Sea Glass (4 page)

  Honora

Beside her, Sexton is snoring, his arms thrown up against his pillow as if he’d just been robbed. She slips out from under the blanket, pulling the sides of her blouse together. When she stands, Sexton, still sleeping, rolls away from her. The smell of his skin is on her neck and arms. She looks for blood and finds a smear on the sheet, random spots on her slip. Not as much as she’d been led to believe.
A massacre,
she remembers Ruth Shaw saying at McNiven’s, though Ruth was given to exaggeration. Her mother never mentioned it, never said a word.

She crosses the room, the floorboards cool on the soles of her feet. She snatches up the picnic basket and her suitcase and Sexton’s coat. The latch makes a soft click as she closes the bedroom door.

She finds a towel in her suitcase and washes herself at the sink in the bathroom. She puts on a nightgown, draping the blouse and slip and brassiere over the lip of the tub. She slides her arms into the brown overcoat, pushing the long sleeves up to free her hands. If she doesn’t eat something, she thinks, she will die. She walks into an empty room, sits on the floor, opens the picnic basket, and looks inside. She puts the heels of her hands to her eyes.

She is on the other side of something now, removed forever from who she was only yesterday. Removed from her mother’s home. She thinks of her mother rising that morning with only Harold in the house, Harold who wakes up every day coughing.

In the basket, carefully arranged, are bowls of potato salad and coleslaw, a wax packet of fried chicken, a loaf of wheat bread, a jar of wild strawberry preserves, two bottles of Moxie, and two small peach pies, individually wrapped. In a tissue packet, she finds a tablecloth, hand embroidered with her new initials, HWB, Honora Willard Beecher. She holds it to her face, then sets it down on top of the basket. She removes a pie with fluted edges.

As she eats, she walks through the house, taking huge ravenous bites, careful not to get any on Sexton’s coat. The sunlight pushes at the frosted windows and makes her want to be outside. She runs lightly down the center stairway, the coat skimming the broad steps. In the hallway, she is momentarily disoriented, but then she finds a passageway to the front of the house. She opens the door.

She has to put a hand up to ward off the light. It is diffuse but intense. The room is long, with floor-to-ceiling windows facing east. Six pairs, she counts, her eyes adjusting to the glare, the world beyond the salt-encrusted windows a temporary mystery. The room is empty save for one item, a grand piano in a corner. Honora stands at the keyboard and picks out a tune, the notes muffled, as if small puffs of air prevented the hammers from striking the strings. One key doesn’t sound at all. Her fingers are sticky from the pie, and she licks them.

She walks to a window, trying to see out the margins, but the view is slivered and unrewarding. She tries the front door and, surprisingly, it gives. She steps out onto the porch.

And, my God, there it is. The ocean. The sun seemingly rising from its surface even as she watches. The color of the water a splintery white, too painful to look at for any length of time. The dune grass is overgrown with sweet pea and beach roses and something else she cannot name. To the south is a long crescent of sand with intricate lacings of seaweed, and to the north a scarred bit of earth, dotted with new growth, a darkened slab in its center. She makes her way to the porch railing, its wood long weathered, rotted out in places. Beyond the front steps is a boardwalk that leads to a wooden deck overlooking the water.

She walks the length of the boardwalk, the wood weathered dove gray. All along the beach’s span, there are cottages and one hotel. She draws the coat around her for warmth, letting her hands slide up into the sleeves. She steps off the deck onto the sand.

“Honora.”

She turns. Sexton’s face is sideways in the slit of a second-floor window, stuck open from the damp.

“Come back to bed.”

His face leaves the window and then immediately reappears.

“And bring the picnic.”

The shout startles a flock of seagulls. They spread out in a fan pattern from the roof of the house and then swoop down low and skim the dune grass. In the wet sand by her foot, a bit of color catches her eye. She picks it up and studies it. The glass is green, pale and cloudy, the color of lime juice that has been squeezed into a glass. The edges of the shard are weathered and smooth and do not hurt at all. She brushes the sand off and presses the sea glass into her palm, keeping it for luck. She thinks that she and Sexton might need the luck.

  Vivian

Razors of light flicker behind the shades at the windows. A stale metallic taste is in her mouth, and her temples are caught in a vise. Still the knocking continues.

“Go away,” Vivian calls faintly from the bed.

