The Seasons Hereafter (32 page)

“So Gina's back,” Kathy said. “Willy called up Sunday night and wanted to know if they could come.”

That would be from the jail. “I suppose they'd run out of money,” said Kathy. “Didn't Willy look ghastly? If I know that Gina, she'll be off again as soon as she can get a fistful. Willy ought to have Steve take care of his earnings for him, send a check to the bank for him every so often and just give him enough cash for cigarettes and groceries. I think I'll suggest it.”

“I think you'll keep your mouth shut,” said Terence.

“But I can make Willy listen to me and they'd be a lot better off.”

“Fools rush in, as the feller says. It's none of your business.”

“That Terence is a whited sepulchre,” said Kathy. “Everybody thinks I run
him
. Gosh, I'm glad you're back, Van.”

Liza wasn't in sight and nobody was home at the Dinsmores', not even Tiger. Relieved, Van left the gifts on the kitchen table, and went on to the store. It was one of the afternoons when everyone seemed to have dropped from sight and she was glad of that. She wasn't ready for them yet. Mark was busy on the car with the men coming in, and Helmi waited on her, but was not relentlessly conversational about it. There was a lot to be said for Finns.

When Barry came home she had cleaned up the kitchen and was making spaghetti sauce. He stood in the doorway, shaking his head and grinning wordlessly at her. “There's something for you there on the table,” she said.

“There's something for me by the stove.” He advanced on her, still incandescent, and she turned her head away quickly, studying the slowly bubbling mixture in the pan. He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her and murmured into her neck, “You sure look good to me.
Feel
good too. What a feel.”

“Don't,” she said. “I'm under the weather.”

“Oh hell!” He took his hand away, but kept on hugging her and moving amorously against her. “Find something like this waiting for me and I can't touch it.” He stood still. “Hey, it hasn't been a month yet.”

“What do you do, Granny, keep count?” she Jeered at him. “It's early. Maybe it was the change of pace, maybe it was what the dentist gave me for the infection, how do I know?”

He let her go, blew hard, and went over to the table. “All right. But it won't be the same a couple of days from now. Nothing like coming in the door and seeing you there and rushing you right upstairs.”

“Cheer up. I mightn't have felt like being rushed.”

“That's right, you'd probably be damn cussid about it,” he said amiably. “And that stairway's too narrow for me to lug up a kicking, swearing, struggling female.” They both laughed. He began opening the packages. “Hey, what about that tooth, anyway? You had it out?”

“No, he wanted to clear up the infection first. I'm taking some kind of antibiotic.”

“So what if that whams you again in the middle of the night?” he asked belligerently.

“It won't. The infection might not be anything to do with the tooth anyway,” she lied. “It could be something in my system that just chose that place to break out in.”

“I never heard of anything like that before.”

“Neither did I, but that's what the man said.”

He whistled, and she looked around. He was holding up the shirt. “Wow! They'll have to have another dance right off, or I'll go hold one all by myself!”

She said impulsively, “You've always liked nice clothes and there's no reason why you shouldn't have a lot of them now.” Suddenly she wanted him to have closets full, to be as trim and dapper as a jockey on holiday when he went to the dances and to Brigport, Now he'd come to the sweater. “How'd you know how much I wanted one of these?”

“I only had to eat and drink that one of Philip's for about a week after you first laid eyes on it.”

He laughed. “Ayuh, something like that gets me. I dunno why. I was always like that. Bad as a girl, my mother used to say. Something new always set me up. Didn't seem as if there was anything couldn't be cured with a new shirt, new pair of shoes.”

Anything? She hoped so. She began to break spaghetti into boiling water and Barry made himself a mugful of instant coffee and sat down at the table. “You see Cap'n Owen over there anywhere?”

“Those pills must have made me dopey. I didn't move around town much except to do my errands on Monday. But he came into the restaurant this morning when I was having breakfast, and sat down with me.”

