The Seasons Hereafter (9 page)

She broke up her sandwich for the crows and walked home. When she came into the house, it was well after six, and Barry had been in and gone out again. His dinner box was on the table and his rubber boots stood against the wall. He had cooked some lobsters and eaten a couple; the shells were in the sink. She put two still-warm lobsters on a tray and carried them into the sunporch to eat by the windows, breaking them open with quick professional twists of her hands and getting the meat out in big pink-and-white chunks.

The wind died out as the sun dropped toward the horizon, and the western sky turned a clear lemon-green color that cast a strange light over the grass and trees, and filled the house; it was silence with its own color, or color that carried its own silence—an element in which she could immerse herself, like water. She seemed to be floating in it when the experience was violently ended by three loud knocks at the back door.

At first she refused to go, then she was too angry not to. She ran out to the entry, but the door opened before she reached it and a man stood there, a solid dark shape against the unique light beyond. “Barry home?” he said.

“No, he isn't! And—”
And what?
She stepped back, and as the man came into the kitchen she could see him. “I don't know where he is,” she said, out of breath as if she'd been running.

“I'm getting my crew together to stop off the harbor,” he said. “It's full of herring. I'm a man short, and Barry could fill-in if he's of a mind to.”

She heard his words without answering, he didn't repeat them, and the silence between them took on the curious quality of the light that surrounded them. Unsmiling and unspeaking they looked at each other, and her suspense composed of terror and delight was familiar; she knew at once that the tiger was here.

“I'm Owen Bennett,” he said finally.

“Yes.”

He put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the cupboards. His black eyes didn't move away from her, and she felt that her blouse must be moving with the beat of her heart. She said tonelessly, “I don't know where Barry is.”

“And he doesn't ever know where you are, does he?”

“What does that mean?” She tried for insolence. “Is that what they say about me already?”

“I don't know what
they
say.” He straightened up and moved toward the door, still watching her. “I only know what I can see for myself. I'll find Barry.” He was gone, the door shut hard behind him; she heard his boots hit the two steps and then nothing. It was the worst nothing she had ever known. She pulled the door open, and heard herself calling after him, regardless of the Campion house, “What do you mean, what did you see?” But he wasn't there. She ran back through the house to the front door and saw him already halfway back along the boardwalk and already indistinct, so swiftly had the light begun to go.

“Fine evening, ain't it?” Terence Campion called to her, crossing from his wharf to his front dooryard.

“Yes, lovely,” she murmured, and went back inside.

She hurried to get to bed and to sleep before Barry came in. But it was not possible to sleep. She heard soft sounds from the harbor—an outboard motor running, men's voices, thumps, the rhythm of oars.
He
was out there. What did you mean? she asked him, saying that Barry didn't ever know where I was?

You know what I mean, he answered. Even when he's looking at you across the table or lying in bed beside you, he doesn't know where you are or what you are. Nobody does but me, and I knew it in the first glimpse.

But
how
? she persisted, seeing herself rangy in the jeans and Barry's shirt, with the thick ginger-colored bangs and the hair tightly skinned back; the angular face, the high cheekbones prominent with windburn, the long jaw. Those were externals. He had to see something else. She knotted herself tightly in the bed, knees to chest and arms clasped around them, a sowbug or caterpillar curling up small when its flat rock was overturned and left it defenseless to ruthless fingers or foot.

S
he awoke at daybreak, aching from her tense sleep, but hungry and energetic. She got up and looked out at the harbor. She could just make out the start of a line of net floats spilling from an orange dory that nuzzled the rocks below the lawn.

Barry was asleep on the sitting-room couch. She moved quietly around the kitchen, making percolator coffee and oatmeal. Barry liked oatmeal, and she felt an affectionate indulgence toward him this morning. Until now whenever she set the table she had perversely ignored the inexpensive but vivid set of dishes in the cupboard, and used the few mismatched plates and mugs they'd brought with them. This morning she used the matching set. If he should ever come in when they were eating, he would see that she was not slovenly about serving the meals.

