The End of the Day

by Bill Clegg

  Oh, it’s you. Dana sounded startled.

  How can I help?, Lupita said, as politely as she could.

  Ok. Right… well… Here you are. Perhaps… you just might… she sounded unsure, as if she was forming a plan on the fly.

  Excuse me?

  Dana reclaimed her authority. It’s last minute, I know, but I need to organize some food to bring to a pal’s place tomorrow… it’s just up the hill from the town beach and you can see the fireworks above the trees Could you organize some deviled eggs and whatever else people eat on the Fourth of July?

  Lupita was silent as Dana continued with a proposal: If you get going on all that today and pack up the car tomorrow, I’ll then drive everything over.

  For the first time, the words Mr. Goss spoke to her that morning returned, Let’s help each other out. You’re obviously curious.

  Lupita froze. She’d forgotten whom she was speaking to for a moment and then when she remembered she couldn’t make sense of what was being said.

  Hello? Dana’s voice poked from the receiver. Lupita, what’s going on? Are you there?

  And her father’s returned. Maybe we can solve this.

  Lupita?

  She struggled to respond, By organize… you mean…

  Excuse me? The play in Dana’s voice was gone.

  Lupita recovered, with forced civility. What I mean… I didn’t know if you meant for me to buy deviled eggs or make them. I can do either.

  The world having righted itself, Dana softened, I’m sure what you make will be better than anything at the grocery store. I’ll see you tomorrow. PLEASE don’t let me down. And never mind about telling my mother. I’ll find her.

  Lupita returned the phone to its cradle. She stood in the short hall off the foyer where an elegant half oval table held a heavy black phone and a small bowl of white peonies. She’d picked the flowers that morning from the long bed outside the library and with Q-tips, delicately rid each bloom of ants, something Ada had taught her to do last summer. Somewhere upstairs her mother was ironing sheets. In the library, Mrs. Goss listened to opera on the stereo system while she received a manicure and pedicure from the middle-aged woman who drove up from Kent once a week in the summer. The citrus smell of the peonies was strong. The aroma of bacon wafting from the kitchen mingled in the damp botanical air. Lupita’s stomach swerved but the terror of having to explain a sudden mess kept it under control.

  In the evening, after driving up from the city, Dana called the Lopezes’ apartment to check in on progress. Before hanging up, she asked Lupita if she wouldn’t mind coming with her the next day to lend a hand carrying things from the car, setting and cleaning up. Who knows what we’ll find up there, she said, as if they’d gone on many such outings before, but with two of us I’m sure we’ll manage Oh, and wear something festive Maybe you’ll even have fun.

  Dana had never before asked Lupita to do anything for or with her. As a girl, she would have been ecstatic to have been asked to do just about anything with Dana. But they weren’t little girls anymore and this was obviously not an overture of friendship. It was work. Though usually when there were jobs to do at the big house she did not interact with Dana. All the directives came through Lupita’s parents and, once in a while, Ada. Mrs. Goss was the one she saw the most, but only ever when she was stripping beds, folding laundry or doing light housework; for the most part she avoided Lupita, save to say a friendly but distant Good morning or Oh, hello if by chance they were caught in the same room alone together.

  The next day, Lupita half-heartedly put a basket of food together. A jar of pickles, two bags of potato chips and a plate of deviled eggs. Dana found her in the kitchen to tell her to bring the car to the house at five-thirty and they’d go from there. It was almost one and she’d clearly just woken up. Lupita avoided looking at her, so at first she didn’t notice the robe. She was slicing a boiled egg in half when she looked up and saw the cream-colored silk, the silver and black stitched clouds, the long sash. Dana was at that moment turning to leave and as she did the dragon came into view. I know you know how to drive, she teased coldly over her shoulder as she left, the serpent crouched upon her back, its mug glaring. This is when she cut herself. The small kitchen knife she was using sliced the pad of her right thumb, but she did not notice right away. By the time she looked down at what she was doing, the bowl filled with yolks she’d taken from the halved eggs was splattered in blood. After she’d bandaged her thumb, hastily made another batch of eggs, and cleaned up the kitchen, she walked the picnic basket out to the garage and shoved it in the back seat of Dana’s convertible. It was already almost eighty-five degrees outside and there would be at least a few more hours before they drove to Hatch Pond, but Lupita didn’t care if the eggs went bad.

