Second Glance Read online

  “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 big day?”

  I do not realize, at first, that he is talking about the baby. “Not soon enough, I bet,” his wife says. “I remember feeling fat as a tick on a hound by the end.”

  I like Mrs. Sizemore, who tells it as she sees it. She reaches across the table to pat my hand. “You hang in there, Cissy. It’ll be over before you know it.”

  “Over?” Allen laughs. “Just beginning, you mean. Why, Spencer will start nodding off in the middle of lectures, after changing diapers all night long. And Harry, maybe we’ll engrave Grandpa on your office door just for good measure.”

  “This baby will be absolutely perfect,” my father promises. “He’ll have his papa’s brain—which means he’ll be smart enough to sleep through the night. And he’ll have his mama’s beauty—which means if he does wake up, he’ll charm his exhausted nanny.”

  “Nanny?” I turn to Spencer.

  He glares at my father. “That was going to be a surprise.”

  “But I don’t want a nanny.”

  “Darling,” Spencer jokes, “she’s not for you.”

  Everyone at the table laughs. I look down at my lap, mortified. Hiking up my sleeve a little, I make sure the bandage is showing, and then I reach for my wineglass, my eyes on Spencer the whole time.

  “Mercy, Cecelia . . . did you hurt yourself?” As I have expected, Mrs. Sizemore has noticed right away.

  “As a matter of fact—” I begin, but Spencer interrupts.

  “She burned her arm on the stove.” He stares at me with a look that brooks no argument. “She really needs to be more careful.”

  “You didn’t tell me,” my father says, reaching for my wrist.

  “It was nothing,” I pull away and in the process, knock over my wineglass. The cabernet spills, bright as my blood, across my lap.

  It seems everyone in the room summons the waiter at once. He comes out of the woodwork with a stack of snowy napkins. His face, wide and brown, reminds me of Gray Wolf’s. He begins to dab at my thighs.

  “For God’s sake,” Spencer explodes. “Get your hands off her!”

  He takes over, mopping up the mess. “It’s only a dress, Spencer,” I say. And to the waiter, without thinking: “Wliwni.” Thank you.

  The waiter’s eyes fly to my face, as do everyone else’s at the table. “Well?” I demand of the waiter, pretending he has heard me wrong. “Who do you think you are?” I turn to the table at large. “Excuse me while I visit the ladies’ room.” As I sweep from the sumptuous dining room I can feel the Gypsy watching. I wish I could apologize to him. I wish I could tell him I understand: the higher you raise your hopes, the farther you have to fall.

  Draft statistics showed Vermont to be almost at the top of the list of physical and mental defectives. It has been suggested that this may be due to the large number of French Canadians in the population.

  —H. F. Perkins, Project #1, ESV archive, “Projects—Old,” 1926

  Somehow, Gray Wolf knows when to come. I find him on my porch when Spencer is lecturing and Ruby has gone into town to the butcher. He steps out from behind a tree when I take a walk at dusk in the woods. When he does not appear himself, I discover more gifts on the porch: a small sweetgrass basket, a miniature snowshoe, a sketch of a running horse. When we are together, I wonder where he has been all my life.

  I know better than to encourage this. He comes from the fraying edge of a society; he holds on by a thread. Me, I’ve grown up right at its woven center. He is dark and quiet and completely different from me, which is exactly why I should put distance between us. But it is also the reason I find him so fascinating.

  If you walk down the street in Burlington you can see all sorts of people—Irish, Italians, Gypsies, Jews—but you learn, growing up on the Hill, to wear blinders. You notice only the people who look like you—women with the same permanent waves in their hair and children with sailor collars and men who smell of bay rum. I have not asked Gray Wolf why he keeps seeking me out, but I imagine it is the same reason I wait for him—for the risk of it, for the sheer surprise of pressing one’s nose to the glass and finding someone staring back on the other side.

  What would Spencer say if he knew the person I most identify with is a Gypsy, who, like me, doesn’t fit into this world?

  Today I don’t expect to see Gray Wolf, and I am truly disappointed. I won’t be at home during the day—instead, I have come to attend the Klifa Club’s monthly meeting. It is the premier women’s social club in Burlington; my membership was a given, based on my social standing in the community.

  Spencer encouraged me to come to town today. Dressed in long sleeves, to cover my bandages, no one would be able to tell. “Besides,” he suggested over breakfast, “a little musical entertainment might be soothing.”

  So I spend two hours listening to a harpist, and another half-hour trying not to fall asleep as a botanist drones on about the gardens of Italy. I suffer through lemonade and finger sandwiches, as women discreetly pat the mound of my abdomen and tell me what I already know—that I am carrying a boy. I fan myself with the program and slip down the stairs when the ladies are discussing next month’s event.

  Gray Wolf is waiting for me beneath the green awning of the bank, smoking a cigarette, as if we have agreed to meet. There is just one moment of shock that he’s found me, even in town, but he only raises his dark eyebrows and offers me a cigarette too. We start walking. We don’t talk, at first. We don’t need to.

  “The Klifa Club,” he says finally.

  “Yes.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “Magnificent, of course. We eat on plates made of 14-karat gold, and hold audiences with kings of small European countries. Why else would it be so exclusive?”

  He laughs. “Beats me.” As we come