B0042JSO2G EBOK

by Minot, Susan

  Someone was sobbing down the hall in one of the guest rooms then it turned into waves. The sea, she thought, the sea, she’d not seen the sea in the longest time. God she’d love to swim.

  She shot herself out of a cannon and flew from the house. The lawn below grew small and the rooftops of the Cambridge houses turned flat and square. She followed the grey snake of the Charles River up to the Tobin Bridge then swung inland at Saugus up Route One’s strip of giant liquor stores and candy kitchens and Chinese restaurants off toward the green summer hills of New Hampshire passing into Maine and the ridge of captain’s houses above Portland onto the two lane road winding by shimmering marshes and fields of Queen Anne’s lace and farmhouses and cornfields and pear orchards over Wiscasset and Waldoboro and Thomaston past the cement factory with its brown grass onto the Main Street of Rockland built of brick down to the ferry landing and its fat pilings over the fish factory into the harbor soaring over the narrow stone breakwater nearly a mile long with the lighthouse at the end past Owls Head across from it blinking into the bay by the gong and the stone monument and into the channel with the smaller islands and cormorants drying their wings over the pole-held floats squeaking into the center of town and the slanting lawn with its curving picket fence and the elm tree shadows out past the school’s dusty swings over the fork in the road dipping by the rushes by the shining mudflats with the islands way off in a hundred dark humps past the white cube of the Grange Hall around to the Bishops Harbor bridge and the flat water of the inner harbor up over the cedars to the house on the bluff where the tent tilted in the field and the long porch flanked the house and below a path cut through high grass to the rock garden then the stone steps down to the dock above the curved flint-scattered beach where in the morning the water was still and green waiting

  The dull thud of stakes being hammered echoed in the still air.

  They stood beneath a limp flag. The world was as still as if there were no air and the sky was bleached out and the water like spilled paint. At the end of the Wittenborns’ dock a schooner was being busily cranked at and unfurled while people stood waiting holding bags and towels and baskets. They arrived in sunglasses. Gail Slater wore a man’s shirt over her bathing suit, Carl’s quiet friend Monty had a nose of white zinc, Mrs. Wittenborn’s straw hat cast a checkerboard across her face. What had they said? Was Lizzie Tull talking about the seating for the bridal dinner, or Ralph checking to make sure the sandwiches were in the plaid bag? Ann could not remember. But she remembered Harris Arden stepping under the boom then stepping over the railing and holding down the cord so they could come aboard. His hair was a fine cloud in the bright air. And after they were under sail she remembered sitting beside him in the center of the boat in the shade while he showed her how a heartbeat has two beats inside one, tha-thump tha-thump, and the sleepy feeling she had as his fingers thumped her arm.

  The wind did not pick up. The surface of the bay stayed soft as poured glass. They motored out from shore then turned off the engine and drifted. She sat near him in the bright shade of the mainsail and they didn’t talk about who was arriving later on the plane. There was no point in talking about that though Ann Grant had grown more curious about what this Maria di Corcia looked like and what else had gone on between them and how it was different. Harris Arden told her about his family, he was the youngest, his father was nearly eighty. The brother had pretty much gone off into shady business practices. His sisters were both married with children. She saw his family as if it were steps up to a monument. The monument was not something she had.

  Up at the bow Gigi lay with her cheek pressed to the studs on the gunwale staring at the molten water moving slowly by. Her legs were stretched out behind her slightly apart. There was no wind, no air, no breath. Ann sat beside Harris Arden. She did not need to touch him, she didn’t need anything as long as he stayed near. The men had taken off their shirts and his arms were bare against the milky sea.

  There was a terrible racket, the halyards clanging, the canvas snapping. Something flipped in her head and the sea was navy blue and blown into white tips and the sails heading into the wind were careening. The Coast Guard captain was holding onto the side of the boat bobbing up and down and Ann brushed the hair from her eyes and saw Oscar’s face turning and the look of pity and fear.

