by John Casey
May stood inside the house and watched Eddie and Dick and the crew flicker back and forth across the space between the studs. At least the back of the house was going to have matching windows.
Eddie’s CB crackled. He got into the cab of his truck to talk to Phoebe Fitzgerald. May called to Dick. She took him to their bedroom. She said, “Do you think we could fit a closet—right there where the cedar chest used to set?”
Dick ran his hand through his hair and looked out the window. May felt the bit of effort he made to look back at where she was pointing. He nodded and said, “I could ask Eddie. See what he says.”
May said, “A cedar closet. We can put the cedar chest in the boys’ room for their sweaters and things. But maybe a cedar closet would fit better in the mudroom.”
“We can’t change the size of the mudroom.”
May waited.
Dick said, “You work it out with Eddie. If he frames it in, I can finish it. Course, he’s got to get to his other jobs …”
“I’ve always wanted a cedar closet.”
“Okay. You and Eddie … I got to get back to work.”
He ran his hand through his hair again. Her eyes followed his gold wedding ring. Had he taken it off when he was with Elsie Buttrick? She took a breath and blew it out. She’d asked all the questions she was going to.
A cedar closet. A mudroom addition. A garden shed. A garden shed that would stand where Dick’s big wood-frame-and-canvas shed had stood—where Dick had built his boat. It was parts of that shed that the hurricane had blown into the back of the house. Was he through with Elsie Buttrick by the time the hurricane hit?
May knew she had to quit asking for things. She didn’t know if she was making sure of Dick or paying him back.
She wished to forgive him. That was still a ways from forgiving him.
Eddie climbed back down from the cab of his truck. Poor old Eddie, yearning for out-of-reach Phoebe Fitzgerald. She had an Irish name, but she went to Miss Perry’s Episcopalian church, had gone to a fancy college. What was she going to do with the likes of Eddie Wormsley?
What did Elsie Buttrick do with the likes of Dick?
May wondered how long she’d have to go on pulling thoughts out of her head. It seemed as endless as pulling rocks out of a field.
chapter six
Eddie’s putting in some hours,” Mary said. “I saw him and his crew working on Dick’s house Sunday morning.”
Elsie saw Mary suck in a little breath after she mentioned Dick. Mary’s fair face was like a screen—the slightest embarrassment sent a blush skimming across it. Elsie said, “Mary, Dick lives just down the road. If you look funny every time his name comes up, people are going to think you’re the mother.”
Mary laughed. “That’d keep ’em guessing.” She laughed again but stopped when they heard a car horn give two beeps. The noise woke Rose. Elsie went in to pick her up. After a minute there were two more beeps and Eddie Wormsley’s truck swept through the overhanging branches at the top of the driveway and pulled up behind Mary’s tiny pickup.
Eddie said to Mary, “Hey, good! I was hoping you’d be around. I’m just going to take a look, see how you like it.”
Elsie was holding Rose, who was crying softly. She cried louder when Eddie waggled a finger in front of her face. Elsie sat down on the front step, unbuttoned her blouse, and began to nurse Rose. Elsie tilted her head back to catch the sun and caught sight of Dick sitting in the cab of Eddie’s truck.
Mary led Eddie into the house.
Elsie couldn’t do anything but look at Dick’s face behind the windshield as Rose’s mouth pulled on her. It took him a long time to get out of the truck. When he did, he was as awkward as if he were on the deck of a rolling boat—no, at sea he was tight and nimble. Now he stood uneasily, one hand on the door handle. Elsie felt a puff of heat in her eyes, blurring him. She said, “It’s okay. Come see your daughter. Hey, Rose, it’s your dad.”
Dick said, “I’m sorry. Eddie doesn’t know … He just all of a sudden remembered he had to look in here.”
“It’s okay. It’s good. Here she is.”
Dick knelt and touched the back of Rose’s head with his fingertips. Rose didn’t stop nursing. Elsie said, “You’ll get to see her face when she switches sides.”
