Three Short Novels (38 page)

The stale pastry was like a wad of paper in her mouth. She washed it down with the coffee and glanced contentedly around. They keep these ferries clean all right, she thought. Windows clean as sky, long benches varnished with a thick, dark wine of a shine, floors mopped. Over by the door of the ladies' lavatory, two men in white overalls were painting light green paint over the old-fashioned dark green, each man down on a knee, each painting with slow and easy, careful strokes. Everything shipshape, engines rumbling along, hot coffee in the urn, candy machine and popcorn machine standing against the wall like members of the crew.
My those ferryboats are a joy to ride!
That was the first thing she'd say to Isobel.
They keep them so clean!
she'd say, as if Isobel had a hand in it.
My, this part of the country, I bet you can't beat it. Why, Mount Rainier looks just like a dish of ice cream standing up there behind Seattle, and all those mountains, my, they make a pretty background for the city. Just like an oil painting!

What a shock to the heart to see someone waiting for you who
didn't want to be waiting! Isobel. Isobel, wife of her brother, Hal. Once they'd been friends—wife and sister. But in the six years since Isobel and her son had fled, there'd been only a card at Christmas, with that hasty blue-ink signature that said,
You're just one among many
, and the card not even to her, Naomi, only to her mother, with herself understood as sharing, and after her mother died, no cards. The city was far behind them now, most of the seagulls had flapped away, and far out across the gray water was the shore where Isobel waited.

“If you're getting off at Winslow, you'd better get up to the front,” the waitress advised after the second cup of coffee. “You can see the ferry put into the slip.”

One high-heeled shoe found the floor, her knees stretching her tight skirt. She dug out her coin purse to slip a quarter under the saucer. Pay her to make her like you, she thought, teetering a bit on the black suede heels of her red pumps, drawing her coat around her. Two men in dark suits, facing each other on the face-to-face, back-to-back benches, unrememberable men, reading newspapers, glanced up as she left her perch and glanced down again, uninterested in a woman with a homeless face, anxious eyes way in under painted black eyebrows, and dyed black hair in stiff, chic curls under a red hat.
It doesn't hurt so much any more, thanks
, she said to them.
The older I get the more used to it I get. When the time comes when you don't look up at all, then I won't feel anything.
She knelt to pick up her overnight case, and in that small activity, because they did not watch her, a feeling of immeasurable abandonment came over her. For several moments she could not rise. Clutching her coat together, she went forward toward the bow.

Now through the windows she saw land again, forested hills, narrow beaches with little cottages, sailboats moored to docks, and again the wash of waters against and over things, over broken docks, over logs on the sand, and the merciless rocking of everything on the waters. Close overhead, she saw a seagull borne back on the wind,
saw the white breast, saw the light from the sky shining through the wings, saw the beak with the preying knob, saw the crazed eye. There was the slip, its high, slanting timbers rising up out of deep water, there the long black ramp up to the concrete building, and there, on that higher level, a parking lot with tiny cars far away and growing larger. Small figures wandered about up there. Which one was Isobel? But in that moment, seeking out Isobel and avoiding her, she felt the frightening closeness of her mother barring her way in a narrow hallway, Mama in the satin robe.
What've you come to see Isobel for? She never wrote, she never brought Hal's son back for me to see. What Hal did to himself, she's to blame because she was no wife to him.
Naomi put up her gloved hand as though to clear a spot on the window glass.

The engines changed their tune, or did they stop? The rumbling stopped, the ferry struck against a piling, and her hand at the glass helped her to keep her balance. A man in a uniform ran down the narrow iron ladder from the captain's cabin and disappeared around the deck. The cluster of passengers was increasing at the bow, the wind blowing up hair and scarves and coat hems. It must be like docking a big ship, she thought. You haven't come very far in forty-six years, she said to herself.
Isobel
, she begged,
forgive me for being a hick, for coming to visit. I won't stay long, I'll stay just tonight.
A child out on deck, his hand in his mother's, was gazing over his shoulder at her, and she changed her face to the face of a dazedly happy visitor awaited eagerly by someone up there in the town.