She lifts her head from the pillow and a wave of nausea ripples to the back of her throat. She has no memory of returning to her room last night, or was it actually this morning? She
does
remember seeing the ugly scissored scar on Dickie’s knee, and then, later, finding him in the bathroom, naked, dozing on the black and white tiles in a fetal position. And, oh God, did she really sleep with the man?

The images come with the jerking motions of a Movietone newsreel: emerging from Dickie’s room at eight o’clock in the evening and changing into the rose opaline while Dickie sat at the end of her bed, smoking and recounting a story about a woman who drowned in the Hotel Plaza rooftop pool in Havana; Sylvia crying at dinner, she was that drunk, and John saying to her, in his affected drawl,
You’re stinking;
walking barefoot into the hotel from the beach, her wet feet covered with sand, while the weasely Franco desk clerk pretended not to notice her. Under the covers, Vivian moves her legs and notes with dismay that her underwear is missing.

She sits up sideways from the bed, not straightening her neck until she is certain she won’t be sick. She will have to pretend it didn’t happen at all. Dickie will do that for her; he is good at dissembling. If she encounters him today, she will simply suggest she was elsewhere and see if he takes the hint and runs with it. Is it too much to hope that he has already moved into his new house?

She studies the skirt of the rose opaline with its hundreds of new small wrinkles, tributaries of streams surrounding the lake of a stain. When did she spill the highball? At dinner with John and Sylvia?

There is one shoe beside the bed. She has no idea where the other is. She thinks briefly of packing, of leaving the hotel altogether, but where exactly would she go? Her head hurts terribly, and the sun threatens behind the shades.

  Sexton

“I’m going to get supplies,” he says, and leaves the house as if he’s done it all his life.

His breath is high and tight inside his chest, and he wants, ridiculously, to shout. It isn’t the sudden east wind, against which he raises the collar of his coat. No, he feels like a kid again, a kid with a new bike, riding it hard over a bump, soaring, getting air under the wheels. He’s left Honora sleeping on the bed, her hair mussed all around her face, the flawless white skin of her back begging to be touched. Hard to walk away from.

He slides into the driver’s seat of the Buick, more gray than blue now with road dust. He will have to buy a bucket, give the car a wash, maybe Simoniz it afterward. He puts the clutch in and adjusts the power lever. He stabs the starter button on the floor with his foot and feels the familiar lurch and purr. He picks up a crumpled napkin and tosses it out the window. He likes to keep the Buick tidy.

The only stores he’s seen are in the mill town they drove through the day before. He remembers a five-and-dime where he could get cleaning supplies, a market where he could buy food. And he ought to get gas there as well, he thinks, at the Texaco station.

But first he wants to check out the coast road. An open road always tempting, promising surprises, the possibility of luck. It’s why he is a traveling salesman, why he chucked it all back home. Nothing better than to find an unfamiliar road on the map, see where it takes him. He got the Claremont Bank account that way, and the Mutual Life account in Andover. It’s how he found Honora, for that matter — that bit about the courthouse true only after he had met her.

He looks at the fuel gauge. A quarter of a tank, more than enough for a spin.

Sand drifts across the cracked pavement like blown snow, but the Buick handles well, the weight of the typewriters in the backseat giving it welcome ballast. He likes the products that he sells, understands their value and knows that he can convince almost anyone of their necessity. But he likes the typewriters as objects even more: the enameled keys with their silver rings, the gold engraving on the black casing, the satisfying thunk of the carriage return. The Fosdick is a good and serviceable machine, heavy as a son of a bitch.

Christ, he thought the house would have some furniture: a table, a couple of chairs, a bed. He and Honora would have brought furniture with them if they had known, and surely Honora’s mother would have given them some household bits and pieces, just to get them started. Sexton has eighty dollars saved from his commissions — a fat one just last week, though he had to shave off a bit for the earrings. He thinks about Honora’s face when she saw the earrings in his hands. Smiling, but still there was that solemn thing in her eyes, taking in the ritual. He couldn’t remember exactly what old Harold had said and so he’d had to make it up as he’d gone along. Odd that bit about unlocking secrets, he thinks now. Where had that come from?

The coast road hugs the contours of the beach, leaving only the cottages between the Buick and the water. Beautiful they are, even boarded up before the season starts in July, as if their eyes and mouths were taped. Old dames facing the sea. The houses mute till someone comes and rips the tape off.