Mary and Eddie came back. Eddie said, “Oh, I better show you what I changed in the kitchen. Made some more space for your pots and pans.” Eddie took off his baseball cap and held the door for Mary.
“See that?” Dick said. “That’s Phoebe Fitzgerald’s doing. She’s working on Eddie, getting him smoothed down for their big-house clients. Look, like I said, I didn’t mean to take you by surprise.”
“It’s okay. Don’t worry.”
“So. She’s healthy and everything?”
“Yes. Perfect.” Rose eased up and turned her head. Elsie cradled her and pulled her blouse shut. “She should have a little burp before she gets the other side. You want to hold her?”
Elsie held her breath as Dick’s hands took Rose, as Dick’s hands touched her. He lifted Rose up to look at her face, then held her to his shoulder and rocked her. Pretty good at it, remembered better than Eddie to go easy.
Rose burped; Dick handed her back. Elsie parted her blouse again and put Rose to her left breast. Elsie looked at Dick’s face. She’d wanted him for the certainty of his fierce instincts; she’d put herself in the way of them. Now he was uncertain. Perhaps he was undone by seeing his daughter—perhaps he was undone by the trouble he was in. She wasn’t surprised when he moved back, stood up, breathed in and out. He said, “Here we are.” He moved his hand in an arc. She knew what he meant—Wakefield to Green Hill, Worden Pond to Sawtooth Point. The bit of South County they lived in. She thought he’d be happier on his boat, out of sight of land.
Mary Scanlon and Eddie came out of the house. Eddie said, “So there you go. So long as you don’t get any new ideas. We’d have got Dick’s house in shape by now if May didn’t get inspirations along the way.” Dick looked at his feet and scuffed away the footprints he’d left. “So like they say at weddings, ‘Speak now or forever hold your peace.’ ”
Mary said, “It’s grand, Eddie.”
Elsie said, “Of course it is. I knew you’d do it just right.”
Eddie frowned and said, “I wonder if you could mention to Miss Perry that I’ve been coming up here to do some work for you. You know how she ordered me off her land.”
“She and I share the paved part of the driveway. But I’ll mention it.”
“As long as you’re saying that much, you might remind her that it was a wounded deer. I shot it somewheres else, tracked it here. I was just trying to put it out of its misery.”
Dick laughed. “You’re really scared of her. That was years back and you’re still ducking away.”
“Easy for you. You’re one of her pals,” Eddie said. “Come to think of it, all this time you’ve been taking her fishing—how come you didn’t clear things up for me?”
“Didn’t want to spoil the mood, bringing up your bloodthirsty ways.”
Mary laughed. Elsie thought Dick shouldn’t tease Eddie, the one guy who’d do anything for Dick. And she also thought how in South County a story could last for years.
Eddie said loudly, “Well, what’s she doing out there with you? Killing them innocent flounder.”
Elsie said “Eddie, Eddie. You’ll scare the baby.”
Mary Scanlon tousled Eddie’s hair as if he were a little boy. “Eddie, we’re all for you.” She hugged him from behind, a warm cloak. Eddie blushed.
“Hey, Mary,” Dick said. “He’s got work to do. You’re making him go weak at the knees.”
A couple of guys and gals, just kidding around. Elsie thought of the years she’d spent trying to be just one of the gang. So she was getting her wish. Here we are.
The men got into Eddie’s truck. Eddie made it around the gravel circle without tearing up any grass. The truck eased over the first bump, the tailga
te chains clanked, the branches brushed the sides of the bed and then closed behind it. Another clank where her un-paved driveway met the asphalt. Then quiet. If Mary hadn’t been there, Elsie would have cried. Instead she said, “Did you ever think of Eddie?”
“Not that way. I’m sort of sorry to say it—he’s a nice man.” Mary held her hand out to pull Elsie up. “So, Rose,” Mary said. “You met your dad.”
chapter seven
Elsie put her uniform on again. It was still warm enough to wear the summer-issue shorts and shirt. The shorts were so tight in the waist she cut off the button and resewed it an inch looser. The shirt was tight, too. She unbuttoned the two top buttons. Wouldn’t do for facing the public. She put on a sports bra, but while that flattened some things it also squeezed some up and out. She borrowed one of Mary’s bras and lengthened the thread on the second button of her shirt. She loosened her web holster belt so that it slanted across the bulge of her lower belly. She blamed herself; she blamed Mary’s cooking. She swore she’d eat nothing but fish and salad for the next month.
