The Season of Open Water (15 page)

“Why not?”

“Last year, I couldn't have dragged you to one of their flings.”

“Well, I can't stay home every night.”

“No, I suppose.” The steps are worn. He runs his hand into the smooth concave tread of one. He picks at a needle-shaped piece of wood that has come loose. He pries it up, revealing the lighter wood untouched beneath. He snaps it off.

“So are you staying for supper or not?” Bridge asks.

“You need something to wear?”

“What?”

“To the fling. If you like, I can buy you a dress.”

She shakes her head and laughs. “I'm not that far overboard,” she says. “I'll scare up something.”

Henry

He arrives late and immediately regrets that he has come. It is not even ten and most of them are well on their way to being tight. Alyssia Borden comes up to him as soon as he steps into the hall. She leads him into the dining room. The long table is spread with canapés, biscuits and cheese, smoked meats, Limoges china, half a dozen crystal punch bowls. Alyssia points to one of them. “Gin lemonade,” she whispers. “I would recommend it.” Her breath is sweet and warm and dusky, close to his ear. Around the table, damask napkins have been folded into stiff triangles. Pale flowers embroidered through the hem of the tablesheet match the border on the window-cloth. Will Borden comes up to them, and the three of them talk for a while, shouting from time to time over the music off the gramophone. Dick Wheeler is fiddling with the volume knob, turning it up and down, higher and lower and higher again. He tinkers with the records and sings alone, loud and off-key, until someone smartly cuffs him and makes him turn the music down.

The guests mill through the room, dancing, drinking—champagne, punch, whiskey, single malt Scotch—the glasses shimmer in the white and glistening light thrown off the chandelier. Alyssia has her hand on Henry's sleeve, and as she talks to him, she keeps her grip on his arm, gentle but firm, her fingers on his wrist. Once, when she turns to have a word with Lady Judith, Henry murmurs an excuse, slips his arm loose, and melts back through the crowd. He goes to the fireplace at the edge of the room. He sets his drink down on the mantelshelf, wipes his face with a handkerchief, and rehearses a few lines in his head that will buy him an early departure. When he looks up again, Bridge Weld is standing in the doorway. She has come in with her brother, Luce. Her eyes play over the room—a slow and democratic gaze—almost disinterested, almost bored. She sees him. Her eyes still for a moment, then pass on. Henry reaches for his drink. The glass is cool and smooth and wet and he can hear the sound of the ice shifting as it melts, and he realizes then that she is the reason he came. He has been waiting for her—without expecting that she would arrive, without expecting he would see her on this night or any other night. Still he has been waiting. He is suddenly aware of his body, the tight shirt collar, the bow tie, the scrape of linen against his thigh. He is about to take a step toward her, a step toward crossing the room. He stops abruptly, catches himself, and in the same moment, Luce takes his sister's arm and steers her along the fringes of the crowd toward the French doors flung open onto the back terrace. As Henry watches, they step outside and her slim body is cut to shadow in the loose red light flickering off the paper lanterns. They move deeper out into the night and disappear.

He follows them. Without thinking, he does it. He leaves his drink and crosses the room, weaving through conversations, suits, cigar smoke, elbows, scattered greetings. He reaches the doors. Luce is at one end of the terrace, turned toward the rail, in an intent conversation with Albert Devereaux. And Bridge, where is she? Henry scans the terrace, the steps, the yard, and he sees her then, down below. She is walking across the dance floor toward the soft sand and the long folding table where they have set out the fireworks.

She has never seen so many. She imagines the explosion they could make. She imagines lighting them, not slowly, not one at a time, the way they will be lit, but all at once—a ferocious, volcanic sound, sparks, shoots of light bursting out of the black night as if the sky itself had split and it was the blood of the stars that was falling.

She wants Henry to come out after her. He had seen her inside. She was sure of it. He had looked at her from across the room, and she had almost smiled—it wasn't that she didn't want to—she had almost raised her hand. But she didn't. Why? Because of Luce? Of what he would have thought? Of the scowl that might have crossed his face? Why should that matter? Perhaps it wasn't Luce at all, but rather something unbrave in her. Either way, she had let Luce steer her through the room and out onto the terrace. There, he had stopped to have a word with someone and Bridge had wandered away, down onto the sand, trying to collect her thoughts. What was it about Henry Vonniker that made such a shambles of her thoughts?

