On our final evening as a group, sitting on the beach, making conversation, Walton mentions the almanac’s prediction of a hard winter ahead, and Ramona says, “Will Christina ever know anything except a hard winter?” She doesn’t look at him when she says it, but we all know what she’s asking: if, and when, Walton is going to offer a way out.
He seems oblivious. “Christina’s not like us, Ramona. She likes the cold Maine winters. Isn’t that so?” he asks me, squeezing my shoulders.
I look at Ramona, who shakes her head slightly and rolls her eyes. But neither of us says anything more.
FLOWERS FADE, FREEZE in an early frost, wither on the vine. Trees burst into flame and burn themselves out. Leaves crumble to ash. All the things about life on the farm that once contented me now fill me with impatience. It has become harder to tolerate the months after summer ends, the plodding regularity of my daily chores, the inevitable descent into darkness and cold. I feel as if I’m on a narrow path through familiar woods, a path that goes around and around with no end in sight.
I spend the early fall canning and preserving and pickling: tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries, blueberries. Shelving the jars in the shed. Alvaro slaughters a pig, and we carve and cure and smoke every last bit of it, from hoof to curly tail. We trowel up and store unlovely root vegetables, rutabagas and turnips and parsnips and beets. Pluck apples and lay them out on a long table in the cellar for the long winter ahead.
I have too much time to think. I torment myself. All I do is work and think. I feel like the mollusk in Mamey’s nautilus, grown too big for its shell. A woman my age, I think, should be laboring for her own husband and children. All around me, friends and classmates are becoming engaged and getting married. The boys I went to school with are settling into lives as farmers and fishermen and shopkeepers. The girls, Sadie and Gertrude among them, are setting up house and having babies.
When I trudge through my tasks, Mother chides me—“Pick up your feet, my girl; life is not as tragic as all that”—and Al looks at me sideways, and I know what they’re thinking, that it might have been better if Walton had never come along.
But Walton’s letters are hot-air balloons, lifting me out of melancholy. He writes about his classes, his teachers, his thoughts about his future career. Though he’s been training as a journalist, news about the war raging in Europe dominates the papers, making it a hard time to break into domestic reporting, he says. He has decided to shift his sights to teaching. Teachers are always needed, whether a war is raging or the stock market is falling. It’s not lost on me that he could be a teacher anywhere—even in Cushing, Maine.
WINTER PASSES AS slowly as a glacier melts. Christmas and New Year’s provide momentary distraction before we settle into months of ice and snow. Walking back from the post office in the late-afternoon gloom of a February day, I am tucking Walton’s letter inside my coat when my shoe catches on a protruding chip of ice and I crash to the ground. I prop myself on an elbow, noting with strange detachment my torn stockings, the thin coating of blood on my shin, a throbbing pain in my right hand, the one I used to break my fall. Tentatively I extend my left arm and begin to hoist myself up. I pat my jacket. The letter must have flown from my pocket when I fell. I feel around on the ground, muddying my skirt even further, my blood pinking the ice. Several yards away I spy the envelope and limp over to it. Empty. The sky is darkening, the air is cold, my shin is throbbing, and still I continue, as desperate as an opium addict; I can’t leave until I find it. And then I see the folded pages, fluttering in the ditch.
When I reach them, I find that the ink has run; the letter—mud spattered, water soaked—appears to have been written in a diabolical code designed to drive the recipient insane. I can only identify every fourth or fifth word or phrase (entertaining . . . I am glad to say . . . beginning to enjoy), and after straining to make out the letters with increasing exasperation, I hold the pages flat against my dress, inside my coat, hoping they’ll be legible when dry. The walk home is slow and painful. When I step into the house, I open my coat to find the bodice of my chambray dress tattooed with ink. A permanent reminder of how important his words have become to me.
SUMMER AGAIN. WHEN I answer the door one June morning in 1915 to find Walton standing there, he gives me a huge smile and presents me with a package of butterscotch candies. “Sweets to the sweet,” he says.
“That’s an old line,” I tell him. “You’ve said it before.”
He laughs. “I obviously have a limited repertoire.”
Soon we fall back into our familiar routines, seeing each other nearly every day. We stroll the property, sail in the afternoon, picnic in early evening with the Carles and my brothers Al and Sam down by the grove. I see Ramona watching as Walton and I go off together to collect driftwood and twigs to make a fire in the circle of rocks, as he pulls me behind a tree and kisses me. At the end of the evening we sit on the rough benches Papa made and watch the cinders crumble and settle. The sky changes from blue to purple to rose to red as the sun sinks like an ember into the sea.
When Walton gets up to talk to Alvah on the other side of the fire pit, Ramona comes to sit beside me. “I need to ask,” she says quietly. “Has Walton discussed the nature of his commitment to you?”
I knew this question was coming. I’ve been dreading it.
“Not exactly,” I tell her. “I think our commitment is—understood.”
“Understood by whom?”
“By both of us.”
“Does he say anything?”
“Well, he needs to establish himself before—”
“I am prying, forgive me. I’ve tried to keep my mouth shut. But my goodness, this is the third year.”
It’s not like she’s articulating anything I haven’t thought myself, but her words feel like a punch in the gut. Walton is a scholar, I want to say, studying the classics and philosophy; he cannot make any decisions until he is done with school. Nobody seems to understand this.
I’m not sure I understand it myself.
“It’s really not your business, Ramona,” I say stiffly.
“It’s not, you’re right.”
We sit in silence, the air between us bristling with words unsaid.
After a few moments, she sighs. “Look, Christina. Be careful. That’s all I’m saying.”
I know Ramona means well. But this is like telling a person who has leapt off a cliff to be careful. I am already in midair.
IN LATE AUGUST, Walton and I make a plan to sail alone to Thomaston. Since my conversation with Ramona I’ve been acutely aware of how deftly he evades any talk of commitment. Maybe she’s right; I need to raise the issue directly.
I resolve to do it on our sail.
It’s early evening, and the air is laced with cool. He stands behind me, unfurling a big wool blanket and wrapping it around our shoulders as I steer.
“Walton—” I begin nervously.
“Christina.”
“I don’t want you to leave.”