Tree By Leaf (2 page)

God had done such good work on land and trees, oceans, mountains, islands, and the firmament with its two great lights, the way the Bible said it, one for the day and one for the night. He’d done so well with everything else, He could have done better with people. And He should have. If she were God, she wouldn’t have made people at all. If she were God, she’d have
stopped with everything that creepeth, and she’d have kept the Garden of Eden for herself, and there never would have been such a thing as war. If she were God, Clothilde thought, she’d have known better.

As silent as one of the Indians that used to inhabit the coast, Clothilde got up and made her way back through the trees. Silent as the still water, quiet as one of the Indians from the lost tribes, Clothilde moved through the trees. She climbed back down the boulders.

By comparison, the beach was noisy. Gulls squabbled and the mud made thick sucking sounds at the boots she had put back on, over the thick socks. When she found a group of little air holes, Clothilde set down the clam basket. She leaned her weight on the rake, forcing the tines down into the flat mud. The mud didn’t want to be dug up and tried to hold itself together, separating from itself with the same sucking sounds with which it released her boots. The rake was as much a shovel as a rake. It was really a short thick shovel, with heavy metal tines instead of a flat bottom. It was made that way so it could dig efficiently but not cut through any more clams than it had to, as it lifted the mud and dumped it down.

Clothilde stood with her feet set wide apart and
dug a shallow pit between them. That turned up a few clams, which she tossed into the basket beside her. Those clams with shells crushed into by the tines of the rake she tossed aside. Maimed and broken, the pale pulpy flesh bared to the air, they were already dead, or dying. You couldn’t tell which, with clams. Clothilde didn’t mind digging clams, she minded those clams the rake smashed. There should be a better way to dig clams.

When the trench between her feet was finished, she leaned forward to force the rake deep into the mud, then pulled. The miniature cliff collapsed toward her; she bent over and worked her fingers through the mud, to find the hidden clams. They didn’t need all that many clams to make Sunday chowder for the five of them. Cooked on Saturday evening, the chowder ripened up overnight. They would eat it for dinner tomorrow, a soup as thick as a stew with its chunks of potatoes and its clams, a rich milky fishy stew. Clothilde leaned over and pulled, bent down to find out the clams that had backed themselves into the mud, moved to a new area pitted with air holes and began again.

She was perspiring. Her blouse stuck to her back. Her hands and arms, like the rake and basket, were
streaked with gray clayey mud. Clothilde didn’t mind that. She liked the sharp, salty smell and the thick streaks of mud. She liked the tiredness. When she had gathered enough clams, she picked up the basket and walked on out to where the water had gotten to, in its rising, set the basket down, bent over to splash water on her hands and arms, and her face too. The water was cool, cold. It wasn’t icy, because the July sun warmed the mud flats enough to heat the water as it returned into the cove, but it was definitely cold. Her steps loosened mud from the bottom and it rose like underwater dust, until the moving water cleared it away. Looking at the bottom, Clothilde saw how the waves made wavy diamond shapes out of the sunlight. Those diamonds chased themselves restlessly over the floor of the cove. There were too many, they moved too quickly, like the little waves on the water’s surface.

The water had rinsed the thickest mud off the clams, and Clothilde used her palms and fingers to finish the job. Mother would give the clams a final cleaning in the kitchen sink. The sun was moving along the sky, the tide was slipping into the cove, and Clothilde knew she was already later than she should have been. Picking up the heavy basket, splashing back to the rake to carry it in her other hand, she
returned to the beach. She pulled her petticoat back on and shook her skirt out over it, so it would hang properly. She rolled down the sleeves of her blouse. She didn’t want to go back.

