The Season of Open Water (16 page)

“I need this,” he says quietly. “You. I want you to need me.”

“That might not be a practical thing to want.”

“Come home with me.”

“No.”

“Tonight.”

“No.”

“Please.”

She kisses the side of his neck, then presses her mouth into his shoulder. “Do you see the moon?” she says. He turns his head toward the window with the ring of yellow light through the beveled glass.

It has been cut. The space between them. She has cut it easily.

“Your life is your life,” she says gently, her mouth still against his shoulder. “My life is mine. What you're looking for, what you need, has nothing to do with me.”

She starts to roll away from him, to push herself up, but he grasps her wrist and pulls her back. “What I need,” he says, “has everything to do with you.”

She stares at him for a moment, then shakes her head. “No. That's not true. What time is it?”

“It is true.”

“What time is it?”

He looks at his watch. “Ten past one.”

She smiles. “We've been gone for two hours.”

“Come home with me.”

She shakes her head. “Come on. Let's go.” She stands and straightens her dress. She rakes one hand through her hair, then turns toward the small pots of jasmine on the table. She picks over a few, finds one she likes, and she takes it. They walk through the rows of plants to the door.

Outside, they walk in silence to Henry's car. Bridge puts the jasmine on the floor of the passenger seat. Then she comes around to the driver's side and steps up onto the running board.

“Let me drive you the rest of the way home,” he says.

“It's an easy walk,” she replies, and she leans through the window and presses her mouth on his. “Go,” she says, stepping away. “Go.”

Bridge

Luce is waiting for her, half stewed, at South Westport Corner. He peels out of the darkness and steps in alongside her as she walks.

“Whoring, were you?”

She doesn't answer.

“Weren't you?”

“Get yourself gone, Luce.”

He takes a step ahead, then turns sharply so he is standing in front of her. She stops.

“I saw you leave with him.”

“You're loaded.”

“He's got a wife.”

She doesn't answer.

“Didn't know that, did you? He don't see her, I guess. Don't live with her. But a wife's a wife.”

“Who cares, Luce? This has nothing to do with him.”

“Oh yes, I think it does.”

He pulls a cigar out of his vest pocket, bites off the tip and spits it on the ground. He strikes a match. The light rakes his face. He inhales, bluish smoke leaks out of his mouth.

“He's not the kind you should go with.”

“I will do what I want. I'm tired now. I want to go home.”

He takes a step toward her. She takes a step back. He looks at her for a moment, then laughs.

“These here are fine cigars. Cost me something, you know.”

She doesn't answer.

“Maybe now, though, they're not fine enough for you.” And as he moves in again toward her, she can see that this time is different, she can sense a vague incoherent threat as he reaches for her arm. She slips away and begins to run. Her heart is pounding in her chest, and she can hear him, for a good half mile up the road, calling her name through the broken dark behind her.

At the house, she comes into the kitchen and lights the woodstove. She blows up the fire, pumps a pot of water and sets it on the heat. She drags out the tub. She stands by the stove and watches the bubbles as they sprout in small crowds. They scurry together and grip the floor of the pot. They thicken and rise. The water comes to a boil. She pours it into the tub. The steam is wet on her face. She strips off her clothes, turns down the lamp, and climbs into the tub, and she lies there, her body still, her ears below the surface, as the fire settles in the woodstove. She listens to the underwater sound of her heart. She watches the skinny shadows spar on the walls, and she lets her mind drift back over the night: Henry, the soft red light off the Japanese lanterns, the first time his hand touched her arm, the greenhouse and its cool hard floor, his skin warm, the scent of him, her body underneath him—she feels it all now. She wants to see him again. She smiles to herself quietly. He was right, wasn't he? It was true. What she felt, what she wanted—it did perhaps have everything to do with him.

Henry

He wakes soaked, an oily film of sweat on his skin, his mind in dreams—dreams of having her, loving her, losing her—dreams of black rivers, corridors, dead ends. He feels too much. He wants too much. He tries to remind himself that he has lived thirty-four years of a life without a trace of her—a stock of over three decades when she was not even a footprint in his brain. He tries to be rational, to remember the laws—the theorems, pithy axioms and their proofs—
life tends toward chaos, sunlight kills the plague.
In the past they have steadied him. In the past they have always been enough to calm his nerves. He tries to be rational, to balance himself between clear values of true and false. Practicalities. Probabilities. He tries to ground himself in reason. It has been three days since he was with her—three days since that night in the greenhouse. He has eaten one half of an apple since then, and in the sweat that soaks the bedsheets, that soaks his nightclothes and his hair, he can smell that telling ammonia reek, the sign that his own body has begun to consume itself.

In the months after he returned from France he woke this same way, with this same stench, this same sense of dread, his thoughts in havoc, as if someone had come and doused his mind with kerosene and set the lot of it on fire.

