The Moon Pinnace

by Thomas Williams

  Lord, John Hearne was just the chauffeur, sir, ma’am. Let the miles pass. The biggest Buick floated on, finally, thank the Universal Mind, into Leah. That was why he’d been back three days before he’d really tried to get in touch with Dory.

  She wondered why those three days should intrude upon her rejection of the world. The three days seemed petty, but there they were, even if she didn’t care. She wouldn’t answer the phone, which rang for long time. When it stopped she was instantly weightless, smooth, forgetful.

  The rapping brought her away from peace, where she had been among leaves in warm colors unlike the slaty near-nausea of what her eyes were forced to open upon. This room, this bed, that window—how ominously boring was consciousness. Behind the screen, hunkered on the roof in his obscene strength, surrounded by a golden outline thin as a crack in glass, he pressed forward, rapping his imperious knuckle as if on her skull.

  He looked in as deeply as he could, suffering from Dory-fear, or fear of mortality. He thought he saw her in there on the narrow bed among runnels of sheets or blankets, too dangerous to speak to in that nest.

  “Dory?” he said anyway.

  He named me that. What arrogance.

  “Is that you in there?”

  After a while he said, “Well, we never did talk much.”

  That tone. Humor that was the worst sort of self-protection.

  “Hey, Dory?” he said with Dory-fear again, the fear of permanence.

  She had no answer.

  “I heard what happened and that you didn’t take it very well. I don’t mean you should have taken it well, you know. Can I come in?” he asked with Dory-fear again—Circe-fear, Athena-fear, the fear of entrapment. Anyone could look upon conventional beauty, but the effect of Dory’s oddness was unpredictable. There was the memory of enthrallment—not of its power, just a simple warning.

  He slid the wood-framed screen together and removed it.

  He slipped into the room and stood over her, then leaned down and pushed her hair away from her face. She could resent, somewhere, this invasion, but the shouted commands were heard in other places, in the halls and passageways of another dungeon.

  “Your hair,” said the prince, “smells like an old tennis shoe.”

  She was all bones, her skin milky across her cheekbones, her arms soft, the muscles gentle rubbery connectors he could follow with his fingers. Her brown eyes looked at him, or he could see too deeply into them, their close-together force seeming to ask a question, but she wouldn’t speak. He lay down next to her.

  —As if he had a right, and gathered her to him with, she recognized, benevolent intent—strength’s intent, which could change without losing power. She felt like pieces floating in water, not whole, so she couldn’t feel that her weakness had a right, or deserved privacy. He was huge and hard as wood, trying to be gentle.

  “Do you mind if I tell you everything that happened to me this summer?” he asked. She didn’t answer. It was her old habit of not answering, not, she thought, because of anger, or irritation or dislike. He put his hand into her pajamas and felt her belly and hipbones, his warm hand tickly as a soft brush. “You’re too thin,” he said. “Are you sick? I heard you had a nervous breakdown, whatever that is. I suppose my mother knew all about it but she chose not to write to me about it. What am I supposed to know, anyway? I got back three days ago and I called but nobody answered and then I had to drive Amos over to Rochester, New York, to get my mother, who ran off with a Celotex salesman and had a hysterectomy. Does that explain anything?”

  “You don’t owe me anything,” she said.

  “You spoke to me. I heard you. I wrote you a card, I really did, but it never got mailed because you deserved a letter. Does that make sense? And also I found my father and my half-sister, a mongoloid. I sort of got to know her and then she died…”

  His voice was like a cat’s purr, her face in his throat. She recognized the tone she resisted but she began to drift. Her hair probably was filthy, which ought to have been meaningless. He gathered her watery spine to him by way of her hips and she began to fade into a dream. Mongoloid? Hysterectomy? Sister? From what shadowy past had those words come? But unlike her other dreams this one forced her out of ease. The universe was inside immense space that also was the universe, which she could never understand, now composed of planets of ancient beige and rose, all the world-sized and larger globes connected by roads like rays and all dangerously important. She was in charge of the switches but she wasn’t good enough to handle it, so right before her eyes the whole universe blew up.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “The roads!” she cried.

