The Sabbathday River (3 page)
Read The Sabbathday River Online
Authors: Jean Hanff Korelitz
Irresistibly engaged, Naomi spoke: “What?”
“This lady, she saw the whole thing. It was all back there, in her head somewhere: a man got out of his car, pushed the victim into her car, assaulted her, stabbed her. We got a description: clothes, height, features. Even got two digits off the guy's license plate. We arrested him within a week.”
Despite herself, Naomi shook her head. “That's incredible.”
“Sure it is. But you see my point, Mrs. Roth. This lady, she thought she knew nothing, but she saw it all. She
knew,
Mrs. Roth.” He paused, fixing her with his disconcerting gaze. “I think you know, too. Think about it for me, will you? Somebody in this small town was pregnant and had a child, Mrs. Roth, but now she has no child.” Then he smiled, getting to his feet and actually extending his hand. “I'll just bet you know her.”
knew,
Mrs. Roth.” He paused, fixing her with his disconcerting gaze. “I think you know, too. Think about it for me, will you? Somebody in this small town was pregnant and had a child, Mrs. Roth, but now she has no child.” Then he smiled, getting to his feet and actually extending his hand. “I'll just bet you know her.”
The Sabbathday Affair
NAOMI'S HUSBAND, DANIEL, HAD BUILT THEIR house in a frenzy of late-summer machismo one year after their arrival in Goddard. The land was cheap, a gift really, from a dairy farmer whose sisterâsweet and voiceless, probably retardedâattended Naomi's quilting afternoons at the First Methodist Church in Goddard. There wasn't much to the lot. It consisted of a grove of maples that sank in a triangular wedge to terminate in a brook strewn with stones, and the nominal sale price of one hundred dollars included a verbal right of way for the farmer's herd. But Daniel was living his dream of loving the land, and he simply refused to accept the possibility that the land would not love him back. The house he built was designedâso he told the bemused native farmers and an optimistic Naomiânot by the dictates of fashion, or even of architectural history and precedent, but by the demands of its natural surroundings. Hence its high peaked roofâless an A-line than an inverted V-line, she had always thought, with skylights near the apex that ended up impacted by leaves each Novemberâand the steep driveway down from Goddard Falls Road; this ran alongside
a creek which iced it over in winter and bogged it down in muck during mud season each spring. A lone wire that ferried down electricity from the wider world got snagged and interfered with by branches when the wind blew through the White Mountains. In the White Mountains, the wind blew a lot.
a creek which iced it over in winter and bogged it down in muck during mud season each spring. A lone wire that ferried down electricity from the wider world got snagged and interfered with by branches when the wind blew through the White Mountains. In the White Mountains, the wind blew a lot.
They had not been particularly savvy about local demographics at that timeâit all looked poor to them, after allâbut it was soon clear to Naomi that they had both saved and condemned themselves by settling where they had, halfway between two communities. Aspiring Goddard, which boasted no industry apart from that of selling its most glorious homes to people who lived in them two months out of the year, had an ingrained arrogance on the subject of Goddard Falls. And Goddard Falls was easily vilified, after all. Poor Goddard Falls, with no town center to speak of, but a dilapidated general store, and no school of its own (the town ferried its kids down the road to the Goddard schools, where they formed a de facto underclass), where the farmhouses were left to rot, the roofs to sway in, the unused barns to crumble. And so, halfway between themâalmost exactly halfway on the odometer between the Goddard municipal center and the Goddard Falls general storeâshe and Daniel had unwittingly established their postures of noncommittal and declared their roles as border guards, negotiators, ambassadors of each community to the other.
By the time she began to think of expanding her women's craft circle into a real business, Naomi was far better versed in the lay of the land. Most of Flourish's workers came from Goddard Falls, where generations of thrift had determined the absolute necessity of reusing textiles and few of the women had to be taught. Their homes, on the rare occasions when Naomi was invited inside, were cushioned by rugs braided from their former skirts or hooked from husbands' worn-out jackets. On their beds were slung quilts made from blocks of old blankets, or pieced together from their children's long-ago dresses, and in their closets and attics, plastic bags bulged with fabric awaiting reincarnation into something useful. On the kitchen wall of the sisters Ina and Janelle Hodge, Naomi had long ago seen a rug, hooked out of frayed wool, which seemed to declare the creed:
Use it up, Wear it out, Make it do, Do without.
Use it up, Wear it out, Make it do, Do without.
