Next she opened a hatbox and pulled a cloche with pink ribbon from the tissue. She put it immediately onto her head, cocked it just so, and looked down at Odd flirtatiously.
“Looks real nice, Rebekah.”
“It’s very smart,” she said.
“There’s a whole department store full of them just down the road. Got about every color in the rainbow.”
She removed the hat, held it before her, inspecting the soft felt and silk ribbon.
Odd sat up, took the hat from her, and put it on her head again. “There’s one more. Go on.”
She took the big box on her lap. “I feel bad I didn’t get you anything.”
“I told you I got all I want. Now, open that last one.”
She tore the big box open and pulled a dress from the tissue. It fell before her, catching the lamplight. “Oh, my!” she said. She dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around him. “It’s so pretty!” She stood up as quickly as she’d knelt and held the dress before her again.
“Go put it on,” Odd said.
Her face was bright as she hurried to their bedroom.
Odd climbed up onto the davenport, took a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it, and laid his head back while he smoked. God almighty, he thought, let her be happy tonight. He closed his eyes tight and pinched the bridge of his nose. After a couple of minutes he shouted, “You come on out here when you get that dress on, let me see how it looks.”
A moment later she reappeared wearing the dress. “Let’s see.” He took her hands as he stood, shifted her to the left and to the right, looking her up and down. “I ain’t never seen something so pretty before. My goodness.” He reached behind him, took the cloche up, and put it on her head. “There now,” he said. “My goodness,” he repeated.
She seemed suddenly bashful, running her hands along the beaded chiffon, adjusting the shoulder straps and the hat, her eyes cast down, standing there in her bare feet.
“You like it?”
“A whole bunch,” she said, smoothing the belly of the dress.
“It’s the right size?”
She took a deep breath, stepped back. There were tears in her eyes.
“Hey, now. What are you crying for?”
She sat down, felt the dress tighten around her waist. “You’re such a sweet boy.”
He sat down beside her. “I got to tell you, Rebekah, you’re getting harder and harder to understand. One minute you’re calling me baby, the next you’re calling me a boy. You’re cooking up our rabbit stew, then you’re sitting here crying. Do you not like the dress?”
She took another deep breath. “It won’t be a month and the dress will be too small.”
“Well, let’s get a different size,” he said, oblivious.
“It’s the right size, Odd. It’ll be too small because of the baby.”
“That’s a good reason to outgrow a dress.” But he knew she was lost for the night. This was how it went: Once she settled on the pregnancy — on her fear of it, on how it would change her — she drifted off into a world of sad thoughts where he wasn’t welcome. “That Glass Block store is full of a hundred dresses. We’ll go find some good ones.”
The apologetic smile she gave him was sincere but unmistakable. He had to look away.
Odd sat there for a long time, staring at his hands folded on his lap, thinking it was easier to read the lake than this woman. For the first time since they’d been in Duluth he felt angry with her. His reason and sympathies were being devoured by her moodiness. For all the thought he’d given it — and he was thinking of it again now — he didn’t see how being here, with him, with all that was in store for them, could be worse than being in Gunflint. He got up. He wanted a drink, started for the kitchen and his stash, but stopped at the sound of her voice.
“I love you,” she said. “I’ve loved you every way a girl can love a boy. Every way a woman can love a man.”
He didn’t stop walking but went into the bedroom instead of the kitchen. He took the lockbox from the bottom drawer of the armoire and the key from his pocket and unlocked the box. He moved the wads of cash aside and took the small velvet bag in his hand. He put the money back in the box and stowed it again.
He returned to the parlor. Rebekah hadn’t moved. She sat on the davenport with her feet up beneath her, the cloche still on her head.
Odd knelt, took from the velvet bag the diamond ring he’d bought from the widower Veilleux, and held it before him. “I want you to marry me,” he said, his voice cracking as though he were twelve years old. “I want you to be my wife and be happy with me. We can be happy.”
“No,” she said, as though he had proposed three hours ago and she’d had all that time to consider.
He didn’t move.
She stood up, took the hat from her head, and dropped it to the floor. She reached behind her and unbuttoned the dress and let it fall and pool around her ankles. She reached behind her back and unlaced her corset, she slid her hands beneath the waist of her panties and slid her panties from her hips. They too fell in the mess of clothes on the floor.
“No,” she said again. “I don’t want to get married. I can’t be happy and you can’t be happy with me.”
Odd was stunned, both by her nakedness and what she was saying.
She lay back on the davenport. “Stand up,” she said. “Put that ring away.”
As though Odd were hypnotized, he did as she said.
“Now, come here,” she said.
When Odd stepped to her, she reached up and unbuttoned his trousers. She tugged them down and lay back again on the davenport.
“Come to me,” she said.
She left him alone in the parlor when they were finished.
He lay there for a long time before he thought to get up and pour himself that drink he’d first craved an hour earlier. On the way back to the sitting room he stopped and found a new pack of cigarettes in his coat pocket. He also found Sargent’s gift. He took both to the window and lit a cigarette and took a sip of his whiskey. He looked at the pack age. He looked at Rebekah’s dress and hat and undergarments still piled on the floor.
He felt aged, like ten years had passed since he’d got home from work, like in all that time the world had changed without his knowing. He drank and smoked and looked out on the Christmas Eve. There was the snow.
He looked over his shoulder, thought of her sleeping — how could she sleep?—back on their bed.
Almost as though he were surprised, he felt Sargent’s gift in his hand. And because he could think of nothing else to do, he tore off the paper. It was a Bible. There was a note, too, written in Sargent’s impeccable script: turn to luke. bless you. h. sargent
Odd opened the book and scanned the names — he might have been reading roll for the old men in Gunflint: Joshua, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Hosea — until he found Luke and turned to the corresponding page. At first he was put off by the high style of the King James version. It reminded him of those Greek poets he’d been made to read in school what seemed like a hundred years ago. But as he settled into it he found himself in a kind of communion with the gospel.
And so he read the story of the life of Christ. He read for hours, until the first light of Christmas morning was showing on the edge of the dark sky. When finally he put the book down and laid his head back, he realized that his own sorrow and suffering were nothing next to the world’s. If Rebekah would renounce him, if she would renounce her child, he would be father enough when the time came to raise his baby.