Deleted Scene from Something
Worth Doing
by Jane Kirkpatrick
Scenes left on the cutting room floor . . . Wisps of this scene are
still in Something Worth Doing, but this was one of what I call
“outtakes,” which are scenes I like and don’t want to cut but that seem too
long and take the reader where I want them to go, but the character isn’t quite
so sure of that. I pull the whole scene out and save it as an outtake.
Sometimes it comes back in; often it doesn’t.
This scene is between Abigail and her sister, and it felt like I was
“telling” the reader how Abigail didn’t always feel that she was a great
mother, her work taking her away often. I ended up reworking the novel as a
whole to create more opportunity for readers to “see” Abigail as a good mother
and, at the same time, as one who struggled with her career, knowing that to
pursue women’s rights and getting women the vote often meant being away from
home for weeks—sometimes months—at a time.
This scene had too many things going on, especially toward the end with
two new named characters who do not appear in the finished book! And the scene
was to be about Abigail and her parenting, not about her frustration with Ben
bringing his friends around. That’s another scene!
***
“I don’t suppose the Argus
newspaper needs filtering though, does it?” Catherine bounced Clara on her hip
while Abigail knelt on the warm earth setting vegetable starts in the garden,
carrots and beans she’d been nurturing in egg shells and potato boats since
March. Abigail patted the ground around the seedlings. It had been a wet, cool
spring and now summer had burst upon them. Her seedlings begged to bloom.
Catherine’s visit was a boon to Abigail when the two could talk about teaching
and writing and life, pleasant interruptions to her wifely duties.
“The Argus deals
with hide prices and women’s recipes so we can’t get into too much trouble
reading it. But the articles don’t stimulate the mind much either and persons
needs that, even farm wives. At least I do. Read News of the World and
the Spectator, just don’t accept everything as gospel.” She lifted her eyes in time to watch a breeze
flutter across the field brushing bachelor buttons, grasses, the movement
easing toward them like an invisible wave until it reached her seedlings and
cooled her face. “Did you see that?”
“See what?”
“The way you
can actually see weather changing. All was quiet and then with barely a
flutter, the entire field began to wave and carried the breeze right here.”
Catherine
shrugged her shoulder; looked confused by why such an observation would mean so
much to Abigail.
“Never mind,”
Abigail said. “I suppose I’m twisted as an old oak, finding metaphors where no
one else does. It’s that change happens so invisibly at times, one hardly
notices. Like Clara. Just yesterday she babbled like she carried on a
conversation with inflections and bursts of sounds that made no sense and then
this morning, voila! She said ‘mama mama’.”
“I’ve been
working with her on that.” Clara bobbed her head toward Catherine’s. She’d seen
her sister and daughter perform that little finish of an interaction, almost
like a punctuation. A tiny stab of envy pierced her. That was silly. She and
Clara had little dances, too, though a few looked like tangoes rather than a
waltz.
“Your teaching
gifts are showing then,” Abigail said. She kept her gaze at the field where all
the foliage whispered, aspen leaves fluttered. She decided then to write
something down about what she’d seen, how change crept up on people when not
expected, how the language of the landscape spoke as loudly as words sometimes.
She stood
wanting to keep the images in her mind until she could put them to paper but
then Ben came into view, riding from a distance. He wasn’t alone and Abigail’s
stomach lurched. She loved the man but she was tired and Ben had a way of
attracting friends, mostly bachelors, who had no problem accepting Ben’s
invitation to stick their boots beneath the Duniway table. She wished one of
them would marry so she could have a friend or two to talk to while the men
smoked their pipes and waited for her to boil potatoes, fry up liver and add
caramelized onions.
“Looks like
we’ve company for supper,” Catherine said.
“At least it
isn’t on wash day,” Abigail said. She gasped as she turned toward the house.
“Are you
alright?”
“I haven’t
been right since Clara’s birth,” Abigail said. “But I’m able to sit up and take
nourishment. Not to worry. But I’ll let you carry Clara in. My back…not to
mention my stomach wants to be a whirlpool.”
“Maybe you’re
with child,” Catherine whispered.
“Mercy me, no!”
Catherine
helped Abigail stand as the riders came into the yard.
“We have
guests, Mrs. Duniway.” Ben doffed his hat to her, nodded to Catherine then
swept his hat to indicate his two friends. Abigail knew them. Bryce and Joshua.
They worked on neighboring farms several miles distant. Abigail thought of the
woman at that farm relieved of two for supper though she’d have them back for
breakfast come morning.
