B0042JSO2G EBOK (25 page)

Some of it.

And husbands. You had a few of those.

I had them and I lost them. I lost—She stopped herself. One should not have to live through some things. You said that once I remember.

Did I?

Yes about the war. We were on the sailboat.

I remember the sailboat.

And your family? she said. What children?

Four. Three girls and a boy.

It was happy?

Happy enough.

I would have wanted better for you than happy enough.

Happy enough is fine with me.

You must think me spoiled, she said. I’m not you know.

We can’t help what we want. Only how we act when we don’t get it. Or do.

You think me spoiled.

Not spoiled. Maybe a little hard. Maybe life has made you a little hard.

She thought for a moment. What has it made you?

Soft. He laughed.

I could have made you more than happy enough, she said.

Maybe. It’s an easy thing to say.

Well that’s me, she said. Easy and hard.

He shook his head. I don’t believe in regret. Things turn out the way they do for a reason.

And is reason good?

It’s the order of things, isn’t it?

Order … she said softly and softly guffawed. She had learned a few things by now.

Gigi looked all over for Harris. She rapped on the windowpane where Maria di Corcia slept waking her and not finding him turned on her heel and ran back toward the headlights shining on the front porch where dark figures crossed back and forth. Maria must have wondered where Harris was and why they wanted him and what the dark stain was on Gigi’s dress but none of them were people she knew and after looking toward the house and spying Lizzie Tull coming out the front door with an armload of jackets and Ralph Eastman getting in the station wagon, she probably went back to bed.

Gigi burst through the cottage door. The lights were on, no one there. Harris! she screamed. Ralph and Lizzie pulled up in the idling car outside.

Harris!

It was the scream Ann Grant heard through the trees. It echoed the name going through her head. It was the scream she ignored.

There was no way of knowing if it would have made a difference if Buddy had gotten treatment sooner or if Harris Arden’s particular knowledge of head injuries from the war would have helped. They were to go over many times the events of that night and when Harris was asked where he’d been he said simply he was taking a walk with Ann Grant so that when Ann heard it the next morning from Lizzie she was struck by the smoothness of his saying they were together without saying exactly how and not having it be a lie and was grateful for his answer though it left her more heavily with
what only she knew—that she had heard Harris being called and had not woken him and had not answered.

Each person thought of what he or she might have done that night, that Gail Slater might have stayed at Buddy’s side where she preferred to be instead of jumping off a cliff to impress him or that Monty could have followed Buddy into the brush if he’d done what he wanted and slipped away from Lizzie Tull resting heavily on his thigh, that Lizzie if less fixated on Volentine Montgomery might not have stopped where Monty stopped at the back fender but stepped forward to see Buddy’s leg, or Kingie herself having a father who disappeared at parties to turn up later after napping in the garden or on a back porch had instead of dangling her legs at the back of the truck smoking a cigarette leaned forward a little to the right and seen Buddy slumped by the wheel or Gigi who might not have led them to the Promontory in the first place and brought them instead to canoe at Phinns Pond or climb Carrie’s Peak or gone to the graveyard near the Grange or done any of the other things they’d done other nights. They might not even have left the house at all and drifted up to the porch and let the night dwindle as they had many other summer nights half-noticing shooting stars, sneaking the Wittenborns’ liquor. Then Buddy would still be there, adjusting his glasses, sleeping through breakfast, coming in the door with a bucket of clams, Buddy with a bag unzipped going back to college in September, needing a haircut, forgetting his keys, who would play hockey and kiss girls and see snow falling and get married, wake to rain, go grey.

And finally there was Ralph Eastman who may have thought of a thousand things he might have done differently but did not need to think past the first one. He might not have backed up the truck, he might simply have driven forward.

A hand rose up from the bed. Nora, she said.

The padding was a tired white then it turned yellow like tea roses then something went wrong and acid green was burning
through, leaking pain. More padding! She needed more padding. Nurse Brown rubbed the needle.

Do you ever wonder what you’d be like if you never … Ann Lord’s voice trailed off.

Never what?

Never met up with the people in the attic.

After the injection she lay herself alongside a man in a Chinese junk. He was wearing wrinkled clothes and she was naked against him with the wooden ribs of the boat like a cradle and the river flat in the grey dawn. The way he held onto her made her believe he loved her and the way he looked at her made her think he would never let her go.

After the scream Ann heard a car driving on the dirt road and saw its headlights lighting up the bridge. Then she fell asleep. She woke to the sound of a car coming back up the driveway. Harris’ hair was against her face, he was heavy on her.

He jumped a little in his sleep. His head lifted. His eyes opened. He saw nothing then he saw her. He put his arms around her and wrapped them tighter. She thought he would squeeze the breath out of her and wished he would.

They stood up. He brushed the pine needles from his knees and she thought how she hardly knew this person and wasn’t it strange she was here with him in the dark zipping up her dress and finding the white glow of her underpants to step into. Then he handed her a shoe and clicked his tongue and snapped back into the person she knew.

They walked up the dark path they would never walk again. Each step they took was away from being together. She saw that now. At the time she did not really believe what she knew was fact, that this was the last time. She still had the reassurance of his body and it threw its cloak over them as they walked. In the dark he took her hand.

