by Robert Stone
When it came time to light the lamps she was still alone. She paced for a while and then went out to gather up more logs for the fireplace. The fire burned high and bright. Eventually she found herself in the cellar where the old furnace was rattling away, looking through the stored wine. She chose a 1978 Rioja with the vague idea of making steak. Before long, she had opened it and poured herself a glass. She took the bottle and sat down beside the fire. Middlemarch failed to hold her. She kept remembering the ferry ride. That made it impossible not to think of the past.
An ocean eternally blue. Lost summer sunlight, love, youth and laughter. The land of lost content. She thought they were drifting apart physically. Something was missing. He seemed unaware of it.
“Oh, shit,” she said aloud. “Goddam it.”
Inevitable tears. The bottle of Rioja was half empty at her feet. She felt so ashamed and foolish that she picked up the wine and took it into the kitchen with the intention of pouring it down the sink drain. At the point of doing so, she thought better of it. She put the bottle on a shelf above the toaster.
She went upstairs to the guest bedroom and turned on the old black-and-white television set that lived there. Dr. C. Everett Koop was on camera, delivering a quiet homily of which Anne understood not a word. Sitting propped on pillows against the brass bars of the shiny antique bed, she felt less anxious than angry. When she heard the kitchen door she got up and went downstairs. He was standing in the kitchen looking out at the fog.
“Why didn’t you come back?” she demanded. “I was waiting for you.” It was too late for her to digest her own anger. “I waited all afternoon for you.”
He looked at her without expression.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s going on? What’s wrong with your?”
“Sorry,” he said. It was not the answer she required.
“Why didn’t you come back?” she insisted. “I was waiting.” She took a tissue from the kitchen table, wet it and held it against her cheek. She was past caring whether he saw her cry. Then the telephone rang and she folded her arms and turned away.
“It’s for you,” she said. “They called before.”
He looked at the phone and let it ring again.
“For God’s sake,” she said, “answer it.” Then she went into the living room, sat down at her typewriter again and stared in dumb incomprehension at the text of the story on which she had been working.
Unable to make out Owen’s end of the conversation, she could tell from his voice that he had gone into his public, salesman’s mode. Then, after he had been on the phone for a few minutes, she heard something in his tone she barely recognized, a measure of suppressed excitement, of brisk conspiracy that brought her back in time. It was how he had often sounded in their first years together and it reminded her somehow, perversely, of the war. When he came out of the kitchen she was on her feet waiting for him.
“They want me to race Hylan’s boat,” Owen said to her. “In the Eglantine Solo.”
She said nothing.
“What do you think of that, Annie?”
Finally she said, “You don’t have the experience.”
“I can’t say no,” he told her, laughing. The same note was in his voice. “I won’t.”
She felt a wave of panic.
“You’ve never sailed alone,” she told him.
“Yes I have. To Cape Fear.”
“And you saw things. You told me that you saw things.”
“Everybody does. It’s like being in the woods.”
“Come on, Owen,” she said, as though it could be laughed aside. “Be realistic.”
Suddenly he seemed angry.
“This is what isn’t realistic,” he shouted. “This!” He raised his arm to include the two of them and the room in which they stood and things beyond it.
Fear struck her again, a tremor like pain.
“What do you mean, Owen? Do you mean us? Do you mean me?”
“No, no,” he said impatiently. “You’re taking it wrong.” She was not reassured. “It’s me,” he told her. “Sometimes I feel like I’m in the wrong life.”
“The wrong life,” she repeated coldly. “I don’t understand.”
“I mean,” he said, “that I’ve never done the things I ought to have done years ago. I took a wrong turn.”
“Would you like a glass of wine?” she asked him.
Owen looked at her in surprise. He smiled and shook his head. When Anne went into the kitchen he followed her.
“Sometimes,” he said, “it’s as though whatever I’m feeling is completely artificial. I have these highs and lows and I don’t think they attach to me at all. That isn’t life.”
No? Anne thought. Isn’t it? She poured herself a glass of Rioja, the correct amount into the correct glass for red wine.
“This,” Owen told her, “is a chance for me to get a hold on things.” He showed her his fists, his hands gripping an imagined helm. “To make it up.”
Anne sipped her wine and looked at his grasping hands. She had not heard him. The wine made her feel much better.
“You’re thinking about the war,” she said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Owen said. He went warm with a patronizing sort of kindness. It terrified her to feel so separate from him, so seemingly outside the range of his desires.
“I don’t want it said I drove you to sea, Owen.”
He seemed to think she was joking.
“Poor old Annie,” he said. “You’re shitfaced, aren’t you? Shellacked, right?”
“Maybe,” she said. She had not been joking about driving him to sea. She had to admit it was an odd thing to have said. “You have responsibilities,” she told him.
“This is the way to discharge them.”
“It’s not.”
“Yes,” he said, “this is the way to recoup. A good way. A clean way.”
She put the wine aside and went to him and leaned her head against his shoulder.
“Are you sure, Owen? Are you really sure?”
“In a word,” he said, “yes. Absolutely certain.”
Then she rebelled and tore away from him.
“It isn’t the right thing to do,” she insisted. “It’s crazy.”