  * * *

  Makahoa Point is behind her now and she’s passed Wainiha Bay. As far as she has drifted from the long half-moon of Hanalei Beach, she’s somehow managed to avoid sharks and jellyfish and stay near enough to shore that she’s not been carried out to sea. But as close as she is—no more than a few hundred feet from the short beach after the bay and before the long underwater fortress of reefs—she is powerless to cross the distance. She can see cars fly past on the Kuhio Highway, but the ocean does not want to let her go. Outside the reef there will only be a few more shots to come in. Her vision begins to wobble and she feels sleepy, her eyelids heavy. The water continues to shove her further out and she resists the strong pull to shut her eyes, go limp and drift. She figures if she can stay alert long enough to clear the reef and slip from the current before it launches her past Ka’llio Point, she still has a chance.

  * * *

  A lanky southern girl named Louise dressed in what looked like pink tennis clothes was the first to complain about the spoiled eggs. Who made these?, she whined after spitting into a paper towel. Lupita said nothing. Peter Beldon, who’d organized the party, pretended not to hear. Dana, minutes after they’d reached the cabin, had vanished back down the steep path saying she’d left something behind in the car. There were only four other people there: Peter Beldon, Louise, Peter’s roommate, Oscar, and another boy their age named Bart who piled sticks and fallen branches from the woods into a circle of stones arranged a short distance from the cabin.

  There was no electricity or running water, but Peter had shown them an old water pump at the wood line. Inside, there were kerosene lanterns for light, and blankets in case it got cold after dark. He’d bragged that his family, in one form or another, had owned the place since his great-great-grand-something was one of the first senators from Connecticut. Louise and Oscar followed Peter past the blue door into the cabin and Lupita ducked around the side of the building where she found a half-rotted wood swing strung with rope from a thick, almost perfectly horizontal limb of an old oak. She waited there for Dana to come back up the mountain and scold her, or give her the silent treatment at least, for the spoiled eggs. Since she and Dana began the half-hour climb up the hill from the town beach, she kept asking herself why she’d agreed to come, and why Dana had asked her in the first place. It didn’t make sense, but very little did lately.

  Lupita knew she would not attend Albertus Magnus in the fall but was pretending to her parents and to herself that she still was. On days when she didn’t feel sick she would momentarily forget that she was pregnant and then, with a wave of nausea, remember. Her body had not yet begun to thicken and swell but she’d begun to feel strangely full even if she hadn’t eaten anything. She also needed to go to the bathroom all of a sudden and many times a day. Her body was shifting rapidly in ways she could feel, sometimes acutely, but the changes were not yet noticeable to those around her. Freshman orientation started the week before Labor Day, so she calculated that she had until the middle of August to make a plan. In a late-night panic she considered returning to Catemaco to find relatives to take her in. She was sure she could cross the border legally now since less than three years before, she and her family had finally gone to Hartf
ord to stand in a library where they’d pledged an oath to the United States with twenty or so other people, none of whom looked like they were from Mexico. They all left with certificates of naturalization which their father kept in a photo album on the dresser in his bedroom. Still, with the freedom to now return, something she’d wanted to do for so long after they first came to Florida and even after they’d moved to work for the Gosses, she had no way of getting there. She had no car, nothing close to the amount of money needed for a bus or plane ticket. Even if she could somehow get down there, she knew her relatives would call her parents. She had $16 left from the money she’d saved, no options, no one to confide in or ask for help, and here she was at a picnic in the woods with rich college kids. People like Dana, who would never know, not for one freezing cold second of their quilted lives, what it was like to be as cornered and alone as she was now.

