Under Water, page 10
She filled out every line, explaining that the baby was reported to have died over one hundred years ago, that he was found on Iris’s property, that she had paid to have him interred at a local cemetery, and had sent DNA but had no idea to whom he might be related. She wanted all the information on him possible. She enclosed the one-hundred-dollar fee, waffling about a toxicology report. Why would anyone need to poison a newborn? They died so easily.
When Benny came home from walking Freddy, she told him about sending the check. All he said was, “What’s for dinner? Not chicken again!”
“If you wanted something special, you could have started it.”
Benny turned to leave the room. For a moment, as he pressed his hand to his chest, he looked ill, neglected, like an old man with no one to care for him. And then Iris blinked, and he was just Benny again, healthy and young-looking for his age and his medical history.
Good. For a moment, it seemed he was about to have another of his anxiety spells.
He came back to her a moment later. “Let’s start the evening over. I was lonesome for you today. I was here with the contractors, who, though you haven’t asked, have finished repairing the back wall. And you were off doing I don’t know what.”
“Didn’t Ms. Hartnup have time for you?” Where did that come from?
“Aw, don’t be silly,” he said, reaching for her hand and pulling her to him. “Did you spend the day by yourself?” He kissed the top of her head in the part of the gray hair he’d admired—and that she feared was getting thin. “How about we just have salad with the leftover chicken…”
She turned, angry, breaking his hold. “You don’t listen to me, but I listen to you. You just said you were sick of chicken.”
“I was kidding. You know I love chicken. Why don’t we open a bottle of wine and eat out on the wall by the pond?”
“The pond?” Iris was surprised and a bit ashamed. She’d turned his olive branch—or drumstick—into a possible fight and he’d been the bigger person, refusing to be triggered.
“Yeah, time to reclaim it as ours.” He embraced her again and she leaned her cheek, hot with a blush of shame, against his chest.
Ours. Not the baby’s. How would Benny have handled things if I’d buried my little Jack by the pond?
Maybe it was better she’d paid for a place to visit, private, away from the house, rather than have Benny interrupt every time she went out the back door, asking, “Where are you going?” He always knew damn well.
And the beautiful old cemetery chosen was certainly better than the cremated remains sitting in an urn on the dining room mantel. Or Jack being a box of ashes stored in the attic, near forgotten. But still, either way, there would still be something.
Of her, their own baby, nothing remained. Benny had seen to that.
She broke away from him, loath to escalate things and further ruin the day. Bending over the shelves of their tiny temporary fridge, she asked, “How about I make the chicken into salad the way you like? Mexican flavors?” She pulled out the chicken, the remainder of a red onion, mayonnaise, and celery.
Benny grinned. “Yeah, wow, I really like that. Shame we can’t get good tortillas around here.”
For a moment, he looked almost as he did when she’d met him. Minus the bell bottoms and long hair. Minus almost all the hair, in fact.
Iris began to chop the vegetables but stopped, knife raised. “Maybe we could take lunch over to the churchyard where I buried him?”
“Him? The body from the pond? That would be creepy.” He sat at the table and scrolled through his phone. “Not like it’s our kid.”
“It” again? She chopped with greater force. Benny didn’t seem to realize why little Jack’s death—his burial site—was so important to her. Why didn’t—why doesn’t—he ever talk about our kid?
She had been the one who’d carried their baby, the one who’d gone through labor. He’d been out calling family, having coffee, abandoning her when she most needed him, leaving it to the doctor to tell her what they hadn’t had: a little girl.
“So, did you spend the day alone?”
Iris took a deep breath before answering. “I was in the library, looking for more history on the area, maybe even the story of our house. That young woman we met—the one who came over after we found the baby—was there. She’s not a cozy mystery writer or anything…” Iris paused for effect and to stir in the mayonnaise. “She wants to do a paper on our house and the baby in the pond. She offered to help me do research. I told her we wouldn’t give anyone else any information we had before we let her write it up.” She added taco seasoning and some oregano to the chicken salad, squeezed half a lime on top, and plopped the Tupperware container down on the table hard enough for a dollop of yellow-stained mayo to spatter. “I told her you and I were always partial to students. You want some greens with that?”