“I'll bet he was lugging one son of a bitch of a hangover,” said Barry with envious admiration.

“Well, he wasn't, and he ate a big breakfast and had the waitress in a state of giggling idiocy.”

“He would. Well, if he stayed sober all weekend he must have gone to visit his youngster, the one that's in high school somewhere over to the west'ard.”

She contrived to look bored. “I wonder how long Gina and Willy will last this time,” she said. “Not that I give a damn. It's just idle curiosity.”

“Oh, they'll stick together about five minutes. Everybody thinks Steve's some foolish to take 'em back.”

“It's a wonder he dares to go against family opinion. The way they all hang together, you'd think they couldn't function apart. Seems like a lot of roosters crowded onto one dunghill.”

“Why should any of 'em go anywhere else?” he asked seriously. “That's not to say any one of those fellas wouldn't do all right wherever he went. They've got the golden touch, you could say. But this is their own place here. They've always been here, always will.”

“As it was in the beginning,” she said. “So it is and ever shall be. World without end.”

He missed the sarcasm and said with innocent fervor, “That's right. They'll always be here unless something wipes them out.”

“But nothing could possibly exterminate the Bennetts. It wouldn't dare.”

He grinned at her, teasing. “Glad you're getting the right attitude. . . . Spaghetti's about to fizz over.” She leaped to turn down the gas. Barry fingered his sweater, his face absorbed and serene.

He'll be all right here, she thought. Such complete admiration, along with a capacity for hard work, couldn't be dispensed with. He was appreciated out here, and she was honestly glad that someone appreciated Barry so much. He deserved it.

T
he next sewing meeting was at the Sorensens'. Barry walked around the harbor with Van and Kathy, and went in to play cribbage with Rob Dinsmore. Maggie came out, shoving the children ahead of her. “They've got something to say to you,” she told Van, who tried to compose her face into the right expression without feeling like a fool. One child recited rapidly, “Thank you for the sewing kit,” and the other chanted, “Thank you for the modeling clay, I already made Tiger.”

“She'll show you tomorrow,” said Mag. “He's baking on the back of the stove. And Diane's making doll's patchwork. All right, you young ones go in and no works when your father tells you it's bedtime.” They rushed in, Tammie crying, “Mr. Barton, look on the stove and see Tiger!”

“They were some pleased,” Maggie told Van. “You taking the time to choose something for them.”

Van leaned down to pat Tiger, thankful for the diversion. Liza Bennett came down her front steps and called over to them, and they joined her.

Van was preoccupied, but not unhappy. The very fact that she hadn't seen Owen since she'd come home had taken on a positive significance; it meant something was happening, advancing. The break could come in a week. . . . In the golden evening Liza's and Kathy's voices were pleasant. The boys shouted in the field behind them, Joanna's dog came toward them. Joanna and two women were walking along the border of perennials beside the house. She saw and assimilated all, moving in aluminous objectivity as if across a broad canvas peopled with figures that meant nothing to her beyond their beauty at this moment; the dog's eyes, the strong line of Joanna's throat as she turned her head, the light in Kathy's yellow hair.

Possibly a week from now they will all know, she thought; the people here will remember this moment and think, When she was coming through the gate she was loved with this great love, she was going to do this unforgivable but great thing.

“It's a shame to go inside,” Liza said.

Joanna was saying, “Nils's grandmother planted these peonies. They'll be red. And her columbines are all over the place.”

Then some others came out of the house and through the greetings and joking Laurie Bennett's husky, youthful voice said behind Van's shoulder, “Did the lilies of the valley live?”

“Oh yes,” said Van, turning her head just slightly. “And they've got buds on them.”

“I wish you'd come over and see what else you'd like. We've a lot of things to spare. Come over after school tomorrow and have a cup of tea with me, and then we'll look at the plants.”

She had to look at her then, it would seem odd if she didn't, “I can't promise,” she said, “but I'll come if it's possible. It depends on Barry.”

