In the Midst of the Sea

by Sean McCarthy

  “And what do you do?” He flipped the sheet over. Started on another. “To release the tension, I mean?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I run.”

  “You run?”

  “Yeah, usually just a few miles though. Sometimes four or five. And I read. Spend time with Samantha. Sometimes drink a glass of wine. I used to smoke a little pot.”

  He smiled again, looking on the verge of laughter. “Pot? Like a pipe?”

  “Sometimes,” she said, laughing with him. “What do you do?”

  He shrugged. “I paint. I read. I walk around and look at the old houses. I like wine, too. But I’ve never been much of a smoker.”

  “Never?” she asked. She didn’t think she knew anyone their age who had never tried pot. And him being an artist …

  “Never,” he said.

  “And what about sex?” she asked, and as soon as she did, she couldn’t believe the words had left her mouth. And this time he blushed.

  “That one,” he said, “has always been my weakness. Sex, and magic, and spirituality. I think they all go hand in hand.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. And how about you?”

  “How about me what?”

  “Does sex work for you like that?”

  Diana felt her heart stutter, rising in her throat. “I’m not sure sex works for me at all anymore.”

  Michael smiled. “Okay. Well, let me ask you one more thing.”

  Diana pulled at her earlobe. “What’s that?”

  “Do you ever lie to yourself, Diana?”

  The painting was half-finished, maybe a little bit more, and Diana’s heart jumped when she looked at it. He had her just as she was where she stood, her arms about her as if she were cold, but in the painting, she wasn’t looking at him, but was looking off toward something distant. And going by the background, she imagined he had her looking off toward the sea. For she was standing on a wharf, and rising up behind her was an outline, ill defined but there all the same, of the Sea View Hotel.

  41

  May 2, 1872

  Still in the cellar. The earth is growing warmer outside—I can feel it—and in the morning, even through the stone foundation, I can hear the birds. I wish I could see them. Wish I could see anything. But there is nothing. Not even Hiram.

  It was not always this way. If anyone is ever to find this, I wish them to know that. When I met him, back in Boston, he was a good man. Perhaps a bit overly righteous, but he seemed so resolute in his beliefs that I couldn’t help but admire him. My father admired him, too. His war record, his piety. My father had introduced us, having met Hiram at a lecture on John and Charles Wesley at Boston University. He comes from an old family, he said, a good family—my father had looked into it. Oh, Papa, if you could see him now. But even if he could, would it be any different? Papa is older now, his wits long behind him, and even when I have been able to get him a letter these last two years, he has rarely answered, making little sense when he does. And now I am more Hiram’s wife, than I am my father’s daughter. What say would he have? In anything? But back then, of course, it was different. Hiram would come to my father’s house on Court Street in mid-spring, walking with me past the golden dome of the State House, and down the hill, through the common, and past the flowers of the public gardens, across the bridge and above the swans, my aunt Cecilia never far behind. We had great plans, once he proposed. He had mentioned the camp meetings once or twice, but never dwelled on them, only on his house in Edgartown down on North Water Street. He kept an apartment in Boston then, too, and did so throughout the courtship. He brought me flowers and he read me poems, and then he asked if on Saturdays, I would be good enough to sit with him and read the Scripture.

  And of course I said yes. He was so kind back then, so charming, that if it happened again, if I didn’t know what I know now, I am sure I would say yes again. And now where are we? Locked away, locked together, possibly forever. And I fear forever is coming too soon. I am so hungry. Weak.

  Please Lord, do not forget me.

  May 5, 1872

  I am now nearing the end of the tenth day without food. Just water. I feel dizzy, and am having trouble standing to my feet. Does he know this? Does he realize what he has done? As cruel as Hiram can be, I can’t believe he would leave me here to starve, not to die like this. Something must have happened. I thought I heard a voice today, coming through walls, and then up through the well. A distant voice, calling my name, and sounding as if trying to speak through water. I felt seen without being able to see, and I then realized it was my mind playing tricks on me. The tricks of hunger are causing me to hear and see things that were never really there. I thought of my parents, my departed brother, and of people who had lived on this land before. Had anyone ever lived on this land before? But even if they did, that made no sense, for how would they know my name? No one knows my name anymore. Hiram has taken it, crushed it, and crushed me right along with it. There is a stream beneath the house that feeds the well—he has told me that before. So perhaps the voices come from the stream. Water. The sea. Spirits.