He turns a corner and skids a bit on the sandy pavement.

Take it easy,
he thinks.

The road is a ribbon now, threading through the beach on the right, a marsh on the left. A marsh and something else, he sees, as he pulls out from the shadow of a house. A tidal pool, maybe half a mile across, and at its entrance a feisty current tossing whitecaps against the banks of a narrow channel. There are boats anchored in the pool, half a dozen lobster boats and someone’s yacht, its mast tilting wildly in the chop. A channel has been dredged.

He hadn’t planned on getting married so soon. Jesus, he’s only twenty-four. And for a while there he thought he might not ever get married, the thrill of the open road too deep inside his bones. But he knew, even that first day at the bank, with Honora behind the grille, that this might be something different, something worth staying put for. He will never forget the sight of Honora’s hands, long fingered and slender and white, so white, slipping out beneath the grille, as if she were a nun and that was all she would allow him to see. The hands snagging his thoughts — practically the only thing that could take his mind off the car, the shine of the paint job a gleam across the front of his brain.

He looked up then at her face, the dark eyes blanketed with lashes. Her hair shingled back from her cheekbones. A beautiful jawline, almost masculine, and a long neck. She had on that day a low-waisted dress that was pinkish beige with complicated buttons along one side. He couldn’t see her legs and he remembers wanting to. Wanting to know if the skin there was as perfect as the hands. Was that what made him go back that second time — driving from Portsmouth to Taft with a pressure inside his chest, trying out phrases all the way, finally relying, in the end, on that old salesman’s trick: announcing the time of the appointment as if it had already been agreed to? I’ll be outside at four, he said, knowing instinctively that she was not the type to tell him to buzz off. The nerve of him when he thinks about it. How had he known for sure she wasn’t married? Of course — the hands. White and unadorned. Then afterward, before she got off work, scurrying for appointments at the courthouse in case she asked, casually, for a name.

The legs were as good as he’d hoped.

He comes to a slight hill and a fork, the road pulling away from the beach. He takes the left fork down to a wharf and a tiny village with a sprinkling of houses and shacks, a fish house near the end of the road. There’s a stiff breeze from the east, blowing a flag straight out. Across the street, against a storefront, an old man is sitting in a rocking chair. There are signs in the window: Nehi and Za-Rex and Old Golds.

Sexton’s coat, when he gets out of the car, billows out behind him. He crosses the street, holding his coat closed and his hat to his head. When he reaches the steps of the porch, the wind stops abruptly, as if someone had shut a door. He lights a Lucky Strike and crumples the empty pack.

“Hello,” he says to the man.

The old geezer is dressed in summer garb, a light suit, his legs spread wide, the trousers riding high over his ample belly. He has on a bow tie and a straw boater, and a medal is pinned to his lapel. Sexton can see the loop of the chain of his pocket watch but not the watch itself. Without the wind, Sexton realizes, it’s pleasantly warm on the porch. He tosses the empty cigarette pack over the railing.

“‘Lo,” the old man says. The one syllable without inflection. Welcoming or not, it is hard to say.

“Not a bad day,” Sexton says.

“Not ‘tall.” The old man’s hands, one holding a cane, the other a handkerchief, are dense with liver spots and moles. Sexton takes a deep pull on his cigarette. “East wind today,” the old man says.

“Nice on the porch, though,” Sexton says.

“That your car?”

“It’s a Buick.”

“A twenty-seven?”

“A twenty-six.”

“How many miles on it?”

“About four thousand.”

“Hope you got yourself a bargain.” The New Hampshire accent, a deadpan lilt, is thick on the man’s tongue.

“I think I did,” Sexton says.

“What are you doing in these parts?”

“My wife and I have been asked to look after a house,” Sexton says, the words
my wife
giving him a pleasant jolt.

“What house would that be?”

“It’s at the end of the beach. Three stories high. White with black shutters. In pretty bad shape.”

“That would be the old convent.”

“Convent?” Sexton asks.

“Thirty-five, forty years ago now,” the old man says. “The house used to be a convent. That salt air, it’ll age a house before its time.”

“The house is empty. We didn’t expect that.”

“Don’t know why not. Been empty four years now.”

“Guess I got some bad information,” Sexton says.

“Guess you did.” The old man starts to rise.

