My face hurt from pretending to be interested while shooting annoyed glances at Mother, who didn’t notice. (It’s like she wants someone to come along and plug a hole inside me. She doesn’t see that there is no hole.) She says marriage and motherhood is everything. “I nearly died giving birth to Gordon,” she likes to say, “but it was worth it! Then of course I went on to have five more children!”
The conversation went on eternally. People kept arriving, and it got so stuffy and hot in the house, and I was so tired of Mr. Sorryforyourloss that I walked out the back door to get some air, and then just set off across the field. I went all the way to the edge of the woods to the fence that marks off our land, and then I stood there and tried to catch my breath for a minute.
Then, on impulse, I doubled back to the housekeeper’s shed for a broom, and then climbed over the fence with it, into the woods, and walked all the way back to the abandoned cottage.
Once I got there I began to sweep. It was like something had taken me over, and all I wanted at that moment was to get the place as clean as possible. I swept out every leaf, every piece of dirt that had accumulated in the corners for God knows how many years. By the time I was finished, the house was still broken, but it was spotlessly broken.
I didn’t trail home until after the dinner was over and all the guests were gone. No one seemed to have noticed: Vera was sitting on the sofa braiding Ruth’s hair (with black ribbon, of course), and Hubert was in the library, no doubt reading depressing poetry. This is another thing about losing Teddy. When he was alive he was just one of us. Now that he’s gone, he’s the only one anyone thinks about.
Anyway, over the past few days I’ve been to the cottage several times to clear out more debris from the crevices in the walls, brought down some old pillows and jars and things Mother won’t miss to make it comfortable, and propped up the old table with some bricks that were scattered close by in the ivy.
I suppose you’ll tell me I’ve lost my mind. I don’t know what to say except that being there and fixing things makes me feel awake, and it’s the only place to be truly alone. Though, as stupid as it sounds, I mostly just sit at this old table (where I am now!) and have imaginary conversations with you. I think of this place as ours. And maybe that’s the strangest part.
Well, no, that’s not quite right. The strangest part is that every once in a while, when I’m home sitting up in my window where I have a good view of the woods, I swear I can see smoke wafting up from this spot in the trees. So maybe I am losing my mind after all.
I’ve been doing some counting. Remember how after I fell off the barn roof that one summer I was always getting hurt, I liked to count my broken bones? The clavicle, the sacrum, the tiny bones in the wrist—going over them again and again to pass the weeks I spent in bed recovering? Now I count time.
It’s been three years and eleven months since they sank the Lusitania and a year and ten months since the first zeppelin bombed London. It’s been four years and thirteen days since you left Forest Row, and by my calculations it will be four more months before I can save up the money to see you again.
All I do is work and read. Work is fine, though none of the workers seem to like me much. It’s only my first year and I’m only seventeen, but I make more money than most of them, and sometimes I suspect they know it.
This time I’m enclosing Ethan Frome. Ruth bought it for me. It’s very tragic.
Love, Lenore
APRIL 1, 1919
Dear Beth,
I can barely hear myself think, my heart is beating so hard as I think about what to write. We’re all going to a workers’ picnic at the factory, and Vera and Ruth are running up and down the hall looking for things to wear. I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to get down before I have to run, but something so startling happened last night that I can’t keep it in. I’ll need to explain what led up to it, which is also confusing in its own way.
The new cinema opened last night, only three train stops and we’re there. I won at drawing straws so Mother took me as her date. The theme is Arabian Nights. It’s full of stars and spires—the kind of thing we would have fainted over when we were little. (Kindly, you would have given me the middle seat. I would have made you give me half your candy.)
In actuality it was so lovely and perfect, but I have to admit that the whole thing felt a bit flat, like there was no sparkle to any of it. I sat there thinking how the stage lights are just chemical reactions and not magical objects like they might have seemed a few years ago. I kept looking around at all the faces turned so raptly to the screen and wished I could be as absorbed as they were. Though it makes no sense, I always find myself looking for Teddy among crowds—for that aggressive, spiky brown hair of his and that smirk that used to annoy me. It’s a stupid habit, but I can’t seem to break it.
A one-armed boy winked at me from the row ahead of us (if you toss a pebble in Forest Row you’re going to hit a one-armed boy). I gave him a look to say not a chance. Not because of the lack of limbs, but because I feel like these boys are always asking something like comfort from me, even if it’s just with their eyes. Mother cried through most of the film even though it was a comedy. Then we came home and went to bed. Everything was normal.
So I couldn’t say why some time around midnight, I woke in a panic. My heart was beating fast like I’d been sprinting. And I couldn’t calm down. I kept remembering—of all things—how Teddy once saved my pet duck from becoming dinner by hiding him in his room—how he called me in in a whisper and showed me, and said, “He’ll live to quack another day.” I couldn’t get it out of my head.
Finally, I snuck downstairs and pulled on my wool jumper and boots and walked out across the field in the moonlight and the drizzle, and down to the creek and wound my way to the cottage because it was the only place I could think of to get away from myself.
I was—I admit—a little afraid of running into something scary in the dark, but I was more afraid of staying in my room and having my heart beat out of my chest. It smelled like dew and grass and rain, and I watched the ground for grass snakes as I walked.
Now that I think about it, I’ve ignored the signs all along. The bowl set neatly on the table. The smoke from the chimney, the half-mended roof.
I burst inside without a thought, tried to light the candles but my hands were shaking. It was like there was some invisible thread between Teddy saving my duck all those years ago and the ground underneath me, the cells of my skin and my shaking hands. At last I gave up and sank down on the floor against the wall and tried to catch my breath. A moan escaped from my lips, a thing inside that had nowhere else to go but out. I held my breath for a moment, and was surprised to find I could still hear myself wheezing. But, Beth, I’m sure you can guess by now that the wheezing wasn’t mine.
Mother is outside beating the door down. Sorry to leave you—I’ll have to finish when I get back.
LATER—