Benny looked up at her, his mouth slightly agape. “What about Jessica?”
“Jessica? Ben, I thought you’d be happier having someone academic involved, a real expert on the area. Someone with facts about history and cultural anthropology. You could really be proud of that, right? Imagine calling and telling everyone back home…”
“There is no back home, Iris. Not anymore.” Benny pushed the chicken salad to the side of the table. “You moved us here, where we didn’t know a soul. I talk to the workmen, because someone’s got to watch over them and make sure things are going right. But Jessica Hartnup’s the first friend I’ve had in years. The only person to talk to about real stuff…”
The only person you to talk to? Iris cut a lemon in half. A tiny abrasion on her finger, one she hadn’t realized she had, stung with the juice. And what’s “real stuff”?
“You’re always wrapped up in…”
“The student’s name is Charlotte in case she drops over.” Iris went back to the refrigerator. “I think you should have a bit of arugula and tomato. I’ll dress them with lemon juice. Most dressing is too high in sodium. Not good when you get old.” She put the salad together and set the plate in front of him.
Benny sighed and spooned out mayonnaise-y chicken salad on top of the greens.
Fury was building within Iris, cutting off her breath, a band about her chest. She wheeled about, a pitcher of water in her hand, took two steps and crash! Only the handle remained in her hand. She’d banged the pitcher against the counter’s edge and shattered it. “Oh, Benny!” She burst into tears. “What the fuck is the matter with me?”
He rose so suddenly that his chair clattered to the floor and came to embrace her, murmuring, “Shh, shh, love. I know. I know.”
Aoife
1862
“My Lettie’s sadness comes not just from losing her Sary but from the many times she lost a baby. She longs to be a mother.” Thomas sighed and blew his nose into a bright red scrap of cloth he used as a handkerchief. “A child might tether her to sanity.”
Aoife sat silent for a while. After all, what was there to say to him? How could any gesture of kindness or friendship help such grieving?
“If she but had women friends or attachments in the town and had not ceased doing her work, her mind might have been eased,” Thomas said. He sat across from Aoife, their silence making the tick-tock of the parlor’s mantel clock that much louder. She regretted her diligence in winding it, for it seemed to make the slow passage of time more burdensome.
Until this moment, she’d been proud of that mantel clock, French with bits of inlaid malachite and a lovely chime. She had loved to wind it, as her mother would have, she who never had a timepiece of her own. But now, as they sat together, morbid thoughts crept into her mind to dart about, muddling her feelings.
Time is king. The past forms the present, as the child forms the man.
In Ireland, with no timepieces, they’d relied on the sun and the crowing of the rooster. The only tick, tick, tick in the cottage came from the beetles infesting the ancient oak timbers above Aoife’s straw bed. Her widowed great-grandmother had shared that bed with her. With that old woman’s tales, the beetles’ ticking made her heart clench up with fear.
Thomas’s fear for Lettie’s changing sanity seemed to burrow into Aoife’s being. She felt the same as when she was a small child, alone in bed with that daft old woman.
“You hear that? You hear that?” the toothless crone would whisper, deep in the dark of night. Her words were mushy soft as the oats soaking for the morning porridge. “Sure ’tis the omen of my death, child.”
“No, no, ’tis not!” Aoife had muffled her frightened cries with the blanket covering the two of them. She was careful not to waken her dadai from her parents’ nearby bed, where he lay drunk with fatigue and the stinking barley poitín he made. He’d be as like to wallop her as to hit the old woman.
“Yes, ’tis. I did hear it at night before each of your baby brothers and sisters died. Sometimes I hear them round the door, weeping and begging to come back in.” The old woman turned toward Aoife. “Listen!”
Aoife crammed her fist between her teeth to quiet the whimpering squeezed from her tight-closed throat.
