A Lesser Light, page 14
Her right forefinger found the palm of her left hand and she tapped her meter. This ship will sink, once more methinks, but I’m a bird above the brink. The song complete, she took her uncle’s hand and they headed for the Traveler’s Hotel.
Stellar Aberration
April 26, 1910
I am the night and the dark it brings.
I am the child and her howling mind; the keeper and his insomnia; his attendants and their toil; their wives and their everlasting patience.
I am the laughter and tears; the sighs and the whines.
I am the hound and the comet’s tail.
I have come from the farthest reaches of the known sky.
I am also the laws of the physical universe and the human ignorance that misunderstands it.
I am all misunderstanding.
I am the stars and the force that moves them.
I am the light—the light!—and the reason it’s warped.
I am not God.
I can hardly imagine believing in such a force.
* * *
LESS THAN A WEEK, and already Willa felt herself to be a distant, celestial object viewed crossly by her husband’s untrained eye. A stellar aberration on this mound of earthly granite. Certainly she knew less of him now than she had a week before. He was as mercurial as the weather, which on this day brought ill-timed snow. For a half hour at dawn, she watched the lighthouse vessel steaming from the west, likely bound for their dock. It trudged like the Pleiades across a night sky, seven deck lights coming in and out of the fitful snowfall.
Already Theodulf had extinguished the lamp, a morning ritual she’d somehow become to feel a part of—as if the imminence of his presence snuffed the light in her, too. Sometimes he returned with nary a word. Others with a simmering rage. This morning, with the other keepers arriving, likely on the approaching vessel, she didn’t know what to expect. The fact she’d not even finished making the coffee did not improve the likelihood of his arriving with good humor. Another woman might have hurried to the kitchen, but Willa only watched the boat.
She heard the door open downstairs. Heard him enter. Then stop. Presumably at the banjo clock, which he wound each morning upon entering. Then she heard the resumption of his passing through the house and into the kitchen. She waited. But not long. Soon after he filled the pot and set it angrily on the fire, he came bounding up the staircase. This, too, had become a regular part of their routine. His castigation. Her silent rebuttal. Then Theodulf would go down and make his own coffee and oats while she loitered in her bedroom.
This morning was different, though. He opened the door to her still mostly empty chamber and stared at her from the threshold. He didn’t speak. His breathing did not betray him, nor did the scolding stare. For a full minute they merely glared at each other before finally he said, “It’s a husband’s solemn duty to covet his wife. To honor her and to protect her and to see her on a path to righteousness.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and wiped the exhaustion from his eyes. “But, Willa, in order for me to honor our union, I need you to participate in it.”
“You don’t understand the first thing about your duty to me, much less to our marriage, which is as dark and misshapen as your very soul.”
His eyes widened and his nostrils flared. Through clenched teeth, he said, “I made vows before God. I have upheld them—”
“Why don’t you take me into your bedroom and fuck me like you’re supposed to?”
“Your vile tongue!” he boomed. “Let me never hear that word uttered in this house again!”
Willa pushed her sleeves up. First her left, then her right. She took a combative stance. “You come in out of the night with your practiced words! A speech you’ve been rehearsing all night!” She swooped to the window, pushed the curtains aside. “I’d rather hear Father Richter proselytize. For that matter, I’d rather hear the Lindvik girl!”
Now he joined his hands before him and brought them to his lips. “I do not believe a man should strike his wife—”
“And yet you’ve struck me! Your convictions are as your nature: weak weak weak.”
He now appeared stunned. As though she had landed a mighty blow. Still he persisted. “But if you leave me no choice, if you persist in your vulgarities and intractability, if you continue to treat your role in this house as child might, then you’ll leave me no choice but to ensure your obedience, however I might.” He risked a look back at her.
Her response? She laughed. As though his threat had been a great joke. Once she gathered herself, she sat on the windowsill and wiped tears from her eyes. “Not only would I rather hear the fisherman’s daughter preach, I’d more fear her wrath.” She shook her head as though she’d just scolded him and hated to do so. “I likewise guess that the only reason you’ve not yet cuffed me again is you fear a similar reprisal as the last time.”
