The Marriage Bed (28 page)

The funeral had been brief, embarrassingly so. Spencer thought that the only comfortable person there was probably Emma Zephin, her body resting in a modest coffin, her soul above them all, looking down at all their weaknesses and foibles.

The whole town had failed her, just as the whole town did everything else. They had passed judgment on her and found her wanting in beauty, and that had been enough to condemn her to a life of solitude and sadness.

He thought of Livvy, sitting primly on the wagon seat just a few feet away from him, and wondered how she had managed to cope with the town's judgment of her. They'd branded her barren, excluded her from one thing and another because, they'd told her, she wouldn't be interested.

And he'd let it all happen. Worse, he'd made it all happen. And then he'd turned around with that stupid smile of his and told her he was sorry and expected her to just forgive and forget.

He stared at Curly George's rump searching for the magic words. It seemed as good a place as any to find them. After all, he was a horse's ass if he thought he could erase away all the hurt he'd done her.

"Doesn't seem right to just go back to work," Spencer said, glancing over Neil's head at his wife.

"No," she agreed.

He couldn't tell whether she was wishing he'd just drop her off and leave her be, or ask to spend the day with her, so he hinted again for an invitation. "Sad that there wasn't any gathering at Charlie's, don't you think? Doesn't seem right just going on with the day after burying poor Miss Zephin."

"Why do you think there wasn't any paying of respects?" Louisa asked from the back of the wagon. She had Josie on her lap and the little one was sprawled in the sun with her eyes shut, probably fast asleep. "Because she killed herself?"

Livvy shrugged. "I think Charlie was ashamed. Ashamed that Emma killed herself, ashamed that she wasn't pretty, ashamed that he was ashamed of her."

Spencer supposed she was right, but still he couldn't help but wonder that it could matter so much. "You know, I never noticed that Emma was so burn-your-eyes ugly."

Olivia didn't say anything.

"I suppose there's a lot I never noticed, huh?"

"Doesn't matter now, does it?" Livvy said, picking at a loose thread on her skirt.

"Like what?" Neil asked, and Spencer heard a snort from behind him. That young lady with the sour expression was surely growing up, whether he liked it or not. He felt like he was missing it all—carrying babies to bed, noting an inch of growth, watching Liv braid the girls' hair—things he failed to appreciate that now he missed so much.

"Matters more than anything, Livvy-love," he said as he brought the wagon to a stop in front of Sacotte Farm. She was squinting at him in the sunlight and her skin glowed with just the hint of the summer heat. How women stood those long black dresses in the middle of the summer was beyond him. And they called them the weaker sex? He'd like to see some of the men in Maple Stand try to do a day's work in those things their wives traipsed around in.

"Spencer?"

Lord, she was lovely.

"Spencer, are you all right?"

''I'm sorry," he said, trying to recall what she'd asked, and failing. He could see those soft lips moving, the fullness of her cheek rise with her smile, but if his happiness depended on it, and he prayed it didn't, he couldn't recall what she'd said. "I guess I was daydreaming."

"I guess you were," she agreed. "I asked if you were hungry. What are you doing about meals, anyways?"

He thought about the fact that she was supplying them. If anyone would call cherry pie for breakfast, dinner, and supper meals. "I can cook. I haven't been too hungry lately, anyways." Not for food. What he hungered for sat next to him, her soft pale skin framed by dark hair and even darker clothes so that her face seemed to glow like a single pearl against a jeweler's velvet pad.

"Oh." She seemed disappointed.

"Not that I don't miss your cooking. But I don't want you to think that your cooking is why I want you back. I'd be willing to live on . . ." He tried to think of something awful that he could suffer through just to have her back in their home.

". . . air," Louisa prompted in a whisper from behind him.

He smiled.

So did Liv.

Lord, who'd have thought that sharing a smile was as wonderful as sharing a bed?

". . . air, is right. I'd live on air if you'd just . . ." The clatter of Remy's wagon drowned out his soft words. "You all waiting for us before you get down?" Remy asked, pulling alongside their wagon.

"Uncle Spence was just—" Neil started, but was quickly silenced by his older sister, whom he turned to stare at.

"Aunt Liv was just . . ." Louisa began.

