The Tidewater Tales

by John Barth

  Lee Talbott tells us gratefully It is okay, taking Katherine’s hand across the cockpit. Frank and I are okay, too, somehow. Whatever happens.

  Confirms Frank Talbott Yup, and with a gesture that could refer either to the twin flare canisters or to himself and his wife or to both, he says to Peter Sagamore If you can make any use of any or all of this, do it. We’ll be honored. He grins and hands Peter his boina. And then old May there will not have died in vain.

  In the latter end of this evening, Peter Sagamore like a certain bird in a certain oak has done more listening than talking. Now, however, he firmly presses the boina back upon its owner and says Absolutely not. Take these canisters home with you. Your script’s inside, waiting for Act Three.

  He considers, then adds May isn’t necessarily kaput, you know; she’s fertilized.

  He considers further, then adds further The hat that comes back is not the hat you cast away.

  He considers finally, then adds finally You’ve hardly even begun to wear that hat.

  Lee Talbott asks Katherine Sherritt May I kiss your husband? Kath says If I get to kiss yours. Cross-cockpit kisses follow. K enjoys hers entirely; in her opinion this Franklin Key Talbott fairly exudes male hormones. Peter is more interested in than roused by his; sharp-looking Leah Talbott’s afflatus is not estrogen, but some mixture of adrenaline and negative-pole electricity. All the same, she kisses him straightforwardly on the mouth, her lips slightly parted. He has a clear sensation that were he to slip his tongue-tip between them, some circuit breaker would let go.

  Though by no means all of the tales promised have been told, we bid one another affectionate and interested but very tired good night. Our conversation is not over, we four feel, but our day sure is. We shall see what tomorrow’s wind is and what the Sagamores and Talbotts feel like doing with it. For now (yesterday), good night, good night, good night, good night.

  Complains wakeful little a.m. as her parents bed down at last (her alternate brothers, F and P, are long since asleep), We didn’t get to tell our story: The Swan Prince of Queenstown Creek. Mañana, her mother promises. If you’re good. Our unborn woman-child frets further And you neglected to tell us

  THE END WHERETO ONE IS FETCHED FORTH INTO THE PARLOUS WORLD.

  It won’t be easy for a girl to sleep tonight, not knowing. A girl may have to wake her unborn brothers, for mere company in the dark, you know?

  When they don’t sleep, sleepy Kate reminds sleepy Pete, I don’t sleep.

  We two are saying good night down in the cabin, P’s head in K’s naked lap, Story as motionless as if aground in the silent creek. To our wakeful daughter in our woman’s womb our man mutters Wumpf, little girl: As to that, our parents never told us, either, nor theirs them. But in your father’s opinion, the end whereto one is fetched forth into the parlous world is neither more nor less than this: to hear or make up stories, and to pass them on. Night, now.

  Thank you, Daddy, and good night.

  DR. SAGAMORE PRESCRIBES.

  Sunday, Day 7, dawns delicious, 6/22/80, a bright warm a.m. through which all hands sleep until near nine, though it’s light at six, except Peter Sagamore, who cannot aboardship sleep in daylight no matter how late he gets to bed, and Leah Allan Silver Talbott over on Reprise, whom he sees lowering her brown slim self into Queenstown Creek as he steps up, naked too, into Story’s dew-soaked cockpit to check the day. She gives him a little wave and splashes off. Not to wake Katherine, instead of diving in he lets himself quietly over the stern and swims away through the balmish water into Salthouse Cove. As always in the Chesapeake, he swims eyes-open; as always he sees nothing but illuminated green. Presently he stands on the silty bottom in waist-deep water to pee and catch his breath. What a morning.

  Mrs. Talbott swims his way with an easy, expert-looking stroke, pauses discreetly a Story’s-length off, calls What a morning!

  Isn’t it.

  Your family still asleep?

  Yup.

  Mine too. She paddles nearer and stands, her breasts just under water. You two did us some good last night, I believe.

  No harm, at least, Peter hopes, thinking a touch enviously of nipplefish.

  Lee Talbott pushes her short hair back. I’m in love with your wife.

