The Seasons Hereafter (38 page)

There was no point in saying that Gina probably felt more destructive, if anything. Kathy went home soon, and Van walked round and round through the rooms. Her body felt too strong and full of life for her to go back to bed. It was as if Owen had brought her to the full peak of existence, and then had deserted her with all this strength and spirit moiling in her. She had a sense of precariousness, of being so delicately poised that a breath could topple her, but from where and into
what
?

She walked around the harbor to get some food. It was a warm quiet day, cloudy yet luminous. There was no rote, and the birds seemed very loud. Dandelions spattered the well field, and blazed a strong yellow around the black ruins of the burned house with its naked chimney. The charred smell was strong, half-sweet in the still air.

At the store all the talk was of the fire. “If she really did it, she needs her bottom warmed,” said Helen Campion indignantly.

“Needs her neck wrung,” growled Mark.

“Lord, I was some scared last night,” Nora Fennell said. “That was before I found out what she was saying. Then I was mad as well as scared, but Matt said she was most likely thinking of some cigarette she didn't put out, and was scared witless, only he didn't say witless.”

“Could have been that,” Helen Campion agreed. “But being careless with your smoking is as bad as setting fires deliberate. How is she this morning?”

“Still in bed and very quiet,” said Joanna. “I'd say she has a hangover from all that liquor we poured into her last night. Don't you think the state ought to provide us with tranquilizers as well as Indian pumps?”

“The only way to tranquilize that one is with a gun,” said Mark, “and Willy'll come to it one day, believe me. Those little fellas take it and take it, and then they explode.”

“I hope not,” said Nora. “She's not worth prison.”

“Poor Willy,” Joanna murmured. “He was in a state last night. He kept telling me she didn't know what she was saying.”

Van took her mail and groceries and went out, but Joanna taught up with her. “Come on up for a cup of coffee.”

“I can't,” said Van. “I've got so far behind on my work the house looks like what Barry's aunt used to call a ‘lapidated whorehouse.'”

Joanna laughed. “You mean you have girls lying around over there wearing long black stockings and nothing else?”

“I don't know what I'm likely to find when I start digging. They could have materialized off the covers of Barry's magazines.”

“Well, be sure to let us all know. We need some sort of happy change around here.” She looked up at the charred ruins. Her face was older this morning than Van had ever seen it, drained of its usual color and vitality. Owen's had been like that down in Ship Cove.

An uneasy silence hung between them until Joanna exclaimed with pleasure and relief, “Oh, here come the kids!”

They were coming along past the harbor beach, Laurie with them, all carrying extra sweaters and jackets. “The Brigport school's invited them over,” said Joanna. “They'll go on the mailboat, and then a couple of men will bring them back late this afternoon. Lord, it's nice to think of children at a time like this. Though Gina was one not too long ago,” she added cynically. “I keep trying to imagine her a baby, but I can't help thinking she must have been born looking exactly the same, makeup and all, only very small.”

The children's noise filled the air like the swallows' chatter. “Don't you wish you were going too?” Laurie asked the women.

“I wish,” said Joanna fervently, “that I were going with you and that I were ten years old.”

This was acclaimed by the children, as great wit. With a little commiserating smile Laurie steered her group toward the wharf. Van was freed from the apathy of the moment.

“Well, I'd better get back to my messy kitchen,” she said.

“And the girls,” Joanna added, but the effort was obvious.

When Van came to the harbor beach she saw a small figure drooping on the stern of one of the big seine dories at the edge of the marsh. At first she thought it was a child who couldn't go with the others, and then she recognized Gina.

“Hello,” she said. “I thought you were in bed.”

“I got away while she was out.”

“Who?” asked Vanessa perversely.

“Lady Bitchybones. So
kind
. Like she was hiding the straitjacket behind her back.” Gina spat into the marsh grass. There was something peculiar about her today, and suddenly Vanessa knew why; she hadn't any make-up. She must have lost her enormous handbag in the fire, along with those great fuzzy sweaters. That must have been a worse blow than losing Willy would have been, Van thought. She sat on the gunnel of the dory and held out her cigarettes to Gina, who took one greedily.

