Sea Lovers (3 page)

She was miserable, but she tried to amuse herself. She made desperate late-night phone calls. She forced the cook to prepare elaborate meals she didn't eat. She played rock records loud enough to be heard on the terrace, where she danced by herself, or with Gino in her arms, until she collapsed in tears of frustration. She took three or four baths a day, watched whatever was on television, and tried, without success, to read a book about a woman who, like herself, was torn between her rich husband and her lover. At the end of a week, she had decided only that she must have a change. She packed her bags and inspected Gino's traveling box. An hour before she was to leave, she went to the back door and called her beloved pet.

But he didn't respond. She called and called, and she made the cook call. Then she enlisted Tom Mann in the search, and together they scoured the house and the grounds, but the cat was not to be found. At last she was forced to go without him. He would show up for dinner, they all agreed, and he could be sent on alone the next day. So she went to the airport, anxious but not hysterical. The hysteria started that night, when Tom Mann called to say Gino had not shown up for supper.

Sylvia's first response was to inform Tom Mann that he was fired, an action that brought down on her for the first time in their marriage the clear disapproval of her husband. “The man has worked for me for twenty years,” he told her petulantly. “He's completely trustworthy and he can't be replaced.”

“He finds Gino, he goes, or I go,” she responded. “It's that simple.”

But it wasn't that simple. Billy Bucks was forced to call his employee and apologize for his wife's behavior. “She's not herself,” he explained, though he had begun to suspect the unhappy truth, which was that Sylvia was, at last, entirely herself. “She's so fond of that cat,” he concluded limply. Tom Mann, who knew his own worth, told his employer that he would continue in his post on the condition that he be spared any future communication with Mrs. Bucks. Billy, humiliated and chagrined, agreed.

The staff at the estate was instructed to make the search for Gino their first priority. Two days after Sylvia's departure, the big house was searched, but since Gino was not found and no one was staying in it, Tom Mann closed it up, as was his custom, and retired to his own cottage. He was of the opinion that Gino had taken to the woods, and the only consolation he could offer his employer was the probability that, as the animal had not turned up dead, he might yet be alive.

Sylvia spent the next three weeks in a constant state of panic, and she poured out her bitterness upon the two men who, in her myopic view, were the authors of her woe. Chester Melville knew what Billy Bucks suffered, and though he could not openly sympathize with him, he found himself curiously drawn to his employer. The two men worked closely, like men under fire, bound together by the camaraderie of terror. Every evening Billy called Tom Mann and received his monosyllabic report while his wife stood nearby, her eyes filled with bitter tears, her cocaine vial clenched in her angry fist.

Then Gino was found. Tom Mann was bothered by a leak in his roof, and a cursory inspection revealed that a large section needed to be reshingled. He remembered that there were a number of shingles in the attic of the house, though how they had arrived there he didn't know. He walked hurriedly through the cold empty rooms, hardly looking about him, for there was nothing indoors that he really cared for. Up the stairs he climbed, his heavy steps echoing hollowly in the still, cool air. When he opened the attic door, the sick, sweet smell of death rushed over him, chilling him like a blast of cold air, and he remembered, all at once and clearly, that just three weeks ago he had come up here to store an awning he'd taken down for the winter, that he'd left the door open for a while, and now he knew that Gino, whose emaciated corpse lay before him, the death-frozen jaws coated with the plaster he'd chewed out of the wall in his futile struggle for life, must have come in without his knowledge. Tom Mann was not a man easily moved, but the pitiful condition of the once powerful animal brought a low moan to his lips.

Gino was buried within the hour. The caretaker chose a spot near his own house, at the foot of a weeping willow tree he himself had planted twenty years earlier. He marked the grave with a flat stone to keep the body from being disinterred by passing animals. When this was done, he phoned his employer and told him of Gino's fate.

Chester Melville was sitting in Billy Bucks's office when the call came through. He knew the substance of the message at once, simply by observing the sudden pallor of Bucks's complexion and the feebleness with which he concluded the call. “I'll tell Mrs. Bucks at once,” he said. “I appreciate your call, Tom.” He placed the receiver carefully into its cradle and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.

“Gino's dead,” Chester said.

Billy lowered his hands slowly and stared at his employee. He had heard everything in those two words, and he knew, though he had never suspected it for a moment, that he was addressing his wife's lover. The two men looked at each other disconsolately. “I can't tell her over the phone,” Billy said at last. “I'll have to go home. Will you come with me?”

“Sure,” Chester said, “if you think it will help.”

“I think it will help me,” Billy replied.