She volunteered for the longest route, on foot, an unpleasant thrash through bullbriars and low-limbed rhododendron along the Usquepaug and the Queens River. Some exercise, and in all likelihood no people. She tucked a pair of rain pants into her fanny pack for pushing through thorns or poison ivy. For lunch she packed an apple and a carrot. All she deserved.
There was a path into the river, but upstream and downstream, both banks were overgrown. She stuck her hand in the water—too warm for trout? She saw a bird, a dull speck flitting in the tree shade. When it crossed the stream and caught the light it turned electric blue. It wheeled away from her and vanished into the woods. The blue persisted in her. Her eyes were so astonished that her other senses went numb. She wasn’t sure if she’d made a noise. An indigo bunting. Not indigo at all—blue, bluer than a jay or a bluebird, absolute blue.
She was alone, blissfully alone, for the first time in months.
She put on her long pants, rebuckled her web belt, and began to pick her way through the bushes, gracelessly at first. After a mile or so she was sweating. Good. Sweat it off. She cut over to the stream and filled the first of her three test tubes. On the far bank there was a stand of cardinal flowers. The blossoms were half hidden by mourning cloaks, some hovering, some attached to the flowers while slowly flapping their wings, velvet black with violet and ivory edging. On the moving surface of the water the reflected red, black, and violet wavered in and out of focus. At first glance it seemed that the colors were being swept away. Then they seemed to be swimming against the current. She looked away to stop feeling giddy. She’d been fooled before—seeing and unseeing. She looked at the butterflies, the real ones, knew what they were up to with the cardinal flowers—their coiled proboscises, grotesquely long fusions of nose and mouth parts, were uncoiling deep into the flowers’ cups. She wondered what they felt. Was it just taste, or was there touch? Was that slow flapping just to keep their balance, or was it a sign of pleasure?
A year without sex. More than a year. She hadn’t gone that long since she was a schoolgirl. She breezed through her memory of a few fumbling schoolboys, then surprised herself thinking of dresses. Dresses she’d put on to be taken off. Unbuttoned slowly. Unzipped and stepped out of. A few frenzied times hoisted waist-high. Once in Sally’s garden. The only red dress at the party. She went into the garden first. He didn’t see her until she stepped into a bit of light between the boxwoods. Then back into the dark. A tall man. She clung to him as he sank to his knees, her face in his chest, her right knee jangling the keys in his trousers pocket. He slid his trousers down, her skirt up, the crotch of her underpants sideways. It was close enough to what she’d had in mind. He worked in downtown Providence—she got off by thinking of walking into his office …
Then she heard the sound of the party, the blur of voices from the front rooms, the clinking of plates from the kitchen. She heard them suddenly, as if snapping out of a daze on a train.
The knees of his trousers were so obviously grass-stained that he went straight to his car and left. She’d laughed. How far she was now from that hard little self. She could miss it or call it names, it didn’t matter. She could call it up for a quick fantasy visit. (Was it odd that she didn’t have fantasies—sexual fantasies—about Dick?)
It had been more than a year since she’d gone to one of Jack and Sally’s parties. Sally occasionally mentioned that one man or another asked where her sister was. Sally sometimes added, “Did you ever think of him?” Sally meant courtship: mixed doubles, charity balls, theater parties, a first kiss. Elsie had made shorter work of it.
Now here she was back in the woods. She looked under a fallen tree limb and found a black beetle. She tossed it into the stream. It drifted ten feet, then a trout sucked it in.
She ate her carrot and apple, drank half her canteen, and moved upstream.
