The weeks after Christmas were drudgery for Odd. The days came and went with little more than the small changes in Rebekah’s temper to mark them. It was a temper as bleak as the cast-iron sky.
In the middle of January Rebekah’s belly and breasts started to round. She was tired all the time and fell into a pattern of sleeping during the day and staying awake through the night. During those nights, alone in the world but for Odd’s snoring in the next room, she felt herself coming apart. As she paced the small apartment it began to seem she was chasing herself, that she had literally become two people: the one pacing — worried and weak and vacant — and the one she used to be, a shadow, trying to keep up. She knew she had to close the distance between herself and the shadow. How to do that, though, was entirely beyond her power of imagination.
Finally she went searching for an abortionist. When she found him in a rank office above a harborside warehouse, her misgivings met the squalor of his surgery and she knew enough to leave. But now she carried a new and cumbersome shame around during her insomniac nights. She’d seen plenty of the women in Gunflint lose their minds. She knew what it looked like. It looked like her. But she had enough wits remaining to want to fend it off.
So she did the unthinkable: She wrote Hosea. In all her life she’d never had reason to write a letter, though she had spent many of her days slotting mail into the townsfolks’ boxes behind the apothecary counter. She could see Hosea, standing there in his starched apron, the hat he’d worn every day for twenty-odd years. Was he getting along? Did he think of her? If he did, was it with fondness or that meanness she alone in Gunflint knew?
In the middle of the night she found one of the pencils Odd carried behind his ear. On the back of a brown paper sack, without salutation or date, in her childlike scrawl, Rebekah wrote: I was never who you said I was. But this is not me neither. I am having a baby. A baby. What has happened…
She folded the paper sack and hid it beneath the davenport cushion and continued her restless pacing.
The next morning, hours after Odd left for work, she went to the mercantile on Superior Street and bought envelopes, stationery, and half-a-dozen two-cent stamps. It was the first time she’d left the brownstone in days, and the cold came biting like a small dog on the way back up the hill.
In their apartment she hurried to the davenport, took the folded sack out, and placed it in the envelope. She addressed it the only way she knew how:
and placed the postage in the corner and put the envelope back under the davenport cushion. She hid the stationery and envelopes in one of her hatboxes and went to bed to try for sleep. When it did not come she dressed again and went back to the mercantile to drop the letter for delivery.
Each of the next five nights she wrote another letter to Hosea. They got longer as her confidence grew but never asked for or told much.
If she thought writing the letters would slow her unraveling, or appease her guilt for leaving Hosea, if she thought it would help her understand the bitter feelings she had for the unborn child, she was mistaken. Instead of finding solace she found further proof that there was no reckoning with this life of hers. The sleepless nights grew longer and longer, spilling into the mornings, when her guilt was worst. Until those mornings she had been able to separate the causes of that guilt — leaving Hosea, betraying Odd, abhorring the child — but now it became the only state of mind she possessed. Her guilt ravaged her, and she gave up any resistance.
Meanwhile Odd did his best. He still tried to woo her, brought her things to satisfy the cravings she announced randomly, still spoke to her gently and imploringly. But there was no hope in his plea. He knew better. When he took Rebekah to the Lyceum hoping the troupe might succeed where he failed, and when she became sick from the cloud of smoke in the theater, he decided his only hope was that the child — when he was finally born — would compel her to happiness.
So he got up each morning and took the trolley across town and found his relief in the long, philosophical days at Sargent’s. At night, after he and Rebekah shared their silent suppers, she would retire to her needlepoint and he to the Bible Sargent had given him at Christ mas. He read every night, not because he was becoming a believer but because any story was better than the one he was living.
It was around Saint Valentine’s Day that Odd came home with a dinner invitation from Sargent. Rebekah was sleeping on the davenport, her needlepoint fallen at her feet. He watched her for some time, remembering how he used to revel in her childlike ability to sleep at a moment’s notice, how he’d once loved watching the sleep come over her. What he saw now could hardly have been the same woman. She kept him awake at night, her pacing like she was some kind of caged animal.
She woke with a start to see him there, his hand on his chin.
“Odd,” she said. She sat up as though she’d been dreaming of fire.
