by Paula Fox
Elizabeth had made herself a peanut-butter-cracker sandwich while Gran talked. Suddenly, she fell silent. Elizabeth glanced at her. Gran was looking back, an expression of uncertainty on her face. She held the paintbrush in the air as though not only her words had been arrested, but her cleaning.
“I seem to be trying to tell you everything that’s ever happened to me,” she said, her voice touched with surprise. “You’ll end up knowing nearly as much about me as Will did.” She gestured toward one of the drawings of Elizabeth’s grandfather.
Was she asking for reassurance? Elizabeth didn’t want to be the person to give it to her. Then Gran turned away and went on with her work.
There were difficult moments with Gran—when she had recited that poem about the western wind, and now when she seemed almost apologetic. Elizabeth ate her sandwich. It was hardly fair that along with being shipped away from home, she was expected to make a grown-up feel it was all right to talk about herself. The crackers were stale and the peanut butter dry. Her gloom was coming back, gray like the morning light. But she couldn’t sit there silently forever. She cleared her throat.
“Didn’t you live with your parents?”
“Barely,” Gran said. She came to the table and sat down across from Elizabeth. “My father was an actor. My mother didn’t know what a child was. I was left with various people. The old woman in California was one of the nicest.”
“Was she mad because you cracked the egg?”
Gran smiled. “She never knew. The earthquake covered up for me.”
“Daddy never told me about your father and mother.”
“Family history can get stale—like those crackers—and sink out of sight. And it’s not always a bad thing. When you asked me about the storms on the island, I remembered all those natural catastrophes, like a string of firecrackers going off. I didn’t mention the storm at sea.” She smiled broadly. Was she making fun of herself? Or of Elizabeth?
“Was your father in the movies?” Elizabeth was interested in that possibility. She imagined herself telling Nancy that her great-grandfather had been a movie star in the old Gary Cooper days.
“For a few years. He never got more than bit parts. Once he was the second male lead in a play that ran in New York for three months. Not a bad run in those days. He didn’t do well at all as an actor. After he and my mother were divorced, he got steady work as manager in a men’s clothing store in Boston. The owner thought he’d please the customers. He was so handsome and winsome.”
“Did Daddy know them?”
“He met them each several times … not the same as knowing them. They both died young, in their fifties.” She was looking at Elizabeth intently. “Like Will,” she added quietly.
Some emotion of Gran’s was about to wash over her and leave her as bare as the wave-scoured boulders on that other, wilder shore. Suddenly, like something glimpsed from the corner of an eye, a picture formed in her mind of a small boy and a young woman, walking slowly down a street, empty save for those two figures. She knew who it was she had imagined in that instant—Gran and Daddy years ago, alone as they had been.
Gran would answer anything she asked. But she wasn’t going to ask. She got up and strode across the room to look at the painting on the easel. She wasn’t going to feel someone else’s feeling. It was too unfair!
Gran came and stood behind her. “That’s a watercolor wash,” she said. “Ocean, sky, shore. It’s mostly what I’ve been doing lately. Though I am going to make some drawings of you from the snaps I’m taking.”
“Will you have a show this year in Camden?” Elizabeth asked, hearing a tremor in her own voice. It came from relief, she knew, that they were talking about something else, not those long-ago days.
“I don’t know,” Gran said.
Voices, a child laughing, made them both turn to the door. Grace got up from the red sweater and ran across the room to stand near them.
“The Herkimers are taking their daily dip,” Gran said.
Through the open door, Elizabeth saw Mrs. Herkimer near the dock, wearing a black bathing suit with a wavy skirt and a long string of pearls. Mr. Herkimer was standing in water up to his knees. The girl who had waggled her fingers at Elizabeth was swimming toward shore. Aaron splashed and laughed in the shallows.
“The boy is the only one having fun,” remarked Elizabeth.
“That often appears to be the case,” said Gran. “Don’t you want to take a swim?”
“I couldn’t even wade in that water.”
Mr. Herkimer bent and threw water on his face. He looked up blankly. He had a large, fleshy face with a mustache on the upper lip that was so thin he might have drawn it with a pen dipped in black ink. As he plodded awkwardly out of the water, his wife plucked a towel from a canvas bag, shook it, and walked down to him, holding it out. He took it and buried his face in it. Elizabeth decided she didn’t like him.
