Reprisal

by Mitchell Smith

  It seemed to Joanna that she and Charis were soldiers, volunteers against the weeds, but lacking a lethal enemy to give them honor. "We need a giant weed,"

  she said, histo come hissing along the ground into the garden."

  "You mean to make it fair?"

  It was such a startling completion that Joanna woke from her weeding, woke from her dreamy day, and looked sideways at that alert and angular face

  --elegantly spare, even smudged and sweating in the sun.

  "Yes, that's exactly what I meant."

  The girl looked at her, hazel eyes bright as if illuminated. "And that woke you up, didn't it?" Then she turned back to her weeding, slender hands deft and merciless. "Fairness would only weaken weeds."

  At dinner--they were having lamb chops-Joanna found it difficult to stay awake to eat. Charis had to remind her ... remind her twice to finish her milk.

  Afterward, while Charis did the dishes, Joanna went upstairs by herself, undressed, put on her robe--and sat dozing in the bedroom rocker until Charis locked the doors, turned off the lights downstairs, and came up to wake her for her shower ... then brought the yellow nightgown for her, and put her to bed.

  Charis tucked the covers, kissed Joanna on the cheek, then turned the bedroom lights off so the rising moon could substitute softly, and left the door half open when she went.

  In bed, though very tired, Joanna lay still, and still awake, recalling. ...

  But the moonlight, so silver, helped her. The bed floated in it like a boat, so Joanna cruised that small quicksilver lake of light until she grew too tired to remember, and gave herself up to sleep.

  ... Charis waited awhile in her room across the hall, then came quietly to stand outside Joanna's door. She listened there a long time ... and heard Joanna's breaths lengthen and deepen, becoming, in almost an hour, gradually harsher in the sleep of exhaustion.

  She opened the door and went into the bedroom then, and stood just beside a bar of moonlight falling through the seaside window. She stayed there for some time, watching Joanna, listening to her.

  Then Charis went quietly out of the room and downstairs into darkness--and, her arms outstretched as if she were preparing to glide a distance, began to slowly turn and turn in the entrance hall, stepping to waltz time in silent sneakers. She turned, dipped, then spun sideways into the living room ...

  danced there ... then whirled out and down the long hall. She wept silently with happiness, her tears shining in moonshadow as she danced into the dining room, whirling, touching nothing.

  After breakfast--grapefruit and cold cereal --the day became a day like the one before, the only changes what Charis served for breakfast, lunch, and dinner ... her checking Joanna's arm to be certain the knife cut was healing

  ... and their stop at the hardware store for gloves, trowel, spade, and a hand rake. Otherwise, the girl allowed no novelty, introduced nothing new.

  There was breakfast, the stop at the hardware, then the drive--the same drive out around the island, with the same turns onto the same roads ... and nothing new except variations in sunlight and cloud shadow, variations in the ocean's colors and motion. From the town, they drove the north beaches ... then southwest to Willis--Percy in his yard again, head cocked for his good eye to see them pass.

  They parked down at the Willis marina to watch the tethered boats for a while--then went east along the harsher coast, its stone shelving struck by the sea. Passed the lighthouse ... and so up to Asconsett Town, home, and gardening through the failing heat of afternoon.

  The next day was the same.

  And the day after was the same, except that day there was shopping, and Charis didn't take Joanna in with her. That was the only change.

  Those nearly duplicate days--guarded by the girl against difference--became several days more, all alike, so Joanna nested in their sameness as if in a swinging hammock fastened to unchanging trees, that swayed only so far ...

  then swayed back, allowing resting, requiring nothing from her but being cared for.

  Charis appeared to need no changes either, and seemed content ... seemed very happy.

  After more than a week, Joanna--spading one of the long, cleared beds in the afternoon--began to be able to whisper familiar names, whisper them to herself and call no ghosts when she did. It was as if the dead were beginning to become only acquaintances.

  ... The next morning, Charis, tuned to her like a companion instrument, suggested for the first time that Joanna make their breakfast--pancakes with maple syrup--then asked her in what different way she would like to spend the day. ...

