“You think that’s funny?” Elsie said. “Mine was much funnier.”
The canoe slithered along easily on top of the marsh. He could pull it by the painter with one hand. Elsie took his other hand. She said, “One of my problems is that I like hanging around with you. What do you say we keep it a secret, keep on hanging out together?”
“I know what you mean,” Dick said, but he couldn’t say any more.
“At least for a couple of months,” Elsie said. “Just hang out some. I won’t use my ray gun on you. I’ll be off to Boston by Christmas.”
They got to the truck before Dick answered. Dick slid the bow of the canoe up on the roof of the cab, and he and Elsie lashed it on.
“We’ll see each other,” Dick said. “I don’t know how much hanging around I’ll be doing. You’ve seen my house. And I got to check my pots.”
“I could go out with you to check the pots,” Elsie said.
“You remember how sick you got last time?”
“I’ll take seasick pills.”
“I’ll have Charlie along, and another hand too.”
“I could help.”
“What’s Charlie going to think? And, more to the point, if May gets to know about you and me, it would get to her a lot more if she knew you’d been out on Spartina with Charlie and me.”
“Maybe not,” Elsie said. “Maybe she’ll take it that I have some decent good will toward her children. She’ll be reassured I’m not out to break up a family. Maybe—”
“Maybe,” Dick said. “You’re a great one for saying maybe. But there’s some things there’s no maybe about.” He felt he’d been a little short and hard. He added, “You can see that, Elsie. There’s some things there’s just no point in being fanciful about.” Elsie cocked her head in a way that irritated him. He said, “Maybe May’ll be overjoyed about the whole thing, want the kid to come stay with us. Maybe she’d like having a little baby girl to fuss over now she’s through having kids of her own. Maybe she’ll want us all to move in together at Eddie’s, maybe you and her’ll sit around together shelling peas while I’m out on Spartina.”
Elsie said, “You want me to ask her?”
Dick felt the unpleasant glitter of Elsie’s nerve. It exasperated him—just when he was feeling sorry for her, she’d get pissy. But that was the way it was with her. She’d be going one way and then dart off another. Whether this was a skittish fashion she’d picked up from the kind of people she grew up with, or whether this was her own nature, he couldn’t tell. Maybe she couldn’t tell either. Whichever it was, it made him skittish along with her. He sometimes liked the feeling—he had to admit that—but it made him doubt her. Not her liking for him or even her intentions of loyalty, but her place in a life like his.
It saddened him. They got in the truck and drove slowly back on the causeway. She put her hand on his arm and said, “I’m sorry.” He was still sad. Elsie said, “The Eskimos live like that. I read a book about the Greenland Eskimos, it’s no big deal for them who gets into whose igloo.”
“There you go,” Dick said. He laughed. Sooner or later she did get him laughing. “We’ll just leave that book around for May to pick up and our troubles are over.”
The other thing he’d miss was telling her stuff. He couldn’t tell May about Parker and Marie. If he did, he knew how May would take it—get those slugs out of my garden. He understood that, he had that feeling too. But Elsie would crack up when he told her about Marie’s skirt suddenly flopping up, about the two pairs of sneakers. And what else would she say? He couldn’t tell. There was something to be said for that, for not being able to tell which way she’d fly.
It didn’t change the fact that he was in trouble.
But when they got to her house Dick said, “There’s this to be said for having kids.” And he told her about the middle of the hurricane, about how he’d started thinking of Charlie, how he’d kept repeating to himself, “ ‘O Leerie, I’ll go round at night and light the lamps with you!’ ”
She was puzzled for a bit. He explained some more, told her about reading to the boys when they were in bed, about how when Charlie was six and seven Charlie had followed him around, admiring everything he did, wanting to do what he did. “O Leerie, I’ll go round at night and light the lamps with you!”
And Elsie did surprise him. She said, “Oh shit.” Dick looked at her. She said, “Why did you tell me that? What am I going to do if it’s a little boy—is that why you told me that? Because I’ll never be Leerie to a boy?”
Dick felt whirled away a hundred miles. “No,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you.”
