by Anita Shreve
“What is this thing called love?”
“I’m not sure bringing Alphonse was such a good idea,” Honora says, turning to McDermott.
“Do him good,” McDermott says, looking at the boy. “Expose him to different ideas.”
“I think it’s called corrupting a minor,” Honora says. “And anyway, it’s not the ideas I’m worried about.”
“Won’t tell his mother,” McDermott says, and she thinks he might be a little bit drunk already. She can feel the heat from the side of his body.
“Is it all right to tell you that you look very pretty tonight?” he asks.
“Perfectly all right,” she says.
“You look very pretty tonight,” he says.
From the center of the table, Sexton shoots Honora a quick glance. “You make the vows to each other,” he says, “and that’s what’s binding.” Honora wonders if this speech is for her benefit. They have not spoken since the incident in the bedroom.
“But why should they be binding?” Sadie is asking.
“My baby just cares for me.”
“What about you, Ross?” Sadie suddenly asks when Sexton doesn’t answer.
Ross blinks. “Me?”
“Do you believe in free love?”
“Nothing’s free,” he says.
“Definitely brown,” McDermott says to Honora.
“Hey, doll, give me a dance,” Vivian says to Louis. She stretches her long graceful arms above her head. “My feet are itching.”
Louis smiles and stands.
“Sadie, how about a dance?” Sexton asks. “We can finish our discussion on the dance floor.”
“I’ll dance with you,” Sadie says, standing and dropping an ice cube back into her glass, “but I think you’re a capitalist shit.”
Honora watches Sexton and Sadie move through the throng, which seems to have doubled already since they arrived — Sexton tall and broad shouldered and almost too impeccable in this slightly sleazy roadhouse, and Sadie, who barely reaches his chest, in her overalls. People turn their heads to stare.
“He’s a good sport,” McDermott says beside her.
“She’s all right,” Honora says.
“Oh, I like Sadie,” he says. “I think she’s great. I just don’t know that I want to dance with her.”
“The mustache bother you?” Tsomides asks from his end of the table. “We Greeks like our women with mustaches.”
“Pretend you didn’t hear that,” Honora says to Alphonse.
“Hey, cockroach,” Tsomides says to Alphonse. “Come over here so I can talk to you.”
Alphonse pushes his chair back, and Honora notices that the boy seems a bit unsteady on his feet as he makes his way to the end of the table. Ross and Mahon, Honora notes, have disappeared. “I think Alphonse is tipsy,” Honora says to McDermott.
“He’ll be all right,” he says. He pauses. “I should ask you to dance.”
“Maybe you should,” Honora says, flirting a little.
“Only I don’t know how.”
“On the sunny side of the street.”
“You could tell me how pretty I am again,” she says.
“Say, Honora, you look very pretty tonight.”
She waves him away. “I should probably get something to eat,” she says. The lights are low, and it is hard to see across the room. McDermott shifts his chair so that their elbows are suddenly touching, but Honora cannot bring herself to pull away. She glances over at the front of McDermott’s shirt, unbuttoned at the collar. His sleeves are rolled as well, and she notes, as she has done often in the last several weeks, the fine dark hairs on the back of his wrists. There are sweat stains under his arms. The temperature has risen inside the roadhouse, and even the open windows and door aren’t helping much. McDermott takes a sip of his drink. “What happened to you today?” he asks.
“I had a nap,” she says. “Overslept.”
“Your husband said you weren’t feeling well.”
“He said that?” she asks, surprised.
“Can this be love?”
“You believe that stuff?” he asks.
“What stuff?”
“What Sadie was saying. About free love and all.”
“I missed the beginning of the conversation,” she says. “So I’m not sure.” She pauses. “But probably I don’t believe in it, no.” She watches him finger the condensation on his glass. “Shouldn’t we have these in paper bags?” she asks.
“What? These innocent little glasses of tonic?”
“What if the police come?”
“They’re here already,” McDermott says, gesturing with his thumb. “See that bald guy over there?”
Honora looks in the direction McDermott is pointing, her eyes resting on a shiny pate.
“Chief of police,” McDermott says.
Cigarette smoke curls upward in the beams of dim electric light. A blue haze hangs only a foot or two above their heads. “I really need something to eat,” Honora says, standing.
The sea air hits her face as soon as she steps outside. She removes her pumps, which pinch in the heat. She inhales as deeply as she can, hoping to clear her head with a couple of good breaths. From a jalousie back window, she can smell meat cooking. She thinks briefly of knocking on that window and asking someone to hand food out to her. Anything, she would tell them. She takes a few steps forward, hoping she is not staggering, as are some who are moving toward their cars. But because the parking lot is gravel underfoot, she turns and drifts toward the back of the building, enjoying the cool blades of grass on the soles of her feet. She moves into the darkness, away from the light, putting her hands out so she won’t walk into a tree. She thinks perhaps she should sit down, or better yet, lie down, and when she has gone far enough, she does so, feeling the dew all along her back. Fireflies dart and tease with their light. She tries to follow them, but they are tricky insects and never where she thinks they’ll be. She closes her eyes, and her head begins to spin. Above her, the leaves of a tree are making a sound oddly like water.
