The Seasons Hereafter (29 page)

Tears fall in my heart as rain falls upon the town
. Or was it,
Rain falls upon the town as tears fall in my heart?
Each time she said it to herself, the phrase grew in pathos until she was on the verge of crying. It wasn't fair, to be shown all this and let that be the end of it. Why did I have to meet him, she demanded of a faceless jury, if I couldn't keep him? And I can't ever go back to what I was, I took off all my shell for him, peeled it away layer by layer, and now I have nothing to protect me. No, I've been like a drunk, dancing and singing and giving myself to men, and now it's the next day, and I haven't even got pride left, or what passed for pride with me. I haven't got
him
. The strong legs and shoulders and the brown skin, and the feel of his hair under my hand, his lower lip, the way he looks at me sidewise and lets me run on as if I were his child. And then the times when there is no age between us, because he's right, there is no special age for loving, there are just lovers.

She put her hand to the curving hollow between throat and shoulder where his head had been. Suddenly a sob broke from her, and she put her wrist against her mouth and bit it frantically to use up the passion of grief, but he had already been waked. He turned over to her and gathered her against him.

“What is it?” he kept whispering, with little hard squeezes of his arms. “What is it?”

“I don't want to go back.” She was ashamed for admitting it and humiliated by crying. “That's all. You weren't supposed to know.” She tried to get away, but couldn't. “I was just going to get it over with before breakfast. All nice and tidy.” She couldn't stop crying, or escape either.

“I don't want to go back again either. Good Christ!” he groaned. “When we left that island yesterday it was like going back to the police or the guillotine. I wanted to stow you in that car and keep driving eastward.”

She held her breath, listening. Close by her face his flesh was wet from her tears, and she touched it delicately with the tip of her tongue. “I keep trying to figure it out.” He spoke heavily like a man exhausted. “Is it because I'm at the age when a man makes a goddam fool of himself? Because I've had to behave for seventeen years or so, for lack of opportunities? If I've been losing sleep like a green kid and breaking into a sweat at sight of you—” He began kissing her forehead and wet eyelids. “If the first time we were together it was like the first time in my life for me with anyone—well, how much of it was because I wanted it to be that way? Because I wanted, at my age, to be in love—guts, feathers, and all? Well, maybe that's it. But you don't come up for air, shake yourself like a dog, and go home and forget all about it.” He forced her face upward till he could look into it. “I don't want to go home and forget it. I don't want to go home. I don't want to give you up. I'm not going to.”

She felt shaken, literally, out of breath and sense. “The family—”

“They don't run my business. I can live without them, I have before. I walked away once and was gone for seven years.”

“Where were you? What did you do?”

“We'll save that for later. We'll have the rest of our lives.” The words made her shudder with an almost sickening emotion and he tightened his grip.

“But you came back,” she said against his cheek. “You were drawn back to the island and the family. You'll always be drawn.”

“I went back,” he said harshly, “because I didn't have anywhere else to go.”

They were quiet for a few minutes, then she said with diffidence, “What about your own family?”

“I've been thinking about them. And this is how bad it is with me, how deep you've gotten into my bones. I want the rest of my life with you. It's like wanting air to breathe or water to drink. I have to have it to survive. It's no sense cursing because we've wasted so much time. We're going to grab what's left. . . . My kids—” He broke off, then started again. “Joss is finishing high school. The other two'll grow up soon and be off on their own. I love them, but I can't wait.”

“Laurie?” she asked timidly.

“She'll do all right. She doesn't figure on falling apart for anything. She can stay there in the house on the island. The whole thing can be hers except my boat and gear . . . I told Mrs. Jessup last night she'd hear from me inside two weeks, one way or the other.”

“I'll give you children,” she promised, wanting to give him more than she could touch or embrace or imagine. There was nothing great enough for a gift. He didn't answer, just lay back and gazed at the ceiling, holding her in one arm. The grayness paled in the room and the rain fell steadily on the roof. Van was not yet able to rejoice, there had been too much all at once. Then she remembered there must be more.

