“I don’t want to leave,” he says, wrapping his hand over mine.
I slide my hand out from under his. “But you have things to look forward to. All I have is months of winter. And waiting.”
“Ah, my poor Persephone,” he murmurs, kissing my hair, my shoulder.
This irritates me further. I pull away a bit. For a few moments we are quiet. I listen to the mournful yawp of seagulls overhead, as large as geese.
“I want to ask you something,” I say finally.
“Ask.”
“Or—well—tell you.”
“Go ahead.”
“I love . . .” I start, but my courage fades. “Being with you.”
He pulls the blanket tighter around me, enveloping us in a cocoon. “I love being with you.”
“But . . . what are we—what are you—”
His hands move up my sides, resting on my ribs. I arch my back, leaning into him, and his hands move to the front, cupping my breasts gently through the fabric. “Oh, Christina,” he breathes. “Some things don’t need explanation. Do they?”
I decide I will not ask him, press him, insist. I tell myself it’s not the time. But the fact is, I am afraid. Afraid that I will push him away, and that this—whatever it is—will end.
AL AND I are clearing the dishes from supper one evening when he says, “So what do you think is going to happen?”
“What?”
He’s bent over the plates, scraping leftover potatoes and yams and applesauce into a bucket for the pigs. “You think Walton Hall is going to marry you?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.” But Al must know this is a lie.
“All I’m saying is . . .” He is strained and awkward, unaccustomed to the intimacy of speaking his mind.
“‘All I’m saying is,’” I mock him impatiently. “Stop hemming and hawing. Spit it out.”
“I’ve never seen you like this.”
“Like what.”
“As if reason has left you.”
“Honestly.” Feeling a flare of annoyance, I handle the pots recklessly, clanging them into each other.
“I’m concerned for you,” he says.
“Well, don’t be.”
For a few minutes we work silently, clearing the table, scooping the cutlery into a bowl, pouring warm water from the kettle into a pan for the dishes. As I go through the familiar motions I get even angrier. How dare he—this cautious man-child who has never been in love—pass judgment on Walton’s motives and my own good sense? Al knows as much about the nature of our relationship as he does about sewing a dress.
“What do you think?” I blurt finally. “That I am an imbecile? That I have not a thought in my head?”
“It’s not you I worry about.”
“Well, you needn’t worry. I can take care of myself. And besides—as if it’s any of your business—Walton has been honorable in every way.”
Al lowers a stack of plates into the washing pan. “Of course he has. He likes the diversion. He doesn’t want to give it up.”
Clutching a fistful of forks, I turn to him. For a brief moment I contemplate striking him with them, but instead I take a deep breath and say, “How dare you.”
“Come on, Christie, I don’t mean to . . .” Again his voice falters, and I can see, given how unnatural it must feel for him to confront me, how important he considers this. And yet I find him irritatingly simplistic. All the things I ordinarily admire about Al now strike me as deficits: his loyalty no more than fear of the unknown; his decency, merely na?veté; his sense of morality, prim judgment. (How quickly, with a slight twist in perception, do people’s strengths become flaws!)
“What I’m saying is that . . .” He swallows. “His options are many.”
It’s no use trying to explain to Alvaro what love is. So I say, “You might say the same about Papa, when he courted Mother.”
An ironic look flits across his face. “How’s that?”
“He could’ve worked on any ship. Traveled all over the world. But he settled here, with her.”
“Mother had a big house and hundreds of acres.” He flings his hand toward the window. “You know what this house, the Olson House, used to be called.”
I splash the cutlery in the dishwater impatiently. “Did you ever consider that maybe Papa fell in love?”
“Sure. Maybe. Just remember—you have three brothers. This house isn’t yours to inherit.”
“Walton isn’t after this house.”
“Okay.” He dries his hands on a dish towel and hangs it on a hook. “I’m just saying you should be careful. It’s not right for him to keep you on a tether.”
“I’m not on a tether,” I tell him sharply. “Anyway, I’d rather be with Walton for three months in the summer than any of these local boys all year-round.”
One morning after gathering eggs, a few weeks later, I step across the threshold into the house and hear my parents’ voices in the Shell Room, a place they rarely enter. I stand very still in the foyer, cupping the eggs, still warm from the hens, in my hands.
“She’s no beauty, but she works hard. I think she’d make a fine companion,” Papa is saying.
“She would,” Mother says. “But I’m beginning to wonder if he’s toying with her.”
My face tingles as I realize they’re talking about me. I lean against the wall, straining to hear.
“Who knows? Perhaps he wants to run a farm.”
Mother laughs, a dry bark. “That one? No.”
“What does he want with her, then?”
“Who knows? To fill his idle time, I suspect.”
“Maybe he really does love her, Katie.”
“I fear . . .” Mother’s voice trails off. “That he will not marry her.”
Papa says, “I fear it too.”
My cheeks are aflame, my heart beating in my ears. In my trembling hands, the eggs jostle and shift, and though I try to contain them they slip between my fingers and drop to the floor, one after the other, splattering smears of yellow and viscous white across the entryway.
Mother appears in the doorway, looking stricken. “I’ll get a rag.” She ducks away and comes back; crouching, she mops the floor around my feet. Both of us are silent. I’m aware of nothing but my own humiliation, the shock of hearing my silent fears put into words. The screen door slams and I watch Papa go past the window, ducking his head on his way to the barn.
IN SEPTEMBER, WHEN Walton is back at school, he writes, “I think that night we made the trip to Thomaston was the happiest I ever spent. How could you steer, under the circumstances? I believe I was to blame.” He is homesick for Cushing. Homesick for me. “This was the best summer of my life. A large part of that I owe to you,” he writes, signing his letter, “With love, Walton.”
I feel as if a wall of the house has detached from the rest and fallen gently to the ground. I can see a way out, a clear path to the open sea.