“Hey, little man.” John rubbed his hand through Ben’s curls.
June backed away from the boat.
“Don’t you want a tour?”
June shook her head. “I’d better not. I don’t want to leave Claire alone that long. I just came down to see you off.”
Paul Hutchinson climbed out of the cabin. He was carrying a hardcover book closed over his thumb to mark his place. He said hello to June and then ducked back inside. June crossed her arms and looked at the crowd milling about. She waved to a few people she knew. She studiously avoided looking in Richard’s direction. “Do you have enough sandwiches and cold drinks?” she said to Evie, glancing at the cooler she’d packed that morning. “And some suntan lotion? You’re going to be out all day.”
“I think so. Mr. Hutchinson brought some food too. So we’ll be okay. Is Claire really mad?”
“She’s pretty upset, but she brought this on herself. I wouldn’t spend too much time feeling sorry for her. Just have a wonderful day out. It’s a pretty boat. You’re a lucky girl.”
June knew she was babbling. Anything to get through this moment. She had thought she would be okay when she saw Richard again, that she would be able to steel herself against his charm, but seeing him standing there on the deck of the boat in his white slacks and navy blue polo shirt open at the throat, her resolve failed her. She felt weak in her knees, her stomach clenched up, her pulse bumped erratically.
John had finished giving Ben a tour of the boat. He handed his son over the transom into June’s waiting arms. “In a few years, you’ll be coming with us,” John said, patting Ben’s head. Then he checked his watch and took his place at the helm to start the engines. Twin Evinrudes, he’d told June last night. Top of the line.
“Listen to that. Just like purring cats.” John smiled happily. He turned toward Richard. “Mr. Hutchinson, would you mind casting off that bowline?”
June watched Richard and her husband prepare to pull out of the mooring slip. She hated the deferential way John treated Richard, as if ever mindful of the differences in their social standing. Although John probably wasn’t even aware of how he was acting. June was angry at both men in ways she couldn’t really comprehend. When she looked directly at Richard pain stabbed her heart. She couldn’t resist the desire to say something hurtful.
“Where’s your wife, Mr. Hutchinson? Didn’t she come down to see you off?”
Richard looked at his watch. “She said she was coming. Maybe she got held up somewhere.”
“Probably stuck in the beauty parlor,” June said with a saccharine smile. “You know how women are.”
Richard gave her a puzzled look.
June tried to freeze him with her gaze. But he glanced away, untouchable now, as if they had never been lovers, never shared the intimacy of naked skin.
“We’re off,” John said. He eased the boat out of the slip and eased it into the harbor. Pools of diesel fuel glinted on the water like a group of iridescent jelly fish. Evie stood in the stern, waving to her mother and Ben. She looked so young and fragile standing on the deck of the boat in her white shorts and yellow blouse, a pair of June’s sunglasses perched on top of her head. Evie’s long hair blew in the breeze. June lifted her hand and waved. The sun glanced off the water and the gleaming boats. The brass band segued into another rousing number in a bid to give the boats a good send off. Soon, all the boats were on the move, flags waving merrily, as they eased away from their moorings and out toward the entrance to the harbor where a derby official with a clipboard was stationed in a dingy, recording the boats and their registration numbers as they left the harbor. June waved until the bright spot of Evie’s blouse could no longer be seen. Her arm was tired, her face stiff from smiling. When the Sabrina Jane was out of sight she turned to go.
There was no point in hanging around the docks. She wasn’t interested in the band or the raffle or the vendors and their wares. At three o’clock she’d have to come down here again and wait for the boats to return, laden with fish. There would be another round of waiting while the fish were weighed and the winners announced. Then it would be over. The rest of the Labor Day holiday would pass quietly, summer would end and school would start. She had tried her hand at making the girls’ dresses for their first day of school and they hadn’t turned out half bad. All she had to do now was turn up the hem on the sleeves and skirt and embroider the edges with rickrack. Pink for Evie, blue for Claire. She would spend the rest of the day cleaning the house. Three o’clock would come before she knew it, when she would be obliged to return to the docks, a smiling wife, greeting her man as he returned from the sea.