When she stopped to fill her third test tube, she saw something move. The tip of a fishing rod. It stuck out from behind a pine tree on the far bank. She corked the test tube, put it in her pouch, and circled into the brush. She crept back toward the stream until she saw a man. Not a fly fisherman. An ultralight spinning outfit. He was using live bait, letting it drift. She couldn’t tell if it was a bug or a worm. No license pinned to his hat or shirt. He reeled in. He’d lost his bait. He picked a bug from a can and put it on the hook, tossed it upstream, shut the bail.
Not anyone she knew. Middle-aged, nicely faded blue shirt, rolled-up sleeves. Panama hat, beat-up but too classy for this neck of the woods. Sort of like Jack wearing broken-down patent-leather dancing pumps around the house on a Sunday morning.
He got a bite. The rod bowed; he held it high as the fish ran for the bank, almost in front of her. She ducked down. She heard the fish thrash, the drag whine. She pushed a clump of leaves aside so she could peer out. He was playing the fish calmly, not horsing it in. All she had to do was stand up and he’d be flummoxed. She watched. She felt a voyeurish intimacy—his gaze was so intent, his right forearm showing little bands of muscle. The fish ran back upstream. He lifted the rod tip and reeled in. He let it run out some more line. The fish swam in an arc, then another, each one closer to him. He stepped into the stream, lifted the rod high, and grabbed the trout. She thought at first that was a dumb move, good way to scare it into a last wriggle that would free it. But he’d got a finger into the gills. He stepped back on shore, set his rod down, and bent the trout’s head back sharply. He held the dead fish at arm’s length, his finger still hooked through the gills. She guessed twelve inches, maybe a hair more. He considered it for some time. He wiped his right hand on the seat of his pants and pushed his hat back. She liked his face. She’d always been a sucker for the face of a passably attractive man doing things deftly.
She lay on her side of the stream and watched him gut the fish with a pen knife. He slit open the stomach and squeezed out a dark pulp. He sifted it with his fingertips, plucked out a more or less intact bug. A black beetle? He lobbed it into the stream and watched. A little swirl and it was gone.
He made a small fire on a flat rock. Another violation. He pulled apart the sections of his rod, tucked them into a cloth case. At least he wasn’t greedy. He washed the cavity, laid the fish by the fire. He cut a long twig and trimmed it. (Cutting or uprooting live plants …) He skewered the fish from anus to mouth and held it over the fire. The tail curled, the skin crisped, the eye turned white. She caught a whiff of wood fire and cooked trout. Still squatting and holding the stick, he moved nearer to the water, groped a bit, and pulled out a half-full bottle of white wine. (No alcoholic beverages inside the park … This meal could cost him more than a dinner at Sawtooth Point.) She watched him wiggle the cork loose with one hand and take a swig. He put the open bottle back in the stream, twisting it into the bed. He turned the fish, poked it with his finger. His intentness focused hers, pulled her gaze into a close-up. He sucked his fingers and broke off a piece of tail, then began to n
ibble at the body.
She was going to let him go. She pictured him licking his fingers, looking up, as she waded across the stream. Brief alarm. And then? Taking in her badge, her holster, her mild hello. Would he help her up out of the stream? Certainly if she held out her hand.
This cameo reappearance of the old Elsie ended. He would eye her badge, her holster, but then … The son of a bitch might even laugh at her waddling across the stream on her pale, plump legs.
She watched him suck the last bit of flesh off the bones. He put them on the fire, took another drink from the bottle. He filled a pipe, lit it with a stick from the fire, recorked the bottle, washed his knife, packed everything into his knapsack. He stood for a long while, looking all around. She began to like him again, liked him for liking what he was looking at.
Maybe in a month. Apples and carrots and riding her bicycle. Or was this the way she would be, cocooned in splashy flesh so that she couldn’t even fantasize about a man being startled by her, by her badge and the lighthearted look of her?
• • •
The man shouldered his knapsack, tapped his pipe ash into the stream, and ground out the last bit of fire with the sole of his boot. He squatted to splash water on the rock, reminding her that he was serviceably strong in the hip and leg. Were all voyeurs washed back and forth between thrill and loneliness?