Blackbird House (14 page)

“She hates me already,” Dorey said just before they got out of the car.
 
Even from a distance, she noticed the purple birthmark on Violet West’s face, and she understood where some bitterness might have taken root.
 
The imper feet were often angry; Dorey knew that from personal experience.
 
“She’ll look at me and see a Jew who stole you away.”

“My grandmother’s not like that.”
 
Lion’s grandmother had taught herself algebra and geometry so she could help him with his homework.
 
She had taken the bus into Boston with him when he applied to Harvard and sat in the bus station for three hours, waiting.

“Everybody’s like that,” Dorey said.

When Lion hugged his grandmother he had the sense of time flying by him, then and there, in the driveway.
 
Violet’s eyes were cloudy; her vision had been going and she hadn’t told anyone, but of course what business was it of anyone but herself?
 
When Dorey was introduced, Violet signaled her over, so she could get a closer look.
 
Dorey surprised her by kissing her on the cheek, right in the place where her birthmark was.
 
“Don’t worry” Dorey whispered, “I’ll share him.”
 
Or at least that’s what Violet thought she’d said.

“You must be hungry.”
 
Violet took her grandson’s arm.
 
“Why don’t you put Bobby in the barn for me?”
 
she called over her shoulder to Dorey.
 
“It will give me a chance to talk to Lion.”

Lion looked at his wife, torn.
 
There was Dorey in her good black dress with her high-heeled shoes.
 
Here was his grandmother, leading him into the house.

“Don’t worry.”
 
Dorey waved them on.
 
“I’m good with horses.”

Lion went inside and set the table, the way he always did when he was at home.
 
But things weren’t the same.
 
The house was so cold, Lion kept his coat on.
 
The dishes were all covered with a thin coat of grime.
 
Violet stood by the window.
 
The light was the blue light of November, a day that was ready and willing to shift quickly into night.
 
She could see Dorey in the field where the sweet peas grew.
 
Bobby was just about as stubborn as a horse could be.
 
He bit, for one thing, and he always took his damned time.
 
He was an unmovable, stubborn creature, which was most likely the reason Violet loved him.
 
But, surprisingly, when Dorey clapped her hands, Bobby came right to her.
 
She slipped a rope around his neck and led him to the barn.

“She knows horses?”
 
Violet said.

“She knows everything,” Lion told his grandmother.

Right away, Violet understood what she was up against.

“I’ve been cooking all day for you,” Violet told Dorey when she stepped into the house.

The younger woman smelled of hay; she’d left her high heels, now covered in mud, at the door.
 
She had learned it was always wise to carry a few packets of sugar in your pocket, along with a small knife, and enough cash to get you to the next town.
 
She had learned that nothing was ever what it seemed to be.
 
“I’ll bet you have,” she said.

When they went to the table for dinner, Dorey folded her coat and placed it on the seat that had been stuffed with brambles.
 
She felt in her cup and slipped out the stones while Lion was getting the coffeepot from the stove.
 
Violet West still used kerosene lanterns and heated the house with a single woodstove in the kitchen.

“You might be cold tonight,” she told Dorey.
 
“Lion’s room is up in the attic.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Dorey said.
 
“I’ve slept with nothing for a blanket but a drift of snow.
 
I’ve slept where it’s so cold your mouth freezes shut and you have to concentrate in order to breathe.
 
The attic will be fine.”

Lion had often thought about his grandmother’s wonderful cooking, and again he was taken aback.
 
The supper was awful.
 
No wonder Violet looked so thin and worn.
 
She wasn’t getting the right nutrition.
 
She probably hadn’t seen a doctor for a year or more.

“I’m worried about you being out here by yourself,” Lion said.
 
Dorey had insisted on washing the dishes; she knew how to work a pump and could clean a whole sinkful of pots with a smidgen of soap.
 
“Maybe it’s time for you to sell this place, and move into the city.
 
You look tired.”

Violet West was nearly eighty, but she was fine on her own.
 
“Go to bed,” she told Lion.
 
“You’re the one who’s tired.”

That night Violet fell asleep in the big chair by the woodstove.
 
She hadn’t mentioned to Lion that her eyes were failing, that her bones were so brittle the cold made them feel like cracking when she went out in the mornings to feed Bobby.
 
She certainly hadn’t brought up the fact that twice this month she had nearly set herself on fire while dozing beside the stove.
 
Her sleep came in fits and starts lately, it was true.
 
And so at first she thought it was a dream when Dorey came downstairs with the beehive.
 
For one thing, the beehive was cloaked in a white pillowcase.
 
It seemed for a moment that Lion’s wife was carrying a circle of moonlight, right across the kitchen.
 
The bees were noisy, the way they always were at night.
 
Dorey put the hive down on the counter and lit a cigarette.
 
She was wearing an old cotton nightgown, and her hair stood away from her head in sleepy tufts.
 
She blew some smoke under the pillowcase, and the bees fell silent.

Violet West sat up in her chair and blinked her hazy eyes.
 
She watched as Dorey reached into the hive and took out a handful of honey.
 
It was red-clover-and-sweet-pea honey the best there is on the Cape.
 
There was enough to fill a small crockery jar.

“I told you I’d share him,” Dorey said.

Dorey went outside, barefoot, into the front yard, where she lodged the bees’ nest into a low branch of the pear tree.
 
In an instant she pulled off the white pillowcase and ran back to the house.
 
She smelled like honey and clover.
 
But her feet were blue with the cold.

“How much do you love him?”
 
Violet West said.

Violet still had the feeling that she was dreaming.
 
