In the Midst of the Sea

by Sean McCarthy

  I sleep in the spare room at the front of the house. The room where Hiram’s younger brother Thomas slept when he came to visit last summer, before he left for San Francisco. Thomas is such a kind man, confident and happy, without always feeling the need to push for more, to demand more, demand better. I am sure both men once set out upon this same path, on this same island, so where did my husband veer off so terribly in a different direction?

  August 11, 1871

  Hiram led a group of camp dwellers back down to the hotel today. There were nine of us in all, walking in single-file procession, our hymnals tight to our chest, and our heads bent in prayer as we walked from the campground, across Circuit Avenue, and then out and across Ocean Park. Only Hiram held his head high as we went. At one time, Hiram would have led a group of fifty or more to approach the hotel builders and perform the Lord’s chore, but that is no longer the case—not since the incident on the wharf. Now people whisper, and walk hurriedly away as Hiram approaches.

  The day was dark, the skies threatening and the seas rough, and Hiram said that was how the Lord would have it. He says the people must see the Lord’s fury, as well as his love, kindness, and benevolence if ever they are to find him. The men on the construction site moved hurriedly, trying to get a day’s work in before the storm. We all dropped to our knees on the beach and began to sing “A Mighty Fortress is My God,” and some of the workers did stop on the scaffolding for a moment to look down and observe—a few looking on with sincere curiosity, but one or two were laughing. I thought the laughter may once again awake the Devil in Hiram, but ever since he arose from his bed, he has been behaving like a new man. He has told me the light of Christ now burns in his heart, and Jesus himself took his hand while he was in bed, carried him to the ends of the world and offered him visions. He says Jesus showed him the Pit, and the sinners burning within, and then he brought him just outside the gates of Heaven, and handed him the key. Hiram said he could still feel the key in his hand even as he woke, and he knew what it meant, he knew what he had to do. Jesus had put the light in his heart, he said, and offered him his blessing. And now his face is indeed alight, his eyes wide and as excited as the sea itself. He has been sleeping very little, and spends most of his nights communing loudly with the Lord, or sitting at his writing table, furiously writing pages and pages of what he has seen and what he has deemed his own personal covenant. He says it is his agreement he made with the Lord, a pact, promising that he will continue to bring him his minions or die trying. And now I fear, he may do just that.

  Mrs. Rhodes from across the campground was with us. She is a round, older woman with a long nose and small eyeglasses, and she is one of the few people left who still listen intently when Hiram goes to speak. Many feel that Hiram has gone too far, and are beginning to question as to whether we can possibly live peacefully with the new people pouring into the hotels and elaborate cottages going up almost daily around Ocean Park. Mrs. Rhodes has told me that she harbors no judgment upon Hiram for the incident at the wharf, and sometimes the Lord raises our hands to strike when all else has failed. A wolf among the sheep must be dealt with quickly, and severely, she has told me, and that is just what Mr. Pratt is, indeed—a wolf, she says—but I myself am not so sure. Despite Hiram’s ongoing disruptions at the building site, Mr. Pratt never appears all too riled, and he still, from time to time, attempts to speak with Hiram regarding the hotel, and what he says will be the quality of the guests they allow to rent its rooms. Christian people, he says, but Hiram will not hear it. He sees what has happened at the Pawnee House on Circuit Avenue, he says, and the class of people—men and women—coming and going from the saloon on the first floor, and he believes the Sea View only rises because the Devil is running out of room in the Pawnee House. The Devil needs more room, he says.

  The problem, I fear, is that no matter how much we sing, how much we pray, our efforts will prove futile. The building is going up so quickly, and really is becoming an impressive structure, surmounted with a tower that looks upon the sea. They have completed the roof.

  Mrs. Stephens and her nephew were with us also. Her nephew is tall with sloped shoulders, and walks with a limp. A club foot, I once heard somebody say. He is a simple man, often unwashed, and today there was much of his breakfast still left in his mustache. He does not speak, as far as I know, and neither did he sing, but he sways back and forth, following along. But Mrs. Stephens sang quite loudly, and she says she must do so because she is singing for the both of them. The nephew’s parents were reportedly lost at sea when he was still a boy, and Mrs. Stephens, now long a widow, has been caring for him ever since.

  There were still many people patrolling the wharf today despite the darkness of skies, many stopping for refreshment at the pagoda, and a band played in the bandstand in the center of the park. The Oak Bluffs Land and Wharf Company likes to keep up the illusion of a festive air despite our protests, and I have heard that it was Mr. Pratt himself, who commissioned the band—they hail from Fitchburg—their trumpets and horns and thundering bass drums drowning out our voices. But louder, Hiram kept shouting, we must sing louder. It was when the thunder finally cracked, lightning breaking the sky, that Mrs. Stephen’s nephew got up and began to run. Mrs. Stephens was soon in pursuit of him, as were the others when they noted her efforts to be futile, but when I went to stand, Hiram pressed his hand firm on my shoulder, whispering to me that we must go on. And then there we were, just the two of us singing, and the sky soon flooding down upon us. It wasn’t long before I could no longer turn the pages of my hymnal; the pages had all stuck together.