Barry came out rubbing his face hard with both hands, squinting against the sunrise shining in over the sink. “I smelled that coffee while I was dreaming, and thought I was in heaven. Hey, what's this?”

“I wish I had some brown sugar for it.”

“Never mind, this looks damn good anyway.” He started to sit down and she said, “Wash first. You're not living aboard a boat.”

“Sure, Marm.” He laughed and gave her a slap on the rear as he passed. It was a measure of her new mood that she didn't spring back at him like an enraged cat. He washed noisily, and when he emerged from the towel he looked clear-eyed and young. “It was so late when I got in I didn't want to wake you up so I turned in on the couch. We stopped off the harbor last night.”

“You slept in your clothes, I see. I'm glad you took your boots off.”

“I almost kept 'em on, scales and all. I was some bushed. But we figger we've got about twelve hundred bushels out there. Owen's not going to call up for the carrier to come after this lot; we'll share it out for bait.”

She sat down opposite him with a dish of oatmeal. “Who else went after the herring?”

“Well, Owen's the cap'n. He came over to the store about dusk, trying to raise his crew. That's Phil, and Rob Dinsmore—he's Owen's man anyway—and Charles Bennett's boy Hugo. Well, Hugo was courting over to Brigport, so I got the chance to go.” He was jaunty with the prestige of it, but she let that pass for once. So Owen hadn't mentioned coming to the house first. She felt again the visceral excitement that was half-pleasant and half-sickening. Barry's voice faded out as if on a radio and then strengthened again as she tried to listen to him. We're going to salt down my part in this fish house. When I start going by myself I'll do everything, like the gear and boat was my own.”

“When do you start by yourself?”

“Next time we go to haul. We're shifting pots today.” He was delighted with her attention, and talked and talked as greedily as he swallowed his food. She listened kindly, protecting the mood in which she had awakened.

“Well, I've got to get moving,” he said at last. “Any coffee left there I can take?”

“Plenty, and I'll make some sandwiches.” She got out a couple of lobsters and opened them. He watched her, tipped back in his chair and smoking. “You know something, Van?” he said diffidently.

“Not much.” She gave him a quick smile. “What?”

“There's no reason now why you can't send off to the catalog for some new clothes. Them shirts of mine don't do much for you, and they got some real nice things you'd look good in. Not that you don't look good in almost anything you put on, except that goddam raincoat.”

She wrapped sandwiches and put them in his dinner box. “Well, maybe I'll think about it,” she humored him. “You haven't got so many shirts that we can divide them, anyway, the way I hate washing and ironing.”

He was pleased by her response and rushed on. “And get yourself a couple of dresses besides pants and shirts. You know those kind with the tight top and full skirts?”

She looked over her shoulder at him and saw him grinning, a little red and overheated as if by lascivious thoughts. “I'm not the type,” she teased him.

“Sure you are!” he blustered. “You're a woman, ain't ye? They'll be having dances pretty soon and you want something nice to wear. I'll be blasted if I can see how anybody can do a Lady of the Lake in one of them straight-up-and-down nightshirts that looks like a grain bag stitched up.”

That was Barry, pushing his luck and talking about dances. She said indifferently, “I'll see.”

“Well, anyway, you can do with some new slacks,” he said, more subdued. “See if they got some like those of Mrs. Mark's you had on the other day. Pick out something for me too, huh?”

It was crafty of him, but she could forgive him that today, even while knowing how he'd tell the other men that the wife liked to pick out his clothes for him.

When he had gone she took the bedclothes off the couch and hung them out in the yard to air.

“Hi!” It had happened at last. Kathy Campion was coming across the wet grass, her blue eyes sure of welcome. “Look, I'm not pushy—well, maybe I am—but how'll you know you can use my washing machine if I don't tell you?”

Be ordinary, Vanessa warned herself. You need protective coloring. “Thanks,” she said in a friendly if not effusive manner. “But so far I've only got a few things to wash, and I'd just as soon do them by hand, the cistern water is so soft.”

