Spartina (28 page)

Elsie laughed. “Isn’t our little spat cheering you up? It does me.”

“Come on, Elsie. Don’t just fool around. I’ve screwed everything up. I’ve blown it all into the air. Every goddamn thing.”

Elsie sighed. “I suppose I should be a comfort to you. The problem is, every time we get all cozy and tender, we don’t have sex. But go ahead. This is my last good deed of the day, though. I’ve spent all morning driving Miss Perry to her doctor and back.” Elsie took off her jacket, sat down on the sofa, and said, “Come on over here.” She took his hand and held it between hers on top of her knees. “Tell me one thing that makes you think you’ve fucked up.”

Dick shook his head, but went ahead and said, “You know most of it. I just told you about why I don’t want to go to Miss Perry.”

Elsie said, “I’ll tell you about that in a minute, that’s not out of the question at all.” Elsie reached up, stroked his head and said, “Something else.”

Dick leaned back and said, “I think Charlie’s got a crush on you. While I was waiting here I couldn’t get it out of my head that he spends time dreaming about you.”

“Oh. Yes. I see.” Elsie cocked her head. “Don’t worry. He may have a little sneaker for me but it’s tiny. And I think he has a girlfriend in school. But no one will find out about us. You don’t have to worry, it really is all right.”

Dick let go. He thought he might regret it, it might be games to her. But the effect of her saying “I know, it’s all right” was too much relief to resist. He told her he was the one who’d dug the
clams from the bird-sanctuary beach. “I know. Don’t worry.” He told her he’d once smuggled coke in his boot. He told her he’d done it again. Recently. “I know,” she said. “That’s probably why Parker and Schuyler went to New York.”

“I didn’t get paid.”

“Don’t do it again. You’ll be all right if you don’t do it again. It’s good you didn’t get paid. That’s all right.”

He told her about the detective on the dock, the dog, the whelks. “Jesus,” she said, drawing in her breath, “don’t try
that
again.” She laughed. “Whelks!” She said, “It’ll be okay. Parker’s got enough sense to let Schuyler do it his way. Schuyler probably sells it where he plays squash.”

As she said “squash” soothingly, Elsie took Dick’s head between her hands. “You really are miserable,” she said. “You really do feel just terrible.”

Dick had never imagined such indulgence, such soothing, indulgent pleasure.

Elsie pulled him toward her so he lay with his head in her lap. She smoothed his forehead with her palms, closed his eyelids.

Dick said, “I sometimes feel like I’m caught already. Like there’s a whole other force nosing around, nothing clear or smart about it, just a bunch of dumb sharks, they can’t see anything, but they’re nosing around.”

“I know, I know,” Elsie said. “But they’re not after you. Believe me, you’re not what they’re after.” She smoothed the furrows in his forehead with her fingertips. She said, “And Parker won’t sell you out. He might use you and cheat you, but I’m sure he wouldn’t ever turn you in.”

“It’s not just that,” Dick said. “I’m all spread out, everything can go wrong.”

“It won’t,” Elsie said. She kissed his temple. “It’s going to be all right. Really. May doesn’t have a clue, I can tell. You’re going to get
your boat and be busy. You and I will be friends. You’ll see. Miss Perry is going to lend you the money. It’s all set.”

Dick said, “What?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have stuck my nose in, but there wasn’t a lot of time—she’s going into her depression. You don’t have to go see her.”

Dick started to get up.

“Not yet,” Elsie said, putting a hand on his chest.

“No,” Dick said, “Jesus, Elsie …”

“It’s all right,” Elsie said. “I know I should have checked with you, but it’s set now, and I want you to let me help. Miss Perry wants to do it. We talked with Captain Texeira, who came by, and he said you’re good, that your boat’s a good investment. She’s going to lend you ten thousand. You pay back a thousand a year plus ten percent interest. And I’m going to lend you a thousand that I borrowed from my brother-in-law.”

Dick was silent. It was tumbling on him. He wasn’t surprised, it was part of the way things were going, more invisible force disorienting him, dislocating him.

