Beloved (45 page)

The bodies of three sailors
—
Ben Brightman, Francis Sylvia, and Ned Quick
—
had been discovered thrown up on the beach within a few hundred yards of the Humane House. Jane found herself actually disappointed that she hadn
'
t come up with the names of the other two sailors on her own. It was a little like being at bat and hitting only one for three
—
a decent performance, but not good enough for Most Valuable Player.

Shocked by her cool detachment, Jane rewound the spool and hurried from the library. The one thing she didn
'
t want to do was to lose sympathy for Judith
'
s cause. She knew, instinct
ively, that that would be fatal.

****

Billy was at Lilac Cottage, putting up the last of the repainted glass-front cabinet doors. The kitchen was looking wonderful in an old-fashioned cheery way. Somehow, without installing
Corian
counters, designer faucets, or a Jenn-Aire cooktop, Billy had managed to bring out the best in the sweet old room. The new window over the sink invited twice as much sunlight, and with the pantry wall knocked down, the light was able to reach every corner. Best of all, everything was original, from the stripped-down pine floors and white wainscotting to the homey porcelain sink, newly adorned with a blue gingham skirt.

"
Billy, you did really, really well,
"
Jane said with quiet satisfaction as she turned slowly around the room.
"
I
'
m glad you talked me out of the linoleum.
"

"
Hey, whaddya need it for? You don
'
t have kids crawling around on their hands and knees all day.
"

It was like taking an unexpected blow.
"
That
'
s for sure,
"
she murmured, catching her breath. She handed him a screwdriver, thinking
.
It
'
s happening. I
'
m starting to panic. I
'
ll be going to a sperm bank next.

Billy looked down at her from his stepladder.
"
Did I say something wrong?
"

"
No, not at all,
"
she lied.
"
I think I
must be a little blue over ..
. over funds, that
'
s all. I
'
ll be fine as soon as my mother pays me for my car this week. I have to admit, I thought I
'
d be back in
Connecticut
by now, having new business cards printed; but out here, one week
just seems
to fade into another.
"

"Yeah. That's life, I guess."

****

That evening the fickle month of April, like an ill-bred mistress, turned from temptress to banshee. A solid bank of clouds had been approaching the island all afternoon, and when it arrived, it came with a howling wind and pounding rain. The effect on Jane was profound. The last of the optimism she
'
d been feeling that morning was washed away in a wave of misgivings. Th
e cold, hard facts were these: s
he was going through her money like a drunken sailor; Bing was never around long enough for the
two of them
to develop a meaningful relationship; and Mac seemed on and off to hate her guts.

And then there was Judith. Judith, like Cissy, apparently had gone into hiding. Cissy might be with her Phillip, but Judith was definitely not with her Ben. So where was she? Was Jane supposed to sit around in some melancholy funk, waiting for Judith to make her next move? Jane wandered from window to window, paralyzed by a brooding sense of expectation, watching the driving rain turn the night into a sodden, muddy mess.

Okay. Enough is enough. I
'
ll build a fire and read a fun book; anything to take my mind off this.

She threw on her oilslicker and plunged into the wild, windy night for some of the firewood that Billy had stacked neatly under a canvas tarp. She had to make three trips and got soaked in the process, but the very act of building a fire seemed to rally her. It was Jane
'
s first fire in the house, and it took on ritualistic importance. Carefully she stacked the kindling, crisscrossed the logs, and bundled crushed paper under it all. She fully expected it to light with one match.

And it did. A roaring, crackling, oversized fire began almost at once to warm the room and her spirits. Jane wrapped a towel around her rain-soaked hair, slipped into pajamas, brought out a bottle of apricot liqueur, and cracked into Grisham
's latest
. It was
an effective
escape, and she was absorbed for several hours.

After that, her attention began to wander. Whether the fault was hers or the author
'
s, Jane just couldn
'
t concentrate. She felt restless, almost itchy. She threw another log on the fire, then circled the camcorder as if it were a crystal ball.

Cissy was convinced she saw something fuzzy there, hovering over Jane.
True, Cissy was a flake, but she was a
young
flake, with sharper eyes than Jane
'
s. Feeling self-conscious, Jane turned down the already dim lamp and fast-forwarded the tape to the scene in question
...
freeze- framed it
...
adjusted the contrast
...
and gasped. Her heart went rocketing through her breast; her head felt trapped in a vise of fear.

How had she missed it before? Granted, the sun in the kitchen had been very bright, but
still!
She peered more closely at the tape. There, above her sleeping body, was a kind of a
shape
,
a decided
shape
,
not as clear as a vapor, yet more substantial, somehow, than fog. She rubbed her eyes ferociously, which only made everything blurry. After a while she was able to focus again, and there it was again, that pale promise of another world.