She smells cigarette smoke and soap. She opens her eyes.
McDermott
“You’re following me,” she says.
McDermott lowers himself to the grass beside her.
“I’m drunk,” she says.
“I noticed.”
“Not used to holding my liquor.”
“You didn’t eat.”
“No excuse.”
Beyond the seawall, he can hear the surf. There is a commotion in the parking lot.
“Is Alphonse all right?” she asks.
“Sadie has taken him under her wing.”
“I guess he’ll learn a thing or two tonight.”
“He’s incorruptible.”
In the distance a woman says, I saw the way you looked at her.
A mist crawls in from the water. He can hear the music from the open door. The lantern at the entrance to the roadhouse is furry with light. He smoothes Honora’s hair off her forehead and worries that his fingers, with their calluses, will be too rough.
“Honora,” he says. He brings her face around so that he can see it. “I have to see your mouth, remember?”
With a slowness that would give her time to turn away if she wanted to, he leans over her and kisses her mouth. Her mouth is open, as if surprised anyway. He kisses her again. She makes a small sound at the back of her throat. “I just . . . ,” she says.
“Don’t talk,” he says, closing his eyes. “I have my eyes closed, so I can’t see what you’re saying.”
He opens his eyes to see if she is looking, and she laughs.
He kisses her again quickly. He reaches down to the hem of her skirt. He slides his hand up the back of her leg. He has wanted to do this all night. He has wanted to do this for weeks.
She shifts, but does not entirely pull away.
“Iwish . . . ,” she begins.
Above them, the tree is making a sound like water. Their faces hover inches from each other.
He can feel her breath.
“You wish?” he asks.
Honora
It would be so easy, she thinks. All she would have to do is turn a fraction of an inch toward him, and that would be that. They are hidden from the light. No one would ever know.
He smooths her hair with his fingers. He says her name and turns her face to his. “I have to see your mouth, remember?”
She knows that he is going to kiss her, and she wants it to happen. She wants to stretch her body the length of his and to arch her back. Her mouth is partly open, and she makes a sound at the back of her throat.
“Ijust . . . ,” she says.
No one but she and McDermott would ever know, she thinks.
“Don’t talk,” he says.
And hasn’t Sexton dishonored the marriage already?
McDermott kisses her again, and overhead the tree is again making a sound oddly like water running. A brook, maybe.
“Iwish . . . ,” she begins.
What does she wish? She wishes that she had again the pristine jewel that was once her marriage. She wishes she could let McDermott love her. She wishes that she did not care about honor or trust or the future. About how she would have to think about herself — day after day after day, week after week after week.
His face is so close to hers that she can feel his breath near her eyes.
“You wish?” he asks.
She presses her palms lightly against his chest.
McDermott
The moon, fuzzy around the edges tonight, creates a cone of light on the water. The surf is barely breaking at the bottom of the low-tide beach. Alphonse was snoring when McDermott left him in his bedroll — a barely audible sound, like that from a woman. The boy sleeps with his mouth open and his eyes rolled far back into his head. His eyelids flutter with his dreams. Dreaming of peach ice cream, McDermott hopes. Dreaming of flying airplanes.
He takes another pull from the bottle of whiskey he found on the kitchen table. He woke in his bedroll, mildly surprised that he felt hungry. In the kitchen, he stood eating leftover lamb stew and saw the bottle on the oilcloth. It hurts his stomach but will help with the sleeping. He can’t remember when he last slept the night through. He wakes restless, and it isn’t because of the bedroll on one of the thin mattresses that Mahon trucked in — it happens at the boardinghouse too. Only there he can’t go downstairs looking for a bite to eat. Madame Derocher keeps a lock on the icebox.
He puts his feet up on the porch railing and tilts the wooden chair backward. In the morning, he will leave.
Sometimes he sees her in the hallway as he is on his way to the bathroom for a wash, and once in a while she is in her dressing gown, carrying a pile of clean laundry or a stack of towels for the men. She keeps the door to her bedroom closed, and he has not wanted to see the bedroom or to imagine what goes on behind that door. And, in a way, that is the hardest part of leaving her in this house: knowing that he is leaving her with Sexton Beecher. Ross told McDermott about Beecher going on at lunch about guns, and privately they agreed that the guy is as crazy as a bed-bug. If it weren’t his house, Ross said. If it weren’t for the typewriter and the Copiograph. You couldn’t use a man’s home and then boot him out, McDermott surprised himself by saying, and, reluctantly, Ross agreed. Keep an eye on him, though, Ross said. And McDermott thought then that he ought to tell Ross about leaving in the morning, that Sexton Beecher would no longer be his problem. But he hadn’t conferred with Mironson yet, and it was Mironson he had to tell first.
McDermott feels a hand on his shoulder. Vivian moves past his chair to another on the porch, Sandy trotting behind her. “Hey, doll,” she says, situating herself so that her face is visible to him.
“I didn’t know you were still here,” McDermott says, reaching down and scratching the back of Sandy’s neck. He takes his feet off the railing.