Buddy Wittenborn lay on an army cot in the back of the Wittenborns’ truck. Foy Hopkins had borrowed the cot from his brother-in-law Chuck Crockett and his sister Phyllis had lent a quilt. Pete Shields had been roused from bed to start up the ferry and as the engine warmed, the Wittenborns’ truck was driven down the ramp onto the empty boat. The cot was lifted off the truck by Vernon Tobin and Oliver Granger on one side and Foy Hopkins and Mr. Wittenborn on the other and carried into the passenger cabin with the green leatherette seats and portholes and set unsteadily down in the aisle by the vibrating wall. Dick Wittenborn tripped on the raised threshold stepping out and Foy Hopkins caught his arm from behind. As Ann Grant moved her arm which had fallen asleep under Harris Arden’s shoulder the ferry pulled out of the harbor with its lights on in the dark blue morning and Dick Wittenborn stood in the windy stern by the coiled rope wiping his eyes. From the landing Oliver Granger and Gail Slater could see the figure of Vernon Tobin climbing the iron steps to the captain’s station. Inside Pete Shields answered questions about navigation and talked about radar and about some of the storms he’d seen in his twenty years as captain and he and Vernon had a pleasant conversation not once mentioning the boy lying beneath them with the women standing over him or a little apart the doctor they’d fetched from the doctor’s house who stood by like an uninvited guest looking as if he were about seventeen years old.

The unshakable certainty she had walking up the slant of hill toward the cottage with the lights still on was not something she would ever feel again. Certainty after that had cracks in it.

The compound was deserted.

He followed her into the little kitchen with the yellow ruffled curtains. His necktie was bunched in one hand and he stuffed it into his pocket. He pulled out a chair and sat. Ann took the other chair and he dragged it over across the floor with her in it and lifted her arm and placed her hand on the green checked oilcloth of the
table and covered it with his hands looking at it not at her face. He pulled her onto his lap. The sky through the high trees was beginning to lighten. She switched off the lamp on the table and they sat in a bluish light.

So this is the room where we say good-bye, he said.

She got out of his lap and sat in a chair.

He started to talk. She was beautiful, she was going to be fine, anyone who could swim in water that cold would be fine, he wasn’t going to worry about her. He smiled. She tried to smile, but couldn’t. Her conviction was beginning to break up into little pieces, and she no longer felt like smiling. There was no one like her, she was strong, he only wished he were as strong as she but he wasn’t. He looked down. Maria—

Then it broke apart. He said her name and it broke apart. Maria had been there for as long as he could remember, he could not picture life without Maria. Maria knew him and Maria loved him and in his way he loved Maria. Ann Grant watched his mouth and the words coming out, not wanting to hear anymore but not able to stop him.
Maria Maria
it kept coming out of his mouth. Maria looks after me, he said. I need to be looked after.

Ann took her hand out of his. Dark ink was bleeding into the clear water around her. Outside it was still as church, nearly dawn. It seemed as if it had always been nearly dawn.

A bird sang a thin note.

His eyes were pale with the whites showing up. She listened to him but pictured other things. She pictured him driving in a car with his wife beside him, she saw them sleeping together in a bed. She saw other women whose hands he’d take, whose shirts he’d pull off at the shoulder, and other women to whom he would with a sad face say good-bye. She thought of how he’d said, Look at me.

They had been through a lot together, he and Maria. Maria was a part of his family …

Ann Grant stared at his hands which sat curved on their sides on the green oilcloth.

I couldn’t leave Maria—

No, she said. You couldn’t.

She noticed his blue oval cuff links not fastening his cuffs and thought I will never remove those from his sleeve and put them in some little box and she thought of the silver box with the raised red enamel insignia which her father kept on his bureau with his cuff links and collar splints inside.

It’s late, he said. You look tired.

She had never been less tired.

I’m going to have to go, he said.

She stared down.

I don’t want to, I have to. He didn’t move. Will I hear from you?

She looked at him.

No, I suppose not, he said. No I don’t see how it would be …

They sat in silence. There was the copper sink and the ruffled curtains and the sheen on the green oilcloth. She took his hand. Inside was a voice saying
don’t leave don’t leave don’t leave

I’ll always be with you, he said.

She nodded.

You’ll always have the best of me. He squeezed her arm, insisting.

It was as if someone had whacked her on the back. No, she said. She grabbed his shoulders. This is the best of you. And this and this. This is the best of you and what I won’t have.

He held her shaking back, leaning awkwardly in his chair. Her face was smashed against his arm and through the space by his elbow she saw the corner of the table and the folded oilcloth with a nail in it and tried to catch her breath. I
can’t
, she thought.
I can’t. I can’t. I can’t
.

There was breath still coming from the body lying there. The room was loud and shaking.

This vibrating can’t be good for him, said Mrs. Wittenborn. She was careful to blow her cigarette smoke away from Buddy’s face. She was wearing an old canvas coat which Lizzie Tull had grabbed
from its rusty hook behind the back hall curtain and she was holding Buddy’s hand. The coat was one Buddy used to wear. Out the window grey water moved slowly by. The lights on the far shore did not change and the sea seemed to roll in place beneath the flat hull. The ferry had never been so slow.