She was so used to being alone in this house that it seemed preposterous for her to be having this conversation with a woman from Germany who was sharing her grandson’s bed.

“How much do you love him?”
 
Dorey said back.

In the morning.
 
Lion swore he had never had such a good night’s sleep.
 
It was even colder today; the ground was rock hard and snow was falling.
 
Violet had made tea for her guest out of winter berries which should have been foul enough to pucker anyone’s mouth.
 
Dorey added two spoons of honey and a packet of sugar from her pocket and announced that hot drinks in the morning were a gift from above.
 
That was how Violet had thought of her grandson, a gift from above that she didn’t quite deserve, but one she would care for as best she could.
 
Lion said he was off to see some old friends in town; he asked Dorey to come with him, but she shook her head.

“Are you sure you want to stay here?”
 
he asked when Dorey came to kiss him goodbye.
 
He was going to talk to Nate Crown, who ran the real-estate office, to discuss what it would take to sell the house.
 
Maybe, if he could get a good enough price, his grandmother would consider moving into the city, where Lion could keep an eye on her.
 
“She’s a little cantankerous with some people.
 
I forgot about that.”

“She loves you so much she would kill for you,” Dorey whispered back.

“So why should I be afraid of her?”

It was Violet who was suddenly uncomfortable in her own house.
 
Dorey cleaned the kitchen floor without being asked, with a mixture of ash from the woodstove and a paste made from lye.
 
This method left the old floorboards surprisingly clean, and the smell was oddly fresh, like mint or new cabbage.
 
Dorey then went into the yard; she gathered the fallen pears, and, using the honey in the jar on the counter, and some chopped-up stale bread for a crust, she made something she called kuchen.

“I prefer it with plums,” Dorey said.
 
“But whoever gets plums in this lifetime?
 
So I use whatever’s nearby.”

Violet had the need to be alone.
 
To get away from this woman who knew how to deal with ashes, stones, bees, pears, lye, distrust.
 
She went out to feed Bobby, then realized how cold it was.
 
Cold enough for ice, at least at the edges of the pond.
 
She hated the idea of electricity at the farm.
 
Frankly, she wasn’t really in favor of anything new. What was the future to her?
 
Everything she loved had already happened and had already been.
 
Violet hitched the little wagon she used to cart ice up to the old horse.
 
It was getting harder to do so; her fingers hurt.
 
And it took longer to guide Bobby over to the pond.
 
It was nearly impossible to get him to stay put, even when he was roped to a tree, while she went to cut ice.

When Lion was a boy he could cut a whole wagonful of ice in little more than an hour.
 
Every block was a different color, he’d say, if you only looked.
 
Some ice was as green as emeralds, some of it was gray, like a dove, some chipped off in the pale, pale blue of morning, and other blocks, those from the very center of the pond, where the big catfish hid, were midnight.

Today just the shallows were frozen, but that was enough.
 
Violet was glad for the work.
 
She didn’t want to think about her grandson in love.
 
She didn’t want to think about the way the birthmark on her face stung, only in sunlight when she was younger, and now a constant ache.
 
By the time she chopped two square blocks, Violet’s shoulders were strained.
 
She looked back at the house and saw a plume of smoke rising from the chimney.
 
Dorey had figured out the temperamental woodstove without any instructions; she hadn’t had the least bit of trouble with it.

That’s what Violet was thinking about when a big bird came soaring past, how some people knew how to deal with what happened to them in this world, and others did not.
 
It was the white blackbird overhead that people saw occasionally on the property, an oddity that easily faded among the clouds.
 
Violet herself wouldn’t have been sure whether or not she’d actually seen it, but its call startled old Bobby, who’d been tied to a little sapling.
 
One strong tug, and the fool horse was even more panicked, as the wagon bumped against him.
 
He went running.
 
He went blindly.
 
He was onto the ice and into the water before Violet could even see what had happened.

Looking out the window, Dorey was thinking of the lake where she and her sister used to skate.
 
They used to hold hands, because her sister was younger and easily frightened and Dorey was not.
 
They’d had a country house not unlike this one, and Dorey had loved to race through the fields.
 
Back then, she believed that ice was made out of frozen teardrops and snow was made from broken hearts.
 
She believed that she and her sister would always be safe, together in the house beside the lake.
 
Now Dorey didn’t think twice about running down to the pond. She didn’t bother with shoes, because the soles of her feet were used to ice; she could will herself not to feel anything if need be. Certainly, she’d done it before.

The grandmother was up to her waist in the icy water, pulling on the wagon, screaming for Bobby.
 
Dorey had heard people screaming for someone they loved many times before, not horses but children, not wagons but mothers and fathers, not those who could be saved but those who were already lost.
 
She grabbed Violet West, who, though she was slight, had become heavy with icy water, pooling in her clothes and her shoes.
 
The horse was gone; that was a fact.
 
Dorey knew that it took less than two minutes to drown.
 
No bubbles rising meant it was over already; there was no use going after the poor creature and going down as well, caught in the reins or trapped between the wheels of the cart.
 
Dorey had considered drowning herself once; people often did it in a bucket.
 
But she had heard it was a bad way to go at the very last moment, the human constitution fought against drowning, and struggled to force the body to rise to the surface, even when it was impossible to survive.

Dorey pulled Violet West out of the pond where the ice turned so many colors Lion always said you could spend a lifetime trying to catalogue every shade.
 
Both women were so cold they were gasping, open-mouthed, like fish.
 
They were drenched, to the flesh, to the soul, and Dorey’s feet were bluer than before, like the ice in the center of the pond, the midnight color Lion liked best.