  So, after preliminary hours walking the beach, they lay glistening with sunblock in their bathing suits, below the dunes past Trudie's. Beside them, in a grease-stained cardboard box, a large steamed lobster waited, with a container of melted butter, ice-cubed root beers, two oily paper bags of french fries, and two pieces of peach pie.

  Joanna had noticed Charis's body as they took their beach robes off and spread their blanket. Long-legged, long-armed--her forearms pollen-dusted with down--Charis was slightly too solid, too heavy-boned, for delicacy. It was a lean body-type familiar enough; had been Joanna's when she was young.

  Charis's forearms and wrists looked thicker than most women's--her rock-climbing, like Joanna's caving, had wrapped fine cords of muscle around them. ... Rebecca had always been slightly plump ... a partridge.

  They lay side by side--Joanna in her old one-piece Catalina, gray stripes on lighter gray, Charis in a two-piece, in blue bandanna material. Lying so close, they looked nearly the same height, almost the same weight--Joanna slightly taller, heavier, a little softened by age. ... In time, as they rested cocooned in heat and light, the patterns of their breathing gradually accommodated to each other, then to the rhythm of surf softly thundering in.

  Under the odors of cooked food and sunblock, hot sand and salt air, Joanna smelled again, as she had on the ferry coming out, the girl's faint sweet scent.

  Drifting, drowsing, enjoying their silence beside the sea's sound, Joanna considered Charis, and the girl's willing sacrifice of a summer just to nurse her, keep her company. Some eccentricity there ... and it had been taken advantage of.

  "Charis, I need to thank you--and thanks can't be enough for what you've done these past days, and before that, in the hospital. I know it's partially because of Rebecca. ..."

  "I wanted to be there." The young woman's voice sounding smooth as polished stone. There had only been that snarl of challenge in Barkley's, when the women were staring. Otherwise, Charis's voice sounded as she looked, certain of its next note--except when she was singing.

  "I hope that's so. I can't tell you what it's meant to have you here."

  Gratitude spoken with closed eyes, face up to the sun as if that brightness were intermediary, a messenger of light.

  "Joanna, I wanted to be here."

  "It's good of you to say so--but what I need to say, sweetheart, is thanks for being so kind, such a wonderful baby-sitter, when I needed baby-sitting badly." Joanna got up on an elbow, opened her eyes to sunlight burning in reflection off the sand ... the girl seeming to lie floating in brightness.

  "--But aren't there people, young people, you'd rather be with this summer?

  What about your family, friends--a boyfriend?"

  Joanna felt a slight tug at the blanket, a movement of the soft sand beneath it as Charis shifted, turned toward her. She was wearing sunglasses with white plastic frames. "The people who raised me are dead, Joanna.--And the truth is, I don't have any real friends. Never did ... except maybe for Rebecca, a little. I've had casual friends. And I've fucked men. I fucked and sucked--you name it--for ten years, until I was fifteen." Said as pleasantly as "Good morning."

  Joanna lay back and closed her eyes, thankful that the ocean's noise permitted pauses in conversation. ... Arithmetic left Charis five years old when that began. Rebecca had mentioned she'd been abused ... the mother ill, then dead, and the father's demons freed.
r />   Five years old. ... There could be chill after all, under the hottest sun.

  "Charis, I'm terribly sorry."

  No answer from the girl. The ocean, in chaotic repetition, answered for her.

  To be sure, an eccentric ... almost odd. Certainly serious damage had been done. Her father--an animal--had ruined his own child, a child that must have been, as Charis remained, intelligent and beautiful. With what pleasure the creature must have destroyed her. ...

  So, on Asconsett's beach, an anguished little girl lay in a young woman's body. An invalid of grief and loss as great as Joanna's, and less likely ever to recover. This crippled child would try to mend herself and her world-would always be trying to mend herself and her world, but neither would ever be whole.

  Blinded with tears turned diamonds by brightness, Joanna felt for the hand beside hers, found and gripped it. "You have a friend now, Charis."

  And felt her grip returned so her bones ached. Held for a moment, then released.