“Why'd you do it?” Van asked her.

“So they'd fire Willy,” said Gina candidly. “You know Steve? He's kept Willy on in spite of me. Believe me, I've done plenty to bollix things up. First I wouldn't live at the Eastern End, so they gave Willy a house up here. Then I'd keep Willy up half the night drinking, and trying to pick fights with him, so he'd be so groggy the next morning he couldn't get started to work. But that didn't work because Steve Bennett is next to Jesus, and when he crooks a finger my Willy runs, even if he falls flat on his face. Then he'll, crawl on his hands and knees. . . . Then I run off, and I knew Willy'd run after me. And we end up here. But now I've burned up the house and everything in it, and it could have burned off the whole island.”

Her small face was transfigured; without the eye make-up her eyes showed a clear brilliant green-blue, as innocent in their joy as Cindy's or Tammie's. “This they can't forgive!”

Van sat looking at her. In herself she felt an enervating dissatisfaction and shame. “If they took you seriously on this you could go to jail,” she said. “But at least you've got the guts to grapple with something you hate, and do violence to change it.”

“Ayuh,” said Gina complacently. “I was born fighting.”

“What if you have to go away, but Willy can stay?”

“He won't stay. He's crazier about me than ever. He thinks I need him.” She hooted. Van stood up, not knowing if the queasiness she felt was directed at Gina or herself. “I've got work to do,” she said.

“They've sucked you in, haven't they?”

Van stopped. “What do you mean by that?”

“I remember you when you first came here!” She was raucous as a crow. “Now look at you. Bird-watching and patchwork. You even dress like them. You could be one of the Bennett women.”

Van left her, walking fast, and Gina kept laughing at her all the way across the beach until suddenly the sound stopped. But Van didn't look back to see why.

She washed dishes and cleaned house. Barry came in early and she had a cup of tea with him, not because she wanted it but because her stomach felt hollow. Barry ate a large wedge of Kathy's bread with the inelegant enthusiasm of a growing boy, gulping food down so he could talk between mouthfuls. Van listened to him because she had no world of her own to be lost in. It used to be easy once, over on Water Street, to wander away. But no more.

He was talking about shifting traps, of the habits of lobsters; discussing his work, he was at his most attractive. She nodded from time to time and sipped her tea. Then he went on to talk around the shore. He loved that as much as lobstering. It was a rich part of his life; the visits from fishhouse to fishhouse, the knot of advice-givers huddled over an ailing engine, the arguments in the store, or the quiet unexpected conversation with one man during which something might be said which he would repeat to Vanessa with wonder and awe, giving it some great, almost prophetic significance.

Elbows on the table, she laced her fingers across her forehead and under their shade she stared at the tablecloth. On Jessup's Island the old square table stood by the windows looking seaward. She battled with her anguish, sitting silent, her face shaded by her hands.

“Another chance,” Barry was saying. “Can you beat it? Steve Bennett's either a simpleton or a saint. Willy must have talked a blue streak to convince him that little turd-heels would behave herself. . . . Huh?”

“I didn't say anything,” she murmured.

“They're all some disgusted, by Judas, I can tell ye. Phil set his jaw some hard when Mark told him. Cap'n Charles looks black as hell. Nobody's heard from Owen yet, but I'll bet he'll go through the sound barrier with a roar that'll break all the windows on Brigport.” He laughed merrily. “Rob and Matt ain't going to take it very kindly, I can tell ye, and the rest who was in the path of it last night. . . . Course, they've got to go back to the other house at the Eastern End, there's no house up here for 'em.” He went to the dresser and sliced another portion off the loaf. “Dunno how Mrs. Steve'll fancy Gina switching her backside around the dooryard down there, but according to Willy she's real sorry, and she got so scared she's likely to be afraid even to scratch a match again.”

She thought of Gina perched on the dory, jeering and exultant. They might as well kill her and be done with it, she thought. They've done the unforgivable. They've forgiven.

