Peter Geye - The Lighthouse Road

"Then your heart is full of love. If it is full of love, it is full of peace."

"All I'm full of right now is apple wine and pork chops. That's enough for me."

Sargent let a knowing smile play across his face.

Rose served the coffee and pudding and when dessert was finished they adjourned to the sitting room. Odd could tell from the bleary sheen of her eyes that Rebekah was tipsy. She'd had two full glasses of apple wine. Once that look would have set his heart to thumping, but now it filled him with dread. She'd behaved so far, but he knew how careless she'd become lately, knew she felt there was nothing left to lose. He knew also that there was nothing she loathed so much as pious folks.

"I hope that meal pleased you, Rebekah," Rose said.

"You are a wonderful cook. A wonderful hostess."

Sargent said, "Mother takes it to heart if her dinner guests don't leave with a bellyache."

Rose put her hand on Sargent's arm. "Rebekah's belly is home to a child of God, there's no ache in the world capable of upsetting her."

Rebekah flashed a false smile. "No ache in the world," she sang.

"Rebekah," Odd said.

Rebekah turned to Sargent's wife. "My belly aches all the time. I feel awful."

Odd leaned forward.

Rebekah continued, "My back aches. I can't sleep. I—"

"You bear those things so your child needn't," Rose interrupted. "Put those cares from your mind."

"Put them from my mind," Rebekah repeated. She sat back in the overstuffed chair, wrapped her hands around her abdomen.

"Besides the love of God, the love of a child is life's greatest reward, Rebekah," Sargent said.

Odd buried his face in his hands.

Rebekah looked up at Sargent. "There's no reward in this life," she said. She turned slowly to Rose. "I ought to envy you. I know that. But it's pity I feel."

"Rebekah!" Odd shot from his seat on the davenport. "Enough!" He turned to Sargent, turned just as quickly to Rose. "I beg your pardon. I don't know what's come over her."

Rebekah stood unsteadily. "You're lucky. . "

"Rebekah!" Odd repeated. He took her forcefully by the arm. "Don't say another word."

He walked her to the front door and took her coat from the rack. He put it over her shoulders and opened the door and pushed her outside. When he turned around Harald and his wife stood in the foyer, their faces full of sympathy.

Odd looked at the floor. "I wish there was something I could say."

"Nonsense," Rose said. "When a woman is with child she says things she doesn't mean. It can be a very difficult time."

"Odd," Sargent said. He moved toward him, put his hands up, and shrugged. "Mother's right. Rebekah is alone in a strange place. She must be anxious about the child. Go home with her. Read the Bible with her. Stand by her without malice or fear of your own. That is your duty now."

Odd pulled his coat over his shoulders. " Thank you, Mister Sar

gent. I will take care of her." To Sargent's wife he said, "Missus Sargent, I apologize for Rebekah's foolishness. Don't matter how out of sorts she is, she oughtn't behave that way. It's me she pities, not you. I know that. Me and her own self. I'd explain if I could, but I can't. Not even one of them Bible writers could explain it."

Odd walked out with his head slung low. When he got to the end of the Sargents' walkway he turned to look back at their home. From the warm light of the foyer he saw both of them silhouetted in the window, and he knew that no such scene would ever play in his life.

T he wait for the trolley on a Sunday evening was intolerable. Odd and Rebekah stood under a grocer's awning on Superior Street in an awful silence. Odd's anger had given way to resignation while Rebekah's sharpness turned dull. He could no more look in her direction than find words to express his sadness. By the time the streetcar emerged Rebekah was nearly sleeping on her feet. Odd took her by the arm and led her onboard.

They still hadn't spoken as they entered their brownstone half an hour later. Odd would normally have taken her coat off, hung it up, and asked her if she'd like a drink or for him to draw her a bath. Instead he kicked his boots into the small foyer closet and walked to the sitting room window. He heard Rebekah remove her own boots and walk slowly to the davenport. Odd kept his back to her, kept his eyes fixed on the darkness.

"All those prayers and talk of the Bible," she said. It was as though she expected Odd's complicity, as though she hadn't embarrassed him.

"I guess their decency undid you," Odd said.

"Decency? Ha!"

"Because they believe in something bigger than themselves you write them off? I suppose all the lies you've lived, all the shit you ate, that's better?"

"Don't forget, darling, you're right here with me, living the biggest lie of them all."

He thought to say, But I want to change. I see our chance. Instead he only set his jaw.

Some time passed before Rebekah said, "I can't understand how it's come to this. For all my life I can't."

Odd said nothing. Since Christmas he'd said all there was to say. He'd said it all twice.

Some more time passed before she continued, "I thought of getting an abortion. I went all the way to his office before I lost my nerve. Now it's too late."

An automobile rounded the corner outside, its headlamps sweeping past their window, filling the room for a moment before leaving it in darkness again. He heard a match strike the box and Rebekah light a cigarette. He heard her exhale.

"I wrote letters to Hosea."

"The hell you say?" Odd said, spinning around.

"I told him about us. About being pregnant."

"Goddamnit, Rebekah."

She took a long drag from her cigarette. "I asked him if I could ever come back."

He turned his good eye toward her, flashed a gaze so fierce it made her shudder.

"Don't look at me like that," she said.

Now he spoke with his teeth clenched, "Does he know where we are?"

"No."

"When did you last write him?"

"A month ago. Maybe."

He ran his hands through his hair. He felt dizzy with rage. He looked at her without blinking until she stood and started for the bedroom. He spoke to her back: "I forbid you to ever write him again. This is our new life here. Do you understand? This is our life and it has nothing to do with what we left behind."

She stopped and turned and looked at him, thought to say more, but turned again without saying a word.

T here were secrets cankering at Grimm's.

One of Hosea's strictest rules was that no one — not Odd, not Rebekah, not any visitor— enter his offices on the second floor of the apothecary without his accompanying them. He kept the doors locked and carried the keys on a chain that hung from his belt loop. As a young boy Odd had been given the strap for merely testing the glass doorknob. He'd never been much curious about what was in those rooms, but something had gotten hold of him that spring. So Odd played sleuth.

Late one Saturday night, after he figured Hosea had left for the Shivering Timber, Odd crept out of his bedroom and went down to the second floor. He felt pure of heart but still his pulse quickened. At the bottom of the staircase he paused, tried to stay his quivering sight, and realized that one of the office doors was open. A swath of bright light fell on the hallway floor. Odd could hear voices.

He sat on the bottom step and looked again down the hallway. On his hands and knees he crawled halfway to the light.

"Good, now," he heard Hosea say. "Yes. Very good."