by Paula Fox
“Take a look at those birds out on the sand spit,” Gran suggested. “Every afternoon, even when it’s foggy, they come to sit there and look toward the sunset. Some kind of bird religion.”
The fire caught, and soon Gran had filled a large, dented pot with water from the pump and placed it on one of the stove lids, around which Elizabeth saw a red rim like a corona. After that, she washed lettuce leaves, one by one.
“You don’t mind bottled dressing, do you? I’m too old for vinaigrette. I’ll light the lamps now.”
Soon the room was awash in a pale yellow glow from several kerosene lamps. Now the posts were like trees that had grown inside the cottage.
A vivid memory came to Elizabeth. She was sitting at the kitchen table at home while Mom sorted clothes that had dried in the sun that afternoon. Elizabeth was crayoning. She recalled the feel of the thick, waxy crayons, the rough surface of the drawing paper in front of her, the radio on low, playing piano music, evening coming softly across the fields like smoke. She had felt so safe.
She put the camera back on the plank table. “It’s very quiet here,” she said.
“I have a small battery radio I get the weather on. You can play it, if you like.”
Gran, busy at the stove, didn’t see her shake her head no. Elizabeth drifted toward the staircase to look at some snapshots tacked to the wall there.
Surprised, she said, “These pictures are all of the cottage.”
“When I visit painter friends of mine,” Gran said, “and I see their big, well-lit studios, I get envious. Then, when I come back here in July, everything looks shabby and dark. A mess! So I took those snaps. They seem to let me see the place in a different way. I remember why I loved it the first time I saw it.”
“You have the apartment in Camden.”
“I don’t feel much about that place. It’s comfortable, but sort of elderly.”
Didn’t Gran know she was old?
“But you couldn’t live here in winter,” Elizabeth said. “It’d be so cold.”
“And lonely,” remarked Gran. “No, I couldn’t. Not anymore.… Your grandfather and I once lived on a mountain in New Mexico where your face froze when you opened the door. Our cabin was not even half the size of this place. We kept warm in front of a potbellied stove, and cooked on it, too. We stuck it out for two months.”
She dropped strands of thin spaghetti into the dented pot, now rocking in place as the water boiled furiously.
Elizabeth’s grandfather had died long before she was born. He’d only been a word, a name for a blank space.
“William, always called Will,” Gran said, turning to smile at her. “You’re tall and thin the way he was. That’s him in all those sketches on the wall. Did you know he was a lawyer, too, like your father? We wandered around for a few years; then he was called up for the army during World War Two. He was in the South Pacific three years. When he came back, he went to law school with government help. Before that—well, anything seemed possible. You could live on very little. You could almost invent your life as you went along. I had started to paint, and Will wanted to be a poet. That cabin we rented for a few dollars a month probably costs a million today. When he came back from the army—I remember the very moment he said it—he told me loving poetry wasn’t enough. He didn’t have it in him. But he became a very good lawyer.”
Elizabeth suddenly recalled that her mother had told her she had to be more helpful around the house than she was at home, that Gran tired much more easily than she let on.
“Shall I set the table?” she asked.
“Put out two dishes and forks and spoons,” Gran said. “We’re out of bread. Jake will bring it the day after tomorrow. I hope you won’t mind crackers and oranges for breakfast.”
The spaghetti was good, the bottled dressing not bad, the blueberries fresh and sweet. While they ate, Gran told her stories about living in New Mexico.
Elizabeth sensed that Gran wasn’t recollecting things only to amuse her. She kept a steady gaze on Elizabeth’s face as she spoke, the way people do when they are serious and want you to remember what they are telling you.
