* * * * *

Dolly had been inquisitive about Marcia. “Where’d you live before you came here? You aren’t from these parts, are you?” Farther down east, was all Marcia would say. (She was through with her past; she’d run away and left it. Dolly’s prying drew it close for a moment, herself ragged, dirty, taking care of babies, one a year, spindly, rickety little brats with diapers hanging down. “Be grateful you’ve got a home,” her mother would say. “Not all men would have done it, but when I married him, I said, ‘Now here’s Marcia.’ And he said, ‘Bring her along.’” Her mother’d been just seventeen when she had Marcia, it’d been a year before she got herself a husband, and Marcia had paid in hard labor for whatever fun her mother may have once had. Until she was old enough to go out to work. Then she didn’t go back.)

“I used to be awful pretty,” Dolly was saying fretfully. “The whitest skin. And now look at me!”

Marcia, looking, felt her own vitality rise on a tide of exultance. You haven’t got much now, she thought. You think you’ve got Stan? Wait and see!

Dolly went on to talk about her lack of health. Stan was really to blame, and he knew it; that was why he tried to make things easy for her. She’d told him she wasn’t strong enough to have a baby, but you know how men are. She’d been terribly sick, they’d had to operate, she’d never had a well day since. She had grown animated and flushed as she described the operation. Only now it was her stomach. Stan had taken her to the hospital in October—last month—and they’d taken X-rays and everything, and the doctor said there was nothing wrong, only her nerves. She didn’t like the doctor. He sided with Stan, pretending nothing was wrong with her.

To all this Marcia had listened, keeping her face humble and attentive, moving about the house with her step leashed and quiet. And within her, her passion had crouched, dark, feral, alert.

On some days Dolly would not get out of bed. Even then she would eat greedily whatever Marcia brought on the varnished black tray and set beside her. She craved sweets, frosted cakes, prunes in syrup, a bag of cheap bright candy from the meat-and-grocery cart which came each week. That she hid under her pillow, nibbling when she thought no one was looking.

On other days she would get up when Marcia came, would choose one of the warm gay bathrobes—the pink blanket robe or the red corduroy—mail-order purchases, and then would sit for hours in front of the mirror at the walnut dresser with the marble top, curling her hair, the room close with the brash odor of scorched hair, with the sooty smell of the kerosene lamp, smoking as Dolly held the curling tongs in the chimney.

“I’d like to try a henna rinse,” she would say. “My hair used to be like gold, real bright. But Stan won’t let me send for anything more.” She combed out curls, softening them over her finger. “That’s the doctor’s fault, too. He wants I should use just his medicine, so he can get a rake-off. Some of the medicines you see advertised are certainly wonderful.”

* * * * *

At the time Marcia scarcely listened to Dolly’s chatter; later it repeated itself against her inner ear. “I used to send for some of them, and they made me feel better, but I didn’t say anything about them, because I knew the doctor would be mad. There was one, an Elixir of Youth it was called. Glands, you know.” She primmed her mouth. “It makes your skin white, your eyes bright, it gives you back allure. It said that on the bottle. I took almost two bottles and I could see a big difference. Only then I was sick and Stan found the bottles in the closet, and the doctor just raved! He said it was pure poison, arsenic. He couldn’t find out what’s the matter with me, and so he blamed that.” She turned her head, her large eyes vindictive. “I sent for another bottle, but it never came. If I thought Stan took it—”

One day, later, Dolly had said, “Stan wants to get a regular housekeeper. He says you never meant to stay all winter; it was just a favor as a stopgap.”

Marcia was sweeping the dining room. She stopped, her hands closing hard over the broom handle, her heart swelling. He couldn’t stand it, the thought of her in his house all day! Last night she had left on the kitchen table the red handkerchief she tied over her hair. He had seen it; perhaps he had touched it.

He is afraid, thought Marcia, if the fullness of her throat, the swift running of her blood could be called thought. He knows we are coming together! When he comes in at night, the house feels different because I have been here loving him.