“Why did you tell me that?” She was still irritated and puzzled. “The only point to it I can see is that little boys need fathers.” She opened her door, but turned back to say, “That is just narrow-minded. Even if you’re right, you’re wrong.”
She was out. “Elsie.” She started for the house. He shouted, “Elsie! You forgot your canoe!”
She said, “Put it in the garage.” But she came back.
He said, “Look, Elsie. All I meant was—”
“Yes,” she said. “All you meant was …”
“All I meant was to cheer you up, for Christ’s sake. Just that it’s nice having a kid around.”
Elsie said, “I see,” but helped him stow the canoe in the garage alongside her Volvo.
Mary Scanlon came into the garage from the house. She gave him a hug and patted him on the shoulder. “Elsie told me you got back okay. Can you stay for supper? I made a stew, plenty for everyone.”
“I ate, thanks. I got to get home.”
Elsie hadn’t moved. He said, “I’ll be by. Maybe we can go see Miss Perry. Talk her into hiring Eddie back to clean up her driveway.”
He drove along the narrow lane down the hill, branches switching the sides of the truck. He saw his mistake. The stuff about remembering Charlie as a little boy was for May. The other story was for Elsie. He said out loud, “Watch yourself.”
He drove to the boatyard to take a look at Spartina. He took his big flashlight, found the buoy with the beam, ran it up the mooring pennant to the chock. Okay.
The only electric light visible was from the South County Hospital high on a hill above the salt pond. Emergency generator. No traffic to speak of. Halfway home Dick cut off his headlights, drove slowly by the light of the moon. He got his story straight. Sawtooth Point. House. Blue canoe? Yes, blue canoe. Spartina, had to check on her.
What surprised him was how he was still looking forward to getting under the covers with May. How soft her lanky bones could get in a big soft double bed. How she got to like it if he took the time to mess with her hair, comb it out with his fingers.
He switched the headlights back on to go up Ministerial Road. In some ways he was a vile son of a bitch, maybe May and Elsie could get together on that.
Eddie was out. May said he’d gone to check on some woman who lived alone up by Miss Perry’s. May was at the kitchen table drinking coffee in her nightgown and wrapper. The boys were watching TV on a battery-operated portable. “Hey, Dad,” Tom said, “we saw you on TV. You and Spartina were on the news. And that man who’s a friend of Miss Buttrick, you know, the one that makes movies? It’s his pictures.”
Dick had misgivings.
He put them out of his mind. Most people had plug-in TVs and the power was still off. The boys at the Neptune, for instance, wouldn’t have seen it. Charlie said, “What’s the house like?”
“Could be worse,” Dick said. “We’ll go by in the morning. You boys don’t stay up too late.” He was pleased to see May put her cup and saucer in the sink and glide down the hall carrying the kerosene lamp. When he came into the bedroom she turned the wick way down. She didn’t even ask why he’d been gone so long.
When she was unpinning her hair he said, “It’s nice in here. You look nice.… I’ll do your hair.” He took out the hairpins slowly.
She said, “Isn’t it odd, living in a strange room like th
is?”
“Well. Yeah. We’re okay here—it’s Eddie’s house. It’s not like it’s a stranger.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean I kind of like it, being in a strange house. It’s like we’re going to a motel.” May blushed.
God Almighty, Dick thought. It’s the whole county carrying on.
They all went to the house first thing in the morning. Eddie said right off, “It looks worse than it is, May. When I get off work, I’ll help Dick jack up that corner—make all the difference in the world.”
But he cautioned the boys not to go inside.
Dick opened the storm-cellar door. Down inside, the water stood pretty near up to the tops of the bait barrels. But they were still tight, still standing in rows.
He ran the outlet hose of Eddie’s pump as near the creek as he could. It was mostly salt water in the cellar and he didn’t want any more salt on his yard.
He figured he’d better get the insurance agent to take a look while things were still at their worst.
When he got to the insurance office in Wakefield there was a line coming out the door. They were giving out numbers like at the supermarket meat counter. He got 102, the head of the line was 37.
He picked up some sandpaper and paint and drove to Spartina to dab up the worn spots in her coat.