  Me too; and your husband’s a mensch. To himself he adds So let’s fuck, and remembers agreeably his bachelor days, when such sweet windfalls as Katie-Sherritt-at-the-92nd-Street-Poetry-Center not only came along from time to time, but could in clear conscience be claimed and chomped. The beauty of women, Donald Barthelme somewhere proposes, makes of adultery a painful duty. Thinks Peter, standing hands on hips, Yes, well: And love makes of fidelity a manageable responsibility. Though it would be delightsome on so fine a June a.m. to get it on with sexy Ms. Talbott here in Salthouse Cove sans offense to either party’s spouse, were such a thing possible.

  She agrees, smiling: A mensch he is. Is he a writer too?

  More candidly than he had expected he would, Peter finds himself saying Maybe not of plays. Maybe not of that play. But what do I know from TV plays? The stage-Jewish locution embarrasses him. Anyhow, Frank should finish the thing and then bring what he’s learned back to the novel. This time it’ll come out fiction. He gestures out toward their boats. Want to swim back?

  In a minute. The woman’s smile is beautiful. They’re standing under an overhanging locust that has fallen most of the way into Salthouse Cove while retaining enough root-system to leaf out: a virtual bower, embowering an amphibian Eve and Adam. If I were that June person and you were that Swimmer, Lee Talbott hypothesizes, and this were that cove we were talking about in Act Two, the first question in Act Three would be whether we’re going to make out, right?

  P’s scrotum tingles. Right. And if we were them, we would. If we were they.

  Too bad for us we aren’t, Lee Talbott says.

  I guess so. But that won’t happen till the end of the act. It’ll be the end of the act, no?

  Peter sees her see him admiring her breasts; she does not turn away, but settles chin deep into the turbid cove. It will?

  Sure. Anyhow, getting it on isn’t the larger question; it’s only the presenting question. Upstream or downstream is the larger question. Separately or together. That’s what they’ve got to decide.

  Lee Allan Silver Talbott says Aberdeen or Virginia. What do you think? Pushing past into deeper water, Peter cordially reminds her that art is art and life life, by and large. Marital counsel is not his line. But as a doctor of dramaturgy, honoris causa, he prognoses that Act Three of SEX EDUCATION: Play will fall flat upon its moral-dramatical tush if the author elects for its principals any of the above.

  You think so?

  I know so. Take the word of an official doctor.

  She says Hm and paddles beside him; they sidestroke leisurely homeward. On Reprise *s foredeck, Peter notes, Franklin Talbott is up and about in cutoff jeans, short-sleeve sweatshirt, boina. No sign of Katherine over on Story, Once again he reproves himself: this time for having slipped into Yiddish slang. Remembering Bernard Malamud’s observation that if you ever happen to forget you’re Jewish, some Gentile will remind you, he hopes Leah Talbott doesn’t feel patronized or otherwise offended by his use of the word tush; his chapter with Marcie Blitzstein notwithstanding, he is no expert in such matters. Given the Y of SEX EDUCATION’S basic plumbing, he points out as they swim, there would seem to be three options for June and her Swimmer friend, not two: upstream left, upstream right, and downstream to the whatchacallit. . . .

  Lee rolls her brown eyes: Don’t remind me.

  But in fact, says Peter, there’s a fourth: the place they’ll get to in the front end of Act Three. It’s what Wye Island is to Wye River, or Cacaway to Langford Creek. Never mind that it’s a kink in somebody’s uterus; if I were a playwright, I’d plant that place with cattails and honey locust trees and throw in some blue herons and crabs and oysters. Then I’d fetch a full moon up behind those honey
locusts and fly a few Canada geese in front of that moon while June and her pal are making out on the beach. I’d hold the camera right on that moon and freeze frame and fade right there: smack in the crotch of the Y. But what do I know?

  They have reached Reprise’s boarding ladder. Frank Talbott comes aft to say good morning and offer coffee, which Peter declines. Lee Talbott unhesitatingly pulls herself up onto the ladder, displaying to Peter her splendid wet backside and to her husband her doubtless even more splendid front. If I weren’t in love with you, Frank Talbott, she pleasantly declares, I would jump this man so fast his head would swim.

  Unruffled Frank replies He’d be a lucky fellow, and hands her a towel. Orange juice? Danish? he asks Peter, who replies that he must go home now and do paperwork before we leave this creek for wherever.

  Frank nods and taps his boina: Likewise. Shall we compare notes at lunchtime, if we’re both still here? Sure. Lee Talbott busses her husband’s beard. Has she got a note to compare with him, she says: Wait till he hears. She smiles beautifully at swimming P; he grins back and asks again, rhetorically, What do I know?