“Don’t get up,” Sexton says. “I’ll just go inside and look around. Is the owner in there?”

“You’re looking at him.”

Sexton watches the tortuous unfolding of the old man’s limbs.

“Name’s Hess. Jack Hess.”

“Sexton Beecher.” The man’s hand in his own is all bones — fragile bones, like those of a bird.

“Don’t have much in the way of furniture,” the old man says. “But if it’s hardware you’re looking for, I reckon I can help you some. We got staples and whatnot too.”

Sexton holds the screen door while Jack Hess pulls himself into the store with a hand hooked around the doorjamb. His walk is stooped, and just looking at him makes Sexton want to arch his back.

It takes a moment for Sexton’s eyes to adjust to the gloom after the bright light coming off the water. The store is a marvel of bins and boxes and tin trays and hooks holding all manner of hardware and food. Lightbulbs, brooms, doorknobs, boat winches, birdcages, enameled pots, fans, axes, knives, brushes of all kinds, paints and varnishes and oils, spools of string, cheese graters, meat grinders, jelly glasses, toilet plungers, ice skates (ice skates!), and even a wire chair held upside down on a hook. Despite the clutter, the store appears to be spotless, the wood floor varnished to a high sheen, the mahogany counter with its jars of screws and hinges and buttons seemingly clean enough to lick. Behind the register are tins of food. Raisins and flour and cereal. Coffee beans beside a grinder.

“Guess I’m set,” Sexton says.

“Don’t have it in here you probably don’t need it.”

“No, I probably don’t.”

“I got the one chair you can have for seventy-five cents.”

“I saw that.”

“I can fix you up with some wood crates you’re desperate.”

“We’re desperate.”

“What line a work you in?” The old man takes his position behind the counter, ready to fetch whatever Sexton might ask for.

“I’m a typewriter salesman.”

“You don’t say.”

“That’s right.” Sexton steps outside to crush his cigarette with his foot.

“You go around in that car of yours and sell typewriters?” the old man asks when Sexton has come back through the screen door.

“I do.”

“Don’t reckon I have any use for a typewriter,” the old man says, pronouncing the word as if it had four syllables.

“Don’t reckon you do. Though one might be a help with the bills. And the orders.”

“Easier just to write ‘em down.”

Sexton laughs.

“Who you sell ‘em to?”

“Pretty girls,” Sexton says.

The old man grins, revealing yellowed teeth.

“You want to go for a ride?” Sexton asks the man.

“In your Buick?”

“You could show me around.”

“Don’t want to keep you from your errands.”

“I’ve got time.”

“Don’t want to keep you from your wife. She mind if you take your time?”

“Don’t know,” Sexton says. “I’ve only been married a day.”

“Oh, Lord,” the old man says, and takes a step toward the door.

Jack Hess sits with his legs splayed. Either his belly has simply grown too big or he has lost the use of the muscles in his thighs. “You should try the mills over to the Falls you want to get rid of them typewriters,” he says.

“Your store do a good business?” Sexton asks.

“In the summer it does. Duller than a preacher’s sermon in winter. That there’s the Highland Hotel. They do a dandy rice pudding.”

The Buick rounds a rocky point. To one side of the road is an inhospitable stretch of coastline; to the other are some of the largest houses Sexton has ever seen. He whistles appreciatively.

“More money than sense,” Jack Hess says. “That one belongs to Gordon Hale. He owns one of the mills over to Ely Falls. That one there is George Walker’s house. His grandfather started the Walker Hotel chain, don’t you know. That one there, that’s Alice Beam’s house. Her father made his money in shipping. She’ll stay on over the winter. About fifty of ‘em do. You got heat?”

“I think so,” Sexton says. “I hope so.”

“Well, they had to for the home, didn’t they?”

“The home?”

“Folks you’re rentin’ from, they didn’t tell you much, did they?”

“Not much,” Sexton says.

“There was a woman came here when she was a girl — oh, thirty years ago now — and she got herself involved with a doctor, and, well, that’s a long story for another day, but she went away and then came back and started a home for other girls who had gotten themselves in the family way, don’t you know. Marvelous enterprise too. Never a complaint from anyone on the beach, even though the place was full of what you would call high-spirited girls. Closed down four years ago.”

Sexton pulls to the side of the road to let a beach wagon pass. “The home was a convent?”