“I know, I know,” said Laurie. “They like you there when they come in. I'm sure I don't know what they think you can be up to if you're
not
there. Certainly not down-street spending all their money, or carrying on passionate love affairs in somebody's fishhouse. But if
they
want to go chasing off somewhere—show that man of mine a school of herring and I think he'd chase it from here to Newfoundland and never give me a thought.”

“Is he talking about going seining again?” somebody said.

“He talks about it every year, but he can't get a crew together except from the boys, and they've got the energy but not the experience.”

“Jamie and Hugo are dying to go,” said Joanna.

“Well, don't worry,” said Laurie. “I don't think the Pied Piper will be piping them away this year. He's not talking so much about it now, for some reason.”

The last gold had gone, and all at once the air was dulled and chilled. The women went inside to begin their sewing.

The conversation rolled on as they worked, the easy talk of women who are used to being strung together like beads on the string of their common circumstances. Vanessa realized that imperceptibly she had come to see past the good-humored arrogance they had represented at first. They could not be otherwise than they were, living on the island like this, and with no dedicated trouble-maker among them. They'd had wars enough in the past on Bennett's, and could have them again, perhaps, when another generation succeeded the veterans.

It was so clear to her, like so many things; now that she was about to leave, her vision was at once quick and penetrating, and she was turning it on the slightest detail, like one discovering the minute elegance of a blossoming weed through the small end of the binoculars.

Liza had just asked Van if she'd had a hard time with her tooth when the dog barked outside, a door slammed, and Owen appeared in the sitting-room doorway. He put one hand up on the jamb and pushed his cap back with the other, narrowing his eyes against the sudden light.

“Evening, ladies,” he said, smiling.

“You brought your fancywork with you?” Nora Fennell called.

“Come on out with me, darlin' mine, and I'll show you some real fancywork.”

“Oops, I asked for that,” said Nora.

“You should know by this time,” said his wife.

“Where in time's your old man?” he asked Joanna. “That hellion of yours is over to Brigport girling, but I'm damn sure that's not where Nils is.”

“I don't know. You tried all your brothers? Maybe he's gone down to the Eastern End.”

“I didn't meet him on the way up,” said Steve's wife.

“Well, I want to stop off the harbor. Lot of herring puddling out there. I've got Barry, but Rob can't go yet, and that kid of yours, Mateel, has gone to Brigport too, and Philip and Mark are glued to that chess-board like they were getting messages from Mars through it.” He turned to go out and Joanna said, “Nils may be out in his place in the woodhouse, reading. Go and look.”

“Thanks.” He went out through the other door of the long sun parlor.

“What did I tell you about herring?” Laurie said. In the lamplight she was rosy and calm. Van turned her new vision on her; resentment had gone, she was only curious about what Laurie thought of her husband, if she ever felt that she had snared some wild wonderful beast in a fine, strangling net and had trained him to sit on a stool. Her easy voice and small smile really said,
He snarls and lashes his tail, but that's all it amounts to. And he's a lot happier than he would be haying to forage around out in the jungle
. She never feels sorry for him, Vanessa thought, because she's so inexorably right . . . she thinks. This is the way it should be. It was all right to be attracted to his wildness in the first place, but a kitchen's no place for a tiger. She's not intelligent enough to be coldblooded about it. Just by
being
she has done it, and she's so sure of it that it's never occurred to her that something still lives within him to which she should never turn her back.

How had she drawn him to her? Van would probably never know. Owen never wanted to discuss her, and when they had left they would leave everything behind and never talk about it again.

“Don't you think so, Van?” someone said to her.

“About what?” she said. They laughed. “She's with us but not of us,” said Mrs. Steve, “or should it be the other way around? We're talking about whether we should have a supper at the clubhouse for the Fourth of July. Of course we don't have to decide tonight.”

“Oh. Well, I'll do what anybody asks me to do.” I won't be here, she thought. “And if I don't go out back pretty soon, I'll be sorry.” She got up and put her work in her chair.