From thisâwho would have thought?âhad come a real business. Even she, raised to revere the almost spiritual integrity of “native” crafts,
had been mildly stunned. Because, she now saw, it had begun with that same mindless gesture of support for the women that she had been primed to make in her VISTA training sessions. Find out what the women are doing, the brief went, and instill the belief that the work has value. The work of womenâthe sewing bees and quilting circles and nights hooking rugs before winter firesâhas value. They hadn't really believed it any more than she, Naomi thought now, but they had come anywayâout of curiosity about her, and to relieve their individual isolation. They had met in the church in Goddard, in the basement with its fake wood paneling and temperamental coffee machine, for afternoons that stretched on into darkness, well past the point dictated by arthritic wrists and knuckles, until they were disbanded by somebody's husband's suspicious phone call or the acrid honk of a car sent to pick up a wife or mother and take her back home, where she belonged. They had taught one another, passing on the patterns nobody used anymore, their melodic namesâSugarloaf and Drunkard's Pathâspoken like passwords to a secret society. They had brought their daughters and sisters, and the circle grew and pulled apart: two days a week, then three, then a separate group for quilters and one for hookers. And over time the older ones assumed more and more a posture of respected supervision and sat with their gnarled hands in their lap, lending weight to a decision about thread or passing comment on the twist a younger hand made as it hooked wool through a length of burlap. And so Naomi had done what everyoneâher education and her values, her family and even her husbandâhad asked her to do. She had made from nothing a community of women. She had infused with pride the activities which had only before been busyworkâ
women's
work. She had driven the breath of her will into those moribund crafts, even as they had been set to accompany an older generation to the grave, and from her breath a living tradition grew. And so she watched with some degree of bafflement as the thing seemed to slip beyond her aegis. A meeting time was changed, and no one told her. Everyone had somebody's new phone number except Naomi. Between her and them there was a prism of formality, even as she sat among them, ardently hooking or sewing, her hands hopelessly flustered, her role as catalyst dormant.
had been mildly stunned. Because, she now saw, it had begun with that same mindless gesture of support for the women that she had been primed to make in her VISTA training sessions. Find out what the women are doing, the brief went, and instill the belief that the work has value. The work of womenâthe sewing bees and quilting circles and nights hooking rugs before winter firesâhas value. They hadn't really believed it any more than she, Naomi thought now, but they had come anywayâout of curiosity about her, and to relieve their individual isolation. They had met in the church in Goddard, in the basement with its fake wood paneling and temperamental coffee machine, for afternoons that stretched on into darkness, well past the point dictated by arthritic wrists and knuckles, until they were disbanded by somebody's husband's suspicious phone call or the acrid honk of a car sent to pick up a wife or mother and take her back home, where she belonged. They had taught one another, passing on the patterns nobody used anymore, their melodic namesâSugarloaf and Drunkard's Pathâspoken like passwords to a secret society. They had brought their daughters and sisters, and the circle grew and pulled apart: two days a week, then three, then a separate group for quilters and one for hookers. And over time the older ones assumed more and more a posture of respected supervision and sat with their gnarled hands in their lap, lending weight to a decision about thread or passing comment on the twist a younger hand made as it hooked wool through a length of burlap. And so Naomi had done what everyoneâher education and her values, her family and even her husbandâhad asked her to do. She had made from nothing a community of women. She had infused with pride the activities which had only before been busyworkâ
women's
work. She had driven the breath of her will into those moribund crafts, even as they had been set to accompany an older generation to the grave, and from her breath a living tradition grew. And so she watched with some degree of bafflement as the thing seemed to slip beyond her aegis. A meeting time was changed, and no one told her. Everyone had somebody's new phone number except Naomi. Between her and them there was a prism of formality, even as she sat among them, ardently hooking or sewing, her hands hopelessly flustered, her role as catalyst dormant.
She did not quite admit to herself the pain of this, or how great a role that pain would play in the formation of her subsequent move. But that move had been years in the making, she saw now, the years she sat
at the periphery of what she had made, watching the women comfort one another and take in one another's children and quarrel and feud and reconcile. For years, too, she imagined the inventory of their products, as if in a brightly lit room, grow and grow, the quilts and rugs and samplers stacked to the ceilings. She saw how they continued past the point when every bed and floor of their own had been covered, every wall adorned, every grandchild gifted. She saw the beginnings of their restlessness.
at the periphery of what she had made, watching the women comfort one another and take in one another's children and quarrel and feud and reconcile. For years, too, she imagined the inventory of their products, as if in a brightly lit room, grow and grow, the quilts and rugs and samplers stacked to the ceilings. She saw how they continued past the point when every bed and floor of their own had been covered, every wall adorned, every grandchild gifted. She saw the beginnings of their restlessness.
