The Seasons Hereafter (4 page)

“All right,” she murmured. The boots moved away from the table toward the sink, and she knew by the sounds that he was stripping to the waist to wash and shave. This calm and positive Barry wasn't the man she'd expected home, but by now she was too numb to be affronted. Let him go, she thought, let him go, and for an instant she was dazzled by the old vision of all the hours in the day completely hers. Then she remembered that the house was dying, and she had nowhere to go. She stared at Barry's back as he leaned over the sink, splashing cold water onto his skin. She wouldn't even have the rents now. She swallowed and swallowed, trying to raise enough saliva to wet her throat, so that her voice would not creak rustily.

“I've been thinking all night, Barry. I think I'd like to go out there.” Any faint quaver could have been caused by the cramps.

He stopped splashing and was motionless, still bent over the sink. “Change comes to all of us,” she said. “Sometimes it's good for us, and necessary.” Her long mouth twisted. “I've got lazy, that's all.”

He straightened up, reaching for the towel, and dried his head. His face was flushed and happy. “You won't be sorry, Van, I promise you! Kee-rist! I haven't been this happy since I was ten years old and got my first skiff!”

And you look about ten, she thought in contempt. She shut her eyes and he said penitently, “Hey, I forgot about your guts-ache. I'll fix you a good hot cup of tea. Want something in it? Mooney's always got a bottle—”

“He's gone out. No tea, Barry, thanks. I guess I'll go lie down a while and plan out what I have to do.”

S
he was relieved because the house was the last one around on the far side of the harbor, with a high point of yellow rock and spruces rising up beyond the northwest windows. It could have been one of the cluster near the store, where you couldn't even cross the yard to the toilet without being observed. The nearest neighbors over here were some fifty yards away, but she was still angrily conscious of them, as burnt flesh is conscious of heat; the girl was for-ever running out onto her husband's wharf for something, or into her windy dooryard to hang up clothes, or sitting on the front steps reading while her children played. She had a short yellow haircut like a dandelion head, and her children were miniatures of herself.

In the house there was too much light, waves of light lapping across walls and ceilings so that even if you lay down and refused to look out, the harbor was with you just the same, glimpsed past the corner of your book, seen from the side of your eye, washing over your head. The windows were full of sky and clouds, gulls, and sometimes a black spatter of crows. The wind blew, and the sound of water was as unrelenting as the light; surf splashed on the rocks at the foot of the lawn and swashed around the spilings of the wharf. From the back windows upstairs she could look across swale and cranberry swamp to a long barrier beach where the seas rolled in and broke with a constant booming. The long dull thunder oppressed her. Back at Seal Point there had always been more calm days than wild ones, and then she'd loved rough weather, ranging the shores just out of reach of the surf like a sandpiper, greedily salvaging lumber, pot buoys, spare oars, fancy liquor bottles.

But this was different; here she was a prisoner. She could hardly bring herself to speak to Barry, who was too happy and too tired to notice. She loathed to the point of nausea the sound of his voice running on and on about new wonders. It seemed to her that one reason for his exhilaration was the belief that she couldn't live without him after all. If she could have trusted herself to speak composedly about it, she would have told him that she'd come only because the house was to be torn down; but that too would have been a triumph for him, because he knew how she felt about the house.

Now she hated Mr. Burrage, and saw his regret as false, put on to hide the fact that he was probably one of the investors in the new project. He was one of the destroyers. They were all trying to destroy her. . . . The cardboard cartons with their few belongings still stood in the kitchen. She had opened only the one holding her books. She had spoken to no one but Barry except at the time of her arrival, if you could call “speaking” the stiff nods and the barely audible murmurs to the people on the wharf and in the store. She had seen in their broad smiles and outstretched hands a mockery of her as a captive, and she had armored herself in proud silence.

“Where is the house?” she asked Barry. He pointed it out to her, directly across the harbor. She picked up the box of books by its string, but Barry caught up with her as she left the wharf. “Hey! Mrs. Phil wants us to come up there to dinner, she's got it all ready.”

“You can go.” The wind sliced through her raincoat, sweaters, and slacks; it whipped her pony tail around past one cheek. “You can tell them I was seasick.”

