Diann Ducharme (12 page)

He looked down at his dirty feet and spoke so softly I could hardly hear him over the noise of the beach. “I’m glad you did. Come down there.”

I smiled, not daring to look directly at him. “I shouldn’t have. I lied to my daddy about where I would be. And I took you all by surprise. It’s not like me to act so … devil-may-care.”

“How
do
you act, then?” he asked, a little smile playing on his lips.

That was a good question. When I was a young girl, I pretty much ran wild. But the older I got, the more rigid I became. Life pinched
me so tightly now. Yet here in Nags Head, I couldn’t deny that I was loosening. In truth, I could feel my whole family unspooling.

“I’m not sure anymore,” I said.

Ben gazed at me curiously, as if he were looking at something etched on my forehead. I forced my eyes to the curling waves.

I asked tentatively, “Say, is Eliza still angry?”

He snorted. “She’s always angry. She takes after her mama’s sour nature.”

I wondered what Ben saw in her, if she was always so unpleasant. “She can’t like the thought of you coming out here. Sitting with me …” I said.

“Ain’t that the truth. She’s jealous as a she-cat. But the heart of the matter is, she don’t like the idea of me learning. She wants me to stay ignorant forever.”

“You’d think she’d want you to learn, for the opportunities it could bring. If you were to marry, she’d benefit, too.”

He nodded sadly. “She don’t see it that way a-tall. She’s happy doing what she’s doing. Don’t want nothing to change. She wants everything out here to stay the same.”

Even I knew that nothing on such a slender land of sand and wind could possibly stay the same.

Before he left the session, Ben hung the chime from the roof overhang with a hammer and a hook that he had brought along. The chime stirred a little in the light breeze, its long extensions of shells barely touching one another as they swayed.

That evening Daddy said his farewells for the week and departed on the packet schooner back to Edenton. It being Sunday, the hotel wasn’t open for meals, so Winnie prepared a scrumptious fried
chicken and sweet potato dinner. We ate on the porch, now our preferred dining room.

Mama didn’t eat much of the fine fare, though. And when the tired and whining Charlie and Martha were shepherded to bed by Hannah, Mama started to cry. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her cry a single tear. The pitiful sobbing sounded as if it were coming from some foreign animal, lurking wounded under the cottage.

I hurried over to her chair. “Mama, what on Earth is the matter? Don’t cry, please,” I soothed, searching for a handkerchief in my reticule.

Her pale face was mottled with pink splotches, and her robin’s egg blue eyes were bloodshot and puffy. She couldn’t look at me, and even tried to shake off my awkward caresses.

“Haven’t you figured it out yet?” She dabbed at her cheeks with my handkerchief.

“No, Mama. Figured out what? Are you ill?”

She laughed heartily at the question, a harsh sound after her display of sadness. “You could say that, I suppose. Yes, I’m ill, Abigail. I’m ill with child. I’m to be a mother again.”

I don’t know why I didn’t figure it out earlier, except for the fact that it was believed by everyone that Mama couldn’t get pregnant again, after a near fatal complication following Charlie’s birth six years ago.

“Have you confirmed this with Doc Newman yet? Are you very sure?”

“I think I know my own symptoms. If you recall, I am somewhat of an expert on the matter.”

If I had the count correct, Mama had been pregnant nine times before. She had given birth to five babies, but only Charlie, Martha, and I had survived past infancy. Little Ned and Lucy, both born between me and Martha, had died within two months of their births.

Four of Mama’s pregnancies had resulted in frightening early and midterm miscarriages. Mama suffered pitifully following two of the miscarriages, and after the birth of Charlie, she stayed in bed for nearly two years recovering from searing abdominal pain and debilitating weakness. Doc Newman believed flat-out that Mama would never become pregnant again, due to the trauma her insides had endured during her childbearing years. And for six years, he had been right.

I forced myself to smile. “Why are you sad, Mama? It’s a miracle that you’ve conceived again!”

She turned to me with blank eyes. “Oh, it’s quite a miracle, divinely ordered. God wants me dead, and I’m afraid He’ll get his wish this time. I can’t endure another pregnancy, and I certainly can’t endure another birth. This baby will kill me.”

“You don’t know that, Mama. You’re strong. You could pull through it like you did with all the other pregnancies. And then you’ll have another little child!”

Mama’s face appeared to age ten years before my eyes. Moisture dampened her vocal cords, making them creak like tired wagon wheels. “I don’t want another child, don’t you understand that? I never wanted children. I wish to God that I had been born a man.”

“But you have a family! We aren’t so bad, are we?” I grabbed for her cold hand. My voice squeaked when I said, “You do love us, don’t you?”

She sighed deeply. “But I never wanted you, Abigail. Nor Charlie, Martha, Ned, or Lucy. Not really. God is punishing me for my lack of motherly love.”

And she dropped my hand, got up from the chair, and walked back into the house. The screen door slammed shut behind her, its harsh bang like a blow to my back.

T
HE CARVED WALNUT MIRROR THAT HUNG ON THE RAW WOOD OF THE BEDROOM
threw off so much light from the nearby windows that it hurt my eyes to look into it.

But I could guess what I looked like. I imagined that my red hair glowed and my freckles popped appealingly next to the sage silk of my dress, just like Mama and the dressmaker had planned.

Mama had stayed in her bedroom for the entire day, but a supper with Hector was not to be missed. With Winnie’s help, Mama was washed and dressed before Hannah had even tied my corset.

