Pendulum

“It sufficeth me to say that I am a grown woman, and I know how I see things,” Louisa was known to say. That is, she knew what it was that she had, and she knew what it was that she wanted. Those were two separate and distinct things. “The idea,” she said, “is to reconcile them, but I do not find it necessary.” The housekeeper, Mrs. Simpson, told everyone that Louisa was not so stubborn as she made herself out to be, but no one believed her.

She’d been told that God existed, and she had long conversations with herself over this, over the grey carpets in the long hallways. Sometimes they seemed indistinguishable--God and the carpets. They ran into each other on the stair landings when she was on her way down to breakfast.

In the evenings, her voice could be heard one floor up and one floor down:

“Now I lay me down to sleep,
Pray the lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
Pray the Lord my soul to take.”

She didn’t know if it would help, but she decided she liked the sound of it. “It’s like a nursery rhyme,” she told her niece, Trixie, whose room was on the second floor.

“I don’t like it,” Trixie said, “Dad used to say it with me when I was little.” Trixie admired her aunt. Her mother had died the previous year and she had hoped Louisa would be granted custody, but it was not to be so. Still, Trixie’s father had allowed her to come to Longhouse for the summer, and she decided that she wanted to grow up to be Louisa.

“Dye my hair to look like yours, Aunt Louisa,” she said. And Louisa told Mrs. Simpson to go out and do it.

That was the way of things at Longhouse. Only pleasant company was invited and indulgence prevailed. The latter, at least, where favorite nieces were concerned. It was said about town that Louisa Kent was rather congenial for an infidel.

There were two guests at the house that summer, and it seemed nearly crowded to Mrs. Simpson. Barney Sutherland--who was actually staying at a hotel in town--occupied the den and dining room so frequently that Mrs. Simpson began buying corn on the cob for dinner. Barney was partial to corn on the cob. “He’s an acquaintance of mine,” Louisa told Trixie, “We’ve done business together in the past.”

Louisa was thirty-two years old in June when Barney proposed, and she was feeling religious that day. She accepted.

“I always did like red-headed women,” Barney said. Louisa stood with her back to the wall and let him kiss her. She supposed that Longhouse would be better with Barney in it. Barney’s blessedly tanned face looking out of the windows, his arms resting on the thin, wooden bannisters. She placed her hand on the back of his head.

Trixie watched Barney from her corners of the house. She pushed her hair back and forth between her fingers and studied him. When they ate at the long table and the crickets began to sing outside, she lifted her fork slowly. This man was something else, and she knew it. Longhouse had never seen the likes of him before. She didn’t appreciate the fact that he would soon be her uncle. She wanted her aunt to remain single, she wanted her to invite her for Christmas, to let her come to live with her when it became evident that Trixie herself was an old maid. Because Trixie never intended to marry. At any rate, the girl got one of her wishes. As her father’s car pulled into the thin driveway on the first of August, gravel crunching and scattering under its tires, Louisa told her niece she would be delighted to have her for the holidays. “As soon as you get out of school--you’ll come see me and bring your pretty singing voice, won’t you?”

“I’ll bring you so many presents you won’t know what to do with yourself,” Trixie said. And then she remembered Barney. “For both of you.” Louisa’s dog was smiling as the car pulled away. Trixie said hello to her father and took a breath of cooling air. “Don’t think you’ll have me for long, Dad. I’m going back at Thanksgiving.”

The wedding came in October. Louisa had pumpkins carved for the occasion. She bought herself an ivory gown, because white would never do for an autumn ceremony. The brown and red leaves were sprinkling down around the guests nearly the entire time. A little boy opened his mouth and caught one in it. It crackled bitterly against his teeth.

Trixie had midterms, and did not come. But she sent a card. It was addressed to “Miss Louisa Kent,” and Barney looked askance at it. “She’s still a red-head, I guess,” he said.

The honeymoon was accomplished at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, followed by a quick trip to Catalina Island. Louisa had never seen the Pacific before. One night the two of them saw a buffalo standing in the moonlight on the island. Louisa pulled her hands inside the sleeves of her sweater. Barney whispered in her ear. “I have the most incredible urge to throw my Carmex at it.” She thought perhaps she would end up loving Barney.

Barney was a hotels man. He worked with the Biltmore, the Ritz-Carlton, and the Four Seasons. He flew out to Illinois once to look at some old furniture, and that was where he met Louisa. Longhouse was full of old things. Louisa remembered him asking about her beaded lamp shade. She had told him she wouldn’t sell it, and he had said he’d be back to change her mind.

By the first of November Louisa found herself back at Longhouse. Barney had been installed as well, but he left for a conference back on the west coast. He said he was afraid there would be a lot of those. But Louisa did not mind being alone. She took to long bouts of praying in his absence, and when Mrs. Simpson asked her what she had gotten so religious about she said, “Well, Rita, I’ve gotten one thing I’ve always wanted and thought I could never have, and I thought I might as well try my luck at another.” Mrs. Simpson went on vacuuming the long carpets, but she wondered if Louisa was praying for a baby.