“The reason she’s doing this,” Elsie said, “I mean apart from her deciding it’s a perfectly good kind of investment—and of course her liking you—is that she wants things to be in good order around here. And her idea, somewhat feudal though it may be, is that you ought to be able to maintain your family’s place in the community. So.”

Dick shook his head. Elsie put her hand on his forehead. “I know it’s not exactly the way you’d like it. But that’s the deal.”

Dick had been feeling a drugged pleasure at Elsie’s reassurances. That was gone now. But his attention didn’t come right to the present, not entirely. He had a moment of fear as complete as he’d had on the hummock in the salt marsh lying flat beside the skiff. It wasn’t that he thought of himself as a criminal, but that there were people in uniform who thought he was. They knew someone was
hiding in the salt marsh. They wanted to know his name. Once they had his name, that would be it. He imagined an office, a desk, a sheet of paper with his name on it. There was a force there—in the office, in the desktop, in the paper. The force wasn’t in the truth or not of what it said under his name. It was the power of duplication that terrified him—office after office, desk after desk, paper after paper. The power of his name on those papers to draw him to office after office … It wasn’t a fear of a trial or prison, it was of the tedium of plastic chairs, each chrome foot on a square of pale linoleum, square after square, pale brown, pale green, gray.

He stared at Elsie. Her sharp, tan face, the white collar of her blouse, the single-pearl earrings. Lipstick for her morning with Miss Perry and the doctor. A navy-blue velvet ribbon pulled her dark hair back from her high forehead and made her look like a nice young girl.

Elsie’s forest-green uniforms were all on clothes hangers for the moment, her .38 revolver shut up in the chest of drawers next to her jewel box. Her red bathing suit was hanging by one strap on a hook by the shower, the backless party dress on the same rack as her uniforms. What did Elsie think of the undertow in those linoleum-tiled offices? It wouldn’t scare her, it was another game she knew how to play.

Elsie said, “I promise you this is all for the best.” She put her hands on his shoulders. She smiled and said, “Say something.”

Dick brushed her hands away and sat up.

Elsie said, “You sometimes make things harder than they have to be.”

“You’re right,” Dick said. “That’s one thing different between you and me. I make it hard. You make it easy. For you it’s almost nothing at all.”

She said, “Oh, for God’s sakes.”

“I’m being dumb,” Dick said, “I can see that. I’m being a pisshead. It’s just going to take me a minute.”

“No, you’re right in a way. I see it’s not as simple as … I see I’ve been very forward about it, and you’re right to resist. I mean, especially if I gave you the idea that I did it because I felt guilty about my father’s buying your father’s land or because you saved my life. Or, God knows, if you think the main effort of your life is suddenly in the hands of a couple of women—I’m trying to see this from your point of view, you understand—a couple of women who don’t really know anything about boats.” Elsie sat up square on the sofa. “But one thing Miss Perry and I both know is that Joxer Goode would have loaned you the money if his freezer hadn’t broken. So why can’t we step in? Especially since Miss Perry got some advice from Captain Texeira.”

Dick nodded but didn’t say anything. He was having a hard time concentrating on how reasonable she was being.

“And Miss Perry and I both know this is just the last little bit. Just the last tenth. Less than a tenth, if you count all your labor. Do you understand that Miss Perry and I aren’t just … jumping in blind?”

“Yeah,” Dick said. “I can understand that part.”

“And this is a
loan.
No one’s giving you anything. You’ll have to pay it back.” Elsie laughed and poked his knee with her forefinger. “Miss one payment and Miss Perry and I may just repossess your ass.”

Dick moved away from her touch. He jerked to his feet. He stopped at the plate-glass window. He would have left the house, but he couldn’t turn around to face her.

She said, “Oh, Dick—”

“Don’t talk.”

He was trying to disconnect what was driving him away from her. Her last little jolly joke. Her flock of reasons. He could see her telling it all to Miss Perry—and Captain Texeira. That too. He couldn’t hear her voice, but he saw her hands moving, the lapels on her jacket moving like gills. Her face shining with her good
deed. Maybe when she asked her brother-in-law for a thousand she’d been dolled up and half naked in her backless dress.

He knew that was terrible. He knew he was being disgusting.

