by Paula Fox
“It was all I thought about,” Bertie said. “I think I even dreamed about it every night.”
“I’m glad my aunt didn’t see it,” Emma said. “She would have told us it wasn’t up to Paris or London—or even Albany.”
The large raft was now anchored a hundred yards or so out on the bay.
“Look!” said Bertie. “There’s the family that rents the house next to Granny’s.” Emma saw at least five children paddling in the little waves. Two grownups were opening a huge yellow beach umbrella.
“The summer has begun,” commented Bertie. “Pretty soon, the beach will be filled with people.”
“How long will our village last?” wondered Emma.
“Who knows? The main thing is—we made it,” responded Bertie.
They walked for a long time until they could no longer see the stairs that led up the cliff to their houses. The cliff fell away. A ridge of low-lying dunes took its place. On the other side of them was a large pond upon which three swans floated like meringues.
“It’s beautiful,” Emma commented. “I’m glad I got to see this part of the beach.”
“We ought to name the village,” Bertie said. “Yeah, it is pretty here. Those swans come back to the pond every year, I’ve heard.”
“How about Swan Haven?” Emma suggested.
“Why not Deer Haven?” Bertie asked. “We really do have a deer in the forest—not a swan. It’s more true.”
Emma hesitated. But after all, only she and Bertie would know the name of their village. “Okay,” she agreed.
Before supper Emma packed her suitcase and her shopping bag. She glanced at her diary before she dropped it on top of the puzzles she hadn’t done, the books she hadn’t read. She ought to write something down, but it seemed impossible. How could she write about the eagerness with which she raced down the stairs to the beach every morning? How could she describe the moment when Bertie handed her the balsa wood sign? Perhaps there are no words for what is perfect, she thought. Even counting the summers with her father and mother at the place in upstate New York, she couldn’t think of anything in her life that had held such delight as those hours with Bertie. Nothing Aunt Bea had said had touched them.
Aunt Bea was almost silent at supper. Uncle Crispin had broiled a steak and made rather lumpy mashed potatoes.
“Quite like nursery potatoes,” he remarked. “We used to count the lumps. Whoever had the most got an extra share of pudding.”
“Who is we?” asked Aunt Bea gruffly.
“Oh—a friend who might be visiting. Bea, I do wish you’d look at what these children made. It is simply magical!”
Aunt Bea stared down at her plate.
“They even built a library and a Greek temple!” he went on.
Aunt Bea rose abruptly and padded out to the kitchen in her beaded white moccasins. Soon, Emma heard the kettle boiling, and Aunt Bea appeared a moment later with a cup of tea. As she sat down, she said, “Crispin, I think I should like to go to Provence in the fall. I’m tired of this meager beach, those hordes who come out here every year.”
“If we can manage it, Bea,” Uncle Crispin said. “Travel is so expensive.”
“Don’t look to me for that problem,” Aunt Bea said angrily. “I have nothing … nothing.”
She glared at Emma as though everything was her fault. She drank from her cup, her eyes still on Emma, but the glow of anger in her eyes died away. When she put down the cup, she muttered, “Oh I know we can’t go.… It was just a thought.”
After supper and the dishes, Emma went to the living room. Aunt Bea was on the sofa in front of the television set.
“Shall I watch a movie with you?” Emma asked timidly. It was her last evening, after all.
“Who said I was going to watch a movie?” asked her aunt. She suddenly snatched up the channel changer and hit the button so quickly, a blur of stations floated by.
Emma sat down next to her.
“Ah,” sighed Aunt Bea, dropping the changer on the sofa between them. Emma watched as people speaking with English accents moved around a large kitchen. “That’s the cook, Mrs. Bridges,” announced Aunt Bea more to the room than to Emma. “This is the second time I’ve watched this series. I adore it. Crispin? If you don’t get a haircut soon, you’ll look exactly like Mrs. Bridges.”
“Oh, dear,” Uncle Crispin said from his table. “If I could only cook as well as she does!”
