Here On Earth

9

Since her return to Fox Hill, all March has accomplished is an orderly mess. There are currently twenty-five boxes in the kitchen, all labeled to go to the Library Association’s booth at the Harvest Fair, which is always held in the basement of Town Hall. Most of the objects March has packed, she knew by heart: The cake pans Mrs. Dale seemed to collect, dozens of them. The lace curtains, the throw pillows, the ceramic candlesticks from England. March’s father’s law books have already been donated to Deny Law School, carted there by Ken Helm, who’s been ru

Judith, who didn’t care much for jewelry, had only three good pieces: A gold necklace, which March has given to Harriet Laughton, one of Judith’s dear friends. A pair of heavy gold earrings, rarely worn, has been presented to St. Bridget’s Hospital, to be auctioned off to the highest bidder at the next fund-raising drive. The lovely, square-cut emerald Judith never took off, March now wears on her right hand. Luckily, March found the emerald in an envelope stuffed into a night table drawer she was clearing out. March studied that ring so often, as Mrs. Dale folded laundry or planted mint or tucked her in at night, that she ca

Today, while March works on organizing the house, Judith’s little dog sits by the window, waiting for rabbits. Each time the dog spies one, out in the orchard or calmly chewing mint by the back door, it goes completely berserk.

“Will you stop that?” March complains, because whenever the dog barks, she’s startled all over again.

Aside from the dog, the house is amazingly quiet. There’s no TV switched on, no radio, no sound of traffic. And there’s definitely no Gwen. March had expected she’d have to argue constantly with her daughter; she’d imagined Gwen would want to sleep until noon or one, when she’d rise only to throw herself in an easy chair to complain, grouse, whine, and threaten, all the while eating cookies or frozen pizza, spreading crumbs on the rug and talking about teenage suicide statistics.

None of this has happened. When March wakes in the morning, Gwen is already gone, her bed in the sewing room neatly made, her cereal dish washed and drying on the dish rack that March will have to pack up today. She’s been out for a walk, Gwen explains when she returns later in the day; she’s been ru

With no distractions-no Gwen, no car, no one other than Susie calling on the phone-March should be done clearing out the house, but the work is going slowly, as if each trinket and kitchen utensil, every sweater and scarf were stuck in molasses. Now and then, March comes across some item which truly surprises her, and then she gets completely side-tracked. This morning, for instance, she found a box of matches from a restaurant called the Blue Dolphin, a small, family-run place down by Lamb’s Cove, less than ten miles away. Seeing those matches, she remembered a night nearly thirty years earlier, an evening Mrs. Dale had off, but because taking care of children is not a job that’s easily compartmentalized, as soon as Judith came home she went upstairs to check on March.

When she came to sit on the edge of March’s bed, Judith Dale smelled of garlic and cologne, a combined scent that was both lemony and pungent. She had appeared so dreamy and young that March had scrambled to her knees to get a better look. Mrs. Dale’s hair was curled, from the damp salt air at Lamb’s Cove. She’d shown March this box of matches, with its smiling dolphin logo; she’d said this restaurant had the best shrimp scampi and the most fabulous cheesecake, and some grown-up drink called a mimosa that March has had a fondness for ever since hearing its beautiful name. Now, March realizes it was love that made the menu so special, and that Mrs. Dale’s di

Though March is trying to divest, she has kept the box of matches, just as she has held on to one of her brother’s blue ribbons from his high school debating team. She went out to the Marshes to visit him, but, exactly as the Judge had warned, Alan wouldn’t open the door. In all honesty, she was relieved. What would she say to him after all these years? Why presume that she knows him? If you’re disco

“Take my advice,” Susa

March had vowed she wouldn’t tell Susie about the calls, but as soon as Gwen wandered off with two local girls Susie had introduced her to, March admitted she’d been phoning him.

“It’s nothing,” March vowed. “It’s like a game.”

“There are no games,” Susie had insisted. “Other than Monopoly.”

Susie is a big fan of Richard Cooper’s, and she always has been. She’s told herself that if she could find a man as good as Richard, she’d marry him tomorrow. But of course, she may have found exactly that in Ed Milton, the new police chief, and what does she go and do but cancel a date with him in order to have di

“Hollis is bad news, and he always has been,” Susie said. How Hollis manages to get his way in this town never fails to amaze her, but he knows who to charm and who to pay off, and in the end, if he wants something-whether it’s business zoning at the end of Main Street or the DPW to plow his properties first-he gets it. “You’re going to be sucked in all over again.”

“He’s a whirlpool, is that what you’re saying?” March had laughed. “Don’t worry so much. I’m married, remember?”

“I remember,” Susie had said, pointedly.

“Don’t say the rest of that,” March had warned.

“Fine.”

“Because I do too, Susie. I remember real well.”

Today, to spite Susa

“The end of the week,” March promises, but already she’s thinking she’d like to stay for Founder’s Day, which celebrates the night when Aaron Jenkins ran over Fox Hill more than three hundred years earlier.