The Seasons Hereafter (26 page)

“Thanks, Cliff,” she panted. “I was some nervous when I saw how low the tide was.”

“Don't thank
me
. Just don't have it on this trip. We ain't none of us got our midwife papers.”

“Don't discourage her, Cliff,” said the captain. “We might put Cap'n Bennett here in charge.”

“Well, now,” said Owen from the top of the wharf, “that's something I haven't tried yet. I did think we could save some money that way once, but my wife didn't have much confidence in me.”

The girl came aft, towed by the speedy child. The bench was full, and Vanessa got up. “I can get a couple of camp stools from the cabin,” the girl said.

“Suit yourself,” Van said. “But I like to move around, when it's calm enough.”

“I used to like to go all over the boat before I got so loaded down,” the girl said without resentment.

Van moved away between the rail and the cabin, and went forward. The engineer disappeared down his hatch, a couple of boys on the wharf cast off the lines, and the boat backed away and out into the harbor. Van walked around the forward hatch and sat on the side of it nearest the bow. Owen came and stood with his back against the mast. “I got you the last room she had,” he said. “And I talked her into it. She was saving it in case somebody or other showed up from Isle au Haut this afternoon.”

Van had to put her head back to look at him. “Thank you,” she said.

He made some small repudiating gesture with his hands, and his lower lip thrust out in a way she hadn't noticed before. He didn't look into her face but around him at the outer shores of Brigport gliding by, and then at a cloud of gulls rising from a green islet on the other side. After a few moments he left her. She heard a door slam and a burst of masculine greetings and amusement, and knew he'd gone into the pilot house; while he had been out here with her they had been under the eye of the captain, steering from his tall stool and half-leaning out the open window, and two men who'd come aboard at Brigport.

She pulled up her knees and laid her head forward on them. The steady motion and swash of water rushing by the side half-lulled her into that state of separateness again. The unborn child does nothing but wait to be born, she thought, and he doesn't even know he's waiting. This is the birthday of my life. . . .
Long night succeeds thy little day
. . . .
I've reached the land of corn and wine, Beulah Land, sweet Beulah Land
. . .

“You all right?” It was repeated, louder and nearer. She lifted her head, blinking unfocused eyes that watered at the radiance of the sky. Owen was sitting on the hatch cover beside her. “You can get seasick like that. Tooth acting up?”

“You know damn well,” she said carefully, like a drunk, “that I've got no toothache.”

“Well, don't advertise it. Everybody's sorry as hell for you right now. Cliff wanted to bring you coffee, but I saved you from that.”

“Thanks, I guess.” She looked blurrily around her, running her hands through her hair and then rubbing her palms hard over her jawbones. “We're almost in! I must have gone to sleep after all.”

“That's why I stirred you up.” He began filling his pipe and she sat with her arms folded on her knees and watched the way ahead. As the boat cut across the harbor traffic and the city grew clear at the base of the blue-violet hills, she could place the trees of Water Street as a long bank of green beyond the roof of the sardine factory. Seen from out here, everything carried an illusion of cleanliness and grace in the warm shimmer of spring, as if Water Street looked as it used to look long before her time. The house is down by now, she told herself. They may have already started the new building. But there was no conviction in her; she saw in her mind the sun on the iridescent roof slates, and the air was full of the scent of lilies of the valley.

She pulled her gaze away from that side of the harbor and concentrated on the big ferry landing on the opposite curve. She realized then that Owen had gone again, and she was alone when the mailboat docked.

The three stout women were met by a stout man whose quips and uninhibited whacks on any handy rear turned them into jellies of mirth. They offered the pregnant girl a lift. Laughter floated from the car windows as it left the slip. There was one taxi, and Van took it, not looking back to see where Owen was. He was helping to get the lobster crates out, and had given her an impersonal nod as she passed him, as if he hardly knew her.

