“My father commissioned the photograph,” he explained. “All the markings are mine. You see the pond here, Beach Road, the old orchard, the dump. Here’s the knoll, and here, more or less, is the rock.”
“What rock is that?” I asked.
His finger was touching a spot in the pasture about halfway between the knoll, our only bit of land above sea level, and the pond. “A speckled rock, about knee high. You’ll know it by the hole in its center.”
He flattened his hand and held it perpendicular to the ground, then swiveled it like the needle of a compass. “North-northeast, less than an eighth of a mile as the crow flies.”
“A rock,” I said. “In the middle of a woods full of rocks.”
“Woods now. Pasture when I was a child. This rock is unlike the others. Rounded, not sharp. Textured like granite. And the hole is unmistakable. Ancient, one presumes, and most certainly man-made.”
He turned back to the map. “The knoll here, the rock here. Two points of a triangle. Two of three. Three to mark the sacred space. The holy triangle. Three to mark the trinity.”
In his lifelong effort to stand out Uncle Matthew has been prone to exaggeration. This doubtlessly serves him well on the pulpit, but in his home, where his flights of fancy have often taken the form of windy, self-aggrandizing sermons untethered and in fact deaf to the needs of his family, he is met with more resistance. It did not surprise him, therefore, when I expressed skepticism about there being anything remotely sacred in our little corner of God’s earth. If he had cared enough to ask why I happened to feel this way, I might have told him. Instead, he tried to convince me otherwise, until at last I cut him off.
“Even if there were a rock, there’s no way through the woods.”
“I’m relying on your husband’s industry and extraordinary enthusiasm.”
“You’ve been on Jack’s path. Have you seen your rock?”
Such tiresome notions as reality did not concern my uncle. “Have him make another path. Imagine. A site of ancient power, here, where we stand. A kingdom under our feet. It boggles the mind.”
“I can’t imagine a kingdom.”
“Of the spirit, child. Of the soul. Lifted up and revealed by Nature. Transfigured by Her hand and transformed by man. By our faith and innocence. By our belief in a power beyond ourselves. Remember Saint Peter. He founded a church on a stone.”
I had had enough of Uncle Matthew for one morning. Leaning up, I whispered, “Get him to look then,” and kissed him goodbye.
Besides seeing family, summers are a time to be with the kids. Jody was five and just beginning to lose his fear of the water, a good fear to lose seeing how water surrounded us on three sides and the whole vacation centered on beaches and boats. As a child, Emily had had the water fear as well, but only briefly. Typically, she loves to be outdoors, to run and climb and swim. The natural world for her is pure delight. She doesn’t worry about getting dirty. She doesn’t bother about her clothes or hair. Where she has trouble is in the world of relationships. Where she falters is with friends.
Despite years of trying, she has never had a best friend. Naturally, we used to blame the other girls. As time passed, we asked ourselves what was wrong with ours. Now we have progressed. We are so much wiser. So much more mature. We don’t point fingers. We don’t cast stones. Emily, we say, is not friendless, but discerning; not haughty, but astute. A child with a low tolerance for displeasure. A girl with standards in terms of friendship that at times are impossible to attain.
Since turning thirteen this year, she has gravitated toward Jack and away from me. The pain I feel at this separation is tempered by my hopes for her. Secretly, I fear that I’m the one responsible for her never having found her heart’s desire, that without intending to I’ve taught her to suspect others and distrust herself. This same voice says it’s all to the best that’s she breaking away. Maybe Jack, who wouldn’t know self-doubt if it bit him, can teach her a different way to be.
The third day of our vacation Emily made a friend her age named Stephanie. Stephanie had a brother Christopher who was a year or two older and hung around the girls when he had nothing better to do. One afternoon, when an invasion of stinging jellyfish forced everyone out of the water, I met their father at the beach. It turned out he and I were distant cousins through a great-aunt, who, by my mother’s later account, was a rude and impetuous woman whom nobody liked. What this probably meant was that this aunt of ours was afflicted with some terrible and ghastly habit, like speaking her mind.