She ran the tape a little ahead, but there was nothing. So she decided to start from the beginning, searching for other images of Judith. For two hours Jane sat there, strained to the breaking point. Outside the storm raged; she was hardly aware of it. And then, when she was nearly at the end of the tape, a particularly violent gust shook the house and the electricity went out.

It was as if someone threw a switch in Jane
'
s soul. She felt cast into oblivion without any warning. For a while she sat there, numb, bereft, completely at a loss. Eventually, when the electricity didn
'
t come back on, she stumbled over to the window. There were no lights on anywhere that she could see
—
which around there proved nothing. For the first time in her life, Jane understood the meaning of the word
"
desolation.
"
Nantucket
had been a mistake for her, and now, finally, she was willing to admit it.

She threw another log on the fire and sat huddled in a blanket, staring at the darkened camcorder, waiting for dawn. But the all-night vigil was not to be. Almost at once she fell into
a troubled, disjointed sleep.

****

It was a cold, rainy day. She was in the sitting room of her house, hers and Ben
'
s, with her coal-skuttle bonnet still in her lap. Her shawl, of an exquisite pale gray weave, was folded across the rocking chair in which she sat. She loved the shawl because it was Ben
'
s favorite. It was part of a shipment she had ordered from
New York
, the only one that wasn
'
t black. She
'
d been advertising the black ones at a very good price, and they were nearly gone. But the gray one she kept, because it set off her blue-black hair.

She felt quite calm. Today was First Day, and she should have gone to meeting. But there seemed no point, and at the last minute she decided to stay home. The Overseers had warned her sharply and ordered her to remove the rose from the mound that, after the recent rains, was scarcely recognizable as Ben
'
s grave.

She had refused.

It was only a matter of time before they came. She had been under dealings from them before: when she
'
d bought the spinet, for example, and begun to teach herself to play; and when she
'
d planted the moon garden, so that she could wander among white flowers on a warm summer night; and when she
'
d come back from Boston with a tasseled vermilion chair for the sitting room.

And each time, at Ben
'
s urging, she had yielded to the Overseers
'
puritanical ultimatums. She sold the spinet and uprooted her perennials and tore the tassels off the chair, covering it in a drab and sickly green. Ben had kissed her and petted her and said that none of it mattered; that their love for one another brought all the music, light, and color to their lives that they needed. But each time it had been harder for her to conform, harder for her to comprehend why the orthodox Friends on
Nantucket
had twisted the lessons of simplicity taught by the original Quakers.

And now, she didn
'
t care. Ben was dead. The one man on earth who had the power to make her bend to the dour, petty demands of a group of oppressive old men was dead. Let them come. Let them expel her. She didn
'
t care. Ben was dead.

When she heard the knock on the door, she almost didn
'
t bother to answer it, so loathesome had the thought of facing them become. But she wanted to put them behind her, and so she opened her home and her heart to their uncharitable scrutiny one last time.

"
I pray thee, gentlemen, come in,
"
she said, her voice stripped of emotion.

The four of them filed in one by one, led by Jabez Coffin. He was the group
'
s senior, an unbending work of steel tempered by decades of self-denial. He paused in front of the fire and glanced around her pleasant sitting room with distaste, fixing his disapproval on an intricate silver frame adorning a small silhouette of Ben that sat on the mantle. She went up to the mantle, picked up the frame, and pressed the silhouette to her breast. If the innocently indulgent frame annoyed Jabez Coffin, so much the better.
"
Thee has something to say?
"
she said, sweeping them all up in one proud glance. The three who were with Jabez Coffin avoided her look.

"
Judith Brightman,
"
said Jabez,
"
there is a concern upon our minds, and thou art fully aware what it be. On the twenty-sixth of twelfth month, thy husband
'
s ship foundered and Benjamin Brightman perished seeking the safety of our shore. On the second of first month, thy husband was buried in the Friends
'
Burial Ground. Eight days ago this day, thou engaged in an act of ill-considered defiance: marking thy husband
'
s grave in the manner of the world
'
s people.
"

Jabez paused and looked at the others to see whether they had any cause to challenge the facts so far. The three men, all of them past the half-century mark, seemed to wilt under his fiery gaze like schoolboys, as if the devil himself had dared them to contradict him. When no one spoke, he continued.

"
Is it the truth I have spoken thus far?
"
he said, focusing his fire-and-brimstone gaze directly on her now. When she said nothing, he said in a severe tone,
"
Thou wilt answer me
...
Friend.
"

"
I planted a rose on Ben
'
s grave, yes,
"
she said, raising her chin.
"
So that I would know where to find him when I am old.
"

"
A rose. Thou didst plant a rose.
"
Jabez glanced at his cohorts again, an unpleasant grin assuming control of his face. It seemed odd to her that for all his abstinent ways, he had bad teeth.

"
There are thousands of souls who have cast off their bodies and left them behind in the burial ground,
"
Jabez said.
"
Is it not fair to say that they have left behind many thousands more who have loved and mourned them?
"