Back at the house, June changed into an old dress. Instead of sitting around doing nothing while waiting for the boats to come back, she was going to roll up her sleeves and give the house a good cleaning. The scrubbing and hauling and carrying would distract her from her fragile state of mind and from the hollow ache in her chest. Not to mention keeping her mind off the liquor in the kitchen cupboard. If she didn’t watch herself, she would take to the bottle in earnest and wind up in the gutter. Wouldn’t that be a fitting end to a sorry tale, June thought bitterly.
But whatever she did to distract herself, her heart was wrung out like a mop, her eyes dry as boiled onions. Seeing Richard this morning had been more difficult than she cared to admit. But she was determined to put him out of her mind, cast him out from her breast. He was no longer a part of her life and that was that. She slapped her hands together as if wiping off dust. No use crying over spilled milk. Over and done with.
She charged into her housework. It certainly needed to be done, having been neglected these past weeks when she’d been so caught up in her affair. But now was her chance to make up for it, to prove to herself that she could go back to being a good wife to John and a good mother to the children. She lifted the braided rugs up from the floor and carried them out into the yard. But they were so old and worn that June couldn’t see much point in cleaning them. Even if she beat the dust out of them and rinsed them with the garden hose they would be as faded and colorless as before. She had a mind to throw them all out. Toss them in the back of John’s truck and have him take them over to the town dump. But for now she would clean them as best she could. That bonus money wasn’t in the bank yet. Better not count her chickens before they hatched.
She hung the rugs over the back fence and beat them with a broom. Dust flew up and made her cough. “Claire! Could you come out here and help me a minute?” June waited for a minute, but there was no sign of movement from inside the house. She was about to go in and get her when Claire appeared in the doorway.
“I thought you wanted me to rest.”
“I do, but I need you to help me with these. You just have to hold the edges for me, while I beat the dust out.” Claire didn’t move. June gave her a beseeching look. She was not in the mood for a showdown. “Come on, be a good girl and give me a hand.”
Claire turned down the corners of her mouth, but did as she was told, scuffing her feet in the dirt. She helped her mother with the rugs, turning her face away from the dust. June had a mind to feel sorry for her, but then brushed it away. It’s what Claire wanted her to feel and she refused to be manipulated. Claire had scared her to death by running off to Oak Bluffs where she could have gotten into who knows what kind of trouble. Putting herself at risk like that. What if she’d had a seizure on the ferry? Slipped into the water and drowned. June could only hope that missing out on the fishing derby would make her think twice the next time she tried to pull a stunt like that.
“Okay, that’s it. You can go back in now if you want.” June didn’t want to spend the whole day watching Claire pout. She felt guilty enough as it was and she’d never seen her like this before. Maybe there was more going on than just missing the derby. Maybe that whole thing with the seizure at the school had affected her as badly as it had affected June. But Claire’s face was an unreadable mask and June decided to let it go.
A screen door slammed over at Stone cottage. June turned her head in time to see Elizabeth Hutchinson carrying a trash bag out of the house. She set it down by the back door, probably for Richard to take care of later. Mrs. Hutchinson did not look up in her direction and June turned away. She must be busy packing. Richard said they were leaving tomorrow so they could get back home in time to drive Paul up to his new school. I don’t want to think about Richard, June thought. If I think about Richard I will die. She squeezed her eyes shut and banished him from her mind.
Turning the full force of the garden hose on the rugs, she sprayed them thoroughly and left them to dry in the sun. Now what? She could scrape the wax off the kitchen floor. It had been building up lately and gave the linoleum an unsightly yellow cast. She could wash all the windows in the house. Or air the bedding and bleach the diaper pail and scrub the bathtub. The list was endless. But if she kept at it just like this, day after day, she would drop into bed every night so exhausted she would be too tired to think about the way Richard had used her, not to mention her own shameless behavior.
