T. Boyle - San Miguel

“I don’t know what to say. I’m delighted. Truly delighted.” She was soaring suddenly, so elated she hardly noticed his embarrassment as he dropped the hand to his side, rebuffed, but then wives didn’t conclude bargains, husbands did. “It’s just — when will you be coming out to take over?”

“Oh, I won’t be coming out. I don’t think your husband would stand for it, do you? No, no, you misunderstand me: I’m to be a silent partner only.”

“Silent?” she echoed, and she couldn’t hide her disappointment.

“Yes,” he said, “in name only.” And here was that look again: was he mocking her, was that it? Was he intentionally trying to drive a stake through her, torture her, bring her crashing to earth like one of Ord’s wing-shot eagles? “Don’t worry,” he said, “you can plan on staying as long as you like.”

And then they were all gone and the household went back to normal. The wool — a bumper crop of it, or so Will claimed — was stored in the barn, safe in the overstuffed canvas sacks, awaiting the completion of the final section of the road and the return of Charlie Curner’s schooner, promised vaguely for two or three weeks on. Ida put away the big stewpot and went back to setting the table for six, baking every third day instead of every morning. They saw the last of the tortillas, as if anyone had wanted them in the first place — tasteless scorched things as dull as the unleavened corn mush they were shaped from. Evenings were tranquil. No more watching Will, Nichols and Mills sit around jawboning at one another, no more pretense or show. They went back to the Ouija board, to whist, muggins, euchre, to the long silences and the quiet ticking of the stove.

The only thing that was off was the weather. It had held for the shearing, and she thanked God for that, but as soon as the schooner pulled out of the harbor it turned dismal, days of continuous rain giving way to a fog so opaque you couldn’t see ten feet ahead of you. When she went out to scatter feed for the chickens, one of the few tasks she actually enjoyed, she had to wait till they emerged from nothingness like the ghosts of chickens, which, she supposed, was what each of them would become in time, their eggs stripped from them, then their feathers and the sweet meat that clung to the bone — pecking ghosts, squawking dismally in the ether of another world. Ida got lost on the way to the spring, which couldn’t have been more than three hundred yards away, just above the spot where the road began to dip down into the canyon. The men went off to work the road and as soon as they stepped from the front porch they vanished like coins dropped into a well. Just finding the W.C. was a trial, and she trained herself to keep her eyes on the ground so as to pick out the thin muddy ribbon of a path leading away from the back steps and across the yard, through the gate and into the field where eventually the blistered vertical plane of the latrine’s door would loom into view. If your luck held. Two or three times, in the urgency of her need, she’d found herself lost in a damp dripping void, nothing visible but her skirts and shoes and a pulp of slick dark vegetation crushed beneath her feet.

On this particular morning — it was the first of March, two months into her exile — she felt well enough to help Ida clean up after breakfast, standing at the counter and drying the plates as Ida fished them from the dishwater. She put them back in the cupboard as neatly as she could, though what she really wanted was to smash them on the floor, but that wouldn’t have been practical, not unless they were going to set up a potter’s wheel and start from scratch. The fact was that she’d all but given up on her own crockery coming now. It was lost somewhere, lost in transit — or in Charlie Curner’s hold. She didn’t want to think of him leaving it behind on the pier or pitching it overboard in a heavy sea. She could picture the box, the newspaper with which she’d wrapped each plate, each cup and saucer and the gravy boat and all the rest, in order to protect them from rough handling, but in the end, she supposed, it hadn’t really mattered. What mattered was this: Ida handed her a dish, one of these dishes, chipped and cracked and ugly, and she wiped it dry and set it atop the others. It was something to do. A sop to the boredom. As they worked, Ida did most of the talking, chattering away about anything that came into her head, but it was pleasant enough, calming, the whole house hushed and peaceful in the grip of the fog. Afterward, she sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, basking in the warmth of the stove, then took a thumbed-over copy of Harper’s Bazaar, which she’d already read twice through, and went out the back door to the W.C.

She wasn’t really paying attention, thinking about Edith, how she was falling behind in the lessons they’d set out for her — reading mostly, in literature and history both, but some maths and sciences too and the exercises in the French text the teacher at the school in Santa Barbara had thrust on her the week before they’d left — because she lacked discipline and her mother hadn’t been able to summon the energy to bear down on her, for which her mother was feeling guilty. Before she knew it, she’d lost the path, one clump of crushed weed looking much like the next and a gray impenetrable cocoon of fog spun all around her. There were no landmarks. The house was gone. The fences. The field. Green Mountain. She kept on, watching her feet, her steps shuffling and cautious. She could step in a hole, turn an ankle, break a leg, and where was the blessed thing? It was in this direction, wasn’t it? But no, it couldn’t have been because she would have caught the odor of it by now, the latrine, the stink-hole, and why couldn’t she have a flush toilet like everybody else in the world? A bathroom, a door that locked behind you, tile on the floor and a sink to wash up after? She paused to sniff the air, but the fog was like a wet rag pressed to her face and all she could smell was the familiar odor of rot drifting up from the shoreline. Then she stopped altogether. Stood still. Listened. There was nothing, no sound at all, not even the droning of the seals.

She didn’t know how long she’d been wandering, the magazine clutched in a tight roll in one hand, her insides churning, when she gave up. It was like that night in the bedroom, the night of the lamb, when finally she’d found the chamber pot, but there was no pot here, no toilet, nothing but dirt and weed and the fog that was strangling her till she found herself beginning to cough before she was even conscious of it. Miserable, shamed, she lifted her skirts, squatted there in the void like some barnyard animal and released her bowels.

Nothing but grass to clean herself with. Everything wet, cold, filthy. She tore a page from the magazine, but that was filthy too, the touch of it on her skin, on her privates, like an electric shock. She stood, gathered herself. How had she come to this, this humiliation, this barbarity? Was this what was visited on the dying, this tearing away from the life lived and worth living? This deracination? And here was her epitaph: Marantha Scott Waters, 1850–18—? Deracinated.

She was cold. She coughed, kept on coughing, a spasm sweeping over her so immediately, so desperately, she didn’t have time to brace herself, and then the phlegm was coming up inside her and where was she to spit it? On the ground. In the dirt. And why not? She’d paid ten thousand dollars for the privilege, hadn’t she?

She spat, wiped her lips on the back of her hand. She couldn’t catch her breath. The coughing wouldn’t stop, each cough crashing down atop the next like bricks falling from a cliff. Then she was down on her knees in the wet, pounding at her breastbone, and what had Dr. Erringer told her? That phthisics like her (he wouldn’t call his patients consumptives, never, because the term gave too much agency to the disease) could more often than not expect a complete cure simply from living quietly, exercising moderately and above all taking in the untainted air of the countryside. Yes, and where was he now? Sitting by the fire in his offices, his feet propped up on an embroidered footstool, the wainscoting glowing behind him, anything he could possibly want just a tap of the bell away, a sandwich, a steak, hot cider, a nurse to come in and ease the tension in his shoulders after a long day of dismissing one patient after another with smiles and promises and the medicines that did nothing but make you feel as if you were dead already. Morphia. Morpheus. Sleep and Poetry.