Everyone in the shop looked up, waiting to see what would happen. Carrie had to give in, for the woman was the customer and wasn’t the customer always right?
Carrie smiled sweetly at the woman. “You’ll not buy it from me, then, for I’ll not have you telling people that I allowed one of my customers to go out into the world looking like an old woman. My customers leave here looking their very best. Now, would you please remove that dress and return it to me?”
The woman had terrorized shopkeepers in four states, and she wasn’t going to admit defeat easily. She smiled in a superior way at Carrie. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law.” Putting her nose in the air, she started toward the door. “I shall, of course, pay you, Mrs. Greene.” She had her hand on the door before she felt the back of her dress give way, and, with eyes wide in astonishment, she whirled around.
Carrie was smiling at her, a large pair of shears in her hand. “So sorry,” she said, “but I’m afraid the dress is ruined.” Carrie held up a large piece of expensive silk that she had cut from the back of the dress.
The customer was torn between rage and tears as she stood at the door, not knowing what to do.
“Why don’t you come back here and look at some lovely peach-colored silk that I have in stock? The peach will go so well with your clear, pale complexion, and I can see you with white egret feathers in your hair. You will stop crowds.” When the woman didn’t move, Carrie took her firmly by the arm and led her to what she and her three saleswomen privately called the Recovery Room.
“See to her,” Carrie said to her assistant as she gave a sigh as she looked down at the fabric she held. Another dress ruined and she’d have to bear the expense of it. Stupid woman, she thought. No taste at all, none whatsoever. Carrie saw it as her duty to save the women from themselves, and, also, she had to maintain her own reputation. She’d never get any more business if “her” ladies were seen looking less than their best.
Carrie looked back at the five women sitting in the front room, each patiently waiting her turn to be told what to wear, and she sighed again. Sometimes the responsibility of it all was nearly too much for her.
“I’m going to get the mail,” she said. “You babysit for a while, but if Mrs. Miller gives you any trouble about that white dress, tell her to wait for me.” Carrie smiled. “But after having seen what happens to women who cross me, I think she’ll be docile enough. I’ll be back in—” Pausing, she looked outside at the late autumn sunshine. “I’ll be back when I get back.”
Joshua Greene and his children rode into town, all three of them mounted on his old workhorse. It had been weeks since any of them had left the grounds of the farm, weeks since they had had any contact with people other than themselves. Josh’s brother Hiram hadn’t come to visit since his new sister-in-law had poured food over him. Three times people from Eternity had come to the farm, but each time Josh had run them off, because he hadn’t felt like talking to anyone. The day after Carrie had gone, he’d left a note for Mrs. Emmerling saying that her services would no longer be needed. She’d cooked a great deal of food that day and left it for him and the children, and she’d also refunded the money Carrie had paid her for the rest of the month.
When the food that Mrs. Emmerling had cooked ran out, Josh again tried to cook the meals for himself and his children. The first time the children ate his burned meal, he prepared himself for their comments, but they didn’t say anything. They ate what he put in front of them and said nothing at all.
In fact, they’d said nothing six weeks ago when he’d told them that Carrie was gone. He’d had that long, long ride back from the stage depot to think of reasons to give his children about why Carrie had gone, and he’d prepared himself for a scene of the most awful proportions. He had been prepared for hysterics and tears, but he wasn’t ready for the quiet resignation of his children. After informing them that Carrie had returned to Maine, he had braced himself for the ensuing storm.
But the children had just nodd
ed at him as though it was something they had expected. They were like two wise old people who had seen everything and knew that nothing good was going to come to them in this life. He wanted to explain to them that he’d sent Carrie away for their sakes, that he knew she’d grow tired of playing housewife and then she and that absurd little dog of hers would leave them. He wanted to tell the children that it was better that they had given Carrie only a week’s worth of love rather than months’ worth. And he’d wanted to tell them that Carrie was a fairy princess who had come into their lives for just a short time and that she wasn’t real. He wanted to tell the children that they’d forget her in no time.
But in the weeks that followed, neither he nor the children could forget her. Not that they talked about her. Not even Dallas asked questions about why Carrie had gone, and Josh tried to tell himself that it would soon be as though Carrie had never entered their lives. When they were alone again, the family settled back into the routine they had established before Miss Carrie Montgomery had seen the photograph of them.
But no matter how much Josh told himself that they’d forget her and that soon everything would be as it was, he knew that he was lying to himself. Nothing was the same. Nothing at all. Not he nor the children nor the farm was as it once was.
It wasn’t just that they missed her. It wasn’t just that the very sight of the house with its roses outside and in made them think of Carrie. It was that she had changed the way they looked at their lives. For a while she had made them happy. She had made them laugh and smile and sing and tell stories and laugh some more.
At first Josh tried to recreate Carrie within his own house, forcing himself to pretend that he wasn’t aching for her and trying to make pleasant, entertaining conversation at the dinner table. The children also made valiant efforts to be cheerful, but it didn’t work. One night Josh tried asking the children to pretend to be animals, but he found himself criticizing their performances rather than enjoying them, so soon the children sat down, their eyes downcast, and said they were tired and didn’t want to pretend anymore.
He and Tem went to the cornfield, and he did his best to try to make the corn grow, but he threw down his hoe. “The goddamn plants know I hate them,” he said. Tem solemnly nodded in agreement.
Josh tried going fishing with his children, but there wasn’t much joy in the outing, no one to tease them and challenge them, no one to make a game of the day.
On the previous evening everything had come to a head. He and the children were eating a meal of fried ham and canned beans when they heard a dog barking outside. They should have known that it wasn’t Carrie’s dog, for it was the deep voice of a large dog, but that fact didn’t seem to register with any of them. Without looking at each other, without a word spoken between them, the three of them leaped from the table and made for the door all at the same time. Since the door wasn’t big enough for the three of them, they began pushing each other. Dallas bit her brother’s shoulder, and Josh nearly knocked his son down in his hurry to get outside, but then Josh had enough presence of mind to realize what he was doing, so he picked up a child in each arm and went through the door.
The dog ran away at the sight of the three fused people coming at him at once. It was a big, scrawny farm dog and not at all like Choo-choo.
Putting his children down, Josh sat on the porch step and looked out at the moonlit yard. As always, the three of them kept to their policy of not saying a word about Carrie, but it was Dallas who began to softly sob.
Without saying a word, Josh pulled her onto his lap and stroked her hair. Beside them Tem began to sob too, and Josh knew that Tem would rather die than allow anyone to see him in tears, so he knew how much pain his son was feeling. Josh put his arm around Tem.
“Why did she leave?” Tem whispered.
“Because I’m stupid and a fool and have no sense,” Josh said softly.
Dallas nodded against his chest, and tears came to Josh’s eyes too. It always amazed him at how much his children loved him. He had sent away a woman they had grown to love very much, but not once had they even questioned him. They loved him enough to believe that what he did was right, and they were willing to accept his decision no matter what it did to them. They loved him with complete trust.
Josh sniffed and wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. Carrie had said that she loved him. Did she love him enough to come back to him?
Josh hugged Tem. “Think she’d forgive me?”
It took the children a moment to understand what their father had said, then they looked at each other, smiled, leaped off the porch and began to dance about the yard. Josh hadn’t seen them with this much energy in six weeks.