Light Over Water

by Noelle Carle

  Remick made no effort to try to dissuade Owen from his enthusiasm over all the war news. He answered Davey’s questions about the battles and the Germans, but as if he were reading accounts from the newspaper, as if none of it actually happened to him.

  Alison found it a great relief to have him home, but was frustrated that he was so different. “I can’t see the old Remick there,” she confided to Esther as they walked home together a few days after the funeral. The air had changed and felt like a layer of velvet on their skin. The sunlight pooled around them as it set in a peachy glow and they carried their sweaters, too warm now to wear them.

  “He’s there, Allie. I think he just has to get used to…the changes. The losses. And to being home and knowing that everyone knows how hard it must be for him.” She smiled and looked away. Alison realized suddenly that Remick had talked with Esther more than she thought. She felt an irrational flare of jealousy when Esther spoke again. “It gives me such comfort, him coming home when he did.” She gripped Alison’s hand suddenly. “It’s almost as if it were planned, isn’t it? I felt I couldn’t bear it, Momma dying, and I prayed that God would help me. Then Remick came home!”

  Alison watched her best friend’s shadowed profile. She squeezed her hand back as they walked up the path to the Eliot’s house. She doubted suddenly that God had anything to do with it.

  Chapter Six

  Grim Necessity Indeed

  With a basketful of damp laundry under one trembling arm and baby Caroline clutched in the other, Mary Reid carefully crossed the back yard to the clothesline. The younger boys, Richard and Peter, were playing in a patch of dirt with a set of blocks their father had fashioned from wood scraps. The ten year old twins, Ivy and Isabella were taking turns on the swing that was hanging from the branch of a maple tree. Caroline, at seventeen months, was more than old enough to walk, but she cried every time Mary put her down. Her white blonde curls were sweaty and her cheeks had splotchy red spots that got hot when she cried. She whimpered even when she was carried, missing her momma and the things only she could provide.

  Earlier, the twins cared for Caroline while Mary, Esther and Cleo did the washing. Mary was used to doing her own bits of washing; not the clothing and bedding for eleven people, including diapers. Nothing had been done for a week since the funeral, so Mary told the girls at school on Friday that she would come over to help. Now her back was knotted with sore muscles, her arms were throbbing with pain and the skin on her hands was raw and wrinkled. But Esther and Cleo moved easily, running the clothes between the ringers, then whipping them out, getting each other soaked. They laughed while they were hanging the clothes and diapers, and draping sheets over a hedge of cedar. The sun was strong, married to a stiff breeze, which made short work of the wet clothes.

  Mary hung up her basketful, leaving Caroline in the grass by the basket. The child screwed up her face and cried again, so her skin flushed red and her eyes were tight bunches. “Oh, give way, baby, give way,” Mary muttered as she lifted one of Reg’s shirts and shook it. She grieved for the man as much as for the loss of her friend. Reg was the opposite of Caroline; empty, lifeless, not speaking of his wife’s death or the overwhelming loss she knew he felt. But Mary could read it in his eyes. It was the face she used to see in the mirror every day, back when she first lost Ian.

  That morning, before he went to work, Ivy ran to him to fix one braid that had come loose from its ribbon. Reg sat up as if slapped. Then he looked carefully at the braid and held out his hand for the ribbon. Mary met his eyes with a look of mute sympathy from the bottom of the stairs where she was sorting laundry. Reg held one end of the braid awkwardly, while he twisted the ribbon into a knot. The braid was loose, but his daughter looked at it happily. She circled her arms around his brown neck and whispered something that caused his lips to tremble. Then she kissed his cheek and skipped out of the kitchen. He rose abruptly and left for the day without a word or a look back at his family. He needs a good cry, Mary concluded; then she followed her own advice, wiping her tears on the dirty laundry.