“Hey, Rebekah. Didn’t mean to wake you. How you feeling?”
She rubbed her eyes, looked out the window. “You’re home early.”
“Harald gave me the afternoon off. He’s invited us to Sunday dinner. I told him we’d be there.”
“I can’t go to dinner—”
“Nonsense,” Odd interrupted. “You can and you will and we’re not going to hem and haw about it. This Sunday. You’ll behave yourself, too. These are good, upstanding folks. Put on a smile.”
“I don’t have anything to wear,” she protested.
“We’ll head downtown this afternoon and fix that. Now, go and get yourself together.” He looked at her fiercely. “Now, Rebekah. Up. Let’s go.”
Rebekah rose slowly, paused in front of Odd, and went to their bedroom. She came back out ten minutes later. Odd had not moved.
Sunday they had dinner at Harald Sargent’s home. Rebekah wore her new dress, sitting at Sargent’s bountiful table. Harald wore a heavy woolen suit and necktie, his wife, Rose, an equally heavy woolen dress.
Sargent, his eyes clenched shut, his hands clasped together, intoned the blessing. “Dear God, my savior and my light, with all my love I give thanks to thee. For the bounteous fare set upon this table, for the warmth of this home, for the love of my wife and sons, I give thanks to thee. For my wayward guests, may you show them the way to your heart, may you deliver their unborn child into a world of goodness and show him the way to your love and forgiveness. Yea! May you show us all your love and forgiveness. Amen.” Sargent opened his eyes and smiled at his table, his eyes serene where they’d always appeared set in stone before.
“Amen,” Rose said.
Odd and Rebekah both smiled demurely, seemed almost to blush in unison. “Smells good,” Odd said.
“Thank you, Odd. Help yourself,” Rose said. She handed him a plate of pork cutlets. “Harald insists on pork and gravy for Sunday dinner. I could make it in my sleep after all these years.” She turned to Rebekah, smiled. “A good Sunday dinner is about all it takes to please a man, that’s my free advice to you, young lady.” Here was a woman so cheerful and good-natured that Rebekah indeed felt like a young lady.
“Odd could eat bread and butter for Sunday dinner and not care a whit,” Rebekah said.
The mere sound of her voice buoyed Odd. He took her hand on the table and smiled.
Rose leaned toward Rebekah and said, “He leads you to believe that because he wishes to make your life easy.” She winked. “Don’t believe him, make him meat and gravy.”
“Bread and butter’s fine, but this here’s a right feast,” Odd said. “I thank you kindly, Missus Sargent.”
“Harald, pass Odd the creamed corn and hominy bread. Here’s a young man who knows how to please his hostess.”
After the pleasantries at the start of the meal the table settled into a formal silence interrupted only by polite requests for second helpings. By the time they finished with supper, dusk had settled with still more snow. Harald requested coffee to go with the pudding, and Rebekah joined Rose in the kitchen to help prepare it.
In the dining room Sargent took out his pipe and packed it. He poured each of them another glass of apple wine. Odd could see the bare branches of the apple trees through the dinning room windows.
“Rebekah was to see Doctor Crumb?”
“She was.”
“He’s the finest physician in all of Duluth. Educated at the University of Chicago.”
“Seemed a fine fellow.”
“He was a help?”
“Rebekah’s right private about that business.”
Sargent nodded. “Do you mind if I ask you a question, Odd?”
“Shoot.”
“How old are you?”
Odd had to think about it. “Guess I’m twenty-four years old.”
“I had you pegged for older than that.” He paused. “Mind if I ask how old Rebekah is?”
Odd smirked. “Old enough to know better than to get stuck with me.”
Sargent smiled. “I apologize if I seem impertinent. I was just curious.”
“I can’t even begin to imagine what impertinent means, but your curiosity is no harm to me.”
Sargent took a deep breath. They each took a drink from their wineglass. “You’ve been studying the Bible?”
“I’ve read some.”
“Is it helping you toward peace?”
Odd stared long on the empty apple-tree branches.
“Thoughtful,” Sargent said.
“There’s plenty of good stories in that book. But I find my peace on the boatwright floor. Out on the lake hauling nets.” Odd turned back to the window. “In the expectation of my child.”
“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.
The 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.