wandered across the grass like sleep walkers, branches held in stiff, outstretched arms.
“What are they doing?” asked the boy’s mother.
Dorothy hesitated. This was the sort of thing people from outside misunderstood.
“Dowsing for water.”
“What?” said the father.
“It’s an old practice. If someone has the gift, the branch dips when you pass over underground veins of water. Watch, he’s letting a student try with him.”
It was Miriam. Today her leotard was peacock blue, but at least a vest covered her bosom. Grayson extended the branch; she grasped one fork, he the other. Holding hands, yoked together by the branch, they crossed the lawn. The stick writhed down.
“Cool,” said the visiting boy. His father looked at his watch.
“This way,” Dorothy said. “We’ll visit biology now.” The family wouldn’t complete the application. Faith and mystery, and Grayson, were the heart of the school but their combination made it vulnerable, too. She should have known better than to linger here.
It was almost dinner time when she started home, taking the long way, around the pond and through the orchard. Last year students had sneaked in the night before the spring dance and ripped down blossoming branches. They smuggled the limbs back to decorate the cafeteria, transforming the ugly room into an enchanted forest. She’d overlooked the mischief since the trees were doomed anyway.
She heard waltz music from the workshop. Grayson must be finishing the dulcimer. She would ask him to dance, push herself across the gap between them; make peace. Dorothy opened the door.
Grayson pressed Miriam against the workbench, kissing her.
Adrenaline propelled Dorothy across the room. She pushed them apart; picked up the dulcimer and slammed it down.
Her husband groaned as the dulcimer cracked and splintered. She tossed the ruined instrument on the floor.
“Come with me,” she ordered Miriam. The girl cowered behind him.
“Dorothy,” said Grayson. “It’s me at fault here.”
“I know that. Come.”
Dorothy had never intentionally destroyed anything before—except at the demolition derby at the county fair, soon after she’d married. Grayson bought her ticket; dared her. She’d swung the sledge hammer, smashing the car’s windshield. Wrecking the car, such meaningless destruction, had been disgraceful but exhilarating. Grayson cheered from the sidelines.
At day’s end, Dorothy liked to step into their quiet house but tonight, the tidy kitchen felt hollow and cold.
Miriam fidgeted with the cluster of wooden animals on the kitchen table.
“Leave those alone,” Dorothy told her. The black walnut lion and the curly maple lamb had been Grayson’s gift to her the first Christmas they were married. “Our peaceable kingdom,” he had said. Every Christmas since he’d added to the couple’s perennial centerpiece, carving animals from scraps of wood; this year’s addition had been a basswood elephant.
“He was only going to show me how to dance. Are you going to tell my father?”
Dorothy imagined the smirks, the gossip in Meeting. Another humiliation, like she’d endured with the music teacher. Worse: this would be a scandal the school could ill afford.
“No, I’m not telling your father.”
“Thank you,” said Miriam.
Dorothy felt ashamed. Don’t thank me, she should say. Don’t listen to me. Don’t lie.
“I’ll walk you back to dorm.”
After leaving the girl, Dorothy went to her office and sat at her desk, trying to collect her thoughts; trying, as Friends said, to reach clarity. But nothing was clear. The pain was worse now than when she’d discovered them—the way a burn hurts more after the initial shock. She locked herself in the faculty bathroom, turned the tap on full blast, and wept. Afterward, in the glare of the bare bulb over the sink, she stared at the mirror. How had she failed to notice that she’d grown old? She’d never tempt anyone again. Grayson and the school were all she had, all she’d have.
On her way home, Dorothy heard a car. Stepping into its path would give obliterating relief but she hesitated in the rough grass and the car swished by. Near the house she smelled smoke and discovered Grayson tending a small bonfire in the back yard.
“What are you burning?” she asked.
“The dulcimer. What’s left of it.”
The fire snapped and crackled between them.
“Perhaps it’s time for you to take that job with the activists.”
“You’re sure, you’re clear? That’s what thee wishes?”
She stared at him across the flames. The heat of the blaze separating them felt good. That much at least was clear.
The Spring
She floated awake and remembered the note Jeff had left for her in the milk shed yesterday. Had he really asked her to come ride with him on the delivery run to the dairy? Jeff, a football star for the county high school, till he got hurt. She stared at the ceiling; Jeff smiled down at her, leaning out the window of his silver tank truck. Daddy surely wouldn’t let her work for Cora if he knew she waited by the milk shed each day at the time Jeff picked up the milk.
Dawn seeped into her dark bedroom, softening it like a black and white photograph slowly washed with color, like the tinted high school portrait of her mother on the mantel. It was the only picture; her father disapproved of cameras, images. She studied it sometimes, wondering what the true colors of her mother’s mouth, skin and eyes had been. Her own hair was the copper red of a scrub pad.
“Annie, you up?” Her father was at her door.
“Yes, I’m up.” She made it true, pushing off the quilt.
“I’m going out to the goats. Call me when you’ve got coffee ready.”
The stairs creaked, complaining under his weight. Annie sat up, swung her long legs over the edge of the bed, and tiptoed across the painfully cold wood floor to the bathroom. She studied herself in the mirror: light blue eyes, white skin, everything too pale except hair and freckles. She practiced flashing smiles for Jeff then hurried back to her room to put on her shirtwaist dress and sweater. Once at Cora’s, she would change into jeans but her father preferred modest garb. She refused to wear a hair net.
Downstairs she flicked on the light in the kitchen, wishing for a radio to keep her company and tell of the weather and world outside the county. But he didn’t countenance radios, even the Christian music station. Water boiled; she filled the drip pot. At least he still drank coffee. She watched little volcanoes erupt in the oatmeal cooking on the stove. Annie stepped onto the porch.
“Breakfast is ready,” she yelled.
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