The Golden Unicorn

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  I shrugged off an uneasiness about all three of them, and followed Evan into a long room that did indeed smell strongly of fish. With an absorbed interest that I’d never seen before, except when it came to the Rhodes’ whaling collection, he began introducing me to his lobster friends in their various glass tanks.

  “This little girl is special,” he pointed out, designating one lobster in a tank alone. “She’s a blue lobster, but you can see that she’s molted. Her shell is completely gone and we’ve given her a hollow pipe to crawl into for protection when she feels like it. In the ocean this would be a dangerous time, since a lobster without its armor can easily be attacked and eaten.”

  I found myself responding with an interest I didn’t need to simulate. For the first time I was seeing past his habitual guard to a man whose working life I knew nothing about. Even though this would no longer matter to me, I wanted to know all I could learn about Evan. I wanted to understand something of this part of him that I had never known existed. There was even a painful satisfaction for me in discovering him as a man who belonged to a wider life—a life which must have a more far-reaching effect upon the world outside than I had ever realized.

  In the next tank were two lobsters with their gray shells intact and yellow bands fastened around their claws to keep them from trying to eat each other.

  “It would be valuable to find a way to farm lobsters on a large scale,” Evan said. “A good food shouldn’t be an expensive luxury for the few. That’s one of the things we’re working on now, but lobsters grow slowly and they’re cannibals, so it’s not easy.”

  He was on his own ground, at home and thoroughly involved, so that I became vicariously involved too, and my vision and understanding of him began to expand. My loss would be all the more bitter when I went away, but my hunger to know all I could learn about Evan Faulkner was very great.

  Outdoors he showed me where a pilot program was being conducted to assess the industrial potential of growing Irish moss, which was used in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and foods, and I found myself listening to his voice as well as his words—because after today I might never hear it again.

  We crossed a wide road and entered another building where there was a huge model of the area showing how tides and currents could be studied and used. The scope of the laboratory was vast—biological and physical sciences of the sea, aqua culture programs, studies of shoreline erosion—the list was endless, the promise enormous. And Evan was playing an active, creative, imaginative role in much that was going on. He had devised some of the experiments and was developing others. The Rhodes and The Shingles seemed far away and I could almost forget the threat they meant to me.

  After a while he took me into a big auditorium, where scientists in oceanography came from everywhere to lecture, listen to lectures, and pool their research. Men and women gathered here who cared about the future of the human race, and I felt an unexpected and glowing pride as I realized how much of a part Evan was taking in matters that concerned far more than this plot of ground, and could reach out across America and touch the world. I felt newly humble, and even grateful that this man might have loved me—if everything had been different.

  Inside the building that housed the auditorium, we walked along an empty corridor, with the place to ourselves since it was Saturday, and as I became aware that Evan was watching me, I looked up to meet his eyes.

  “Are you all right, Courtney?” he asked. “You’re still pale. Does your arm hurt you?”

  “I’d forgotten it. I’m all right. You made me forget. All this—it’s so big—it matters. I’m glad to know a little more, Evan. More that I can remember.”

  I hadn’t meant to say that about remembering. I didn’t want him to understand how I felt. He was still watching me, and he seemed less unforgiving now.

  “I made some pretty strong accusations when we last talked, Courtney,” he went on. “I’ve been regretting them. I’ve had too much experience in distrusting and judging harshly, and I’m not sure I’ll ever get over being that way. But that’s no excuse for the things I said.”

  I didn’t want apologies from him, and I moved on down the corridor. “It doesn’t matter. I understand.”

  “I wonder if you do.” He came beside me at once. “Perhaps we can talk again before you leave. I’d like you to understand—about Stacia, for one thing.”

  Stacia was someone I didn’t want to understand, and I took abrupt refuge in the proposal I’d been waiting to make.

  “Evan, that house—the one that used to be owned by Nan Kemble’s mother—it’s still in the family, isn’t it? And isn’t it located somewhere around here?”

  He halted our progress down the corridor, regarding me intently. “Yes—that’s right.”

  “I’d like to go there,” I said hurriedly. “I’d like to see the cottage and the beach. Will you take me, Evan?”

  “Why? Why do you want to visit that place? Isn’t this a morbid notion?”

  “You mean because it’s where my mother died? But it’s the only spot left where I might try to get close to her. At The Shingles I can never seem to reach her. Here—” I broke off because I was dealing with matters that concerned emotion—and Evan was a man of science. “It’s just that after today,” I went on feebly, “I have to forget everything connected with the Rhodes and the Kembles. This is my last chance.”

  He still hesitated and I sensed something I didn’t understand. “It’s occupied, you know,” he said. “We mustn’t disturb the people who live there. And I don’t think Judith will want you to go. Don’t be surprised if the others oppose your doing this. Perhaps you’d better not say anything ahead of time. We’ll try after lunch.”

