Part 3 (2/2)

”What did you tell her in your note?”

”I just wrote my name and the address. I figured if she was interested, she'd come by.”

Which she'd done later that same afternoon.

”I was working upstairs when I seen her come up the walk,” Ruth told me. ”Mr. Dillard was in a fury over something. I kept trying to calm him down. Good heavens, I remember thinking, if he keeps carrying on like this, n.o.body'll ever take this job.” She drew a weary breath. ”Then I looked out and this young woman was coming up the walkway. Selling something, I figured Bibles. Something like that. It didn't strike me that she was the one who'd put the notice in the paper.”

”Why not?”

Ruth thought for a moment before she answered. ”Because she didn't look like the type who'd be looking for that kind of work. Young, I mean. And pretty. Didn't look the type who'd be interested in seeing after a crotchety old man.”

”What else do you remember about her?”

”Mostly that she was real ill at ease. Like she'd never been invited into a house, didn't know how to act in one.” She glanced toward the window again, to where Mr. Potter could be seen slumped on a heap of wood, breathing heavily, snow swirling around him like a horde of white-winged moths. ”He's going to kill himself, chopping that stuff.” She continued to watch her husband for a moment, then returned her attention to me. ”Tense, like I said. Figured she was that way because she really needed a job, and that was making her jumpy.”

There'd been a kind of desperation in Dora's eyes, Ruth said, like someone who'd reached the end of her rope, exhausted the last of her resources.

”But even if she really needed work, I made it plain that this was no picnic. I was real honest. Told her all there was to it. All she'd have on her shoulders. Sweeping. Cleaning. Doing dishes. Laundry.”

Dora hadn't flinched at the amount of work.

”That's when I got to the hard part,” Ruth said. ”Tending to Mr. Dillard. The way he was. That he could get real snippy when things didn't go his way. Stubborn, too, always wanting to do things for himself, even when he couldn't do them. Told her all that, but she didn't seem to mind that she might get treated a little rough.”

Suddenly, I felt that I was in the dark again, spying on the yellow light that seeped from Dora's window, the red robe dropping from her shoulders, revealing all the evidence I would ever need of how ”rough” she had been treated.

”Maybe she was used to it,” I said.

”Being treated bad, you mean?” Ruth asked. ”Could be.” She shrugged. ”But I told her that the worst thing was the reading. How Mr. Dillard liked being read to. Hour after hour. Enough to drive you crazy. She said that wouldn't bother her. So I said, 'Well, okay, then. The job is yours.' She came to the house the very next day.”

An impulse overtook me. ”Any way I could see it?” I asked. ”Her room.”

Ruth was clearly surprised by the question. ”What for? Dora ain't been in that room since Ed Dillard died.”

”I'd just like to take a look at it.”

”We could get stuck in all this snow.”

”We won't,” I a.s.sured her.

”Well, okay, then.” She pulled herself to her feet, wincing slightly. ”I still got a key to the place. But we'll have to take your car. Ours ain't running.”

A few minutes later we arrived at Ed Dillard's rambling house, walked up the snow-covered walkway and into the front room. Everything was silent, motionless, the furniture covered with sheets.

”Can't find a living relative, that's what the lawyers say,” Ruth told me as she peered into the ghostly parlor. ”That's why everything just sets here. 'Cause they can't find n.o.body to give it to.”

The white sheets sent a s.h.i.+ver through me. Billy had lain under one with the same stillness, a lifeless arm dangling toward the floor until I'd finally placed it on his chest, then drawn the sheet back over him again.

”I guess Dora covered everything up,” Ruth said. Then she led me up the stairs to the room Dora had occupied during the few weeks she'd worked for Mr. Dillard.

It was plain but tidy, its single window overlooking the broad front lawn of the house, a chair drawn up beside it. Lace curtains hung over the window, and there was a beige paper shade with a string pull that jumped slightly, like the pendulum of an edgy, disordered clock, each time I took a step.

While Ruth watched, I looked in the closet where Dora had hung her dresses, then went through the drawers of the bureau beside the bed that had been hers. I even searched behind it for some clue to where she might have gone. Finally, I sat down in the chair by the window.

”She didn't seem to care what the room looked like,” Ruth said. ”I don't think it mattered to her. The accommodations, I mean. Probably glad to get a room of her own. She'd been living at the hotel, you know.”

She'd come early the very next morning, Ruth told me.

I imagined it as a typical autumn day in Port Alma, brilliantly clear and windy, with gusts sweeping waves of crimson leaves across the lawn.

”She come on foot,” Ruth said. ”n.o.body brought her. She was toting a suitcase. All she had, I guess.”

I parted the curtains and peered at the grounds below.

”I was getting this room ready when she came back to take the job,” Ruth added. ”Mr. Dillard was sleeping in his wheelchair. He always took a nap in the afternoon.”

The snow now obscured the lawn, but as I continued to peer out the window, the seasons reversed themselves. Fall returned, bl.u.s.tery and windswept.

”I just looked out that window, and there she was.”

I imagined a woman striding resolutely toward the house.

”That's when Mr. Dillard woke up all of a sudden.”

Wearing a long cloth coat, her emerald eyes fixed straight ahead.

”And started squirming around, all upset and panicky.”

Dora sailing toward me.

”Like he did when the pain hit him.”

On a river of red leaves.

Chapter Five.

I looked in on my mother the next morning, something my brother had done each day on his way to his desk at the Sentinel. His loyalty to her had been heartfelt, an ardent affection she had in every way returned. I was a poor subst.i.tute for Billy, of course, merely the surviving son, as she no doubt regarded me, tied to obligations she a.s.sumed I did not feel.

She no longer lived in her beloved cottage by Fox Creek. The stroke had made that impossible. And so Billy and I had moved her into a house not far from Main Street. We'd done most of the work, getting the house ready for her ourselves, enlarging rooms and putting in windows so that she would get the light that brightened both the s.p.a.ce around her and her spirits. We'd hung bird feeders outside each window as well, hoping to occupy her eyes, the one part of her body, other than her mind, that the stroke had not damaged.

Her daily needs were taken care of by Emma Fields, an old woman who'd recently lost her husband, and with him, her rented home and livelihood. Emma was a short, round woman with white hair and watery blue eyes.

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