  Charis said nothing for some time, then sighed and sat up, searched through her black book bag. She cast a shallow shadow that cooled Joanna's arm. "If I don't keep this stuff on, I burn."

  Joanna, squinting, watched as Charis found the little yellow plastic bottle of sunblock, squirted a white worm of it into her palm ... and turned as she sat, to massage the ointment along her arms, making that slightly awkward posture, those awkward angles, graceful.

  Gulls had noticed them, suspected their lunch, and now passed over to see better, to give them notice of hungry birds. Joanna, shading her eyes, saw one of them--frost-white, mouse-gray--sailing overhead, haloed in molten gold ...

  and noticed an instant later the swifter shadow of the gull flick across her, touch Charis, and be gone.

  Arms oiled, the girl started on her legs. "You need a hat, Joanna. Too much sun. I have a big straw hat at the house, but I didn't bring it."

  "I hate hats. Especially big hats-they're always in the way and you can't see the sky because of the brim. ..." The heat settled onto and into Joanna, a personal matter. She blinked the last of tears away, and saw the intolerable center of the sun. Then she lay drowsy for a while, her eyelids presenting an empty bright-red landscape ... put her hand up to check the bathing suit's top, make sure her prosthesis was in place.

  "Drinks are going to be warm. ..."

  "Hungry?"

  "I'm very hungry." Charis, sitting in hot citrus light, put her sun-block away.

  Joanna sat up, dragged the cardboard box nearer. ... The lobster's going to be a mess.

  "Use a towel. We can put everything on one towel, and then wash it."

  "Okay."

  Charis flapped a towel free of sand, and spread it on the blanket between them. "If we spill, we spill. ..."

  Joanna set the lobster out, brick-red and baking hot, too big for its paper plate. Trudie's nutcracker and the plastic container of butter went on the towel with it. Then she tore open the small sacks, left the french fries-dull gold in the sunlight--in two heaps on their grease-spotted paper, the slices of peach pie beside them.

  The root beers, ice cubes melted, were warm as blood in their tall white cardboard containers.

  Charis and Joanna sat facing each other over the food, and reached to attack the lobster--shifting their grips to detach legs and then its armored tail.

  They broke the lobster open ... worked on the pieces with the nutcracker, and scooped pale meat out of scarlet shells. They took busy turns dipping into the melted butter ... sucked smaller threads of meat from narrow, jointed legs, and paused only for warm root beer, bites of pie, or heat-blistered french fries. There was no ketchup. Trudie sprinkled her fries with vinegar, salt, and pepper after she shook them out of their boiling bath of oil, and thought that fixings enough.

  Sitting cross-legged on blanketed sand, eating in such fiery heat and light, it seemed to Joanna a meal that might be served in hell, if hell were heaven after all. ... In less than half an hour, she ate her belly tight, just this side of sickness, to the steady thudding of the surf.

  "Oh, fantastic." Charis, holding one of the lobster's littlest legs in her fist. She sat sucking the last meat out of it--a hollow-cheeked fashion model for a moment.

  "I'm going for a swim." Joanna stood up, staggering as if the sunlight had weight. "I need to cool off. ..."

  Charis finished the lobster leg. "I'll come wade and watch."

  "Don't you swim?"

  Charis picked up the lobster's head. "I can swim if I have to; I'm really a very good swimmer. But I don't like it. I always think there's something coming after me in the water, even in a pool. ... I know that's weird. You want this blue stuff?"

  "Charis, I never eat the blue stuff. I don't know what it is, and I don't want to know."

  "I think it's his little liver. ..." Charis scooped it out with her finger, tasted it. "Tastes like liver," she said, licked her finger, and got up to follow Joanna down the beach.

  ... Joanna said, "Cold water," as if to warn her body--and it was cold, almost bitter after the heated air. It iced her ankles, then her legs as she walked in, the waves thumping at her knees. ... She waded in to her groin, then dove straight out, had an instant of air, then struck and sank into freezing green.

