Kings of the Sea

by Van Every Frost, Joan

  APRIL 9, 1900

  One of David’s brief rare letters came today, and as usual its tone was as if he were writing to a distant relative rather than to his wife. He is still somewhere in the middle of Luzon attached to the army. It seems strange to think that if he had stayed quietly and safely on his ship, he might now be lying next to Stephen. I find myself both longing for and dreading his return.

  We are all feeling sad and let down after seeing Christian off on the train today. He and Rob had a long talk this morning, I suppose over Double. I can’t help wondering after what Christian said yesterday if he suspects something between Rob and me. As soon as Rob saw us home from the train station, he left for his office and his neglected practice, and Double shut herself in her room. I was feeling so low that when the thought occurred to me that I should look in on her, I simply shrugged my shoulders and went to my own room to strip Christian’s sheets and make up the bed for myself. Esperanza, bless her, had already done it and is entertaining the children by letting them help her make butterscotch. It will no doubt thoroughly spoil their dinner, but I am so thankful for this diversion that I don’t care.

  “Bonne chance, my dear,” Christian said as I hugged him goodbye while the locomotive impatiently spouted steam. I nodded and smiled, though my eyes were dim with tears. “Remember,” he added, “I’ll always be here for you if you need me.”

  I nearly broke down entirely when Francis suddenly began to weep bitterly and ran alongside the moving train calling, “Papa! Papa! Don’t go, please don’t go!” Poor thing, he is so confused about men dear to him who aren’t his father that he forgets who his father really is. I wish David could have witnessed this particular scene — he might not have been so quick to decide that he was going to stay there living out his military daydreams. I must write him tonight to tell him about Double, and I’m not looking forward to it.

  MAY 15, 1900

  I’ve been so busy that I simply haven’t had the energy to write in the journal. Double in truth did move out into an apartment not far from the middle of town. It is in a large old adobe house that has been split up into separate living quarters for three families, and she has her own kitchen and commode. Even maid service! The other two families are a pair of newlyweds and an Italian couple with three teen-aged children. I’m glad and relieved that she is living in a building with such nice neighbors.

  I have joined an antiwar group myself! I came to the point where I felt finally that I had to protest this foolish, tragic war in a concrete way, and much of my being so busy lately has involved writing letters to everyone from the president on down. Imagine, I wasn’t even sure before who California’s senators were. Every time I weary of the constant repetition of argument, I think of poor little Francis running down the station platform screaming, “Papa! Papa! Don’t go, please don’t go!” to his grandfather.

  If I am to be completely honest, I must confess that I also embraced this new interest with such fervor because it keeps me from thinking too much. It also keeps me from seeking out Rob as almost the only adult companion I have. After Christian’s departure, even he realized that we were dabbling with madness, I think, because he has made himself scarce. I must confess that I miss him dreadfully, and Francis keeps asking why we see so little of him now. By keeping every minute full during the day, I can avoid thinking about him much, but at night after I blow out the lamp, I find myself remembering the picnic especially. I have slowly come to the decision that if things with David are the same after he returns as they were before he left, I must persuade him to let me go. I am no longer the same woman who kissed — or rather pecked — his cheek goodbye two years ago. I know that a divorced woman is a social pariah, but what should I care, since I belong to no society anyway? I wonder now if I didn’t refuse to return with the children to Boston to live with Kate and Christian because instinctively I knew that would trap me forever with David. Trap him, too, if the truth were known. Maybe he can’t respond to me because I am simply the wrong wife for him. I can see him with some elegant, casual, very decorative creature who would put on the marvelous dinner parties that would assure his admiral’s rank.

  I am still not being completely honest. It’s the dreams that have unnerved me. In them I keep finding myself in the most compromising circumstances with Rob, who is doing perfectly outrageous things to me. Last night I dreamed that I was still nursing Francis, and then it wasn’t Francis at all but Rob whose mouth was closing on my eager nipple. It is pitiful, I don’t even know if men ever do things like that, but I suspect they do. There must be more to it than that furtive groping of David’s, and when my inhibitions are asleep I apparently try to imagine what that something more can be. I waken burning with shame and desire. I am very afraid.

  JUNE 3,1900

  I have realized gradually that Double has changed again. She now works part-time for an entrepreneur of grain who, unlikely as it seems, she met through her work against the war. The rest of the time she is going to secretarial school and apparently doing very well at it. With it all, she has become more like David than I ever would have believed possible: efficient, cold, impatient, and ambitious. Thinking of Christian and Kate, I wonder where in the world these two came by such qualities. Christian is ambitious and probably efficient, heaven knows, but cold never. The thought occurs to me that if it is hurt that is giving Double these unlikely qualities, was it perhaps hurt that made David the way he is?

  However, no matter what made David the way he is really doesn’t matter very much anymore. I’ll not have the rest of my life spoiled or the children’s either. They are plenty old enough now to be hurt by indifference.

  JUNE 23, 1900

  Ever since Christian left and Rob has stayed away, Francis has had increasingly frequent asthma attacks, and he has taken to wetting the bed occasionally again. He doesn’t seem to thrive living in a household of women.