Aunt Bea laughed loudly. “It’s all a joke,” she said. “They give her a bowl and a whisk and she turns out a seven-course dinner for the king of England. If you were like me, you’d see that everything is a joke.”
Emma got up then and said good night without looking at her aunt or her uncle. As she went up to her room, she thought of how glad she was that she was leaving.
The moon’s rays made her room so light, Emma didn’t turn on the lamp. She knelt by the window, her elbows on the sill. A breeze was stirring the trees. The balsa sign that read Lodgings would be waving like a small banner. A night traveler would see it by the light of the moon and be comforted. She imagined herself walking down the main street toward the starfish. Which house would be hers? She chose the one made of sand dollars. Way out on the bay, she saw a tiny light. Someone must be night fishing. She would miss the water, its smell, the whisper of waves.
When she finally got into bed, she fell asleep at once.
Emma sat straight up in her bed. What had she heard? A soft shushing sound as though heavy cloth were being dragged along the hall. Then she realized it must be Aunt Bea in her moccasins. She held her breath, and in that instant, the sound faded away. She turned on the lamp. She felt she’d slept ten hours but the alarm clock showed it was only three a.m. She tried to read but couldn’t concentrate. She began to feel sleepy; the book slipped from the bed and hit the floor with a thud. Her eyes flew open. She sat straight up. There was a gasping, rasping noise just outside her door. It passed in a few seconds. The silence returned.
Now she was fully awake. On a sudden impulse, she got up, pulled on her jeans over her pajamas and shoved her feet into sandals. She would take a look at the village by night. She would know it in all its hours. As she went through the small foyer, she took the flashlight from the shelf.
From the porch, the dark waters of the bay glinted as though pricked by starlight. The islands were invisible, and the bay seemed to flow into the sky itself. Emma took the stairs slowly, feeling the tickle of the long sea grass against her ankles.
The sand was cold. She turned on the flashlight and looked down.
The village was wrecked. Stones and shells, seaweed and glass, all that had made the abodes, the temple, the library, the school, were scattered about, and hillocks of sand covered paths and gardens. She bent to pick up the starfish compass, ripped in half. Near where the doctor’s house had been was the plastic deer. Two large stones lay close by, one of the deer’s legs crushed between them. She knelt, holding herself up with one hand. With the other, she shone the flashlight close to the sand. She saw several tiny beads, blue and white and red. The throbbing of her heart sounded like a great alarm gong that should wake up all people who lived along the cliff. She grabbed the beads and waved her hand to shake away the sand that clung to them. She turned off the flashlight and stood in the dark, looking up at the sky. The blackness was like a substance she was swallowing.
It seemed only a moment later that she found herself on the long porch among the rocking chairs that huddled there like old, old people. Through the window, she saw a ray of light on the dining table. She went inside. Uncle Crispin stood in the kitchen doorway holding a cup of tea.
“Emma?” he questioned.
She began to cry. She put the flashlight on the table and held one hand against her mouth. In the other, she felt the hard little beads.
“Why, Emma!” he said in alarm.
She looked at him and opened her fist. He peered down at the beads, his face uncomprehending. She couldn’t speak yet. She look
ed around the dining room, into its shadowed corners. She was looking for something; she didn’t know what it was. Then her glance rested on the Monet poster.
“Emma—tell me!” Uncle Crispin said urgently.
“She smashed our village,” Emma sobbed. “It looks bombed. There’s nothing left.…”
“She?”
But he knew who she was. Emma could tell by the way his eyes narrowed, his mouth shut tight. He looked grim.
“Show me the beads,” he said. She held out her hand. He touched them one by one. Suddenly, she snatched her hand away, shook it so the beads dropped onto the floor. She went quickly to the poster, her hands raised to rip it from the wall.
“Emma! No!” he ordered her.
The desire to destroy it was so strong she thought she could feel it tearing in her hands.
“Don’t touch it,” he said. “I don’t care about the poster. I care about you.”