In a room under the eaves of the mustard-colored Victorian house, she washed her face and hands in water from a tall flowered jug, and then went out, still in slacks. Limerock was no longer the serene, embowered city seen from the bay. She was glad to get into the comparative quiet of a booth at the back of the Crow's Nest. She had just sat down when Owen came in.

“Link dropped me off at the corner of Sea Street, and there you were, just going in the door. How's that for timing? I was trying to figure out a way to reach you without getting Eva Marshall all hawsed up. . . . What do you want to eat? Better make it dinner, you look some ganted up.” He grinned at the waitress. “We'll have some of those scallops, if they're fresh.”

“Of course they're fresh,” she said severely, then gave in and smiled back. It took years off her. She had once been pretty and full of a kittenlike smartness and life, and Owen's smile had reminded her of it. When she had gone, Van said, “How do you plan on explaining this? Somebody you know could walk in that door in the next five minutes.”

“My wife and your husband aren't going to bust a gut because we happened to meet in a restaurant and eat together.”

“You think you have everything under control, don't you?”

“I have.”

Amused, fairly content, Vanessa ate. The food was hot and good. There was no conversation until they sat back with their coffee and cigarettes. “I called up my lawyer,” he said. “We can't see the revenooers till Monday morning.”

“What have you been doing, cheating?”

“Nope. But they think so. Now what I want you to do,” he said matter-of-factly, “is be ready with your dunnage when a taxi calls for you about five o'clock. He'll know where to take you.” By expression or tone he gave nothing away to the couple in the booth across the way. Van sipped her coffee and looked past him as if she hardly heard him and didn't care. Yet she almost felt she should cover her throat in case the heavy beating in it showed. “You can tell Eva Marshall,” he said, “if anybody shows up from Isle au Haut they can have that room tonight and tomorrow night.”

Swallowing didn't ease anything. Watching the people passing by the windows she said, “All right.”

The waitress was with them again. “We've got nice fresh custard pie today. It's real good.” Her voice and eyes implored Owen to let her feed him with custard pie.

“Darlin' mine, I've got no room for it.” He patted his middle. “Look, no pot yet. My wife's some proud of that and you wouldn't want to contribute to my downfall, would you?” She gave Van a sidewise look, then closed up her face and wrote the slip.

H
e left her outside the restaurant and she walked along for a block, finding her way by instinct among the other walkers. She certainly didn't see them. Suddenly she returned to reality like an awakened sleepwalker and stood staring into a shop window, trying to orient herself. Beyond the ghostly flicker and sweep of reflections, there were women's clothes, and suddenly she felt that the poverty of her wardrobe was shameful. She couldn't go anywhere with Owen like this, in slacks. She stood examining the clothes, trying to concentrate on details and colors, while sweat prickled between her shoulder blades. Miss Foster used to take her shopping for clothes, and once they had gone in here, simply because Van had kept looking back at a dress in the window. Van had never allowed herself to show any interest or preference in clothes; no matter how hard the woman tried to give her a choice, Van always stood stiff, unpliable, armored against the humiliation of being on charity. The dress had taken her unawares; standing here now, she could remember the taste of her longing for it. She had been about fourteen, tall but still flat-chested, and unable to force herself to show pleasure once it was on her with its soft pleats, and cool green-and-white pattern of leaves and blossoms. Woodenly she stood before her reflection while Miss Foster and the clerk admired and exclaimed, trying to make a dent in her. She thought, Well, I have the dress now, and so what?

It didn't really belong to her; it belonged to the other kind of fourteen-year-old, the kind with families. The taste of longing turned sour enough to make her sick. She hardly ever wore the dress after that, unless Mrs. Bearse asked her to wear it to church.

Whatever became of it? In any case, the store had changed hands several times in sixteen years, so there was no chance of meeting the saleswoman again. And now there was a point to choosing clothes. She was ironically amused to find herself wanting, just like anybody, to look nice; or at least nice enough so that Owen wouldn't be ashamed of her. The line
It is the birthday of my life
popped irrepressibly into her head and she thought, Good God, how sentimental can you get?

