The Seasons Hereafter (33 page)

“It's out past the woodhouse,” said Joanna. “Wait, I'll give you a flashlight.”

“Thanks.” She didn't need to go, she just wanted to get out for a few moments. At the thought of going away with Owen she had been suddenly unable to bear the pressure of other people. She didn't put on her light as she went out along the wooden walk between dark masses of lilacs. At the end there were two steps down into the yard, and she sat on one and lit a cigarette. There was no light in the small woodhouse, and she could see the shape of the barn roof against the stars, and beyond that the sawtooth line of the woods. A smell of earth, green grass, spruce, the barn, came to her. The quiet was so extreme that she thought she could hear her heart beating in it, faster and faster, and it was as if—sitting here on this strange doorstep in the silent dark—she had suddenly come to consciousness, wondering, Who am I, what is my business here?

Then she heard footsteps on the soft earth and thought, In another minute I'll know something, but what? . . . An animal came out of the dark and thrust a cold nose into her face, gave her hand a lick. Then Owen was there. He took her hand and led her across the yard and into the barn. The dog went sniffing and snuffling in corners, invisible, his toenails tapping on the boards. “How'd you know I was still out here?” Owen asked.

“I didn't. I just had to get out for a minute. It was close in there.”

“I've been standing out here waiting for you.”

“Where's Nils? And what about the herring?”

“I dunno where he is, and to hell with the herring. I only came up here because you were here. My God, it's a long time since last weekend. And I don't dare touch you now. Out here in the dark, all alone. . . . It's that bad.”

“I know,” she said. “At night I miss you so. Now that I know what it's like. Did last weekend really happen?” she laughed shakily.

He fumbled gently for her face, pushing back her hair and laying his hand along her cheek and jaw. All the time the invisible dog was noisily busy with his mousing. “Listen,” Owen said, “I told you we wouldn't see each other but we've got to.”

“What's wrong?” She pressed her face into his hand, shutting her eyes.

“What's
wrong
, for—” The violence shot out like a fountain of blood from an artery, and then was shut off. He said with exaggerated calm, “I've got to see you every day. Maybe only to speak to, just to get a look and know you're still there.” He stroked her face. “I'm off the deep end, all right. Everything's just out of whack, off balance, askew—however you want to call it—till I see you.” He laughed, a sound without pleasure, expressing a defeated incredulity.
“Me
. Oh Jesus.”

“Don't.” Shaken, she put her hand over his mouth and felt his lips move against her palm. “When are you going to tell her?”

“As soon as I get things straightened out. I've been going through papers, making plans for the kids, and so forth. I want everything clear, so we can just up and go, no chance to chew things over. . . . Look, can you come to the place over by Long Cove tomorrow? I'm going out in the morning, but I won't haul through.”

“I'll wait there all afternoon,” she promised. The dog sneezed loudly, twice. They jumped, and then laughed. From the house somebody called across the dark yard. “Van, are you all right? You haven't fallen down, have you?”

“Go on,” Owen whispered. “I'll wait here.”

She went to the pale opening and called, “I'm all right.” She switched on her light to show her the way underfoot, and walked toward the house. The dog caught up with her and bounded ahead. On the wooden walk Joanna was a silhouette against the lighted door behind her. “It was so quiet out and smelled so nice,” Van said. “I stopped to smoke a cigarette, and listen to your friend here mousing in the barn.”

“I don't know what he'd do if he caught one,” said Joanna. “Nils isn't in the woodhouse, I see. I wonder what Owen's doing about his herring.”

They went back into the house.

K
athy came over in the morning to ask her to go greening with her and Maggie. “Nope,” said Van. “I don't like dandelion greens and neither does Barry.”

“You don't know what you're missing.”

“I don't mind missing it, but I'll pick strawberries with you,” Van promised, thinking, I'll pick them on my own island.

