A Gathering of Finches by Jane Kirkpatrick

Author:Jane Kirkpatrick [Kirkpatrick, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-56913-4
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-04T00:00:00+00:00

Margaret left on the ship north with no plan to return.

Louie began a kind of routine that surprised me with its predictability and what I thought as tedium. Up early to lift barbells on the bay porch, his chest muscles straining with the weights. Wearing a towel around his neck, short-sleeved shirt with a row of close buttons and knickers, he’d take hot coffee from Lem’s hands, then walk through the garden with the dogs romping around his feet. I’d hear them all bounding up the stairs to our room where their plunge to my bed was a sign that I should rise, the Lady Margaret finding my toes to lick until I did.

Louie’d bathe then, dress, and between bites of fresh grapefruit—peeling several pieces he fed to me—he talked about his day ahead. Then down the steps to the shipyards and the mill where he met with foremen for reports and exchanged directives his father had sent to him on a just-arrived ship. He’d be home for dinner at noon straight up, and sometimes nap, then off to work and back for supper around seven. He’d spend the evening visiting colleagues with mills from Marshfield and businessmen and investors. He spoke happily of work and the men who implemented his and his father’s goals, and I listened with a listless air of envy from my chair surrounded by my books.

It surprised me how little Louie expected of me. He acted content to simply find me at home to kiss my rosemary-scented hair as he walked by to tease Lem. He’d look over my shoulder as I read and hum agreement when I informed him I’d be buying some new frock or Victrola, a Gibsongirl corset or more rats to heighten my hair. I kept up my journal, and with Lottie and alone, I made trips to the lighthouse exchanging books.

Louie paid scant attention to the accounts of my days, but he acted most pleased when I had done the least. Sometimes he behaved as though the very drive that kept him moving was foreign to my soul. Even riding proved an effort with the horse stabled some distance from our home.

“I’d suggest you take the bicycle,” Louie said, “but I keep remembering what that doctor said, about your need for rest and living easy. Wouldn’t want to risk a future Simpson.” He smiled.

“I doubt my resting has a thing to do with it,” I said and didn’t tell him later that I’d taken the bicycle and ridden hard, my thighs and knees ached still from the effort of forcing the wind against my skin, the wheel between my knees.

I took to wearing the practical knee-length bloomers permitted on the contraption around the house as well. But bicycling, even with the dogs racing by my side, brought little pleasure, perhaps because no one else rode along the road ruts with me, perhaps because the joyful sensations were so short lived.

The last Christmas of the 1800s came. We wove dried beets and cranberries on string and packed little stockings for the workers’ children.

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