So the two men left the safety of their office building and trudged wearily through the snowy streets to Bucks's palatial flat. Sylvia was drinking coffee and perusing a magazine when they came in, and the sight of their grim faces so unnerved her that she let the magazine slip to the floor.

“Tom Mann called,” Billy said. “I'm afraid it's bad news.”

The scene that followed went on for a long time. Gino, who had been in reality a hearty, handsome, greedy, and independent beast, who had probably not spent one moment of his intensely feline life longing for anything that might come to him in human form, who had tolerated his mistress as cats do, was now resurrected as the only real love Sylvia had ever known. In the midst of her furious accusations, Chester realized that he had been willing to put his happiness, his job, and his entire future on the line for a woman who, because she knew herself so well, could only scorn any man who was mad enough to love her. He also observed that Billy Bucks knew this as well, but had married her anyway. As the two men beat their retreat down the stairway, Chester, overcome by his sense of his own foolishness, shouted back to her, “You killed that cat yourself, Sylvia, as surely as if you had strangled him with your own hands.”

When they were gone, Sylvia smashed her husband's heirloom crystal, but that, she thought, could be replaced. She took a large knife from the kitchen and slashed a small Corot landscape, a particular favorite of her husband's, until it hung from the frame in strips. Then she went to the bedroom and ripped his down pillow until the feathers rose about her like a snowstorm. All she could hear was her lover's parting remark. She began to stab and stab her marriage bed itself, calling out to Gino as she drove the knife deeper and deeper, but nothing she could do would bring poor Gino back to her, nothing she could ever do.

Lily's hair was her mother's pride. In the afternoons, when she came home from school, she sat at the kitchen table, her head resting on the back of her chair, while her mother dragged the wooden brush through the long strands. Lily told her mother what had happened at school that day, or she talked of her many ambitions. Her mother, preoccupied with her work, holding up a thick lock and pulling out with her fingers a particularly tenacious knot, responded laconically. She looked upon this ritual of her daughter's hair as a solemn duty, like the duties of feeding and clothing.

One afternoon they sat so engaged, conversing softly while outside the rain beat against the house. Lily's mother observed that she couldn't take much more rain, that it would surely rot her small, carefully tended vegetable garden, that it seemed to be rotting her own imagination. Lily agreed. It had rained steadily for three days. Her head rose and fell, like a flower on its stalk, with each stroke of her mother's care, and each time it did she lifted her eyes a bit, taking in a larger section of the tiled floor before her.

Her mother shouted and threw the brush at the stove.

Lily sat up and looked after the brush. She was quick enough to see the disappearing tail and hindquarters of a rat as he scurried beneath the refrigerator. These parts, Lily thought, were unusually large, and this notion was quickly confirmed by her mother's cry as she clung momentarily to the edge of the table. “Good Christ,” her mother said. “That's the biggest rat I've ever seen.”

Lily drew her legs up under her and watched the spot where the rat had been. Her mother was already on the telephone to her father's secretary. “No,” she said, “don't bother him. Just tell him there's a rat as big as a cat in the kitchen and he needs to stop at the K&B on the way home for a trap. Tell him to get the biggest trap they make.” When she got off the phone, she suggested that they move to the dining room to finish Lily's hair. “It's the rain,” her mother said as she closed the kitchen door carefully behind them. “The river is so high it's driving them out.”

Lily sat at the dining table and pulled her long hair up over the back of her chair. Her mother resumed her vigorous brushing. It was strange, Lily thought, to sit at the big dining table in the dull afternoon light. The steady beating of the rain against the windows made her drowsy, and her mind wandered. She thought of how the river must look, swollen with brown water, swirling along hurriedly toward the Gulf of Mexico. She had never been to the mouth of the river, though she had gone down as far as Barataria once with her father. It had not been, as she had imagined, a neat little breaking-up of water fingers, the way it looked on the map. Instead, it was a great marsh with a road through it. There were fishing shacks on piers, wood, and other odd debris scattered in the shallow areas. She remembered that trip clearly, though two years had passed and she had been, she thought, only nine at the time. They had stopped to buy shrimp and her father had laughed at her impatience to have hers peeled. That was when she had learned to peel shrimp, and she did it so well that the job now regularly fell to her.

Her mother had not stopped thinking of the rat. “I can't get over his coming out in broad daylight like that,” she remarked as she pulled the loose hairs from the brush.

“Who?” Lily asked.

“That rat,” her mother replied. “I don't even want to cook dinner with that thing in there.”

Lily could think of no response, so she stood up, turning to her mother and fluffing her hair out past her shoulders.

