by Nancy Thayer
He drew on, exhilarated. Slowly the light faded from the sky so that at last he could not see even the branches of the trees nearest him. Night had fallen.
He put down his sketch pad and found the one he had taken with him to the beach the previous week. He had made brief, rough drawings of the ocean, a sailboat, a gull riding on the wind. But the drawing that pleased him the most now was one of pebbles, shells, and seaweed cast up on the shore. In any given square foot of beach, the variety and subtlety of shape and color were amazing. He had not had his paints with him but had scribbled in the colors he wanted to duplicate and drawn arrows from the word to the appropriate shell or stone: coral, dun, peach, plum, washed gray, pale brown, faded blue. Most colors had been dulled by the weathering of sand and sea. He had walked along the shoreline a long way before the dark dappling of stone and shell was broken by one small rock covered by seaweed. The seaweed was still alive, and it was a brilliant emerald green, streaming over the rock and down toward the sea like a woman’s hair. That hair … John flipped over to a clean sheet of paper and began to sketch. Long, thick, streaming dark hair flowed across his page; he was drawing the woman’s head from the back, and he could get only the faintest suggestion of a profile turned toward him. The profile, the face, wasn’t important now; only the thick, abundant, streaming dark hair mattered.
John glanced up at the darkened attic window and saw a woman there, just on the other side of the glass.
A young woman in a black cape, her back to him, her profile obscured by the waves of dark hair that streamed down from her head, around her shoulders, to her waist, was out there in the air.
Startled, he dropped his pencil on the floor, and the clatter it made as it hit the wooden boards was immense.
“What the hell?” John said.
The woman in the window disappeared. The window was blank, black.
John rubbed his hands over his eyes. He looked at his watch. It was after five. He had been working for over four hours, and he was exhausted. This had happened to him before—not a hallucination but the same plunge from intense euphoria to sudden, complete fatigue. It was like being dropped from the high of a drug. He was more pleased than frightened by his hallucination—how vivid it had been!—and it seemed to him that this meant he was really starting to work now, that he was at last beginning to tap into his true artistic core.
He was immensely happy. He shuffled his papers and pads back into order and got ready to go downstairs. He couldn’t wait to share all this with Willy, to tell her how well his work had gone. On the first day! He wanted to share his sense of achievement with her, knowing that she would be happy for him.
He wouldn’t tell her about the hallucination, though. It had been so brief, so strange—Willy might take it too seriously. Or, worse, not seriously enough. No, he wouldn’t mention the hallucination to Willy. He had always envied her her sense of self-sufficiency, of being lost in another world, when she was at work on her embroidery. Her sense of having secrets. Well, now he had his secrets, too. He went down the attic steps and reached up to pull the chain that switched the last light off.
Even though it was raining, Willy and John walked to the Atlantic Cafe. The cobblestone streets seemed polished by the sheen of rain in the lamplight, and strangers passed one another with collars turned high, hats pulled low, looking like spies in the night. The inside of the restaurant was cozy and bright by contrast. The bar at the front of the café was lined with fishermen, scallopers, and carpenters, bearded young men with their wool caps stuck in the pockets of their rain slickers, laughing heartily, the storm outside forgotten in the first taste of beer. Willy and John took a booth in the back.
They ordered cheese nachos, zucchini sticks, chicken fingers, cheeseburgers, and dark draft beers, their hunger strong because of their walk in the rain. Willy had braided her long honey-colored hair, and it hung over her shoulder against her thick wool sweater like a rope.
“I saw our carpenter up there at the bar,” Willy said. “Although perhaps I’m being too optimistic when I say our.”
“I didn’t see him,” John said. “Which one? Beauregard?”
“Yeah,” Willy said. “I wonder if one of us should go over and say hello … remind him that he promised to be back last week with an estimate for the work.”
“I don’t know, Willy,” John said. “I hate to bother someone on a Sunday night when he’s relaxing.”
“Well”—Willy sighed—“I suppose you’re right. It’s just so frustrating, though. There’s so much I’d like to have done to the house.”
“I know,” John agreed. The waitress put their food down in front of them, and for a while they ate in silence. Then John said, “I’d like the skylight fixed so we can use it like a door. Or a hatch. So we can get out on the widow’s walk. In fact, I’d like it done right away.”
Willy looked up from her food. “Why on earth do you want to get out on the widow’s walk?” she asked.
“I don’t know exactly,” John said, almost as surprised as Willy. They hadn’t put the widow’s walk at the top of their list before. “It’s just that after working up there all afternoon, I feel I need access to it. I want to be able to go in and out on it. Perhaps,” he went on, trying to explain to his wife and himself, thinking aloud, “perhaps, it’s that I want to get away from the man-made in my work and get back into the natural elements. If I could just go out whenever I wanted to and stand on the widow’s walk and feel the wind or rain …” He was quiet a moment. “It will be a long time until the spring, until the weather’s good enough for me to take my paints outdoors. With the widow’s walk accessible, I’ll be able to be more in touch with the weather and with what I want to do.”