“One evening, a big truck full of Arkansas families parked near our cabin. They were sawyers—woodcutters—and they’d been timbered out, no more trees to cut. Four families looking for work, children, even an old dog, all sliding off the tailgate. We gave them water and some boxes of Fig Newtons we kept around. They invited us to breakfast next morning. We had to get up at four A.M. They wanted an early start. When the sun rose, it looked no brighter than the big fire they made. I’ve never had such a breakfast. Biscuits made in a frying pan, bacon and eggs and grits. Later, they drove off, banging and rattling on the rough road, the children dangling their legs over the end of the truck and the old dog trying to curl itself into a lie-down position. I think it was the first time Will and I realized there was a river of people moving around the country, looking for work. People are out of work again now, and moving. But I doubt they start their days with such good breakfasts. Would you mind filling up the big pot with water and putting it on the stove? While it’s heating, we can go out and look at the sky. You’ll have to heat water to wash your clothes as well as dishes.”
Elizabeth hadn’t washed clothes before, just dropped them into the washing machine. She did remember that when she was little, she’d destroyed a doll’s party dress when she soaked it in liquid floor polish she’d thought was soap.
They walked out of the cottage and toward the dock.
“New moon rising,” Gran said. “‘Sky canoe,’ Wordsworth called it.”
There was a tremor of light on the water, like a silver needle writing something undecipherable. Above the dark mass of land in the distance, Elizabeth saw the moon. It did look like a canoe made of light. She heard the mumble of water on the shore, withdrawing, returning. An eerie cry pierced the silence.
“Loon,” Gran whispered. She was standing next to Elizabeth, her hands clasped. “I’ve never wanted anyone tramping around my cottage,” she said. “But I’m glad you’re here.”
I was sent away—Elizabeth’s inner voice spoke its refrain fiercely—sent away, sent away.… Gran’s words didn’t warm her. They frightened her, made her uncertain about her own explanation to herself of why she was on this island. If it hadn’t been Stephen Lindsay’s birth, then what had it been?
To her further dismay, Gran began to recite a poem.
“Western wind, when wilt thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ, if my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again!
“No one knows who wrote that,” Gran said. “It’s called ‘Absence’ and it’s over four hundred years old. Will liked it.”
Hurriedly, Elizabeth asked, “What happens out here in a really bad storm?”
Gran walked back to the cottage, and Elizabeth followed, ashamed of herself and angry that she felt so. She bent to pet Grace, who had followed them outside and was now winding about her ankles. But as soon as she touched the cat, Grace sped away.
“You wish I hadn’t told you the poem,” Gran stated.
“No. I just—”
“Go inside. I have to shut the door. If the wind shifts, we’ll get mosquitoes.”
The room seemed much lighter since they’d been outdoors.
Gran walked to the stove to pour the hot water into a basin. “During the night, I have to make several trips to the outhouse. I hope I won’t wake you. There’s a flashlight in your bureau in case you have to go. Watch out for tree roots.”
“I’ll be careful,” Elizabeth said, wanting only to be in her room with the door shut.
Gran washed the supper dishes, rinsing them in a pan of cold water.
After a while, without looking at Elizabeth, she said in a stern voice, “That poem has lasted because it has such truth of feeling, of longing, in it.”
“I was embarrassed!” Elizabeth burst out.
At once, Gran turned
around. She smiled. “You’ll have to get used to me saying a poem now and then. I swear to you, you’re not obliged to listen. It’s a habit I got from Will.”
Elizabeth didn’t know what to say, but it was as though a dreadful knot in her stomach had suddenly untied itself.
“I’ll go to the outhouse now,” she said. “There aren’t any snakes, are there?”
“No big ones. Just little nervous things that’ll wriggle away when they hear you.”
She didn’t need a flashlight to find her way. The sky was luminous. A faint wind had risen. Around the outhouse, the ivy leaves rustled. The lights Elizabeth saw seemed very far away, flickering like earthbound stars. They probably came from Molytown or from a boat anchored out on the bay.
When she returned to the cottage, only a single lamp was lit.
“Bring up the lamp,” Gran called from the upstairs. “In the morning, you can take it down again.”
In her room, Elizabeth placed the lamp on the bedside table. She put on her pajamas and went to kneel at the window.
Mom and Daddy could not have known how Gran lived on Pring, how the most ordinary things you never thought about—washing a dish, going to the bathroom—had to be learned in this place.