  In the car on the way to the pond, they barely spoke. When Dana turned onto Route 7 from Undermountain Road, she reminded Lupita for the second time that day of their drive two years ago. The last time we were in the car together, you were the one driving. Don’t you remember? She chose not to answer, hoping Dana might take the hint and stop talking. Which she did, until they were getting out of the car at Hatch Pond. She’d eyed Lupita from top to toe, taking her in with sudden and exacting scrutiny: her two thick ponytails, her green shorts, and the yellow and orange checkered blouse with thin white spaghetti straps, the only thing in her closet that could meet Dana’s festive standards. Good, she’d declared, her eyes then quickly moving on, sweeping the parking lot and near field.

  Lupita saw Floyd before he found her. He came around the side of the cabin looking precisely as he had the last time she’d seen him. Strong, kind, untroubled and young. There was something particular about his loping gait, the proportions of his limbs and torso and his tidy but still roughed hair. He was, as he had been before, beautiful. He was also clearly in a hurry and nervous, scanning up and down along the wood line and then back again. He even glanced up, into the trees, as if who or what he was looking for could be found there. Wearing a light blue T-Shirt and old jeans, he looked like a boy still in high school. No one had ever seemed so far away.

  When Floyd spotted her, she knew she should leave. Nothing good could come from talking to him now. But it was too late. He waved hello and started to jog toward her. As much as she knew she should run as fast and as far away as she could from him, she felt a desperate urge to tell him everything. But she thought of Jackie, and the daughter she’d given birth to soon after they’d married. She reminded herself that she had no place in Floyd’s life, that they did not know each other beyond a few childish kisses. But she was trapped, and here was the one person with whom she’d willingly shared a secret. Hi, he said, as he approached, his jog slowing. You ok?, his face shifting from excitement to concern.

  She didn’t know how to answer without saying too much, the potential consequences were too great. Not for herself or even for Jackie and her daughter, but for her parents, and Ada.

  Hey, you all right? I’m going to have to leave in a minute—I agreed to help Dana bring some things up the hill—she told me you were here… I wanted… well… I just thought I’d…

  She wondered if Floyd had just spoken more words to her than he had the night two years ago at the bottom of this very hill and the morning after. They’d barely spoken at his farm. She had no idea what to say now.

  Can I show you something?, he asked, filling the silence. It will only take a minute. She nodded and stood and he motioned her to the wood line. We used to come up here all the time in high school, he explained, sounding nostalgic and pointing to a well-trod deer run that appeared between blueberry bushes. Drinking beers and killing time. I only got a minute but you should see it… I’ll bet none of these knuckleheads you’re hanging around with today have any idea what’s back here. C’mon. As Lupita stepped over a fallen branch and wobbled momentarily, Floyd’s hand gripped the bare skin above her elbow to help steady her. She startled violently, as if electrocuted, her arms flying up and over her chest. At the moment his hand made contact she grunted a high frightened sound that she’d only ever heard come from her throat once before. She was shaking, her heart slammed hard and she could feel sweat beading down her body. After a few seconds, her panic dissipated, and she was mortified. I’m sorry, she managed. Floyd looked more surprised than Lupita and seemed to be trying to understand what had just happened, Ok… ok now… didn’t mean to scare you… Just wanted to help you there… let’s go have a quick look and I’ll get going. He stepped past her on the path, put five or so feet of distance between them before pressing ahead through the forest of birch trees.

  Lupita tried to still her shaking hands and slow her breathing, but it was useless. More and more over the last weeks, her body was operating on its own, against her will. She focused on the back of Floyd’s T-shirt, the perspiration wetting the space between his shoulder blades and behind his armpits. She watched him brush against a dead branch and knock it to the ground. As her body slowly calmed, she wished they would never stop walking, continue on to Vermont, to Canada, clear to the other side of the world. Even as she imagined this she realized how childish the fantasy was, how it didn’t include the baby that would be born, the one she knew she would not love, even if Floyd promised to. Again, she wanted to tell him. If anyone would be willing to help her, it was him. And what were the odds, of all the times they could have met again in the two years since they last spoke, that he would appear now, in the least likely company, at her most desperate moment. Her courage swarmed. He was here. She started to speak as they crossed into a clearing. I need to…

  Here we are!, Floyd announced, interrupting her, stopping sharply when he realized what he’d done. Hey, I’m sorry… I didn’t hear… And anyway, this is it. That’s all I wanted to say. If his face was flushed before, it was on fire now, slick with sweat. As he wiped his left hand across his forehead and down his drenched neck, she noticed his wedding ring for the first time, its metal sparking in the late-day light.

