The Last to See Me by M Dressler

Author:M Dressler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2017-07-25T04:00:00+00:00

14

At the Point, I did my very best work for the Foldes. I scrubbed their china and polished their silver. I dusted and oiled and rubbed the mahogany sideboard in the dining room. I filled the lamps with kerosene, cleaned the grates, hauled out the trash. I cooked the meals while Mrs. Folde collapsed in her sewing chair, fanning herself with her knitting. When it got too warm, I was allowed to open the kitchen’s screen door and then I could look out to see if Quint was coming toward me through the cypress grove, as he’d said he would. After a week, nothing. I turned back to kneading the bread.

I did everything Mrs. Folde asked of me. I stayed clear of the children, though they would come and ask me if I’d seen their sister in the grain room—I hadn’t, she was never there—and stare at the cleft in my chin and run off again. Behind the house, I washed their soiled clothes, hanging up the ghosts of their tiny bodies to dry, then took the stiffened arms and legs down and brought them to the ironing board. Mrs. Folde couldn’t manage an iron; her condition was too delicate. Yet she was nervous about Mr. Folde’s shirts and would snatch them away from me if I offered even to sew on a button.

She gave the children their lessons in the morning after they came back from their walk with their father and, in the afternoon, knitted in the parlor until she fell asleep. Each day her stomach dropped lower on her body, like timber ready to unload, yet she still had two months to go. She was sure now it was twins. She felt two people kicking against each other, she said.

“I don’t see how God could ask a woman to bear this twice,” she moaned.

One day the ironing was finished, and I’d stepped out just for a breath of fresh air, and there was Quint, coming from the high road on a white-blazed black horse. I put up my hand to guide him toward the house. I tried to look peaceful and unsurprised. I’d thought he might come in one of the Lambrys’ new automobiles and had imagined us riding around without a care in the world, showing off to all the wagons. Instead he was wearing his riding best, his hat wide-brimmed and his boots shining. I tried to keep my heart from surging, looking at him. It drew up anyway, like a wave.

Mrs. Folde and the children were already upstairs taking their naps. Mr. Folde was coming from the direction of the coal house and met Quint’s horse before I could. I went inside and wiped my hands on my apron and hung it up and came back out.

Quint had already tied his mount to the fence and was busy making conversation with Mr. Folde. Mr. Folde turned around, his pale brows a little knitted under his lightkeeper’s cap. I could tell he was seeing me in a new way.

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