Reprisal

by Mitchell Smith

  All the rest of the summer?"

  Charis finished a computer entry with a quick rap-a-tat-tat on her keyboard.

  "Well, I've already done my paper for American Novel--and Sue Harriman'll grade me on that. And I talked to Engletree and Singleton. They know I'm out here with you--and they both said I could write papers for them instead of the last weeks of classwork. I think Engletree was glad to see me go. ... The dean's office said okay if the professors said okay. And it was all right with Cavelli, for Statistics, if I take his end-term exam."

  "How many papers?"

  "Three. Have to do a poet for Engletree.-I was thinking of doing you--"

  "Oh, for God's sake, don't do me. Chris really dislikes my work. Places me in the nineteenth century with Tennyson and Longfellow--in intention, not accomplishment."

  "Joanna, I think that's really good company. I love "Hiawatha."--Maybe I'll do Longfellow just to piss him off. He'll hate it."

  "... Longfellow, the too-popular poet and his trochees. And mighty unfashionable now.-Charis, I really don't advise your teacher's annoyance as the basis for choosing a subject. ... But if you do decide to, and find our old romantic rich enough, there is a library out here, very small, across from the school. I'd guess Longfellow is a poet they might have, among others. But I'd think twice before doing him for Chris.--And what else?"

  "A paper on peripheral wars." Charis made another short entry, read the screen to check it.

  "Peripheral wars ...?" It occurred to Joanna that it might be a good idea to read through White River's fall catalog--be reminded what they were teaching these days, besides English literature and poetry.

  "Right," Charis said. "Peripheral wars.-Sociology, "A Global Perspective." And the paper's supposed to be about whether First World countries promote small conflicts to advance imperialism and so forth. Peripheral wars, the new colonialism."

  ""Peripheral ...""

  "That should be the name of the course." Charis opened a textbook, turned to the index. "... It's really dreary, because Singleton just wants agreement.

  "You bet the First World starts little wars to screw the Third.""

  "And they don't?"

  "No, I don't think so." Charis was frowning at the textbook's index. "Advanced countries go in with these good intentions, and it always turns to shit. Those little wars are blunders, more than anything." She found her entry, opened the textbook to it.

  "... Worse than crimes."

  "Was that Talleyrand?"

  "No. De la Meurthe."

  "Tell you what I think. I think a few of the Third World countries would be better off back under colonialism. You know, Joanna, some of them are turning into zoos."

  "A possible truth you might want to keep from Professor Singleton. ... Leave him his illusions."

  "Oh, I wouldn't say that in my paper. That would be heresy."

  "Yes.--So, that's two papers."

  "Well, the other one isn't really a paper; it's a critique. Just maybe three or four pages on statistical method in collation and application of census material in the U.s."

  "God, that sounds grim."

  "It's a hard course--Statistical Means. I'll pass and get the credit, but I won't do very well. Cavelli likes math proofs--even if they don't prove much--and my math is terrible."

  "I didn't think Cavelli taught summers."

  "Old guy's teaching this summer."

  "He's ancient.--But if you turn in those three papers, Charis, and pass Cavelli's end-of-term exam, you do get your course credits? Because I don't want you to stay out here with me, if it costs you a summer's work."

  "No, I get my credits, so I'll have my B.a. Then I'll go for my master's next year--at White River, if I can get accepted. I'm tired of picking up stuff summers, and at city colleges." Charis sighed, closed the textbook, and entered something into her laptop.

  "White River?"

  "Well, I know it's hard to get in--so I'm thinking backup at State."

  "... Charis, if you let me look at your work, and it's good, I'd be happy to help you with the personnel people."

  Charis looked up from the laptop's screen, smiled at Joanna. "Happy to help--if my work's good."

  "I shouldn't ... shouldn't have qualified my helping you, Charis."

  "Yes, you should." Charis finished her entry. "--ally should do exactly what you think is right. Especially about English, about poetry. ... If you didn't, I wouldn't respect you as much." She looked at her computer screen. "How do you say ... what do you call a really devoted follower? A disciple--but I already used "disciple.""