Louisa was not praying for a baby. She was praying for a god. She wasn’t exactly sure who she was praying to, but she decided as long as her request was clear, whatever powers might be would be able to negotiate it. She still did not know whether or not she believed in God, and she shaped her demands accordingly. She prayed to be able to believe in Him. She had not needed this for herself, though she had always thought it would be nice, but she wanted it now for Barney. He had kissed her in the bathroom before he left, and wiped a droplet of water from her face with the belt of her bathrobe. He had left a blue china bowl of oranges on the kitchen table. Nobody had ever done that for her before. She loved Barney, and she knew she was going to need help. “Love is not a gift, it’s an occupation,” she wrote in one corner of her day planner. The blue ink of her pen soaked through a couple of pages.

The expected arrival of Trixie a day before Thanksgiving gave Mrs. Simpson reason to go into town for new lilac scented sachets. Lilac was Trixie’s particular favorite. Mrs. Simpson looked forward to Trixie’s visit as a distraction for Louisa, and a bit for herself, as she had made a kind of pet of Trixie during the summer months. The dog was nowhere to be seen when Trixie came, but she ran up the steps anyway, and burst through the door that was not used to being burst through. “Aunt Louisa? The choir has gotten together ten new songs this year and I know every single one in soprano and alto.”

Louisa thought her niece’s movements very lovely. Her posture and carriage had improved since the summer. “Brilliant! Then you will teach them to me.” Trixie ran up two flights of steps and deposited her things before returning to the sitting room where she had found Louisa upon entering. “Now. Tell me about your comings and goings at school. Barney’s been gone since last Tuesday and I’ve had only Mrs. Simpson to talk to,” Louisa said. Trixie had nearly forgotten about him. The mention of his name put a bit of a damper on her spirits, but she persevered.

“I went to the Harvest Ball, Aunt Louisa. A horrible boy took me--a friend of Eileen’s--but we went ice skating, and so it was worth it. Dad didn’t like it one bit, and you know--that’s kind of why I went.”

Barney arrived Christmas Eve with snow all over his loafers and a cab-load of packages. Mrs. Simpson stayed until after the clam chowder and cherry pie had been served, and then Barney took her home to the other side of town. When he got back he said, “Well, Trixie, this will be the first Christmas at Longhouse for both of us.” Trixie didn’t hear him. Her hands were busy with Christmas Eve tinsel, and she was humming to herself.

After Christmas the weather worsened. Temperatures dropped lower than the lowest Mrs. Simpson could remember in all her fifty-five years living in Oak Grove. Longhouse was snowed in as the end of the year approached. Trixie was expected home for New Year’s but was glad to stay with Louisa instead. “Dad will be so put out,” she said.

Barney flew in from Los Angeles as soon as the St. Louis airport was free enough from fog and snow to allow his plane to land. Trixie’s father was expected to pick her up the following day, so the three celebrated their last night together by building a fire in the old stove in the den and playing Spades and Knock-knock. By eleven Barney announced that he was ready for some shut eye. The wind had died down and the clouds had swirled into nothingness, leaving the sky dark and relentless outside the double-paned windows.

“Come on, kitten, I know you’re not tired, but Miss Trix here has a long day of travel ahead of her,” Barney said. Louisa kissed Trixie’s warm forehead and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

“I’m going to have to invite you for next summer.”

“I’m going to have to accept,” Trixie said. She laughed.

Barney awoke to the terrible screech of a cat fight among the garbage cans outside. “Poor creatures,” he said softly. Louisa’s eyelids were heavy and pale and he knew she was still asleep. He got himself out of bed and traversed the long, grey staircase to the kitchen. Moonlight glowed in the silver basin of the sink. He sat down on one of the yellow-cushioned wicker chairs he’d had ordered from California and spread his fingers out over the glass table top. He thought of the hideous old masonite table Louisa had nearly kept him from replacing because her father had made it. He thought of Louisa, curled in a ball upstairs with her silky hair around her ears, and he was happy. He had never been so happy before in his life. He had discovered in Louisa the other half of his soul, and he still gloated over the discovery.

A slight, muffled sound came from the direction of the den, and the white-painted wooden door opened to reveal Trixie in her flannel nightgown, holding the dog in her arms. An orange rolled out of the box by the refrigerator and came to rest against one of her bare feet. “I thought I heard someone,” she said. She scooted the dog back into the den and turned to follow.

“You must be cold, Miss. Get on up to bed,” Barney said.

She said, “I burned my arm on the stove.”

Trixie held out her arm, and he took it. He slid a hand through her fair hair and around to the back of her neck. He pulled her close and kissed her.

And Trixie, her blood racing through her delicate blue veins, was oblivious to the icy coldness of the floor as he layed her down on the tiles.