  And now he is leaving me to join them.

  May 7, 1872

  I have seen them, they come and sit with me at night after it gets darker, and even sometimes throughout the course of the day. Yet, one day blurs into another now. Time keeps going, but has also somehow stopped. Or maybe it just is not. The spirits are women, but sometimes I look twice, and they seem more like children. Small, lithe, and their image not quite clear. I think I recognize them, and then I do not. And then I see my mother, my grandfather, and my brother, still a child, the city landscape behind them. But these things I know I am not seeing. Unless maybe it is the cellar I am not seeing. Which is real? The illusion or the nightmare? I can commune with everyone now, the living and the dead, and the pain from my hunger has all but faded. The water sustains me.

  May 8, 1872

  Much noise upstairs now. Bangings. And a voice shouting for the Lord, shouting at the Lord. Cursing. It seems so distant, but I know it must be Hiram. He must have returned from his quest. Successful or not, I don’t think I will ever know. The best thing to do would be to hide, pretend that I’ve fled, but I’m not sure I have the strength nor the will. And as one world has opened up upon the other, I’m not sure it matters. I can’t think clearly. He is calling out again now. Screaming my name.

  The journal ended there, and Diana had to wonder if Elizabeth had ended along with it. Or what may have happened to her. If she got away. She liked to think that she got away, but something in her heart told her she did not. For if she did, why would she come back to this place to spend eternity. If it was in fact her, Cassie, that she heard. But maybe it wasn’t her at all, maybe it wasn’t at all. Maybe it was just Sam’s imagination, and Diana’s unraveling mind. Noises and fatigue getting the best of her. But she had to know, had to find out. She supposed she could ask Ford if he knew any family history involving the house. She doubted it, but even if he did, would he tell her?

  It was late now, nearly two a.m., Ford at work and Samantha sound asleep, the lights down and the house quietly creaking around her. If nothing else, she had wished for the journal to be hidden, and Diana wouldn’t want to chance Ford stumbling across it. She stepped slowly down the stairs, and quickly into the cellar. Back to the atlas, hiding the journal inside. And then quickly back up. She was shutting the door, locking and dead-bolting it behind her, when the sound of the wind in the trees picked up outside, and then something else. The distant voice of a woman, softly singing, a sad, sweet song, the words too far off to come clear.

  42

  April. Diana couldn’t sleep. She could hear the radio playing downstairs. Pink Floyd—“Welcome to the Machine.” The vibrations coming through the floor. Ford was down there with his friend Al from work. She looked at the clock. Another two hours and they would be gone. They would have to be. Like vampires, they needed to be back before the day shift started dwindling in.

 
Ford was drinking again daily. He had been building toward it up until Barry and Phillip’s visit, and then the day-long binge had set the snowball in motion. She shouldn’t have invited them to visit, she thought, should have known, but then again, she figured, if it wasn’t then, it would just be another time, another occasion, another excuse. There was always an excuse. He had stuck to beer the first few days after they left, then moved to vodka, then whiskey. And it had picked up just all the more since he had returned from off island. He didn’t tell her where he had been, and she didn’t ask. It was better not to ask. He did ask her what she had been up to, which was unusual, and his eyes seemed to follow her a little bit more, making her suspicious. He had been even more sullen than usual since he got back, and more detached, drinking straight from the bottle on the balcony as he stared at the stars. And maybe it did have something to do with the news about his father, but the thing was, she had yet to see him really drunk, stumbling. Just the heavy red eyelids, glassy, empty eyes. And then when he woke, irritable, a full pot of coffee, and two to three nips before going into work. He didn’t drink the nips in front of her, but she had been finding them in the trash, buried.

