The Signature of All Things

ribbons with the money. I once even bought a ribbon for you!”
    Alma slowed her pace, hoping George could not hear them speaking. But she knew he had already heard everything. “Retta, you are so weary, you must save your voice . . .”
    “But did you never, Alma? Did you never wish to commit compromising acts? Did you never feel a wicked hunger, inside the body?” Retta clutched her arm and gazed up at her friend quite piteously, searching Alma’s face. Then she slumped again, resigned. “No, of course you didn’t. For you are good. You and Prudence are both good. Whereas I am the very devil himself.”
    Now Alma felt that her own heart would break. She looked at the wide, hunched shoulders of George Hawkes as he walked ahead of them. She felt overcome with shame. Had she never wished to commit compromising acts with men? Oh, if Retta only knew! If anyone knew! Alma was a forty-eight-year-old spinster with a dried-up womb, and yet she still found her way to the binding closet several times a month. Many times a month, even! What’s more, all the illicit texts of her youth— Cum Grano Salis , and the rest of them—still pulsed in her memory. Sometimes she took those books out of their hidden trunk, in the hayloft of the carriage house, and read them again. What did Alma not know of wicked hungers?
    Alma felt that it would be immoral of her to say nothing of reassuranceor allegiance to this broken little creature. How could Alma let Retta believe she was the only wicked girl in the world? But George Hawkes was right there, walking only a few feet in front of them, and surely he could hear all. So Alma did not console, nor did she offer commiseration. All she said was this: “Once you settle into your new home here, my dear little Retta, you will be able to walk in these gardens every day. Then you will be at peace.”
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    O n the carriage ride home from Trenton, Alma and George were mostly silent.
    “She will be well taken care of,” Alma said at last. “Dr. Griffon assured me of it himself.”
    “We are each of us born into trouble,” George said, by means of reply. “It is a sad fate to come into this world at all.”
    “That may be true,” Alma replied carefully, surprised at the vehemence of his words. “Yet we must find the patience and resignation to endure our challenges as they arise to meet us.”
    “Yes. So we are taught,” George said. “Do you know, Alma, there were times when I wished Retta would find relief in death, rather than suffer this continued torment, or bring such torment to myself and to others?”
    She could not imagine what to say in response. He stared at her, his face twisted by darkness and agony. After a few moments, she stumbled forth with this statement: “Where there is life, George, there is still hope. Death is so terribly final. It will come soon enough to us all. I would hesitate to wish it hastened upon anyone.”
    George shut his eyes and did not answer. This did not seem to have been a reassuring response.
    “I will make a practice of coming to Trenton to visit Retta once a month,” Alma said, in a lighter tone. “If you wish, you may join me. I will take her copies of Joy’s Lady’s Book . She will like that.”
    For the next two hours, George did not speak. For a while, it appeared that he was falling in and out of sleep. As they neared Philadelphia, though, he opened his eyes. He looked as unhappy as anyone Alma had ever seen. Alma, her heart going out to the man, elected to change the subject. A few weeks earlier, George had lent Alma a new book, just published out of London, on the subject of salamanders. Perhaps a mention of this would lift hisspirits. So she thanked him now for the loan, and spoke of the book in some detail as the carriage moved slowly toward the city, concluding at last, “In general, I found it to be a volume of considerable thought and accurate analysis, though it was abominably written and terribly arranged—so I do have to ask you, George, do these people in England not have editors?”
    George looked up from his feet and said, quite abruptly, “Your sister’s husband has made some trouble for himself of late.”
    Clearly, he had not heard a word she’d spoken. Furthermore, the change of subject surprised Alma. George was not a gossip, and it struck her as odd that he would refer to Prudence’s husband at all. Perhaps, she supposed, he was so distraught by the day’s events that he was not quite himself. She