  18

  The bed-and-breakfast where Norman and Cybil were staying was a Victorian nestled on Samoset Avenue behind Ocean Park. There was a tower surmounting it, a cupola, and Cybil said it offered a great view of the sea. The couple that ran it had purchased the house after the husband had struck some money with a software company, sold his shares and bailed ship, and not long after the company had gone under. They had restored the inn to match its original splendor, refinishing the woodwork and balconies and mahogany rail on the staircase, and much of the furniture and artwork had been there for a hundred years or more.

  Diana had shown up with Sam sleeping in her arms shortly after eleven o’clock, asking for Cybil. The woman had looked at her suspiciously for a moment, the side of her face, but it was cold and it was late and she had a small child. She had asked Diana to wait in the foyer and then gone up the stairs.

  When Cybil pulled her close, Diana’s body heaved, and then she started to cry. Just for a second, and then she pulled away, wiping her eyes. “I must look like a fool,” she said.

  Cybil took her hands. “Don’t say that. This isn’t your fault. I’m going to call the police.”

  Diana shook her head. “No. Don’t. It will just make it worse. You were right. I shouldn’t have stayed. He was obviously in a bad way, and staying just made it worse. If I hadn’t of stayed it never would have happened. Everything would have been fine.”

  “You can’t go back there,” Cybil said. “He needs to be arrested. I’m going to call the police. You can stay here for a few days. There’s five bedrooms, and three of them are empty right now. I can explain what happened. And I’m sure she’ll give you a break on the cost.”

  “No, Cybil, honestly. I don’t need the pity wagon. I brought this on myself, and I’m going to have to deal with it. He just needs some help. I just want him to get some help, and then he’ll be fine.”

  “No.” Cybil shook her head. “He’s my brother, but he’s a monster. He’s just like our father. And he’s not going to get help unless it’s something he decides to do, and he won’t do that. He can’t. Look what he did to you. There’s no excuse for that, Diana. None.”

  Sam was asleep on the couch. Diana walked over to the fire, looked at her daughter. “I just need to go back to get some of our things. That’s it. And then I have to think things through.”

  “You’ve already thought thi
ngs through. You need to leave him. Now.”

  “And where am I going to go?” Diana asked. “Back to my mother’s? No way. I have too much pride to go crawling back to her. And I don’t have a job right now, so it’s not like I can afford a place of our own, and besides, Samantha is in school. She has friends here.” And she did, it was true. And as desolate as it could be in the winter, Diana had grown to love the island, the quiet and the beauty.

  “You’re just looking for excuses to stay,” Cybil said, “and you can’t do that. Sam will get over it. It’s better that she’s safe, and then she can make new friends.”

  “Oh, he wouldn’t touch her. He knows better than that. He knows I’d kill him. I would. I would kill him.”

  “You don’t know what he would do,” said Cybil. “You don’t know what he’s capable of.” She put her fingers to her chest, her heart. “I do. Believe me. I grew up with this. And besides, this is about you. You need to be safe. If you go back, it’s just going to get worse. He’ll apologize, while subtly blaming you, and then it might be better for a while, but then it will just get worse. I’ve seen it, Diana. Listen, after you get your things, you can come back up to Salem and stay with us. The apartment isn’t huge, but we have room. We can make room.” She reached over and took her hand. “Just until you get back on your feet. Okay?”

  The following day they drove to Edgartown to get some lunch, away from Oak Bluffs so Diana could relax. In the good weather, parking in town was nearly impossible, but now there were spaces all along Main and North and South Water Streets. Just a few art galleries still open, the lights soft and warm in the windows. They ate at David Ryan’s, downstairs in the pub, sports shows playing on the televisions, highlighting the football games from the day before. Diana’s stomach was in knots. She ordered a Reuben, broke it into pieces and pushed it about her plate, and Samantha ate her French fries.

  Cybil had asked Samantha if she would like to come and stay with them, with Diana, for a few days, and the little girl seemed excited, but Diana sidestepped the conversation again, saying, “We’ll see.” She wanted to leave, and yet she did not. Before Ford, she had always been independent, even in high school, and the thought of being dependent on somebody now, being a handout, even for a short period of time, was making the hollow feeling inside just swell all the more. And maybe if he did stop drinking, he could be different, she thought, not such a jackass. Maybe it was just a matter of getting him to stop. But she couldn’t say that to Cybil. She wouldn’t understand—would call it battered woman syndrome. And what if Diana told Cybil that the stress was getting to be too much, that she feared she might be having a breakdown, that she had begun to see things. People? Ghosts? And that Sam was making up people to have conversations with? What would Cybil say then? She would look at her as weak, troubled, and then what? Would she report her to DSS as an unfit mother? Unable to care for Sam? If she did, Diana had no doubt she would do it in the belief that she were doing the right thing, for Sam, and for Diana, that she would be doing it to help them, because she loved them, but it wasn’t that simple, wasn’t that easy, and Diana couldn’t bear the thought of being separated from Samantha. Maybe Cybil wouldn’t do anything at all, nothing besides offer her support. But you never knew—she had already been through too much trauma herself.