“You hear them? Do you? Good thing I am so old and ready to go. Mayhap death has had enough with the young and will take me now. Mayhap, having had all the other little ones, he will pass you by. But mayhap not.” She shrugged and pulled the blanket up over her mouth. Her breathing settled into snores.
Back so long ago and far away, Aoife had lain in the dark, her eyes searching the lightless room as the deathwatch beetles’ steady click kept her awake all night.
Tonight, I will cram an old stocking within the works of that monstrous clock and still them, or I’ll get no sleep at all.
Thomas still had not said a word.
Aoife broke the silence. “Lettie is haunted, Thomas, is what I would say.” She pursed her mouth to think and then nodded as a memory came to her. “There might be the fixing of that. One day serving Mother Sprigett and her friends at whist, I heard of a woman who could summon the dead. Do you think she could help? Mayhap by reaching her Sary who, as she loved her sister, would say that Lettie should let her go and be at peace, as mourning too greatly keep the dead from rest.”
Thomas’s face passed through many changes, as if he thought of and then rejected ways to answer Aoife. At last, he shook his head. “I fear dealing with the uncanny would only worsen her condition.”
She said no more about the medium, feeling Thomas was wrong, for someone like Lettie had to be bedeviled by the spirits of her sister or of the babies she’d lost. Aoife’s own levelheaded mother had been. “Is there anything to cheer her? Sweetmeats from the confectionery?”
Thomas shook his head again. “She eats so little. I fear that any wind would blow her away.”
Living alone might be a good bit of Lettie’s sadness, and Aoife’s heart wanted to say, Go, Thomas, be with her now. What benefit shall property be if you have no one to share it? Solitude might drive her mad.
Would that not be a kindness? To release Thomas from his vow to protect herself and the farm. But that kindness would betray William. He had entrusted her with the care of herself, his wife, and his property, to keep all safe for his return home. “Only one thing would do, then. Bring her here whilst the weather is fair. The countryside and the pleasant air might heal her disordered mind.”
Thomas’s eyes widened with surprise. “To your house?”
Aoife blushed. That had not occurred to her. That was something she did not want. “A bed could be put in the barn loft, and she would be welcome to whatever I cook for you. That way, she would no longer be alone. You could watch over her.”
Thomas
1862
The second cutting was almost complete. The hay lay spread across the wide field. The sun beat down in a cloudless sky—promising the crop was not likely to be ruined—and the barn was full of the first cutting for their own livestock, the cows and oxen, which would later be grazing anyway. This richer hay needed to dry well, as it was to be sold in the city for the municipal horses—and if the weather held and they got a third cutting, it would go to the cavalry and racetracks, should any be buying. The Negro grooms and stall muckers had stood humbly shuffling, caps in hand, and convinced the officials that Thomas had the best and, more importantly, the cheapest, feed to be found. They were still proud of him, proud of his learning and his rising to prospective rural landowner. And his love for Lettie, his devotion to her—difficult as she was—had only improved his status among the local women, who helped sway the opinions of their menfolk.
It was gracious of the missus to offer shelter to Lettie, and Thomas planned to broach the possibility with Lettie little by little unless she became so frankly mad that his hand should be forced.
That Lettie hated Aoife was a worry, but worse worry was the missus’s talk of mediums and séances for reaching the dead. Truth be told, if steering clear of William’s wife by sheltering in the barn meant protection given to Lettie’s mind, that would be a good thing. She could have kittens to dote upon, as the barn cat was near ready to deliver, and he himself could return many times in the day to make sure she was safe.
And with permission, Thomas could, in his spare time, throw up a lean-to against the back of the house and a small stove to keep it warm. They could winter over, at least until Mr. William returned. But Lettie had to live until he could bring her to the farm. She had to eat.
Honey. Lettie had been very fond of honey. There was a hive at the edge of the field of clover planted for the cattle. It mightn’t please her as well as honey from the South, but the clover and wildflowers on which the bees foraged should make a tasty sweet to put atop her toast. He had meant to get it for the missus, for baking her sweet soda bread.
