Page 3 of The Invisible Hour

If a person should break the rules, their shortcoming would be written on a chalkboard, left up for weeks. They would be made to wear placards strung around their necks with the first letters of their transgressions there for all to see. S for selfishness. Q for those who asked too many questions. C for those who coveted their neighbors’ belongings. J for jealousy. A for anarchy and acts of wickedness.

For women who went directly against the principles of the Community, if they wore colorful clothes, for instance, or were found with a book among their possessions, the punishments would also include isolation and the letters branded onto the flesh of their upper arms. You shall not be like Eve, Davis told them tenderly, and lead us to ruination. Children and teens were whipped out in the field, a stroke for every rule broken. This was done out of love, Joel explained. If you were not taught, how could you be expected to know better? If you were not a student, how could you ever hope to teach your own children? Love was everything, he said, as a transgressor was locked in the barn without food or water. Love was all they had in the world that they were building, and it would remain when the world outside fell apart.

JOEL NOTICED IVY ON the night she arrived. Usually he was unapproachable, and didn’t bother with new arrivals, unless they were homeless men, which he had been himself before he changed his life, but this time his attention was riveted. Ivy and Kayla were brought into his office, where he was working late after they’d made their way to the farm by walking down Route 17 in the dark. Joel had raked his fingers through his black hair. He had a natural arrogance that irritated some people and drew others to him. Joel sat at his desk while Kayla went on about how her parents didn’t understand her.

“That sounds like the story of everyone who comes here,” he said dismissively.

He then turned to Ivy, who hadn’t said a word. He looked at her as if she were the only person in the room and she could feel her heart jolt. At that moment Ivy felt as if he saw her, the real her, not the pretty rich girl, for he seemed to look more deeply. He saw the girl who had feelings and ideas and who was now so terribly lost. Joel didn’t ask her any questions, instead he just pushed his chair back, then stood and came to embrace her. “You won’t be hurt again,” he said. “I promise you that.”

Ivy leaned against Joel and wept and wished that Noah and her father had said that to her, but they hadn’t.

“I’ll take care of you,” Joel said. He spoke softly, so no one else could hear.

Kayla was staring at Ivy, glassy-eyed and annoyed by all the attention she was receiving.

Ivy wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and nodded her gratitude. In the times to come, she would thank him a thousand times over and sometimes she would mean it, but more often she would not. She meant it on this night.

“If you stay here, I’ll make certain you never regret it,” Joel vowed.

“Great,” Kayla said, even though Joel’s eyes were on Ivy. “We’re in.”

A WOMAN NAMED EVANGELINE led them to a house that several young women occupied. They would share a room. It was plain, but comfortable. The beds were all made with clean, fresh linens.

“He liked you,” Evangeline said to Ivy. Evangeline had been a college classmate of Joel’s first wife, Carrie, and had given up tenure at Tufts in the psychology department to come help Joel run the farm after Carrie’s death. She was married to Tim Hardy, who Joel had thought would be a good match for her. Tim had been a pastor in the army and had come to the Community when he was drug-addicted and homeless. Joel had offered him more than charity; he’d offered him a way of belonging. Tim still wore secondhand clothes, as if to remind himself of the time when he was hopeless and avoid getting a swelled head, even though he was now the foreman of the building crew. Evangeline was in charge of the children’s house and the office and just about everything in between. There were several married couples in the Community, but some were more respected than others, and Tim and Evangeline were closest to Joel.

“Joel’s been hurt before,” Evangeline told Ivy, for she’d seen the way Joel had looked at the girl and she knew what would likely come next. “He lost the love of his life to cancer. Don’t hurt him again.”

Ivy knew that he was focused on her all through the autumn as slashes of red and yellow appeared in the woods. She had felt his eyes on her as she raked heaps of fallen leaves or assisted with the children in the play yard. She noticed that the children were polite and well behaved; even the youngest ones weren’t allowed to run riot. Sometimes she felt like telling them to act up, to race through the fields, to climb trees or tell jokes, but she never did. Evangeline’s vigilant eyes were always on her.

Ivy’s favorite job was to work in the orchards, where she felt safe and hidden among the trees, preoccupied by the fairy tales she had always turned to for solace. Now, as the dark late autumn approached, she felt as if she were a character who’d been lost in the woods.

Joel had recently taken in several homeless people from Northampton to work and live on the farm, and now they were calling to each other in joyful voices even though it was drudgery to comb through the orchard for fruit. Ivy had seen them on the night they arrived, after they’d been brought to the dining hall. Joel had been the one to bring them their dinners, and then he had sat down with the new people as if he had known them all their lives. He had been so kind to them that Ivy’s heart had swelled up with an abiding devotion. Most people were intimidated by him, but he opened himself to these people who had nothing and welcomed them to the Community. He’d lifted his eyes to her, and when he did everyone else in the room had fallen away.