  WHAT PETER KNOWS

  Two-thirds asleep, Katherine Sherritt has dreamed something tiresomely uterine involving, what, crossed keys? She wakes groaning at the half-assed pun upon that pun upon that stylish Baltimore development where Lee Talbott’s gynecologist vacuum-aspirated her. Nice and Easy have been awake for some while, considerately sucking each other’s thumbs until their mother rouses. Wait till your father hears this new evidence for his pet hypothesis, K tells them: that the human unconscious is a ree-tard.

  Can we have a pet hypothesis? they ask in unison. Thinks Kate (one-third adream) That’s what it’s going to be: Hartz flea collars and gerbil turds. She can hardly wait.

  Nine o’clock! Has she ever slept so late aboard? Already it’s quite warm in the cabin, but we went to bed naked; a sweet air licks the skin above her waist-high sheet. She is unsurprised to find Peter not at home; assumes he’s swimming or socializing next door. But when she sticks her head up through the forward hatch to say hi to 22 June ‘80, she gets it kissed; he’s perched in dry swimtrunks on the foredeck, logging last night’s stories in note form. No kids yet, huh? he asks.

  They’re never coming out. Her husband lies back against the cabin trunk; she rests her chin in his hair and tells him about crossed keys and Let’s remember to ask Frank Talbott about Operation BONAPARTE. He tells her about his little swim and how agreeable it would have been to fuck Lee Talbott standing up front-on in Salthouse Cove ‘neath yonder honey locust tree, were there no such things as love and responsibility, which there are and so he didn’t. Kathy says Much obliged, but what I don’t appreciate about this piece of moral news is the pairing of successful writer with sexy hotshot lit prof, which leaves us pregnant librarians and failed playwrights sucking the mop. Peter objects: Frank Talbott’s no failure; he’s just getting started. And Lee Talbott is not quite Edmund Wilson with boobs. But you are unequivocally a pregnant librarian: my favorite one. Mollified Kate acknowledges that she too falls for women who are both smart and good-looking, not to mention men who seem wise, gentle, strong, well hung, and generally menschy. In another incarnation she would enjoy a dynamite affair with, e.g., Franklin Key Talbott. But our present incarnation, we remind ourselves with a squeeze of hands, is not bad at all; in fact, it’s terrific.

  Killer heat-wave continues in Texas through our breakfast; forest fires in Colorado. We pity everyone unfortunate enough not to be in good physical health, in love, and aboard a sailboat anchored in Queenstown Creek. The light morning northwesterly is usable for sailing; Peter’s Hoopers Island savvy tells him that the afternoon will be airless. All the same, we decide to stay put till lunchtime, he scribbling, she reading and gestating like the pregnant librarian she is, and then see what’s what. We’ve been being loners for a pleasant week, Katherine observes; cruising in tandem can be fun too. Maybe we’ll see what the Talbotts plan to do next.

  Peter explains why he believes they should do nothing next, in effect, though he acknowledges that to postpone certain decisions is a backhanded way of making them. Even so, his sense of human dramaturgy makes him wish that Reprise could follow Story’s lead for just a little while yet: whither the wind listeth, etc. But what does he know, outside the bailiwick of fiction? Whereto he will now repair, excuse him, mindful of our vow that he shall compose no actual sentences till Said and Done have seen the light.

  Katherine declares You know a few things. Surveying the world, she observes that Lee Allan Silver Talbott, now demurely bikinied, is down in their dinghy sponging Reprise’s hull, and that her husband is evidently below, no doubt ascribble. The literary life. She thinks she’ll swim or row over and spend the a.m. in female conversation, which she much enjoys and misses.

  Men.

  She slips a sunsuit on and makes a headband of our paisley scarf that sets off her beachy longish hair as well as it did Lee Talbott’s dark short. We kiss good morning, and Peter Sagamore spends the next two hours bringing us up to where we narratively are. Our week has given him a possible idea for a book, he believes, but his practiced eye sees in it—he had been going to say snags and shoals, but the peril is more meteorological: between twin storms fore and aft, Horse Latitudes. The Doldrums. A novel in which next to nothing happens beyond an interminably pregnant couple’s swapping stories?