  He had agreed and that was all that mattered. I was willing to go along with anything he suggested, even though I didn’t understand why anyone should oppose so simple a request. When he’d left me to go into an office on the errand that had brought him here, I sat on a bench in the corridor to wait. On the wall before me had been mounted the skeleton of a dolphin, with every bone set meticulously in place. I found myself studying it, trying to sense something of the strange existence this sea creature once had known—an existence hardly more strange to me than Evan’s life.

  When he returned and found me regarding the dolphin with a certain bafflement, he told me that it had been washed up on a beach near here dead, and the ocean had pounded those bones into a broken heap. One of the men at the lab had collected them and painstakingly wired them together, each in its proper place. The only bit missing was a single tooth, and a dentist in town had contrived a substitute.

  I listened, feeling somehow subdued, thinking of Alice, whose body had also been rolled onto a beach. Morbid? Perhaps, but I was eager now for lunch to be over so that Evan could take me where I wanted to go.

  When we walked back toward the car I saw that Judith was resting in the back seat, while Herndon and John paced the road nearby, their heads bent in earnest conversation. What were they plotting? I wondered suspiciously. Did any of it concern me? But of course it couldn’t any more, since I’d be gone from their lives very soon.

  “Let’s go out to the lighthouse at the Point and have our lunch,” Judith suggested as we reached the car.

  No one objected, and Evan took the way east out of town—a fine road, almost empty of traffic at this season. The land rolled on either hand in low hills to the dunes, overgrown with pines and grasses. We passed summer homes occasionally, but no real communities as the road thrust east to the ocean.

  The red sandstone lighthouse at Montauk Point is one of the most photographed and painted scenes on Long Island, and it has stood for nearly two hundred years, rising some sixty-eight feet into the sky from the rocks at its foot. Shipwrecks have been numerous down the years, and the foghorn still marks land and danger for the seafarer.

  We left the car and walked toward the tower, rising before
us in grace and strength. Fortunately, the earlier fog had lifted, or we could not have approached because of the shattering noise of the horn. Once the lighthouse could have been climbed, but the Coast Guard no longer permits this.

  In frothing water where the ocean broke over rocks, a surf caster had just given up his try for striped bass, and was climbing to higher ground where he had left his car. The rocky beach lay deserted below us, but the sea was dotted with small fishing boats, and would be into October, as long as striped bass and blue fish were to be had. Farther out, Block Island was visible. All these things Evan pointed out to me as we moved about, and his mood continued friendly, though impersonal.

  When we’d found a place to sit not far from the base of the tower, Judith began to unpack our lunch, with Herndon helping her. This was hardly a gay outing, and I wondered once more why Judith had put this plan together so impulsively, insisting upon carrying it out, and why she seemed watchful of Evan and me. The two of us sat on a grassy patch, apart from the others, and though Judith glanced doubtfully our way now and then, no one said anything.

  Once I met John’s eyes upon me, faintly mocking, yet without condemnation, and I knew that he understood me best. He knew very well that marriage between Stacia and Evan was over and what remained to be dissolved was only a matter of time. Strange to think that under different circumstances I might have been able to confide in him, even to turn to him in my puzzling. Certainly he must have seen what was in my eyes when I looked at Evan. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t trying to fool anyone—not even Evan—and after today there would be no more looking at him.

  We ate our lunch in a companionable silence for the most part, but since this was my last opportunity I tried to put a few more thoughts into words—just for Evan’s ear.

  “I suppose nothing ever matches what we imagine and dream of ahead of time. Such stories I used to build up as a child! All about accidental meetings under strange circumstances, where I would find my real parents, even my grandparents, and we would know and love each other instantly.”

  Evan nodded, and though his eyes were on a distant fishing boat, I sensed his understanding.

  “And now I’ve found that my mother is dead, and I’ll never be close to my father. I think I’m an embarrassment to him and he will be relieved when I go away. Just by existing I ask something of him that he can’t give, and Stacia is more his daughter than I could ever be. Blood doesn’t keep people from being strangers.”

  “Nor does marriage, Courtney.” Evan stirred beside me. “Will you listen if I try to tell you something?”

  I found myself stiffening, fearful of hurt, yet I didn’t want to stop him. “I’ll listen.”

  “I did love her, you know. I wanted a marriage that would last, and I didn’t realize that she would never change, never grow. Perhaps it was my fault that I was able to have so little effect on her. In any case, it was all over long ago. I’d like you to understand that.”

  I was silent, wanting to believe, yet afraid to hope. I had seen the flashes of powerful emotion between those two.

  “There’s still feeling between us,” he went on, perhaps understanding my silence. “Rage, I’m sure, something close to hatred at times—nothing I’m proud of, or that’s pretty to see. Whatever it is, it’s not love. I’d thought I could never love any woman again because of my experience with Stacia.”

  There was still nothing for me to say, and I dared not speak.

  “Do you know what I see when I look at you, Courtney?”

  I shook my head, not meeting his eyes.

  “It’s been an evolving process,” he said, and in a sidelong glance I saw his wry smile. “You made it very hard, you know, with all that artificial veneer you’d built about yourself so skillfully. But it’s been cracking away like a shell since I first saw you. Perhaps a little more every day. Now, you’re almost out in the open, for the first time, I think, to yourself as well as to others.”

