The Widow Nash

“The army,” said Durr.

Margaret gave her a look; Dulcy had confessed to doubting Lewis’s story. The move from officer to glazier still didn’t make sense, but Dulcy had no right to inquire about anyone’s alternate history. She tried to look interested in flaking caulk on the other windows, until Durr felt the pressure to offer more information. “I learned glass from my father-in-law,” he said. “In Berlin. Ateliers, palm houses, solariums in clinics.”

“Oh!” said Dulcy. “A wife!”

“Dead, then,” said Durr. “And so I emigrated.” He started to climb down, but Margaret handed him another pane and gave him an expectant eye—please don’t stop. Durr elaborated: he’d been depressed, and he’d had a tendency to fight. He made his way from New York to Milwaukee and found a job repairing a studio for an old photographer from Hamburg, who’d known his wife’s family, and showed him how to use a camera. And then another fight, and a friend had come to retrieve him, and brought him here.

“Since then I wanted to begin seeing it all fresh,” said Durr. He had a floaty way of looking at a person, half there and half anywhere else. Perhaps the other half always had to be sure nothing stray was headed for a pane of glass. During the story, he bent down to show them the dent on the crown of his head where a man had hit him with a metal bar (“a Silesian ”).

“Fresh? Because of your grief?” He drew a perfect bead of caulk.

“No, no. I used to be violent, very angry. Then it went badly, and when I woke I was different, and everything looked different, and all I wanted was to look very hard at things.”

The idea of Durr angry made her uneasy, but that in turn made her feel guilty. He had only been honest, and he didn’t wrangle like Irina’s men. Rusalka was there helping after the plasterers were done, and Goulliand finished his martyrdom of walls, and Dulcy noticed that Durr studied Rusalka with pale moon eyes while they wiped the place down, hung the curtains, and had the furniture and coal delivered. He watched Margaret the same way.

???

Dulcy had told Eugenia she’d need her room until April 1, but she’d had Irving gradually move her things from the hotel. The gray shearling and the blue valise were stowed in the smaller upstairs bedroom, and she kept the door locked. It was her Bluebeard room.

A few days before the official end of winter, she walked back with a small satchel and some groceries and let herself in. She lit the furnace and loaded wood into the stove and left her groceries in a bin on the cold front porch. She made tea and began the christening task of painting her pantry a bright Swedish blue with a pot of paint she’d smuggled in that afternoon. Martha’s shelves had been a deep ironic grape color; Goulliand would have been horrified, but Goulliand was finished and paid, off drinking away the job. Dulcy planned to layer her paint like shellac so that it could be scrubbed without chipping for years, so she wouldn’t have to line things with tatty muslin.

When the first layer was down, she opened the pantry window and shut the door, poured herself some wine and twirled around the house, unpacking silverware and linens, moving the bedstead around the south-facing room for the right feel from the windows, walking barefoot to not gouge the freshly varnished floors while she put her very few belongings on her very many shelves, running back and forth. She was giddy; it made her think of running a doll through a dollhouse when she was a child, all errands and no duty, all officious joy, and it reminded her of how Martha had changed everything in her house when her husband and daughter had died, how even in the middle of that hell she’d been silly with movement.

Dulcy’s new bedroom still had no curtains, and she watched the snow fall after she turned down the lamp. When she woke up, the coal fire had died out, and the house was cold but muffled by new snow. She found another quilt, and climbed back under. She could sleep as long as she wanted to sleep.

???

“It snows in the middle of summer, sometimes,” said Samuel, shaking slush from his hat. “I gather people go ahead and plant, and then just cover the little things.”

“Cover with what?”

“A sheet, I think. Canvas?”

He had no idea; he couldn’t have told the difference between a radish and a beet if they bit his gums. “You’ll be flooded, anyway,” he said. “The mosquitoes will kill you. You’ll have malaria by May.”

“No, she won’t,” said Lewis. “The creek has a good drop. She’s ten feet over the flood level.”

They’d toured the place before lunch. “I suppose you’re the voice of authority,” said Samuel.

“I’ll do,” said Lewis. It was a Saturday, and they were eating at Ah Loy on Main, open again after its mysterious funeral. The place was filled with ranching families in town for supplies, but Samuel, who was wearing a new checked suit and cultivating a spotty moustache, was by far the nattiest dresser.

“I like you better clean-shaven,” said Dulcy.

“I’d like to look older,” Samuel had answered. “Sterner.”

He wasn’t a fop; she wasn’t sure what he was. Lewis filled their beer glasses while Rex, who dressed in silk and wool like a banker from 1850, spoke nervously about a variation on his newest business plan—he’d had a promising note from a family friend in the Interior Department about a possible concession permit for an area of the Gardner River just inside Yellowstone Park, and he intended to construct a hot springs resort.

“What a lovely idea,” said Margaret. “You’ll bring tour people to your own hotel.”

“The Boiling River?” snapped Samuel. “Who on earth wants to boil? You’ll have to rename the spot, or people will think ‘boils,’ instead of luxury.”

“I will,” said Rex, flushed. “It makes as much sense as betting on thin paper and bad writing.”

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