She stood. “You should go meet whatever vessel is about to land at our dock.”
He flinched. “What vessel?”
“All morning, it’s come from the west.”
He hurried himself to the window now, as if they hadn’t been about to injure each other, and pulled the curtain aside as she so recently had. “Today is the twenty-sixth.” It was not a question, though it sounded like one. “Oh my.” He looked again out the window. “That’s the lighthouse vessel. That’s Misters Wilson and Axelsson. Surely it is.” Now he glanced down at his uniform, still creased despite his night on watch.
“You’re inept at everything you do, aren’t you? Is it because your mind is constantly tangled with itself?” she whispered.
“What?”
“Do you know what a stellar aberration is?”
He looked about the room as though it were burning. “You must put on a dress! Presently! You must meet them with me.”
She only shook her head.
“Presently,” he begged, and was gone again.
Willa went to the window and watched him lope across the yard. She saw him disappear down the path to the dock.
She’d certainly not wear a dress. Instead, she removed from her closet a short-sleeved blouse and the pair of bloomers she figured were most likely to offend. She took her time changing. After lacing her brogues, she fetched last her parasol. She would walk slowly. Ladylike, if not ladylike at all.
* * *
Willa discerned from a glance that the two women disembarking from the lighthouse vessel—one twice the age of the other—were matronly and stern. They indeed wore dresses. The younger of them a woolen thing with a mock neck and gathered sleeves and not a single flourish; the other a petticoat beneath her hoop skirts and already an apron cinched beneath her ample bosom, as though even to travel were to serve. Both had shawls likely crocheted by their own hands draped over their shoulders, and by the time they took their bearings—sweeping views of the Lindvik place, the hillside, the lighthouse atop the cliff—their eyes settled on Willa with dismay if not outright contempt.
Theodulf stood mid-dock, his hands clenched behind his back like a soldier at ease, a posture of both passiveness and aloofness, one that sought approval even as it aspired to mastery. It was, Willa realized as she approached him, the only sort of demeanor he was capable of, a man of near-constant agitation, one never actually at ease, one always being rent.
Willa reached him the same moment the wives did. He ignored her, giving all his attention to the new arrivals instead. “Mrs. Wilson,” he gave a slight bow to the elder, but kept his hands knotted behind his back. “Mrs. Axelsson, welcome.” Now he did remove a hand, not to salute the approaching Misters Wilson and Axelsson, but to check his watch.
Willa, finding his uncouth manner intolerable, stepped forward, donned her brightest smile, and said, “I’m Willa Brandt, pleased to make your—”
“Sauer,” Theodulf said.
The two wives looked affrighted.
Willa, her smile persevering, said, “Excuse me?”
Through clenched teeth, he said, “Willa Sauer. Née Brandt.”
Willa put her fingers to her lips and snickered. To the women she said, “I guess it’s taking me some time to get accustomed to my . . . new . . . state. My condition. I mean, that I’m a married woman.”
For the first time, Mrs. Wilson spoke. “Whoever heard of such a thing?”
Willa already saw the sport in this. “Oh, please don’t misunderstand, I love my sweet Teddy, and couldn’t be happier.” She pretended an adoring look at him as the other lightkeepers joined the coterie there on the dock, noted his still rising choler, and concluded, “But it’s a strange place, this rock. I find myself not unlike the ship’s compass.”
Mrs. Wilson looked at Theodulf, as if he might decode his wife’s riddling.
“Which is sent dithering here, given the iron ore deposits in the earth. It’s all around us,” Willa explained.
“Well!” It was Mrs. Wilson who spoke now, she in the apron. She with the impossibly long braid—like a rope—hanging down her back. “I’m not certain I understand what you mean, Mrs. Sauer.”
“Please, call me Willa.”
The looks of despair on the faces all around! She may as well have profaned again, for the impropriety she’d apparently uttered.