They themselves, it was clear, lacked the next necessary thingâthe next infusion of magic. They were no more capable of offering their products to the market for money than they were of suddenly donning business suits and presenting themselves for job interviews. Here, finally, was her second opportunity to interject her worldliness into their midst, and Naomi took it.
Surreptitiously, over time, she had clipped magazine articles which seemed to track the new values ascribed to the handmade, the traditional, the nostalgic. She had traced the tastemakers' return to an unpolished and comfortably cluttered aesthetic. She saw that the homes of the wealthiest no longer made a display of their wealth by flaunting precious objects but instead favored old things and used things, battered objects left alone to show their wear. She noted the speed with which manufacturers observed and reacted to the trend, offering rugs braided by machine and importing quilts mass-produced in China, and she took note of the stratospheric heights to which the prices of antique textiles soared. She saw the path that was open to them.
Flourish began poorly. Two of her best quilters' husbands refused to let their wives participateâa hobby was one thing, sewing for rich folks quite something elseâand there was confusion over the cooperative scheme Naomi proposed, a perhaps unnecessarily complex model involving shares and dues and unwaged hours on such grunt work as inventory and advertising. They began with craft fairs in New Hampshire and Vermont, but it was soon clear that these potential customers were too much like the women themselves to value art forms redolent of deprivation and thrift. What enthusiasm there was for Naomi's idea flagged quickly. But then, with the last of her seed money, she took an ad in a decorating magazine, informing the citizens of city and suburb alike that, in one corner of New England, old ladies were still gathering to make quilts in a church basement and still hooking rugs in their
rocking chairsâand the stuff was for sale. Within two weeks, it was all gone. Within six months, the names of disappointed latecomers comprised a formidable mailing list.
rocking chairsâand the stuff was for sale. Within two weeks, it was all gone. Within six months, the names of disappointed latecomers comprised a formidable mailing list.
She had drilled into a good vein, all right. Live rug hookers, unlike dead ones, could insinuate the image of an adored pet into a design using only a photograph, or custom work a house's year of construction into a hooked welcome mat. Live quilters could endow a wedding quilt with dates or etch a crib covering with names, lengths, and hefts. As many as the requests for “authentic” items were, the special orders far outweighed them. Naomi began looking for more artisans.
New Hampshire Profiles came to call. Good Morning New England
snaked its lines down the steep church basement steps and turned its lights on the withered hands of the Hodge sisters. Inside a year, Flourish was flourishing.
New Hampshire Profiles came to call. Good Morning New England
snaked its lines down the steep church basement steps and turned its lights on the withered hands of the Hodge sisters. Inside a year, Flourish was flourishing.
And Naomi, to her own surprise, was ready. Though “business,” in the glossary of her youth, was somewhat synonymous with capitalist oppression, she had found herself keenly following the wave of catalogues that had risen to command the retail arena of the early 1980s. Indeed, she had even, willingly, offered her name to each, to be shared among them all, until every delivery of mail seemed to bulge with their glossy stock and gleaming photographs of merchandise, their stage decorations of a successful American life: woolen nightgowns, china, dollhouses, strawberry jam, clothing to chop wood in or make an entrance at the ball, furniture, picture frames, and a hundred other unsuspected but, evidently, utterly necessary items. It drove Daniel wild, that tilting stack of then unrecyclable paper, blaring materialism from one corner of their great room. The tchotchkes on those pages incensed him, the edible delicacies sent him into rages as he invoked the human deprivation of the momentâEthiopia, India, the slums of Rio, the hollow-eyed deprivation of Soweto. He charged her with self-importance. She replied she was merely trying to give the women an income of their own. He charged her with covetousness. And that was true.
There were other accusations, inappropriate to herself, she thought, but somehow less baffling. Because Daniel
was
right: all around them, their fellow soldiers were sounding personal retreats, and each renunciation struck him with both distinct and cumulative vehemence. They knew one Harlem schoolteacher who had quit to publish a newsletter for independent investors. Former political agitators were suddenly Washington insiders. Naomi had a woman friend who abandoned her
planned master's thesis on H.D. to accept a scholarship endowed by Cecil Rhodesâshe did, however, have the good grace to refer to her benefactor as a “fascist.” And after four years in West Virginia, a fellow VISTA worker was back home on the West Side writing ad copy for what he blushingly described as a “feminine deodorant.”
was
right: all around them, their fellow soldiers were sounding personal retreats, and each renunciation struck him with both distinct and cumulative vehemence. They knew one Harlem schoolteacher who had quit to publish a newsletter for independent investors. Former political agitators were suddenly Washington insiders. Naomi had a woman friend who abandoned her
planned master's thesis on H.D. to accept a scholarship endowed by Cecil Rhodesâshe did, however, have the good grace to refer to her benefactor as a “fascist.” And after four years in West Virginia, a fellow VISTA worker was back home on the West Side writing ad copy for what he blushingly described as a “feminine deodorant.”