She turned back to him.
He had put the cup of tea down and drawn out a chair. “Sit here,” he said.
Her arms fell to her side. She felt weak. She did as he said.
“I can’t explain anything,” he said in a low voice. “I don’t ask you to forgive her. One of the tutors I had as a boy was much given to adages. Do you know what an adage is?”
She shook her head. She was barely listening to him, thinking of the destroyed village, of the place where it had stood which would, in a few days, look just like any other part of the beach.
“An adage is a way of summing up a kind of wisdom in a few words … like ‘haste makes waste’ or ‘a stitch in time saves nine.’ They’re boring, I know, but so often true. This tutor I was speaking about always spoke in adages. I recall a few. One was this: ‘Envy’s a coal comes hissing hot from hell.’”
He was staring at her. His face was partly in shadow, the kitchen light falling on his white hair.
“Emma,” he called softly as though she were far away. “I’m the only person Bea doesn’t envy. That is because I’m married to her. Do you understand what that means?”
She heard herself sigh.
“It means she knows about herself,” he went on. “That hot coal is inside her. She feels it more terribly than anyone else. She feels helpless—that’s why she says those dreadful things.”
“She did something this time,” Emma said. “She didn’t just say something.”
“Yes,” he said. “You can’t imagine how funny and nice she can be … when we’re alone here.”
Emma felt terribly tired. She didn’t want to hear anything more from Uncle Crispin. “She hates me so,” she said, thinking that would put an end to the talk. Then she could go to bed and sleep.
“No!” he said fiercely. “It’s not you she hates. It’s the world. She feels left out.”
“It would have blown away in a storm,” Emma said. “Or a high tide. People would’ve stepped on it.” She looked up at the Monet poster. She remembered her aunt saying, “the silliness of human beings against the force of nature.” But human beings were a force of nature, too.
“I was taking her a cup of tea,” Uncle Crispin said sadly. “She is very unhappy. I didn’t know what was wrong. She’ll regret what she’s done forever.”
Emma didn’t quite believe that. All she wanted now was to be in her room. The morning was near.
“You’re going home today,” he said. “Listen. You were so happy building your village. You mustn’t forget that.”
The skin on her cheeks felt tight with dried tears.
“I guess I won’t,” she said. She got up and left the dining room, aware that he continued to stand next to the table, perhaps looking at the chair where she had sat.
10
Home
When Emma awoke, her eyes felt grainy as though someone had flung sand at them. The sky was as gray as a camp blanket. For the first time, she noticed the chipped paint on the window frames, a long crack that ran the width of the ceiling, a thin layer of dust on the floor. There was a large yellow stain on the braided rug, and dust had gathered around its edges, a tide of dust that would cover it after she had gone and the room closed up as though she’d never been in it.
The silent house, the grayness of the morning that seemed to press up against the grimy windows, made her feel that everything had stopped—she had felt that way before on certain rainy days when she hadn’t wanted to get up, dress, when the day ahead was like a long, dreary test for which she wasn’t prepared.
She looked at the alarm clock. Time hadn’t stopped. It was nearly ten, the hour when she and Bertie had agreed to meet. She got out of bed, listening. She didn’t think she could have gone into the hall if she’d heard them.
But she must get down to the beach before Bertie saw the havoc. Why was it that she felt ashamed when it was her aunt who had done the awful thing?
She tiptoed to the bathroom, which Uncle Crispin must have straightened up. When she was dressed, she went back to the hall. She heard a faint murmur of voices and movement from their bedroom, and, as she went down the stairs, a soft padding of moccasined feet, Aunt Bea going to destroy the bathroom, she guessed.
There was scum on the tea in a cup on the dining room table. Uncle Crispin must have forgotten to take it to Aunt Bea after Emma had told him what had happened. She stepped on something hard. It was a blue bead. What had Uncle Crispin said to Aunt Bea when he went upstairs?