  WOMEN

  Hi. Hi.

  Deft K ships her oars; the two dinghies tap. Lee Talbott is standing in Reprise’s inflatable, holding onto the cutter’s bobstay with one hand and wiping anchorline mudmarks off the bows with a scrubbing sponge. Katherine Sherritt guesses that if she were a man or May, she’d want into that maroon bikini. We enjoyed last evening, she says, holding the dinghies gunwale to gunwale.

  Frank and I did too. I guess it was an important evening, for us. Lee grins. I’d’ve jumped your husband this morning if I weren’t so attached to mine. Plus et cetera.

  Thanks for not. Peter felt the same way about you, but we think open marriage sucks.

  Lee Talbott, scrubbing, says We think we think so too. But probably it’s the chemistry of particular couples, no?

  The Hispanification of North America, Katherine remarks, and knows that Leah Talbott understands at once that what she’s referring to is that ¿No? habit (which the Sagamores too have picked up, through Kate, from her oral-ethnic expeditions into Baltimore’s Latino community) and not anything to do with conjugal mores. With Peter, K bets aloud, she’d’ve had to clarify. Lee bets she’d’ve had to likewise, with her Frank—but listen to them sounding like a pair of stereotypes! You can scrub better if I steady the dinghy, Kate offers; Lee Talbott grants that, but points out that it would be imprudent for Katherine to stand in the dinghy and steady it with her feet while working it down the length of Reprise’s gunwales; the scrubbing, on the other hand, if K’s willing, can be done from a lower center of gravity.

  They end up tying the dinghies together and sponging first Reprise and then Story from cap rail to waterline stripe; then rowing over to that honey locust bower, not to disturb their husbands, and stripping and swimming; then sitting side by side in six inches of tidewater, leaning back on their elbows in a secluded sandy stretch farther up in Salthouse Cove. They talk until lunchtime. Katherine Sherritt tells Leah Talbott how it came to pass that our boat is named after that boat in Peter’s novel, in which the characters themselves wince at that tacky circumstance. In course of that tale she fills her new friend in on Jean Heartstone’s Magic Language Theory and sad death, Marcie Blitz’s proposed public-television documentary of a few years back, our romantic encounter at the 92nd Street Poetry Center in June 1964 and our reencounter at the Katherine Anne Porter party in College Park in 1970. Lee Talbott tells Kate Sherritt about her husband’s first marriage and divorce, her small problems and large pleasures with his daughter by that marriage—Lee’s a step-grandmother at thirty-five—and her and Frank’s Cute Meet (remee
t, actually, since he had been her step-uncle for years) just below Wye Island in 1973, when she and scattered Marian had capsized their Sunfish and he’d come to their unnecessary rescue in Reprise, only then recognizing who they were.

  She chuckles: Talk about jumping and getting jumped! Once we got each other alone on that sailboat, Frank and I went off like a pair of firecrackers. Chuckles Katherine So did we.

  Lee Talbott then sits up and raises the confidential ante by telling Kate briefly about some important love affairs in her life, all pre-Franklin: A boy she really fell for in undergraduate days, whom on some principle or other—probably a reaction against her sister’s early promiscuity—she would not screw but indefatigably blew. One of her graduate professors at the U. of M., who was both a brilliant dissertation-director and a sexual imperialist, yet who was so opposed to the idea of trading academic for sexual favors that she had to work half again as hard for an honors grade in his seminar than she would have had they not been lovers. Et cetera.

  Katherine Sherritt sits up too and tells Lee Talbott a lot about her brief marriage to Poonie Baldwin, Jr., and a little about her intermarital affairs with Yussuf al-Din, Saul Fish, and Jaime Aiquina. Lee knows Saul Fish by musical reputation and says she has trouble with Hasidism, though she respects its influence on Franz Kafka and Isaac Bashevis Singer. So does Katherine, to whom the word Hasid always suggests hayseed. Next they talk for quite a while about Latin American politics; the common fate of Jaime Aiquina and Jonathan Silver Talbott chokes their voices. A horsefly roars through their neighborhood but does not pause to bite. Both women fear that if Jimmy Carter loses to Ronald Reagan in November, the U.S. is going to wreck Central America. Leah Talbott is pretty sure Carter will win; Katherine Sherritt, who moves mainly in nonacademic circles, is hopeful but less confident.