by Anita Shreve
I had not been inside her house before and had the idea that it would look fussy, if homely, with knickknacks and knitted tea cozies. Did I think this only because she was of a different generation than myself? But her rooms were not fussy, were rather surprisingly spare and inviting. I remember most of all her floors, burnished dark hardwood floors that she later confessed to me she polished on her hands and knees. She had a ritual, she said, of rising at six every morning and spending her first two hours cleaning and polishing, so that she did not have to think about chores the rest of the day. Her kitchen was quite large, with white vertical boards on its walls and a gray-green slate floor. She invited me into her kitchen and said she'd make us a cup of tea. There was a fireplace and a large round oak table. She was wearing that afternoon, as she always wore, a pair of thick corduroy pants and a sweater. I don't think I ever saw her in a skirt the entire time I knew her. She had strong, muscular hands and forearms, which I noticed particularly when she brought the kettle to the stove. I remember, too, that there were a great many books in her kitchen—not cookbooks but novels, biographies, and histories—and I had the sense that she lived in this room, at least in wintertime.
I put Caroline on the floor and let her creep around, always keeping my eye on her and the fireplace. Julia put the screen across, and she, too, kept watch, once getting up and bringing Caroline, who had wandered too close to the hearth, back to the other side of the room.
"You settling in?" Julia Strout asked as she fetched two mugs from her cupboard.
"Yes," I said. "The cottage is wonderful. Very peaceful."
"You have any idea how long you're going to stay?"
It was an idle question—I'm not sure she really cared—but it took me by surprise, and I must have hesitated, or she must have seen the alarm on my face, for she quickly added, "It's yours for as long as you need it or want it. There's no one else signed up for it."
"Oh," I said.
"Milk or brandy?" she asked.
"What?"
"I prefer brandy on a cold afternoon," she said, "but suit yourself."
"Brandy," I said.
I watched her pour large dollops of the amber liquid into the mugs. Perhaps she wasn't as sensible as I'd imagined.
She brought the steaming mugs to the table. I took a sip from my own. The liquor was strong, and I could feel it hit my stomach, the warmth spreading.
She sat across from me, took a swallow of her tea.
"Are you going to be looking for work?" she asked.
I wasn't sure of the answer to this question. I looked at Caroline.
"I don't know," I said. "I suppose I'll have to eventually. But there doesn't seem to be much work available. I'm not sure what I'd do."
"You have a certain amount of money," she said carefully.
"Yes."
"And when that's gone...?"
"Yes."
"I see." She turned in her chair.
"I like living alone myself," she said, "though this house is ridiculously big for just one person. The cottage is nice, though."
"Very nice," I said.
"I've shut off most of the rooms here. Can't imagine living with anyone else now. Comes from too many years on my own."
I heard the hidden message—that I did not have to be afraid of living alone. I took another swallow of tea. Caroline was making cooing sounds in a corner, entranced by the carved and spindly legs of a tall wooden chair she'd found there.
"You're on the run, aren't you?" Julia Strout said suddenly and plainly. "You've run away."
At first I didn't speak.
"You don't have to tell me," she said. "It's none of my business."
"I had to," I said finally.
She stared for a time at her knee, which was crossed over her other leg. She wore work boots, laced up over the ankle.
"Not a good idea to be alone with a baby all the time," she said. "I can always take her for a couple of hours if you want a break."
"Thank you," I said, "but I couldn't..."
"Well, you think about it."
"I will."
A silence descended upon the kitchen. In the corner, up on all fours, Caroline lost her balance and bumped her head on the chair leg. I went to her and picked her up. I had nearly finished my tea, anyway, and said I ought to be going. Julia seemed at first reluctant to let me go, and I thought that possibly she was sometimes lonely too.
She walked me to the door.
"You come again for tea," she said to me.
I thanked her and said that I would. She watched as I put Caroline into her snowsuit, wound the scarf around my head.
"He won't find you in this town," she said.
That day I did not go back to the cottage but instead drove into Machias. There was something at the five-and-ten that I wanted to get. I went into the store and bought a nightgown for myself—a long flannel nightgown in a pattern of small blue cornflowers, a long prosaic nightgown to keep me warm in my solitary bed, the sort of nightgown that might grow soft and threadbare from use.
A nightgown that Harrold would not have approved of.
***
In the middle of December, about ten days before Christmas, there was a flurry of activity on the point, as three of the four boats in the channel were hauled onto cradles for the winter. There were boat trailers and winches and heavy pulleys and more men on the point than I had ever seen before. One of the boats that was being pulled that day was Jeannine, Willis's boat, and he made a show of coming to my cottage twice, once for coffee, and once for a drink when the boat was safely hauled, as if to suggest to the men on the point that we were old friends and the cottage nearly a second home to him. I wondered if the other men ever asked Willis about me, and if they did, what he told them. Would he confine himself to the little that he knew, or would he feel compelled to embellish these few facts so that I might appear more mysterious or intriguing in his stories? The green-and-white lobster boat did not get hauled that day, was not even in the channel. It had gone out at daybreak, as was its custom, and did not return until nearly dusk, when all the other boats had been hauled and the men had gone home to their suppers.