"I was just . . . " Liv said, and then her hand went up as if she were offering something to Spencer and waiting to see if he would accept.

He cleared his throat. "I was just . . ." He didn't know what he was.

Remy tried to stifle a laugh, covering his mouth and exchanging a look with Bess.

"Well, I was just thinking that we ought to gather a few things and head on out to the bay for a good fish boil," Bess said. "I suppose that's what you were all just . . . justing!"

"Be like working on the Sabbath, burying poor Miss Zephin and then getting to work," Remy said, while the boys behind him were gesturing to Neil and Louisa and bobbing their heads up and down in support of the idea.

Spencer was afraid to look at Livvy. There was every reason to believe she would say no to his joining them. And there was no way he would force himself on her.

"Well?" Remy asked, his eyes on Spencer alone. "You coming?"

Spencer took a deep breath and turned his head, pleading with just a look for her permission to accept the offer. Without her nod he would graciously decline and head on home where he would be sorely tempted to find a strong rope and hang himself from the rafters in the barn.

It was a tight smile. Not welcoming, but it was a smile nonetheless. And a nod. Not vigorous, not anything more than resigned, it spoke of not disappointing the children or ruining anyone's day, without even a word being said.

"Tell me what you'll need," he said, relief washing over him like a wave from Lake Michigan itself. "Beyond my skill as the best fisherman in Door County," he boasted.

Philip and Thom-Tom hooted, slapping their father's back.

"My kids and me against your kids and you," Remy said. "Most fish gets . . ." He paused, and there wasn't a sound beyond the slight breeze rustling the leaves in the orchard. Spencer waited for Livvy to remind Remy the children weren't his. He supposed she was waiting for the same thing. Surely Louisa would object to even being called a kid, never mind his.

"A cherry pie," Livvy said quietly. "Winners get a cherry pie."

There was still silence. He'd lived with so much of it lately that he couldn't find comfort in it, but neither could he think of a word to say, nor could he have gotten any past the lump in his throat.

"All right," Livvy said, a shy smile playing at the corners of her full lips. "So do the losers."

"Yeah!" shouted the children in Remy's wagon.

"Yeah!" shouted Neil. Spencer even thought he might have heard a very quiet "yeah" from Miss Louisa, the grump, behind him.

He ventured a sideways glance at his wife. "Yeah," he said, almost a question instead of a cheer.

"Don't know if I've got enough onions," Bess said, not hiding the smile of triumph on her face. "And a few extra potatoes never hurt."

Neil had never seen a fire set right on a beach before. He'd never seen a cauldron as big and black as the one that his Aunt Bess had unearthed in the barn and which was now full of water that was barely simmering.

He'd also never seen his Uncle Spencer so tongue-tied and nervous. Ever since his Aunt Liv had offered to go back to the farm with him and pick up a few things for the fish boil, he'd been jumpier than a frog in a frying pan. He'd insisted that she stay at Sacotte Farm and change into some lighter dress for the shore, and taken off so fast they were all still choking on the dust he'd raised ten minutes after he was gone.

And if he was in such an all-fired hurry to get to the beach, why did he just sit there staring at Aunt Liv like he'd never seen her before when they should have been halfway to Sturgeon Bay? What did it matter whether he'd ever seen her in that dress or not? As far as Neil was concerned, one dress was the same as another. But it was like she was the Blessed Virgin herself, the way Uncle Spencer stared, his jaw dropping and his pipe falling right out.

And when his Uncle Spencer had put his hands on his Aunt Livvy's waist to help her up into the same wagon she'd gotten herself in and out of nearly every day since they'd arrived from Chicago, Neil thought his uncle was gonna be sick. Well, a grown man didn't usually just groan out loud unless he had a bellyache, did he?

He and his cousins had all kicked off their shoes and socks as soon as they'd gotten to the bay, but Uncle Remy and Uncle Spencer had both seen to his aunts' boots before taking off their own. Aunt Liv had insisted she could manage herself, but would Uncle Spencer let her? No, he wouldn't hear of it. Like the best treat in the world was taking off a lady's high-button boots, his uncle claimed it was his pleasure just like he really meant it.

Lord, was Neil ever glad when his aunt refused to let him help with her stockings. His uncle seemed to find it kind of funny, and his shoulders shook as he quickly shucked off his own shoes and walked straight into the water claiming that he needed to cool off.