The sweat has pooled in the cavity under his ribs. He gets out of bed. He washes and shaves. He dumps out the basin of soiled water in the bathroom sink. The soap foam collects around the drain, strung through with bits of his scruff. He turns on the tap and rinses the basin down.

It is half past five in the evening.

He goes downstairs to the front room, rifles through the bookshelves until he finds his volume of Epicurus. Epicurus, that great and ancient philosopher of the garden who did not believe in Providence or fate and claimed at best a lazy God.

Henry sits at one end of the sofa and reads. He skims the text until he finds what he is looking for—the three possibilities of a body in motion—and there, that third declination—the occasional, free and inexplicable swerve of an atom off its normal path.

She has said she is not on his path. She has stated it clearly. More than once. His life was his life, and hers was— He doesn't want to think about it. He slams the book closed, puts it back roughly on the shelf, not where it belongs, but somewhere else. He goes back upstairs, pulls on his clothes and leaves the house.

He gets into his car and drives. He drives to forget her. He reminds himself again of the reasons. There are so many reasons. They are too different, a universe apart. He is, technically, married. She is just a girl. He is almost twice her age.

The sun is low in the sky on the hills across the river.

He drives north. He will drive to the store at South Westport Corner. He will buy some food. He will take the long way home, down Drift Road, through the Point, across the bridge, back to the beach by John Reed Road. He will cut a few vegetables, cook a light supper. He maps it all out in his mind.

There is a crick in his neck, a tightness in his shoulder. He shifts his hand on the wheel, cracks his head to the side to stretch out the muscle, to loosen the ache. It is a crick from sleeping wrong, he thinks, from sleeping too much, from living too long in a box and twisting himself in order to fit inside it.

But that is not about her. No. She was right. She must have been right. His life has nothing to do with her.

The grass heaves off the side of the road as he takes the curve just past the farm. There is a fallen branch on the road ahead of him. He swerves around it. He draws up a list of groceries in his head. He won't think about her. He won't even think about not thinking about her. He will make a stew for supper.

He remembers the pale dusty light on the floor of the greenhouse, how it nicked the edge of her hair as she moved underneath him in the dark. It had surprised him, how easily she opened herself to him, and how when she came, her body tensed to the hardness of wood.

But there was no reason to remember that. There was every reason not to.

A beef stew. Carrots, potatoes, beans. Spices if they carry them. A jar of bay leaves. Would they be likely to sell bay leaves?

He presses his foot down on the gas, takes the Model T up to forty, forty-five. The needle on the speedometer quivers at the speed, the car rattling as if the frame will shake loose off the axle.

It will not be difficult to forget her. He tells himself this. There is no bend in the road beyond this. No path at all. He will take a blade to what he feels. He will cut it down and pack the pieces away in the back of a dark, locked room.

After supper, perhaps a banana. A banana would be fine.

That should be enough. That should be all he needs.

He passes the second farm, its fields sloping down toward the river, squares of land patched out by stone walls, some ancient and some new, long black shadows, the ruffled scalps of trees.

The road dips, then curves into the trees. Splinters of indirect light. Cool, evening light. The road rises again, the land on either side dropping down into the fields, and he sees a figure on a bicycle pedaling toward him on the opposite side of the road. He lifts his foot off the gas to slow the car as he passes by. It is her. He can see that it is her.

His foot lands heavy on the brake—the car lurches—he eases it onto the shoulder. He can see her in the rearview. She looks back once, then continues on.

“Turn,” he murmurs. “Turn around.” He keeps his eyes fixed on her. But she keeps pedaling south, away from him. She disappears around the bend.

He puts his head in his hands against the steering wheel. This is the way it is, he thinks to himself. This is the way it is supposed to be, a searing pain behind his eyes. They live in the same town, a small town, and he might see her, from time to time, around. That is just the way it will be.

He continues driving down the road, and for the first time in a long while, longer than he can remember, he feels a little free. There was a choice and she made it. It was not the choice he would have wanted. But it was the choice that she had made. And it was done.

He takes the left turn onto Hix Bridge Road at the corner. He passes the post office and pulls up in front of the store just as Maddox Tripp is latching the windows to close for the night. Henry parks the Model T behind the mail truck and takes the three steps onto the front porch.

“You've got five minutes,” Maddox says. “You know what you're looking for?”

“A few vegetables, coffee.”

“Coffee's second aisle on the right. Vegetables are in the back.”

“Do you have fresh peas?”

“Sold out.”

“Oh.”

“Got the peas in the cans though, that aisle there, by the California lima beans.”

“What about bananas? Do you have any bananas?”

Maddox takes him in with a glance, then looks away and goes on wiping down the counter. “Have to go to the Point for them. Not even sure he's got 'em now—now being the early part of the week, and if he did, they'd be over-ripe from last week.” Maddox refolds the rag and starts again on the counter, using the clean side. “Bananas come in on Thursday,” he goes on. “In time for the out-of-towners.”

