Free Shirley by Susan Scarf Merrell

core.
    Perhaps that’s why it is so easy for me to recall the way it felt when Shirley called me Little Rose. And how the night smelled, the odor of cold that one smells only in New England—apples and oak leaves and freezing water, and the day’s sun caught in the grass, a blanket of fog around my shoes. I was gratified by her affection, gratified, as if the insult of it was a form of kindness.
    I knew so little of love or what it felt like. I could only assume the guises it would take from the novels I had read. And Shirley herself, part creation and part creator, was wisdom and art made manifest. She put an arm around me and leaned some portion of her weight against my shoulders, and I bore it for her. We walked in silence down the long drive, out of the campus and back to the house. Upstairs, Barry’s guitar was louder; he was singing. His voice was lovely. The men’s debate, at the table, had continued—so many words respoken I could no longer parse the sentences: motivation, pluralism, unconscious, melodrama, complexity, revelation, damnation, imagination, hierarchical, democracy, weakness, temptation. They had not noticed our absence.
    The phone rang as I hung our coats in the closet. Shirley, fresh Scotch in hand, paused at the door to the parlor. She did not look at me, nor back at the dining room. The phone rang, five, six times, and then stopped.
    â€œFor whom the bell tolls,”
she said. I wasn’t sure how to answer. “Perhaps we must create a spell to silence a most insistent pest.”
    â€œI’ll help you,” I said earnestly. “There has to be a spell for getting rid of someone like her.” I tried to imagine who the womanmight be. Was she someone I’d seen in the village or on campus? My mind could not create a more compelling woman than the one in front of me, the one Stanley already had.
    She leaned in so close that I could feel the chill still clinging to her hair. “Sometimes,” she said, “one has to dispense with spells. Be pragmatic. Take action.”
    â€œTake action?”
    â€œYes, action. One has to be practical.” Her eyes were unaccountably dark, her mouth taut. I would not want her to be angry with me, not ever, I thought. I felt a tingling pulse through my fingertips and along the curve of my ears, where the heat of the house was challenging the cold I’d brought in with me. “Some situations demand spells, but others, well . . .” She paused, studying me, as if deciding how much she was willing to say. “I am not afraid to take matters into my own hands.”
    I nodded.
    â€œNot when the situation demands it.”
    I opened my mouth and closed it, without uttering a word. “Good night, little Rose,” she said abruptly, and she winked. I have never forgotten this. She winked.
    She was joking, of course. She was the kind of woman who would laugh when things were most tragic. As much as I admired her stories and her novels, I admired this even more. “Sleep well,” I told her, but then I was the one who went upstairs.
    Later, when Fred came to bed, I did not mention that I’d gone out for a walk. I let him feel the baby kicking—this had just started and was fascinating to me—then I kissed him, turned on my side, and went to sleep.

Seven
    â€œI’ LL HELP WITH THAT ,” Shirley said. I was melting wax off the candlesticks—the Hymans had a motley collection of them, formal cut glass, silver flutes, shabby braided brass, and sturdy pottery. To my mind, she treasured them beyond their value. She generally preferred that I use chipped saucers and juice glasses and rinsed-out jam jars for the sturdy candles whose light we nightly dined by. When we set the table with some of the good sets of candlesticks, we were en route to a more celebratory evening.
    After those raucous evenings when our customary numbers were enlarged and the table vibrated with