Author's Note: If you're just joining the story, here's a brief recap. Emily, an over-assured, privileged and sheltered North American white 18 year old athlete has discovered a secret room in the house she's lived in all her life. In lieu of paying a contractor to install two secret entrances into it, she offered her body to him. Now, after experiencing more intense sex than she'd bargained for, she's escaped to the family summer home for the weekend to reconsider her choices.
This far north, the sun came up even earlier than at home. Emily awoke, slipped on her suit and sat at the end of the dock, dangling her feet into the water, feeling the sunfish and crappies nipping at her toes. She would take a leisurely swim across the lake today, but not without one of her parents keeping pace with her in the boat.
That isn't what Coach was referring to
, she was certain. Still, her muscles
were
sore, so maybe she'd swim tomorrow. A morning breeze was picking up and she turned her attention to the sailboat tied next to the dock. It was an old Sunfish, nothing fancy, but a lot of fun to scoot about the small lake. She hopped in, put on her vest, raised the sail, dropped the rudder and set off, capturing the breeze.
She tacked back and forth across the lake, watching as households woke up, lights appearing in breakfast rooms, dogs barking on their morning walks. The air was cool, and it was going to stay that way. It was exactly what she needed to clear her head and give her some space.
At breakfast, her mother sensed something was off. "Are you okay, Em?"
She nodded, questioning why she would ask that.
"You seem...preoccupied?"
Emily nodded.
That would be a safe description.
"Yep. I'm really focusing on the race, mom. Coach has been working us pretty hard, and I'm trying to keep my head in it. It's pretty much everything I'm doing right now.
"Except thinking about college," she added.
"Oh, that's months away, honey," her mother dismissed the idea. "Don't get yourself into a lather about that!"
Emily rolled her eyes, annoyed at her mother's reaction to her perennial worrying.
Better that than the only other conversation I could be having
. Still, she didn't want to be annoyed right now at all. "I'm just getting excited is all," she agreed.
"I was looking at that woman's journal last night while I was lying in bed," Emily's mother changed the subject. "Abby Crewitt was a complicated young woman."
Emily's ears perked up. She hadn't had a chance to dive into the journal and was excited to hear what her mother thought.
"She was a little older than Grand-Mama, you know," her mother turned to her, "and while they traveled in completely different circles, they lived in the same city...roughly speaking." Jen sat back and looked out the window.
That would be her mother's great-grandmother, Emily remembered. She hadn't heard her mother speak about Grand-Mama very much. Her mother was barely born when she had passed.
"It really wasn't the same city. They were living in completely different worlds from one another, even though they were only a few miles apart. But the outside world was changing for both of them." Her mother looked thoughtful. "They were caught up in the same turbulence and change. The coming of the railroads, the emergence of science as we have come to know it, the impact of global economics, the exploration of the human mind. Abby is documenting, although unwittingly, the impacts of these larger patterns, the emergence of Modernism for example, on her world view and daily activities."
Emily hadn't had this kind of conversation with her mother...ever. She eased into her chair and listened.
"I ran across this entry that was a revelation." Her mother opened the journal to a spot she'd bookmarked. "Listen:"
Mother was simply incorrigible today! I had to run from the room before I created a scandal, although my mere running was surely enough to earn me punishment. I had mentioned Mrs. Martinique's ideas about the independence of the fairer sex, and she called her, for all intents and purposes, a hussie! A prostitute! My mother thinks, that because a thinking woman might offer the mere suggestion that the fairer sex might have an equal place in the world, that she is promoting immoral behavior of the highest kind!
And what does that suggest of her opinion of me? I must find a way to get out of his household, but how? Without marrying, my options are limited. If I could get my own income, I should be able to afford to pay for room. But where, in fact? No place in this small-minded village. The City? I've read such opportunities exist, but with them great perils. Women with children borne out of wedlock. Women forced into positions more compromising than the simple subjugation to a man in marriage. Those stories make marriage look tempting, if I didn't know the truth about that institution.
Her mother stopped, looking across the table. "She could have been writing when I was her age, or even today! The same pressures. So little has changed." Her mother paused to think about what she'd just said. "Well, I hope at least something has changed for you and your generation."
Emily wondered, as she sat listening to her mother's reading from Abby's diary. Like she had said, Grand Mama was living at the same time and place, but her experience was anything like Abby's. So, it probably came down to class, Emily figured.
My options are wide open
. But Abby's were anything but.
Emily took the canoe out afterwards, paddling slowly around the edge of the lake. It would take an hour working at it, but she wanted to go slowly, working out the stiffness in her upper traps, her deltoids and even the twinges from her scalenes. She had heard the loons last night and was hoping she would see the hatchlings at the water's edges.
Lily pads, buds poking up among open blossoms, hid turtles and leopard frogs. She lingered next to the lakeside edge of the pads, watching the sunnies darting underneath, hoping to catch a glimpse of noses poking through the surface. In spite of the sun and clear blue sky, the temperature was cool; at least cool compared to what she'd been experiencing back home. The perfume from the room drifted into her consciousness, but she couldn't imagine where it came from.
Maybe it's just in my clothes
. With it, the image returned of her kneeling in front of Cos, the two of them naked, centered in the middle of The Study, her head bowed as if in prayer. The word
supplicant
