by Holly LeCraw
“Be careful,” Callie said. She smiled too but it was automatic; her eyes were opaque. “Be careful with that racquet.”
Jamie screeched, “Mommy, we don’t know where it is!”
“I know, sweetheart,” she said, not looking at him. “I’m sure you’ll find it.” She settled her head back into the faded chintz. It had been their mother’s favorite chair. She said, “I’ll just stay here awhile.” She did not look at Jed.
He heard Toni’s and Jamie’s footsteps go down the hall, then down the creaky back stairs to the kitchen. The screen door squeaked open, slapped shut. Callie was looking out the window, her gaze flat against the trees. Jed eyed the closet door. It would be the most natural thing in the world to go get the bathing suit back out. To say, Do you know whose this is? To say, Why is it here?
But instead he whispered, “Have a good rest, Cal.” She gave him the barest of nods.
He left the room then, but instead of following Toni and Jamie’s path down the hall, he made an abrupt turn, into his own room, and shut the door. He sat down on the edge of his childhood bed and stared at his empty hands. They tingled.
The ghost of memory, of the desire, shimmered again and then it was no longer a ghost but alive and warm and vivid. He had been keeping it at bay—why?—but now he could see and feel it all. An ordinary day, an ordinary party, Marcella Atkinson perhaps slightly more than ordinary at the edge of it. And then not at the edge but at the center. His life had not been ordinary for a long time.
The party had been mostly people from the Nobscusset Tennis Club, which was the grandiloquent name they had for the little collection of clay courts in the woods half a mile away. There had been kids in the pool and a few dads, but mostly the adults were dry and dressed and drinking; Jed himself had been directed, by his mother, to help entertain, and so he had been in the pool, throwing kids around, letting them climb on him. He preferred doing that to having the parents of his friends ask him about college and what he was majoring in and all the rest of it, which was what would have happened if he had been making conversation over by the grill. He’d known he would have ended up telling them he was pre-law, but he wouldn’t really have meant it, and he hated himself when he said something just to sound impressive. He had just finished his freshman year, and he had hated, too, the idea that his life would take predictable turns.
Callie was there but she was mooning around waiting for their friends, specifically Ham Storer, to show up. He remembered that. And Toni was there—she must have been ten or eleven, and Jed had had the distinct impression that she was showing off for him, which he thought was funny because he himself had been showing off, just a little bit, for her mother. Maybe he’d stood in front of her to throw a ball, maybe, oh, he’d flexed a muscle once or twice. Marcella Atkinson had been sitting at the corner of the patio, alone. He tended to notice her when she was around, which was not often—she seemed to play tennis only under duress. If one of his friends had happened to ask him about her—and maybe they would have; surely he wasn’t the only one noticing her—he probably would have said she was hot. Another thing to impress. But in his mind, he held her more gently. With more awe.
He was trying to ignore Toni and not be rude about it, and he ducked under water and swam to the deep end. When he surfaced, he found himself looking directly at Marcella. He was in a little space of quiet; he checked; the kids, including Toni, were now in a knot at the other end, playing Marco Polo. He propped himself against the deck with his elbow, and when he looked back, furtively, at Marcella Atkinson, she had sat up in her lounge chair, and was taking off her dress.
It was only a beach dress, of course. Her bathing suit was underneath. He wondered for the briefest of moments if she was going to swim, and then, for a moment that was even briefer, the dress caught around her hair and she twisted to free herself, and her bathing suit pulled back, and he saw her nipple, dark as an unblinking eye.
He had been almost nineteen. He had seen nipples before, whole breasts in fact. He was not a virgin, and he fancied himself an adult, but as the dark privacy of Marcella Atkinson’s body flashed by him—almost instantly she twisted again, and the suit slipped back, and her breast was covered—he had realized he wasn’t. He realized that normally he would have felt a throb of transgressive glee, a thrill of good luck, and that that would have been wrong. Because instead he wanted to run and protect her. To hide her, even though now there was nothing to hide. He gripped the edge of the concrete deck and resisted.
