Marta

I watched her cross the snowy field in the dusk. Violet color there, the indigo muted.

I turned away. The kettle hissed in the stove in the wide kitchen. “You've listened too long to her stories, you know,” I said aloud into the room. Yes, yes, I know.

I poured the tea and held the cup closely in my hands, feeling the warmth from it, needing that. Marta had come here often these past months. But why? Not only to talk, I was sure of that.

The field changes so much. Last week it was so cold in the evening, and so much snow had fallen that even Tom Pelles hadn't made it out here with the groceries piled on the back of his horse. I hadn't worried, Tom always came through eventually, but you had to get anxious sometimes when it's not all entirely in your control, this business of living. The practical parts, I mean. I had watched out the window for a long time, until it was blowing fiercely beyond the trees outside the door, and just once I couldn't help myself and bundled up and forged out into the storm, to see if I could see Tom coming.

Never did. Never saw him, I mean. I remember the feeling of the snow stinging against my face, and the way the wind spun drifts into patterns that clouded my sight. At one point I couldn't even see the house for a little while. Coming back in here, I had hung my wet clothes on the line in the kitchen and made the fire bigger in the front room. The next morning the groceries were there, lying under the mailbox, covered with a foot of snow.

The first night Marta came it had been snowing, too, but lightly. She appeared at the door, holding something wrapped in a scarf held tightly against her. Crystals of ice flickered behind her under the light from the porch, and everything was very still, the wind gone at last.

“Sorry to bother you, I'm Marta, going home and got cold, too cold, I'd like to stop here and warm up before going on,” she said to me, all in one breath. I opened the door wider, though I'm not sure why I did. I wasn't inclined to visitors. I had spent so much time on my own. But I wasn’t lonely. That’s what I told myself. Though it's all different now, of course.

Marta moved slowly toward the fire in the grate, her old, arthritic hands shaking. “You can trust me, nothing to worry about, and Reverend Merton in town, he'd vouch for me, yes, he'd do that.”

I got her some tea, after giving her a blanket to wrap around her knees when she sat in the wicker chair on the other side of my sofa. The only sound for a while was the wood in the fire burning in wild spurts, so that flashes of flames rose high into the chimney. Each time, I jumped a little, in spite of myself, but Marta sat quietly, nursing her cup. I wondered if I should have given her some whiskey with it, but she was opening her own pint in front of me and dropping some of it in. She held it out to me. I shook my head.

“Lived here by yourself a long time, haven't you?” she said.

I resented curiosity. I'd go into the village on Sundays for church, that was it, and then only once a month. Merton didn't force it.

“Okay,” she went on, “it's your affair. We all have our ways...your mother did, too.”

Marta began to fumble with the scarf in her lap, drew out something from it, and handed it to me.

“Pretty, isn’t it?”

I held the box carefully. The shiny wood reflected the firelight. It had a small gold clasp in the front, and I tried it without thinking, but it was locked.

“Got what you care about most in there,” Marta said to me, solemnly. Her black eyes were very bright.

I handed it back to her. “I doubt that. You and I are strangers. You never knew my mother.”

With effort, unable to suppress a short grunt of pain, she stood up. “I'll be going. You'll see me again, maybe. It depends. It's a hard winter, and a long walk to get here.” She gathered herself together, putting on the layers she'd left to dry by the fire. Before I could say anything, the door was open and she was walking away.

“Wait!” I called to her, and grabbed the box. “You forgot this!” I held it out to her.

“I'll pick it up next visit,” she said, without turning around. “Keep it safe for me.” And she was beyond the trees and lost in the night.

Marta came to visit every few weeks or so after that, and each time she wouldn't take the box away with her. I wondered if she thought it gave us a link, or gave her permission to be there, somehow. Since it was locked, there was no way for me to see inside without leaving evidence I'd tampered with it. After a while I began to rely on her coming by, though I wouldn't admit to actually looking forward to it. Being alone pleased me. I couldn't get enough of it, as far as I could tell. But Marta didn't intrude. She didn't ask anything of me. After that first time, she even came with her own tea. And against my will, I would listen to her stories.

“Blue cloud,” she began, on one visit, after she'd poured just a few drops of the whiskey into both our cups. “Just the one cloud,” she continued, “crossing the noon sky while the cicadas sang. Eucalyptus lined the road, silver-gray and dusty. A man walked along there, thinking of his wife.”

She stopped and stared into the fire. I waited for a few moments and then spoke.

“Why?” I asked.