How poorly Lettie had looked the last he saw her! Perhaps I could induce her to take it by the spoonful, like medicine. He scratched his whiskery chin and thought, I’d best shave before I visit her as she dislikes a beard and, should she let me near her, could rub her skin raw. I’ll ask the missus for a jug of heated water.
The very hope of lying with Lettie was something he had to tamp down.
“Thomas!” Aoife called from the barnyard. “I would go to the post office to see if William has written again. Is Maisy fit to carry me?”
It had been a while since word from her husband had come. Thomas feared that Mr. William’s mother had somehow, through the interference of her dead husband’s friends, intercepted arriving letters, perhaps diverting them to herself. He said nothing to Aoife about his suspicions, fearing a role in troublemaking and so more gossip.
Gossip could lead to more visits from Mother Sprigett.
Only a small segment of the field remained uncut. He left the mare standing, still hitched to the hay mower, and made his way to meet the missus.
“Would you prefer I leave the last bit be? I can bring Maisy and plow to the barn and hitch her to the cart.” He wiped his brow on the hem of his shirt.
Aoife looked fretfully toward the horse, who stood in mid-furrow, head hanging. She twisted her hands in her apron. “I apologize, Thomas. ’Tis womanish of me to put my desire for news of William ahead of the farm work, and poor Maisy looks near played out.” She sniffed loudly with her eyes downcast.
He suppressed a smile. She played on his sympathies, but it had been overlong since he’d had a letter to read her. “I would go for you if I could, since it’s not far to walk if one’s fast enough. Faster than Maisy goes unless you whip her up. I have seen you too softhearted to do so.”
She turned her eyes up to the sky and sighed. “Best to get the hay cut.”
“When the field is cleared—even before the evening meal—I’ll go into town. There is a man who will sell me the newspaper cheaply, once he has read it.”
“And you will look on the lists of those wounded and killed for the name William Sprigett and report back to me?”
Thomas nodded. “I’ll do so, and better, bring the sheets back to read with you, though I’ve heard that those with influence, like the Sprigetts, will have news of their soldiers personally delivered. They would have no need to search through the newspaper lists. Would she not even be kind enough to let you know if Mr. William were injured?” He would never suggest the word killed.
Aoife’s lips twisted wryly. “Mother Sprigett is not noted for her kindness, least of all to myself. Please, finish the fieldwork. Have no fear—my worry will still be with me when you finish.”
“I will, missus. And will go to the town afterward.” He smiled. “I planned to go to the bee tree today, but your concern is far more important. The honey would be sweet, but tears of worry might turn your cooking.”
Aoife put her hand atop his. “You would raid a wild hive for me? Risk their angry stings? No, I would not have that. I have some stored now and over the winter I’ll weave skeps as my granny did, and come spring, will lure a swarm to settle with us.” She turned to go back to the kitchen but stopped midway. “And when we have our own honey, we shall sell that, too, with plenty over for us and for your Lettie.”
Chapter 11
The contractor was ripping out the kitchen’s dark and decrepit homemade cabinets, the 1970s range, and the rusty dishwasher Iris had never used, fearing that, if she opened it, she’d find dead mice and swarming ants, just as there had been under the 1970s range. Despite the heat, Iris wanted out of the house.
In the early afternoon, she walked Freddy down the long southern arm of the driveway and stood waiting in the sun as several cars passed, and it was safe to step out along the verge to the mailbox. The heat and the moisture-saturated air made it hard to breathe.
An official envelope from the county coroner was stuffed inside the box. The only other mail was flyers from the supermarkets and high-end catalogs, which had followed them, like unshakable imprinted ducklings, all the way from the Bay Area.
Walking back to the house from the mailbox, anxiously clutching the mail against her chest, Iris decided to wait for Charlotte before opening the autopsy report. Failing to disclose the DNA results made her feel a bit guilty, and uncertain as to why she’d held the information so close to her chest.