  She had been thinking about Michael. It wasn’t good to think about Michael, wasn’t right, and still, she couldn’t help herself. Before she left, on the day of their painting, he had gone downstairs and fixed them a drink. Some sort of martini, cold and delicious, tasting like apples, and almost immediately putting her at ease. She liked being up in the octagonal room, surrounded by the views, the park, Circuit, the pond, and the sea—the tempest quieting with the coming of spring—she liked being up there with him.

  When the alcohol started going to her head, she had looked at her watch again, saying she really had to leave, which was true, but she was also beginning to wonder if she trusted herself alone with him. And if she couldn’t trust herself, then who could she trust? With each passing year it felt as if the list grew shorter. Michael said he was leaving on Sunday, but before she went out the door, he said he would give her his address. Scribbling on a piece of paper, he folded it in two and slipped it in her pocket. “If you ever need anything,” he said, “don’t hesitate to get in touch.”

  Diana had leaned up and kissed his cheek, lingering just for a moment.

  “And, Diana?” he said as she started down the walkway. He looked up toward the sky, and then he looked at her and nodded. “Be careful,” he said.

  She wondered again what she would have done if he had tried to touch her, how she would have handled it. It had been so long since anyone had tried to touch her other than Ford, that the whole thing seemed foreign, and yet she was sure he wanted to touch her. She had thought of him now, and he was there for a moment in that murky state between consciousness and dreams, voices and images mixing what was fantastic with what was still quite real, the wind outside and clock downstairs, and she had felt herself responding, wet, aroused. Wanting someone to touch her. It hadn’t been like that with anyone for a long time, certainly not with Ford; his touch now just made her tense. If he was in a good mood he might laugh and tell her she was a prude, that she was old before her time. But she wasn’t old and she wasn’t a prude, she just didn’t like him, couldn’t, and what was worse, she now realized, she no longer loved him. And it seemed absurd, because she barely knew him, but she could, she thought, love Michael.

  She wondered what it would take to move back. Not to Brockton. She never wanted to return to Brockton. But maybe somewhere close to Boston. Weymouth, or Braintree, or Quincy. Or maybe in Boston itself. Michael said he had a place in Boston. Samantha was young enough where they could live there for a few years, and then maybe move back out to the suburbs. Buy a house. Their own house. She could get a nursing job quick enough, she was sure of it. She imagined she could even get a job out here on the island, the hospital, but if she stayed on the island, Ford would never let her be. She was sure of that, too. He would haunt her.

  Now she heard Al jabbering downstairs, and knew they were drunk. She figured they were playing darts. Usually if Ford brought someone home from work during the middle of his shift, they would drink and play darts. If there were more than two of them playing, it could get fairly loud, but now she could only hear Al—a muffled, slightly high-pitched voice, losing its power as it came through the floor—but no sound from Ford. They must have been down there two hours or more when he came upstairs. The door opening and a slant of light spreading across the room. Diana feigned sleep; she wasn’t in the mood to get up and fix them something to eat.

  She felt him watching her, though, and as he moved closer she could smell his breath. Whiskey. He put his hand on her shoulder and whispered in her ear.

  “Hi, sweetie. Are you awake?”

  Diana didn’t move. He shook her shoulder a little, then with his other hand, cupped her buttocks beneath the blanket. “Are you awake?” he said again.

  “No, I’m not.” She shook him off, shifting on the bed, moving away from him. Ford took a seat on the edge. Reached out for her shoulder again.

  “Why don’t you come downstairs for a little while? I have my friend Al over. You remember Al?”

  “No,” she said, lying. Of course she remembered Al. Obnoxious Al. Late thirties, potbelly. Thin little mustache. Hair slicked over the top of his scalp with long curls around his neckline. He laughed at everything Ford said, and he smelled like Aqua Velva.

  “Sure, you do,” Ford said. “He was over here with me a few weeks ago. I was thinking you might want to have a drink with us.”

  “Well, you can forget it,” she said. “I have to get up with Sam in the morning, and then I have a dentist appointment. I can’t.”