  She knew the utter misery residing in him. The younger children were transparent in their grief, crying at intervals, cheerful and unblemished by it at others. The older children, especially the boys, tried not to show their feelings. But they acted either stoic or surly in the classroom. Esther had stopped coming to school, which grieved Mary in itself, but Reg could not care for the home and do his work too. Esther carried on as if in a daze, by times cooking and cleaning with tears dripping down her cheeks. Other times she seemed caught up in another world, thinking, Mary knew, of her Remick, home and safe from the war. Cleo meanwhile, used her grief to gain attention at school, carrying it like a banner. Mary would see her in the corner of the school yard during recess with her face in her hands, and her friends clustered around her, helpless but enjoying the attention by proxy.

  However, Reg felt the responsibility of his family and the inherent necessity of showing himself strong and capable. How would all of these children react, Mary wondered, if Reg acted upon his feelings of loneliness and grief. If he curled up in his bed, immobile in his despair, as she had done after Ian? At least grieving women were given the room in their mourning for honest emotions. She always felt that the stoicism required of men was unfair. When Ian’s mother had died, Mary remembered urging him to release his emotions, that a good cry was like a cleansing, but he scoffed at her and insisted that he couldn’t cry.

  People brought over meals every day, but feeding ten people, eleven really, counting Aubrey Newell, took such quantities of food. Just at lunch Mary had seen Sam eat three helpings of creamed salt cod and mashed potatoes, while leaving the table with a hungry look.

  Sam would leave for his army training next week. Alison Granger was often here now, helping Esther in the kitchen. Mary perceived a change in her also through the week - an understandable grief, with an added tenderness, especially towards Sam. Mary noted how Alison’s quick blue eyes often strayed over to Sam, seeming to absorb the sight of him before his departure.

  Leaving the basket by the clothesline, Mary stooped again with a groan to lift up Caroline. Her cries subsided to hiccupping whimpers, but she did something she’d not done all day. Where before she had held herself away from Mary with rigid little arms, studying Mary’s face through her tears, this time she leaned into Mary’s neck, dropping her head on her shoulder and slipping her thumb into her mouth.

  Mary closed her eyes and sighed. Her other hand rubbed the baby’s back, which still vibrated with hiccups. This was exactly what she’d been longing for. She stepped carefully across the lawn, up the stairs onto the wide porch and eased into a cane rocker. She stayed there rocking while the children swirled around her. Her aching arms found ease in the steady movement of rocking with the baby. From here she could hear the harbor sounds; the rote of the sea, the thump of oars as men drew their fishing boats in with the turn of the tide. She didn’t know when Reg would be back, but she waited and stayed. She wanted him to find her here, with his baby asleep in her arms.

  There was a party for those who had enlisted and would be leaving for training. Among the young men were Sam, Robbie Bell, who was Rena Mayhew’s young man, and Tim Cooper. Others were older; men who were young enough to fight but didn’t have a family depending on them, or who just wanted to be a part of the war despite their circumstances. The church Youth League arranged it for all who would be meeting the train Saturday morning in Bath, heading for basic training in New York State. Sam didn’t want to go, still in a somber, guilt-ridden state following his mother’s death. He had been working with his father and Aubrey as much as he could, then eating his meals and retreating to his room. He shared a room with William and Henry, but they spent every hour apart from school outside with their friends or doing chores that Esther now assigned. Alison left Sam alone, baffled as to how to help him. She wanted to be with him every moment until he left, but settled for glimpses of him from the schoolyard or at church. His
gaze, when it met hers, was intense and confident, but not curiously uninviting.

  The party, to be held on the beach near the schoolhouse would include a clambake and bonfires. Warm humid air had rolled across from the southwest making the day summer-like. Reg finished setting out pots with Sam and Aubrey by mid-afternoon. They rowed over to the store to pick up items from a list that Esther had given her father and were visible there from the schoolhouse just as classes were dismissed.

  The Eliot kids, seeing them, swarmed to meet them on the road. Reg smiled and slowed to walk with them, his rough hands reaching out to stroke their hair or pat a shoulder. Little Ivy hung on his arm chattering about the party for Sam. Sam hung back after seeing Alison standing by the steps with her brothers, helping Davey pick up some papers he’d dropped. She saw him there and said something to Owen, then ran over to meet him. Cleo was dawdling along also, asking Aubrey Newell just at that moment if he was going to the clambake.

