Private Life Read Free Page B

as she was, what person she had been.The teakettle was whistling in the
    kitchen, but they wouldn't be drinking any tea. Pete, staring at the coots, leaned forward
    with an intent look on his face, and the whistle of the kettle rose in pitch, as if in
    desperation. She said, You take it. I want you to take it.He stood straight up and looked at
    her, refusal written on his face, but then he relented. His smile came on slowly, and he
    kissed her on the forehead. She stepped forward, took the picture, and placed it in his
    hands. It wasn't terribly large, though it had always seemed to be. She said, The teakettle
    is going to burn up.While she was in the kitchen, Stella entered through the dog door, her
    tail wagging, but Margaret went out without greeting her, and closed her in the kitchen.
    In the hall, Pete had his hat on, the picture under his arm. She walked him the step or two
    to the door and opened it. As he went out onto the porch, he pressed her hand.Thank you,
    he said, then again, thank you.She stood on her porch and watched him walk to his car,
    get in, and, with a wave, drive away.

PART ONE

    1883

    FOR A WHILE, they lived in town. She had a particular and vivid memory of
    that time: she was running, as it seemed she always did, back and forth from one end of
    town to the other. She was fast and gloried in it. She wasn't racing against anyone or
    getting into trouble, she was just running and looking at things. She ran fast enough so
    that she could feel her heavy blond hair stream out behind her, subside across her back,
    stream out again. She passed one house after another.

    At the far end of town, there was a pleasant large house where some ladies lived,
    though they never talked to her, nor she to them. She remembered how, one day, she
    came to a halt in front of this house and one of the ladies, a tall beauty, was standing on
    the porch, wearing an elegant white embroidered gown with a snowy eyelet skirt.
    Margaret stared at her, and the lady smiled. Margaret thought that she had never seen
    anything as beautiful as that dress in her life, which at the time seemed rather long. When
    the lady wafted back into the house, Margaret turned and pelted home, where she found
    her mother in the back parlor, sewing. As soon as Margaret entered the room, out of
    breath, she saw that her mother was sewing a copy of the dress she had seen on the
    beautiful lady. She exclaimed, "I saw that! I saw that dress today!" Then she went up and
    touched the eyelet. Her mother, Lavinia, didn't reprimand her, but finished the seam she
    was sewing, and broke the thread between her teeth. Then she said, "Perhaps you did. But
    don't tell your father." It was years before Margaret realized that the pleasant house at the
    far end of town was a brothel, and that, from time to time, her mother sewed for the
    ladies, to make a little extra money. In Margaret's mind, these dresses were always white.
    When she was older, though, and recalled this, Lavinia said that it hadn't happened, it
    couldn't have happened; Margaret must have read it in a book.
    What
    had happened, what Margaret should have remembered, was that her
    brother Lawrence, who would have been thirteen then, had left the house with her one
    day and taken her to a public hanging. No one had stopped him, because Lavinia was
    giving birth--to Elizabeth--and her father, famous all over town as Dr. Mayfield
    (Margaret thought of him as "Dr. Mayfield," too, he was that imposing), was attending
    the birth. Lily, the housekeeper, was occupied with Beatrice, who was two. It was said
    that Lawrence and Margaret left the house and were gone for hours before anyone
    noticed. But no one suspected that Lawrence, a studious boy, would have taken her to the
    hanging. Ben, yes--Ben was rowdy and adventuresome, though two years younger than
    Lawrence. The whole episode was a family legend, and part of the legend was that
    Margaret didn't remember a thing about it. "Margaret looks on the bright