Was it that night, or later, that she had known what she would do? Or had the knowledge lain coiled, waiting, in the dark center of her being from the moment she had first walked into the house, and had that dark self acted without a moment of conscious decision, of choice? And having acted, had thrust back into darkness all thought of what she had done, as if in achieving oblivion she achieved safety? For she was safe now, and Stan was free, and spring had come. The blueberries were in bloom.

No one would ever know how clever she had been. That was a pity. It would be fine, years from now, when all danger was outlawed, a worthless debt, to jeer at Dr. Kirk; to say, “I outsmarted you, for all your smug sureness!”

“Are you quite sure, Mrs. Barrows, that you didn’t send for this patent medicine for Mrs. Douglas? You say she spoke about it. Did you ever see her taking it?” His suave voice angered her, for all she knew just how she must widen her eyes and let her lips part, meek, puzzled, ingenuous.

“Dolly told me about it,” she had said. “She said she had sent for it and it hadn’t come. Weeks ago. Before Christmas. She told me you said it was bad for her. Why would I send for it?”

“Why, indeed? And if she did take it, where’s the bottle?” Dr. Kirk had stared at her, and she had met, had endured his probing eyes with no movement except a little troubled sigh.

* * * * *

Marcia heard a car, the sound of the motor irregular as the machine slowed in spring ruts, climbed a rough hill, approached. She stepped back into a growth of alders, and as the car passed, peered out. A black coupé, and behind the wheel, slouched in the seat, the doctor, his profile grim under the brim of a gray hat. Where had he been? To see Stan? Marcia folded her arms under her breasts, lifting them, trying to still the great jump her heart gave. Why should he want to see Stan after all these months? He had signed the death certificate. Acute indigestion.

Marcia walked on to the blueberry slopes. Long hillsides arched gently against the brilliant blue of the June sky, a close cover of tawny, rose-hued, green leaves, lustrous, with huge gray boulders, and lines of darker gray ledges. She chose the boulder where she had sat last year, and sank down, hugging her knees, her back turned to the road, not to tear herself to pieces watching, straining her eyes for the glimpse of Stan.

And again, as if she must finish the story before she could be rid of it forever, she thought she heard Dolly’s thin voice, complaining of pains in her stomach. That was in January, after a sleet storm, and the trees about the house were brittle glass, cracking in the wind; the roads were sheer ice. Marcia had telephoned the doctor, at Dolly’s urgency. “Take her temperature,” he had said, in an exasperated voice. “She’s been overeating again, that’s all. Call me back if she has any fever; otherwise give her a good dose of castor oil. Keep her off sweets, if you can. I can’t get out there unless it’s serious.”

Dolly had anxiously taken her own temperature, but she couldn’t coax any fever reading no matter how she tried. So she had taken the tonic Dr. Kirk had left, and after a few days stopped complaining.

In February Dolly had died, picking a blizzard to make things as bad as possible for everybody. Stan had been at home, stormbound, for almost a week, and Marcia had not been near the house. “I’ll send for you by the stage when I want you again,” Dolly had said. She had smirked. “Stan and I have just the cosiest time together.” That had been the afternoon the storm began.

Marcia did not know how long the storm had lasted. The brief dim day blurred into night; night, with its whirling snow catching lamplight beyond the window, was almost as light as day. She had not gone to bed. She had slept on a chair, her head down on the kitchen table, waiting, waiting. She had been sitting there, unable any longer to sleep even for a few minutes, when Stan’s fist beat against the door.

“Dolly’s sick.” He looked like an old man, the snow frosting his eyebrows, his chin. “She’s awful sick. Can you get over? I’m driving out to the end of the road to pick up the doctor. He can come along the highway that far in his car—the plow’s coming through ahead of him. You got a lantern? It’s drifting.”

Stan had gone on at once, not waiting. She plowed through drifts, some of them deep enough to throw her, so that she squirmed along on her belly until she could get a foot down to earth again. She found wind-blown stretches where she could run, the lantern swinging crazily.