  Aubrey’s answer was an exaggerated shrug, while he smiled at Cleo mischievously. “Come on,” she teased, “everyone is invited. Everyone else is going,” she said, emphasizing everyone but pleading with Aubrey with her liquid gleaming eyes.

  Ivy and Isabella both turned around with their eyes wide and questioning, and Sam and Alison joined Cleo and Aubrey on the road. “Us too?” the twins asked, at the same time that Sam declared, “I’m not.”

  Reg Eliot turned and gazed back at Sam and the others. They exchanged a long look, which ended with Reg’s words, “We’re all going. You too, Aubrey. Now let’s get home and get cleaned up.” He directed Aubrey to go back and row the dory across the cove to their wharf. Cleo looked sideways at her father and skipped after Aubrey, riding with him in the dory.

  Sam stopped walking, his cheeks flushing and his eyes on the ground. Alison moved closer, reaching for his hand. It was warm and hard, with calloused palms and strong fingers. Looking at his hand now, as she held it, Alison realized again that he was a grown man, and it had happened while she’d been all unaware.

  He squeezed briefly, gazing at her searchingly. “You’ll be there?”

  She nodded.

  He gave a brief nod, gave her an unconvincing smile, then turned to catch up with his family.

  Almost everyone was there at the festivities. Young girls made banners which read “Bon Voyage, to Our Heroes”. Alvie Cooper gazed long at the banner when he arrived, then muttered to everyone he spoke to, “What makes ‘em heroes? They ain’t done nothin’ yet!” The banners were festooned with flags and streamers, which flapped lazily in the sea breeze. The three Kens, who had always done it, had been preparing for the clambake all afternoon. Everyone brought blankets and baskets of food to spread out on the long tables brought down from the church hall. Pastor Whiting spoke such an eloquent prayer for the boys who were going off to fight that Tim’s mother, Gladys, started crying. Vernon took one look at her and said dryly, “Well, woman, they ain’t leaving till the mornin’. Let’s eat!” The supper commenced and was consumed by all – some of whom would be remembering the soldiers every day and other who were just there for a good meal. Twilight settled upon them while they feasted. Fingers of fog drifted in as the air cooled, and Alvie Cooper reluctantly left the picnic to set the light, as he always said, over the water. As soon as the food was cleared away, they lit three large fires along the shore and gathered in different groups of families and friends to sing, mesmerized by the fire, the plum colored sunset and the gentle waves just touching the shore. They sang into the night, with comfortable pauses and whispered conversations.

  Sam was sitting with his family, who were positioned next to the Grangers. His father held Caroline, who was asleep. Clustered around him were the twins, and Richard and Peter, drowsy and yawning after a long day and all the excitement. Esther sat by herself, disappointed that Remick had refused to come. William and Henry stood by the bonfire with their friends, feeding the flames, surging from fire to fire like a school of fish easily diverted. Cleo was nowhere in sight. Sam last recalled seeing her helping Aubrey Newell carry a table back up the path to the church. He was restless. The singing was nice but it reminded him of his mother. Alison was next to him, her hand in his, their shoulders touching. He whispered to her, “Meet me over by the public,” and started to rise.

  Just then they heard the noise of running and Cleo came thrashing up to their blanket, out of breath. She plopped down beside Esther, who asked her what was wrong. Her face stiff in the firelight, Cleo just shook her head, trying to slow her breathing. Her hair was askew, and her hands, as she reached to smooth it, were shaking. Esther grabbed one of Cleo’s hands and asked more insistently, “What happened?”

  Cleo sniffed and shrugged. “I thought I saw a bear.”

  “Where’s Aubrey? I thought you were with Aubrey,” Esther said. Cleo only shrugged and shook her head.