  “Okay,” he said, and felt her slip off again into the inert steadiness of sleep. Her tears and snot lubricated the hollow of his throat. She was so thin and light and alive he wanted to cure her with his touch, which seemed to him invincible, but he was afraid to disturb her now. He was in her bed, in her family’s house, without permission, but it was all right because he was responsible and he never threw anyone away.

  Except, you faithless intolerant child, those you have betrayed. But not Dory, at least not yet, and not children. No, and he was here, now, in this narrow bed, his woman sleeping beneath his arm, in an aura of steady and faithful poverty, in the mild funky odor of continuance and survival, so he betrayed no one and could himself drift into the hours.

  Urban Stumms, though definitely known to be dead, frozen and then burned to a grainy powder, came steadily up the stairs, his mask of scars gray as steel. A friend in life, though a fierce one, there was no reason for him to be a threat now, was there? Dead as a doornail, croaked, finished, todt, shinimashita, he came as a threat dressed in a black suit and heavy black preacher shoes. Of course John Hearne in his strength could take the small man easily except that Urban’s rage was righteous, he was insane, his valor was proven, and he was dead.

  He woke: that dream could be endured because he always lived with fear and the sense that he was a betrayer. If he could admit to just how he had betrayed Urban and all the rest he might come to terms with his treachery. He would not count strangers who had asked too much of him, at least not yet, but there were those in whose good estimation he falsely stood. Even now he thought his simple presence could comfort her.

  She slept. He hadn’t slept, except for his dream of Urban, if that could be called sleep, for a long time, so he matched his breaths with hers until her breaths proved too short for his, and then they descended into separate places.

  She came near the surface, remembering “mongoloid,” and “sister,” which allowed him something she hadn’t known or expected. He had always been too dangerous in these ways, his gentle sleep even now seducing her resentment, making her feel that her resistance was unfair or petty. His even, alien pulse was at her lips, not alien so much as necessary, its separateness necessary. Then she descended easily, believing she would return for another breath of that consciousness.

  Something woke him; he knew by the dim September light that an unexpected amount of time had passed, so he let only his eyes expose him, as if he were in the woods and in danger. Her mother stood in the doorway, not five feet away. She had been there a while, the precise instruments of survival informed him, and now stood in fierce surmise, pending judgment. Her narrow dark eyes were Dory’s, but Dory’s after a long, long voyage, her skin worn and pale, her shoulders bent, a silent and honorable woman. Without admitting his knowledge of her presence she stepped back into the hall and closed the door, sealing her only daughter in the room with whatever fate, for good or ill, John Hearne might cause her.

  Dory was awakened by the change in his metabolism and then more clearly by the sound of the door.

  “It was your mother,” he said.

  She was still coming awake, pushing away the leaves of her dream, an interesting dream she all at once could not remember.

  “Christ, it’s five-thirty,” he said, getting up and shuffling into his moccasins.

  �
��It’s all right,” she said. He stopped and looked at her—instead, she supposed, of jumping out the window. His chinos were all wrinkled in diamond and slash shapes because they had sweat together.

  “At least she had to see I had my clothes on,” he said. She felt musky and stale and damp, her hair clotted. She hadn’t had a bath in days and she could smell herself, which came with memories rimmed with shimmery pleasures and embarrassments and pride. For him she shouldn’t be like this. She got out of bed and stood up, dizzy and light in the bones.

  “Jesus, Dory,” he said. “Have you been physically sick? You look like a skinned rabbit.” He reached out and held her up. Her pajama bottoms fell down, which bothered her only because she was ashamed to be in such a strangely rank condition. Sick?

