T. Boyle - San Miguel

The door pushed slowly open and there he was, Will, standing in the doorframe peering in at her, his look poised between the elation she knew must have been surging through him and the duty he felt toward her. The duty to frown and commiserate and fold his big busy hands up in front of him as if he didn’t know what to do with them. “Is it bad?” he said, and he took a step forward, as if to come to her, but she didn’t want him, not yet.

She spoke without lifting her head. “We’re going to have to do the washing,” she said, her voice toneless and rasping, the voice of a woman shrinking into the grip of her own skin as if it were no more than a sack, a coat. “I hope you understand that. Right off. First thing.”

“Yes,” he said, snatching a look at her face before his eyes went to the wall, the window, anyplace but the space she occupied, “yes, of course. You’re right.” He was a big man, six feet tall and well over two hundred pounds, solid, powerful, her man, her strength, and she felt sorry for him in that moment, sorry she couldn’t share in his enthusiasm, but one thought only was going through her head: They’d spent ten thousand dollars for this ? The last ten thousand dollars she had to her name? What if things didn’t work out, what if the boat didn’t come, or what if it did and then went aground and wrecked under the load of the shorn wool that was the profit of the place? Then what would they do? Kill sheep and wear their skins and go around hooting like the Indians who’d given up on this lump of rock all those eons ago, who’d died of misery and want for all she knew?

“It’s all right,” he said, more softly now, and his eyes came back to settle on her. “We’ll have it all washed and dried out before bedtime, you’ll see.”

She didn’t respond for a long moment. “Send Ida up,” she said finally. “And Edith. Where’s Edith?”

* * *

And then everything shifted as if she’d turned the page of a book. Will eased the door shut. She heard his tread on the stairs, heard Ida’s voice, Edith’s. She sat up, setting both feet squarely on the floor and the floor didn’t move because it wasn’t the deck of a boat, everything fixed and solid now, this mineral world, this place where she lived. She took a tentative breath and held it, and in the next moment the weight was gone from her chest and she was breathing freely, thinking of all the things that needed doing, the wash, the clothes, the furniture, unpacking. She felt ashamed of herself. So what if the place was dirty? That was a temporary condition. It could be cleaned. Made presentable. Comfortable, even. Anyplace could.

She stood. Brushed at her skirt to smooth it down. And then she was out the door and in the upper hall, heat rising to her from the iron stove below and the damp lingering reek of sheep driven down by the scent of the coffee Ida was brewing on the kitchen stove, God bless her. She went to the kitchen first. Ida, a smear of something darkening one cheek — ash, grease? — gave her a frantic look. “I was just making up a tray for you — coffee, with two lumps, the way you like it, and buttered toast.”

“Don’t trouble yourself,” she said, “you’ve got enough to do, I can see that. I’ll take it here.”

“Here?”

There was a hutch in the far corner, the glass in the upper portion cracked, its paint (olive and cream, with dabs of yellow to represent the blooms of the flower pattern on the cupboard doors) stripped to the bare wood in random patches as if it had been gouged with a sharp implement or maybe even gnawed. An oilcloth-covered table with two chairs stood beside the back door, just beneath the window. On the wall behind it, running from the door to the stove, there were two lines of hooks, and from the hooks, blackened pans hung suspended. Along with a cleaver. A boning knife. What looked to be some sort of flail — or no, it was a flour mill. And beside that, in the corner where the stovepipe ran up into the unfinished eaves, a homemade calendar fastened to the wall with a single nail, its leaves curling at the edges. She moved closer, squinted her eyes. The calendar showed the month of March, 1886, almost two years ago, and she saw that one of the dates had been circled in black, the tenth.

“Ma’am?” Ida had lifted the tray from the counter and was holding it out before her in offering.

“Set it on the table, would you?”

She went up to the calendar, ran a finger over the neat circle of ink. Mrs. Mills. It must have been Mrs. Mills who’d marked the date as special, and what was it, an anniversary? A birthday? She’d met the woman only once, in the house at Santa Barbara, and she remembered her as graceless and plain, her clothes out of fashion and her hair gone gray, a woman not much older than herself who’d spent the better part of seventeen years on this island, in this house. Who’d sat at this table and laid out the days and months in a neat grid, who’d selected Wednesday the tenth and marked it in anticipation of an event that was long past now. History. Everything was history.

“Do you miss it?” Marantha had asked her. “The island? After so much time spent there, I mean?” It had taken the woman a moment, as if the thought had never occurred to her. Then she leaned back in the chair — the men were out of earshot, on the front porch, perched on the railing and jawing away like long-lost brothers, the afternoon grand, sun striping the carpet and carriages sailing by on the street as if they were boats on a stream — and let out a long sighing breath. “It does get lonesome out there, I’ll say that. But the quiet does you good. You don’t have all the dirt and noise of the city. The criminal population. Cheats, lawyers. Of course, my boys — Jack and William — was eager to get out. No females out there, you see?”

Seventeen years. Mrs. Mills. Call me Irene .

She didn’t sit — she felt full of energy suddenly, as if she were somehow in competition with the absent woman, a housewife herself, a farmwife, at least for the time being. Instead, she ate standing up, leaning over the table to sip from the cup and pick the toast up off a cracked plate she’d never laid eyes on before. One of Mrs. Mills’, no doubt. One of the sheepmen’s. She studied the unfamiliar cup in her hand, paused to chew, swallow. A quick image of Charlie Curner flitted through her head, his boat riding the waves and the mainland looming up on him. “Ida,” she said after a moment, “have you seen the crate with the dishes?”

“They must be in the yard yet. Or the front room.” Ida had already been out back, at the cistern, and the big laundry pot had been set to boil atop the stove. The sheets would go there, if anyone could find the soap they’d brought, and the bed curtains and the rest, and Will would have to string up a length of rope for a clothesline, or did they already have one here? They must have. Even sheepmen, even Jimmie, had to have washed their clothes, if only to keep them from rotting away to rags.

“Well, wouldn’t it be a good idea to have them brought back here so they can be sorted and put on the shelves? We can’t be expected to eat off a bare table, or, or”—she held up the cracked plate—“this rubbish.”

“I don’t know, ma’am, but there’s an awful load of boxes out there, just a jumble of things the men have gone and dropped down without bothering even to see what they are. I can’t make hide nor hair of them.”

“But I clearly labeled them — you saw me.”

Ida just shrugged. This was hard on her, she could see that. Everything was in chaos and there were a thousand things to do, not the least of which was to prepare the meal, the holiday meal, and here was the bird itself — how could she have missed it? — laid out on the counter beside the iron sink, neatly gutted and plucked, just as if it had come from the butcher.