The manager had his crew cleaning up the yard. Dick took the johnboat out to Spartina and set to work. The sun was hot, a late-summer day in September. Even working slowly on account of his sore ribs he worked up a sweat. At midday a little onshore breeze blew across the salt pond, dried him up nicely. He thought of getting the boys, but didn’t want to break this thread of pleasure. His ribs felt better in the sun. Maybe it was just bruises and pulled muscles.
He finished sanding and touching up the front of the wheelhouse. He found a can of lukewarm Coke in the corner of the locker. Good enough. Everything he did, everything he touched or smelled gave him pleasure. He couldn’t figure it, he hadn’t felt so good for years.
He stripped the wood off the broken window. He was still working slowly and pleasantly. He felt as good as a bee inside a flower. He wondered if May ever felt so good tidying up the house when he and the boys were out. He opened up the wiring, tried to see where it’d shorted out. He’d get Eddie to check it. Even messing with the wiring didn’t irritate him. The breeze came in the window and out the door, cleaning out the damp. He pulled the mattress on deck to air it out, and he couldn’t pass up lying down on it in the sun.
He woke up from a simple dream—bright-blue sky and flat-bottomed clouds piled in billows against the westering sun. An easy waking—in front of his eyes was blue sky and flat-bottomed clouds.
Elsie was sitting on the hatch cover next to his head.
She said, “I like you having a boat in port. I can always find you.” He sat up. “When I was a little girl I used to go visit old Mr. Hazard in his bookshop, it was like having a little tea party whenever you felt like it. A floating balloon on a string, give it a tug and down it comes to you. Have you had lunch?”
Dick rubbed his eyes, sniffed the air. He wasn’t sure where he was with Elsie, but she seemed cheery enough. He said, “I had a Coke.”
Elsie opened up her lunch box and began to lay out food on the hatch cover. Dick said, “I ought to get back to work.” She peeled a boiled egg and gave it to him. She said, “Get a cup, I’ll give you some iced tea. It won’t take a second, I want to tell you something funny.”
He got his White Rock—girl thermos and unscrewed the cup.
“Now, that’s funny too,” Elsie said. “You have to admit.”
“You’re in a pretty cheery mood.”
“I am, I am indeed. Here’s the funny thing. I was moaning around about how I might have to resign if the department won’t give me leave. I even went and talked to the new headmaster at the Perryville School—Jim Bigelow, you remember him? The Bigelows’ son … Anyway I was thinking I could teach science there when I get back. But here’s what was going on. My rich Republican brother-in-law is in with some guy who wants to run for governor in a couple of years. But the Republicans don’t have enough women. There’s a not-bad Republican woman in Congress, and their thinking is that competent women can update their image. So this guy asked Jack for a list of women who were likely candidates for appointments to this and that, and Jack told him about me—degree in forestry, pioneer woman in Natural Resources, years of good and faithful service. All of this leaks out. Everything leaks out around here. So when I went in to ask about extended leave, before I open my mouth, my boss tells me he’s heard I’m on the emergency hurricane task force. Two months’ TDY. And my promotion is coming through. His whole tone was ‘You’re on the way up and don’t forget your friends, Elsie.’ And here I was going to beg.… After the emergency-panel reports—Jack is on it too—though how he’s going to square that with being a partner in Sawtooth Point …
“Anyway, after the panel writes the report and fusses around another month or so explaining it, then I get to go back to school for a management course for a term. I can do that in Boston, drive to school from my mother’s house. And the department pays for it and they pay me my salary and a per diem. That takes me up to June. Then I’ll have enough accrued leave and sick leave to stay at my mother’s for three more months. The whole thing makes me laugh. I mean there I was about to throw in the towel and it turns out like this. From knocked-up and driving a jeep to being some kind of executive trainee with rumors that I’m a hot item. Ms. Buttrick as part of the new gender-ticket. Anyway that’s why I’m dressed like this.” Elsie flipped the hem of her green uniform skirt and touched the little black tie on her white shirt. Her badge was on her starched breast-pocket.