  "Votary."

  "Okay. ..." Swift typing. "Very-o-that-a-rather-you?"

  "That's right." Joanna sat with her notebook, the poem's beginning, and her handsome black pen, and watched Charis work. She observed with an easeful pleasure the girl's absorption. That elegant face, usually guarded, almost expressionless, had now become mobile as a little girl's--intent, frowning ...

  then suddenly relieved, satisfied with some conclusion, an idea come to completion. The child she had been could be seen in her face--in slow turns curious, puzzled, and pleased as she worked along. A face as open as a flower.

  Joanna watched for a while, then felt she was somehow taking advantage ...

  seeing more than Charis would wish. The little girl revealed in the tender acceptance of new knowledge.

  "I think I'll go up early. ..." Joanna stood, picked up her notebook and pen.

  "Good night." Charis looked up from her laptop, smiling.

  Joanna felt an impulse, acted on it, and went around the table to kiss Charis's cheek, kiss her good night. "Sleep well. ..."

  Then she went down the hall, and climbed the stairs, considering the reasons for respect. Charis had said, "If you didn't, I wouldn't respect you as much."

  Without the meeting of certain standards--a lower grade given. And though Charis presented herself as an experienced young adult in attitude and conversation--with none of the teenage catch-phrases clung to by the uncertain young, often into their thirties --there still seemed to lie beneath, the simple, swift, and merciless judgments of a little girl. As if she contained within herself both a child who'd never grown up, and a woman who'd never been a child.

  Joanna went into her bedroom and sat by the window in the rocker, her notebook in her lap. She thought of the ocean ... and Charis. Geology, and the massively slow formation of lands to cup the seas. Periods of formation. ...

  It was what Charis must have missed, the time of normal transition to adulthood. Those years wrecked by continuing abuse, and the reiterated memories of her monstrous childhood, so a ruined adolescence was replaced by judgment's iron bridge between a little girl and her grown self ... with strict requirements that Charis felt she must meet, that others must meet, that life must be made to meet for her. ...

  Joanna sat by her bedroom window, rocking a little back and forth, writing in her notebook as the evening came slowly down toward dark ... working while the light failed, enjoying the race the black pen ran across darker and darker paper, until the verses faded as all light faded over the sea. The ocean in deep darkness heaving ... its difference then absolute. By day, the sea might be dealt with--and under the moon. But benighted, except for glowing monsters finning deep, all fish swam blind.

  She heard Charis singing downstairs, in the dining room--something in poetry, or sociology, or statistics having prompted her to song. She was singing a melody Joanna had never heard before, her voice as spontaneous, frail, and unself-conscious as she was not. ... Of course. It was the child's voice, singing.

  Joanna wrote while she could see, only a few minutes longer ... then got up, put her notebook away, and turned on the room light. --Wondering if she was ready, if it was too soon, she went to the closet for the shoe boxes of family photographs Rebecca had brought out for her.

  Joanna brought the boxes to the bed. ... There were many pictures of Rebecca.

  One of her on a sunny lawn--in Gloucester--sitting up
just over a year old, and laughing. Her fat little hand was gripping a stuffed toy dog in her lap.

  ... Roscoe. White with small black spots. He had been her dear friend.

  Joanna sat on her bed and looked at pictures--but kept coming back to that one. She began to weep, as much for the small toy dog that had been so loved, as for the little girl laughing on the lawn. ... Joanna sat looking at pictures, and found Frank smiling at her out of many ... found her father standing at the corner of their old house in Chaumette, tall, withheld, slightly stooped even when younger, and always caught just in or out of shadow.

  There were no pictures of her mother. Her father had put most in the garbage after her mother died, apparently so no reminder would torment him.

  "I'm not that brave," Joanna said to the bedroom, and sorted through a bunch from the back of the second box. Fading photos in torn yellowed envelopes.

  College pictures, early pictures with only a few of Frank. Other old photographs stacked in back of those. ...

