The Point of Vanishing - Maryka Biaggio (large ebook reader TXT) 📗

can break away from my attempts to secure an income for all of us. I refuse, however, to defend myself against the onslaught of character defilement you’ve likely subjected her to, though I won’t hesitate to explain she should not accept your claims of our supposed happy marriage as granite gospel.

I trust you and Barbara are finding ample adventure and distraction to fill your days. As much as I oppose this journey on the grounds of practicality, I find myself hoping you’ve hit on some formula for bridging your passage to a new beginning. Enough months have passed for wounds to begin to heal. Let us contemplate new futures and make peace so that we can abate the complications our sundered marriage has visited on our children.

I’ve told you that the bank will wire you when I’m able to deposit funds. You needn’t ask Oxford to intercede, which I suspect you do for motives that are not monetary, since I’ve made this arrangement with the bank bull’s-eye clear to you. And you fail to understand the cold reality of my circumstances if you count on me to finance this scheme of yours. I simply can’t and won’t. Under the circumstances, you really ought to preserve rather than spend what little money we have between us. I close with this one last appeal to reason.

Respectfully,

Wilson

Helen took some comfort in the knowledge that her absence staved off the divorce. Perhaps time apart from her and their girls would force Wilson to contemplate the prudence of his actions. Still, she thought it only right to keep him apprised of their travels.

November 29, 1928

Dear Wilson,

I surmise from your letter that you fail to grasp the gravity of your actions. I certainly encourage you to write to Barbara. But to restrict yourself to mundane patter and to criticize the one parent who is caring for her will do her no good. Your abandonment still weighs heavily on her. She refuses to discuss you or the terrible pain you’ve heaped on her. Don’t you have any room in that cold heart of yours to understand that? You meant everything to her, and now you’ve completely turned your back on her. Not to answer her pleas about your obligation to our family was and continues to be cruel beyond words. And I find your chiding of me about Sabra’s care altogether ludicrous. I’ll refrain from saying anything more on that subject since my words will no doubt be lost on you.

As for the house, I had little choice but to find a stable family to rent it. How could I possibly expect them to take care of it if they feared I’d roost them out at any moment? Surely you see the prudence of finding renters who will value and maintain what is still, by law, yours.

Apparently, you’re dead set on divorce. Am I to conclude that you and Miss Whipple remain intent on marrying? Can it be that a twenty-year-old (or perhaps she has reached the mature age of twenty-one by now) is truly content to contemplate life with a man twice her age? Furthermore, a man so callous and uncaring as to have left not just one, but two, broken families in his wake? Have you even told her about your past? Sooner or later, you know, these things come out.

Barbara and I will continue on this, as you call it, crack-brained expedition. My whole life has been cast onto uncertain seas, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t seek peace for myself and Barbara someplace far from the person that caused our misery.

We will soon leave Barbados. Once we’ve settled in Santa Lucia, I’ll let you know how you can reach us there. And I do count on you to support your family, regardless of whether you—who have little right to judge—approve of our living circumstances.

Your wife for the present,

Helen

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

BARBARA AT FOURTEEN

Santa Lucia, December 1928

Barbara and her mother found a room to rent from an elderly woman in Castries for two dollars a day. On their third morning there, Barbara woke to the peal of church bells clanging over the town’s motley rooftops.

She rose from her netted bed and stood at the window. Thirty steps downhill from their room stood the neighborhood church, an austere brick building with a shallow arched roof. She watched the congregants streaming toward the door: young women in colorful cotton dresses, many with babes in arms or tots teetering at their sides; men in crinkled, light-colored pants and white shirts; and older women in long, flowing purple or blue garb. All carried themselves with dignity—as if merely attending the ceremony was an honor.

How curious they looked, slowing their pace as they converged on the church steps, greeting each other in their sing-song French, funneling in, dipping their fingers in holy water, and crossing themselves.

Barbara heard her mother rousing. She turned from the window and said, “Let’s have breakfast outside.”

They gathered the biscuits, nuts, and alligator pears they’d purchased at market and ventured out to the square opposite the church. The branches of an old banyan tree draped over the sandy ground, and they settled against its tangled trunk, quietly munching their breakfast.

They’d argued the previous day about extending their travels.

“If we go back now,” Barbara had told her mother, “the same miseries we left behind will torment us. Nothing’s changed. Here we can live on our terms.”

“We can’t leave Sabra forever. And I need to call your father to account for not even trying to find work.”

“But you said we should let him stew in his own problems.”

“He’s squandering his chances, chances I as a woman simply don’t have. He could find a job in New York if he tried. I have to insist on it.”

Barbara had pleaded, “Look how well we’ve managed already. We’re meant to journey on. I feel it in my bones.”

Her mother only shook her head. “Oh, Barbara. What am I going to do with you?”

Barbara decided not to