Elsie said, “Of course there may be hell to pay later. I mean if Jack finds out he was touting me as Miss Responsibility and all the time I was carrying a baby … But the timing works.… And I feel lucky. No, not just lucky, I feel really good. I mean I have worked hard, I am a perfectly good person for this. I know what I’m talking about, and why shouldn’t I go on working and have a baby if I want?”
Dick was dizzied by Elsie. Glad for her. Also charmed and touched by her in a way he’d mislaid recently.
He said, “That a girl, Elsie. Go ahead and get what’s coming to you.”
Elsie laughed. “When someone says, ‘You’ll get what’s coming to you,’ it makes me look over my shoulder.”
“I don’t mean it like that.”
“Oh, I know.” She touched his forearm briefly in her summer-party style. Intimate, easy, one-way. She laughed again. “Here’s another funny thing, speaking of getting what’s coming to you. I saw Schuyler for a second. He’s absolutely cleaning up. He’s into his Mr. Zip-zip-zip mode. He’s been to Boston and New York and he’s got a deal for his documentary. He’s sold the whole film, with all that stuff we shot on Mamzelle and some other footage—and what he shot during the hurricane too. You know what he did? He stayed in Galilee after it was evacuated. He was in a kind of pillbox with his camera, and he got shots of roofs flying through the air, the surge coming right over the breakwater and over the docks. He was up the slope a bit or he would have drowned. As it was, he was waist-deep in water in his pillbox. He got that footage processed and sold clips to the TV stations in Boston and Providence. He wasn’t in Galilee when you got back but he had someone else working for him, so he’s got shots of Spartina coming back up the channel.”
Dick said, “The boys saw that on TV.”
“And he’s going to use what I shot that morning you came in. I must say he’s sort of insufferable in his ruthless show-biz mood. I gave him the film of Spartina’s homecoming and he asked me why I hadn’t gone out with you.”
“You wouldn’t have seen much out there. Just a lot of water close to.”
“Anyway he’s on a roll. I’m not sure he deserves it, but he’s going to be a golden boy again. He does have nerve. In a funny way the nerve that it took to stay in Galilee during the hurricane is
the same nerve that he uses to make deals. What pleases him even more than the money is getting back on top. He went to some TV executive in New York who wouldn’t return his calls last year. Schuyler had found out the executive’s boss wanted the film clips, and Schuyler kept getting up to leave. ‘I made him grovel’ is what he says. He’s so full of himself he’s about to pop. His wife can’t stand it. She put up with a lot during the hard times. She really admires him for his jauntiness when he’s down. She forgave him for all sorts of stuff.… It’s odd. They’re very like each other in lots of ways. They think alike, they talk alike, they even look alike. But he’s neurotic in an active way, and she’s so passively neurotic she could spend the rest of her life in a deck chair. She seems to soak up Schuyler’s thrashing around in his desperate funny way. He is very funny—when everything is about to cave in and he’s dodging bullets. But when he’s doing well and is plugged in right, there’s no buzz for her. In fact, she’s repelled by him when he’s in good order. She really is a kind of vampire who sucks up his desperate energy.”
Elsie stopped, her hands in mid-air. “I’m being a bitch, aren’t I? What I don’t like is I’m harder on women than on men. Is that right? Have you noticed that? Or in this case is it that the two of them are both spoiled, but Schuyler is at least redeemed by his work? So I’m just … Of course he is being monumentally self-centered these days.… But, then, he’s still funny. Of course maybe she’s just as funny but doesn’t say it. But, then, that’s her fault for not speaking up.”
“ ‘But, then,’ ” Dick said. “ ‘But, then.’ But, then, maybe he talks so fast she can’t get a word in.”
“Ah.” Elsie straightened her legs. “Okay.” She pulled her uniform skirt up above her knees to sun her legs. “You know the way I talk to you has changed. The only other people I talk to like this are my sister and Mary Scanlon. I used to talk to you more the way I talk to Jack, sort of put-up-your-dukes.
“I realize I’m just pouring out now, but it’s because I may not get to see you so much.… Still. I’ll try. It’s funny because at the same time I’d like to just sit here and not say a thing.” Elsie reached in her lunch box and unwrapped a sandwich. “Here, have half. It’s huge. Mary made it. She baked the bread too.”
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