They embraced, kissing each other's cheek, each bending to pick up the overnight case and Isobel gripping it first. It was done as it ought to be done, for anybody watching and for themselves, and, arm in arm, they walked to the parking lot.

“If anybody'd asked me, I could have picked it out!” she said as Isobel unlocked the car door. “There's something so neat about it!” Not old, not new, a clean, light green sedan with plaid green seatcovers. “You were always such a neat one!”

“Guy's very cooperative,” Isobel said, settling in the driver's seat, smoothing her coat under her, fitting the key with a sure hand. “He uses the car, too, mostly on weekends. Even though he takes his friends with him—they go to the beach or Seattle or Mount Rainier—why, he brings it back in good shape, even the ashtrays emptied.”

Naomi doubled over with a disbelieving laugh. “Guy drive? Oh, God, I keep seeing a twelve-year-old boy. He's a man!”

“In September he'll be starting at the university,” Isobel said, glancing over her shoulder as she reversed the car out of the line. “Medicine.”

“Medicine? Oh, you mean he's going to be a doctor!” Again Naomi bent over, laughing, because she was so dense. She's still Isobel, she thought. She's got her own schoolteacher way of saying things, and she looks more like a teacher now than ever. So vapory kind, like a nun. “Well, isn't that nice! A doctor! There's nobody in the world gets more respect than a doctor.”

The houses were far apart in this town. Back in her own neighborhood, they were boxy stuccos of pastel colors, plots of grass in front littered with children's toys and paper. They passed an acre of grass, two horses grazing, then a long row of small houses all alike, gray frame with dark green trim. “Company houses,” said Isobel, and Naomi nodded as though she knew the meaning. Then, after more grass, “That one? The white one?” she asked, peering through the windshield, directed by Isobel's pointing finger. “Say, that's sure a cute little house.”

“It belonged to my aunt,” Isobel said. “She left it to me. She died three years ago. We've got awfully nice neighbors. Another teacher at the high school lives just a couple of houses down, the green one, see? And on the other side of us there's a nice family, he works on a newspaper in the city. They're all nice people around.”

Isobel parked the car exactly before the few stone steps to the yard so that, in lieu of an honest welcome, there was a path for the guest's
feet directly as the guest stepped out of the car. Naomi thought—Anybody looking out a window would see a smartly dressed visitor, nice figure, nice legs, nice posture, a visitor positive of her welcome, carrying a snappy, round, black and white overnight case. A forever-young woman delighted with small surprises. “Say, look what you got here!” pausing on the concrete path. “Clam shells! Say, don't they make a pretty border!” her voice the voice of Athena, a tough woman with a kind heart.

So this is the house Isobel got for herself!
Naomi passed through the little hallway and into the living room, her heels muted by braided rugs. This is the house where Isobel found refuge, protected by distance and silence. “Oh, say, this is cozy, Isobel!”

“Let me take your bag upstairs,” Isobel said. “You're welcome to my bedroom.”

“No, no!” shaking her head vigorously. “What's the matter with the sofa? I'll sleep on the sofa. Won't be any trouble to anybody, that way,” tossing the bag onto the sofa, removing her hat, her coat, and tossing these over the bag. “Wait'll I get my cigarettes,” she called after Isobel who was moving on into the kitchen to make tea, and, fishing up the package from her purse, holding it under her breasts, she followed Isobel. At the kitchen table, she hung a cigarette on her lips and struck a match. “I can stay overnight, like I told you, but I got to get back in the morning. I'm staying with friends in Seattle and it wouldn't be polite if I stayed away longer. They drove me to the ferry and I wanted them to come along for the ride, but they said it's nothing new to them. Real nice people. The wife used to work in the recorder's office with me.”