In our family women are taught to swallow rather than speak, especially if what we have to say is critical of others. If we simply must voice our opinions, then we do so indirectly, a form of intercourse designed to confound and thus incapacitate opposition. Men, of course, are not subject to such regulation. Nor, as a rule, are elders. Children, unless invited, are not supposed to speak at all.
My own children, having not been taught these strictures, tend to speak when they have the urge and chatter on at will. The following morning they were doing just that, when my mother, who’d been giving a clinic in the swallowed word, suddenly lost control and yelled at them to go outside. A few minutes later Emily returned to ask if she could take the rowboat out. Jody immediately insisted on going along, but once near the boat, he balked. Jack was ready to take him back inside, but I engineered a compromise that we all go out together. This seemed to ease his fears, as well as my own about staying inside with my angry mother, and five minutes later, with Emily at the oars, we cast off.
Our house sits on a finger-shaped cove separated from the main pond by a narrow channel hazarded by rocks. Jack played navigator, but Emily couldn’t hold course, and she grew increasingly frustrated as she kept ramming into obstacles. Jody, who assumed she was doing this on purpose, didn’t help matters by demanding that she stop. Finally, she did, tossing the oars angrily against the gunwales and pressing her chin into her knuckles in a clenched-lip pout.
For awhile we drifted, at the mercy of the tide and that peculiar adolescent ability to disable response, until Jack took the oars and Emily the bow, where she refused to speak. In the stern with me Jody caught sight of a horseshoe crab scrabbling along the bottom. His fascination overrode his fear, and he leaned over the transom for a better look. Emily came out of her funk to grab the crab net for a swipe. She missed, but now she had something new to do.
She tried to catch another. And then another. After a few more tries she got annoyed.
“I can see them, but I can’t catch them,” she complained. “They’re too fast.”
“It’s easier at low tide,” I said.
“When’s low tide?”
“When the birds come in to feed. There’s a chart in the kitchen that tells the times.”
“Do birds eat fish?” asked Jody.
“Some birds do,” I said.
“But not crabs. Right?” He was trying to sort things out, to figure where he stood, especially vis-à-vis this slightly scary crab thing.
“Some birds eat crabs,” said Emily. I assumed she was trying to help, but Jody didn’t see it that way.
“No they don’t,” he said sharply.
“Some boys eat crabs, too,” she added.
“They don’t.”
“You know what, Jody?” She had a wicked grin.
“What?”
“Some crabs eat boys.”
His eyes widened, and his lips started to quiver. He clutched my arm.
“She’s teasing,” I told him. “Crabs don’t eat boys. They don’t eat people at all.”
“They bite,” said Emily.
“Hush. Why do you want to frighten him?”
She shrugged.
“The world’s a scary enough place as it is. You don’t have to make it worse.”
“I’m not.”
“You were afraid too when you were his age.”
“You always take his side.”
“You’re mean,” shouted Jody.
&nb
sp; “I’m bored,” said Emily.
“Are we having fun yet?” asked Jack.
Five minutes later we were back at the dock. Emily jumped out of the boat and stalked off. My mother, watching from the back porch, gave me a look implying that I was at fault for allowing such insolence. I glared at her, much as my own daughter had glared at me. Then I went looking for Emily.
I found her in the front of the house, in the maple tree, the only maple on our property. She was sitting on a branch about ten feet above the ground. When she saw me coming, she tried to scramble higher.
Emily is not a clumsy child. How she lost her balance I don’t know. She made a noise, a choked cry, then fell. She landed on the ground with a thud. I ran to her, my heart in my throat, feeling as if I had fallen myself.
Jack took her into Westerly to see a doctor. Four hours and three X-rays later they returned, full of ice cream and french fries and good news. Lots of bruises, but nothing broken. An hour after that we got some other news, not quite as cheery. Hurricane Dorothy was off the coast of Maryland and headed straight for us.
