“Because you don’t need all those dresses. They aren’t even fit for church!” His bottom lip quivered a little under the mustache.
I filled a small glass with pear brandy; my hand barely shook, though the anger was already building inside me. “I need something nice to look at, being burdened with the sight of you every day. Why do you want so little in life, and why does it offend you that I want more?”
He shifted on the floor then, with his gaze cast down, the newspaper crumpled in his hand. “I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment to you.”
“It’s too late for regrets now.” I lifted my glass and downed it. “You should change your aims, though. We ought to live somewhere nicer—bigger.” I looked around at the cramped room, littered with my purchases.
“Why? We have empty rooms as it is.” He looked utterly confused.
“Empty rooms are a sign we have done well in life. God looks after his own.” It ached to say it, as I would rather have them filled with little girls and boys. I could not admit this to him, though. Instead, I lifted my chin and narrowed my gaze, measured him across the short distance.
“Does He now?” Mads replied with something like mirth tugging at the sides of his mouth. “My wallet is nearly empty, Bella—my savings are nearly gone!” He hit the table with the newspaper in a rare display of anger, but I was my father’s daughter and it did not impress me at all.
“You have to make more, then,” I hissed across the table. “You always knew it would cost, having a wife.” If I was to be trapped in this house with this man, at least I would live as I pleased.
He slumped down in a chair. “We are not rich people, Bella. We cannot afford all that.” The newspaper motioned to my parcels. “We cannot have beef every day.”
“What would you want us to eat, then? Salted herring and porridge?” My lips twisted up with disdain. His pitifulness made me furious.
“Something . . . sensible.” He threw out an arm.
“Do you think God would love us better then?” I filled my glass to the brim. “Do you think he’d bestow great riches upon us if we ate more cabbage and beets?” I all but snarled when I turned to face him, so abruptly that my skirts spun around my ankles and liquor spilled down on my hand.
“It’s just slipping away, Bella. All my money, into puddings and vanity.” He shook his head and rubbed his brow.
“You shouldn’t have married, then, if it bothers you so much! Maybe you’re just lazy—too lazy to work to keep a nice house!” My gaze searched the table for something to throw: a book, perhaps, or a cup. A pair of gleaming scissors.
“We’re perhaps not where you want to be in life, but I wish you would wait to spend until we have the means—”
“You eat the beef and savor the cheese, same as I!” I drank fast to quench the fury—to erase it with another sort of fire. The liquor slipped down my throat, sweet and burning, but it did not smother the flames of my rage.
“I wish you would not drink so much.” His voice was meek—it fanned the flames.
“I wish you weren’t such a foolish man.” I could barely whisper the words. I filled my glass again.
“How can you speak so cruelly to me?” His mouth hung open and his eyes went wide.
“I was thinking of buying new china,” I told him. My voice was still hoarse, but it carried. “We can’t be eating off chipped plates.” I wanted to bait him, to see if he would turn into a bear before me: rage, scream, and throw things too. Maybe that would be better than this sad and miserable sheep before me.
“They are not chipped,” he bleated.
“Not yet, but they will be. Cheap plates always break.” I clutched my glass so hard that my fingers ached. My gaze was trained on his neck, on the fat vein pulsing there.
“Who cares what we eat from, Bella?”
No one cared, and that was the truth of it. No one cared what we ate from but me.
* * *
—
As Mads’s savings shrunk, my mood darkened. I kept staring into the pantry, at the sausages and cheeses, the mutton and the beef, and it never seemed to be enough. I bought more all the time, filled that pantry to the brim, but still it seemed so empty to me. Even when I had to throw some out or cut green mold from the cheese, I bought more. Even when it reeked of rot, I kept pushing more food in there. I thought that if I could not fill the empty rooms, at least I could fill that pantry to the brim, but the house always worked against me. It was a bottomless pit for my wants and needs that would never give me satisfaction. All it did was take, and taunt with that empty space—with what I did not have. Soon I would not even have money to spend, and that thought scared me more than anything else.
I would not be poor again, take in wash or mending and feel my hands grow sore from scrubbing other people’s sheets. Never again—no more. I would never feel the ache of hunger and fall asleep with my knuckles buried deep in my belly to stave off pangs of pain.
I would never be hungry again.
I broke into a cold sweat and hives, sitting by the kitchen table, ogling the door to the pantry. Instead of spending less money or cooking less lavishly, I found myself unable to do anything but the opposite. I brought home even more butter, sugar, and cream, even more meat to fill the pantry. I was preparing for winter like a bear, adding fat to my body. It was my shield, that girth of flesh. No harm could ever come to me behind folds of fat and expensive clothing. No one could take the food from me if I had already eaten it all. It was mine then for sure.
I deserved that food, those clothes, that china. This was America, land of opportunity and second chances. Who you were before did not matter. So why did those snapping jaws come back to haunt me? Why could I not escape the sensations of poverty and disgrace? It all seemed terribly unfair. I had done everything right: I had married and settled, I had my own house, I went to church and I wiped orphans’ faces. I had made a new life for myself. Yet the husband was weak, the house was wicked, my womb was empty, and the pantry reeked of rot. All I had wanted turned to dust in my hands and it left me so very disappointed.
13.
Nellie