagon to transport the family to the train station in Ellsworth, Tom Hatch said he would drive them there, and the blacksmith’s wife told Mrs. Small not to worry about cleaning out the rooms because she would take care of that little chore. The afternoon wore on, wore away.

It seemed that people went from one bereaved house to the other, because many brought news of the Twohey household, which was a sadder place than this small room. “You have your children,” they said to Mrs. Small. “Many hands help bear the burdens.”

Tom Hatch stayed the afternoon too, standing back from the talk but lending a hand wherever it was needed, with all the company. It was hot and dim in that little room, and Clothilde, whenever she had cause to step outside, was surprised to find that it was still daylight.

The sun had set before Clothilde left the little house. Tom Hatch had borrowed Mr. Dethier’s wagon, so he could take her home. They sat side by
side on the wooden seat; the horse, with blinders to keep his eyes fixed on the roadway, pulled them along at a steady pace, through the village and along the fork by the schoolhouse. A lantern, hung at the brace beside Tom Hatch, gave them light.

Clothilde had her mother’s package heavy across her knees and guilt heavy across her shoulders. All the windows at the Twoheys’ were dark, except for one on the ground floor. The house was a mute, black shape with only that one dim window, where a light burned behind the drawn shades. The lantern cast flickering shadows. The air grew chilly. Clothilde didn’t have anything to say as they went along, past the dark meadows and farmlands and over the causeway where the sound of waves on rocks could be heard, punctuated by the horse’s steady footsteps.

The wagon moved along the rutted driveway. Overhead, the leafy branches closed in over them, emerging from the darkness ahead, then fading into the darkness behind as the wagon passed. It was like moving through a tunnel. But whether the leafy ceiling overhead was there to keep them safe or to shut them in, Clothilde couldn’t tell. Finally, she roused herself to say, “It’s kind of you to bring me home, Mr. Hatch.”

“I couldn’t let you walk the way alone, and in the dark,” he said. “Now, could I?”

Yes, she thought, he could have. But he didn’t.

“I wish someone could persuade Lou not to go away. Could you?” she asked him.

“She’s a girl yet, and she has to stay with her family besides.”

“Her family needs her,” Clothilde agreed. “But still—it’s not right. She hates the mills. She told me, she hates it there.”

“Yuh,” he said. “She would.”

“Even if she had been going to stay on with us,” Clothilde realized, “now she wouldn’t be able to anyway.”

“Yuh,” he agreed, with such hopelessness in his voice she turned to look at him. She wished she hadn’t done that, because he had turned to look at her, at the same time, in the wavery yellow lantern light. His eyes were shadowed, but she could still see them, and she turned away. The horse’s hooves sounded muffled on the dirt. The wagon bounced along. They moved in an arched doorway of light, under the trees.

Tom Hatch wanted Lou to stay in the village because he wanted to court her, and marry her. Clothilde knew that, although she didn’t know how
she knew. But Lou was too young yet, he thought, so he hadn’t spoken to her. Now Lou would be moving two states away. He would have made a good husband for Lou; Tom Hatch was a good man and a good friend. Lou would have made a good wife. Lou was young in numbered years, but she was old enough. Clothilde opened her mouth to say all this to Tom Hatch, and ask him please to ask Lou; but she closed her mouth before she let a single word out.

Besides, Lou would just say No, if he asked her now. Lou had to go with her family, because she was the only one old enough to get work.

The light lit the undersides of the leaves growing on the branches of the many trees. Darkness was all around them.

Besides, she might have it all wrong. Who was she, anyway, to think she was so smart about things. She had thought she was so smart before, and so right too, and look what she had done.

On Thursday morning, Clothilde was the first to wake. She built a little fire in the parlor, to take the night chill off the air so that when Mother and Dierdre came to sit it would be comfortable. She started a pot of oatmeal and set the table the way Mother wanted it to be set, with plates, napkins, and spoons, the pitcher filled with milk, the sugar bowl filled. Everything was ready when they came down, everything was done the way Mother wanted it done. But all the busyness couldn’t stop her thinking: her hands worked but her mind kept on thinking.