  Now, leaving the restaurant, Cybil was walking up ahead, holding Samantha’s hand. Diana was with Norman, some twenty feet behind, and she couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Samantha’s lips were going, talking and talking, and she looked happy, and Cybil was listening. They headed toward North Water Street, which led to the lighthouse. As old as Oak Bluffs was, Edgartown made it seem young. Especially here on North Water Street, the white colonial mansions, Georgian in style, lining the brick sidewalks, close together and so close to the street, towering above you and seeming to look down. To Diana it seemed as if you almost never saw anyone coming in and out of these buildings, even in the good weather, and it was almost as if each had been frozen in time, its occupants from that bygone era gone one day, never to return, leaving the shells of these grand homes, untouched and silent, waiting, not even the dust allowed to pervade inside.

  Many of the homes had been owned by sea captains, whalers, who for every six months they spent at home, spent three years at sea. Children growing, and wives quietly tending to the homes, every once in a while looking out upon the sea, never really sure if their husbands would ever return. A ship on the harbor could very well be them, and it could very well not be; there was always a chance that their ship already rested at the bottom of the ocean. Diana wondered what life was like then? Never knowing. Some women probably missing their husbands terribly, bombarded with the echoes of the empty spaces around them, and others maybe praying they would in fact never return. Their hearts slowly sinking as they saw the weathered men walking up the then streets of cobblestone, chins high and carriages erect, cabin boys in tow, dragging the captains’ sea trunks behind them. Home for now, another six months. The peace gone. Her life, his will.

  His will.

  “As a matter of fact,” Norman said to Diana, “we were going to stop by the house today regardless, even if nothing happened, and invite you up for a few days. After yesterday, we were kind of getting the feeling that a little distance for all of you might not be such a bad thing.”

  “He’s not always bad,” Diana said quietly, the words feeling heavy, false, but somehow still necessary. He was her husband, and she had taken her vows seriously, and despite everything, there had to be some loyalty. Hadn’t there? But she hated him right now, hated him.

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong,” Norman said, backtracking a little. “I’ve seen him act like a great guy. Funny and all that.” He chuckled a little. “The trouble is the other ninety-five percent of the time when he’s acting like a total asshole. He can get pretty scary. They all have their baggage in that family, Cybil included. She’s been seeing a shrink for years. That old man incurred more damage in a few short years than most fathers could do in a lifetime. And believe me, I bet his father did the same thing to him. Probably beat the hell out of him. That’s how it works. It’s all cyclical. It never ends.”

  “Well, it could end if they wanted it to. Anything can end if you want it to.” The wind came in off the water, sharp and cold.

  “Do you think so?” Norman asked. “I’m not sure. Think of how you feel when you lose your temper, how you react. Whether you scream, slam your palm against the table, throw things or sulk. When your emotions get away from you, you do what you do. And anger is one of the most controlling and debilitating emotions we have. Rage can consume you. Just think how hard it would be to change how we react. We react as we do because that’s who we are. It’s ingrained in us—both before and after we’re born.”

  “You sound like a psychologist,” Diana said.

  “Well, I’m trying to think like one. Just to put it in perspective, I mean.”

  “So you think anyone who is born of an abused parent will be an abuser themselves.”

  “No. Not necessarily. I think the wiring for that sort of temperament has to be there to begin with, but then that person would have to be abused, too. And if that happens? Forget it. No shot.”

  Diana looked ahead again at Samantha. She wondered how much Sam processed what was going on, how much she thought about it. Diana knew that Ford scared Samantha at times, but it hadn’t been like that early on. She had been quite attached to him at first, her eyes lighting up every time she saw him. Diana thought of days gone past, better days. Ford taking her to the planetarium at the Museum of Science, playing Frisbee in the park, D.W. Fields. Climbing the Blue Hills, and feeding the reindeer at the bottom in the November chill. He was capable of being a good man. She had once been sure of it, and now, at least had to hope for it. He was just … a mess. And now it had been some time since Diana had seen that light in Sam’s eyes. She wondered what he was doing to her, psychologically, emotionally, what she was doing to her, the
two of them living together, and yet whenever she thought of leaving for good, she found herself racked with guilt. Never marrying Samantha’s biological father, then marrying Ford, then taking her away? Leaving her with just one parent? Again? Ford had never touched her, never hit her, she was sure of it, so maybe he had some self-control. Maybe he had something.

  “No shot, huh?” Diana said to Norman. “Thanks for making me feel good.”

  “Well, I’m not trying to make you feel bad,” he said, “but I am trying to make you see that it’s not your fault, and unfortunately, there’s probably not much you can do about it.”