CHAPTER 9
I CHANGED INTO MY duster, and for the rest of the afternoon, I laid claim to our narrow stone house, teasing cobwebs out of the corners of the ceiling, chipping hardened grease off the stovetop, washing the floors until the water in the bucket was no longer black.
I saved the second bedroom for last and then went at it with a broom and dustpan and a length of dirty oilcloth I’d found stuffed in a kitchen cupboard, intending to wrap up the whole mess and fling it into the ocean, jars and all. As I began to sweep, however, I thought of the children, their eagerness and sincere interest in their collection. I abandoned my broom and searched the outbuildings until I found a number of empty crates. These I filled with everything that didn’t smell, and I lined them up along one wall. Only the things that reeked did I fold in the oilcloth and bury at sea.
By early evening, I was pleased with my work and pleasantly exhausted. Face washed, hair neatly coiled, and duster exchanged for corset, shirtwaist, and skirt again, with a smart black bow tied around my neck, I thought myself a charming picture of domesticity as I stoked the fire in the cooker, arranged potatoes to simmer in a pan with some milk, and coated a pot with lard in readiness to shirr some eggs.
I heard clanging from the kitchen next door as Archie Johnston prepared his own meal and the bang of a door as he went out, presumably to cover his shift at the light. I closed a letter to Lucy and inked an address on the envelope. Expecting Oskar every moment, I set the table with the lighthouse china and the linen napkins my mother had stashed in the trunk. I slid the potatoes from stovetop to oven, selected a can of peas and one of pineapple from my colorful store of canned goods, and pounded them open with a chisel and hammer I’d found in a drawer. Oskar didn’t come. I read from The Prisoner of Zenda, the novel I’d chosen from among the books in the “library.”
The potatoes browned. The peas warmed and cooled again. The eggs and pineapple beamed up at me from their bowls. The crown prince lay drugged or drunk in Ruritania. Still Oskar didn’t come.
Exasperated and unable to sit any longer, I wandered through the parlor and upstairs to the bedroom. Eventually, I found myself in the “nursery,” where I began examining one by one the items I’d stored in the crates. A few things—a bit of pressed seaweed, a mussel shell—resembled the plants and animals of Lake Michigan, but most were entirely foreign to me. I touched their surfaces, some sticky, some rough, others as smooth as the water itself.
A few items clearly hadn’t come straight from the sea. There was a cracker tin, for instance. Its contents rattled. I hadn’t peeked in earlier; after all, it belonged to the children. Now, with nothing pressing to do, I couldn’t resist opening it. Inside were a tiny, intricately woven basket painted with black slashes that suggested diving birds; a bone with a well-sharpened point at one end and a small hole at the other; a piece of green rock cunningly carved in the shape of a fish; and a length of leather with feathers worked through it. I knew at once that the children hadn’t fashioned these things. How had they come by them, then?
I was fully absorbed by these treasures when I finally heard Oskar’s footfall on the path outside. It wasn’t hurried or even brisk. In fact, he stopped for some minutes before climbing the steps to our door. Doing what, I couldn’t imagine.
I went down the stairs, sure that at any moment the door would open. Finally, I pulled it open myself and looked out.
“Look at the moon.” He pointed, not shifting his eyes from the sky.
I would not. “Where have you been? Your dinner has been ready for two hours!” I’d not allowed myself to feel angry while I waited, but now my impatience burst forth. I understood why my mother fretted about my father coming home on time. I’d organized a tableau that was to have established us, husband and wife, in our cozy home, but he’d not played his part.
“Oh!” He looked sincerely surprised and puzzled. “You shouldn’t have waited for me. If you were hungry, you should have eaten.”
“Should have eaten!” I stopped myself. He’d not promised me the rituals of home, a Milwaukee bourgeois existence transplanted to a new world.
He didn’t notice my indignation. He went to the sink and began washing his hands industriously. “I was just going through the workshop, seeing what tools we’ve got. It’s astonishingly well equipped. I suppose it would have to be—you can’t run to the neighbors if you need a drill or a handful of nails. And there’s plenty of wood to work with.” He put his arms around my waist and drew me to him in an obvious effort to appease me. “I could easily make a chest of drawers or a night table, a vanity, whatever you’d like.”
I weakened. It was not that I wished for any carpentry, only that I didn’t want to be angry with him. “How about some shelves?” I suggested. “For the children’s rocks and things. That would be useful.”
“The children’s rocks? I thought we were getting rid of that stuff.”
“No,” I said. “I guess not.”
“Shelves are too easy,” he protested. “I could do something much more elaborate than shelves.” He sat down at the table and speared a cold potato with his fork.
“I’m sure you could,” I said indulgently, ladling peas first onto his plate, then onto mine. I felt better now that at least some version of my domestic picture was taking shape. “Nevertheless, shelves are what I want.”