Laid out on the table are boxes of red Roman candles, sparklers, cannon crackers, ladyfingers, pinwheels. She stops at a box covered in blue silk and lifts the lid. Inside it are the skyrockets. They lie wrapped in white tissue, braided wick to wick.

A short distance away from the table, a man in a black waiter's suit is kneeling in the sand. She knows him by face but not by name. He lives next to the Poor Farm on Drift Road. He is a mason, and they have hired him for this. He has shoveled out a short trench and now he is digging a deeper spot in the belly of it to set a small launching pad. He lays blocks of wood and stone in a square around the hole, and places a small stand inside to hold the rockets, their wicks straight, angled out to sea and up toward the sky.

She feels someone behind her and she turns. It is Henry. He says, “Hello,” and she finds she cannot think of anything to say. She can feel the current pass between them, again. Her heart is wild, and they stand there, close together, their feet sinking into the soft sand.

“So tell me more about your life,” she says.

He laughs. “More?”

“Tell me something.”

“I am afraid when it comes to life, if you haven't yet noticed, I am a bit of a passerby.”

She doesn't answer. Her eyes are steady on his face, but they feel cool and it makes him nervous.

“I came by your house last fall,” he says. “To see you. To make sure you were alright.”

“My mother told me.”

They stand for a moment, an awkward silence.

“You went away this winter?” she asks.

“I did. For business.”

She nods.

“Did you notice I was gone?”

“I did.”

“Did you miss me?”

She smiles. “I might have.”

He doesn't know what to say. He feels that he should offer her something. Some explanation, confession, apology. He remembers the day she came by his house at the beach, the day of the box wrench and the teacup. He remembers her mouth on his. He wants to tell her that he remembers that moment as if it happened yesterday.

“Any run-ins lately with an oil pan?” she asks lightly.

He shakes his head.

“Not once?”

“No. I brought the car to the garage.”

“The garage?” Her voice bends, and he is uncertain if the slant in her voice, the slant in her eyes, is intended to include him. “You give up easily,” she says.

“I think you know that's not true.”

She is still looking at him with those cool and empty eyes, eyes dark and blue, currents at their surface, rippling light, and down below that, swift dark running water.

He rights himself, clears his throat. “Have you eaten?”

“No.”

“They have food inside. Quite a spread. Some sort of fish. You do eat fish, don't you?” He is blundering now. Flustered. “Are you hungry?”

“Sure.”

“Will you go in with me?”

She pauses for a moment, still looking at him, then she nods and takes his arm, and they begin to walk back across the dance floor through the soft red light of the paper lanterns, and for the first time that night he feels that things are good, they are more than good. He is with her and she is holding his arm, and they are walking together toward the steps and the terrace, toward the clink of glasses, the clatter of silver and china, the shimmering waves of light and jazz and voices, barely contained by the thin-shingled walls.

Bridge sees the woman coming toward them before Henry does. They are on the first landing, and she is above them on the terrace, her tight blond curls and long white arms. She has noticed them. Bridge recognizes her as Alyssia Borden from Horseneck Road. The woman who was talking to Shorrock that day Bridge saw Henry at the store. She is with her husband. She calls out Henry's name. Her voice is strong and she is gorgeous, walking toward them as they step onto the terrace. She wears a white sheath dress and stockings. Her mouth is painted red.

She reaches them and puts her hand on Henry's other arm. “We need you, Henry. I must steal you, for just a moment.” She does not look at Bridge.

Will Borden comes up behind her, smiling broadly. “She seems rather desperate over it, Henry.” Henry feels a twinge of disgust toward Will, his friend, for being so blind and, at the same time, disgust toward himself for the old betrayal.

“This is Bridge Weld,” he says curtly. “Bridge, Alyssia Borden and her husband, Will.”

Alyssia's gaze plays over Bridge. She gives her a stony nod, then looks back at Henry. “We do need you, Henry. Please. For a moment.”

“Actually, we were on our way in to find something to eat.”

“Fish,” Bridge adds. Henry smiles.

Alyssia looks at her coolly. “You must be Luce Weld's little sister.”

“Yes.”

“Well isn't that just grand.”

“It has its moments.”