Landfall was estimated at six hours. Pete Cowell, one of the neighbors on the drive, came by with a truckload of plywood, and he and Jack unloaded half a dozen sheets. He said the authorities were calling Dorothy the biggest storm in fifty years and comparing it to the hurricane of ’39. He figured we were due for one. Pitch your tent on a beach, he said, and sooner or later you’re going to get blown away.
There were ten year-round inhabitants of Aponeset when the hurricane of ’39 hit. Two of them died, and the remaining eight, four of whom were my mother, uncle and my two grandparents, huddled a day and a night on top of the knoll, while the storm leveled everything in sight. Uncle Matthew was eight at the time and is the main custodian of these memories. He never tires of the tale, which, emblematic to him of the power of faith and tenacity in the face of misfortune, has assumed biblical proportions. His is the common belief that disasters bring out the best in people, and while this may be true of natural, God-driven ones, I question whether it holds for the more typical variety, the slow-developing, inbred disasters of familial misconduct and wrongdoing. In my meager experience these are a source, not of heroics, but of shame and denial. The best to be said of them is they give us plenty of room for self-improvement.
My mother watched the kids while Jack and I nailed the plywood over the windows. The wind was picking up, and near dusk a State trooper drove in and told us we had to evacuate. They were closing Beach Road in twenty minutes.
We hurried into the car and went to get Uncle Matthew, who was waiting on his porch. I half-expected him to tell us he was staying behind, but apparently today was not the day for a test of faith. He was nervous and beleaguered and once in the car barely spoke at all. His silence was filled easily by the children, who chattered non-stop. Emily, like me, was worried; Jody, like Jack, excited. My mother, who was driving, was all business. She knew just what to do, as if she’d prepared ahead of time, and it occurred to me that she, like me, lived with a shadow that had taught her to expect disaster and, when it came, to handle it.
We drove to Providence to stay with my sister. The storm hit land at midnight and blew until dawn. Then the eye came, or what we thought was the eye. We cracked the windows in preparation for the pressure change, but the calmness only deepened. An hour passed, then two, then three, until it became apparent that the storm had either blown itself out or passed us by. Uncle Matthew, who had not slept the entire night, insisted on returning to Aponeset at once. My mother replied that it seemed prudent to wait until we knew that the roads were open and clear. Uncle Matthew, who was older, argued with her, but she had long since stopped automatically deferring to him. And since the car was hers, she got her way. We waited. I was glad.
By noon the radio was reporting open roads, so the six of us piled in the car and headed back. I sat in front between my mother and uncle, between caution on the one hand and fretfulness on the other. Of the two, fretfulness was clearly suffering the most.
Uncle Matthew lived year round at Aponeset and had everything to lose. My mother understood this and tried to reassure him. At his request she kept the radio tuned to the news. She spoke calmly but firmly to the children, asking that they try their best to be quiet. At one of the many halts in traffic she reached across my lap and squeezed her brother’s hand.
Apart from this, the most notable event of the trip occurred when Jody spotted an overturned semi in a ditch. This was the source of much wonder and dismay, as he tried to piece things together.
“Did it have an accident?” he asked Jack. At this point we were slowed to a crawl, and he had plenty of time to examine this oddity of nature, a truck on its back.
“Looks like it,” said Jack.
“Is the driver inside?”
“I doubt it.”
“He climbed out. Right?”
“Right.” There was, in fact, no sign of anyone in the wreckage.
“He went home?”
“He went somewhere.”
In the rear-view mirror I saw Jody puzzle this over. He frowned. “Are we going to have an accident?”
I turned in my seat. “No,” I told him. “The storm’s over. We’re all very safe.”
“Do you have to pee?” asked Jack.
Jody shook his head.
“You sure?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then I agree with your mother.” He ruffled Jody’s hair, then kissed him. “We’re safe as safe can be.”