“I have to tell you something,” she said. “If it makes any difference I want to know now.” He turned his head toward her, his eyes questioning. “That story I told you about myself was a lie. It's true that I was a state ward, but the other yarn, about my mother and father, I made that up out of whole cloth as I went along. I don't know who my parents were. Chances are I'm somebody's mistake that was left on a doorstep somewhere. I've got no one that I know of.”

“You have someone now.”

She went on quickly before the words could break her down. “When I was small I used to get a postcard signed “Mama” now and then. But the welfare people couldn't ever trace her. My caseworker told me, when I was older, that my mother probably hadn't deserted me because she wanted to; she might have been scared or sick. She explained to me very nicely about people being sick in their minds. It was supposed to keep me from thinking I'd been coldly rejected, or something. What it did was make me wonder about once a week if she was in a padded cell somewhere and I was heading that way myself.”

“Poor kid,” he murmured, stroking her hair back from her forehead. “Jesus, what people do to young ones and never turn a hair. But it's gone by now. You don't need anybody but me.”

They lay there in silence and slept again, but the sleep was shallow and fidgety from their exhaustion.

They hardly spoke on the way back to Limerock. The land that had been a haze of green gold when they had driven through it on Saturday was now sodden in the rain. When they reached the motor lodge the rain had given way to a chilly fog. After Owen turned the car in to the agency, he called Limerock for a taxi. They went across to the restaurant and had coffee. The few other people in the warmly lit room were mostly salesmen talking business over breakfast.

Owen sat with his elbows on the table, shoulders hunched and head sunk forward. She drank her coffee quickly, though it was very hot, and poured more. Suddenly he looked up at her and smiled.

“I don't know if I told you how much I like that color on you. What do you call it? The shirt.”

“Apricot.” She was ridiculously pleased, and had to keep from touching it like the preening women she despised.

He nodded amiably and she knew he had scarcely heard her. It was as if his declaration had driven a wall between them; until now he had been centered in whatever he saw their relation to be, but now he was distracted and absorbed by all that had to be done. She was actually second to the new concerns. She felt a brush of cold, which angered her because she should have been feeling warmth and joy. She put her hand across the table and touched his, the one with the fingers gone.

“How soon will you let her know?” she asked. His head jerked up, a sort of wild astonishment flashed youthfully across his face. “The woman who owns the island,” she added, and he sat back.

“Oh. Next week.”

“You thought I meant Laurie.”

“What if I did? She's on my mind.”

“Naturally,” she said coldly. “I won't tell Barry until you've talked to her.”

His nod was more of a chopping jab with his chin. He drank his coffee fast. “More?” she asked him.

“No, I think the cab's here.”

She would have liked to sink into a trance state at will, and never open her eyes or think until she was back on Bennett's Island. She did the best she could on the way to Limerock, but the trick she used to have, of veiling her consciousness against her surroundings, had been lost somewhere. Owen sat in his corner, head turned away toward the fog outside. His disfigured hand lay on his knee and she wanted to take it, in some hope of establishing contact with yesterday, but she couldn't do it.

He got out at the north end of Main Street, and paid the driver. “I'll see you later,” he said to Van. Where, when, she wanted to ask, but didn't. At the Marshall house she had to walk around a happy cluster of island women just setting out to shop, discussing where to meet for lunch and what the movie would be tonight. They included her in their innocent gaiety, nodding and smiling; one cried heartily, “You come in from somewhere in this fog?”

“Must have come by gull,” another said, and they all laughed, their excitement and pleasure embracing her. She forced a smile and said, “Oh no, I came Saturday. I've been somewhere else for the weekend, that's all.”

