Second Glance: A Novel Read online

  Dr. DuBois is the most prominent physician in Burlington. He delivered me; he will no doubt deliver my baby. "Spencer . . ."

  "Please. I'm asking as a friend."

  "There are places, you know, in the country, where she'd be looked after. All rolling meadows and wicker rocking chairs--we're not talking Waterbury."

  "No. I can't do that to her."

  "To Cissy? Or to yourself?" Dr. DuBois shakes his head. "It's not about you this time, Spencer," he says, and then he lets himself out.

  Spencer sits down on the edge of the bed and stares at me. "I'm sorry," I manage.

  "Yes, you are," he answers, and in spite of the brutal heat in this bedroom, a shiver runs down my spine. Once again, Spencer has found me lacking.

  Q. What is meant by negative eugenics?

  A. This deals with the elimination of the dysgenic elements from society. Sterilization, immigration, legislation, laws preventing the fertile unfit from marrying, etc., come under this head.

  --American Eugenics Society,

  A Eugenics Catechism, 1926

  It is a full week before Spencer leaves me in the house alone with Ruby, and then only because his undergraduate students have returned. "You can call me, you know, any time," he says.

  I look up from the scone I am buttering. "All right."

  "Maybe we could go out for ice cream tonight. If you're feeling up to it." This is Spencer's way of telling me to be alive when he gets home. "Well, then." He is so handsome in his lightweight suit, with his hair slicked back and his bow tie as level as the scales of justice. I know he is staring at the butter knife in my hands, wondering whether it can do damage. Before his eyes I lick the dull blade clean, just to watch his reaction.

  "I'll send Ruby in," he says, and he flees.

  Ruby, who has done her best to avoid me, drags herself into the kitchen as Spencer's car mutters down the drive. "Miz Pike," she says.

  "Miss Weber."

  "If you were my friend," Ruby bursts out, "you would have told me you were going to do that." Her eyes fix on the bandages on my wrist.

  "But then, by definition, you wouldn't have let me," I answer quietly.

  I am saved from having to say any more by a commotion outside. "Coons," Ruby tells me, going for the shotgun we keep behind the pantry door for things such as this.

  "Then they're rabid. It's broad daylight." I push past Ruby, gathering bullets from the sugar bowl in the cabinet. We step out the back door and look around, but the only motion comes from two dragonflies playing tag.

  Ruby thumps the butt of the shotgun onto the ground. "Whatever it was is gone now."

  I am about to agree with her when I notice that the door to the icehouse is ajar. It is a small outbuilding left from my grandmother's years in this home, before it was passed down to me through my mother's will. Blocks of ice cut from Lake Champlain in the winter get delivered every few days, and sit packed in sawdust in the shed until we chip some off for the icebox in the kitchen. Spencer is meticulous about keeping the door shut tight. "If I want water with my scotch," he says, "I can get that from the tap."

  I pluck the shotgun from Ruby's hand. "Stay here," I say, so of course she follows. We climb onto the icehouse porch and slip inside, letting our eyes adjust to the lack of light. Only someone who has spent as much time trolling through darkness as I have would be able to sense that third body in the room. "Come out," I call, braver than I feel.

  Nothing.

  "I said come out!" By now I am imagining robbers, rapists, thieves. Because I have nothing left to lose, I raise the shotgun and fire at the closest block of ice. It explodes, and Ruby screams, and behind my left shoulder a man yells, "Goddamn!"

  Gray Wolf comes out from his hiding spot, hands up, like in the movies. His face is wreathed in a strange combination of pride and shock.

  "What are you doing here?" Now that it is over, my hands are shaking. Ruby cowers against the doorway of the shed. "It's all right," I tell her. "I know him."

  "You know him?" Ruby's mouth drops, a perfect O.

  It is possible that he has come to steal from us, or to hurt me. It would have been easy enough to follow me home after that day at the Gypsy camp. But it makes more sense to have robbed our home when we were gone, in New York City. And it doesn't account for the moccasins, which I am sure he left for me to find.

  More than anything, I do not want this moment to be the one where I turn out to be the sort of person he accused me of being the last time we met.

  "Gray Wolf," I say, "this is Ruby. Ruby, Gray Wolf." I present them to each other as if we were all British nobles at a ball. I dare either of them to comment.

  "I'm going to call the professor," Ruby murmurs under her breath.

  I catch her by the elbow. "Don't." This small seed of trust slips from my palm into hers.

  But she has been living in the house of a eugenicist. And not even Ruby's French Canadian background looks quite as dark, compared to that of a Gypsy. "Miz Pike," she says, her eyes sliding to his face. "He's . . . he's . . ."

  "Hungry," I supply. "Maybe you could get us something from the kitchen?"

  She swallows whatever she is about to say, nods, and heads for the house. When we are alone, Gray Wolf lifts my arm and traces a finger down the spiral of bandage. "You've been hurt." I nod. "An accident?"

  Looking away, I shake my head.

  He continues to examine the gauze, visibly upset. "I brought you something to keep you safe. But I guess I didn't get here quick enough."

  He pulls a leather pouch from his pocket, which is attached to a long loop of rawhide. It smells faintly of summertime, and him. "Black ash, ground hemlock, yellow lady's slipper." Gray Wolf's eyes dart to my abdomen. "For both of you." He slips it over my neck and I feel myself leaning into him, feel the leather burning against my skin. "Kizi Nd'aib nidali."

  "What does that mean?"

  "'I have been there.'"

  I look into Gray Wolf's face and I believe him. This man knows what it is like to be thrown into a place that might very well kill him, if he doesn't do it himself. It is there in his eyes--black, the color that's left when all the other color in the world is swallowed whole.

  "What's the word for 'thank you?'" I ask.

  "Wliwni."

  "Wliwni, then." I touch the beading on the pouch, an intricate turtle. "How did you know where to find me?"

  That, finally, makes him smile. "Everyone in Burlington knows where your husband lives."

  "You left the moccasins on the porch for me."

  "I left them for the baby." He leans against the supporting beam of the icehouse porch. His hair spills over his shoulders.

  "You shouldn't have come," I say.

  "Why not?"

  "Spencer wouldn't like it."

  "I didn't come for him, Lia," Gray Wolf replies. "I came for you."

  I do not know what to say, which is just as well, because something catches his eye--Ruby, who has ferried a tray filled with lemonade and scones onto the porch of the house. As we walk toward the refreshments, I feel the medicine pouch sway against me. Gray Wolf and I are the only two people in the world who know it is there. I wonder how and why he has twice now called me Lia, when I have never introduced myself to him that way.

  The social life of the Old Americans sets the social tone of the community. They are the charter members of society, and the rules that they make governing social intercourse are the rules that all others would follow.

  --Elin Anderson, We Americans: A Study of Cleavage in an American City, 1937

  Forks ring against fine china, and the sound of crystal glasses singing makes me think there might be angels in the rafters. My father and Spencer and I have the best table at the Ethan Allen Club--the one uniformly agreed upon to be the choice location in the dining room for watching the sun set. Through the roses and nasturtium in the center of the table I watch my father flatter the wife of Allen Sizemore, Dean of Sciences. "So," Allen asks, smiling. "When do you expect the