  There was no wind, it was still. The schooner sat on top of the bay. The boom glided from side to side and people were dragging behind in an inner tube further slowing the boat’s progress and he walked up the deck carrying a plate into the shade beside her and held out the plate as if they’d known each other a long time and didn’t need to speak and she took a sandwich triangle with the crust cut off and they watched the water go by.

  Carl stood at the stern with his hand on the huge wheel, people in the cockpit chatted softly over Bloody Marys, their words inaudible. A herring gull cawed. In the distance a motorboat buzzed by and they could hear people talking beneath the sound of the motor then it was quiet again.

  There was a splash. Ann turned to a space beside her. She looked in the water. He was swimming alongside the slow boat.

  Aren’t you coming in? he said as if it were something they’d discussed.

  She stood up, took off her sunglasses, snapped down the back of her bathing suit and dove in. The cold water was a shock, and colder down at her feet. But she was used to long swims. Past the breakers in Cohasset where the water was warmer she’d turn around to find the shore quickly far off and the houses small and the dune grass a feathery line. She liked the feeling of the swells lifting her up and rolling beneath her. They swam away from the boat. They went faster than the boat. Ann got ahead of him then he swam ahead of her. He said she swam well and she told him she used to be in swimming contests, not caring if it sounded like boasting.

  She swam with Harris and thought of how his fiancée was arriving later that day and if she would have a chance to be alone again with him the way they’d been last night. It seemed it ought to be possible, but when she tried to imagine she saw that it was less and less likely. Maria di Corcia knew no one else and would naturally stay by Harris and he being Harris would look after her. He was that sort. Tonight was the bridal dinner at the Yacht Club then the wedding tomorrow and the reception after and then it would be Sunday and they would all leave the island and the whole time he would be with his fiancée. Ann would probably not get a chance to talk to him much more and then back he’d go to Chicago—with her—and he and Maria would … what would they do? What would he do? Stay like that stay like that always something has already happened She did not want to stop swimming. She would have liked to keep swimming with him out into the bay forever.

  They’d all stood at this door. Margie stood hesitating as she’d hesitated at so many other of her mother’s doors, waiting for her to be through with her nap, out of the tub, finished getting dressed, or in the middle of the night by some fluke to be still awake and willing to take her back to bed. A vase of cosmos she’d picked from the garden was balanced in one hand, not that they needed any more flowers but these were everywhere like small tangled trees. She unclicked the knob and gently pushed the door.

  Her mother was awake and the nurse was bent over her and both their faces turned sharply toward the door.

  Give us a minute, said the nurse, her profile melting into the window light behind. Behind her massive white back Margie saw her mother’s face unrecognizable with an expression of panic and she immediately backed out. It was an expression she’d never seen before and with the air of secrecy and preparation and the peculiar fused position of her mother’s body with the nurse Margie felt she’d walked in on some forbidden rite.

  She stood in the hall with her heart beating in a sped-up unnatural way. She put the vase down on the floor off the rug and turned down the stairs. In the library she heard Constance on the phone speaking French. At the end of the hall she saw Teddy’s wife Lauren in the kitchen with Mrs. Kelley and Pat Vincent, each holding one of the twins on the
ir laps. Margie snapped up her pouch with the satin cord on the hall table and knocked open the wide screen door taking the porch steps quickly, her tennis shoes flapping against her heels.

  She took the gravel path through the granite posts between the hedge out to Emerson Street. She went in the direction of the Square. It was nearly seven and the streets were quiet and the lawns off the sidewalk humped in deep shade. She hurried across the street, half-seeing the car which braked and honked, and didn’t look back. Her sneaker slipped off and she reached back impatient to hook it around her heel, not stopping, nearly tripping, catching herself in time. She turned at the end of the street. She was about to burst.

  Around the corner. Finally out of sight of the house, finally away from the tall shutters along the porch and the lantern above the door and the black shingled roof and the upper windows watching after her. A pocket of air rose in her lungs, or a bubble of non-air, making it hard to breathe and she walked swiftly. Up ahead loomed the figures of two men walking a dog, she couldn’t face anyone, she turned onto a street she never took.