“Can’t he get his own towel?” she asked.
“Is it a bad thing that between being born and dying, a person should be handed a towel?” Gran asked coolly.
“I just meant—” Elizabeth began to protest.
But Gran took hold of her arm, interrupting whatever she was going to say. “Let’s go out and meet them.”
After the introductions were over, Mrs. Herkimer remarked, “You have noticed my pearls, Elizabeth. They’re real. I would never, of course, wear anything that wasn’t real.”
“I can see you’re Cora Ruth’s grandchild,” Mr. Herkimer said to her, but looking at his wife as though to find out if she agreed with him. Deirdre had emerged from the water and was staring up at the ridge, shivering.
“Manners, Deirdre,” said her mother. “And put on your robe at once.”
“Hello,” Deirdre said without looking at Elizabeth.
But Aaron ran out of the water, grinning. “Take my ice-cold hand,” he demanded, thrusting it toward her. She barely touched it with her fingertips. “She thinks I’m repulsive,” Aaron said gleefully.
“Hush!” commanded Mrs. Herkimer. “Deirdre! What did I tell you? Cover up! You’ll get pneumonia. John, will you kindly see to these children?” She turned to Elizabeth. “It’s rather nice to see a new face on this splendid shore.”
“Can I bring anything for supper?” Gran asked stolidly.
“Don’t tell me your ice is holding up!” exclaimed Mrs. Herkimer. “I’m glad that fool is coming tomorrow in his broken-down boat.”
“That’s a beautiful old launch, Helen,” Gran said. “And why on earth do you call Jake a fool?”
“I have my reasons,” Mrs. Herkimer said mysteriously.
Deirdre let out a snort of laughter. Aaron began to run in ever-widening circles, shouting, “Grown-ups! Grown-ups!”
“You’ll have to take your chances, tonight,” Mrs. Herkimer said to Gran and Elizabeth. “I’ll throw something together, though you can be sure I’ll go to some trouble.”
They walked away at last, Mr. Herkimer keeping a firm grip on Aaron’s arm as he wriggled like a fish on a hook.
“Does she really want us to come?” Elizabeth asked Gran when the Herkimers were out of earshot.
“Helen usually sounds a bit put out. Pay no mind.”
Elizabeth wished she could pay no mind to the kind of things Gran said. What was wrong with Mr. Herkimer having to get his own towel? Oh, it was all too much here! Thinking about what this meant and that meant. Back home, she hardly had to notice her parents. They were just there.
When they went back into the cottage, Gran took an apple from a basket. “I’m going to lie down now. Maybe you’d like to explore this part of the island. Or read.” She took a bite of the apple. “I have some books of poetry and some of history, a few on Maine. If you’re interested …”
“I have books to read for school,” Elizabeth said curtly.
Gran went on as though Elizabeth hadn’t spoken. “If you go past the Herkimers’, you’ll find a tiny cemetery. When I had the walls taken down he
re, I found old newspapers stuck to the laths that must have been used for insulation. The date on one was 1847. That means there have been people on Pring for one hundred forty-five years! There are only three gravestones in the cemetery. The names have worn away except for one.” Gran leaned against the table. “Here’s a poem to say to yourself when you’re there:
“In this little urn is laid
Prudence Baldwin, once my maid
From whose happy spark here let
Spring the purple violet.
“Robert Herrick wrote that around 1640. Perfect, isn’t it?”
Gran’s smile was pure mischief.
Elizabeth bent to stroke Grace. She had tried to shut her ears as Gran recited. She had clenched herself like a fist. Yet despite her effort, the lines of the poem settled into memory. Brainwashed by my own grandmother, she thought to herself.
She heard Gran going up the stairs. A moment later, her voice floated down. “Don’t forget to write a note home. We can send it back with Jake, tomorrow.”
There were some sheets of paper on the work-table. Elizabeth took one, and a pencil from one of the jars.
She wrote: I’m here. Gran tells lots of stories. The water’s too cold to swim in. I’m okay.