“Until the terms of our friendship are consummated, I’ll do no such thing,” Mrs. Wilson scolded. Now she gave Theodulf an admonishing glare. That his wife should be so irreverent and unpolished was unpardonable. “Surely we’ll learn our roles here at the station, and posthaste. Mr. Sauer, you know our husbands.”
“Indeed. Gentlemen,” Theodulf said, doing his best to gather his composure and his standing as Master Keeper. Hands were shaken all around. “Welcome to your post.” He nodded at Willa. “You’ve already heard from my wife, Mrs. Sauer.”
“You’re newlyweds, yes?” This was Mr. Axelsson, a bearish man with a full, dark beard and small eyes. His uniform ill fit him, and his voice betrayed a certain jocularity. Indeed, he might have appeared merely oafish, but there was also something crooked about the way he glanced at Willa from beneath his unruly brow, which grew in a single great line across his forehead.
“We are,” Theodulf answered. Had he expected Willa to answer him? Willa who, upon receiving that glance, took a step back?
Mrs. Wilson spoke next. “There will be time enough for pleasantries once we unload this boat.”
Willa couldn’t help but wonder if Mrs. Wilson had intervened in the conversation so as to spare Willa Mr. Axelsson’s underhanded lewdness. She even gave the other woman a silent acknowledgment, which of course went unresponded to. An air of apprehension befell the group, and for a moment they all six stood silently.
The captain of the lighthouse vessel interrupted their silence as he walked toward them. “Are we celebrating the posting of these keepers, or making prayers here on the dock?”
Now here, Willa thought, was a man with gumption. He outranked them all, a fact that alone would have bestowed on him the confidence of his action. But he also possessed charm, plainly, and this Willa welcomed.
“Hello,” she said, perhaps too eagerly, for Theodulf stepped forward, giving her still another silent reprimand.
“Captain Voigt,” Theodulf said. “Welcome. We’ve just made introductions.” Now he turned and summoned Willa with a quick wave of his hand. “This is my wife, Mrs. Sauer.”
“Charmed,” the captain said, but he was quick to move the party along. “I’ll bring the boat over to the eastern edge of the cliff. At least we’ve got a fine morning for unloading. You three sirs should get to the top of the cliff and ready the hoist and derrick. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.” Now he gave his attention to the women. “Mrs. Sauer, I expect you’ll amuse these fine ladies while we unload your furnishings.”
Without waiting for a reply, he turned back for the boat, and the keepers and their wives moved like a group of reprimanded schoolchildren. Slowly. Heads bowed. With a solemn purpose.
Willa watched them for a moment. She could not say why, but the sight of them kindled the memory of her Radcliffe classmates leaving Bertram Hall on exam day, facing questions they could not master. Willa herself never left Bertram with that look about her, and as she followed the Axelssons and Wilsons and Theodulf himself, she had another familiar feeling: brashness. She’d never left Bertram Hall with anything but full confidence.
* * *
Once inside, sitting in the kitchen, the kettle boiled empty and nearly scorched after a half hour over the flame, dirty dishes piled in the sink, the last cheese rind a coiled centerpiece on the table, Willa suspected that whatever hope she had of befriending the other keepers’ wives vanished the moment they witnessed her slovenliness. Still, she tried to be gracious, emulating the memory of her mother from those long-ago nights she and her father hosted friends or colleagues.
Willa brewed tea for her new neighbors; she offered them the only food from the pantry that seemed appropriate—the last of the pilot bread and a bowl full of dried apples and peaches—and advised them they could use the water closet after their journey from Duluth. And if their comportment changed—as if proximity to a kitchen, even one as messy and unkempt as Willa’s, softened them—they remained aloof.
“How long have your husbands been in the Lighthouse Service?” she asked, and their answers could not have been more concise or simultaneous: “Twenty-two years,” said Mrs. Wilson, “Three years,” Mrs. Axelsson said. When Willa inquired of children, Mrs. Wilson said, “Both my daughters and both my sons are married,” and Mrs. Axelsson said, “We hope to have children soon.” Willa also asked them where they were from, to which both replied, Detroit, Michigan.