  “Yeah, but you can go back to bed after, right? The dentist shouldn’t come before your husband. Come on.”

  “No, Ford!” she snapped. “I need to sleep!”

  “Come on.”

  “No!”

  Ford sighed. He was quiet for a moment. Diana hated the quiet with him. She could suddenly hear her heart.

  “Well, I wasn’t going to bring it up,” he said at last, “but you know, I did you a big favor when your brother and his boyfriend were over a little while back. I could have been a real jerk, been antisocial and everything, but I stayed up and socialized all night. I didn’t even say anything about them being gay or anything like that. I didn’t even make fun of the stupid séance stuff. I went right along with it.” He hesitated again. “I actually had a really good time with them, and that got me thinking that maybe that’s been the problem all along. Maybe we don’t spend enough time together, socially, doing things with each other’s friends, trying to please each other. Maybe if we did, we’d be that much closer, and not fight so much. I know Phillip and his little friend there are your family, not technically friends, but you’re like friends when you hang out together, and you get to cook together and gossip, talk about flowers and show tunes and all that stuff.” He was quiet again, waiting. “Come on. Just one drink? You won’t even have to get dressed—Al doesn’t care—you can just put on your bathrobe or something.”

  “Why do you even want me down there?” She looked at the clock. “It’s after three in the morning. If you want something to eat, there’s leftovers in the fridge.”

  “It’s not that. I’m not even hungry.” Ford caressed her shoulder. “Al was saying how much fun he had with you last time, so I thought I’d come get you.”

  “I cooked you guys some grilled cheese and went back to bed.”

  “Yeah, but he really liked you. He thought you were cool.”

  “That’s great. Lie to him—tell him I think he’s cool, too, and we’ll call it a day.” She moved away again.

  “Come on, one drink?”

  “Ford—”

  “Just one drink, and you can go back to bed. I promise.”

  Diana squeezed her eyes tight. He wasn’t going to leave, and if he wasn’t going to leave, she wasn’t going to sleep. It might be quicker, better, she thought,
to just go down, fix the drink, weak, slug it and go back to bed. Make him happy. She assumed once she got down there he would ask her to fix them something to eat again—put her on the spot in front of Al—and then that would be that. Al would think she was “cool” again. Over and out.

  “One drink?” she said.

  “Just one,” he said, “I promise.”

  She sat up on the bed, swinging her legs to the floor, Ford beside her, and her nightgown up around her middle. Ford looked down. He reached over and put a hand on her bare thigh, slipping down and inside and holding it there. He put the fingers of his other hand under her chin, and turned her head to face him, leaning in to kiss her. A ripple of tension ran up Diana’s back, her neck sinking into her shoulders. Everything tight. He moved his hand farther up along the inside of her thigh, pushing and probing. If she was going downstairs, she thought, she was going to have to put her underwear on. Ford drew back, his eyes at half-mast, and his lips barely parted. A bit of spittle she could see in the light coming in from the moon.

  “You look really sexy in that nightgown,” he said.

  “It’s an old Red Sox jersey.”

  “I know, but I like that look. It’s playful. You look really sexy in it.”

  “I thought you wanted to go downstairs,” she whispered.

  “I do. But first I just want to sit here and look at you. Kiss you.” He leaned closer again. “I love kissing you.”

  Maybe he was drunker than he she thought. This wasn’t Ford. Ever. They used to kiss a lot when they were dating, but now that seemed too far back to remember. She didn’t want to remember. The smell on him was beginning to make her feel sick to her stomach again.

  “I love you so much,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about that lately. How awesome you are, what a jerk I’ve been. And you’re so hot. I don’t think I’ve ever really appreciated how hot you are. It’s almost like greedy that I get to keep you all to myself.” He tilted her head, began kissing her neck. She hadn’t reciprocated. Couldn’t. Not yet. Everything from a few months back still felt much too close. She felt nothing for him, and yet she didn’t want to be cruel. She put her arms around him, rubbed his back a little. Mechanical.