  The pressure kept expanding inside her. The sidewalk erupted in cracks and roots and above her branches frayed and she felt that if anyone stepped out of their door the force whirling around her would blast them back in or hurl them down like a sack of rags.

  Her mother’s face came back to her past the large arm of the nurse with an expression which seemed to say, Go away, you’re going to take away my comfort, go away! and the bulging knot in Margie’s chest popped and no sound came from her mouth as her body was wracked with sobs on this unknown street. She tried to stay ahead of the waves sweeping up from inside her. It was not unlike the surge she’d felt with Seth in Bali when she’d been so sick overboard. He’d held her forehead with a cool hand firmly not in the least put off and muttered soothing words. Now the sobs came longer remembering how she’d not been seasick after all. Then they decided they weren’t ready to have a baby, that is Seth wasn’t ready, not yet, they would, eventually they would, they were married weren’t they, but just not yet. So she’d gotten rid of it and had lost that. Then she’d lost Seth and now there was her mother … eventually one lost everything. She flushed with shame to feel sorry for herself while her mother lay there with so much more to feel sorry about and the sobs surged afresh.

  After a while her crying softened. She began to catch her breath. A tingling rose in her temples, she felt her cheeks hot. She stopped, shaken and worn out. The reason they never walked on this street was that it ended in someone’s driveway. She looked around. In the houses were people with many lives she would never know. It was a summer evening in late July. People were getting home from work or already were home. Maybe they were having drinks, feeding babies. Maybe someone read a book, lit a pipe, walked down stairs. None of them was her mother. She heard a window shudder. Through the tangle of trees the sun was setting and the small orange diamond of it flashed, hitting Margie in the eye.

  She retraced her steps back down the street they never took. The two men with the dog were gone. She followed the curving brick sidewalk, crossed the wider street with traffic going both ways, and took Radcliffe Way past the half-stone house with the television going inside, over the sidewalk stained wet from a sprinkler. She put her sunglasses on before reaching Brattle Street, feeling blank and drugged and numb. Back at the house was pain that did not stop, that would keep going, having no purpose, adding up to nothing, continuing until it ended. She stepped up to the market on the comer.

  She took out of her basket and put on the counter a yellow bottle of Joy, three green apples, a bulb of garlic, a blue box of spaghetti, mushrooms under plastic in a purple container, an orange packet of batteries. The Asian woman at the cash register sometimes seemed to know her and sometimes didn’t. This time she seemed to and smiled. Margie asked for paper not plastic and put the items in the bag herself. She waited at the door while an old man who was coming in took the steps very slowly tapping his foot forward. Her mother would never be that old.

  The evening light flooded Brattle Street which for a moment had no cars on it and the surface shone gold.

  At home the flowers had been taken off the hall floor. In her mother’s room sat Mrs. Kelley and Pat Vincent. Margie tilted in the door as Mrs. Kelley was saying she’d just gotten a postcard from her son who was driving his family across the country, they’d stopped in New Mexico to see Buddy Cutler who as they knew had married the part-Indian girl who according to her son couldn’t be nicer though maybe not the brightest girl and they had four kids and Buddy seemed to be doing very well with his business selling cactus plants. They were all having a super time.

  Her mother’s eyelids were heavy from the drugs. She pointed to the cosmos. Where did those come from? she said in her new slow voice.

  Margie said she’d picked them from the garden.

  Tell her I love her, said Ann Lord, and she closed her eyes.

  I don’t know how you can last in there, said Ralph Eastman when Ann Grant and Harris Arden climbed up the schooner ladder. Aren’t you freezing?

  Harris handed her a towel. It was the only towel around and it occurred to Ann how Malcolm Flynn would have passed her the towel after quickly drying himself off first and even Vernon Tobin would have wiped his face before passing it on. Harris Arden gave her the towel while he dripped.