“Oh!” They were reassured. “I didn't think anybody in his right mind would set out for the main this morning,” one said. She watched them go under the dripping elms toward Main Street, and thought, This time yesterday. . . . Then she went inside, and from the kitchen at the end of the long hall she heard Mrs. Marshall's ringing tone, and went toward it. An elderly woman rocking and knitting by the stove smiled. “Morning! Eva, you've a visitor.” Mrs. Marshall turned from peeling a turnip at the dresser.

“Hello there! Your room's ready. My cousin, she got off to Boston on the eight o'clock bus this morning. You have a good weekend?”

“Too good,” said Van. “I'm tired. We islanders can't stand this fast pace.” They were amused by that and she was cynically proud of herself. There was a time when she would not make an effort; now that she was obliged to, in order to keep from being conspicuous, she had discovered unknown talents in herself. They were carrying on the joke now, and she smiled, only half-hearing, and went up to her room.

When she shut the door behind her, depression swamped her. Everything about the weekend was a dream, Owen an illusion that had passed through her unconsciousness. She would never see him again, never dream him again. She sank down onto the bed, staring about the room in quiet horror, as if she didn't know how she'd got there.

But the room was indisputably real and she was in it. Tomorrow would inexorably come, and the return to Bennett's. No illusions here. “How can I?” she heard herself whispering. “I
can't.”
Yet she would go back because she had nowhere else to go.

She took off her outside clothes and lay down on the bed, pulling the extra blanket over her. Outside on the gables there was a constant conversation of sparrows. From Main Street the sound of traffic was like the rote on the outer shores of the island. Make it Jessup's Island, she thought as if she were praying. I'm on Jessup's Island, in the fog. . . . She slept.

W
hen she woke up she felt refreshed and hungry. She dressed and went out into the foggy streets to the Crow's Nest. She was used to her new clothes now and enjoyed the feel of them; since Saturday she had learned that if anyone looked twice at her it was because she had a sort of distinction.
I like the way you walk
, Owen's voice companioned her.

A waitress handed her a menu and began laying her place. “Thank you,” Van said, and looked up at Brenda. Her first thought was that she hadn't realized how many wrinkles Brenda's thin skin had, or how sharp and strong her nose was.

“For Gawd's sake!” Brenda whispered reverently. “If
this
ain't some surprise! I thought you'd dropped off the edge of the world. And don't you look some
fancy!
No wonder I didn't know you when you came in.”

“I know I was pretty messy, but I didn't think I was that bad.”

“You know what I mean. You look like a million dollars! How does anybody get that way out on that hunk of rocks?”

“You'd be surprised at what it's like, Brenda,” said Van. “Electricity, gas, television. And that's not all.” She smiled. “Not anywhere near all.”

“Well, there's money, I can tell by the sight of you. . . . I'll be back.” She went on to another booth. Her rows of yellow curls looked like the wig on a cheap doll. Van recognized her alien emotion as pity. What was a life with no wildness in it, only the small gnawing resentments against employers, aching feet, the loneliness of rented rooms, the nights washed out with beer and television and movies?

Brenda came back. “How's Barry ?”

“Walking high, wide, and handsome.”

“I'll bet.” She smiled reminiscently. “He was always cocky, even without a cent in his pocket. . . . What are you having?”

“The special. I'm starved.” From a weekend of love, Brenda. A man is leaving his wife for me, what do you think of that? And he's not a bum. If you'd been on duty Saturday afternoon you'd have seen him.

Brenda was back with a tray. “Coffee now or later?”

“Later. Where are you living now?”

“Same place.”

Her heart seemed to twitch. “Didn't they tear it down?”

“There's some hitch, I guess. Different parties can't come to an agreement, so in the meantime the house stands there.”

“But who's in charge?”

“I am,” said Brenda with a satisfied smile. “I've got your place. My Gawd, it feels as big as the Community Building.”

Cheated again, Van thought. She tried to keep the instant antagonism out of her voice. “Mooney?”

“Still in the front parlor. But he'll be moving out soon. He's given some girl a diamond.”