When I finally made my way out to the porch in my ballooning skirts, Mama’s pale face creased itself into a starched smile, and Daddy whistled.

Mama declared, “Hector won’t be able to resist you. As long as you don’t start running down the boardwalk, a marriage proposal is inevitable.”

Her midsection was tightly corseted. Mama was thinner than ever now.

The little red horse pulled us through the sand with just about as much difficulty as Mungo had, but I knew it wasn’t the unfamiliarity of the sand that vexed her. Justus had been hitching the cart to her every day for practice, but she still hadn’t taken to it. With a sense of dread, I watched her hindquarters stretch and her neck strain all the way to the hotel.

Hector, with not a wrinkle in his black dress suit, stood when he saw us enter the dining room. He strutted over to Daddy to offer a white-gloved hand, then bowed to Mama and me, hat in hand, and held our chairs for us to sit down.

It had been several months since I’d seen him, but I hadn’t forgotten how nice he was to look on. His eyes were his best attribute—deeply brown and bordered by thick dark eyebrows and long eyelashes. His nose was imposing yet finely sloped, and his jawbone was strong and chiseled. His black hair wasn’t too long, nor too short, but thick and well coiffed. It was parted cleanly down the middle.

But tonight I noticed that there was a feminine quality about his lips. They were too pink, too full, for his masculine face. I couldn’t stop looking at them.

Daddy joked, “I can’t believe I’m dining with a man who goes to a Yankee college! What’s it like up there, all coal dust and immigrants?”

Hector smiled. “It’s an excellent medical school. But home will always be North Carolina.”

“Good to hear it,” said Daddy, settling himself into his chair.

Over her glass of sugar-laden lemonade, Mama said, “Tell us how you’ve been spending your summer hiatus, Hector.”

I could see that she had applied the tiniest bit of powder and rouge to cover her pale, yellow complexion.

“It has been entirely restful. I’m rather embarrassed to admit that I’ve been sleeping so late into the mornings that I’ve found I’ve long missed breakfast and quite nearly come upon the midday meal!” he said with a flourish. He sat stiffly upright, a one-dimensional board propped in a chair. “I must admit, though, that I have a hard time tearing myself away from Daddy’s library. I do so enjoy the field of medicine. I’m still looking for ideas for my medical thesis. It’s due at the end of the term next January, and I can’t wait to get started on it.”

“Going to follow in your old man’s footsteps, then?” Daddy asked.

“He has indicated to me that he would like me to continue in the family business, so to speak, so that he can have a rest in his old age. Although I don’t think he’s willing to cease the practice of medicine anytime soon.”

“Oh, I should hope not,” Mama interjected, her eyes round. “I would hate to see Dr. Newman retire. You never know when you’re going to need a skilled doctor, and they are so rare around these parts.”

I already knew that Mama, thinking of the baby growing inside her, was anxious to procure the services of Doc Newman, who had attended all of her previous births and miscarriages.

“Why, Mrs. Sinclair, you look the absolute picture of health, a rare eagle of a woman perched firmly in the prime of her life. Such a
woman should not be requiring many medical services, of that I am sure!”

Mama blushed at the compliment, and Hector looked over at me in the ensuing silence with a self-satisfied smile. He brushed a stiff-cuffed hand over his hair and winked at me, just barely. But I could only stare at his perfect orderliness, my mind suddenly picturing the marked crease between Ben’s freshly washed hands and his still-grimy forearms.

Daddy picked up his whiskey and took a long drink. I wondered if he knew of Mama’s condition, and whether he’d be pleased. One more mouth to feed, one more body to clothe.

Mama said, “If your father does have to retire, perhaps you would consider taking us on in his place. I
have
known you since you were a small boy, you know, when you came around with your father on his calls.” She paused to smile coquettishly at him. “But I do think it would be much more convenient to have a doctor already
in the family.”

I breathed in sharply, causing my glass to almost slip out of my hands. If Hector had the slightest inclination of proposing marriage to me one day, she had probably just sent him running directly for the sand hills.

Yet Hector just smiled and nodded his head, as if she had just commented on the pleasantly warm weather Nags Head was experiencing. He then filled the rest of the meal with elaborations of his days at Yale, his father’s medical endeavors, and his own successes.

It occurred to me then that as a doctor’s wife I would be in for a lifetime of Hector’s trials and tribulations. I would be expected to sit quietly and smile for the rest of my days, while Hector boasted and carried on. I had never realized just how much he liked himself.

Yet it was newly obvious to me, especially after spending so much
time around the Bankers, that his many accomplishments were of the indoor variety. His skin was the color of milk, and his arms and legs were lanky from lack of labor.

I also noticed that he ate like my sister, Martha, daintily holding the fork and knife with his pinkie finger jutting out and carving up his soft crab with small, careful movements, perhaps the way he had been taught in an etiquette class for boys. He chewed a mouthful of crab meat and potatoes about twenty times before swallowing it all down. And he even sipped his watered-down whiskey like a kitten, taking several tiny sips at one time.

When it was time to order dessert, Hector declined, explaining that he was restricting his intake of sugar for health reasons. Of course, Mama also turned down dessert (she had turned a bit green during dinner), but Daddy and I took great pleasure in ordering the most decadent item on the hotel’s menu—Kill Devil Cake, a dark-chocolate fudge cake with sugared blackberries on top. I couldn’t help taking slow, luxurious bites.