On the day after the boats had been hauled, I dressed Caroline and myself for an excursion. I was short of coffee and dishwashing liquid and a baby cereal I had begun to give Caroline, and thought I would just run into town and pick up a few things at Everett Shedd's. It was a gray day, cold and overcast, with a hint of snow in the air, and I was thinking that I had better do the errand before dusk and possible bad weather. I put Caroline into the basket in the back seat and started the car. I was halfway down the gravel drive, however, when I realized something was wrong. The steering wheel kept pulling to the right. I stopped the car and got out. I had a flat, the right front.
You will probably be amused by this—I see you as someone who prides herself on being competent—but I had not actually ever changed a tire before. I had been shown how to do it by a male friend of my mother's, who had taught me how to drive, but I had never done the deed myself. Out of habit, I looked around me, as if someone might materialize—where was Willis when I really needed him?—but the landscape was particularly cheerless that day and empty. Now that the boats had been hauled, the men seemed to have taken a day off. And the green-and-white lobster boat had not returned yet. I thought to myself that I could wait until the next day, when someone might appear, but I did not like to think of myself and the baby stranded without a car, in case of an emergency. I carried Caroline back into the house, so that she would not freeze in the back seat, and laid her in the baby basket on the braided rug. All the coming and going had thoroughly woken her up, and she was crying.
I mumbled something to her about being right back, which was, in the circumstances, wildly optimistic, and went out to forage through the trunk of the car. I found the jack and the spare and a lug wrench. I understood the theory of changing a tire. I got the jack to work, but I could not get the nuts off. I stood on the wrench, but
even my weight wouldn't budge them. Inside the cottage, I could hear Caroline wailing.
I was thinking that I might have to wait until she was asleep, but by then it would be dark outside and the task even more difficult. I thought that if I jumped up and down on the wrench, that would loosen the nuts, and so it was that I was standing on the wrench, jumping up and down for all I was worth, holding on to my car so that I would not lose my balance, perhaps even cursing my bad luck into the bargain, when I heard a voice behind me.
I hadn't seen the boat come in. From the gravel drive, the channel was not as visible as it was from the cottage. And I hadn't heard the familiar sound because I'd been too distracted by Caroline's cries.
"The way they put them on, it's a wonder anyone can get them off," he said. "Here, let me give it a try."
He bent down and gave the wrench a hard push. I could only see the back of his head. His ears were red from the cold. I had never seen him wear a hat. He loosened the nuts and tossed them into the hubcap. Caroline sounded hysterical in the cottage.
"I have to see to the baby," I said.
He nodded once, took the flat off the axle. I went in to Caroline, lifted her into my arms, and returned to watch the man in the yellow slicker fix my tire. He worked with, dispatch, methodically changing the tire as if he'd done it a hundred times before. He turned the damaged tire carefully in his hands, examining it. Then he put it into my trunk.
"Can't see offhand what the trouble is. You take it into Everett's, he'll fix it for you if he can." He was wiping his fingers on a rag in my trunk.
"I'm glad you came by," I said. "I don't know what I'd have done on my own."
"Someone would have come along," he said. "Is she still cutting teeth?"
I looked at Caroline. "Not any more since that night," I said. "She's been pretty good, actually."
I glanced up. He was staring at me, at my face. I hadn't given a thought to the scarf while I'd been trying to change the tire. He looked hard at me for four or five seconds, not speaking, and I didn't look away. I was thinking how unusual his eyes were, how they didn't seem to belong to the rest of his face. He seemed about to speak, then stopped.
He threw the rag into the trunk, shut it.
"Thank you," I said.
"It's nothing," he answered, and turned.
Just then a red pickup truck came around the corner of the lane at a fairly fast clip, pulling to a stop beside my car, spewing gravel so that it hit my car like bullets. The man in the yellow slicker, on his way back to his own truck, gave a wave to Willis but kept walking.
Willis jumped down from the cab, looked toward Jack Strout, then at me.
"What's the story?" he said, sounding out of breath.
"What story?" I said.
"With Jack. What's he doing here?"
I thought, all in all, it was an odd question.
"I had a flat," I said. "He saw me trying to fix it and came by to help."
"That so."
He shook a cigarette from a pack in his jacket pocket, put the cigarette to his lips. He seemed particularly jumpy.
"I've got to go," I said. "I have to get the tire fixed at Everett's."
"Let me take it for you," he said quickly. "I'll bring it right back, put it on for you."
"No," I said, "but thanks, anyway. I have to get some things." I moved toward my car.
"I come by to tell you about the bonfire," he said.
"The bonfire?"
"Yeah; it's a town tradition. Every Christmas Eve, we get together on the common, the whole town, and we have a bonfire and sing Christmas carols. Everybody goes. The women from the church, they make hot cider and sweets for the kids. You should come; wrap the baby up. You'd be amazed, the heat from the bonfire, it keeps you warm, even on the coldest nights." He looked up at the threatening sky. "Think we're going to have another storm tonight," he said.
I thought he must be running out of excuses to come to the cottage. Christmas Eve was more than a week away.
"Well, I'll see," I said.