  “I just retired for a while,” she said. “Now I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”

  He guided her, mostly by remote control, to the bathroom. Mr. Perkins looked up from the bottom of the stairs. “Hey, Johnny?” he said, his narrow, creased, shadowed expression all one hard question. The bathtub began to fill. “Hey, Johnny? Come down and have a ale if you want.”

  They were friends, but Mr. Perkins was the father of a young daughter, after all, and in the present circumstances this could not be ignored. He went downstairs and was treated by them not as a child or as an irresponsible randy youth but as if he were a doctor to whom they described Doris’s symptoms. He drank Genesee ale from the can and nodded sagely. Some poet or philosopher had said that as you grew older you didn’t rise to the level of the world, it fell to your level, which seemed to be happening here and to have been happening all this strange year long. If he were the authority God help the poor people, God help them all. Mr. Perkins looked friendly, grateful, then as if he had been slapped and resented it but couldn’t quite figure out who had slapped him, then sad, then again grateful. Mrs. Perkins looked into John Hearne’s soul, and surmised. She knew more about this business than her husband really wanted to know.

  John Hearne’s prognosis was guarded and careful, but his recommended therapy was clear: he would try to get Doris up and out of the house, talk to her and feed her and try to get some meat back on her bones. This was what he told them, but there was the question of what he might be getting into. There was the question of his possibly being flattered because these adults had delegated so much authority to him, a former child.

  He did a strange thing: he went back to Amos’s house and into the living room, where Martha was ensconced in afghans and lace on the davenport, a brave, twinkly convalescent, and asked Amos if he could borrow the Buick this evening. It was the first time he’d ever asked Amos directly for anything. Amos was startled, and said yes, hedging his mercantilism or whatever by adding that it would be all right if John would first go to the store and get two quarts of ginger ale and a bottle of aspirin. Martha glowed and preened, as if through this transaction all of her dreams had come true, her two men actually talking to each other, asking favors of each other. Now don’t blow it, John thought; for once please leave it. But of course she couldn’t, and said, “My two men! Isn’t this happy? Aren’t we all so happy?”

  “I’m going to take Dory Perkins out,” John said quickly. “She hasn’t been out of her house in weeks.”

  “How sweet of you, Johnny!” Martha said.

  “Just don’t wreck the goddam car,” Amos said, mollified by the mention of another female. What simpleminded psychology these children danced to. Amos took out the keys to the four-holer, holding them at first, for part of a second until even he saw the error in it, up in the air as if asking a dog to beg. John took them, with thanks, at waist level.

  Dory felt her weakness when she stood up to get out of the bathtub. He’d said she looked like a skinned rabbit. She’d skinned rabbits herself when her father brought them home, the downy fur and the weak skin that wanted to tear into handfuls of red-bordered fluff. In the mirror were the black eyes against pale skin, angled white collarbones. She wasn’t red like a skinned rabbit, but the air, warm and humid as it was, seemed to abrade her nakedness.

  Her mother waited for her in her room. “He wants to take you out. He borrowed his stepfather’s car and he wants to take you to supper at the Cascom Inn.”

  “I’m not hungry,” she said, not meaning that she objected to his wanting to take her out, or to her mother’s wanting her to act more normal again. But her mother’s face turned loose and grayish and she began to cry.

  “No, Ma,” she said, “I didn’t mean…Why do you want to make so much of it? I’ll be all right.”

  “You ain’t all right!”

  “You want me to go out with him?”

  “You got to get out of the house. You got to wake up. I don’t know what he wants with you. I don’t know how serious he is about you. Has he growed up yet? I don’t know.” Her mother dried her hair, violently, Dory’s neck wobbly under the thunderous flopping of the towel. She put Dory’s hands on the towel and said, “Keep that up,” then picked out clothes for her and put them on the bed. The patterned beige dress she’d bought at Trotevale’s in June seemed to have grown into folds and bags, so her mother got out a skirt and blouse and fixed the skirt band with a safety pin so it wouldn’t fall down. “You don’t look so bad, but you got to fill out some,” her mother said. “Anyways, he knows you been sick.” She combed Dory’s hair and pushed at it. “I got to cut your hair again.”