It wasn’t what she’d wanted. She hadn’t even mentioned Mr. Twohey. Mr. Small—and she thought of the way Lou’s face had looked that one morning, it was before Lou lived-in with them; Lou had come in that morning with the right side of her face swollen and discolored, as if her face had been caught in the machines and twisted like her hands had been—Mr.
Small she had mentioned, and that was why. But she hadn’t meant he should die. It was her fault, and it wasn’t even what she’d wanted. It certainly wasn’t what she’d ask for, either.

When they were through eating, Clothilde washed up the breakfast dishes. She told herself that what had happened had happened and she couldn’t undo it. That was funny, she couldn’t undo things, she could only do them.

Clothilde mopped the kitchen floor before she went to find Mother. She needed to know what Mother wanted done first, the clothes dampened for ironing or the batch of bread started. If she looked in the mirror, she was afraid she would see a worm there, an ugly thing with its blunt blind head; that was what she should see, even when it wasn’t what she did see.

She was so sorry. Even if it wasn’t her fault, she was still sorry and she didn’t know how she would ever make up for what she’d done. What she’d done wasn’t what she was like, but she didn’t know how to prove that.

Mother wasn’t in the parlor. The brown-wrapped package from Boston waited on the table. Clothilde had given Mother the package, and Mrs. Grindle’s message, last night. “I don’t know what to do,” Mother had said; “I don’t know what I’m supposed to
do.” “You’re supposed to take care of things,” Clothilde had reminded her, too worn down to think before she spoke, but she ran upstairs before Mother could speak again.

Mother was probably dressing, to deliver the package to the man in the boathouse. Clothilde went upstairs to find her. It was all right if Mother wanted to look like a lady, and pretend she was a lady; there were worse things than ladies in the world.

But Mother wasn’t in her bedroom. Looking out of the window, Clothilde saw the two of them, Mother and Dierdre, in the garden below. Mother was bending over—weeding it looked like. Her hair hung down her back in a plain braid. She wore a plain blouse and skirt, and an apron. Clothilde didn’t know what to think.

She stood looking down at them, as if they were a painting. The two figures bent over the earth. Overhead, high thin clouds floated along a sky so blue it could have been some kind of mineral stone, and you could cut it into chunks and sell it for jewelry. It was a good picture, Mother and Dierdre working side by side, in the brown soil of the garden.

Clothilde went outside to ask her question. Mother was teaching Dierdre how to recognize weeds.
Clothilde remembered when Mother taught her that; she had been older than Dierdre was, quicker to learn. Dierdre’s pile of weeds was awfully small.

“Is this one?” Dierdre asked, her fingers around the delicate stem of a clover. “Mother, is this one?”

Mother turned around to say Yes. She turned back to her work.

“Am I done now?” Dierdre asked. “Mother, am I done?”

Mother turned around to say No, not yet, there’s a lot more to do.

Dierdre looked at Mother’s back. Clothilde didn’t know what her sister was thinking. Dierdre waited a moment, then reached out to pull up a weed.

“Not that one, Dierdre,” Clothilde warned her.

Mother straightened up and turned around. “Remember, the ones like ferns are carrots. They’re in the straight row, remember?”

Dierdre looked at Clothilde and at Mother. She had to look up for both of them. Clothilde couldn’t remember being that little—Dierdre was so little and round, her eyes were so big, you just wanted to make her happy. “I’m hungry,” Dierdre said.

“No you aren’t, dear,” Mother answered, and turned back to her own weeding.

“I am. Am too. Mother? Can I have something to eat?”

Dierdre couldn’t be hungry. It wasn’t an hour since the good breakfast she’d eaten. Clothilde looked at her sister’s round face. The chin was so little and her thick hair didn’t want to stay caught in braids. The hand-me-down pinafore she wore was too big for her, so it was tied up across her chest. Her blue eyes looked at Clothilde.