  I had the first long letter from David in months yesterday. When he arrived in the Philippines, he used to send long, detailed letters that sounded like military reports. I almost used to wonder if he weren’t writing them for his memoirs rather than for me. This one was very different and oddly disturbing. To begin with, it was posted in San Francisco, and in it he says he was going to try to send it by hand with a man going home, so he must have done so. The only reason for doing this, of course, would be to evade the army censors.

  Saying nothing of how he feels about it, he has detailed his life in San Isidro: the rain, the frustration, the physical hardship. As far as I can see, they spend their lives being wet or hot or both and exhausted besides. He says he is doing interpreting and interrogating prisoners, but gives few details of that. I’m not sure I would like to be interrogated by David. Most of the letter he talks about their chasing fruitlessly after guerrillas. I must say, it doesn’t sound as if we are getting anywhere over there. I’ve tried to read between the lines as to how he feels about it all, but there is no hint. Except for their lack of success in catching the enemy and the resulting low morale, there is nothing that a censor couldn’t have seen. Then there is a final surprise line, “I am thinking of perhaps staying over here after the war is over.”

  What can he mean by that? Is he saying that he wants us to join him after the war, or that he is simply never coming home to us? What a strange thing to say without any clarification! Of course, he doesn’t ask my opinion, so it is clear he hasn’t changed all that much. I think I shall simply ignore it unless he brings it up again.

  In the end I never told him about Double’s attempt at suicide. Somehow I kept putting it off, and finally I realized that it would be awkward telling him at all after so much time had elapsed. Since he hasn’t mentioned it, I have to assume that Kate and Christian as well avoided telling him. They may have felt that because he wrote Double about Stephen’s death, he would think himself the cause of her breakdown. For whatever reasons, therefore, we have maintained a conspiracy of silence. She seems to be all right now, so why drag it all
up again? There was a time, however, when David was first gone that I would never have considered not telling him. Coping all by myself for that year and a half must have changed me more than I knew, and then when I couldn’t cope anymore having Rob to lean on. Now I miss Rob, but I don’t need him to lean on, there is a difference. To be honest I don’t even miss David.

  JULY 4, 1900

  What a day! The veterans of the Civil and Spanish American wars got together and organized a huge picnic on the beach out at Noble’s Point. I wasn’t going to go, I don’t like crowds, but Rob came by yesterday and offered to take us all, Esperanza and her children included. It was the first time he had come by the house in months.

  “You’ve got to go,” he argued. “There’ll be games for the kids and fireworks and all kinds of things. You can’t just stay shut up in the house all the time. At least your children should know that other youngsters exist.”

  He was right, of course. We don’t live very near anyone, and the nearest families all have only older children. With a stab of guilt I realized that Francis had hardly ever played with a boy his own age. Wouldn’t that make a boy what they call a sissy, to be around only girls and women? “All right,” I agreed. “I’ll do the lunch. When do you want to come by?”

  I knew he was thinking of jelly or egg sandwiches like those I had been making before the other picnic. “No,” he said, “I invited you and I’ll bring the lunch. Why don’t I come for you around ten?”

  So it was that at ten we set off for the hour’s ride to Noble’s Point, a tree-covered headland that sloped gently on one side down to a sheltered beach. It was a favored picnic ground, since the swimming was safe even for small children, and the city fathers had provided a number of oak picnic tables and benches. There was a high fog overcast this morning, typical of a California summer, but I was sure it would burn off around noon as usual. I would have to watch the children for sunburn. Esperanza and her two youngest boys came with us carrying a huge basket of tamales — succulent meat in a rich red chile sauce wrapped in tender corn dough patted thin and corn husks to keep them from falling apart until they were ready to be eaten.

  When we arrived, the picnic grounds were already swarming with people. There were the occasional bangs of firecrackers, and many of the men had obviously made several trips to the large barrels of draft beer sitting in a wagonload of broken ice. There were also huge cooking pots containing cold lemonade for the children and non-imbibers.

  If I thought I was going to see a lot of Rob, I was mistaken. We had hardly gotten settled when he went off toward the crowd around the beer barrels and disappeared. Manuel and Carlos ran toward the open sunlit field, where mobs of children were playing, taking a gleeful Francis with them. Esperanza had taken Elisabeth over to a group of other Mexican women brought along by various families and was soon gossiping away while Elisabeth played happily with her rag doll, a hopeful eye on a little Mexican girl about her own age who was looking at the doll wistfully. Thus it was that I found myself all of sudden sitting alone and feeling quite vulnerable, as if everyone were staring at me, though in truth no one was paying me any mind. Then I was angry clear through. If sitting by myself in the midst of a pack of people I didn’t know was what Rob Connors had gotten me all the way out here for, he’d get a piece of my mind and then some.

  “Pardon me, ma’am, for being so forward,” a masculine voice said at my shoulder, “but you seem to be by yourself, and I thought —”

  I swung around, startled. The man was young, about my age, tow-headed and blue-eyed, with freckles sprinkled across his nose. He was wearing what I would call dress-up rancher’s clothes, elaborately ornamented heeled boots, a gray Stetson hat, a brown serge suit, and a black string tie. A number of retorts occurred to me, for he was indeed being forward, but instead I said, “You’re welcome to sit down if you’ve a mind.” I didn’t even mention Rob and the children.