She turned toward me and I would have sworn she was smiling, though it may have been a trick of the light.

“There are stories, and there are listeners,” she answered. “Sometimes they're the same.”

She went on with her tale and I can't remember any more of it now, only that her voice lulled me, and the wind outside from a new storm seemed to be very far away. When she left, that time, I felt more tired than I could recall being, and slept without waking even once in the night.

“On the corner of the street where I used to live, in a town far from here, there was an old pawn shop,” Marta began, on a visit when winter was over and spring had begun. She was silent for some minutes.

“Yes?” I prompted her.

She stared at me but I had the feeling she was seeing something else. Or someone.

“What you have to know is how difficult people can be,” she said, shaking her head as if waking up. “Usually it means they’re wanting things a certain way so they don’t have to think about them at all. Best to leave that sort alone, my grandmother used to tell me. Let them keep themselves to themselves. Stuck people, she’d say.”

Marta glanced out the window at the new green leaves on the oak tree out in front of my house. The dry leaves from fall and winter still cluttered the ground and I knew I should clear them away.

“Don’t,” she said.

I was startled. “Don’t what?” I said.

“Don’t stay stuck. You’re displaced, is all. Needing to know that. The universe is a big place. Plenty of room for everyone. Just look at the stars in the night. Now, about that pawn shop. It was a wonder. I remember seeing things I couldn’t even give a name to there, all laid out on shelves and tables as if they were part of a museum display. And most things I saw I knew had been put there by people who were hoping they’d be able to get their precious things back before they were sold, if life let them. Of course, there were others looking for a profit for things they’d stolen and couldn’t hock. The owner was there all the time and he let me look over everything to my heart’s content on Sundays when the shop was usually pretty empty. It felt like I was exploring for hidden treasure.”

She stopped again and her eyes were staring straight ahead as if she was in a trance, but in a sudden shake of head she turned in the chair and focused on me. “You’ve let go of many things, too many. You thought you were letting go of clutter, but you were really letting go of treasures. Just the way you let go of people. Sweep all the clutter away, that’s what you decided to do. Do you know why?”

My tea was cold. I didn’t want her there anymore. She had crossed the line that everyone does, eventually. She was intruding on my life.

“I’m going,” she said. “I want to visit the wildflower garden someone planted at the church. It’s blooming now, a riotous display. Something we can all enjoy. Nice of her, the woman who did the planting, don’t you think? I must be off.”

This time I didn’t go to the window to watch her leave.

It was her last arrival, her final visit, that changed things even more, and for the good.

I thought I was ready, but I wasn’t. Seeing her walk across the field in late summer caught me unawares. I had decided we were done. The line had been crossed, my interest dissolved, her presence unnecessary. But I had forgotten about the box.

“I won’t stay long,” she said, when I opened the door. “Just come for my box, don’t you know. You haven’t opened it?”

“No. Of course not. It’s yours, not mine. Take it.” I picked the small wooden box with its gold clasp off the counter and handed it to her, glad to be rid of it.

“I want just the box, not what’s inside. That part belongs to you. Here, use this.” She gave me a key made of copper. “Open it,” she said when I hesitated.

It was the only way to make her go away. I twisted the key in the lock and the cover swung open. For a long moment I looked at what was inside with a feeling of disbelief. I felt the tears rise, tears I had never shed, never wanted to, wasn’t going to now.

“Your mother gave that box to the pawn shop so she’d have money to take care of you. But it just about killed her to part with it. Only, you came first. Everything has a story. It matters to find out what it is. Try to remember that, when you wonder how it is I know what I have told you. I need my box.” She held out her hand.

I took out what was inside and gave her the small, shiny wooden box, and Marta smiled for the first time.

“Now we’re done,” she said, walking out of my house.

I sat in the wicker chair for a while holding what she’d given me, what she had said belonged to me.

The necklace had a small, delicate chain. I had to lean close to see it clearly. But I knew what it was. I had worn it as a child, my favorite thing, a gift from my parents. After my father left us, it was gone. I always believed he’d taken it with him. He had told me it was worth a small fortune because of the emerald in the pendant, so I must take good care not to lose it. But he had taken it from me. It was a betrayal that had shaped my life.

Only, he hadn’t, after all.

And my mother never breathed a word about any of it.

I watched the emerald catch the firelight and its facets became a star pattern of color and a sudden joy overtook me. I put the necklace on my wrist, winding it twice around. And I felt something click into place.

I was no longer alone.

Not anymore.

End