Instead, as he watched, she pulled the dress the rest of the way off. She sat back in the chair, unaware of what had happened, and looked down at the bundle of the dress in her lap, pensive, as if she did not know what to do with it. And then she looked straight up at him.
She had light-green, northern Italian eyes. They were startling against her skin, her dark hair. They were wide open and innocent with a guileless, heartbreaking longing, and he knew that somehow it had everything and yet nothing to do with him.
His old self—the self he had been until a minute before, the self he was jettisoning at that very moment—would have been disappointed to realize she wasn’t looking at him. But this abrupt new self (he saw with the clarity of memory) knew he had seen something mysterious and fascinating: Marcella Atkinson’s body, and Marcella herself. He thought of the girls he knew who seemed to offer him sunny manicured lanes instead of turning, twisting mysteries, and he knew his own life would not be ordinary, that it would instead be boundlessly rich. He was eighteen and things had always gone well for him, and while he knew that his good fortune so far had not involved much choice on his part, he thought that being an adult, in the land of choice, would only improve things. He stared at her for another long moment. He was all nerve endings. And then he knew suddenly that he had to get away.
He turned his back to her and heaved himself out of the water, took a towel from a nearby chair, covered himself. When he turned to her again, Marcella Atkinson was looking beyond him, into the trees, like she wanted to escape, and he knew she was no longer thinking of him at all. Somehow it didn’t matter. But escape seemed exactly the thing and so he left without saying good-bye to anyone and went to the club. It was empty; everyone was at the party. He slammed balls against the backboard for an hour, sweating out his lust and wonder, effecting the change in himself. When he had gotten back home, the party was breaking up, and the Atkinsons were gone.
He sat now, rigid, on the edge of his bed. He knew Callie was still in the other room and that she was not really resting and that something was wrong. Through the open window he heard Toni’s voice, indistinct but with an impatient edge, and he knew Jamie would come looking for Callie soon, and he would have to intercept him. And he knew that since that moment years ago, when life had seemed to lie exquisite before him, he had lost faith in any ability of his for agency or happiness.
And he knew also that Marcella Atkinson’s bathing suit should not be there, in the upstairs closet of his parents’ house. He knew that later, when the room was empty again, he would go back for it. He would hold it in his hands, and figure out what to do.
III
It was sultry, for June. Marcella opened the windows and let in the muggy breeze, and then sat at her dining room table working on a translation job that was not due for another month. Outside, all week, it was sunny and bright, and the garden bloomed without her. By Thursday, she had to admit she was completely done. She called her editor—who was happy, but not surprised, to hear that she was finished ahead of schedule—and then she was free. She told herself that she would spend Friday in the garden. It was the only way, besides her work, that she could lose herself.
But she woke the next morning to a gentle rainfall. She looked at the clock: far too early. She had never been a good sleeper, and was getting worse. Outside, the leaky gutter at the corner of the house dripped steadily. Was that what had woken her up? No, there had been screaming—she touched her throat. She had been screaming. In her dream. She
had been screaming because no one was listening to her. There had been some kind of macabre party, a roomful of unconcerned faces, herself in the middle, seemingly invisible, mute.
But Cecil had been there. He had been—hurt? Was that what she had wanted people to see? The dream was already fading. She tried to ignore her leftover panic and remember instead the feel of Cecil’s presence, warm and comforting, blanketing her like sleep itself. She pressed her arm over her closed eyes to block out the weak light and go back to nighttime. She knew it wouldn’t work.
Until now, Cecil had left her alone for—how long? a year, two?—at least at night, in her dreams. She remembered her nonna moaning that Marcella’s dead father or grandfather, or both, had visited her, as if it had really been they, their restless spirits, and not the toilings of her own unconscious. And Marcella’s mother scoffing, derision on her face masking her own pain: There are no ghosts. It was one of the few points on which she had dared disagree with her mother-in-law. No ghosts, she had said. Only God. She had been religious, her mamma. She had believed that God gave you what you deserved.