June made a mental list of all the chores she needed to do and worked straight through lunch and into the afternoon, stopping only for a glass of iced tea and a cigarette. She thought about the bottle of vodka at the back of the kitchen cupboard more times than she’d like to admit, desperate for a drink, wanting something to calm her somersaulting heart. But she would hold off for now, wait until John and Evie came back from the Derby and they were sitting down to dinner. She could slip a little bit into her iced tea then. John wouldn’t know. And wouldn’t he be surprised to see the house so clean and shiny, and his wife bustling around the kitchen preparing the dinner with a smile on her face. She would be a changed woman from now on. To start with she would be more attentive to her husband to make up for the past weeks and months of neglect. She would work hard to put new vigor back into their marriage and be thankful for whatever life decided to throw her way.
* * *
My mother is planting a garden. Not roses and cornflowers and petunias like we used to have, but oleander and bougainvillea and flowering succulents, and a lot of other plants I don’t know the names of. She’s even bought two orange trees in big wooden tubs to place on either side of the kitchen door. I arrived home from school today to find her digging in the dry patch of ground behind our house. She’d taken a day off from work and gone to the nursery and brought everything back in the trunk of the car.
The plants are lined up against the fence, their roots wrapped in burlap, ready to be nestled into the holes she’s digging. She must have been working for most of the afternoon because the whole backyard is dug up, the earth furrowed and turned over as if an army of moles had passed through. She is kneeling on the ground in a pair of old dungarees, her hair tied up in a kerchief, when I lean my head out the kitchen window and offer to help. She puts me to work sifting through the soil to remove sharp stones. I start in the back corner next to the chain-link fence and run my hands through the dry sandy earth, feeling for rocks. When I find one I drop it into a plastic bucket. In no time the bucket is full and my hands are rough as sandpaper. It is early March and the sun is already fierce, but my mother and I work side by side like this until dinner time, digging up the earth and sifting out stones from the soil. When she is finished with her digging, she fills the holes with water and fertilizer and settles the plants in the earth, rocking them gently in the soil and tamping the dirt down with her hands. The bougainvillea will spread over the fence she tells me, draping over the metal wire like a brilliant pink veil. The oleander will grow into large bushes with strappy leaves and pink and white flowers. It’s a poisonous plant, though, so we’ll both have to keep an eye on Ben to make sure he doesn’t put any flowers in his mouth. A man is coming on Saturday to lay the paving stones. There’s going to be a little patio just off the kitchen and a brick walk leading to the back of the yard where my mother will place the bronze sundial she bought for a dollar at a yard sale. She assures me that a little polish and elbow grease will fix it up just fine. And if we put a birdbath over there, just under the shade of the avocado tree, the birds will come from all over to drink and splash about in the sun. A tiny oasis. Won’t that be pretty? She wipes the sweat off her brow and smiles. The first smile I’ve seen in a long time, and I stand transfixed at this new change in our lives.
Later, with the house shrouded in darkness and the whole neighborhood asleep, I push open the kitchen door and step out into the new garden. Moonlight shines down on the oleander flowers and the bright patches of damp around the newly planted shrubs. The oranges glow like gold against the glossy green leaves. The stars are bright. I breathe in to savor the sweetly scented air that floats over the garden like a veil.
20
The sound of the brass band faded into the distance as the Sabrina Jane pulled out of the harbor. John couldn’t remember a derby with weather as good as this. Not a hint of fog on the water or a whisper of haze in the sky. And to be out on the deck of such a magnificent craft as the Sabrina Jane on a day like today, it was more than he could have wished. Sun glinted off the bowsprit as the boat moved swiftly along the surface of the ocean, handling the slight swell with ease. There was no pitch or roll, just a gentle parting of the water as the prow pressed onward. John had set a course for the fishing grounds on the edge of the Katosha Banks, twenty-five miles out to sea. He had a feeling that the fishing would be good there today, or that’s what the commercial fishermen had told him yesterday in O’Malley’s. Cooler currents had swept down from the north in the last couple of days and this mixing of thermals usually brought with them great schools of fish. John was always impressed by the fishermen’s cocky certainty, the strange brew of science and superstition that governed the men’s talk and the ways they piloted their boats.
From time to time he looked back at his daughter and Mr. Hutchinson who were sitting on the polished deck in canvas chairs. Evie was reading a move magazine and Mr. Hutchinson had his hands clasped behind his head, face tilted up into the breeze. They had been under way for nearly half an hour and were well out to sea when John called over to his neighbor. “Mr. Hutchinson? Care to take the helm?”