She sat down, leaned back, flicking together the nails of thumb and little finger to make a hard, worldly, nervous clicking. “Say, you've got a sweet little kitchen here!” glancing around at the crockery windmill clock on the wall, at the crockery Dutch boy and girl with ivy growing out of their heads, at the yellow and green curtains with ruffles.
“Nobody keeps house like Isobel, that's what Mama always said. You remember?” Her face lapsed. “Mama's dead, you know. I wrote you, didn't I?”

Isobel was setting teacups down, place mats, teaspoons. “We were sorry to hear,” she said. “And I thought to myself, wouldn't it be nice if Naomi could come here for a visit, a change of scenery. Last night when you phoned, we were so pleased. Guy said,” and she laughed, “he said ‘I wonder if she looks like I remember her, in a blue dress.' ”

“Mama never did forgive you for taking Guy away,” she said, thinking, Why am I making accusations for Mama? “I was always having to explain to her how I figured you felt. But you did do everything so fast, hustled him off on the plane, sent him all that way, a kid alone.”

A slice of lemon slid off the saucer Isobel was setting down. She picked it up with hasty fingers. “The stewardess took care of him,” her voice flat. “And my aunt met him in Seattle. He was twelve years old already.”

“That's what I told Mama,” her voice rising with dolorous insistence like that of a child who is seldom listened to. “That's what I said. Oh, I was always defending you, Izzybell. Remember how I used to call you Izzybell? Oh, say, I sure missed you, Izzybell.”

Isobel sat down angrily, a teacher fed up with a student's perverse behavior. “One thing, one thing let me ask of you. Not one word to Guy about his father's suicide. Not one word. And for that matter, not to anybody else, if anybody comes by while you're here.”

“Oh, God, never!” clasping her throat. “Never. What did you think, that I came all the way here just to bring up old troubles?”

“That's all I ask.”

“Well, that's certainly not too much to ask.” She laughed. “You don't have to be afraid of me, that's just a little thing to ask.”

Isobel pushed herself up as if already unbearably weary of this visitor, and, at the stove, pouring boiling water into the flowered teapot,
her back to the visitor, she asked cheerily, “Tell me about
you
. Anything interesting?”

“Me?” Naomi crossed her legs, sliding her palms down along her thighs, and clasping her hands together when they met upon her knees. “I got married. Yes, I did. I was going to write and tell you, but oh, my, it was like the roof falling in. Dan, his name was Dan O'Leary, that's just what it was, and a nice guy, nice as pie, but an alcoholic. One of those real ones. It didn't last long, the marriage I mean, oh, maybe six months. He went back to New York, business stuff. He never wanted me to go and see Mama, I had to fight with him. When he left, I moved back with her.” All told with a shrugging of shoulders, with pulls on her cigarette, and a crossing and recrossing of legs.

“What was his business?” Isobel asked.

“Oh, he used to be an engineer, really. He used to be a big time engineer, he was that smart. But then his alcohol craving got the better of him, and he started drifting.”

“It's sad, isn't it, what it does?” Isobel, sipping her tea.

Naomi rubbed her knees. “You'd never believe your sister-in-law, old workhorse Naomi, you'd never think she'd start drinking around, now would you? I used to go around to the bars with him, got to like it. Oh, don't get worried!” holding up her hand. “Don't worry about
me
. I'm off it now, haven't had a drink since the night I almost got run over. After Dan left and I moved back with Mama, I used to go out after she was asleep, go visit the bars. Up until the night I almost got it. That sobered me up.”

“What about Cort? What's he doing?”

“Cort? Kid brother Cort? He was just twenty-six when you left, wasn't he? Well, now he's married, got himself a nice honey, and they got two boys, yep, two boys, and now they got a baby girl. They don't waste time these days, do they? The oldest boy's the smartest kid you ever saw, four years old and talks like a judge. Mama used to say he was going to grow up to be like his Uncle Hal. But Hal was one in a
million. Everybody watching him. Watch that man going nowhere but up! Got out of law school, right away he's in with the biggest lawyer in town. If he'd made that election to Congress, I'll bet he'd be a Senator now. Senator Hal Costigan. It's okay, isn't it, if I tell Guy what a smart father he had?”