She went into the shop and chose, with an efficiency that pleased her, a beige tweed topcoat, moss-green skirt and sweater, a matching plaid jacket, a two-piece dress in apricot silk shantung. “You have taste,” the man told her. “Not many would dare those colors—not many could wear them.” She accepted his praise with composure, knowing he was right, confident that he couldn't guess she had never bought a dress for herself except by catalog. “Do you need anything else?” he asked her. She bought some stockings, accepting his advice on the shade. She handled for a few minutes a wide bracelet set with topaz like chunks.

“It matches your eyes,” he said without flattery.

She gave him a slight smile, shook her head, and handed it back.

“Too bad,” he said. “Well, come in again.”

“I shall.” The transaction set some sort of seal upon the day. She walked briskly back to the rooming house and told Mrs. Marshall that she'd met a friend who wanted her to spend the weekend, and she wouldn't want the room again till Monday. Naturally she'd pay for using it today to wash up and change her clothes in.

“Oh, don't talk so foolish,” said Mrs. Marshall. “What's a few towels?” She was buoyant in her relief, because a cousin had shown up from Isle au Haut, just as she'd expected.

Van put on the skirt, and the shirt that belonged to the dress. Her loafers were old, but she hadn't worn them much and they were of good quality; with her long narrow foot her shoes had to be expensive. She packed away her slacks and sneakers, wrapped the full skirt of the new dress in tissue paper and packed that also.

She remembered how she had felt wearing Helmi's clothes that day, how she had looked in the mirror at an elegant stranger. The stranger had returned again, a woman reflected in glass as if caught in time for an instant on her way from one life to another. The only link with the past was the old raincoat thrown over a chair behind her. She could see Mrs. Marshall moving around in the kitchen at the back of the passage when she went downstairs with the raincoat over her arm. “Could I leave this coat someplace over the weekend?” she asked. “It's nothing much. I only wear it on the mailboat to keep my clothes clean.”

When she got into the taxi she felt at once an upsurge of gay anticipation reinforced with relief. The driver was middle-aged and incurious. He looked like a fisherman, and said with a down-east accent, “Real pretty weekend for a trip.”

“Yes.” They were heading north, through the quiet residential streets with broad lawns and shade trees.

“Likely a weather-breeder though.” he said. “It'll rain on Monday.”

“It always does,” she said.

He laughed. “It does, at that.”

This was a part of the city she had always avoided, but now she looked out at it with the excitement and curiosity of a traveler in a foreign country, enchanted by the shapes of trees in their translucent leaves and the brightness of children's hair flying out in the wind. When her eye could be ravished by that, she knew that she no longer resented all children who had not been abandoned; she had at last been given something to make up for it. I give you permission, she said grandly to the children, to be happy. Then she almost laughed aloud at herself.

They left the city and drove a little way into the country, and turned in at an expensive motel. She knew of it, it was one of Limerock's glories. The restaurant had a quiet elegance among its landscaped lawns and borders, and the cabins were set on natural terraces under the spruces. For this first really good May weekend the parking lot was already full of out-of-state cars, and as the taxi circled it Van's euphoria began to shred. They stopped at a discreet cabin carrying the sign of a car-hire agency. Owen and another man stood talking like old friends, and as she looked out at them from the taxi Owen was as unknown, as meaningless to her, as the pink, short, balding man who was telling him a story with great wild gestures that made Owen grin and dodge. In this foreign place, in those different clothes, he was no one she knew, and her head began at once to ache in a queer way.

The driver had opened the door and was setting her bag out. She sat still, her eyes on the man in the tawny tweed coat and brown slacks. He was laughing, his pipe in his hand; she and her taxi were invisible to him. Her head wanted to split. “I'll go back,” she said to the driver, but he hadn't heard her, and she was frightened to think she mightn't have spoken aloud. Smiling kindly, he was saying, “It's all paid for, and a good tip beside.” He reached in his hand as if to help her out. Did she look sick? At last she stood on the crushed stone drive, the new coat over her arm.