Chapter Sixty-Two Pearl
SIXTY-TWO PEARL
I never married. I suppose I am what they call a spinster: a once bright flower now withering on the vine.
Poor Chauncey tried. He asked for my hand many times, came courting with flowers and simple but thoughtful gifts, which I courteously but consistently refused.
Eventually he realized that no meant no and that no meant never, and he married Becky Miller, who has given him five children.
The youngest child, a boy named Walter, is the same age Chauncey and I were when he first confessed his love to me.
Time is a funny thing. The way it passes, then seems to circle back. How in my mind, part of me will always be nineteen, sneaking out to see you, aching to steal kisses, to whisper secret things.
Some things in town have changed, but much of it stays the same.
People still leave offerings for the knackerman on full moons. It is said he’s always watching, a vengeful spirit with the power to destroy every living soul.
Sometimes I think of the generations to come, how they will only know the stories, have no recollection of the actual flesh-and-blood man, the truth of what happened to him.
Stories can be twisted, embellished. Chauncey’s sister, Josephine, has a gift for telling the darkest of the knackerman stories. She claims she can hear him sometimes, telling her that the town is cursed, that we all must continue to pay for what was done to him.
Perhaps Boone’s Ferry is cursed. Sometimes I think that would explain a great deal.
I have lived alone in this house, my father’s house, for thirty-seven years now.
Both my parents lost to the sickness, the madness that took so many that spring.
I rattle around like a ghost, moving from room to room, going up and down the stairs, feeling like I’m looking for something, but never sure of what it is.
In the beginning, I had Aife. The lovely black creature you left me with. She was my one true companion for years. Together, we waited for you to come home.
Each night, even now, all these years later, I leave one light on, just in case, though it seems impossible now, but what do I have to live for if not hope?
I leave the light burning so you can find your way back to me, so you’ll know I’m waiting.
For all these years I have been waiting; waiting for you, my one true love, to return from wherever you went.
My heart, of course, knows that if you could have returned, you would have long ago. But still I cling to hope, and as Emily Dickinson says, hope is the thing with feathers. Each night, as I turn on that one light by the window, I feel it fluttering there in my chest.
I don’t believe you ever made it to Boston.
No doctors ever came. No outsiders asking about the illness or your and Dr. Endicott’s notes and records.
The records you so carefully hid and never told me where.
You never made it to reunite with your aunt either.
When she and her baby girl, little Charlotte, returned to town six months later that fall, Margaret told me she hadn’t seen or heard from you.
Where did you go, Frankie?
There are questions we are never meant to know the answers to, I suppose. Questions that keep us up at night. Torment us, wrap us up in great dark coils, keep us from sleep, and when we do sleep, fill our heads with nightmares.
But sometimes, sometimes the dreams are good (which is almost worse, I must confess).
Sometimes I dream that there’s a noise downstairs.
I go down to see and there you are! You’ve just come in the door.
You saw the light in my window, and you’ve come home at last. You take me in your arms and kiss me and time melts away and we’re just girls again and we have our whole lives ahead of us, our whole lives together.
They hollow my heart out, these dreams.
Sometimes I go to our other house, our true house, the old Ayers place.
The roof fell in long ago. It’s little more than a pile of rubble now—the chimney at the center is the only thing still standing.
I go, and I leave flowers. I leave little gifts.
I stand in the moonlight and I talk to you.
I ask if you remember. Do you remember when we were young and so in love?
Do you remember the way my lips tasted against yours?
Do you remember how upset I used to get when you were late?
How I would hide in the shadows, pretend I wasn’t there, and come pouncing at you like some sinister thing, a phantom, a vengeful spirit, and we would roll together, laugh, and I would chide you for never being on time, for putting your work before me?
How we would imagine an alternate life, a make-believe life where we were married, and you would come home to me each night and I would have a pipe waiting for you, a nice glass of brandy, and I would ask you something simple, something mundane, like, “How was your day, my love?” and you would tell me about the patients you’d treated.
I would cook you sumptuous things and we would eat in bed, licking stew off one another’s fingers. We would be happy.
Sometimes, I’ll admit it, I catch myself playing the game alone at home. I walk into the kitchen, start making supper, and I let myself imagine you’ll be coming through the front door at any moment.
I pour you a glass of brandy.
I set a place for you at the table.
I sit on the other side of the table and I close my eyes, and say your name.
And I wait.
And I wait.