“You were never seasick in your life.”

“There's always a first time.” She started on. “Unless you want me to throw up in my plate and I promise you, Barry, I
will
.”

“Oh, goddam,” he growled, and then grabbed the box of books from her and put it under his arm. He walked behind her around the shore, past the fish houses and wharves on one side and the village on the other. The road then passed along the brow of a pebbly beach where skiffs were drawn up, and where a man was coppering the bottom of a keeled-over boat. Across the road a marshy field began, bounded on the far side by a sea wall crawling along against the peculiar luminosity of the eastern sky. Gulls were rising and falling in slow high circles over the unseen water beyond the wall. The rough wind, pushing and slapping from every direction, was at once mild and chill and carried the wild acrid tang of open ocean and the birthplace of the long deep seas.

The man working on his boat waved his paint brush, and Barry shouted, “Hi there, Cap'n Foss . . . Foss Campion,” he explained importantly to Vanessa. “Hell of a nice guy. Awful moderate, though. He lives on our side too. Next is Terence Campion, he's his nephew.” Not needing any response from her he led the way along a plank walk laid over the rolling beach stones past two low-roofed houses whose front yards were mostly granite ledge; yet they looked as settled and at ease as cats. Each was faced across the walk by a wharf and fish house. Vanessa saw no one—the women were at the store and the men all busy—but her skin prickled and the back of her neck seemed to feel the stare of curious eyes. And there was nowhere to hide.

When she saw children's toys outside the second house, her stomach twisted. She did not like to be close to children. But she needn't look at them. There was the point beyond the house, and twenty-five miles of ocean to be seen from the sunporch windows.

She stood in the kitchen, her ears ringing in the sudden relief from the noise outside. “All papered and painted new,” Barry gloated. “Ain't this some bright after that smelly dark hole?”

She wanted to cover her eyes against the blaze of yellow and white. “You can go back after the other stuff. I'll look around.”

“The stove and refrigerator run on bottled gas,” he said. “Later on we can have a generator if we want, and buy a television set. Hey, how about
that
, honey? The cistern's full for dishes and washing, and I lugged in fresh drinking water this morning. Got a big grocery order too. Look, I'll tell Mrs. Phil you're not feeling good, and you make us some coffee and sandwiches while I'm gone, huh?” His eyes took on a wet glisten; he said, more gently, “You're right, we should eat our first meal in this house alone together. My God, Van, but I'm happy.” He almost choked. Then he was gone, boots thumping with happy arrogance, like the first rubber boots of a small boy. She sagged against the dresser and felt tears crawl burning into her eyes.

The next day she thought with grim humor, They never missed the fact that we moved out here with about two wheelbarrow loads of possessions done up in Campbell's Soup cartons. Now they know we're truly derelicts. . . . She kicked the nearest carton and went away from it. The way she felt now, the stuff could sit there forever.

They had had meals of a sort yesterday—sandwiches and coffee at noon, and a mess of lobsters for supper. She'd been hungry in spite of herself. Barry did all the talking, used to her silences, and they had both slept as if stupefied. Then Barry was up and gone by daylight in the morning. Windy weather didn't hold up these men, because it was almost always windy out here and their boats were built for it.

Barry was learning the grounds, the currents, the shoals and ledges, before he was given a boat of his own. The chart that he'd been studying the night before was still on the kitchen table. She was drawn to it, but repulsed the temptation and went on prowling around the house, refusing to imagine Barry at work in his new world. She'd met Philip Bennett yesterday, but he was indistinguishable from the several other men who'd been on the wharf. She knew only that they were all bigger than Barry and burnished with the maddening superiority of men on their own ground. She had loathed Barry's eagerness among them and the way he'd used their first names.

Upstairs she stood at a back window, arms folded on the middle sash, and stared hopelessly out at the long rollers crashing in on the barrier beach, whose dike of polished stones had been thrown up higher than the field behind it. The field was tawny with dead grass, and toward the east it ended at a set of white buildings at the foot of a wooded hill. Beyond the side of the hill she saw the eastern horizon, and suddenly the sea turned to a brilliant blue as the sky cleared. The winter-black spruces shone green, the houses were bathed in sunlight, and the dead field burned with an amber light. The dazzle pierced her through, but not with joy. She thought, I
could
get a job, I
could
hold it, and swung excitedly away from the window, only to remember that even now they might be starting to tear down the house.

