She doesn’t mention the lost baby. Good, Grace thinks. Here I can pretend to have moved on until I actually do move on. Will I be able to move on?
Inside the front door is a boy who says, “Hello, I’m Roger. I know you’re Mrs. Holland.”
“Hello, Roger. I’m sorry you had to share your house with my children.”
“Oh, they’re okay. Tom isn’t up to much, but I’m teaching Claire math.”
Grace laughs. “That can’t be very rewarding.”
“It’s all right. She’s a little slow.”
Roger has on a red plaid shirt and dungarees. She can see soot marks on his knees. He has left his shoes by the door, where there are three other pairs. Grace sits in a chair and takes hers off.
“I spend all day cleaning,” Joan says, “but I can’t keep the ash out of the house. We do our best, but it’s going to take a snowfall to settle the black on the ground.”
Grace glances at the living room, where the finest lace of dark dust permeates.
“Eventually, I’ll get it all,” Joan says, putting on an apron. “I swing wet towels around all day.”
In the entrance to the kitchen, Joan has set up a playpen and a crib. Tom raises his hands in the air, a signal for his mother to pick him up. Matthew moves a chair next to the crib so that Grace can touch her son through and over the bars.
“Mom, look!” says Claire. Grace watches in amazement as her daughter folds and then sets a napkin beside each plate on the kitchen table. Her children look months older than they did four days ago.
On the walls, pretty wallpaper. Bright oilcloth on the table. Well-ironed yellow-checked curtains at the windows. All around them is black. Black trees, black underbrush, black ruins of houses. The air they breathe is full of black. On the banks of the cove lie random burned branches and boards, the flotsam and jetsam of a hundred destroyed houses.
They sit to supper, Claire on a wooden booster seat.
“The Methodist church at Hunts Beach didn’t burn,” Matthew informs Grace. “It’s being used as a shelter now. It’s a center for information. I’m not suggesting you stay there, but I am saying you might want to have a look at their bulletin board. You might be able to find your friends.”
He doesn’t say husband. He doesn’t say family.
“I put your name and address up on it a couple of days ago,” he adds.
“We don’t have a telephone or a post office though,” Joan points out. “It could take a while for a message to get to us.”
No one has tried to find me, Grace thinks. “I’d like to go there tomorrow,” she says. “Can you take me?”
“I sure can,” says Matthew.
“I don’t have any money,” Grace adds. “I can’t pay you.”
“Good Lord,” scolds Joan. “Don’t you even think of paying. We’re just glad we have a roof over our heads we can share with others.”
“And food in the cupboards. Hope you don’t mind green beans and peaches. I thought my wife a fool for putting up so many beans. But now I think she’s pretty smart.”
“And lobster,” Roger pipes up. “My dad can pull more pots than any man.”
“Now, now,” Matthew mumbles.
“You’re a lobsterman,” says Grace.
“That I am.”
“But you didn’t go out today.”
“Matter of fact, I did. When I got home, I got a call from the hospital. They said you were going home, so I waited with my truck.”
Grace, overwhelmed by kindness, can’t speak.
Grace and her children have the guest room with two cribs. Grace guesses that either Joan or Matthew has borrowed at least one. Joan has apparently been collecting clothes for Claire and Tom and has for Grace an entire suit of clothing that looks to have been made before the war: a blue tweed skirt and matching jacket, a nylon blouse, a slip and a new package of underwear. How did Joan get her hands on underwear? Grace decides to sleep in the nurse’s uniform. In the morning, she’ll put on the new clothes, overdressed for breakfast.
“Don’t you look smart!” Joan exclaims when Grace and her children enter the kitchen. “It fits you perfectly.”
“Thank you,” says Grace.
“My wedding suit,” Joan explains as she scrambles eggs with a fork.
Grace glances at the fabric, touches the skirt with her hands. “You can’t give me this,” she says, embarrassed. “It’s a treasure to you.”
“Truth is, I was busting out of it when I got married. Never had it on since. But now I’ve found a use for it. Can’t be sentimental about clothes when others need them.”
“I’ll pay you back someday.”
“Don’t be thinking about that. Get some eggs into you. You’ve got a tough day ahead.”
If she had had a baby, Grace thinks, she would now be lying in the maternity ward for the better part of two weeks while she healed. The baby would be brought to her three times a day for bottle feedings. When she gave birth to Tom, she was offered the option of going home but leaving Tom in the hospital for thirty days, a dollar a day. “Give you a rest and get the little one fattened up,” the nurse had said.
But to give birth and go home empty-handed had upset Grace. What was the point?
“I’m a fairly good seamstress,” Grace announces. “I just need a mill store with remnants. I can work up a dress in no time if you have a machine.”
“I’ll see if Matt, when he gets home, can go into Biddeford with you on your way to or from the church.”
“I have to find a way to make money,” Grace says.
Joan glances at the clock. “Matt will come home early to get you to the church. You must be worried about your husband.”
“I am,” says Grace as she places finger food in front of Tom. Claire insists on using a grown-up fork, which, in her eager hands, acts as a catapult, sending bits of eggs onto the wall and floor. Grace cleans them off as best she can. “You know, I feel fine, but my life ahead seems overwhelming.”
“We’re here to help, and I think when you get to the church, you’ll find lots of people willing to help, too. All the organizations have mobilized: the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Grange, any church that didn’t burn.”
Grace stares through the kitchen window at the unremitting black. So this is what it means to survive a disaster.
The bulletin board is surrounded by a handful of people. Grace, in her blue suit, makes her way to the wall and, when she can, shifts so that she can read the notices.
Henri, I am at Arnaud’s. Come at once.
Lost: dark terrier. Answers to Scruff. Leave note here if found.
Mother, we are at Bishop’s parents’ house in Kennebunk. Anne.
Please leave any word of David Smith or David Smith Jr., father and son, last seen in the vicinity of Hunts Beach.
Any sheep found with red marking on right hind leg belongs to Piscassic Farm, Route 1, Sanford, Maine.
Grace studies each message. To be doubly sure, she scans the board again. Nothing. Below the board is a table with scraps of paper and a pencil. She writes her own message.
Looking for Eugene Holland, Marjorie Tate, and Rosie MacFarland. Write to Grace Holland, in care of Matthew and Joan York of Cape Porpoise.
She finds a small bare patch in a lower corner. There she pins her query.
Grace finds Matthew, who reports no luck, and together they leave the cacophony of the sanctuary for the door. Grace hears heavy footsteps behind her. She turns to see a haggard Reverend Phillips.
“Grace,” he says, out of breath. “This came for you, directly to the church. I didn’t want to put it up on the board.”
Grace waits an eternity for Reverend Phillips to hand the envelope over. If he expects her to open it in front of him, he’ll be disappointed. Grace folds the envelope and sticks it into a purse borrowed from Joan. “This is Matthew York. He and his wife are helping me and my children.”
“Bless you, son,” says the minister. “This is a catastrophe. More and more arrive every minute.”
Matthew drives for nearly an hour and parks in front of the Pepperell Mill. “I don’t know a lot about fabric and such, so I’ll wait in the truck and read the paper.”