Ivy was four months along and showing now. It was a chilly morning, and she was out gathering fruit in a wicker basket. She knew her family had something to do with apples, and they had never been a favorite fruit of hers. She wore a scarf and gloves and a man’s peacoat. When she turned, Joel was standing there watching. She’d heard other women say it would be unwise to betray him or anger him; you had to earn his trust, and if you dared to break it, there was a price to pay. She had seen men and women wearing badges when they had gone against the rules. She was told they had lied or stolen, that they had been vain or disrespectful. Joel was an honest man and expected honesty in return. That’s what Evangeline always said.

“Wherever I look, I always see you,” Joel told her when they encountered one another in the orchard. “I see true beauty.”

Ivy felt so unattractive, her face was puffy, her body heavier than it had ever been, that she couldn’t help being flattered. “You must be seeing apple trees, not me.” Ivy laughed, flushed with embarrassment, but also with something more.

“You’re far more beautiful.” His eyes were so dark, almost black. “Some things are meant to be,” he told her.

“Like apples.” Ivy gave him a fleeting look. She felt out of her depth here. The basket was heavy in her hands, and she set it down in the grass, aware that he was watching her. For some reason her breath was shallow in her chest.

“Like us,” Joel responded. “I’d wondered if I could ever love someone again.”

When Joel came toward her, she didn’t step away. Ivy couldn’t imagine that he’d want someone like her, an insecure girl who hadn’t even finished high school, who didn’t know how to drive a car and was pregnant and didn’t know the first thing about being a mother. She couldn’t imagine that her life could be set right. He kissed her in a way she had never been kissed before. No wonder people did as he said and believed in him. He was stronger than most men; for one thing, he knew what he wanted, even though Ivy wondered how he could be so kind to someone who had arrived on a bus, owning nothing, with nothing to offer. When she told him so, he smiled and shook his head.

“You have everything I want,” he told her. “You are the apple, you are the tree, you are the orchard.”

He didn’t wait for what he wanted. Ivy was impressed by that after being with a college boy who expected everything to be handed to him. Two days after they’d met in the orchard, Joel went on his bended knee before her; it was old-fashioned, and another woman might have laughed at how serious he was, but as soon as he did, Ivy was his. Just like that, on an October day. She was a tree in the forest, she was the love of his life, she was so young she was unable to see the future, and on that day, she went forward, hoping for the best. All she knew was that she was the woman who walked through an orchard knowing that she was valued and loved, something she had unfortunately never felt before.

THAT WAS THE WINTER when the snow fell for days and storms became blizzards, when the Lost River froze and turned blue, it was the winter of love when they walked through the drifts to an abandoned cabin at the edge of the woods so they could be alone. Ivy’s belly was huge; she was due that March. All the same, Joel swore that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and she nearly believed him. They were inside a snow globe, after all. They were in a world of their own. “What do you want more than anything?” Joel asked her.

“A daughter,” she said. “Your daughter,” she added when she saw that he looked crestfallen. She knew that she said things to please him, that in some corner of her soul there was a hidden self she never allowed to be seen. Nothing was perfect, but this was close. Nothing lasted forever, although Joel swore what was between them was for all eternity. The snow was deeper all the time, and the world Ivy had known was so far away. She might have been anywhere, but she was here, in his arms, only six miles from the nearest town, but so far away she might as well have been west of the moon.

ON THE DAY MIA was born, there was a false spring. The lilacs bloomed all at once and the bees emerged from their hives, only to freeze when the cold, blue night fell. Petals turned black. Bees were found on window ledges, having frozen as they tried their best to reach the warm rooms inside. The Tree of Life planted by Johnny Appleseed did not have a single leaf that year. Ivy knew nothing about childbirth, and she’d thought she might die during the worst of her labor. She asked the midwife to put her out of her misery, but they didn’t use drugs of any sort. “I can’t do this,” Ivy had cried, but then Joel had leaned close to whisper in her ear. He didn’t leave her for a minute. “You have to walk through hell to get to heaven,” Joel told her. She listened to him and calmed down. In this way she was bound to him, no matter who she had been before. “Breathe,” he had said and that was what she did. Have faith in yourself, she thought. Have faith in him.

When they handed Ivy her daughter, the heart of her heart, the true love of her life, all of the pain she’d experienced was immediately forgotten.