  Sam rolled his eyes and stood up. He moved back away from the light of the bonfire and made his way over the rocks to the public wharf. The lobster platform next to the dock where they weighed and cased their haul hardly moved with the gentle motion of the water; boats at their moorings waited quietly for the morning and the work that would come with it. Life, Sam realized, would continue on as it always had, even if he wasn’t here. Classes at school would go till summer, lobster and cod would be caught and sold, mothers would cook meals and fathers and children would eat them. The tide would go in and out, twice a day, without him here. Sam was beginning to understand the blessing of this good simple life and how much he’d miss it, and how much he wanted nothing more than to live it. He sat down on the end of the wharf. The moon was rising, muffled in the light fog. The stars that shone were familiar friends overhead. Many nights he would slip out of the noisy house to lie on the grass and gaze into the night sky.

  He felt Alison’s footsteps vibrating the wharf as she came near. She settled beside him without speaking.

  “You know I’ve never been further away than Bath,” he said.

  “Me neither.”

  “I’ve never even been on a train!” he laughed shortly. “I’ll probably get on the wrong one and end up in Canada!”

  Alison said nothing, but he felt her eyes on him.

  “In geography class in school I’d look at all those maps, all those different countries and think they can’t be real, because I’ve never seen them. I believe there really is a place called Africa or Australia, or Iceland, or France. But this is the only place I know for sure.”

  Alison moved beside him. “Sam,” she said quietly. “I’m so afraid for you. But it will be over quickly now, won’t it? “

  Sam grunted and muttered, “Hope so.”

  “Well,” Alison said slowly but confidently, “I’m going to hold you here in my heart, and in my mind. I’m going to think of you being safe and well and whole. I’m going to try not to be afraid.”

  Sam sighed. “I think it will take more than that. Things happen to people…things you don’t plan on. Look at your brother.”

  She nodded but thought he couldn’t see her, so she reached for his hand and held it firmly.

  He looked at her finally, sensing the sweet outline of her face rather than actually seeing it in the scanty light of the moon. “Alison, I’m afraid…” he hesitated, and then continued as she squeezed his hand. “I’m afraid I’ve started something that I can’t finish. We don’t know if I’ll even come back. I hate to think of you hurting for me. I don’t think I should have said what I did that other night.”

  She looked away, out at the water. Then in a low voice she questioned, “Was it true, what you said?”

  He couldn’t deny it, couldn’t even stop from smiling, so he answered, “Yes.”

  “Well, what I said was true too. I’m not afraid of that, or of the wait.” She said it firmly, in a most Alison-like way, so that he let go of her hand and passed his arm around her shoulders. Their lips met in a gentle agreement that soon changed to a kind of hunger that frightened them. Footsteps sou
nded across the other end of the wharf, but no one approached.

  They drew apart shakily. “Someone’s here,” Sam remarked, not really caring.

  Alison leaned onto his shoulder and they whispered promises and dreams to each other as the night deepened around them. And when the fog horn sounded a melancholy cry and the light on Old Bald Head swung out over the water, Alison began crying. Sam held her close, despising the war.

  Chapter Seven

  Their Way of Life and Obedience

  Aunt Pearl was giving Davey a haircut on the back porch, which looked out on a large field in which the Gilman’s were mowing some early hay. Heat pressed down on the land like a wool blanket, making the leaves on the trees droop like wet rags.

  Remick sat motionless in a rocking chair, a glass of water gripped in his hand. Davey wriggled and cringed as Aunt Pearl snipped at the hair on the back of his neck.

  “Why do I hafta get a haircut? There’s no school in summer,” he whined.

  “Can’t have you looking like a sheep, no matter what time of year it is,” she replied mildly.

  The clank of the mower sounded across the field, baby robins in the bush by the porch squawked insistently and Davey moaned.

  Alison stepped out onto the porch, wiping her hands on a towel. “The bread’s all set,” she said, wiping her brow with the towel. “Wish we didn’t have to cook in this heat.”

  Aunt Pearl shot her a glance, shrugged and continued cutting. Drops of sweat trickled out from under her hairline and her nostrils flared as she sniffed, but she loved summer. The family knew that Aunt Pearl carried a melancholy during the cold months, which was unexplainable but very real. In the summer she thawed; the warmth seeming to ease the coldness that gripped her spirit all winter.