“Well, we don’t know if it’s a secret,” Nellie said. “Maybe she keeps jars of those sweets she used to sell in Chicago—or marzipan cakes and chocolate pudding.” Lucy and Myrtle laughed. “Maybe you should go down there, just to see what’s she’s hiding,” my sister suggested, and I could not for the life of me figure if she said it in jest or not.
“Oh, Mama would be mad then,” Jennie said. “You better not do it,” she told her sisters. I could hear Philip too then, making soft sounds. Jennie would likely have him in her lap while she did her work on the table.
“So what will we do about the cabbages, then, if none of you can go down there?” Nellie asked. “Maybe I have to go get them myself? If the stairs can carry your mama, I’m certain they can carry me as well.” The sound of her voice increased as she moved, slow with her ruined back, toward the door to the hallway. I had my filthy shoes off by then, replaced by a pair of house shoes, and quickly moved to block the cellar door. When Nellie came out, the first thing she saw was me.
“Oh, Bella!” She startled and clutched at her throat. “I didn’t know you had come in.” Clearly she had not, or she would not have tempted my children to mischief. “I was just—”
“I’ll get the cabbage,” I said, turning toward the cellar door, “and some turnips too. These stairs really are dangerous. You have to know where to tread to be safe.”
“Oh—oh, all right, then.” She stepped back into the kitchen with wide and worried eyes.
I went down in the cellar, where the floor was still covered in stained and reeking oilcloth; my heart was working like a piston in my chest, and my hands were so slick that I could barely hold the cabbage I fished out of the bin. What was it my sister wanted? How much did she suspect?
39.
Nellie
Ihad said that I came to borrow silverware, but in truth, I was in La Porte to make sure there was no new wedding on the horizon for my sister. It had been like that for quite some time; if I had not been in La Porte in a while, I grew restless, suffered from stomachaches and shortness of breath. I was drawn there over and over again, just to keep an eye out. To make sure that all was safe and no new husband was afoot. It hounded me always, that worry and fear. I thought I could not bear it if it happened again, and I had stood by and done nothing.
It was always pleasant to see the children, and it lifted my spirits to see them thrive. I thought that I had done right then, in leaving what had happened in the past well alone. I never dared to ask my sister how she fared in that regard, but hoped the young ones’ continued wellness and health meant that the beast had been thrown off her back. How could a woman who so patiently braided little girls’ hair and polished small shoes to a shine be capable of such atrocities? It made so little sense to me.
Surely she had only been sick for a while.
If only she did not marry again, everything would be fine.
Then, having had that worrisome conversation with the children, and finding Bella hiding behind the door . . . I could not stop thinking about it: the expression on her face. The fury that blanched her skin and made her eyes look so dark. It did not help one bit that she was quite herself when she came back up from the cellar with a sizable cabbage. I could barely eat that soup after all; my appetite had fled and did not return.
I wondered how long she had stood there in the passageway, listening in on the children and me before I went out there. Wondered if her anger was directed solely at me, or if it encompassed the children as well. The thought of the latter made me feel ill, which in turn was what gave me the courage to sit up with her that night, alone, and to ask her, though I deeply feared the answer.
“The children say you are looking for a new husband.” Our knitting needles’ soft clicking filled the silence between us.
Bella made a clucking sound. “They would say that.”
“But you don’t?” I looked at her over the knitting in my hands. We had lit a fire, and the scent of wood smoke filled the air.
“As I said, I’m happy alone.” She did not look at me, but counted the loops on her knitting needle, using a finger as aid. “I only crave some company from time to time. In an adult way.” Now she did look at me, a long, telling gaze.
Oh, how I wanted to believe her. “So that is why they are gone before breakfast?”
“For sure . . . I don’t care for them to get too comfortable here, or too friendly with the children.” She took up the knitting again, her needles clicking calmly and rhythmically.
“But where do you meet these men?” I had completely ceased my own knitting.
She shrugged. “Some I know from Chicago, acquaintances passing through.”
“I didn’t know you were in the habit of socializing with men.” I gave her a look over my newly acquired glasses. The half moons rested partway down my nose and still felt both unfamiliar and uncomfortable. They did help me see the knitting, though.
“I met many people while I had that store,” Bella informed me, and pulled the knitting higher up in her lap. She was making a gray sweater for Myrtle and was working on the back. “I don’t want to marry, but I don’t want to be lonely either. Surely you can understand.” Her chin lifted just a little.
“Just be careful,” I said in a voice that did not carry as well as I hoped.
“Of course.” She glanced at me. “I won’t put anyone at risk.”
“Lucy said that one of the men had—”
“That was a mistake.” Her chin lifted just a little higher. “He won’t come near her again.”
Yet I could not help but fret. The anger on her face when I found her in the passageway had been so terrifying, and if there was nothing to find down there, why did she so jealously guard that cellar? I did not for one minute think that she kept stairs that could be unsafe for her children without doing anything to remedy that fact. Unable to sleep, I rose in the night and went down in the kitchen, hoping to find some of Bella’s precious brandy to settle my nerves. A few laudanum drops as well, perhaps. To my surprise, I found Jennie there, crouched down in her nightgown and stirring the embers in the stove with a poker.
“Jennie,” I said. “What are you doing up so late? Is Nora up too?”
“No,” said the girl. “She fell asleep at once. It’s only I who have problems sleeping sometimes and come down here for some milk.”
“Well, I won’t hold that against you.” I smiled and sat down on a chair by the table. “I find it hard as well tonight.”
“It upset you, didn’t it?” She looked up at me from her crouched position. She had unbraided and combed her hair, and it hung around her face like a golden curtain.
“What did?” Again, that heart of mine acted on its own accord, setting up its speed. It took so very little since Peter Gunness’s death to have it race in my chest like an untamed beast.
“That thing with Mama, about the men . . .” Jennie rose to her feet and dropped a few logs into the red inferno. Then she came and sat with me. “I knew it would upset you; that’s why I didn’t say anything.”