“Come on, Alyssia,” Will says. “Leave them. We'll catch up with Henry later.”

Alyssia glances at Bridge, then back at Henry, a sly look in her eyes, and he can see that she is about to add a remark, and he knows it will be cruel.

“Later,” he says quickly, with a subtle but definitive intent, a warning or a promise depending on how she chooses to read it.

Alyssia bites her lip. “I will hold you to ‘later,' ” she says, and she shoots him a winning smile, then takes her husband's arm. They walk back toward the other end of the terrace that looks out onto the sea.

“I've heard she keeps jasmine flowers,” Bridge says, looking after them.

“She does.”

“Have you seen them?” She does not look at him. Her voice is measured, even, and he knows what she is asking.

“Yes,” he replies after a pause. “A few years ago. I've had no interest in them since.”

They fall into silence. Notes of a new jazz music strike up from the gramophone. Bridge looks toward the doors. Her eyes sweep the room inside. She spots her brother in a corner, leaning against the wall. He is talking to a woman in a slim black dress. His glass is filled with a ruddy whiskey. He drinks it off and picks up another from the end table next to him.

“Do you want to go in now?” Henry asks her.

She smiles. She doesn't look at him. The lights from the room inside play across her face. “I did miss you,” she says. Her voice is still and soft and deep, complicit. He cannot take his eyes off her. He cannot see any other thing, has no desire for any other thing except her face—the thin arch of her brow, the delicate line of her jaw. She turns and looks at him, and he feels that he is falling toward a place inside her that has no floor.

“Are you still hungry?” he asks slowly.

“No.”

“They're going to have dancing later. A band outside. Fire-works.”

“Where's your car?” she says.

“Next door.”

“Let's go.”

He does not ask where. They go outside into the night, through the narrow alley between the houses, across the yard to the second drive.

“Give me the keys,” she says. He looks at her for a moment, then hands them to her. She slips behind the wheel.

They don't speak. She drives along East Beach then north up Horseneck, past Bald Hill and the Glen. She kills the lights as they make the second left-hand turn. She cuts off the engine and lets the wheels roll on their own down the lane.

He knows now where she is taking him. He can see her face in the darkness beside him, the lean angles of her profile against the window glass, the eerie reflected glow off her skin, and he wants this moment to go on, this suspended pause as they coast down through the darkness toward the bottom of the hill.

Ahead and to the left, he can see the glass roof of Alyssia Borden's greenhouse set in off the drive. Bridge lets the car roll past it. She twists the wheel slightly and steers across the lane into a turnoff by the brook. She lets the front hood of the car push into the brush. The wheels come to a halt.

They walk back twenty yards to the drive. They walk in silence, slightly apart, this last, carefully maintained distance between them. They reach the door. Bridge presses down on the latch with her thumb. The bar lifts. The door swings open on its hinges with no sound.

He follows her through the rows of plants, the peat pots, the galvanized buckets, the watering pails, past trays of seedlings set on stepped shelves. She leads him through the steam, the warmth, the soft-brushed scented light until they come to a cluster of jasmine plants.

She stops and points to the flowers on one—five-starred and open. She points to the buds, slight pale bulbs on long-stemmed necks among the leaves.

“You can't touch them, you know,” she says. “They won't open if you do.” She takes his hand then and places it on her neck, his fingers at the edge of her throat. His mouth grows dry. His hands feel awkward on her skin, and he wants to explain it. He wants to explain that for years he has let his hands grow numb, unable to feel.

“No,” she says quietly, as if she is reading his thoughts. She puts her finger to his mouth. She touches the side of his face, and in that gesture, so simple and complete, he can feel his body begin to thaw. It is painful—so much more painful than he could have imagined— those first few moments of returning—the blood winding back in a slow and knifelike rush.

He slips the strap of her dress off her shoulder, and she takes his coat and lays it on the floor. She pulls him down with her. She is warm. Her body is so warm. Her skin tastes of salt and he can smell the jasmine. There is sweat in the curves behind her knees, and he is holding her tightly. She cries out.

Afterward, as they lie together on his coat on the cool dark floor split by circles of thin light, he tells her that he wants this. He wants her. It matters. She looks at him, but she does not answer. Her face is inscrutable in the soft, warm darkness.