She hesitated, then signed only her name.
5
After writing the note home, Elizabeth looked down at her stingy, graceless lines, folded the paper quickly, and slipped it into an envelope Gran had left for her. Her parents would know she was offended—if they didn’t already—but these days, it would hardly matter to them.
She felt listless, as she sometimes did on one of the steely cold days in late November when she came home from school after dull hours in the classroom and could find nothing she wanted to eat in the refrigerator.
In the early dark of such an afternoon, as they met in the kitchen, her mother had told her about the baby that was coming. Elizabeth had felt her knees go weak. The headlights of a car sweeping across the windows had made her blink and cover her face with her hand. Her mother had asked, “Elizabeth? Are you all right?”
She knew she ought to begin reading one of the books on the table upstairs. But, instead, she went out of the cottage into the bright afternoon. She was stuck on the island; she might as well get to know it.
Instead of going past the outhouse to reach the Herkimer place and the cemetery beyond it, she followed the shoreline to that sandy point where the birds came to sit at sunset. The beach on the farther side of the point was composed almost entirely of stones bearded with green waterweed. Above it lay the gradual slope of a meadow of tall grass, through which a path had been worn. The rambling old house sat in a dazzle of sunlight, its weather-beaten clapboard burnished. It was as silent as a monument. Had they all disappeared?
Mr. Herkimer suddenly stepped out of the shadow of the barn and looked intently up at a broken window. She had an impulse to tiptoe past. Then, as had happened in the morning, Aaron sped out of the house; a door slammed. In a second, Mrs. Herkimer appeared. The door slammed again.
“Aaron! Come back here!” she cried. Then they saw Elizabeth. Aaron halted. With both hands, Mrs. Herkimer smoothed down her feathery hair.
“Where are you going?” the little boy shouted.
“None of your business,” said Mrs. Herkimer. She smiled distantly at Elizabeth. “He has to know everything,” she said.
“I want to know everything,” Aaron said.
“It’s okay. I’m going to take a look at the little cemetery Gran told me about,” Elizabeth said.
“You have to take me with you,” said Aaron.
From beside the barn, Mr. Herkimer called, “Aaron, don’t be always telling people what to do.”
Aaron’s dark eyes were fixed on Elizabeth’s face as though to read it.
“I can be of help,” he said seriously. “I know the way.”
The Herkimers were silent. Elizabeth had the impression everything was up to her. She hesitated, not wanting the company, or the responsibility, of a small boy, especially such an unpredictable one. The Herkimers were watching her closely now. She felt as though they were resting their combined weight on her.
“He can come with me,” she said at last, thinking to herself—just this one time.
“You’ll have to watch him every moment,” Mrs. Herkimer said, her fingers constantly catching and letting go of her pearls. “He likes to scare one. He likes to jump off high rocks just to startle. He doesn’t look where he’s going.”
Elizabeth had not heard a parent speaking in front of her child as though he wasn’t even there. She felt a faint indignation for Aaron’s sake, and was glad she had said he could come with her.
“I’ll let you watch me,” Aaron said. “I’m calm today—easy to watch.”
“Go ahead, then,” Mrs. Herkimer said. “And behave yourself—”
“Or else!” Aaron cried gleefully. “I know all about or else. Come on, Elizabeth!” And he bounded around the house, under a wash line, past a woodpile, and into a grove of slender trees whose white trunks glowed like straight chalk lines among the surrounding pines. Twigs crackled as Aaron ran ahead of her.
“Wait up,” she demanded.
He paused to look back at her. His face, dappled in sunlight, then shade, glimmered briefly like a face in a dream. He went on.
She emerged from the little wood to see him streaking across another long, narrow field, bound on one side by the bay, on the other by the slope that led to the crest, bare of trees here, and steeper than it was at the other end of the island. It was forbidding, too, with fanglike black rocks rising from the earth in clusters like the remains of prehistoric creatures.
Aaron stopped beneath a tree whose upheld branches formed the shape of a goblet. He was smiling. A few feet away from where he stood, Elizabeth saw three mossy gravestones, all awry, tumbled like blocks. Aaron put his finger to his lips. “We have to whisper,” he said softly. “We mustn’t wake them.”