At noon she took a book and walked along Long Cove toward the place. It was an almost windless hour; heat bounced up from the beach rocks and the field shimmered in green light. The sea had taken on the vibrant, almost artificial turquoise that means an easterly. As she walked along the high barrier of the beach, she imagined herself walking on Jessup's Island, absolutely alone on it except for the birds, eiders and sea-pigeons paddling in the shallows, and the medricks screaming and diving. There would be look-out places to which she would come and stand and look for Owen. When she saw
White Lady
at last coming up through the Thoroughfare she would hurry back to the house to start his meal, then be down at the landing to meet him. Later she would paint buoys for him while he built new pots and headed them with the trapheads she had made. There would be no one else and they would need no one else. Sometimes they'd go ashore; maybe instead of having a car to drive to the nearest town they'd go by boat, up or down the coast a bit. They might sometimes go to a dance. She hadn't ever cared about dances, but she would like to go with Owen. It would be different to go with a lover. Now she wanted to do all sorts of things she had never allowed herself to desire. It was like having a second chance to grow up, to have youth again with the richness of maturity. All lovers should be past thirty, she thought. They're the only ones who know what it's all about. I must tell Owen that.

At the place she lay in the shade and read at random in the paperback poetry anthology she had bought in Limerock. Some of the poets were new to her. She struggled with the involutions of Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Donne, muttering lines aloud until suddenly their meaning became as lucid as the day. When at last she was tired of it, a long time had gone by. The sun had moved across the sky, and boats were coming up Long Cove; she got up and looked out through the trees and saw Nils Sorensen's boat by Tenpound, Foss Campion's a little way behind him, both boats attended by a lifting, falling cloud of gulls. She thought guiltily that Owen could be in and she hadn't even heard
White Lady
. He could come upon her at any time. She lay back and looked at the sky through the spruce branches and saw a fish hawk sailing in great circles far above the gulls.

When she woke up, dazed and cold, it was late. She sat with her head in her hands, like a drunk on a curbstone, and tried to clear it; she was heavy with despair as if something—light, joy—had been stolen from her while she slept. Owen wouldn't come now. By the sun it was suppertime for most people.

Suddenly she heard yelping laughter and the thud of running feet. She pulled herself tight together, stopped breathing as if that would make her invisible. In another moment the boys burst through the trees, Richard and one of his dark-eyed cousins. A small startled grunt came from Richard and then both boys froze into statues.

She said hoarsely, “Hello.” At once they grinned and came farther into the clearing.

“Is this your place?” Richard asked her.

“You might, call it that. I've never found anyone else here.” “We've got a place further up in the woods,” he said.

“Got a brush camp there,” the other boy offered in the husky voice of some young boys. His nose and the tops of his round dusky-red cheeks were sprinkled with freckles; his eyes looked black and were thickly lashed. He looked more Owen's son than Richard did. He said proudly, “It's the best one we ever made. The rain won't go through it. We slept in it one night.”

“They wouldn't let us cook our breakfast up there,” said Richard discontentedly. He took out a knife and began chipping away at a tree.

“That's not spruce gum, it's pitch,” said his cousin. “And besides, if it was gum, it's hers.”

Richard gave her an embarrassed grin and put his knife away. “I should think you'd be baiting up for your father right now,” she said to him.

“He didn't come home today. He went to Limerock. Come on, Pete.”

She couldn't let them go, she flung words after them like a lasso to draw them back. “But this isn't boat day.”

“He went in his own boat,” said Richard. “All of a sudden. He called Uncle Steve on the radio and said he was starting in right then and he'd be out tomorrow, and to tell my mother.” He shrugged. “Maybe he had a toothache like the time you went.”

“Let's hope it didn't hurt as much,” she said. They agreed, said so long, and went back the way they had come. She sat there until the branches had stopped moving behind them, and their voices mingled with those of the excited medricks. She was certain that Owen had gone in to call Mrs. Jessup about the island. He could have decided all at once that now was the time. It meant they would be off here by the end of the week. It meant that a week from now they would be sleeping on the island. Her stomach seemed to turn over. Coming out from between the trees into the full white fire of blazing afternoon sea and sky, having to walk with lowered head and feeling the fantastic light dancing across her forehead and crown, she thought of the children, but dismissed them resentfully. They've got their mother and their home and a flock of relatives to be sorry for them. They can spare me their father. I've got nothing but him.

Nothing was everything. The frugal world in which she'd existed had been filled up for her with a wild and prodigal sweetness, everything had become real.

“Wonder why Cap'n Owen took off for the main,” Barry said at supper time. He snickered. “Might be he suddenly got to feeling kinky so he went looking for some tail.”

“The way you talk sometimes,” Vanessa said on a manufactured yawn, “anybody'd think you had but one thought only.”