  Too many to look at all at once. The faces too insistent, all saying,

  "Remember me--recall, and be reminded. I was this ... and now I'm not. I was yours ... but no longer, and never again."

  Joanna put the pictures away, carried the boxes to the closet, and undressed to take her shower. She stood naked in front of the closet mirror, and recognized herself in the glass as she might have recognized a slightly older sister, tired, flushed hot from a day in the sun, and a little worn. A sensible sister, who had accepted with more grace than Joanna her cancer and missing breast. A sister who had more gray threading through her hair. ...

  "Is there anything I can do for you?" Joanna said to her reflection ... and received no answer. She went in to take her shower, didn't linger, and stepped out to towel dry. Then she put on pajamas, instead of the yellow nightgown ...

  turned off the light, and went to bed. There was a faint glow of light through the half-open door, light from the stairwell. Charis was still up, downstairs, working on a paper.

  Perhaps peripheral wars. ...

  Joanna lay enjoying the sheets' coolness against her sun-heated skin. Charis

  ... a friend. And who would be the healed, and who the healer, when their summer ended? Friends--perhaps for a time, perhaps forever. Who else did either of them have?

  Joanna felt the weight of responsibility, familiar as family--though for a childhood lost to Charis long ago. Responsibility, purpose, settled as she lay there, billowing softly down like a warm blanket flung over her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Joanna made breakfast.

  Over coffee, they decided on no drive today. "And the phone?" Charis smiled.

  "Do you think it's time to get it fixed?"

  "... Yes, it's time. While we're in town we can go by their office, and schedule somebody to come out."

  "And lawn furniture. We'll split what it costs."

  "No, Charis.--You're a student, for God's sake, and you've bought more than your share of groceries already. It's for the cottage, and I'll pay for it."

  "I want to pay for something." Charis poured more coffee for each of them.

  "Fine. Pay for one chair.--Sweetheart, do you have any money? It's none of my business, but you're in school, and you haven't had a chance to work this summer. ..."

  "But I worked before. I've always had a job--and I had a trust fund for college, so I saved some money."

  "Okay, pay for one lawn chair, Charis--and don't pay for anything else for a while."

  "Okay ... for a while." Charis looked into her coffee mug. "--Is the cream turned?"

  "No. It's just Jersey cream. Thick. ... You know, with the phone will come things to be done."

  "Right." A businesslike nod, the girl's face striped in horizontal shade and gold by the kitchen blinds.

  "At the end of the week, I'll probably have to go over to White River. There are things ... a lot of things that just have to be done, and I haven't wanted--haven't been able--to do them. The mail. ... And I want to bring Rebecca's ashes back."

  "I know. ... Can I go with you?"

  "Of course you'll go with me."

  Charis put her coffee mug down. "Joanna, you're really ... you're so much better now, you don't need me. You have things you have to do, and your work.--I know we thought I'd stay all summer, but it might be less trouble for you if I didn't. You might like some time alone."

  "Charis, I wouldn't like some time alone. I'd like you to stay with me. ...

  Unless you'd prefer not to--unless you have other things you'd like to be doing."

  "I don't."

  "Then stay with me. And--I know this may be premature--but if we can get you into the regular graduate program, and I decide to keep teaching, we might share the house at White River, do our work ... maybe go caving, if you want to try it."

  "I'd like that.--And going caving." Charis picked up the spoons and mugs, took them to the sink.

  "Then--if we're still speaking by the end of summer --we'll do it. But if we do, anytime you decide to take off ... then you just go, and it's no problem."

  "I won't want to." Charis started washing the dishes.

  "Well, someday you may.--You know, even after the hardest times, terrible times ... it isn't impossible for you to have a wonderful life, find someone who cares for you, a decent man."

  "Not interested."

  "And you might want to have children. ..."

  "Joanna, I already have--almost." She began rinsing the dishes. "I got pregnant when I was thirteen, and he did an abortion on me in the garage.--After that, I went on the pill. I was afraid I'd have a baby, and he'd take it."

  "... I'll dry." Joanna got up, went to the sink.

  "We're almost out of detergent."