“You have to hand it to these Bennetts,” Barry said. “They're not only decent, they're
fine
people. The salt of the earth. The rest of 'em don't like Steve being so easy, but it's his decision, so they'll be some nice to Gina. The women'll go call, and give her stuff for the house, and keep on asking her to the sewing circle.” He gave her a bright earnest look. “I want you to go and call, Annie. It's the way we do things out here.”

“Is it?” she said to the table. “I'll tell you; I'll go when they need somebody to help lay one of them out.”

“What in hell does
that
mean?”

“It means that's what all this being forgiven and given another chance by the salt of the earth will lead to. He'll kill her or she'll kill him, and that little fire last night will seem pretty small potatoes alongside it.”

He shook his head sadly at her. “You got an awful bitter tongue, Annie. Don't you know that's an awful bad unhealthy way to be?”

“Don't call me Annie. I'm not Annie.”

“Have it your own way, dear.” He smiled at her. “But try to hold back those words. Don't even think them. Trouble with you is, you never met up with these kind of people before. They're
big
. Nothing mean and petty about 'em, they think big and they act big. Take Cap'n Owen, now. He'll swear like a pirate about this, and call 'em everything he can put tongue to, but he'll be good to 'em. Wait and see.”

She heard her voice coming out of the center of the hurricane's eye; she saw the eye, large and yellowish-gray, filling one wall, and her voice came from the pupil as if from a speaker. “Maybe he'll take an interest in Gina, give her a new interest in life, so she'll be contented out here.”

“Now look, now look!” He was half-laughing, half-angry. “I called him a wild one, but he's a family man now, and he's not chasing after anything, not that cheap little piece for sure, and not after anything else.”

“Maybe he isn't
now
, at this minute,” she said, “but you and your holy family! Blessed are the Bennetts and those that suck up to them. You make me laugh, you're such a bloody fool about them.” She got up. She could still see the eye. It occurred to her that it was her own eye. “You wouldn't believe that one of them came whoring into this kitchen after me, would you?”

He didn't move. He sat with bread in one hand and mug in the other, his stare a shiny metallic blue. “I warned you about that tongue of yours,” he said after a moment. “That's a goddam filthy way to talk, lying like that. What if somebody heard you?”

“I want somebody to hear me,” she said. “You.” She held onto the back of her chair and went on talking at him. “I'm not lying. A Bennett came whoring after me and I went whoring after him. Simple. One and one makes two.”

He stood up. His tan had turned putty-colored, and his lips so pale he didn't seem to have any. He leaned across the table toward her. “You're lying, goddam it to hell. You're back in your old crazy ways, only this is worse, because you didn't bother to lie then. You're trying to turn me against 'em because you know I'm happy here.” His eyes flooded. “Damn you, admit you're lying!”

“I am not lying,” she said carefully. “The man was Owen, but don't worry, we never did anything in this house. It was always outside somewhere. Thank God his wife's the schoolteacher.”

He fell back into the chair rather than sat. His hands were trembling. “You're lying, aren't ye? You're fed up here. This going to bed and staying, I should've known. That's it, isn't it?”

“No, that isn't it. I'm not lying, I told you. He walked in while you were out of the house, and he didn't have to say what he came for. He made it clear enough.”

“And you went with him?” His mouth shook.

“Not then. Remember the dance? Remember he left early?”

He was nodding in a kind of palsy. She said, “I've never been able to find the place in the woods where we went. . . . Remember the tooth-ache I had?”

He leaped up, the chair fell backward, and he lunged across the table, knocking over the mugs. “Shut up, shut up! I don't want to hear any more! I don't believe it anyway!” He was half-sobbing. “Jesus, why do you—you've
been
with him? More than once?”

“More than once.”

“And I have to beg for it. All this time it's like you're doing me a favor, but
he
walks in and—the bastard—” He went off into a long frantic stream of profanity in a cracked and breathless voice. She stood against the refrigerator, watching and listening in awe at what she had done. He pounded his fists on the table and went on swearing. Suddenly he dropped back into his chair and said lucidly, but in a voice thickened as if with long weeping, “When I married you they said you'd destroy me. And they been waiting for it. Well, by God, I'll do a little destroying of my own so I won't go down alone.”