The weight of water - Anita Shreve [96]
“It is why you have been looking pale,” I said, suddenly comprehending the truth of what Anethe was saying. As I looked at her, I had no doubt now that she was pregnant.
“I have felt a bit faint from time to time,” she said, “and sometimes there is a bad taste in the back of my mouth, a metallic taste, as if I had sucked on a nail.”
“I cannot say,” I said, standing up and spreading my hands along my apron skirt. “I have never had the experience.”
And Anethe, silenced by the implications of that statement, picked up the broom by the table and began to sweep the floor.
The coroner missed this fact about Anethe in his examination of her body, and I did not like to tell Evan, as I thought it would make his agony all the more unendurable.
About two o’clock of that afternoon, I heard a loud hallooing from the water and looked through the window and saw Emil Ingerbretson waving to me from his schooner just off the cove, and so I ran outside quickly, thinking that perhaps there had been an accident, and I managed to make out, though the wind kept carrying off the words, that John had decided to go straight in to Portsmouth, as he could not beat against the wind. When I had got the message, I waved back to Emil, and he went off in his boat. Once inside, I told the other two women, and Anethe looked immediately disappointed, and I saw that she had meant to tell Evan that day of her news, despite my admonition not to. Karen was quite vexed, and said so, and asked now what would she do all dressed up with her city clothes on, and I replied that I had been asking myself that question all morning. She sighed dramatically, and went to a chair against the wall in the kitchen and lay back upon it.
“They will be back tonight,” I said to Anethe. “Let’s have a portion of the stew now, as I am hungry, and you must eat regular meals, and we will save the larger share for the men when they return. I have packed them no food, so unless they feed themselves in Portsmouth, they will be starved when they return.”
I asked Karen if she would take some dinner with us, and she then asked me how she would eat a stew with no teeth, and I replied, with some exasperation, as we had had this exchange nearly every day since she had had her teeth removed, that she could sip the broth and gum the bread, and she said in a tired voice that she would eat later and turned her head to the side. I looked up to see that Anethe was gazing at me with a not unkind expression, and I trust that she was nearly as weary of my sister’s complaints as I was.
We ate our meal, and I found some rubber boots in the entry-way and put them on and went to the well and saw that the water had frozen over and so I went into the hen house to look for the axe, and found it lying by a barrel, and brought it to the well and heaved it up with all my strength and broke the ice with one great crack. I had been used to this chore, since the water often froze over on that island, even when the temperature of the air was not at freezing level, and this was due to the wind. I fetched up three buckets of water and took them one by one into the house and poured them into pans, and when I was done I brought the axe up to the house and laid it by the front door, so that in the morning, I would not have to go to the hen house to get it.
Dusk came early, as it was still not the equinox, and when it was thoroughly dark, and I noticed, as one will notice not the continuous sound of voices in the room but rather the cessation of those voices, that the wind had quieted, I turned to Anethe and said, “So that is that. The men will not be back this night.”
She had a puzzled look on her face. “How can you be sure?” she asked.
“The wind has died,” I said. “Unless they are right at the entrance to the harbor, their sails will not fill, and if they have not yet left Portsmouth, John will not go out at all.”
“But we have never been alone at night before,” Anethe said.
“Let us wait another half hour before we are sure,” I said.
The moon was in its ascendancy, which had