“What I think?”
“About him, silly. What you think about him.”
It feels like a trick question, as if I’m being asked to respond in a language I don’t understand. “I like him. I like many people,” I say warily.
Ramona wrinkles her nose. “You do not. You hardly like anyone.”
“I hardly know anyone.”
“True,” she says. “But don’t be coy. Does your heart pitter-patter when you think of him?”
“Ramona, honestly.”
“Don’t act so scandalized. Just answer the question.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a little.”
“Maybe a little. That’s a yes.”
As the summer progresses she goes back and forth between Walton and me like a carrier pigeon, carrying scraps of news, impressions, gossip. She is perfectly suited to the task—one of those girls with boundless energy and intelligence and no place to exercise them, like a terrier with a housebound owner.
AT FIRST MOTHER is formal and a little cool with Walton, but slowly he wins her over. I watch how he calibrates his behavior, deferring to her at every turn, calling her Ma’am, presuming nothing. He coaxes her outside for picnics and afternoon sails. “Well, the boy does have excellent manners,” she allows at the end of a long afternoon lunch on the shore. “Must’ve learned them at an expensive school.”
One morning Mother surprises me by returning from town with a bolt of calico cloth, a packet of buttons, and a new Butterick pattern. She hands it to me casually, saying, “I thought you could use a new style.” I look at the illustration on the cover: a dress with a seven-panel skirt and fitted bodice with small mother-of-pearl buttons. The calico is pretty, flowers with green leaves on a brown-sugar background. I set to work after my chores are done, cutting out each piece of the pattern, pinning the puzzle pieces of delicate tissue to the fabric, marking it with a nub of chalk, trimming along the solid line. I work in the orange light of an oil lamp and several candles as the sun drops from the sky.
Late into the night I sit hunched over Mother’s Singer, feeding the fabric through, my foot pumping the treadle. Mother pauses in the doorway on her way to bed. She comes and stands behind me, then reaches down and traces the hem with her finger, smoothing it flat behind the needle.
When I put on the dress the next morning, it skims closely over my hips. In the pantry I hold the small cloudy mirror in my hand, turning it this way and that to get the full effect, but all I can see are bits and pieces.
“That turned out,” is all Mother says when she comes into the kitchen to help with the noonday meal. But I can tell she’s pleased.
Later in the morning Walton comes to the door with a bouquet of tulips and daffodils. He takes off his straw boater and bows slightly to Mother, who is sifting flour at the table. “Good day, Mrs. Olson.”
She nods. “Good day, Walton.”
He hands me the bouquet. “What a dress!”
“Mother bought me the fabric and the pattern.” I hold out the skirt and turn so he can see all the panels.
“Lovely taste, Mrs. Olson. It’s beautiful. But wait, Christina—you made this?”
“Yes, last night.”
He grasps a piece of fabric from the full skirt and rubs it between his fingers, touches a mother-of-pearl button on my sleeve. “I am awed by you.”
Behind me, Mother says, “Christina can do just about anything she sets her mind to.” This rare praise surprises me—she’s usually so restrained. But then I remember that my mother was discovered in this house by a stranger at the door. She knows it’s possible.
ONE DAY WHEN Walton is visiting I tell him about the Mystery Tunnel—how I think of it as a mysterious and magic place, holding secrets that may never be revealed. “Some think it’s filled with buried treasure,” I say.
“Show me,” he says.
I know my parents won’t approve of our going alone, so we make a secret plan: we’ll wait until Mother is resting, Papa is at the fishing weir with the boys, and no one will suspect I’m not where I usually am on a Wednesday morning, wringing clothes behind the house and hanging them on the line. He’ll come quietly, on foot; and if anyone is nearby, we won’t attempt it.
At breakfast, before heading off to the weir, my brothers help me fill the tubs with water. If anyone cared to notice, they might have seen that my dress is starched, my hair neatly braided with a ribbon, my cheeks pink not from exertion but from being pinched between my fingers, as Ramona taught me to do.
Finding me in the yard behind the house after everyone has left, Walton silently takes the heavy, wet clothes from my hands. He begins to feed them through the wringer, turning the crank with one hand and coaxing them along with the other. At the clothesline he lifts the damp pieces from the basket, shakes out the wrinkles, and hands them to me one by one as I pin them on the line. When the basket is empty, he lifts the rope and secures it to the poles.
How thrilling it is—I am suddenly aware—to be playing house.
Hidden among the damp and flapping clothes, Walton reaches for me, pulling me gently toward him. His eyes on mine, he lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses it, then tugs me closer, tilts his head, and kisses me on the mouth. His lips are cool and smooth; I feel his heart pulsing through his shirt. He smells of butterscotch, of spice. It’s such a strange and heady experience that I can barely breathe.
When I take the basket back inside the house, I slip out of my apron and smooth my hair, stealing a glimpse of myself in the fragment of mirror in the pantry. What I see looking back at me is a thin-faced girl with a too-large nose and lively if uneven gray eyes. Her features may be plain, but her skin is clear and her eyes are bright. I think of the man waiting for me outside. His hair, I’ve noticed, has begun to recede. His chest is lightly concave, like a teaspoon, his spine unnaturally stiff from that summer in a cast. When he’s agitated he has a slight lisp. It isn’t inconceivable to imagine—is it?—that this imperfect man could grow to love me.
We walk silently, single file, in the shadow of the house and barn to the trees beyond the field. At this time of day, with the shadows as they are, we cannot be seen unless someone is actually looking for us. Walton reaches forward and brushes my fingertips, clasps my hand. Several times, making our way down a steep embankment, through a dense cluster of trees, we drop hands, but he finds my fingertips again like a knitter seeking a dropped stitch. When we are out in the open but hidden by the ridge, I pull on his hand playfully and he pulls back, bringing me to a stumbling stop. He is behind me, his breath on my neck, his arm at his side, holding me against him.