She didn’t want to go back because when she was alone on the beach, in the woods, at the headlands especially, but anywhere in her wanderings over the peninsula, Clothilde was as close to happy as she could ever remember being. Even digging clams or gathering mussels, she felt herself sitting content in herself. Not worrying the way she often worried; not reassuring herself the way she often did, by remembering the peninsula, which was hers. That struck her as odd, because whenever she thought about digging clams and gathering mussels she felt a resentment that burned inside her. Why should she be the one to go out and gather, to get her hands cut on barnacles and sharp shells, her palms callused on the handle of the rake, her fingernails blackened by mud. Nate sometimes brought home fish, because a gentleman could know how to fish. Sailing a boat was something a gentleman could know how to do, so he could sail out and anchor, and bring home fish for dinners. Dierdre was not quite four, too young to be useful, so it was Clothilde who chopped wood, year-round, for the
stoves, and shoveled coal into the boiler that supplied hot water for the house; who dug potatoes out of the garden with Mother; it was Clothilde who—whose future didn’t matter. The resentment burned like a slow fire in her. And even while it burned, at the same time and in the same place, contentment washed over her. The sunny silence wrapped around her like arms.

Clothilde walked along slowly, partly because of the weight of the clam basket, partly because she was going back. The clam basket pulled at her shoulder and banged against her leg. She reassured herself: she had her plans, she had her peninsula and her plans.

She could have entered the kitchen from the one door at the back of the house, in the ell that connected the farmhouse to its barn, but Clothilde always went around to the front, where the house faced down the driveway. The driveway was only two shallow dirt tracks, with grass growing up between them. It led away through the long grass and into the trees. Because almost nobody came up it, the driveway was overgrown. But when she looked at it, standing by the house, Clothilde could see as clear as if it hadn’t happened four years ago, in May of 1916, but yesterday, in July of 1920, how Father had looked riding away west into a setting sun.

He was in uniform by then, riding off to join his cavalry regiment. He sat Bucephalus easily, carelessly. Father was a born horseman, everybody said. Clothilde had seen him a hundred times the way she had seen him that morning except that he hadn’t been in uniform before. Father’s back was straight and his smile fell over all of them like sunlight, while the big horse moved restlessly, eager to be going. Father, too, was eager. He turned the horse’s head and went off at a fine canter, to please them, to show off. Just before he entered the trees, he unsheathed his sword and swung it over his head. He was teasing, Clothilde and Nate knew, making fun of his soldier self, but he was also proud and gallant, as if right then he could hear bugles blowing to call him into battle, where he and Bucephalus would charge through the enemy, smiting right and smiting left.

Life went easily for Father. Even when he made it hard, it was easy for him, because everyone liked him. He was big and handsome and happy, he had a ready laugh and a strong arm, he was always talking, telling stories on himself. When Father, who had only been there for a day and a night, left the farmhouse to ride off to war, he left the rooms cold and empty behind him, as if the house had already gotten used to him
being there and wanted him to stay. But Father had gone.

But sometimes, as if time cracked and let a glimmer of light through from the past, Clothilde could look quickly at the driveway and quickly away, and see Father riding off—and her heart would lift. Recently, she could always see that picture, although the figure on the big horse became less distinct every time. Setting down the heavy basket, holding herself still to catch that glimpse, Clothilde almost really saw it.

Nobody but Lou was in the kitchen. And Lou had the windows wide open to cool down the room. She was heating flatirons on the stove and she had set the ironing board beside the open door. She didn’t look up when Clothilde came in.

Clothilde emptied the clams into the sink. She might as well go ahead and give the clams their final cleaning. She guessed she would steam them, too, if Mother didn’t show up. She turned on the tap water and scrubbed the pale gray clams, one at a time, one after the other, using a vegetable brush. The brush made a small sweeping sound on the clam’s shell, water trickled into the sink, the iron swooshed back and forth on the damp clothes, and the trees rustled outside.

Dierdre would still be napping, and Nate had sailed over to have lunch and play tennis at the club in town with one of his friends from Phillips Academy.
She hadn’t seen Mother in the garden, she was pretty sure Mother wasn’t upstairs, and she guessed she knew where Mother had gone. Mother wouldn’t stay long there, and when she got back she wouldn’t have anything to say. Clothilde washed the clams, then scrubbed at her hands to get the gray mud out from under fingernails. That done, she ran a little water into the big steamer and set it on the stove. Lou had the stove stoked up high for the irons, so Clothilde didn’t need to feed in any more wood. While she waited for the water to come up to a boil, she sat at the kitchen table.