“That looks lovely,” her mother said, touching Lily's hair at the temple. Then, as if she were shy of her daughter's beauty, she drew her hand away. “Do you have a lot of homework?” she asked.

“Plenty,” Lily said. “I guess I'd better get to it.”

When her father arrived that evening at his usual time, it was with chagrin that his wife and daughter learned he hadn't gotten their message and had come home trapless to his family.

“Well, go out and get one now,” her mother complained. “I don't want to spend a night in the house with that thing alive.”

“It's pouring down rain,” Lily's father protested. “I'll get one tomorrow. He's probably moved on already anyway.”

“Give me the keys,” she said. “I'll get it myself.”

Lily stood in the kitchen doorway during this argument, and she stepped aside as her mother came storming past her, the keys clutched in her angry fist. Her father sat down at the kitchen table and smiled after his affronted mate.

“Did you see this giant rat?” he asked Lily.

“Sort of,” she said.

“Are you sure he wasn't a mouse?”

“I think it was a rat,” Lily speculated. “His back was kind of high, not flat like a mouse.”

“When have you ever seen a rat?” her father asked impatiently.

Lily looked away. She had, she realized, never seen a rat, except in pictures, and she knew that if she said, “In pictures,” her father would consider her to have less authority than she had already. “He was big, Dad,” she said at last, turning away.

When her mother pulled the trap from its purple bag, Lily felt a twinge of sympathy for the rat. The board was large; the bar, which snapped closed when it was set, was wide enough to accommodate Lily's hand; the spring was devilishly strong and so tight that her father forced the bar back with difficulty. He tested it with a wooden spoon, and the bar snapped closed, lifting the board well off the floor. Her father baited it with a slice of potato, and the family turned out the lights and settled in their beds. Lily lay with her eyes open, listening for the snap of the bar, but she didn't hear it, and while she was listening she fell asleep.

The next morning the trap was discovered just as it had been left. Lily's father gave her mother a cold, skeptical look and sprang the trap again with a spoon. Her mother concentrated on cooking the breakfast, allowing the matter to drop. When he was gone to work, she turned to Lily as if to a conspirator and said, “I'll get some poison today and we can try again tonight.”

Lily didn't think of the rat again during the day. Her schoolwork was oppressive, but at lunch break, for the first time that week, the students were turned out of doors. The clouds had cleared off, leaving a sky of hectic blue, a sun that beat down on the wet ground with the thoroughness of a shower. Lily and her best friend sat on the breezeway, watching the braver students, who sloshed through the puddles in search of exercise. They discussed their summer plans and confided in each other their mutual fear that they would be separated the following fall.

“If I get that grouch Miss Bambula,” Lily's friend said, “I think I'll die. She looks just like a horse.”

Lily wondered which would be worse, to be with her friend and have Miss Bambula or to be without her friend and Miss Bambula. One of the boys in the yard hailed the two girls, holding up for their long-distance inspection the squirming green body of an anole. Lily stood up and went out to him. She liked anoles and this one, she saw at once, was of a good size.

That afternoon, when her mother brushed her hair, the rat didn't appear. “Maybe your father's right,” her mother said hopefully. Later, after she had practiced piano, Lily rejoined her mother in the kitchen to help with dinner. She sat at the table with a large bowl of green beans, which she proceeded to snap, throwing the ends into a small bowl, the fat centers into another. Her mother stood at the counter, peeling potatoes. They worked without speaking, and it was so quiet in the room that they heard the scratching of the rat's claws against the floor before they saw him. They both turned, looking in shocked silence at the refrigerator. His ugly face appeared first; then he took a few timid steps forward and stood before them. Lily saw that his black lips were drawn back over his teeth and his cheeks pulsated with his nervous breathing. She sucked in her own breath and dropped the bean she was holding.

The rat made a sudden dash for the stove, moving so quickly that Lily's mother let out a little cry as she jumped out of his path. “Mama,” Lily said softly as they both bolted for the kitchen door. Her mother held the swinging door open and wrapped her arm protectively around her daughter's shoulder as she passed through. In the dining room they stood together and Lily allowed herself, for a moment, the luxury of closing her eyes against her mother's shoulder. “Don't worry, baby,” her mother said. “I got the poison this morning; we'll get him tonight.”

Lily's father was incredulous when they told him of the intruder's boldness, and he smiled in disbelief when Lily, holding up her hands, estimated the creature's true dimensions. “She's not kidding,” her mother said angrily. “He's really big. We got a good look at him this time.”

“All right,” her father said. “We'll put out the trap again. I just wish he'd show his face when I'm here.”