Willy smiled at her husband. “You started working today. Isn’t that great?”
“I did start,” he said. “Willy, I’m excited about it. I didn’t think I’d be able to start—really start—so soon.”
“Well,” Willy said, “let’s get that skylight open as soon as we can.”
“I love you, Willy,” John said.
“I love you,” Willy answered. She ate awhile, then began to tell John her plans for painting and carpeting her sewing room. She could do the painting herself; she wanted the walls to be a bright apricot color and the woodwork trimmed in cream; did that sound too odd? They discussed their plans for the house and had hot-fudge sundaes for dessert and finally forced themselves back out into the rain for the walk home.
Back in the house, Willy put on her nightgown and robe and made a pot of decaffeinated coffee for them to drink while they watched Masterpiece Theatre. Then they watched a goofy comedy on HBO, and it was after midnight when they got ready for bed.
“We don’t have to set an alarm!” Willy said, crawling into bed next to her husband. “You don’t have to leave for work in the morning. Oh, what a luxury. We can sleep as late as we want in the morning.”
“So we can stay up as late as we want at night,” John said, turning to Willy. He pulled her toward him, feeling her generous curves through her flannel nightgown. “Doing whatever decadent things we want,” he went on. “He-he-he,” he laughed in a dirty-old-man voice, nuzzling Willy on the neck.
Willy wrapped her arms around his shoulders, but loosely, so that she would not constrain him in his movements. By now they knew each other well enough to know exactly how to give the greatest pleasure. Although for Willy, just this—holding her husband in her arms—was the greatest pleasure. She found the current rage described by magazines for women to achieve orgasm amusing, ridiculous, even irritating. Usually, often, she had an orgasm, or several, when she and John made love, but that was not what was important or even best about their lovemaking. The best of it was John in her arms, moving against her, the two of them together; the scratchiness of his evening’s beard against her forehead; her lips pressed against his naked shoulder, tasting salt, smelling sweet sweat and the lingering fragrance of clean cotton; the weight of him all up and down her. Often s
he tried not to become orgasmic so that she could focus on this, on John in her arms, his labor against her, the sense of urgency in him. He became everything to her then, her child, her hero, and when she held him in her arms, naked, full-length, on their bed, she was always overcome with a love for him that was so strong that she knew she would kill for him, do anything for him. This was what her life was about. She loved her husband as her heart loved its blood.
The next few days almost gave them summer back. Nantucket was nearer the Gulf Stream than the continent and so was often warmer, and for the week after Thanksgiving, the temperature reached fifty-five or sixty almost every day. It was unusual, but Willy and John were delighted.
John took his sketch pad and pencils and inks off in their Wagoneer to different spots on the moors or along the beach and spent entire days sketching and painting. Willy packed him sack lunches of corned beef sandwiches on bread slathered with mustard and thick with sweet onions; she thought onions guarded against catching colds. She added an apple, a beer, a thermos of coffee.
John left by nine every morning and didn’t return until five or so at night, and he returned exhilarated, the back of the Wagoneer filled with sketches and small watercolor scenes. It was just picture-postcard stuff, he knew—a canvas of the ferry Uncatena rounding Brant Point or the glaze of bright sun on the smooth water of a pond—but these pictures were a start, a way of feeling his way toward what it was he really wanted to do.
Willy stayed home, threw open the windows, put all her Wyndham Hill records on her stereo, and painted her sewing room. She painted the woodwork cream, the walls a golden-pinkish apricot. The walls were old and had as many wrinkles and eccentricities as an old sailor’s face. Former owners had made holes to hang pictures or put in a flue; more recent ones had plastered over or put on wall-board compound and not sanded down thoroughly, leaving lumps and blotches. There were some long wandering cracks that had been there so long they seemed essential to the wall; the wall was not weakened by them. They were just there. Willy didn’t mind.
Kirk Beauregard arrived and took measurements for turning the skylight into a hatch that would open onto the widow’s walk. He said he’d be back by the end of the week, but he wasn’t. It didn’t upset the Constables very much; nothing could during this week of kind weather. On Saturday they bundled up in layers and biked out to Surfside together with lunches and paperbacks in their bike baskets and spent the whole day walking on the beach, picnicking in the dunes, watching the ocean tease the shore. Gulls dipped overhead, and families with children and dogs went past, playing games with the surf. Willy and John congratulated themselves for their happiness.
On Sunday, Willy thought she might go to one of the churches on the island but didn’t get up in time. She spent the long morning reading the Times and the Globe and drinking coffee with John. It was cooler today but still sunny. Windy. John wandered off up into the attic to sort through his week’s work and start making some kind of order of his material. Willy curled on the sofa with a book and pulled an afghan up over her. She was too lazy to build a fire.