“What man doesn't, if he's a man? And you know what I told you about Owen. When a feller who's lived the life he has gets to pushing fifty, he gets desperate.”

“The voice of experience,” she said.

“I've seen plenty of 'em, sister.” He gave her a wink and a nod. “These guys that go to get a fifth or a package of cigarettes and never come home again. Or they start going out every night, if they're where they can, gone foolish about some little slut like Gina. Not that Cap'n Owen's
that
gormless. There's some pretty good-looking skin lying around loose over at Brigport,” he said authoritatively. “Older but better. Like they say about wine.”

She got up and began to dear the table. A week from now, she thought. We could have the table by the windows that look out to sea.

S
he didn't know he was back the next day until she went around the harbor at boat time, and Joanna asked Philippa about him. “Oh, he's back this morning,” Mrs. Steve said. “I saw the boat in the cove when I came up by, but no sign of him.”

Mark, unlocking mail sacks behind the window, said, “I suppose you women'll chew that over till you find out what he went for. God, a man don't stand a chance around here.” The mailboat captain laughed appreciatively.

“Sure, we're nosy,” said Joanna. “What's the point in not being so? Think what you miss. Look at Van's expression. I'll bet she's thinking, Thank God I'm a loner.”

They all laughed. Nora Fennell said, “Well, I'd kind of like having a bunch of brothers and sisters.”

“Me too,” said Maggie. “My kids miss having a raft of aunts and uncles.”

“Well, personally, I like being in a large family,” said Liza. “Of course there might come a time when you'd like to keep something to yourself, and I think I could manage that.”

“Philip being as close-mouthed as Nils,” Joanna agreed. “Oh, well, it'll probably turn out that Owen suddenly wanted something he forgot to pick up last week. He always used to be that way.”

“Or he had a toothache,” suggested Van, solemn-faced; she was possessed with an almost irrepressible excitement, and there was an exquisite pleasure in adding to it. They agreed it could be a tooth, and Marksaid, “Well, if the cabinet's got that over with, maybe they can get onto something a dite less pressing, like Vietnam.”

“All right for you, Mark,” said Philippa. “Sometimes when you want us all to rally round and hold your hand we'll be coldly indifferent.”

Vanessa went quickly back around the shore and took the road to Schoolhouse Cove. From the brow she could look across the broad blue basin where a long line of eider ducks splashed, washed, talked, and visited.

White Lady
was tied up inside the wharf at Windward Point. Van was about to go down over the rocks and along the beach when a burst of sound from the schoolhouse startled her. The children were rushing out into the warm bright day, older ones already equipped with gloves, ball, and bat, younger ones running toward the tumbled sea wall, scattering through the beach peas and down over the rolling stones. Laurie came out last and stood on the door step, shading her eyes. It was too late to escape from the skyline; in a moment she saw Van, and waved. Van waved back and then walked slowly toward the Bennett meadow, as if that was the way she had intended to go all the time.

She was disappointed, but not acutely. It meant waiting only a little longer. She walked on, taking the path that crossed the lower meadow toward the woods. Up beside the house Mrs. Charles was taking down sheets that billowed and shone like sails.

She came at last to the cove where she had first met Owen. Today it was full of glitter and motion. He'd never have been able to land a dory in the surf. The sound of it among the rocks filled the air, and the fine light was faintly dimmed by the salt mist flung off from it; the cool acrid scent alternated in her nostrils with the warm resinous aura of the spruces. A thrush picked tranquilly in fresh, gleaming rows of rock-weed. A bright red plastic container swashed in the surf and beyond it a black-and-white buoy. Automatically she went for the buoy; the thrush flew, its alarm like a note plucked from a guitar string, and some little birds running at the edge of the water ran further, half-lifting their wings as they sped. She looked at the name and number on the buoy.
J. Allston
. There were Allstons at Seal Point. She held the buoy in both hand and looked out across the flashing water toward the mist-hidden mainland, conjuring up the Allstons, stocky red-headed men running to fat, and wondering if J. Allston was Joe, who once cornered her in the woods behind the school and tried to show her his private parts. She'd been terrified behind her disdainful manner, and now she realized he'd been quite as terrified; he probably had worried for weeks before he realized she hadn't told Mrs. Bearse. Anyway, he'd been very careful not to even glance in her direction ever again.