  It made a contrast so delicious that she lay under and rolled in it, salt slipping into her mouth, the sound of surf softened by being beneath. There was a ringing noise, faint and constant ... and she surfaced into moderate waves and began to swim into their strong shifting.

  "Cold?" Charis was calling from the beach.

  "Very cold ...!"

  Joanna swam out a few strokes more, then stayed treading water, gently lifted and lowered as the waves went by. Charis was stalking along the shore, long legs ... narrow feet tentative in the surf's fringes. She yelped like a child as she stepped through the water.

  Joanna called, "Come in a little way--it's better once you're in!"

  "Bullshit!" But Charis took a few swift heron's steps into the sea, then suddenly dove and was gone ... rose swimming very strongly, surprisingly strongly and fast--and as suddenly turned back, ducked under, and was gone.

  Joanna kicked up higher on the rise of a wave to look for her--felt a foolish apprehension--and was relieved when the girl splashed to the surface farther in, stroked once or twice, then stood, long dark-blond hair soaked darker-Aphrodite to any ancient Greek--and waded out onto the sand.

  She called something back, perhaps "Enough for me," and stood stripping the water from her hair, shaking it out for the sun ... watching Joanna swim.

  Behind her and higher, at the base of the dune, the gulls had found their scraps of lunch, and a slow tornado of white wings and mustard-yellow beaks funneled and rose and fell. Some birds fled, successful, and were chased into a sky that was perfectly blue.

  Joanna swam a little more, swimming north a few yards against a slanting current ... then turned and stroked in toward the shore ... finally kicked and found her footing. She walked out of tumultuous cold into heat, stepped onto hot sand--Charis coming to her with the clean towel--and realized she hadn't mourned her dead all afternoon.

  After dinner--they had cooked it together--Charis sat at the dining-room table to work, with notebooks, textbooks, a looseleaf and her laptop set out before her.

  Joanna was washing the dishes, drying them and putting them away while thinking about the garden--what flowers should be planted. Even with no work done today, they already had the beds cleared and turned along the yard's edge. Bulb plants--or seasonal flowers? Would pansies last into autumn ...?

  She rinsed the milk glasses and put them up on the shelf over the sink. Her skin felt slightly rough with the sea's salt. ... They'd need more milk; Charis drank it thirstily as a child.

  The last of the dishes done, stains of spaghetti and meat sauce soaped away, Joanna went upstairs for one of her legal pads and the fat black Montblanc pen--a gift to herself years ago.

  She came back downstairs and sat across from Charis at t
he dining table.

  Joanna had the sea poem's essence in her head, had stepped aside a little to let the ocean flood in with words ... withdraw with words that wouldn't do ...

  come back with others to consider.

  The poem would be the wind's--that in breezes and gales, in stillness and hurricane, stroked and struck the sea, sailed over it, knew it ... had known it longer than the billion years since it was shallow and fresh enough to drink. Since lizards, later, grew to greatness and oared through it, hunting.

  Theirs was an ancient marriage, never faithful. But the wind was first. It had hissed and howled alone among volcanoes, and curtained down a million years of rain and then another million, and other many millions until small pools reflected a furious sun in sulfur, here and there.

  The wind brought rain and filled the first seas up. And after millions more of circling years, it hummed and blew and ruffled at last across the waves of company, and was no longer alone.

  The waves are the wind-bird's feather that

  display Their plumage colors with the weather; so far today, White is their sheer shade shown, and green waiting For a turning moon to tug the rollers into breaking, And row the deeper currents, heave them into motion By the haul of swinging stone that shrugs the ocean.

  This introduction of couplets, sometimes broken --and to be broken further

  ... rhymes separated. Then the poem swinging out to stanzas ... and those to be steady marchers, wind-driven, until smashed as surf along the land. All undertowed to calm couplets once again. ...

  Joanna sat back and put the fat pen down ... imagined the poem, as she often did, a small smooth oval egg resting in her head, warmed by worry and desire--by pleasure, habit, and consideration while its odd chick matured ...

  one tiny, clawed, four-toed foot already beating in time with her heart.

  "... Charis, I'd like to be sure you can afford all this time out of class.