  "We'll get some today. Add it to the list. ... Sweetheart, because that happened, that doesn't mean you might not have children, later."

  No answer, only dish rinsing.

  Joanna looked over at this injured angel, and was startled by the weight of her grief for the girl --grief and great anger.

  "Not your fault, Charis." She took the next dish and put it down, touched the girl's arm and turned to hug her. It was the first time she'd held Charis in this way, and she hugged her hard, as if to heal all those ancient injuries.-Held her close, felt the soft-solid length of perfect youth ... the light burden of the girl's head against her shoulder.

  Charis was trembling, a fine vibration. Joanna kissed her cheek, and oddly reluctant, let her go. "Okay ...?"

  "Yes," Charis said, and smiled. Her eyes were bright, blurred with tears. "I'm okay now."

  "So--we shop this morning, pick up the plants? Then we can put them in this afternoon."

  "Sounds good." Charis rinsed the last plate, handed it over to be dried.

  "Sounds good to me. ..."

  They spent the rest of the morning buying plants --some at the hardware, little green plastic boxes of pansies ... and more at Fuller's, on Weather Road, a dead end south of town. Fuller's, a very small nursery in apparently permanent decay, was owned by two stout women with one cat and several fat and friendly dogs--and Joanna and Charis were given a great deal of advice, sacks of dried manure and potting soil, and a carload of boxed seedlings and small plants.

  They stopped back in town, but the phone company's small island office was closed for lunch--so they came home for their own, tuna sandwiches.

  ... When Joanna came downstairs after changing into her gardening clothes, Charis was already kneeling out back with the small hand rake, getting the last stones out of the south bed's turned soil.

  "Here." She stood and handed Joanna a baseball cap. "This isn't a big hat, and you need something in the sun."

  It was a Cardinals cap, worn, stained. A red baseball cap.

  Joanna supposed this was only the first of many accidental associations she would encounter through the years. Random grim reminders of mystery and loss.

  ... Better start getting used to them. Start with this baseball cap lik
e another red baseball cap--seen or not seen on a boy. A boy seen or not seen sailing with Frank the day he died.

  "Thanks." She put the cap on. It fitted her.

  "Same big heads," Charis said, and knelt, wearing her wide-brimmed straw ...

  intent on raking.

  Joanna knelt beside her, digging a row of small holes in earth enriched with potting soil along the border of the bed "... You know, what we were talking about, what happened when you were thirteen? Well, that's something we have in common. Except that I had choices, Charis, and you didn't. I was responsible, and you weren't."

  "Choices ...?"

  "Charis, when I was seventeen, I got pregnant. Well, I was already a freshman in college, not young enough for that to be an excuse. I had the child. ... My mother was Catholic; both my parents were Catholic--they were separated then--and my mother came down to Cambridge and stayed with me the last few months." Joanna dug the last planting hole of the row--concerned they might be too shallow, even for such little flowers. "--I had the child, and I gave it away."

  Charis stopped raking, knelt looking down at the carton of small green plastic boxes of pansies, rows of little flower faces. "... Are you sorry you did that?"

  "Yes. You bet I've been sorry. It was an act ... it was an act of cowardice.

  Selfishness. The father was definitely not interested, and that left it up to me and I didn't want my life interrupted, taken out of my control by anything." Joanna leaned over to pick out a flower, try the size of the small hole she'd dug. "--I thought I was too important, too valuable for that, so I gave the baby away like a new sweater that didn't fit."

  The pansy was lavender, a gay little lion, roaring. She eased it from the plastic basket, then troweled more room for it. "I saw the baby once, in the hospital, and it was given away for adoption."

  "Hard choices," Charis said.

  The flower fit. Joanna tamped soil carefully around it. "... When you make a decision like that, it has permanent consequences. At least, it did for me. It meant that I wasn't the person I'd thought I was. I was ... less. I have never forgiven myself for it." She planted a second pansy, bright orange, pressed the soil firm around it. "We need to remember to water them. ..." She reached into the carton for another flower, picked one blue with black borders, took it from its basket, and bent to tuck the little flower in.