Marcella lay in bed wondering what sorts of things her mother had dreamed of. If she had ever cried out in her sleep, and why. But the dead were retreating, and as she herself inexorably woke she was forced to admit that the Cecil in her dream looked nothing like the actual Cecil, that he had been a feeling rather than a man, and now that she was awake she wasn’t sure if her dream had been about anyone real at all.
Finally, she got out of bed and went over to the window to raise the shades. Outside, her garden glowed in the milky light. There were her blue geraniums, the last of the peonies, the white roses on the arbor, luminous as stars. She stroked them with her eyes, again and again, trying to soothe herself, although there was nothing to be upset about—she did not deserve to be upset. She turned from the window, wrapped herself in her old cotton dressing gown, and went down the hall to the kitchen.
It was a bit brighter here, with the windows facing east. She filled her kettle, set it on the stove, and turned on the burner, watching the gas flame up blue. Her own little kitchen. Would her mother have wanted such a thing? It probably never would have occurred to her, and if she could see Marcella now she would think her solitude was only a sign of failure. Marcella stood up a little straighter, resisting. She tightened the front of her robe. It was bright pink, with a raucous pattern of zinnias, something she herself never would have picked; Toni had given it to her. Toni—who was not at work yet. Not yet at Cecil’s house. Likely not yet even awake. She thought of Toni sleeping, her full long body beautiful and relaxed, dreaming her own dreams. Good ones. Marcella would will it so.
The kettle sang and she carefully poured the water over the grounds in her little French press, and the scent blossomed warmly in the pearl-gray light. Yes, Mamma, this is my little pot for one. She pressed the coffeepot’s plunger firmly, watching the grounds swirling, and then poured her cup and stepped resolutely out to the porch. The air was close and wet, as thick as the early quiet. Yes, alone, Mamma, Nonna. What do you think of that?
In the crumbling palazzo in Florence where she had grown up, the revered ghosts had been the only men in the house, and her mother and grandmother had been conspicuously incomplete. They were together only for her, for Marcella. If only, if only, they frequently said, their bodies said, their very gestures—futile grasping hands, sighs, all speaking of unending lack. If only the men hadn’t left them—one in war, the other in a car accident, two commonplace stories that struck them as spectacularly tragic. All the hope in the house had landed on her, on Marcella. Someday, she would find a man to complete her, and them; it had been her birthright, her only task. But sometimes Marcella imagined they looked at her with narrowed eyes, as if they doubted her capacity to succeed.
When she had met Anthony, then, right after her mamma died, she had felt weak with relief. He was so clearly the goal for which her mother and grandmother had prepared her—so handsome, so sure, so fearsomely complete in himself! Men, the di Pavarese men she had never known, had been wondrous creatures, and it had seemed that Anthony Atkinson could stand with them. Love had seemed not a matter of comfort, but something much more august.
The rain pattered more and more softly, and she knew it wouldn’t last. No, she could not crawl back into bed and hide. There was already an edge of brightness in the sky. In the garden the ground would be lovely and soft, easy to work. This day, this Friday, was supposed to be her reward, after all. So why did she feel lost? She shifted in the creaking wicker chair, the cushion’s dampness seeping through her robe, and clung to her warm mug like an anchor. Toni at Cecil’s house. Today, all summer. The murk of her life that had settled to the bottom was being stirred up again. She wondered if Anthony thought the same thing. If he dreamed of it, and if he then dreamed some kind of comfort. If he needed that, in his sleep. Don’t cry, Marcellina. Don’t be sad. Long ago her tears had made him anxious, and then, later on, impatient. What do you want me to do? She hadn’t known then that men could be frightened, that they could have weaknesses for which they needed to be forgiven, that they would expect things they themselves could not identify.
Cecil had seemed, at first, to need only her.