“An apple,” she said. “I want an apple. Clothilde could get it.”

The eyes were hungry, and the little white teeth between her pouting lips were ready to bite into something. Dierdre was hungry, Clothilde thought, or, at least, she felt as if she was hungry, but it wasn’t stomach hunger. It was heart hunger, as if, no matter how much attention and love you gave to her she wouldn’t be full. Greedy, Clothilde thought, looking at the little girl who was scowling up at her now, hoping that anger would get her what whining didn’t.

“Dierdre,” Clothilde warned, when Dierdre reached out to interrupt Mother again. Then she had an idea because she could see—almost as if she were inside of Dierdre’s head and walking around—how hard it would be to always be wanting more. She could
guess what might soothe her sister. “Dierdre? If you can weed that whole row, without pulling up a single carrot, we’ll make an apple pie for supper. You and me.”

“Don’t know how.”

“I can teach you,” Clothilde answered. If you needed attention and love, and you couldn’t ever give it to yourself … then you’d always be asking other people for it. “You’re big enough to learn.”

“Could I make my own?”

Greedy and selfish, Clothilde thought. But she wasn’t so perfect that she had the right to criticize Dierdre, was she? “Your own little pie? Your very own little pie just for you?”

“And roll it out. And prick it with a knife.”

“Not a knife, a fork,” Clothilde said. “Yes, you can, if you do the whole row. With no carrot mistakes. And not asking Mother every time.”

“Easy,” Dierdre said. She was smiling now, happy again with something to look forward to.

“Should I start bread rising, or—” Clothilde asked her mother’s back.

Once again, Mother turned around. Clothilde felt how Mother was trying to stay patient; and she could understand why, because Clothilde had interrupted her mother’s work, just like Dierdre.

“I’m sorry,” she said, but Mother spoke at the same time:

“You’ll have to take that package over to the boathouse. It’s his. He must have ordered it. I hope he paid for it, because….” She wiped her hand across her forehead, as if she could wipe all the worry away. Her hand left a trail of dirt.

“He ought to ask Grandfather for money,” Clothilde said. Men were supposed to take care of their families.

“He can’t do that, dear. He can’t go begging to his father.”

“Then he should ask Nate—I bet Nate’ll have plenty of spending money now,” Clothilde said.

“Or to his son.”

Besides, Clothilde thought, look what happened when you started asking for things.

“And bring back the bowl the chicken was in, too, if you would,” Mother said.

“But why don’t you go?”

Mother shook her head. “Not looking like this. It’s better if you do it, dear. Right away, please, so you can gather mussels at low tide, we’ll have a stew.”

Clothilde wanted to say No. But Mother’s face had that streak of dirt across it. So Clothilde nodded
her head. She tried to say how much she wished Mother could have things the way she wanted them. “Are we ever going to have flowers growing here?”

“I can’t see where we’d find the time, can you?” But Mother smiled at Clothilde and Clothilde wondered how much her mother minded not having flowers after all. Because, she thought suddenly, still nodding like some puppet at her mother, what her mother really wanted was to have things growing, even just beans and chard. Her mother didn’t mind work, either. She only minded not knowing what she should do. Mother thought, because she was an orphan—Clothilde unexpectedly saw what it might be, to be an orphan and not somebody who belonged, and if there was somebody who wanted to marry you, even if you were an orphan—but then if you thought he was sorry he’d done that—how would you know what to do? With everyone telling you you weren’t good enough, because you weren’t anybody.

Clothilde would take the package, but she didn’t even remove her apron and she didn’t hurry one bit. She carried the wrapped parcel under one arm as she walked across the peninsula to the boathouse. If he sold the peninsula, where would they live? But if he
wouldn’t see anybody, he’d never be able to sell it. But if he got better—