The Stubborn Season. Lauren B. Davis
out to play baseball. Their mothers told them not to talk about it, held their fingers to their lips and shook their heads, with a pitying sort of look on their faces.
Ebbie Watkins was Irene’s best friend. Ebbie was tall for eleven, with curly hair so blond it was almost white and lashes and eyebrows that might just as well not have been there at all. Her skin was pale and her eyes protruded slightly, so that Irene’s mother said she looked like a partly skinned rabbit. Irene didn’t think it was nice of her mother to say such things about Ebbie. Had Irene said them herself, her mother would have given her a swat and a lecture about kindness to others. What Ebbie lacked in pretty, however, she made up for in smart.
As Irene rounded the last corner in front of Winchester Public School, Ebbie ran up behind her and jumped the last step almost on Irene’s heels.
“Boo!” she yelled.
“Oh! You scared me half to death, Ebbie!”
“You looked like you were a thousand miles away.” Ebbie’s laugh was always a surprise. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Your mother not getting any better? I know maybe I shouldn’t ask. Everyone says I shouldn’t. Well, not everyone, it’s not like everyone’s talking or anything, but my mother says . . . Oh, you know what I mean. But we’re friends and all, so . . . Whatever is wrong with her, anyway?”
“Nothing’s wrong with her,” said Irene, but seeing Ebbie’s eyes widen skeptically, she added, “Not really. Daddy says her nerves are bad and she’s fragile. It’s a sign of good breeding, you know.” She paused and thought. “My mother’s got awfully good breeding.”
“Can you come over? My mother always asks why you don’t come over anymore. She thinks you don’t like me anymore, for heaven’s sake.” Ebbie pushed out her large lower lip in a mock sulk.
“You know that’s not true, Ebbie! You are absolutely, positively my best friend!”
“Good, so come. Why not this Friday? We can have a sleepover.”
“I’ll ask. I don’t know, but I’ll ask. I’d like that so much.” Irene thought how her parents were always fighting now. She thought about her mother complaining the house was too small for the three of them. And so maybe, maybe, her mother would let her go. “She’ll say yes, I’m sure she will. I’m positively sure.”
Irene and Ebbie went the rest of the way to school together with their arms wrapped around each other, looking forward to that Friday, planning what they would eat and what radio programs they’d listen to.
5
Margaret passed the morning sitting in the living room. She could not rouse herself, although there were a million things to do. Beds to make. Laundry to fold. Dusting. Sweeping. Cooking. She kept saying, over and over, “Now, get up now. I will count to three and then I will get up. One, two, three.” And then, nothing.
She saw her reflection in the mirror above the fireplace. Her eyes were wide and wild, her hair a mess, her knuckles in her mouth. She looked like crazy Mrs. Rochester, ready to set fire to the world, ready to be locked in the tower and replaced by Jane Eyre.
At last she walked toward this image. She leaned her elbows on the mantelpiece, pushing aside a purple porcelain dog whose hollowed-out stomach housed a wilting African violet. She put her hands on either side of her face and pulled back the skin. She stuck her tongue out and made a lizard face. Soon she would be old. All her chances at happiness seemed behind her. Before her the future loomed plain and comfortless.
If she could just find a point, a reason for her life. She had asked Reverend Fuller to see her after church yesterday. She thought surely he would be able to understand and offer her guidance. The Reverend was a huge heron of a man with a beaklike nose and thin lips. His hair was wiry and white, his skin laced with small red veins. His bony shoulders stuck up under the black material of his jacket, and his sleeves were too short. When she had asked for a few moments of his time, he smiled gently and told her to wait on his porch, next door to the church. Margaret did not want to wait there, in full view of the street. But she did as she was told.
“Masie,” he called to his wife, “make Mrs. MacNeil comfortable, won’t you, my dear. I shall be with her directly.” Margaret refused the offer of tea and sat stiffly on the edge of the wicker chair. She told Irene to do the same.
“Stop fidgeting, Irene. Honestly!”
“But, Mummy, there’s a piece of stick. It pinches.” Irene was hot and miserable in her crinolines and hat and gloves.
“Shush. Be good. We won’t be long.” Margaret busied herself in her purse as a way of avoiding eye contact with other members of the congregation now on their way back home. The entire exercise of going to church was frightening. All those faces, all those well-meaning inquiries as to her health. She wouldn’t go except she fervently hoped that here she might find answers to the questions she didn’t even know how to form.
Before long the Reverend finished shaking hands and accepting compliments on his sermon. He approached her, his black Bible tucked under his arm.
“And now, Mrs. MacNeil, you have my full attention,” he said and led her to his office at the back of the house. She told Irene to wait outside.
His office was small. Just a desk, with a chair behind and one in front, where he indicated she should sit. Books lay everywhere and a cup half-full of cold scummy tea sat on his desk. Another cup rested on the floor, and yet another on a small table near the window. The Reverend Fuller perched on the side of the desk, facing her. He smelled of camphor.
There was so much of him, all height and limbs. The room seemed too intimate, like a closet in which they were hiding together.
“Now, what can I do for you, Mrs. MacNeil?”
“I need your help, Reverend. I’m not myself these days.” She twisted the strap of her brown leather purse. How to phrase it so he understood?
“Well, these are difficult times.” He held his head down, not looking at her directly, as though he was a priest and she a confessor. It made her fear he might not grant her absolution.
“It’s just that I can’t pull myself together. My head goes round and round with the strangest thoughts. Dark thoughts. I can’t seem to stop worrying.”
“We all have our worries.”
“I find myself overcome with them, very nearly. Like I’m drowning.”
“What do you worry about?”
“Well, the sorts of things that everyone worries about these days. Money, shelter, poverty, destitution, starvation.” She heard a noise. Was he laughing at her? He must not be laughing at her! She couldn’t bear that. Her palms were sweating, and her thighs stuck to each other.
The Reverend blew his nose with a handkerchief that was none too clean.
“Things are not that bad, surely? We must trust in the Lord. He will provide. Have faith, Mrs. MacNeil.”
“I do try, Reverend.”
“Of course you do, dear lady.” He patted her shoulder. Then he turned his face toward the ceiling and began to recite. “’Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord.’ James 5, verse 7.”
“I try to be patient, but I’m not, mostly. I can be,” she paused, unsure if she should continue, “peevish.”
“Ah,” he said, and looked severe.
“I do try. It’s just that... sometimes. . . ” She wanted to tell him about how lost she felt, how she knew the world was passing her by, how she was entombed in that little house.
“Yes?”
The conversation was