  I didn’t… it was nothing, she sputtered, and looked past him to the reason he’d brought her here.

  The ledge they stood on dropped off sharply behind Floyd and left an unobstructed view. He motioned her forward, out to the edge, below which were the woods they’d hiked through earlier, and past the woods, the town beach. Lupita stepped closer and could see down to the pavilion, the white shed between the fire-pits and the parking lot, and the short dock that stretched into the algaed water. They were close enough to see people spread out on blankets and gathered around the coolers, but far enough away to make it impossible to see who they were. Lupita wondered which one was Jackie.

  On the other side of the pond, a low hill with white clapboard houses dotted with shuttered windows and chimneys rose toward three church steeples, a clock tower and a flagpole that appeared above the tree line. Lupita had never seen the town from a distance like this and at first she didn’t recognize it. It looked so tidy and contained, as if each building and landmark had been compressed into a painting. If she hadn’t lived there for most of her life she’d have thought it looked like the perfect town, a place where nothing bad could happen.

  Pretty cool, huh?, Floyd said, as if trying to convince her that where they’d grown up, and not just the view, was better than it was. Lupita looked down toward the beach and the people she would not miss. The blond and freckled children of Wells who’d let her know when she came from Florida nine years ago that she didn’t belong. Floyd had not seen her then, just as he hadn’t seen her in the years after, even though they’d gone to the same elementary school. She was invisible to him until she was someone who could be kissed behind sheds and barns. And here they were, she began to recognize, alone again, in the woods, out of sight.

  I need to get back, Lupita blurted abruptly and turned to locate the path they’d taken. Before he could respond, she rushed from where they stood, her body once aga
in taking control, carrying her away as fast as it could into the woods.

  * * *

  She’s missed her chance at shore. Shot past the beaches between Kolokolo, Kepuhi and Ha’ena Points and for as far as she can see there is blinding whitewash breaking over the reefs that stretch without interruption to the far end of Maniniholo Bay. As long as there is a reef between her and the beach, there is no chance of making it in without being shredded on the coral. Water swells and slaps at her from all sides. She needs to make it to the other side of Ka‘īlio Point, past long sandy Ke’e Beach which she’s sure is barricaded by reef. After Ke’e there is no approachable land until Hanakapi’ai where, she remembers, there is a waterfall coming off the steep cliffs at the back of a small beach. She’d been there a dozen times after hiking down off the Kalalau trail. She knows the approach to shore from the water there is clear because all that separates the beach from open ocean is sand and a lethal riptide notorious for dragging haole tourists to their deaths.

  * * *

  She did not see Floyd again until after she’d joined Peter and the others around the fire. We were starting to get worried, Peter said seriously and with what sounded like genuine concern. Oscar cleared a place on the log next to him, and Lupita, not knowing what else to do or where to go, took a seat. She wondered but did not ask where Dana was. The four friends resumed their talk of concerts and vacations and the draft they’d taken care to avoid. Floyd appeared a few minutes later, looking confused and serious. He approached where Lupita was seated, and brushed past Oscar whose face and neck and arms were flame red with a rash he’d just described defensively to the group was caused by an allergic reaction to the cheap vodka Peter was using for the drinks. Floyd accidently grazed his shoulder, which caused the boy to lurch abruptly, fumble his drink and spill it across Lupita’s shoulders and down the front of her blouse. Everyone around the fire froze until Floyd stooped protectively toward Lupita which prompted Oscar to shove him off and bark, What the hell do you think you’re doing?