It was windy outdoors. The bay looked thick as porridge. Emma didn’t pause at the place where the village had been, but went to the stairs that led to Bertie’s house. She sat down on the bottom step, pushing her feet into the sand until they were hidden.
How would she tell her?
She couldn’t tell Bertie what her father would have called a bare-faced lie. And how could she look at Aunt Bea, at those great doll’s eyes, and smile? Could something so dreadful just disappear inside of smiles and talk without a word being said?
She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned her head to look at it, a brown hand with strong, long fingers.
“Bertie,” she said, “you didn’t make a sound.”
“Practice,” said Bertie. “Let’s go see our village.”
“No! Wait!” Emma said, grabbing Bertie’s hand. “I have to tell you something.”
Bertie sat down on the step below. Emma looked at her long golden braid bound by a rubber band, its tasselled end like a burst of yellow milkweed.
“We could take a swim,” Bertie suggested. “The water doesn’t look so great. When is your mother coming to get you?”
“Bertie, there is no village—it’s gone—everything is gone,” Emma said, speaking so quickly, her words ran together.
Bertie turned. She stared at Emma, her eyes narrowing. Without a word, she jumped up and ran to the place where the village had been. Emma sat still, watching her.
Bertie crouched. She reached across the sand and picked something up, looked at it, tossed it away. She stood up and kicked the sand, then raised her arms straight up in the air as though she were about to take a dive. She walked back slowly to Emma, her head down.
“That was no dog,” she said.
“No,” Emma said.
“There are a couple of kids down the beach who could have done it. They’re always tearing up everything.”
Emma drew a deep breath. “No. It wasn’t them,” she said. “It was her.”
Bertie’s eyebrows lifted. “Lady Bonkers?” she breathed.
Emma nodded.
“But why?” cried Bertie.
“I don’t know. Maybe because my uncle said it was so wonderful.” He had praised it too much, she thought to herself, but how could it have been just that? “I don’t know,” she repeated.
Emma got up and the two of them walked to the water’s edge.
“I don’t feel like swimming,” Bertie said. “I don’t feel like anything.”
“I wish it had been a dog,” said Emma.
They sat down. Bertie flipped pebbles in
to the water. They didn’t speak for a while.
“Well, I’ve got the pictures,” Bertie said at last. “If they turn out okay. At least we’ll know the village was really there. Why did she smash up the deer?”
Emma shook her head. It was a tangle of dead old roots. She couldn’t pull them apart. After that, neither of them mentioned the village directly again, although Emma was sure Bertie was thinking about it just as she was. Instead, they spoke about September and meeting each other back in the city.
Gradually, as they talked about the things they would do together in the far-off autumn, Emma began to feel a kind of hope. She recalled a line from a poem by Emily Dickinson her father had read her. “Hope is the thing with feathers,” he had read. She had liked that, not really knowing what it meant. Despite everything, she was beginning to feel rather … feathery. The sky was clearing. As the sun emerged, the bay lost its thick look and flashed like small swords at play.
“I loved all those days we had,” Bertie said.
“So did I,” said Emma with feeling.
“Oh—you don’t have to feel so sad,” Bertie said. “I’ve got an uncle who was a shoplifter when he was around fourteen. Well—he didn’t pinch big stuff.” Suddenly Bertie laughed. “Granny always made him take the stuff back when she found out. The last thing he ever stole, Granny told me, was a big kangaroo doll in a frilly pink dress. The store guard spotted its huge orange feet sticking flat out of my uncle’s jacket. My uncle claimed he thought he had picked up his gloves.”
“Did he ever get arrested?” Emma asked solemnly.
Bertie grabbed her shoulders and shook her back and forth. “Come on,” she demanded, “laugh a little. No, he went to a shrink for a while. Now he’s got four kids and he won’t let them go to a movie alone. Granny says there’s one in every family.”
But it wasn’t the same, Emma thought.
“I have to go,” she said. She smiled at Bertie, who took her hand and pressed it between her own hands.