As she stood there in anguish, someone knocked at the back door. She felt the blows on her flesh as she listened, her fingers laced so hard that they hurt. “Anybody home?” a woman's voice cried outside. The door was opened and the call repeated. Another voice said, “If she isn't in, we can leave these things on the table.”

They would come in and see the shameful collection of unpacked cartons. They might make remarks which she would overhear, and then how could she ever live another day on the same island with them?

“Just a minute!” she called in a strong bright tone. She ran her fingers through the thick bang to fluff it up, tucked her shirt more neatly into her jeans. Then she ran downstairs and into the kitchen, her heart beating so fast that she felt out of breath.

“Hello!” A tall black-eyed woman stood smiling at her. Warm authoritative voice, strong handclasp. Vanessa thought, I'm suffocating. “We met yesterday but you were so wretched you hardly saw us,” the voice went on. “I'm Joanna Sorensen, Philip's sister, and this is Philip's wife, Liza.”

Van tried to smile in response; she was sure the effect was frightful, that she looked like a skull. “Won't you sit down?” she asked. “Come into the sunporch.”

Mrs. Philip Bennett was shorter than either her sister-in-law or Van, her straight fair hair done in a low knot on her neck, her face almost classic in its oval serenity until she smiled, when something at once mischievous and passionate sparked in her brown eyes. “This paper is exactly right for this room, Jo,” she said. “I refuse to be modest about it. Don't you think we did a good job?” She appealed to Van. “It's the first time I ever did any papering. Of course you've probably done it. I think every woman in Maine has, but I'm a New Yorker.”

“Yes, she came down to rusticate and ended up married to a lobster-man. It was good luck for all of
us
, but poor Liza. She didn't know what she'd let herself in for.”

“I worked on a fashion magazine, so I was in pretty good fettle,” said Liza.

Van smiled politely. She was sweating. “You've got such a gorgeous view over here,” Mrs. Sorensen said. “Of course if you didn't like the ocean it would be hellish, but Barry said you were used to the water. You both grew up in Seal Point, didn't you?”

Van nodded with difficulty, her neck felt so stiff. She wondered if Barry had told them she was a state ward. Mrs. Bennett said, “Philip likes Barry so much. He's not only enthusiastic, but he knows the business, and men like that are hard to find.”

You're wondering why he was practically a waterfront bum if he knew so much about lobstering, Van thought. But it won't cost you anything to be nice to a couple of tramps while you wait to see if he's a drunk and she's a slut . . . “I hope you like it out here, Vanessa,” Mrs. Sorensen was saying. “Barry says you like being out of doors and you like to read, so you ought to do all right. You can always find somebody to go for a walk with you, and we're forever passing books around.”

“And if you like to walk alone,” said Mrs. Bennett, “you don't have to worry about bears and moose and stranglers, things like that.” They both laughed and she heard her own laughter like an echo, and despised herself for joining in, for letting them think she was flattered and easily won over by their attention.

If they didn't get out soon she was going to fly apart. Their gay complacency was an evil-smelling and deafening fog in the room, so that Joanna Sorensen's words seemed actually obscured by it.

“The sewing circle's over at Hillside this week . . . my brother Owen's place . . . you can see it from your back windows . . . a good chance for you to meet everyone at one whack.”

Van pushed her back against the back of her chair and willed her hands not to grip the arms. “I don't go around much,” she said. “I don't know if Barry told you that I'm kind of—I mean it's hard for me to meet a lot of people at once. I'd r-rather take my time.” The slight stammer was genuine, and humiliating. She blushed, and Joanna Sorensen exclaimed at once, “You take your time, then. That's what we have plenty of, out here.” She got up. “You've probably got lots of things to do that we hauled you away from. I must say you look a lot better than you did when you got off the mail boat yesterday. A trip across the bay aboard the
Ella Vye
in an easterly is enough to kill off for good any love you might have for the ocean.”