He took a long drag on his cigarette.
"Want me to follow you into town? Make sure you're all right, with no spare now and all?"
"No," I said. "I'll be fine."
"You're sure about that now, Red."
"Yes," I said, moving toward my car. "I'm sure."
"OK, then," he said, looking down at the figure in the yellow slicker moving toward the end of the point.
"Think I'll go see how old Jack is doin'," he said. "Too bad I didn't get here sooner. I could of changed the tire for you; you wouldn't have had to bother old Jack."
"I didn't bother old Jack," I said. "He just—"
"Yeah, whatever," Willis said, cutting me off. "Watch yourself now, in the storm, if it starts snowin'."
"I'll be fine," I said, with more firmness than was perhaps necessary. I got into the car, put Caroline in the back, shut the door. Willis was walking down the point, his shoulders hunched up inside his jacket. I put the key in the ignition, took a long, deep breath. I had a sudden image of Harrold coming fast around the corner, spewing bullets of gravel up onto my car. I had a sudden image of myself and Caroline in the car, with Harrold hovering over us, trying to get in.
I wondered where he was now, what he was thinking, what he had done to find me.
There are stretches of my stay in St. Hilaire that are hazy to me now. The several days before Christmas, for instance. I remember clearly only Christmas Eve, the bonfire, but the days preceding it are now a blur.
On Christmas Eve day, Caroline cried a great deal; she was cutting two more teeth simultaneously and resisted my efforts to console her. Even the baby aspirin I had finally bought seemed ineffectual. As a last resort, I put her into the car and drove aimlessly up and down the coast road for at least an hour, so that she might sleep. The day was clear, transparent. To my left, as I drove south toward town, the gulf was strewn with jewels—glinting, restless, sparkling—in the high sunshine. I wore my dark glasses from necessity as much as for camouflage. The green-and-white lobster boat had been gone when I bundled Caroline into the car, and as I drove—first south, then north, peering across the passenger seat out to sea—I suppose I looked for a speck that might have been a boat, emerging from the lee of an island or idling amid a scatter of buoys.
During the day, men came and went on the point. I would be aware of a motor, then perhaps a voice calling to another. Short words, bursts of words on the wind, with a hint of gruffness in them, the greetings of men who do not stop working when they talk to each other.
I think I imagined I would just have a look at the bonfire, stay a minute or two, and then take the baby home. I was curious about this event, and I would have liked the sense of having somewhere to go, something to cap my day, but I was worried about having Caroline out on such a cold night.
I had not been on the coast road after dark, except for that first confused drive to the motel, but now that I knew the road better and had landmarks to refer to, I could more easily pick out houses that had grown familiar to me. The sky that night seemed immense with stars, and there was a moon, cream and low on the horizon, sending a rippled shaft of light across the sea and illuminating, from the east, the simple outlines of the Capes and cottages and farmhouses.
Many of the houses had Christmas lights strung up along the gutters, or electric candles in the windows. Here and there, I could see a tree in a living room, and detached as I was that night, I was thinking about what an odd custom it was—to take a tree into your house and dress it with gaudy bits of glass and paper and put colored electric lights all over it. I was trying to imagine what I'd think of this custom if I had happened to visit Karachi or Cairo in the summer, and the people there, for a Muslim holiday, had brought a flowering tree into their house and decorated it in the same fashion. But I was not so detached that I did not sometimes have sharp memories when I looked into the windows on the coast road, memories of holidays with my own mother, memories of holidays she had m
ade for me—stockings hanging from a bookcase; the fragile glass ornaments on the higher branches of our Christmas tree; our own electric candles in the win dows; the pile of presents (handmade sweaters and gloves and hats; an array of toys).
You could see the glow of the bonfire from the edge of town. I parked in a small clearing behind the church, put Caroline into the sling, and wrapped my coat around her, so that only her head, in her woolen cap, peeked above the buttons of my coat. She had settled down some since late afternoon, and I thought she would probably sleep as I walked around.
I made my way toward the light of the fire, hanging back at an outer ring of celebrants. Already there were what looked to be a couple of hundred people in the common, most surrounding the fire. Closest to the fire were the young boys, their faces lit orange, darting recklessly toward the fire and back to the circle, throwing bits of twigs and debris onto the pyre, their faces upturned as a plume of sparks arced over the crowd. The fire was noisy, crackling, popping, and around it there was an equally loud commotion: boys squealing, adults admonishing, buzzing, greeting each other, slapping their hands together in the cold—although even in the outer ring, I could feel the fire's heat. Once or twice I saw an older teenager moving through the crowd, flashing a peace sign; another boy had a cardboard poster: "Stop the War." Where there were gaps in the ring, the light flickered outward, against the stone war memorial, against a green Volkswagen parked by the common's edge, against a tall straight tree I could not see the upper branches of.
To me the bonfire seemed dangerous, as if the sparks could easily ignite the old boards of the store or of Julia's house, or the trees overhead—but the townspeople seemed unconcerned about the danger. Perhaps they had had so many years without incident that they were complacent about hazard, or perhaps they had taken precautions I was unaware of. Possibly icy-cold branches do not easily ignite; I don't know.