It was the two of them who had mixed everything together. She was caught too. Maybe she was trying to get clear and this was the way she knew how.

He shook himself, breathed through his nose. Now he was angry because he couldn’t think straight. His anger eased off. He felt depression come in and flatten his anger.

“Well,” Elsie said, “I can see you think I’ve done something wrong.”

Dick said, “You wouldn’t tell your brother-in-law’s business to someone else. You wouldn’t try to do his business for him without his say-so. You wouldn’t tell people what kind of trouble he’s in. But someone who was last seen earning a few bucks fixing a clambake for the gentry, why, anything at all you can do for him, he ought to be pleased.”

“That is just so wrong!”

Dick turned to face her. He said, “No. Maybe it’s not so simple as that for you. Maybe the complications make it hard for you to see it as plain as that. I shouldn’t boil up about it either. There’s so much else mixed in.”

“So much else to get mad about?”

“No. You know what I mean. I see how you’ve made some efforts so your life doesn’t just stick close to shore. Some of that’s just for your own fun. But you aim to do good. I see that.”

Elsie looked down and straightened her skirt across her knees. “I’m … I really don’t dare say anything.” She folded her hands in her lap, her eyes still down.

Dick couldn’t believe he’d ever slept with her, so trimly rigged out in blue and white.

At the same time he had a sharp sense memory of her—his face
over hers, her clenching her jaw, breathing fast and shallow, then going rigid with a hiss that frothed through her teeth.

Elsie looked up at him, looked him over. He felt the knot of his tie on his throat, his shirt collar riding as high as the lowest razor scrape. His scrubbed hands stuck through the ironed shirt cuffs.

Elsie stood up. “Look, Dick, I may not have arranged it perfectly.…”

Dick said, “The thing is, I pretty much have to go along. On account of May and the boys.”

“Well, there you are,” Elsie said. “It does come down to that.”

A
t Miss Perry’s door for the second time that day, Dick was impressed with the stonework. The doorway was round-arched, made of gray stones rough-hewn to the size of bricks, except the keystone, a handsome wedge the size of a loaf of bread.

Dick said out loud, “Christ Almighty,” and rang the bell. A nurse in a navy-blue jumper opened the door. Dick told her his name. She said, “Just a sec,” and left him in the front hall.

Dick had been in the house before, but the clearest memory now came from when he was seven. Because he’d been scared that time too? He recognized the walking sticks with carved heads hanging in a rack on the wall. He looked down at them. They had been at eye level then. They had terrified him. The Indian head, the bulldog with red garnet eyes, the eagle’s beak. The relief of the plain ivory
handle. The blackthorn topped with a two-humped gnarl, yellowish in the fissure. It had been most terrifying because it was trying to be something, caught half alive under the layers of shellac.

The nurse came back and led him into the house. Miss Perry was in the library lying on a sofa, a thin wool blanket across her legs. Her glasses lay on her chest. Her white hair was pinned up, as usual, but was untidy. Even in the dim light Dick could see her eyes were red.

“Please sit down.”

Dick looked around, found a straight-backed chair. The curtains were drawn across the tall windows on either side of the fireplace. At one narrow end of the room there was a bull’s-eye window high above the bookshelves. The outside shutter was closed.

“I’m afraid you see me at my worst.”

Miss Perry’s voice was so low Dick could scarcely hear her. He started to move his chair closer, but she raised her hand. He sat down again.

“I don’t like to see people when I’m this way.”

Outside it had been a hot day. Here the air was cooler, but motionless. Dick began to sweat.

Miss Perry said, “Elsie and the doctor want me to take a drug. ‘… let me my senses in Lethe steep.’ That is a line from Webster. Neither Elsie nor the doctor understands why Lethe is terrible. I quote Webster. Webster is morbid, melodramatic, inferior to Shakespeare. But Webster is apt for the way I am. Webster is glittering and unwholesome. I should get him out of my head, but I can’t. The trouble with Webster is that he didn’t meet life head-on the way Shakespeare did. His plots are full of drugs and potions. ‘Sweetmeats which rot men’s nostrils.’ ”