Then passed another awkward silence, one spent nibbling the pilot bread and pretending grave contemplation.
Mrs. Wilson finally broke their stalemate. “You’ve been married for how long, then?”
Willa, unaccustomed to fielding questions about her marriage, looked to Mrs. Axelsson. When, after a moment, the younger woman did not answer, Willa let out a yelp, and then covered her blushing cheeks. “I’m not used to being a wife,” she said. “Perhaps that’s obvious. But let’s see, Theodulf and I married March the sixth. So, not quite two months.”
“Thirty years for me,” Mrs. Wilson announced.
“And just three for me and John.” Mrs. Axelsson caught and corrected herself. “Mr. Axelsson, I mean.” She looked away, as if she’d committed a terrific gaffe.
Mrs. Wilson harrumphed, then drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “Brandt, you said before? Your maiden name?”
Willa nodded.
“A bohunk, then?”
“My father, yes.”
“Bohunks are, what, mostly Catholic?”
“My father was raised Protestant but didn’t practice any religion by the time I was born.”
Mrs. Wilson nodded knowingly. “So, you converted to Catholicism before your nuptials?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Now the dowager spread her hands across the table and leaned toward Willa. “This is what I meant about consummating our friendship.” She appeared exhausted by the prospect but persisted. “I reckon Mr. Sauer will want a passel of kids. Catholic men usually do. Same with Catholic women, for that matter.”
Mrs. Axelsson leaned in and whispered, “He seems unsuited for you, from the vantage of age. He’s old to enough to be your father.”
So obvious was the younger woman’s faux pas that Mrs. Wilson stepped in immediately. “You were married in the Church, then?”
Willa took a moment to collect herself. “Sacred Heart. Theodulf and the Sauer family are fast friends with Father Richter—”
“Bishop Richter, you mean?”
Willa nodded. “He presided.”
Mrs. Wilson was gaining confidence. She pressed on. “Your father left the church . . . why?”
“He was a scientist. A meteorologist.”
“A man can’t be a meteorologist and a man of God at the same time?”
“In my experience, the two vocations aren’t especially compatible.”
“You’re a scientist, too, then?” Mrs. Wilson asked this condescendingly, even solicited Mrs. Axelsson to join in her mocking chuckle.
“In fact, I am. I studied astronomy at Radcliffe College.”
“And that makes you Leonardo da Vinci?” At this, Mrs. Wilson apparently had had enough. She reached into her reticule and removed from it a small copper flask, which she uncapped and drank from, lifting the hem of her apron to wipe her lips after.
Willa wouldn’t have been more surprised if she’d pulled a pet monkey from that purse, and her expression must have betrayed this. Mrs. Axelsson was less surprised—perhaps she’d seen it before?—but still sat up straighter.
“Here’s the truth, Mrs. Sauer: We’ve only the three of us to entertain each other. This sip of brandy? It makes me a more tolerable person. For that matter, it makes the two of you more tolerable.”
“Theodulf will not allow it,” Willa whispered.
At this, Mrs. Wilson chortled. “He might have a say about what happens in his house, at this table. But after that?” She took another sip but did not offer it around. “Why, after that, Theodulf has about as much providence over me as I do over him.” She put the flask back in the bottom of her reticule.
Mrs. Axelsson appeared delighted, which in turn brought some joy to Willa, who couldn’t help but smile.
Well satisfied, Mrs. Wilson said, “You seem a sweet girl, Willa Sauer. We’ll get along just fine, provided you resist that holier-than-thou attitude about your days at Radcliffe College.”
Willa blushed.
“There’s no need of embarrassment. It’s simply true we’re all three equal here. That’s important. Agreed?”
Willa nodded. So did Mrs. Axelsson.
“Good. Now, tell me, how’s your marriage bed?”
* * *
If, on the dock, Willa believed the other wives would be her adversaries, and if she brought that belief into her own kitchen and sat through the first frosty moments of their togetherness, and if the first hour of knowing them left Willa with a wider chasm between herself and happiness, then the next hour proved a bridge spanning it.