Neil thought it was pretty cold by the shore, the breeze strong enough to make their clothes flap in the wind. And no one else seemed to need to get wet. Much as he liked him, he still found his Uncle Spencer a strange man.

Neil watched his aunts checking the water in the kettle again and thought it was a good thing they'd both changed out of their funeral clothes. Two barefoot women all in black leaning over a steaming cauldron might just be mistaken for witches, and his uncles would have to defend their wives' honor or see them burned at the stake.

He was imagining again. He did it more and more lately, especially since they'd moved to Sacotte Farm. It didn't take a genius to figure out that there was a real fine line between imagining and wishing. Almost as thin as between wishing and hoping. And if he got tangled up in those lines, well, he'd drown.

"Neil," Thom-Tom yelled to him. "Aren't you gonna help us catch any fish?"

"Hey," Uncle Spencer corrected. "He's on my team. We're gonna win that pie, aren't we, son?"

Something about his question made Philip laugh, but Neil was busy feeling the warmth of his uncle's arm on his shoulder and didn't bother to ask his cousin what the joke was.

"You know how to bait a hook?" Uncle Spencer asked him. Where did he think Chicago was? In the middle of a desert? He'd seen men baiting hooks right at the pier. Maybe he'd never put the squiggling worm on the hook, maybe he'd never even held a pole, still, he wasn't some namby-pamby little sissy who couldn't ...

The worm that Uncle Spencer held out to him was fat and dirty. It fought to get loose by arching first one way and then another. Neil wasn't afraid of worms. Heck, he found them in the garden and the fields all the time. Still, the idea of sticking that sharp hook through its body ...

"Get the pole from over there," Uncle Spence said, pointing down the beach a little way to a pole that stood up from the ground about as high as Neil was tall. '

It was a boy's pole. "Was this yours?" he asked his uncle after he waded out to him, careful to keep the pole out of the rising water.

His uncle nodded. "Lines kind of fouled," he said under his breath. "Hasn't been used in a long time."

Neil wondered just how long, but Uncle Spencer didn't say.

"You hold this," he said, forcing the worm on Neil and taking the pole in exchange. "And don't make friends with it. It's some nice whitefish's last meal."

Neil cupped his palm and watched the worm plead for mercy.

"Water's nearly boiling," Aunt Bess yelled out to them. "And so far I've only got two fish to clean."

"You can't hurry the fish," Neil yelled back, and everyone laughed.

Almost an hour later, the fishermen all dry from lying on their backs and letting the sun dry them out while Aunt Bess and Aunt Liv cleaned the fish, Louisa peeled the carrots and onions, and Josie combed the shore looking for stuff and things, the dramatic moment they had all been talking about was at hand.

"Okay, okay," Uncle Remy said, shooing everybody back from the bubbling pot that was filling the whole shoreline with a wonderful smell "Now stay back. Louisa, you got the little one?"

"I've got her," Aunt Liv said, picking up Josie and settling her on her hip. "Oh, I love this part!"

Uncle Spencer seemed torn between standing with Aunt Liv or helping Uncle Remy. Finally, and Neil thought not so happily, his two uncles carried over something from the wagon and threw it onto the fire.

In all his life Neil had never seen flames jump so fast and so high. With a loud puff and a whoosh of hot air the fire roared to life, sending bubbles of stew over the edge to sizzle back on the flames.

"Burning off the fish oil," Aunt Liv whispered to him when he looked to her to make sure nothing had gone wrong. "Isn't it a sight?"

His face burned from the heat of the fire. He had to squint his eyes to stay as close as he was. So this was why people had cameras. He'd never understood until now. But if he could have, he would have preserved forever this moment, flames shooting around the big black kettle, his uncles smiling and patting each other on the back, the women folk huddled together wide-eyed, and his cousins running along the beach shouting that the stew was ready for anyone who might want to join them.

Life
, he thought, as warm on the inside as the fire was making his outside,
was perfect
.

"Liv? You asleep?"

She'd been lying in the sun for quite a while and he was worried about her burning. At least that was what he told the rest of the family when they decided to take a walk along the shore. "Go ahead," he'd told them. "I'll watch over Livvy and make sure she doesn't burn."