Even though the sky was continuing to lighten, a last gust of rain blew through her yard. The one peony bush she had forgotten to stake tossed in the breeze, its heavy balls of bloom bent to the ground. The weight would break the stems—she would have to cut them. She felt a moment of ridiculous loss and then stood suddenly, spilling her coffee. Enough. A vase of peonies on her table. She would go get the scissors.
MARCELLA WORKED OUTSIDE all day. The sun did come out, but the humidity from the night’s rain, instead of burning off, intensified. Sweat rolled down her face. The salt ran into her eyes, stinging, and she reached up with her dirty glove to rub it out. Her face would be filthy by now. So be it, she thought. That is what I am. A dirty woman!
Well.
Her garden was doing well, so well that she needed to move things around, give them a bit more air. It was the hardest work, the digging, the stomping on the edge of the shovel. She had just finished lifting the enormous root-ball of an astilbe that she had stupidly sited in full sun. Her back would hurt tomorrow; that would be good. Her nonna would have been horrified by such manual labor. Her mamma would have understood it. She felt a prickle of the old dilemma—whom should she please?—and then plunged her spade into the earth again.
By dinnertime she was covered in a fine layer of grime, her hair in muddy wisps around her face, dirt ground under her nails in spite of her leather gloves. It was after seven, and the mosquitoes were coming out. As she was putting away her tools, she decided she would go straight to the beach to swim; she’d be lazy and drive, instead of walk. If she got there soon there would be just enough time to swim to the seawall, her usual destination.
Once, she had sat on a seawall with Cecil, the one in Mashantum, at Howes Beach, where everyone went. Except that then it had been late September. No one else had been there, and the sky had been a deep, heartbreaking autumnal blue. That had been a stolen day—their first day. She had come down from Boston, looking for solitude, and instead found Cecil McClatchey, who had thought he was looking for the same thing. It had become a habit of hers, to swim to the seawall here and think of that other. She gave an impatient sigh.
It was later than she had realized—as she walked around the house to the garage, under the trees, she saw the light was almost gone. There was a car she didn’t recognize parked in front of her house. She took another step and then froze: a man, his outline blurred in the gathering dusk, sat in one of the chairs on her small front porch. It’s not dark yet. Not dark. No one wants to hurt me.
“Mrs. Atkinson?” the man said.
He rose and moved toward her, and she took a step back. “What do you want?”
“It’s Jed. McClatchey. From Mashantum.” He hesitated. “Cecil and Betsy’s son.”
She co
uldn’t see his face. “You frightened me,” she blurted.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do that,” he said. “I knocked. I thought you were out.”
“I was in the backyard.” She went closer, through the grass, up the front walk. “You were waiting for me? Has something happened? Is Toni all right?”
“She’s fine. As far as I know.”
Her feet thudded up the wooden steps. “I’ll turn the light on,” she said, and looked at him again, enough to assure herself it really was Jed McClatchey. She hadn’t seen him in years. So strange. Did he know? Could he? Had Cecil told his children in a fit of remorse? She was standing close to him now. She opened her front door and reached inside to flick on the switch.
He looked nothing like Cecil. She was blocking the door with her body, staring at him in the weak artificial light, but she didn’t care. He was dark—dark eyes and hair, an angular face. Handsome. But so serious. “It really is me,” he said. And something still boyish in his eyes told her: he did not know.
“Yes. It is you,” she said. She held out her hand, then glanced at it, drew it back. “I’m sorry. I’m so dirty. I have been playing in the mud.” He looked at her blankly. “The garden.”
“Oh.” He took her hand anyway.
His handshake was hard and firm. He had been a boy when she had last seen him—a young, young man when Cecil had died. He did not know that they shared a loss, his, truly, so much greater than hers—how odd that she had never given him her condolences. Impulsively, in spite of the dirt, she reached forward and hugged him, and although he accepted it stiffly, immediately she felt something electric and strange. She stepped back and said, “I’m sorry, but why, again—”
“I was passing through. On my way to the city.”
“And Toni—?”
“She really is fine.”
She nodded and forced a smile. “I don’t have many visitors,” she said. “I have forgotten how to behave. Do come inside.”