She thought of how she had watched her parents from the airplane. They had paused, she remembered now, probably trying to spot her through one of the windows in the long slope of the plane.
She had realized briefly, before the plane began to slide away from the loading platform, that they were having an argument. She knew how they’d sound, Daddy pretending he was trying to calm a maniac, Mom getting more and more stirred up because she knew Daddy’s reasonableness was fake. Then she saw Stephen Lindsay rear back and open his mouth. Her parents had both clutched at him. If she thought of it as a silent movie, it was pretty funny.
Suddenly, as she stared through the small window, she saw four figures come around the sand spit and walk slowly toward Gran’s dock. They appeared cloaked, sinister. Then a small figure broke away from the group and began to dance ahead, leaping from side to side.
At once, the two larger figures ran after the dancer, waving their arms about.
“Aaron!” Elizabeth heard a woman’s voice cry out. “Aaron! Come back here at once!”
4
In the morning, the light was dull and gray. Through the window, Elizabeth saw Gran standing on the path below, holding a mug in one hand. Grace sat on a patch of grass close beside her. She guessed that Gran and her cat started every day like that. They looked lonesome.
She dressed, yawning. She had slept like a stone sunk in the sea. As she passed Gran’s room, she glanced in. It had a severe appearance, as though it would refuse to contain more than was already in it: narrow bed, chair, table, a small, cloudy mirror above a small chest of drawers.
Downstairs, Gran was skinning an orange and dividing it into sections. A dish of saltines sat upon the round table.
“Good morning, Elizabeth. There’s some warm water in the pan to wash up with.”
“Good morning. I’ll go out to the bathroom first.”
When she returned, the radio was playing softly on the floor next to Gran’s easel.
“When you’ve finished breakfast, you might want to look around,” Gran said. “Go up behind the outhouse and you’ll find a path that will lead you over the ridge to the other shore. It’s wilder there. There’s only one island beyond Pring and no one lives on it. The tides wash up odd things. Once I found a quite good wood carving of a rhinoceros. Strange object to find on a Maine beach. I used to gather blue mussels there on the rocks, but I slip and slide too much these days. If you want to collect some, we can steam them for lunch.”
Elizabeth nodded and ate her crackers and orange.
“Do you mind if I take some snapshots of you?” Gran asked. Elizabeth looked down at her torn jeans. “It’s not for beauty,” Gran said. “I use the snaps for drawing.”
Elizabeth shrugged. For the first time, she used the hand pump, intending to heat water to wash her dish. The rush of bluish water was immensely satisfying.
“Just brush the crumbs off the plate,” Gran said. “We can do without a few amenities here.”
Elizabeth heard the buzzing of the Polaroid. She was used to the sound. As long as she could recall, her parents had taken pictures of her. Now they would be doing the same with Stephen Lindsay, making faces and silly noises so he’d liven up for the camera. She thought of her own infant pictures. You might as well take shots of a banana in a dish.
“I’m going to work. Morning is the good time for me. My energy tends to run out like the tide as the day goes on.”
A ray of sunlight touched the old planks of the floor.
Gran held out her hand as though to touch the warmth. “Good,” she murmured.
“I’ll take a walk,” Elizabeth said.
Gran smiled vaguely, looking at her work-table.
As Elizabeth passed the outhouse, a breeze sprang up, and by the time she had emerged from the trees, the sun had cleared away the morning haze.
She found the path, narrow as a snake, faint as a tracing, leading across the glossy leaves of some kind of ground cover. It went part of the way up the ridge and petered out among rocks and sandy earth where stunted trees grew no higher than her knees. From the crest, she looked down upon a scene in which there seemed no place for humans to walk, to rest, on that turbulent edge of land, gleaming wetly, its several half-hidden coves ringing as waves broke in them. Pinkish-colored boulders pressed against the ridge as if backing away from the sea. Dark, jagged rocks rose up like stone geysers. What beach there was, was covered with stones and patches of coarse sand or thick tufts of swordlike grass. Everywhere, flung by the tides, were pieces of driftwood.
