The Postmistress by Sarah Blake Page A

Harry’s gentle wave as he walked away took some of the pleasure out of it all. She climbed up onto the chair beside the sorting table, holding the flag above her shoulders so it did not touch the floor, and shook it out like a bedsheet, holding a corner in each hand. The certificate in its envelope lay perfectly safe up the hill in her cottage, among her nightgowns in the bureau drawer. It had lain there all these weeks since she’d gone into Boston, and every day he’d come into the post office and she could feel the tie between them tightening, sighing as it tightened, and she didn’t have the faintest idea what to do next.
    The vision of her mother standing in the passage on the way to her parents’ bedroom flashed before her. Thin-framed but gone to fat, her mother’s body hung like too many coats thrown over a hanger. She was thick and mealy, but Iris had caught her laughing in response to something coming from her father in the bedroom that Iris couldn’t hear, turning her girlish. Iris appeared in her nightie at the end of the hall and her mother had turned, concerned, but still headed for the bedroom—her whole attention in there. In one hand she held a rubber pouch, like a hot water bottle, with a long tube snaking out of it and over her mother’s arm. In the other hand, Iris saw she held the glass bottle of vinegar from the pantry. “Iris,” her mother said, “you’re dreaming, dear. Go back to bed.” And Iris had.
    How did the next part work? She couldn’t imagine it. She couldn’t think past the looking and the smiling to a moment like that with a douche in one’s hand, without any pretense what for. A woman standing like that, wide open. Like an announcement.
    She folded the flag in half, then half again, then held it against her chest, smoothing it flat. Still holding to one corner, she let the other drop against the flat length, so that it made a triangle. And then again, she let the triangle fold against itself into a second triangle. This way and that she folded the flag until it was fully collected into a single triangle of cloth into which she tucked the ends.
    The moon was rising as she latched the post office gate and stepped back into the matter-of-fact world where her bicycle leaned against the side of the building at the bottom of the post office steps. A fog was coming in and the foghorn sang its steady single note. Across the green, the light inside Alden’s Market shone fiercely down on the people inside. She could see Florence Cripps from here. And another woman. Leaning over the counter to talk to Beth, the grocer’s daughter. They looked like figures in a painting, stuck onto the light.
    She glanced up at the naked flagpole, then stared in the direction where Harry had disappeared, and flushed. She would go to the movies, she decided. She would not get her habitual chop at the café, she wasn’t hungry. She would not go back up the hill to her cottage.

    INSIDE THE FISH HOUSE, nothing had changed much, either in the frequency or intensity of Maggie’s contractions. The clock beside her bed kept time like a supporter, the minutes passing as Maggie walked and slept. She had been right; she was in for a protracted labor. Will watched her as she breathed. When Will checked her again, the cervix was no wider. She fell again into a doze and Will went downstairs in search of coffee.
    “How’s everything?” Jim Tom turned from the sink.
    “Coming along,” said Will. “You want to come up?”
    “I’d just as soon wait down here, thanks.” Jim Tom glanced at him. “How many babies have you caught there, Will?”
    “Fifteen. No, sixteen,” Will answered abruptly.
    Jim Tom nodded. “Then you ought to know how mean the ladies can get at the end.”
    Will looked at him, quizzically.
    “No?” Jim Tom smiled. “Well, maybe the Boston ladies hold their tongue.”
    Above them, Maggie started to groan again. Will stopped and looked at his watch, timing the contraction. It lasted