  They sat in the sun to warm up. The engine kicked on and a sigh of protest rose up from the ship.

  We’ll never get back in time otherwise, Ralph said.

  Let’s never go back, Buddy said. He had a wet towel wrapped turban-style around his head. Gail Slater sat beside him with her long arms and long legs folded up like origami and Ann noticed a familiar worshipful look when her face tilted in Buddy’s direction. Ann had seen the look again and again on girls near Buddy. He liked quiet girls. Sometimes one never heard a word out of Buddy’s girls. They slumped in a posture of admiration, hypnotized. He seemed to cast a spell over them with no effort whatsoever. One summer he’d even turned his idle attention to Ann. There was one afternoon they’d ridden bikes to an abandoned farmhouse, stolen plums, and lay eating them under a tree. He’d taken a splinter out of her hand, and Ann had started to see him in a different way. Then he’d gotten distracted by the buxom Preston sisters. Ann had minded at the time but soon grew proud of having escaped being one of those girls swooning over Buddy Wittenborn.

  The water was satin. Harris’ hand came toward her and she thought crazily he was going to grab her and pull her over. Instead he removed a thin green ribbon of seaweed stuck to her shoulder. Up at the bow Gigi lay unmoving in the same position as if nailed to the deck.

  Don’t turn on the engine, she said.

  We won’t.

  It’s coming in from the south, said Ann Lord.

  Teddy and Margie exchanged glances. Their mother looked through them.

  A person is like a porpoise, she said solemnly.

  Teddy and Margie started to laugh and left the room, pushing each other, not wanting to embarrass her.

  But they did, they did turn on the engine and they kept it on. The hum took over the silence and the boat which had been drifting unsteerable into the glassy bay now pointed unwavering with a slicing bow back toward the bristled silhouette of Three O’Clock Island. The water passed in striped ripples beneath their feet dangling over the side. Gulls flew by weaving around each other and Ann Grant felt there was a purpose behind everything which she understood but could not put into words. Maybe music could explain it, words were too flat.

  The man beside her was a tree.

  At the stern Lila and Carl sat with their backs to the boat. Lila’s head rested on Carl’s shoulder as he talked to her and she nodded, keeping her head against him.

  Gigi Wittenborn materialized on the other side of Harris. Even waking from a nap she seemed to be coming from some adventure. A whole crowd of people seemed to stare out from her lit face.

  You were asleep a long time, Harris said. I hope it
’s not that bump on the head.

  I wasn’t sleeping, Gigi said. I was dreaming.

  They faced out. Not far from the boat the sleek back of a porpoise slid up with its flat fin and rolled forward like the top of a wheel then slipped under again. Ann glanced at Harris Arden. He wasn’t wearing sunglasses and his eyes were suffused with light. Everything is in the eyes, she thought. The porpoises—there were two—swam alongside the boat without looking over, quick to attach themselves, unquestioning and proprietary. Ann Grant looked at his mouth with the crease in the bottom lip. Everything is in the mouth, she thought. For a moment the difficulties of their situation pricked her but she quickly assumed they would be resolved.

  Look over there, someone said. Coming from the south.

  Around the western tip of Perry’s Point plowing forward like a huge white snowbank was white mist tumbling with curls of steam dissolving upward in wisps.

  It looks like an avalanche, someone said.

  Ann looked at the encroaching fog. She felt it was coming for her.

  Ask me again.

  What?

  To look at you.

  What do you mean?

  The way you did.

  He was silent for a while. I’m not sure I can go back that far. Can we? It wouldn’t be the same.

  That’s alright, she said. I have it here. She closed her eyes and knocked her fist on her breast.

  The sheet on her knee rolled into a glassy swell. His hand came toward her again and touched the small of her back where her bathing suit dipped and his palm was cool.

  Are you sunburned? he said. His hand on her back seemed to say, This is you. This is who you are under my hand. The boat moving made a breeze but the water’s surface remained still. You have a nice back, he said. This was how he would tend a patient, she thought, looking down, thinking what to do next.