  “I’ve wanted the shell to crack,” I said. “But it’s been rather frightening.”

  “I expect it has. Meeting oneself can be alarming. But now I see a young woman with an appealing vulnerability, with a mind of her own, with a talent she cares about doing something with. A woman with a longing to love and to be loved that she tries to hide from the world. A woman who would, I think, be loyal and truthful, and generous, if ever she loved. A woman I have become very fond of. That’s why I was so angry yesterday—when I stupidly believed for a little while that I was wrong. I’m not sure I’m ready to love again, Courtney, or even that you are ready to begin loving, but if we were alone and in a different place, I know I’d want you in my arms. Would you come, Courtney?”

  I looked at him then, through tears that I couldn’t hold back. “I’d come,” I said.

  He held out his hand and I put my own in his. His clasp was warm and I could return it—as though it were a kiss, an embrace. A beginning had been made between a man who was still fearful of loving, and a woman who had never learned how to love.

  “If we’re to stop at that cottage on the way back, we’d better leave now,” he said, releasing me. “It’s on the north shore of Montauk, off the main road near the water.”

  I packed up our lunch things and got to my feet. Evan stood up beside me, but now, with the physical contact broken, there was a certain hesitance between us, as there must be between two, so recently strangers, who have begun to let down all guards.

  “Courtney,” he said, “when you get back to New York—what then?”

  “I resigned from my job, but I think they’ll take me on again.”

  “Why did you resign?”

  “I didn’t want that sort of life any more. I was going to work on a book. I meant to free-lance and live away from any city. But it’s no use. I have to work at a job. I have to go back.”

  “Why must you?”

  “So I can forget,” I said a little desperately. “So I won’t have time to think and I can forget about what has happened to me with the Rhodes, here in East Hampton.”

  Judith called to us just then, and I knew by his face that I hadn’t convinced him. But now there was no more time left to explain. Perhaps while we drove into New York later . . .

  We picked up our things, and when we returned to the car, Judith gave us a brief, curious glance.

  “I’d still like to know why we came,” John said to Judith.

  She regarded him calmly. “It was better for us all to get away from the house for a while. Safer.”

  “For whom?” John said.

  “For us, of course. With us away, there’s nothing more Stacia can do.”

  “I wonder,” John said. “I wonder if it’s Stacia we must worry about.”

  He turned and started toward the car, a lonely figure—a man who would always walk alone. His very loneliness touched me, and I wanted to go to him, to make him the gift of some gesture that would acknowledge our relationship, yet I couldn’t move. I couldn’t yet make such a gesture spontaneously to my father, and unless it came from my heart, it mustn’t be made.

  Evan drove fast on the way back, not slowing until we came to a side road and turned north to follow it. Judith stirred in the back seat.

  “Where are you going, Evan?” Her voice was suddenly sharp.

  He answered her casually. “Courtney wants to visit the Kemble cottage.”

  “No!” The cry was explosive as Judith’s composure evaporated. “No, I won’t allow her to go there! Turn back, Evan.”

  Evan kept on his way, deaf to her words.

  I looked around at Judith. “Why don’t you want me to see this place?”

  “It—it’s not healthy to go there. It’s a place with terrible memories. I don’t want to go there myself, and I should think you, of all people, would want to avoid it, Courtney.”

  “It’s where my mother died, isn’t it? So why sh
ouldn’t I see the cottage and the beach?”

  “You won’t need to go in, Judith,” Evan said. “You can sit in the car while I take Courtney around.”

  “I think we should go back,” Herndon put in quietly. “If Judith doesn’t want this—”

  John made a derisive sound. “She’s not that fragile. And what does it matter at this late date!”

  Judith turned to him with an urgency that seemed all the more disturbing because it was uncharacteristic.

  “But there’s the possibility—” she began.

  “Don’t,” John said. “Let what will happen, happen. It doesn’t matter now. And sooner or later Courtney will have to know.”

  Judith sank back in her seat and it was alarming to see that she could appear so unreasonably terrified of the place where we were going. What had she been hiding all these years? What had really happened there?

  Before long Evan turned off onto a narrow, sandy road, running toward the water. Here there was an occasional house, and we drew up before one of these—an old-fashioned Victorian structure that was not what I would have called a “cottage,” though it was nowhere as large as The Shingles. It boasted a wide veranda across the front and down one side, with a great deal of gingerbread carving on the supports and at the edge of the sloping roof. As Evan and I left the car, I saw a mailbox out in front that bore the name “Kemble,” and the sight startled me. Surely there were no Kembles living here now!

  When I stopped at sight of the box, Evan held out his hand. “Come along,” he said. “This may be a test for you. You wanted to see this place, so you’d better face whatever it holds for you. I don’t know myself what may happen, but it may be better this way.”

  Behind us in the car there was utter silence and I didn’t look back. We went up the steps together, but I stopped Evan before he rang the bell.