“Isn't it, though?” Kathy lingered, hugging herself against the chill that raised gooseflesh on her arms. “I haven't had a chance to ask you how you like it out here.”

“I like it a lot,” said Vanessa. “It's so good to be out of the city with spring coming that I can't seem to stay in the house.”

“Oh, I know what you mean!” Her fervent and puppyish responses would be wearing. “Most of us feel like that. We couldn't stand living anywhere else. Well, there's one who doesn't, but it might be because she's so young.”

Dying for me to ask who, and then we'll move inside for a nice kaffee-klatsch, Vanessa thought, but was surprised when Kathy bubbled on, “Well, if I don't get back, my kids will be fixing their own breakfast, and they'd eat chocolate-coated herring if they could manage it.” She ran back in her wet sneakers and Van called after her, “Thank you!” Kathy waved and went in.

Barry would be proud, Van thought wryly. I sound so goddam neighborly and housewifely and every other stupid thing I can think of . . . But it had been necessary; a great many things had now become necessary.

She started a chowder with the rest of the lobsters, and then sat down with coffee and a cigarette. Instantly, and without any seeming wish on her part, she began reliving last night. She shut her eyes so that she could see him clear against the dark, and felt under her fingers the structure of big nose and jaw and cheekbone; the brown skin would feel burning hot against her cold palms. Suddenly she felt certain that she would one day know these things and more, that there was no escape.

You sound, she told herself cynically, exactly like Maggie Dinsmore. She got up and found the mail-order catalog. It had been so long since she'd bought anything but sneakers and jeans that the vivid pages of styles and colors, the directions on how to make the correct measurements, made her painfully nervous. Still, Barry's remark stayed with her.
Those shirts of mine don't do much for you
. They made her conspicuous, that's all they did for her; they made her a white blackbird among the nonfreaks. She had to cease to be someone to whose every habit and gesture they would be acutely sensitive.

Finally, made a rough selection of clothes to choose from; with a small derisive smile she marked a couple of full-skirted dresses. Then she checked off some men's clothes for Barry to look at.

After that, she walked restlessly around the rooms. She found herself coming back again and again to the front windows, and realized that she was acting like the women she despised, waiting for the men to come in. Oh well, she thought, I'm not all gone yet; at least it's not my own husband I'm looking for. In the afternoon, she went upstairs to change her clothes. Now that she had decided to get something new to wear, she regarded what she had with loathing.

Nothing suited her, and suddenly she became despondent and sank down on the bed in the tumble of clothing. The fiery energy that had driven her all day seemed to have consumed itself. Tears gathered in her eyes, and slid from the outer corners down past her cheekbones to her ears. She didn't know why she was crying. “Except that I'm miserable,” she said aloud in a cracked voice. “That's a simple fact, isn't it? Like being black or white or crippled or tubercular.”

She heard a boat coming in and bounded off the bed. She dressed fast then, not caring what she put on as long as she could be around the harbor when Barry came home, a woman who walked down on the wharf to greet her husband. Her hair was full of electricity when she brushed it. It flew out from her head, lay in a tough lustrous web across her mouth, and wound itself around her hand and the brush. Finally, she got it gathered up and the elastic on.

When she left the house at last she felt hot and nervous. The youngest child next door was playing in the path and she hurried around him as if he were a rock. There were more boats coming in, the harbor danced with their crossing wakes, and she wondered feverishly which one was Owen Bennett's. Supposing he'd come in, sold his lobsters, and gone home while she'd been struggling with her damned hair?

She saw Mrs. Foss Campion taking in her wash, but got by without being noticed. At the harbor beach she stopped and shaded her eyes, trying to see across the flashing water. An outburst behind her made her jump, and she saw the children spilling across the field from the schoolhouse, exploding into the day like a box of fireworks into which someone had dropped a lighted match. She hurried on, around to the front of Philip Bennett's fish house.