“They’re dead,” Elizabeth stated.
“Dead, but not gone,” he retorted.
“You mean, ghosts? Are you trying to scare me?”
“Why? What for?” Aaron asked. “If you got really scared and started screaming, I’d go mad! I’d have to part the waters and escape to the mainland!” He skittered around, searching the ground until he found a stick. He held it up.
“Do you know about Moses’ parting the waters of the Red Sea?” he asked. “If the wind was right to help me, I might do the same. After all, Aaron was Moses’ brother. Then we could walk across the bay to Molytown.”
Elizabeth knelt to look at the gravestones. There were very faint indentations on two of them. On the third, she could make out the dates: 1859–1864. She touched the stone with one finger, tracing the numbers.
“Here’s someone who was only five,” she said pensively.
“Indian massacre,” Aaron declared. “And if it wasn’t for us coming, they’d still be here in their swift canoes, hunting giant otters and lobsters as big as dogs.”
“You don’t know if it was an Indian massacre,” she said. “It could have been a disease.”
“I’m right,” he said. “My uncle Fred told me and he knows all about history and Indians. I’d be with him now if he hadn’t gotten sick. They leave me with him every summer, you know, because they think I’m safer there. They don’t know Uncle Fred takes me to Mount Baxter. We climb a lot worse rocks than the ones here. Well, what they don’t know won’t hurt them. Except they’ll find out someday. My mother will. She always finds out.”
“Why would the Indians have bothered with a tiny island like this?” asked Elizabeth.
“Don’t argue,” Aaron said. “We can just have our own thoughts.” He slid to the ground and leaned against the child’s gravestone. “Let’s sit here. It’s cozy, in a way, and the sun makes me sleepy.”
Elizabeth, irritated yet amused, sat down beside him. She hadn’t paid attention to young children for a long time, especial
ly small boys, who seemed senseless to her with their running about and shouting and knocking things over.
“Your gran is a spy,” Aaron said suddenly.
“What a dumb thing to say!”
“Maybe it’s dumb. But I’m right. She spies on us and then goes and draws and paints us when we’re not there.”
“But she’s a painter,” Elizabeth protested.
“She made fun of us … though I liked the way she painted Deirdre all twisted up, wearing that ugly pink dress.”
It was pleasant to sit there in the sun, gulls sailing over the bay, bugs ticking in the grass, a breeze stirring the leaves of the tree.
“Now I’m thinking about how hungry I am,” Aaron said.
“I’ll give you something else to think about, a poem that’s right for this place.” She recited the lines about Prudence Baldwin and the purple violet, and was rather pleased when she’d finished.
Aaron was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “If you say ‘here let’ fast, it sounds like a flower, too. Also, toilet.”
She looked at him apprehensively. Was he about to explode into the silliness little kids went in for when they heard certain words, like toilet?
But his expression was serious. “You can do anything with words,” he said. “Except eat them. Deirdre says to me, ‘I’ll make you eat those words.’ I can’t do that. You can’t take them back, either. They sit there like big damp frogs. Why did you come to Pring, anyhow?”
“I was sent away by my parents,” Elizabeth replied, and she was startled at the harshness of her own voice.
“I wish my parents would send me away,” Aaron said drowsily. “I’d take my canoe a thousand miles from here and build a tepee in the forest.”
He had slipped sideways so he was leaning against her. She gazed down at him. His eyes were closed. His dark lashes rested against his pale skin. She moved slightly but he didn’t open his eyes. He’d fallen asleep, just like a baby does, suddenly.
For a long time, Elizabeth sat there. Aaron grew heavier as her thoughts grew vaguer. She looked at small clouds on the horizon, at the bay, at the distant line of the mainland. Below her lay the bones of people who had been alive over one hundred years ago, who must have sat in the sun as she and Aaron were doing this day. There had been houses on the island, boats on the shore, the rattle of china, wood smoke from a chimney, a child’s voice crying out, perhaps the voice of the child who now lay beneath them. Maybe Aaron was right—dead but not gone. After all, she was thinking about them.