Lou paid no attention to her. Lou ironed. Her thin, pale hair was pulled back into a knot at the back of her head. Her thin arms moved the heavy iron along the skirt of Mother’s blue church dress. The skirt hung down onto the floor, but that did no harm because Lou scrubbed the painted floorboards every evening. Lou wasn’t much taller than Clothilde and she wasn’t that much older, just fifteen, but she looked and worked like a woman grown. When Lou returned the flatiron to the stove and had tested one of the others with a dampened fingertip, she told Clothilde, “Pot’s steaming,” in her flat voice.

Clothilde carried the clams over by handfuls,
dumping them into the pot. She put the lid back on top and sat down again. It took fifteen minutes to steam clams. She looked at the clock on the wall.

Lou finished Mother’s dress and held it out to see that there were no wrinkles she’d left. She put the dress on a hanger and hung it up on the nail by the door. Then she turned around to look straight at Clothilde. She looked and looked before she asked her question. “Who is that man in the boathouse?”

Clothilde looked at the clock. Lou was a servant. Clothilde didn’t have to answer. She didn’t want to answer, didn’t want to say, didn’t want to think about it. Lou stood waiting, her jaw out, her pale face without expression, lips, eyes, and eyelashes pale, and she didn’t have any right to ask. In Grandfather’s house, a servant would never have asked a question like that, and in that way.

“What man?” Clothilde asked.

“Yuh,” Lou said. “He’s been seen, daytime, and Tom Hatch was late coming in the other night and he said there was a light in the boathouse. He was worried about your ma, so he ast me. It’s that man I’m asking you about.”

Clothilke didn’t want to say it. Even having Lou mention him made the day dark, as if a cold gray fog
had seeped up into the kitchen from the cellar below. Because she didn’t want to say it, the words hurting in her mouth, Clothilde made herself speak. “He’s my father.”

It was true. There was no use denying that. It frightened her, but there was no use denying it.

Lou thought for a while about what Clothilde had said. Clothilde looked at the clock. She looked at the freshly ironed dress. She looked at her fingers resting on the wood of the table.

“Why’s she hiding him away over there?’ Lou asked.

“She’s not,” Clothilde said. Which was true and not true. “She doesn’t say.”

“Yuh.” Lou moved slowly back to the ironing board. Clothilde got up from the table, to set the metal colander over the soup pot, to line the colander with clean muslin. She knew Lou didn’t carry tales. The servants in Grandfather’s house gossiped, but when Lou went home Sundays to her family, she didn’t talk about the people out on the Point. They’d learned that, because whatever trouble they had on them, Mr. Grindle at the store never knew of it. Mr. Grindle didn’t know, not until Mother told him, that Nate was going to attend Phillips Academy, where the summer
boys from town went to school; and he never suspected that it was Grandfather who sent Nate there, with mother asking Nate to accept the gift. What Mr. Grindle knew, his eyes showed, if he was sorry for your trouble and glad for your good news, or if there was something he knew you wanted kept secret. Those bulging eyes didn’t know anything, nothing they hadn’t told him themselves, because Lou wasn’t the kind to carry tales from the Point into the village.

Clothilde took a holder to lift the top off the steaming pot. The clams had opened. The steamy air that rose into her face smelled sweet and fishy. She picked up another holder to lift the pot in both hands, carried it over to the sink, and carefully poured its contents out into the colander. Then she sat down again at the table. The broth needed time to drain through the muslin. She watched Lou’s thin shoulders move as her arms moved the heavy iron up and down over one of Nate’s shirts.

“What did you say to Tom Hatch?” Clothilde asked.

“I told him to mind his own business, yuh,” Lou answered, without turning around.

Clothilde could just hear Lou saying that. Poor Tom Hatch would have thought he was just giving
them a warning, if a tramp had moved out onto the property and Mrs. Speer there with only her boy for protection, and him just fourteen. Tom Hatch would have meant well. But Lou must have given him one of her pale-eyed glances all the same, and she’d told him to keep his nose stuck in his own business.

When the clams had stopped steaming up into the air, Clothilde shook the colander a couple of times, in case any broth was trapped in any shells, then lifted it over onto the metal draining rack. She moved the soup pot with its watery broth back to the stove, setting it up high on the warming shelf. She turned around and watched Lou.