Traffic was light all the way back, but at the Beach Road—Route 1 intersection we hit an unexpected roadblock. Citing the dangers of contaminated water, fallen wires and possible looting, a State trooper had parked his car across the road and refused to let us pass. This incensed my uncle, who might have sprung at the man had he been able to get out of the car. But cooler heads prevailed, in this case my mother’s, who kept her finger firmly on the master door lock. With tact and perseverance she spoke to the officer, until she had him convinced not only of our harmlessness but of our right of passage. He was really no match for her. It was a wonder he even tried.
Beach Road was a mess. Sand everywhere, trees and wires down, chimneys toppled, boats overturned. We had to stop several times to move brush and rocks out of the way. The kids couldn’t stop jabbering, but as we approached Uncle Matthew’s, they fell silent. The gravity of the situation, the bleak possibility that his house might be gone or irreparably damaged, chilled us all.
My mother pulled into his driveway and had to stop almost immediately at a waist-high boulder that now blocked the way. She cut the engine, and Uncle Matthew rushed out. He walked halfway to the house, then stopped. Slowly, he surveyed the scene.
The front lawn was blanketed by a sheet of sand, and water lay pooled everywhere. One of the cedars was knocked over and another was leaning precariously close to the roof. The garage door was splintered. Aunt Lillian’s garden was gone.
He stared at all this a moment, arms at his side, looking lost, then made his way to the house. Sand had piled into a dune against the front porch, and slowly he plodded up its face. He unlocked the front door and worked it free, then went inside. Ten minutes later he reappeared with a report.
A kitchen window had blown out, and there was water damage as a result. Dishes were broken, and in the living room books were scattered everywhere. A favorite vase was in pieces. A painting had somehow been torn from its frame. But structural damage, it appeared, was minimal. The roof, for one, was still in place. The house hadn’t jumped its footings. The walls stood where they had before the storm.
My mother’s house fared even better. A few shingles were torn from the roof, and the wooden dock had been snapped from its mooring. It lay mired in the cove, which apparently had surged a good four feet, because the entire back lawn was in a state of salt-water shock. But beyond this, and the maple in front, which had been ripped down the middle like a zipper, there was little damage. I never liked the maple an
yway, not since my grandfather had used it to hold me in place while he ground his pelvis against mine. That was another way he spread his poison, by making me suspicious and even fearful of beautiful things. I was glad to see the tree destroyed, but when I looked, my mother was crying.
“My father planted that tree,” she said, wiping her cheeks and clasping herself in her arms. “It was a wedding present for me.”
“You’ll have to call the tree man.”
She heaved a sigh. “We’ll get some firewood at least. Once it seasons.”
She gazed at the tree, then turned to me. She knew what I was thinking. It was a struggle for her.
“It was different then, Sharon. People weren’t so outspoken. We kept things to ourselves. Looking back, it may seem cowardly, but that’s just how it was.”
“If it happened to my kids—and it wouldn’t, believe me, I wouldn’t let it—but if it did, I’d feel responsible.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I’d feel responsible for that.”
“Yes. That’s the kind of person you are.” She started to walk away, then stopped. “If you want an apology, you have one. But I don’t think that’s what you want.”
“I want you to love me.”
She looked at me as if I’d spoken in tongues. “Why do you say such things?”
“Love means protecting the people you love. It means keeping your loved ones safe.”
“Do you love Emily?”
“Do you even have to ask?”
“Jody?”
“Yes. Of course. I love them both.”
“And I love you,” she said, then surprised me by coming over and giving me a hug. “And I loved that maple too.”
Later, I thought of a reply, but by then she had broken our embrace and wandered off. I could have caught up with her but decided not to. Women in our family rarely run. More commonly, we stand in place like trees and watch.
For four days we were without electricity and therefore water, because our pump was down along with everything else. Luckily, the weather turned rainy following the hurricane, and by setting out pots along the drip line of the roof, we managed to collect enough rainwater for cooking and drinking. For washing we used the pond, which left a salty residue.
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