  “Thank you. My name’s Frank Lawson. I’ve got a small spread over by Lookout Canyon. I’m raising purebred Herefords.”

  “Herefords?” Were they a breed of horse I hadn’t heard of?

  He laughed. “They’re cattle, red-and-white cattle built for lots of beef, unlike the cross between razorbacks and roadrunners that pass for cattle hereabouts.”

  “I see. I would offer you something to drink, but the drinks are all over in that melee over there.” I pointed to where a crowd was milling about the beer and lemonade.

  He put his hat on the table. “I’m not really thirsty, but could I get you something? Surely you didn’t come here alone, a handsome woman like you?”

  “No. No thank you to the offer of a drink — I wouldn’t think of subjecting someone to that crowd — and no, I didn’t come alone. Though I might as well have,” I added somewhat bitterly. “My children are around here somewhere, and our Mexican housekeeper, and the good doctor who talked us into coming to this madhouse.”

  “You’re sure I’m not homing in, then?”

  “Of course not.” I smiled sweetly. “I’m glad to have someone to talk to.”

  I was, too, and heaven knows he was easy to converse with. He made no secret of his admiration, and I have to admit that I positively wallowed in his regard of me as an attractive woman. Soon we were exchanging brief personal histories. Frank was fun to talk to, self-confident, humorous, open. The time flew, and we must have been at it for the better part of an hour when Rob reappeared, looking a bit frayed and carrying two beers. It was unfortunate that in that very moment Frank had taken my hand and was explaining the science of palmistry. For a second I was afraid that Rob would pour the beer over Frank’s head — he certainly looked as if he wanted to.

  “For heaven’s sake, Rob, where have you been?” I asked to lighten the suddenly ominous atmosphere.

  “To get you a beer, Janice. I see that I needn’t have.”

  “Rob, don’t be like that. You didn’t tell me where you were going. This is Frank Lawson. He saw me sitting all by myself and kindly offered to keep me company. Frank, this is Rob Connors.”

  Frank stood and put out his hand, which Rob looked at much as he would have a dead and malodorous fish before reluctantly taking it. “I was just explaining to Mrs. Hand how seers read palms, Mr. Connors,” Frank said winningly, though he had to know that Rob was far from delighted to meet him.

  Rob plunked a beer down in front of me and picked up the half-finished one he had put down to shake Frank’s hand. “Not Mr. Connors, Dr. Connors if you don’t mind. I see that you are well taken care of,” he said evenly to me and stalked off.

  Frank smiled ruefully. “I’m afraid my being here ruffled his feathers. Would you rather I left?”

  “Oh no,” I said impulsively, knowing that I would be left alone once more, “please stay.”

  Looking back now, I find it difficult to excuse my behavior, but at the time it seemed logical enough. If Rob wanted to sulk, then let him; I was not going to have my whole day ruined.

  So it was Frank who helped me cheer on Francis in the events for five-year-olds and under. Francis was hopeless, of course, for he had never raced anyone in his life. However, the last event was an egg-and-spoon race, and once again it seemed that he would be hopelessly outclassed. To our mounting excitement, the others one by one all came to grief, either because they tried to go too fast or else ran into each other while watching the egg in the spoon instead of where they were going. When Francis crossed the finish line alone, suddenly Rob was there, hoisting him triumphantly on his shoulder and carrying him over to where Mrs. Rutherford was holding out his prize, a brand-new shiny scooter. As Francis finally took it all in, that he had actually won and that the scooter was his, his face lit up in an ecstatic smile that all at once made him look a twin image of David as a boy. My heart turned over, and I thought — though I must confess only fleetingly — how wicked I was to be at a picnic with two other men when David was wet and miserable thousands of miles away fighting a frustrating unjust war.

  Fra
nk was a charming companion. He talked me into going with him in the three-legged race — we came in second! Then I invited him to eat with us, since it became obvious that Rob was not going to appear at the table. Somewhere Frank found a length of string and fascinated Francis and Esperanza’s boys and even Elisabeth with the making of a cat’s cradle and then all kinds of intricate and ornamental knots. When I said it wasn’t right to eat up Rob’s chicken when he wasn’t there, Frank came back with what looked like a whole rack of ribs from young beefs that had been barbecued. We stuffed on those and Esperanza’s tamales until we could hold no more. Later on we all cheered for Frank’s side in the men’s softball game, though how he could play in those high-heeled cowboy boots I’ll never know.

  As soon as it was good and dark, the fireworks began. Boston had more spectacular displays, of course, but I never enjoyed fireworks so much. Roman candles and Catharine wheels and rockets with different-colored stars and in the end a marvelous firework tower that Esperanza said they had even in the villages in Mexico on fiesta days. As I stood entranced, I felt Frank take my hand and squeeze it.

  “When can I see you again?” he whispered as red and green and gold stars drifted down the night sky.

  “I’m a married woman, Frank. You mustn’t see me again.”

  “Tell that to the doc. Why should you go to seed because that husband of yours chooses to be gone for years?”