  “A nervous breakdown,” Dory said. “Is that what everybody says?”

  “God knows what they say. I never said it. Will you try to eat something at the Cascom Inn?”

  “It’s a pretty fancy place,” she said, and her mother was grateful for this, wanting to smile with her against fancy people like those of Union Street, the rich, the spoiled who could pay all that money to go out and eat.

  Her breasts were small in her bra, her stockings looser but at least not baggy. She put on lipstick but it looked like a slash of blood, so she washed it off. He didn’t like lipstick but she took it off for herself, not for him. Her mother thought her pink cardigan sweater might give her a little color.

  “You’re almost eighteen years old and you look about twelve,” her mother said. “You’re scrawny but you’re awful pretty, too.”

  “Ma, you don’t have to say that.”

  “I just feel like hugging you,” her mother said, standing still, so Dory put her arms around her mother’s thin rib cage and they stood awkwardly for a moment, two bony women hugging in a way more perfunctory than they felt.

  It was as if down the hall in another room was Debbie, a bawling giant who might judge this affection against what they thought of her and what they’d done for her.

  When she turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs he was stunned. He saw through her—through her clothes, to her skin, to her bones. That she was willing to come away, at least for a while, from her illness or distraction was an unbearable gift. Even her parents had given her into his care. Take her, our troubled daughter.

  The Buick flowed along, soft and quiet as a room, and she seemed passive, even serene about it all. At his touch she slid over to him, her transparent hand on his thigh. They traveled over the long hills toward Cascom as dusk came on, going as if through the years, and he thought if he could always have this power—of the car, of her mysterious assent, of a pleasurable destination, of a looming choice that was dangerous but in his power to make—then that would be a life.

  Well, he did come back, she thought, and now his nervous seriousness meant that he was thinking very hard about her and what to do with her. She touched him as he guided the car over the hills toward the lake. September was the benevolent month, the season but not the summer over, the air still luminous as the light dimmed. Even green looked gold on the far hills as the sun left, then straight to dark. He’d slid down the teeter-totter and kissed her, then in his own time just taken her, because he could. There was no murder in him that she could see, just that taking. She had watched him all her life
and she ought to know. There were doubtful things, too, but he was not happy to be cruel. He had always been friends with Debbie. He might cause hurt, and had, and would, but he wanted to be fair. He’d come in a somersault through her window, neat and quiet as an acrobat, and just took her over.

  But he was substantial and warm, now, at her side, and he was kind except when he was too upset with himself and had too many doubts. She was kind, too, she thought. She tried to be, and tried not to judge too harshly. But these judgments and evaluations were beside the point. No matter what he was she would let him and no other man inside her, because she had made that decision. No, it hadn’t been a decision, it had been a command. No use thinking about it.

  It seemed strange, in September, not to be going to school, but only for a moment until the events of the year, resonant as a long past, made all that recede. All became memory.

  The Cascom Inn would soon be closed except for weekends, and they were the only ones in the long dining room, their pink table lamp making of their table and their faces a sphere of light below the dim sconces on the walls. The old inn was kept up like a museum for the tools and furnishings of a hundred years ago—spinning wheels, harvest tables, cobbler’s benches, hooked rugs—all gleaming with soft, expensive taste in the half-darkness.

  They knew the waitress, Sandra Kelly, who had been a class ahead of Dory, and who knew about what had happened at Cascom Manor but not about this wonderful unexpected pairing of Dory Perkins and John Hearne. Sandra was so pleased about them her bright solicitous curiosity seemed an official Leah blessing upon them as a couple. Dory was too thin, Sandra said, but we would soon have her herself again, wouldn’t we? Her smile suggested secret, avaricious discoveries.