John sorted through his stuff. He wasn’t going to have shelves for months; that was becoming obvious. If he waited on the shelves, he’d never get anything done. The former owners had left behind a large wooden cable wheel in the attic. It stood only about two feet high and was stamped in yellow on its green surface: American Insulated Wire Corp. Pawtucket R.I. But it was sturdy, and John unpacked some of his paints and brushes and set them on that. There was also, in the corner, a heavy old humidifier. It was useless, but as a surface it was something, so John stacked some jars and bottles and tins on it. He put his bare canvases and sketch pads along one wall of the attic, and the ones he had been working on during the week he ranged along the back of the attic, so that they were the first things he saw when he came up the stairs. They were not great, but they were passable. Nice scenes that a tourist might pay a few bucks for. This was not what he wanted to do, but it was a step away from microwave ovens.
He found on the floor by his stool the large sketch pad he had been working on the previous Sunday. He flipped through it, then sat thinking. He roamed around the attic for a while, fiddling with the lights; until an electrician showed up, he would have to make do with what lighting he could rig up himself. So he began to fasten the 100-watt bulbs he had bought during the week into the extra hanging sockets that existed at random around the attic. The result was not elegant but bright. It would do till the electrician came.
At some point during the week he had thrown his wool vest up into the attic. Now he remembered why. He dug into the pocket of the vest and found three gull feathers, white tipped with gray; one scallop shell, unbroken, the ridges peach colored, the channels white as snow; one shriveled rose hip, still vividly red. He arranged these carelessly against the rough gray-and-white plaid wool of his vest and began to work. He wanted to capture the different textures of soft feather, fragile shell, dimpled fruit, and their similarities: their delicate curving textured reality. He made some sketches on his pad, then set up his easel and began to work on a large canvas. The barbs of the feathers grew from the shaft with the minute perfection of cat’s teeth; he remembered he must look for a kitten for Willy. Then he grew lost in his work.
It was dark outside when he gave up for the day. John sat down on his stool, his arms hanging at his side, considering his work. It was almost half-finished. The penciled outlines were there, and the beginnings of color. He was delighted. And tired, tired in a pleasant, fulfilled way, like a runner who has reached his destination. After a while he rose and went around the attic turning off the light bulbs one by one until the only light remaining was the one hanging over the stairs that was reached from the bottom of the stairs by the pull chain. Now he realized how very quiet the house had become. There were no sounds of Willy fixing dinner, no sounds of music. There came over him the sensation that he was alone in the house now, that Willy had gone out for some reason—to buy groceries? But he felt that she was gone. He was physically exhausted from painting for so long, and he was content. It was dark outside now, and the wind was coming up, rattling the windows.
John stood for a moment, looking out the window toward the harbor, before he realized what he was really looking for. Then he made a gruff noise in his throat, a sort of snort of laughter at himself. He’d been halfway expecting to see some kind of hallucination in the window again, for he had been working very hard. But there was nothing there now. He shook his head at his foolishness and went down the stairs, pulling the chain to switch off the last light.
At the bottom of the stairs he paused. The house was quiet, but in the attic there was a persistent thumping now that he hadn’t noticed before. A gentle knocking noise.
Without turning on the light, he went back up into the attic. He stood a moment, listening. Again he wondered if there were creatures in the wall. He really must see about that cat. It sounded as if something wounded were trying to get in. He moved toward the window cautiously, trying to locate the direction of the pattering. There was nothing at the window, although every few moments it shook slightly from the blows of the now forceful wind.
The noise seemed to be coming from the skylight. John reached out and tugged on the chain hanging over the stairs, switching on the light so that the attic was slightly brightened. He wasn’t brave enough to encounter some kind of rabid bat or pigeon (he thought of Hitchcock’s The Birds) in the dark.
He walked across the attic to the wide wooden staircase that led steeply up to the skylight. It was the skylight that was being battered. He began to climb the steps, which ascended so sharply that he was practically lying facedown on them. He had to crane his neck backward to look up.
He had gone up three steps, so that his face was nearly against the skylight, when he saw her.
The light from the stairwell was not sufficient to illuminate her clearly, but still he could see without any doubt that she was there.
John saw quite d
istinctly a young woman with a pale face leaning down over the skylight, her dark cloak billowing heavily against her, her long black hair streaming upward, backward, all around her face in the wind. Her dark eyes were large and beseeching. Her small white hands were making the sounds he had heard: She was beating her palms against the glass. There was no color to her: Her skin was all white, her eyes and hair and cloak all deep black.
“Jesus Christ,” John whispered. He clutched the wooden step in front of him. He was dizzy with shock. He had not felt such a deep plunge of fear and dread since he was a child. But he could not seem to look away, and the woman did not disappear. She continued to beat with her small hands on the skylight glass.
“Who are you?” John whispered. But he spoke more to himself than to the woman at the skylight. In any case, she did not seem to hear him. I’m going mad, John thought. I’m going fucking mad. I think there’s a woman blowing around on the roof.
“Willy!” John yelled.
“No!” the ghost-woman called, and raised a hand, palm out to him, as if to forestall him.
He heard her voice then quite clearly. It was high, light, sweet, enchanting even in its demand. He heard it as clearly as he had ever heard anything.