“Christ,” her mother replied. “That's not my fault. If he's still here tomorrow I'll take his picture. Would you believe that?”

“That's not a bad idea,” her father said.

That night, before they went to bed, the family gathered in the kitchen and laid out their arsenal. The trap was baited and placed near the wall; the poison, which was inside a plastic box with a hole at one end, was placed near the stove with the hole turned toward the wall.

“Can he get in that little hole?” Lily asked.

“I hope so,” her mother replied.

Alone in her bed, Lily slept, then woke, then slept again. Toward morning she opened her eyes abruptly, with the sensation that she had cause to do so. She raised herself on one elbow and looked out into the darkness of her room. She could see nothing, but she heard distinctly a scratching sound, the sound, she knew at once, of claws against wood. She fell back and put her hands over her mouth, as if to hold in a scream, though she made no sound. Her heart pounded so furiously that she could hear it, and she felt in her legs, which were drawn up now beneath the sheet, the sudden ebbing of strength that usually follows a nightmare. The sound continued, and it seemed to her that it became louder, closer, as the moments passed. She consoled herself with the thought that the rat would doubtless find little to interest him in her room and would soon opt for the swift or slow death that awaited him in the kitchen. If only she'd put a trap in her room, she thought.

The scratching was very close and then, when it sounded as though the creature was under the bed, abruptly it stopped. Lily breathed uneasily, afraid and unable to move. Then she heard a sound she was never to forget, the metallic protest of the bedsprings as they received the weight of the animal's body. Lily's eyes burned into the humid dark air and she opened her mouth, but still no sound came. She had begun to perspire; her gown clung wetly to her narrow chest. Again she heard the squeaking springs, and this time she knew exactly where the sound came from. The rat was just behind her head. Though she couldn't see him and didn't have the strength even to turn her head so that she might see him, she felt the nervous twitching of his snout, the horrible inhalation of his breath, as he pulled himself up over the headboard of the bed and looked down upon the paralyzed young girl before him.

For a moment the animal contemplated her, and then, as if they were one, both moved. The rat sprang forward, his front legs stretching out before him as his back feet propelled him out into the air. Lily, finding her strength and her voice at once, sat up, throwing her hands over her head and screaming “No!” But it was too late. Her left hand encountered the rat's side and inadvertently she slapped him toward her own back. He landed squarely on the top of her head, and as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and rose to her feet, he slid down her back. His body was enormously heavy. In his panic he clawed at her hair, tangling himself and enraging Lily so that she threw herself against the wall, thinking to crush him. This gave him the leverage he needed to pull free of her hair. He slipped down over her buttocks and dropped to the floor. He was running when he hit the wood, scrambling back toward the bed. Lily was already in the hall. Now, she thought, she could run until she dropped. But she only ran to her parents' door, throwing it open before her with a scream. Her mother was raised up on her elbow looking at her; her father sat on the edge of the bed fumbling for his slippers. It was to her father that she ran, but not for comfort. She caught him by his shoulders, forcing him to fall back across the sheets, and she held him down there, her hair falling wildly about her as she screamed into his astonished face, “You kill him, you kill him now! Go and kill him now!”

Her mother sat up, pulling back Lily's hair, feeling her neck and shoulders frantically. “Did he bite you?” she asked. “Are you cut?” Then Lily turned on her mother, thinking that she would strike her, but when she was folded into the eager, smothering embrace, she gave in and clung to her mother's neck, hugging her close. Her mother glared over the girl's shoulders at the still prostrate form of her husband and repeated to him the injunction his daughter had just given him. “Go and kill him now,” she said. “Don't leave this house until that animal is dead.”

Lily's father sat up and resumed fumbling for his slippers. Lily and her mother lay locked together and neither watched him as he shuffled off toward the bathroom. They clung to each other, pulling the sheets up and adjusting the pillows so that they could sleep as they had when Lily was a baby, with their arms around each other. Outside, the rain began, softly at first, punctuated with the low rumble of thunder and flashes of lightning that radiated like nerves across the sky. Lily's father had turned on the light in the hall and she could hear him in the kitchen, opening the refrigerator, running water in the sink. The rain grew more intense; it beat insistently against the window in her parents' room, and she thought of how it must be outdoors, beating the flowers down into the already waterlogged soil, beating the leaves back on the trees. She thought especially of the big plantain tree in the side yard, of how it bent down in the rain, its great leaves shiny and smooth, like sheets of brilliantly painted plastic. The rain washed over the house and seemed to carry great waves of sleep with it, impossible to resist.