“Oh right,” Henry says, and he can feel the flush spread across his face.

“Closing in three minutes,” Maddox says.

“You mentioned that.”

“So get what you need.”

“What I need—” Henry starts to say, then stops himself. He steps into the second aisle, takes a tin of coffee off the shelf and a can of stewed peaches in their juice. He is standing there, debating whether or not it will be worth it after all to make a stew, when he hears the door open. He turns, and she is standing there, the last raw light of the day balanced on her shoulders. She steps inside.

“We're closed here, Bridge,” Maddox says, annoyed.

“Not quite, it seems,” she answers, looking at Henry.

“Two minutes.” Maddox's voice is gruff. “Two minutes, I'll be turning the lock on that door.”

Bridge nods. She steps into the aisle next to Henry. She is very close to him. She turns away and picks a jar of black olives off the shelf.

“I saw your car on the road,” she says, examining the olives. “Wasn't that you? I saw your brake lights go on. Did you stop?”

Henry just stares at her.

“Was there something you wanted to ask me?” she says.

“Are you buying those olives, Bridge?” Maddox says.

“Yes,” Henry answers.

“No,” says Bridge. She sets the jar back on the shelf.

Henry walks around her to the counter, lays down the coffee and the can of peaches and a loaf of bread. She follows him.

“Is that it?” Maddox says.

Henry nods.

“No peas?”

Henry shakes his head.

“So what was it then?” Bridge asks, leaning into the counter.

Henry rifles through his left trouser pocket for a bill.

“What was it?” she asks again. She is standing close to him, and he can smell the faint reek of salt wind off her skin.

“What about you?” he asks, turning on her. “Was there something you wanted?”

“Me?”

“You were going the other way, weren't you? And now you're here.”

She shrugs. “I forgot the newspaper.”

“The newspaper?”

“Yes.”

“That's all? The newspaper?”

“That's all.”

“So you want a paper?” Maddox says. “Is that what you want, Bridge?”

“Yes. Evening, if you've got it.”

“I don't.”

“Alright then, I'll take what you've got.”

“That'll be fifty cents,” Maddox says to Henry. Henry nods, hands him a dollar. “And a nickel for you, Bridge.”

“I'll get it,” says Henry.

“No, that's fine.” She sets a nickel on the counter and picks up the paper. “See you then.” She walks out.

She is waiting for him outside. Her bicycle lies in the grass by his car. As he comes out of the store, she picks up the bike, dusts off the seat, and fiddles with one of the gears. She walks it to the road around his car and, as she passes the driver's side, she tosses the newspaper in through the open window. It lands on the seat. She glances back at him over her shoulder. She smiles.

“I'll see you there,” she says lightly and sets off pedaling down Hix Bridge toward the turn onto Horseneck Road. His house.

It is dark by the time she meets him at the cottage. A black sky in the east. In the west, a few last traces of steep blue. They eat outside on the porch. He lights the mosquito torches, and they eat the bread and the peaches from the can. He opens a bottle of wine that has been cellared for years, and she drinks it slowly. The wine loosens her tongue. He can see how it softens her, makes her a little careless. She tells him about her life, about her grandfather Noel, his boat shop, his ship tales, his garden, how the tomatoes he grows are brutally sweet, unlike any other tomatoes she has tasted. She will bring him a few someday. She promises this. Her voice is like music, and he finds himself staggered, speechless. At moments he can feel his eyes burn over her, wanting her, and he hopes she will not notice. At one point while she is talking about her grandfather, he realizes suddenly that the man she is describing is the same tough, battered creature he has seen on the beach mucking up the weed. He wants to tell her this. He wants to explain how their lives have already crossed, have been crossed for years this way. He is on the verge of telling her, but then he stops, afraid that if he speaks, somehow he might disrupt the magic and the wonder in her voice. So he lets her go on. He sits near her, listening. She tells him about her grandmother. Dead now, she says, but they had been so in love. They had fallen into one another in such an unlikely, incredible way. There are tears in her eyes as she talks—he can see this— strange, faraway tears. She does not seem to notice, but there is water on her cheeks, and he wants to touch it, to touch that smooth and glistening surface of her face. His hand moves. He pulls it back, sharply. He fingers the stem of his wineglass instead. She stops talking then and looks at him, and he can see, for the first time, her age. He can see that as young as she is, there are years on her, years that have only just begun to settle into thin light lines around her eyes, and again he wants to reach out and touch her, but he does not, and they sit together that way on the steps of the porch, the torches blazing in throes of jagged light around them. He feels the wind on his face.

They move inside and put the food and wine away, and she leads him up the stairs to the bedroom. She lights the lamp and turns the flame low. She takes off her clothes, and it is like they have always done this. It is like they have already grown old together and their bodies know the script of this night. It is everything familiar, being with her, and at the same time, it is everything new.