“You’re wrong,” he told her. “It is the right thing.”
“You’ll be alone.”
“Why not?”
“Owen,” she said, “I don’t want you to. You really don’t have the experience.” Having said it, she realized that he was altogether serious and that only her will stood in his way. She was certain she could prevent him from trying it, if she dared. But then there would be the rest of life to get through.
“These people at Hylan don’t know anything about sailing,” she insisted. “If they did, they wouldn’t ask you. They’d find someone more experienced.”
“You’re right,” he said cheerfully. “But they did ask me. I’m going.”
She must have looked forlorn; Owen took pity on her.
“I’m going to persuade you,” he said soberly. “If I can’t persuade you, I won’t go.”
“No,” she said, “that’s not fair.”
He laughed. “Why?”
“Because you’ll persuade me.”
“Damn right,” he said happily. “I’m a believer.”
She clung to him a little drunkenly as they went upstairs. He jollied her along to bed. When the lights were out she said, “I can’t imagine what it would be like.”
“For you,” he wanted to know, “or for me?”
“For both of us.”
“At the worst,” he said, “like the war.”
“We were young during the war.”
“We’re still young, Annie.”
She shook her head without answering.
“Do you know what it could mean?” he asked her. “In the business? It would make us, Annie. It could move us from where we are into something else altogether.”
“What’s the matter with
where we are?”
“Are you kidding?” he demanded. “Are you satisfied with things?”
“No,” she said.
“Well,” he said, sounding a shade surprised, “I finally got you to admit it.”
“I mean,” she said, “I would be if you were. I don’t know what I mean. I mean what if you die on us out there?”
“You don’t go through life with that attitude.”
For that she had no reply. She turned over on her stomach and rested her throbbing head on her folded hands.
“Remember?” he asked her. “Remember how it was?”
Anne tried to remember how it was during the war. Her memories seemed distorted and even immoral. Somehow the anxiety, the weight they had both borne, the constant sense of being in trouble, had vanished and whatever traces remained had long ago been bonded in the blood and was part of them. Now, absurdly, she remembered the beach at Pattaya and mai tais at the Halekulani and all-night loving at the Navy’s Waikiki Beach hotel. At dawn, his whispering, Lente lente currite noctis equi. They had been adolescents. She remembered the deliciousness of youth and the feeling of fuck the world, the proud acceptance of honor, duty and risk. In spite of everything, they had proved life against their pulses then, beat by beat.
In her inebriated state, she understood his thirst for life and youth. And, she thought, he was capable of bringing great strength to bear, a strength that people like her father could not understand. She had always believed him a much underestimated man. There was a part of her that, day in day out, would always remain his secret admirer. She had seen hope in his face that night and it was beautiful. He was not the only one who needed to be a believer.
13
A WEEK LATER, shambling and red-faced, Duffy the public relations man arrived at the house above the Sound. Anne was surprised at his unprepossessing appearance. Seated on their sofa with a cup of coffee on his knee, he philosophized.
“Some people are lucky,” he explained. “They can afford to come across as themselves.”
Owen and Anne shared a quick glance. Very shortly, Duffy commenced to address Anne in a collegial fashion, as though they were partners in PR. He discussed Owen as though he were not present.
“I look at Owen,” Duffy said, “and I think: Lindbergh! See what I mean?”
Anne smiled because the association embarrassed her. In the circles in which she had been raised Lindbergh was much admired. Anne Morrow Lindbergh had been her mother’s favorite author.
Duffy was crestfallen. “You don’t think so?”
Owen muttered something under his breath. His irritation struck her as comical. Duffy persisted. “You know what I’m saying? Clean-cut but serious. Serious but not weird. See what I mean?”
When Duffy left, he took their family photographs with him to leaf through for inspiration.
“Christ,” Browne said when the man was gone, “what an utter asshole!”
“Don’t you think they’re probably all kind of like that?”
“Remind me to call up Thorne tomorrow,” Owen said. “They’re going to have to send me someone else.”
The next day Owen forgot about calling Thorne and Anne did not remind him. Duffy would do, as far as she was concerned.
On the following Friday, the Southchester Yacht Club held a cocktail hour to introduce the entrants in the race to the press. An hour before it was scheduled to begin, Duffy came to the Brownes’ door wearing a tweed checkered cap. “God save all here!” he called cheerfully, hurrying inside. Anne made coffee for the three of them. The publicist sat down at the kitchen table and began spooning sugar into his cup. His face had an unhealthy radiance.
“You’re gonna be asked a lot of questions about Hylan,” he told Browne. “Refer them to me. Maybe we can get it all over with today.” Then he addressed himself to Anne. “Do you know these other guys?”
She understood that Duffy was asking her about the three other contestants in the race that the club had managed to assemble: Dennis, Kerouaille and Fowler.
“I’ve met them all,” Anne said. “Owen knows Fowler. He’s a broker down in Virginia Beach.”
“I know him all right. He’s the last of the oyster pirates.”
“Ready?” Duffy asked the Brownes.
Browne finished his coffee and said, “Sure, let’s go.”
