“Aw, Ma!” they cried together.
Caroline did not scold them. They were so disappointed, she could not stand to look at them. Never in her life had she denied her girls good, fresh food. Caroline hated the sound of every word: “Not so much as a taste. We can’t take such a risk.”
Charles shrugged and licked a dribble of juice from his wrist. Then he popped the whole piece of melon into his mouth. It bulged his cheeks and made him purse his lips to keep the juice from spurting out. The sound of his teeth crushing each cool bite was more than Caroline could bear. “Take it outside, please, Charles. It isn’t fair for the girls to watch.” He went, Jack trotting behind.
The girls returned to their play, but they were quiet and sullen about it, not quite sulking. Caroline knew they could picture Charles as well as she could: sitting on the stump behind the woodpile with his elbows braced on his knees, hunched over a giant crescent of melon. With no one watching, he would spit the seeds, gleefully as a boy. Caroline stopped herself. Her mouth was watering. Another minute of that, and she’d be glowering like Mary and Laura. She swallowed and blinked the image away, finished the dishes, then mopped the puddles of juice from the table and wrung out the dishcloth. She picked up Carrie and went to her rocker.
It was hard to feel bereft of anything in that chair, with the baby in her lap. Caroline pressed her thumb into Carrie’s palm and rubbed a slow circle. It was a trick she had learned early on, when she could not get enough of touching Mary’s silken hands and feet, that made all of her babies go limp with pleasure. But now Carrie grabbed hold of Caroline’s finger and pulled it to her mouth. She gripped fist and finger with her gums, testing the strength of her jaw. Then her eyes widened and her toes splayed. She gave a little chirrup and sucked and sucked at Caroline’s fingertip.
“What in the world?” Caroline wondered.
Mary came running. “What is it, Ma? Is Baby Carrie all right?”
“I declare, your baby sister is sucking my finger as if it were a stick of candy.”
Mary offered her own waggling fingers, but Carrie would not be distracted. She was still at it when Charles came back, wiping his chin with his handkerchief. “The cow can have the rest of it,” he announced. He kissed her, and Caroline tasted the sweet juice on his mouth. She licked her lips. So sweet after days and days of bitter quinine, she shivered. And then she knew. It was the juice from the dishcloth that Carrie tasted on her fingers. Caroline looked again at Carrie and saw that she was happy. Happy, perhaps for the first time in her life.
She waited until after supper, excusing the girls from wiping the dishes so that she might slip a spoon into her pocket unnoticed. Without a word, Caroline went outside. First to the necessary. No one had asked where she was going, and this would render their assumption true; no need for questions meant no need for lies.
From the necessary, the woodpile beckoned irresistibly. The voice in her mind seemed not entirely her own. It chanted and whispered at her as she walked, reasoning, wheedling, stringing together every thought she’d had since she’d seen the contented look on her baby girl’s face.
Carrie never had the fever and ague. She was the only one who didn’t. Carrie had endured every drop of bitters without ever taking sick herself. Charles must be right—watermelon could have nothing to do with their fever and ague. And anyway, Carrie had already tasted the melon. What harm in more? If Charles gave the melon to the cow, and they drank the cow’s milk, what difference then if Caroline ate the melon and Carrie drank her milk?
The melon was there on the stump behind the woodpile, just as Caroline knew it would be. Charles had eaten the heart, the exact center out of it, and no more. Ants clustered around the seeds and drippings between his footprints, feeding on the sugary pink juice. Three yellow jackets sawed diligently with their jaws at the ragged edges of rind. Caroline did not wave them away. The sight of so much waste smarted; allowing the insects their fill was the tiniest consolation. “No great loss without some small gain,” she murmured to them.
With her spoon she sheared a thin strip of flesh from the rind, so that it curled into a pink scroll. She put it in her mouth and waited, as if the ague might strike her then and there. Nothing, of course—only the foolishness of her fear and the foolishness of the risk silently warring with one another. Caroline thought again of Carrie’s rapturous face, of the child’s wordless realization that the world had more to offer than frustration and discomfort, and pressed the fruit against the roof of her mouth. The juice dribbled into the trough beneath her tongue. It was warm from the sun, the sweetness dense and syrupy. A kind of medicine, Caroline told herself, and swallowed, and scooped up another spoonful. A tonic to brighten Carrie’s bitter little life.
She woke in the night to the faintest of nuzzling. Drowsily Caroline unbuttoned. In the dark, she could not see Carrie’s face. She felt the long pulls of lips, heard the rhythmic swallowing, and that was all. It should have been enough. The child had not fed so easily in weeks. But Caroline had so looked forward to watching the baby’s knitted brows soften, seeing her eyes pinch shut as her cheeks bulged greedily. Carrie’s hands pressed lightly as she fed, almost patting, the way Caroline patted Carrie’s bottom when she lifted the baby to her shoulder. The feel of it made her want to try to smile, but Caroline could not quite manage it.
Be thankful for what is given. Caroline heard the words in her mother’s voice. No matter if it is not enough, be thankful.
“I am,” she whispered to Carrie. But gratitude, Caroline had learned in childhood, was too often the feeblest of pleasures; gratitude was nothing like what she had been waiting to pass between herself and her daughter. Carrie gave her another squeeze, and this time Caroline smiled softly into the darkness in spite of herself. And then there was another, larger hand. Charles. He fitted it over her free breast and stroked softly, the way she would finger a fine length of silk. Drops of milk beaded up on the nipple. He caught them with a fingertip and brought it to his lips. “Sweet,” he whispered to the curve of her neck, and kissed her shoulder. A lump bobbed hard in Caroline’s throat. Sweet.
Twenty-Five