“I’m embarrassed to say I passed out on the couch,” she says, yawning slightly. “I saw a light and wondered who was out here.”
“Just me.”
“Couldn’t sleep?” she asks.
“Not really.”
“Oh Lord, I’m a mess,” she says.
“You look fine to me,” McDermott says, and indeed she does. Vivian is always an expensive-looking package, all the bows neatly tied.
“I need my bed,” she says.
“I could walk you home,” he says.
She waves his gallantry aside. “I’ve got the beach wagon.”
“Beautiful night,” he says, leaning forward and offering her a cigarette. She takes one, bends for the light, and inhales. She removes a speck of tobacco from her lower lip.
“Been brooding about the universe?” she asks.
“Don’t know enough about the universe,” he says.
“How about your particular universe?” she asks.
“Not worth brooding about,” he says. “Want a drink?” He holds out the bottle of whiskey.
“I think I’ve overdone it already,” she says, putting a hand to her head.
“A wee one can’t hurt you,” he says.
“Hair of the dog?”
Even swigging from a bottle of whiskey, McDermott notes, Vivian is elegant in her gestures. She hands him the bottle back, and he takes another swig himself. “Are you all going back tomorrow night?” she asks. “Well, I guess by now it’s tonight, isn’t it?”
“I’m going back this morning,” McDermott says. “Early.”
“What’s the rush?”
“Things to do,” he says.
“Alphonse going with you?”
For once, McDermott hasn’t thought about Alphonse. The boy, having arrived at the house late into the weekend, will not want to leave. “No,” he says. “He’ll go back later with the others.”
“He liked that peach ice cream,” she says, smiling.
“He’s dreaming about it right now,” McDermott says.
Vivian laughs. She takes another pull on her cigarette, crosses her legs. “What do you dream about, Quillen McDermott?”
The question is so unexpected and so direct that for a moment McDermott cannot answer.
“No fair thinking about it,” she says. “You have to answer right away.”
“Whose rules are these?” he asks, stalling for time.
“My rules, of course.” She smiles, crinkling the few wrinkles at the sides of her eyes.
“Don’t remember my dreams,” he says.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Why not?”
“I think you’re a deep one.”
“Don’t bet on it.”
He takes another drink and slaps a mosquito. Vivian never seems to get bitten, he has noticed. Must be something in her perfume. McDermott feels the booze going down, waits for the pain. He has to take it easy now; he’s had far more than enough already.
“What do you dream about?” he asks her.
“Oh, everything,” she says. “My Maggy Rouff gown. My Houbigant atomizers. My Van Cleef and Arpels sapphire-and-diamond bracelet. My room at the Plaza Hotel.”
He laughs.
“I’m serious,” she says.
“I know you are,” he says.
“Working on the newsletter has been a hoot,” Vivian says. “I wouldn’t trade an hour of the time I’ve spent here.”
“That’s pretty generous of you,” he says.
She bends conspiratorially toward McDermott. “Don’t tell Louis or Sadie, whatever you do, but I think I’m being indoctrinated,” she says, leaning back in her chair. “Once you see the world the way Louis does — once you allow yourself to see it — it’s very hard to see it again the way you used to. My sort, I mean. We seem, well, despicable, really.”
“I don’t think you’re despicable,” he says.
“How come you don’t have a girl?” she asks. “A handsome guy like you.”
“I did have,” he says. “Last year. She left me for a bricklayer.”
“How sad,” Vivian says.
“Not really.”
In the moonlight, Vivian’s coppery hair is a dull metal that has lost its color. “Were you in love?” she asks.
“Thought so at the time,” McDermott says, lighting a second cigarette with the first. It’s another thing he should be cutting back on.
“But now you don’t,” she says, studying him.
He flicks his ashes onto the porch. “Now I don’t,” he says. From the window above them, there is the sound of a man calling a name frantically in his sleep. Rosemary. “That’s Ross,” McDermott says, pointing upward. “His wife’s name is Rosemary.”
Vivian smiles. “Hard for them all to be away from their families,” she says.
“Wouldn’t know about that,” he says.
“It’s more obvious than you might think,” she says.
“What’s more obvious?” McDermott says.
“The thing that’s obvious,” Vivian says.
McDermott bends to tie his shoe. He ties the laces slowly and deliberately. His fingers feel like thick sausages.
“Bit of a thorny problem, though, isn’t it?” Vivian says.
“Don’t know what you mean,” McDermott says.
“The shady husband and all,” Vivian says.
McDermott instinctively glances around as though someone might have heard.
“Don’t worry,” Vivian says. “The husband’s obtuse. I just happen to notice things. I’m very good at it. I do it as a hobby.”
“Lucky for you,” McDermott says, his heart racing.
“Your secret is safe with me,” Vivian says.
“Don’t have secrets,” he says. Vivian searches for an ashtray. “Just stub it out with your foot,” he says.
Vivian puts the toe of a delicate high-heeled pump on her cigarette butt. “I think she feels the same, if it’s any consolation,” she says.
McDermott tips his chair back and puts his feet on the railing again.
“Nothing she’s said, mind you,” Vivian says. “I can just tell.”