The Love of a Good Woman

stubborn voice.
“Can
this marriage be saved?”
    All last year, when she thought of the place where she most wanted to be, Karin had thought of this kitchen. A big room whose corners stayed dim even when the light was on. The patterns of green leaves brushing the windows. All the things here and there that strictly speaking didn’t belong in a kitchen. The treadle sewing machine and the big overstuffed armchair, its maroon covering oddly worn to gray-green on the armrests. The large painting of a waterfall done long ago by Ann’s motherwhen she was just a bride and had the time, which she never had again.
    (“A lucky thing for all of us,” said Derek.)
    There was the sound of a car in the yard and Karin thought, could it be Rosemary? Had Rosemary been the one to get depressed, left alone; had she followed Karin for company?
    When she heard the boots on the kitchen steps she knew it was Derek.
    She called out, “Surprise, surprise. Look who’s here!”
    Derek came into the room and said, “Hullo Karin,” without a trace of welcome. He set a couple of bags down on the table. Ann said politely, “Did you get the right film?”
    “Yes,” said Derek. “What’s this muck?”
    “For cleaning the silver,” Ann said. To Karin, as if to apologize, she said, “He’s just been to town to get some film. To take pictures of his rocks.”
    Karin bent over the knife she was drying. It would be the worst thing in the world if she should cry (last summer it would have been impossible). Ann asked about some other things—groceries—that Derek had got, and Karin raised her eyes deliberately and fixed them on the front of the stove. It was a kind of stove no longer made, Ann had told her. A combination wood-and-electric stove with a sailing ship stamped on the door of the warming oven. Above the ship, the words C LIPPER S TOVES .
    That, too, she had remembered.
    “I’d think Karin could be a help to you,” said Ann. “She could help you set up the rocks.”
    There was a slight pause during which they might have looked at each other. Then Derek said, “Okay, Karin. Come on and help me take pictures.”
    • • •
    M ANY of the rocks were just sitting around on the barn floor—not yet sorted or labelled. Others sat on shelves, separately displayed, with printed cards to identify them. For some time Derek was silent, moving these around, then fiddling with the camera, trying to get the best angle and the proper light. When he started to take the pictures he gave brief orders to Karin, getting her to shift the rocks or tilt them, and pick up others from the floor, to be photographed even without labels. It didn’t seem to her that he really needed—or wanted—her help at all. Several times he drew in his breath as if he was going to say this—or tell her something else that was important and unpleasant—but then all he said was “Shift to the right a little,” or “Give me a look at the other side.”
    All last summer Karin had nagged in her brat way and requested in a serious way to be taken along on one of Derek’s forays, and finally he had said she could come. He made it as hard as he could, a test. They sprayed themselves with Off!, but it didn’t entirely prevent the bugs from getting at them, burrowing into their hair and finding a way under neck bands and shirt cuffs. They had to squelch through boggy places where their boot prints immediately filled up with water, then climb up steep banks covered with berry canes and wild rosebushes and tough, tripping vines. Also clamber over smooth, tilted outcrops of bare rocks. They wore bells around their necks, so that they could locate each other if separated, and so any bears could hear them coming and stay clear.
    They came on one big mound of bear scat, with a fresh glisten to it and an apple core only half digested.
    Derek had told her that there were mines all through this country. Almost every known mineral was there but usually not enough to make them profitable, he said. He had visited all these abandoned, almost forgotten mines and hacked out hissamples or simply picked them up off the ground. “The first time I brought him home he just disappeared up the ridge and found a mine,” Ann said. “I knew then that he’d probably marry me.”
    The mines were a disappointment, though Karin would never have said so. She had been hoping for some Ali Baba cave with a gleam of glittery rocks in the darkness. Instead Derek showed her a narrow entryway,