On the drive, Duffy regaled them with old-time newspaper stories. The day was cloudy and warm, the Sound’s surface heron blue. A sultry light seemed to hang over the far shore.
Duffy turned out to have worked on the long-lost New York Journal-American. He had a wife who was chronically ill. The previous week he had taken her for a drive up the Hudson to Boscobel mansion and it had been very pleasant. Halfway up the stone steps that led to the club’s front door, he turned to them breathlessly.
“You two stay close together. We want Anne in the pix.” Southchester’s club was set on a bluff over a salt marsh, an enormous timbered Tudor manor attended by ancient, wind-stripped sugar maples. Candles were burning in its windows. Voices and music drifted down from inside.
They found the club premises a mob scene. Bars had been set up; the place smelled of whiskey, perfume and leather. Owen and Anne followed Duffy across the trophy room through the press of the crowd. At the door of the club library, a tall man with a graying nautical beard appeared to be expecting them. Duffy briefly attempted to make introductions but the bearded man paid no attention to him.
“Browne, is it?” he asked Owen. “I’m Captain Riggs-Bowen, club secretary.” Browne shook his hand. An aged man in a blue blazer appeared and was introduced as Mr. Whitney, the club commodore. Members of the press had begun to shout questions at Browne. Duffy interposed his person.
“If you have questions about Mr. Matthew Hylan,” he announced at the top of his voice, “let me have ’em. Mr. Browne has no information for you.”
About two dozen reporters followed Duffy into an adjoining room. Riggs-Bowen, who had come alert at Anne’s presence, conducted the Brownes to the back of the library where the three other entrants in the race were waiting. They lounged somewhat defiantly in captain’s chairs beside an antique oak table on which stood an enormous vase full of daffodils. Everyone stood up as the Brownes approached.
Ian Dennis was a foxy-faced, introverted Australian who had set his name to a book that recorded his adventures during sixty-seven days adrift in a rubber raft. He was in the United States to promote it and was attempting to do so in nearly total silence.
Patrick Kerouaille was an amiable Breton schoolmaster and also an author. Kerouaille’s books were written by himself and recorded the mystical ruminations toward which life at sea inclined him.
The third sailor was the Virginian, Preston Fowler, who had a reputation as a shady character and a soul-withering false smile.
“How’s business?” he asked Browne.
“Things are tight,” Browne told him. “What with the market.”
“Where’s your big boss at?” Fowler asked. “Ever hear from him?”
“Nope,” Browne said.
“I didn’t know you were a single-hander, boy,” Fowler said. He winked at Anne. He had a pug-dog face with a faintly swinish turned-up nose. “When’d you take it up?”
“I’ve been single-handing for years,” Browne told him.
“I never knew that,” Fowler said.
“Sure,” Browne told him. “A couple of trips to Bermuda. And the Azores. A couple of transatlantic deliveries.” He felt Anne kick him in the ankle.
Fowler laughed. “Hiding your light under a bushel, were you, Owen? And you call yourself a salesman.”
“Selling’s an art, Preston,” Browne said. “Sailing’s recreation.”
Riggs-Bowen began to shepherd them toward the trophy room for pictures. As they went, Anne grabbed his arm.
“How could you say that?” she whispered urgently. “I’ve never heard you not tell the truth before.”
“I don’t really understand it mys
elf,” Owen told her. “At that moment—it was what I wanted to say.”
She looked around the room in sudden alarm.
“Good God,” she said, “will it all be like this?”
“Yes, I think so,” Browne said.
14
STRICKLAND moved alertly among the salty revelers with a smile for everyone. Attempting invisibility, he had sought to disguise himself as a sort of waterman, in a blue windbreaker and Topsiders. As it happened, most of the people at the press party were wearing dark suits.
Strickland’s attention was taken by the richly tanned young persons in tuxedos who functioned as menials at the party. Male and female alike, they exuded vitamins and sunshine. Their cheeks were smooth and their teeth bright; they were the club’s children. So taken was Strickland that he could hardly conceal his interest. When a young person’s gaze met his, Strickland held it until the poor creature looked away in confusion. Their untroubled faces represented a newfound land for him.
In the center of the library, three bearded young men in striped jerseys were playing jigs and hornpipes on a banjo and tin whistles. Strickland sauntered up to the service bar, where an icecream-blond girl was waiting to take his order.
“You a sailor?” he asked the girl as she prepared his vodka and soda. She had large friendly brown eyes.
“Yeah,” she said. “I teach at the sailing school during the summer.” She laughed a toothy mock-rueful laugh. “But today we’re all serving.”
“You’re n . . not . . .”
She waited politely on his stammer.
“You’re not old enough to fix drinks,” he managed to tell her.
Her smile became slightly fearful.
“Just kidding,” he assured the youngster.
As Strickland stood drinking beside the bar, a tall, good-looking man in a Brooks Brothers suit approached for service. The man had a long youthful face and hair that appeared to be prematurely gray. His eyes were mild. He ordered two glasses of white wine and a Coke.
“Hey, Mr. Browne,” the young bartender chirped happily, “the Coke for you?”
The man only smiled. A second tuxedoed young woman of similar appearance came down the bar for a look at Mr. Browne.