Elizabeth wiped the sweat from her face and began the descent. Once she slid and held on, gasping, to the hard-packed earth. At her back, the wind pressed like a great flat hand. Her hair hung in her eyes, tickled her mouth. At last, she came to rest on a huge rock shaped like a saucer.
She braided her hair and looked out to sea, where birds swooped and rose like torn strips of paper. She felt buoyant as the wind blew against her, and even, it seemed, through her. They had sent her away … and she didn’t care.
She wished there were a long beach; she would have run for hours. As it was, she had to pick her way among the stones. She paused in a cove to stare at a dense colony of mussels clinging to a rock, around which purplish weeds floated. She shuddered at the thought of eating them. When she bent to feel the water, her hand acted like a siphon, drawing up the coldness until she felt it in her bones. It might have been minutes or hours that she wandered along that shore. When she had decided she’d had enough of it, she found an easier slope leading up to the crest of the ridge. The lee side looked calm and tame. On the bay, she saw several small boats that would pause, move quickly on, then pause again—lobster boats, probably—and one sailboat, its canvas billowing. As she descended, the wind dropped and she felt the full heat of the sun.
Below her was the roof of the Herkimer house and the collapsed barn. As she looked down, wondering about the people who lived in the place, the boy, Aaron, came running out of a door and hurled a vermilion Frisbee into the air.
“There’s my own moon!” he shouted so loudly Elizabeth heard each word.
In a few seconds, a girl ran toward him and grabbed him. They struggled briefly until she pinned him to the ground. He lay still like a small, toppled statue. The girl sat up. Aaron, as thought electrified, sprang to his feet and raced back into the house. At that moment, the girl looked up, spotted Elizabeth, and stuck her thumbs in her ears and waggled her fingers.
When Elizabeth got back to the cottage, Gran was bending over a cabinet. “Hell is trying to get a big frying pan onto a crowded pot-and-pan shelf,” she said. “Did you see the sea? You’ve been gone for hours. Oh! Your face is so red! I should have given you something to put on. It’s hard to keep in mind all the new warnings.
”
Did Gran talk to herself when nobody was around? Elizabeth wondered.
“I saw Aaron,” she said. “He ran out of the house and his sister came right after him. Last night, I saw them, too, all walking toward your dock. He jumped a few feet ahead of them, and they acted as if he were going to run across the water to Molytown.”
“He does like to startle them. I heard he once got into their car when he was five or so and managed to start it and drive several blocks before they caught him.”
Now that it was noon and the sun was overhead, it was darker in the room. Gran was pushing her easel closer to the window.
“When you’re old,” she said, “what you want is light. Your eyes change. You begin to see much more yellow in everything. That presents an interesting problem to painters. About lunch—there’s peanut butter and jelly and some tomatoes. We have the milk we got yesterday.”
Yesterday! It seemed a week ago!
“I saw a lot of driftwood on the other shore,” Elizabeth said. “You must have some storms out here.”
“We do. Grace and I have sat in the middle of this room waiting to be blown to Oz like Dorothy and Toto. Nature’s violence doesn’t leave you much time to be scared. Human violence is something else.” She began to clean a brush. “I was staying with a friend in Texas once,” she went on, “when a hurricane hit. We had to gather up her mother’s chickens. I have a hard heart where fowl are concerned. Infuriatingly dumb they are, squawking hysterically when you’re trying to save their lives. I’ve been in an earthquake, too, in California. I was around six, I think. I’d just cracked an egg open when the first tremor struck. For some peculiar reason, I hadn’t yet understood how eggs got out of their shells. As it dripped into the sink, there was a great shudder in the little house where my parents had left me to be cared for by an elderly woman. Anyhow, I found myself on the floor. I recall creeping outdoors. A huge cloud of dust was rising in the street. When it cleared, I saw the street had opened up as though it’d been struck by a giant tomahawk.”