Richard stood up from his deck chair and stretched his legs. “Be glad to. But good grief, call me Richard. Mr. Hutchinson makes me sound like my father.”
Richard strode across the deck and as he casually took hold of the helm, John stepped away so as not to make him feel he didn’t trust him. Richard was Mr. Sandhurst’s friend, after all, giving him more claim to captain the Sabrina Jane than John had. But all the same, John hung discretely back and observed Richard for a few moments. When he was satisfied that the man knew what he was doing, he retreated to one of the deck chairs near his daughter and stretched out his legs. Evie put her magazine down on her lap and stared out toward the horizon, twirling a lock of hair with her fingers. Paul was still firmly lodged inside the cabin where’d he been since they’d pulled away from their mooring, like a hermit crab afraid to come out of its shell. John wondered if he shouldn’t go in and check on the boy, but he didn’t believe in hovering over children. They could find their own way when it suited them. He only wished that Claire were here. She’d been so excited about taking part in the derby. It had been overly harsh of June to punish her like this, or so he believed, but he always deferred to his wife where the children were concerned. He hoped he would have a chance to make it up to Claire somehow, although it was unlikely he’d ever get another opportunity to go out again on Sandhurst’s boat. Next year Claire would have to be content with the Evening Star. Thirst gathered in his throat like cotton, and he rummaged in the plastic cooler June had packed for something to drink. He pulled out two bottles of Coke and handed one to Evie. “Why don’t you ask Paul if he’d like something to drink?” Evie rose from her chair and ducked down into the cabin.
Richard stood straight-backed and confidant at the helm, the wind ruffling his sandy hair, blond-tipped by the sun, his face and
arms richly bronzed. John thought about asking him if he wanted a Coke, but perhaps Richard would find it too early to drink soda pop. Although Richard was some kind of hotshot ad man who drove a Cadillac and was probably loaded to the gills, John felt no envy as he studied him, silently taking in the cut of his expensive clothes and the neat row of stitching on his Italian-made boat shoes. John believed that he was the happier man. A happy home life, hard work and perseverance were all a man needed to get on in life. Luck and privilege had nothing to do with it. He was as sure of that as he was about anything.
Evie emerged from the cabin, holding her hair back like a coiled rope around her wrist. “Paul doesn’t want anything,” she said. “He’s just lying down in there reading some dumb old book about archeology.” She leaned toward her father and lowered her voice. He looks kind of sick. I don’t think he likes fishing much. Or boats either.”
“He’ll perk up when we get some lines in the water.” John took a swig of his Coke. “Don’t tell your mother I let you drink soda pop so early in the morning.” He winked at his daughter to include her in this small conspiracy.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell,” Evie said with a wry curve of her lips. She tilted the bottle to her mouth with a practiced motion, looking much older than her years in the seductive angle of her jaw and the way she thrust her hip out, her long hair loose and blowing in the breeze.
John blinked at his daughter as if seeing her for the first time. When had Evie grown up so fast? You looked away for a moment and your children were grown and gone. Before he knew it, Evie and Claire would graduate from high school, morph overnight into grown women wearing nylons and lipstick, who brought home boyfriends and then husbands. Children would follow on the heels of their marriages, and in the moment it took for him to imagine this, John felt his own youth slide away. In his mind he was no different from the seventeen-year-old boy he’d been when he first left home and settled in Boston with nothing but the clothes he wore and twenty dollars in his pocket. But now a clear picture of himself and June rose up in his mind, alone in the house, growing older; their quiet lives brightened from time to time by visits from their grandchildren. Although John could scarcely imagine his wife giving herself over to the comforts of grandchildren and old age. She would fight it every step of the way, never giving up on the idea that grander things were just around the corner. That she still believed in the great cornucopia of life, that everything was still waiting to happen, seemed like an indulgence to John, an invitation to unhappiness. Most people, in his experience, got over that feeling when they passed through the rocky terrain of adolescence and took on the responsibilities of work and family.
Yours Until Morning Page 22