In Goddard, Daniel's maple sugar co-op was failing, and he wasn't doing much except reading
Mother Jones
and brooding. For her part, she considered herself fully evolved beyond the dungeon of gender roles in homemaking, but Naomi could not help but notice that her husband seldom reached for a cleaning or cooking implement while she tended to the business that was growing around her. The situation grew even clearer when Flourish moved out of the church basement and into a once-derelict flour mill at the edge of Goddard, which Naomi had bought in '81. He might have helped her, she often thought now. He might have helped her with the company, shaped it, had vision for it. There was no reason why he should have considered benefiting the women of their community somehow beyond his protocol. Organizing and elevating women, after all, was part and parcel of the vision they had professed to share, back in their student days of yore, back in the life they had lived togetherâthat vision of the world beckoning at the end of their inherited and chosen trajectory: the unions, the socialist ideal, the campaign for Mississippi, the free-speech effort, the Peace Corps, the women's movement, the generous dignity of the land, and ultimately VISTA's battle for the home front.
Mother Jones
and brooding. For her part, she considered herself fully evolved beyond the dungeon of gender roles in homemaking, but Naomi could not help but notice that her husband seldom reached for a cleaning or cooking implement while she tended to the business that was growing around her. The situation grew even clearer when Flourish moved out of the church basement and into a once-derelict flour mill at the edge of Goddard, which Naomi had bought in '81. He might have helped her, she often thought now. He might have helped her with the company, shaped it, had vision for it. There was no reason why he should have considered benefiting the women of their community somehow beyond his protocol. Organizing and elevating women, after all, was part and parcel of the vision they had professed to share, back in their student days of yore, back in the life they had lived togetherâthat vision of the world beckoning at the end of their inherited and chosen trajectory: the unions, the socialist ideal, the campaign for Mississippi, the free-speech effort, the Peace Corps, the women's movement, the generous dignity of the land, and ultimately VISTA's battle for the home front.
Sometimes she wished so fervently that her time had come a little earlier, that she had been on those buses down South, turning her cheek to the white rage along their route, letting some small dark child braid her hair while she taught it the words to “This Little Light of Mine.” She wished she had been there to hear King, and in the Delta for that dangerous summer of '64, and on the boardwalk in Atlantic City that fall for the convention, with the relics of the warâthe charred hull of a car, the bell still warm from the ashes of a fire-bombed churchâand in Berkeley only weeks later, and again in Washington for the Vietnam marchesâall those last great moments of unity. But by the time she and Daniel had come along, there had been so much refraction that their lights were little indeedâso little she wondered why they bothered
not
hiding them under a bushel. By the time she and Daniel had come along, people were so busy splitting apart it was no wonder they hadn't
achieved their aims: black civil rights workers who suddenly couldn't share their movement with whites, free-speech advocates incapable of listening to anyone else, anarchists too busy leading the way to let women have a turn, women who wouldn't share the podium with lesbians. Communes and cults, drugs and suicide and business school-truly common ground seemed so truly rare that it was some kind of miracle when kindred souls managed to collide at all. Especially here, she thought with resignation. And yet here she was, the last freedom fighter, waving her flag of quilts and rugs as the Reaganite troops swarmed victoriously over the ruined battlefield. Sometimes she wished they'd just hurry up and shoot her already.
not
hiding them under a bushel. By the time she and Daniel had come along, people were so busy splitting apart it was no wonder they hadn't
achieved their aims: black civil rights workers who suddenly couldn't share their movement with whites, free-speech advocates incapable of listening to anyone else, anarchists too busy leading the way to let women have a turn, women who wouldn't share the podium with lesbians. Communes and cults, drugs and suicide and business school-truly common ground seemed so truly rare that it was some kind of miracle when kindred souls managed to collide at all. Especially here, she thought with resignation. And yet here she was, the last freedom fighter, waving her flag of quilts and rugs as the Reaganite troops swarmed victoriously over the ruined battlefield. Sometimes she wished they'd just hurry up and shoot her already.
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