Western Wind (7 page)

They entered a hall where jackets, coats, and caps hung from hooks in the wall. An old teddy bear sat on the newel post of a staircase, its arms straight up, a button eye hanging from a thread and resting on one cheek like a tear.

To the right was a dining room with a long table and chairs. To the left, the living room. Lit candles and kerosene lamps sat on every surface, even on windowsills. A fire burned in the hearth. On the mantel above it were dozens of framed photographs.

The place could not have been more different from Gran's cottage. Chairs, tables, benches, even a chaise longue, jammed the room. It must have taken many trips on
El Sueño
to transport so much stuff, thought Elizabeth. The tables, too, were crowded with objects of brass and china and tarnished silver, stones in bowls, shells in baskets, and on one table, curling around a lamp, what Elizabeth took to be horse tackle.

Mrs. Herkimer rose grandly from a battered armchair. At the hem of her long green skirt, Elizabeth saw a large hole. Mrs. Herkimer, catching her glance, remarked airily, “Moths … moths …”

As greetings were exchanged, Elizabeth saw Deirdre sitting on the floor near the fire, staring into the flames. Her T-shirt was wrinkled and dirty and her shorts were several sizes too large.

“Deirdre—for heaven's sake! We have guests,” her mother reproached her.

“Hello,” Deirdre said with a shake of her wild bramble of brown hair. She didn't turn around to look at anyone.

“For Deirdre, there
are
no occasions. When did you last change your clothes?” Mrs. Herkimer asked the girl's back, but went on at once as though not expecting an answer. “Hasn't the weather been glorious, Cora? Aren't we blessed?”

Gran had remarked to Elizabeth that Mrs. Herkimer gushed over weather, praising the good days as if she were somehow responsible for them.

Mr. Herkimer rubbed his hands together like a fly and asked, “A glass of wine, Cora?”

“Just the thing, John,” said Gran.

There was a clatter of feet on the staircase, and in a second Aaron burst into the room. “We're having a party!” he cried, running to Elizabeth and grabbing her around the waist.

“Let go of her, Aaron,” ordered Mr. Herkimer. “If you tackle guests like that, they won't come again.”

“He's really taken to you,” Mrs. Herkimer said. “It's unusual. He hardly likes anyone except his uncle Fred.”

“I hate Elizabeth!” yelled Aaron. At once he pressed her hand and whispered, “I don't mean it!”

Mrs. Herkimer ignored the outburst and sat down with Gran on a sofa. Aaron released Elizabeth and wandered over to the table where the seashells were and began to sort them.

“How do you like our little island in the sea?” Mrs. Herkimer asked Elizabeth.

“It's very nice,” she answered.

“‘Nice,'” repeated Mrs. Herkimer. “A tepid response. Cora, don't you find young people's vocabulary shrinking? Sometimes, of course, they say ‘great.' All of John's students do, whether the subject is Batman or Julius Caesar.”

Elizabeth was surprised to hear Gran reply that she didn't mind what young people said as long as they read a book now and then. She guessed Gran wouldn't ever show Mrs. Herkimer she agreed with her. It would be like agreeing with Mrs. Herkimer's self-satisfaction.

At that moment, Mr. Herkimer returned with a tray of glasses of wine, and Mrs. Herkimer excused herself to go to the kitchen.

It was the way evenings were at home when Elizabeth's mother and father had people to dinner. They were like sentries guarding their guests. As soon as one left the room, the other would appear. When Elizabeth, as occasionally happened, was invited to stay awhile with the company, she had discovered that her interest ebbed away in a few minutes. A thick curtain seemed to drop between her and the grownups. She heard their voices, but thought about other things. It was no different tonight. She stopped listening to Gran and Mr. Herkimer and went to the fireplace to look at the photographs on the mantel. All of them were magazine pictures of people skiing or sailing or riding horses. Deirdre snickered from the floor.

“Those aren't pictures of us,” she said. “Mama bought them because she liked the frames.”

Elizabeth squatted down so she was close to Deirdre. They stared coolly at each other. “Why are you so mad at me?” Elizabeth asked.

“I don't know you,” Deirdre replied. “So I can't be mad at you.”

“Elizabeth!” Aaron called.

“Go play with the nut,” said Deirdre. For a second, she appeared about to smile. Her mouth twitched. Then she scowled. “You'll be doing me a favor,” she said.

Aaron had replaced the shells in the basket. “I have a present for you,” he said. He reached into a pocket and took out a metal giraffe, its brown spots nearly faded away. “He can see over the trees, over this island, to everywhere,” he said. He pressed the giraffe against her palm. “Hide it!” he commanded her. She slipped it into the pocket of her dress.

“Dinner is ready,” announced Mrs. Herkimer from the hall.

Elizabeth had never seen so much cutlery and so many plates piled on a table. At each place was a paper napkin printed with clowns, probably left over from a birthday. A small pale chicken lay carved upon an oval platter, and two silver dishes held watery beets and string beans. There was a basket of sliced white bread and a large bowl of steaming potatoes.

Aaron insisted that Elizabeth sit next to him, and when she sat, he began to bang the table with a fork and jiggle around in his chair. Mr. Herkimer told him to calm down and placed a potato on his plate.

Aaron looked down at it. He said in a loud, solemn voice, “This is what I've wanted all my life.”

Elizabeth burst into laughter.

“Good!” cried Aaron, and clapped his hands.

“Aaron is very theatrical,” said Mrs. Herkimer as she sat down.

“He's an attention hog,” said Deirdre.

“Oink! Oink!” squealed Aaron.

Except for the potatoes, the food was dreadful. Gran ate small bites of chicken very slowly. She caught Elizabeth's glance and rolled her eyes upward.

“This is a plain American meal,” declared Mrs. Herkimer, as though there might be doubt about what it was. “Honest food is all I have time for. Reading and reports for the historical society take up all my strength. Then, of course, I have my family. Before we return to Orono, I have to complete a report on nineteenth-century prison life in Maine.”

“A good subject for you,” Gran murmured.

“Oh, Cora! Do you remember when you first came to Pring?” Mrs. Herkimer cried. “I was painting then, too, but I hardly have the leisure now for such hobbies.”

In a voice as hard as crystal, Gran said, “Painting is not a hobby.”

Mr. Herkimer cleared his throat loudly. “Have you noticed those plastic bottles washing up on our shores this summer, Cora?” he asked. “Twice as many as last year. They'll never sink.…”

Aaron was pulling on Elizabeth's arm.

“I only eat potatoes, cookies, canned pears, and tea, and one glass of milk a day,” he said. “When you have me to supper, that's what you have to give me.”

“I'll never have you to supper,” Elizabeth replied, smiling.

“Lucky you,” Deirdre said.

“Listen to what Deirdre likes to eat,” Aaron said. “Worms! Green ones from the sand, and oozy red ones from the ground. Ugh!”

“I'll make you eat those words!” Deirdre threatened.

“See!” he said triumphantly to Elizabeth. “I told you she'd say that!”

“Children. In the words of the poet—shut up!” said Mr. Herkimer mildly.

“Do you enjoy sailing?” Mrs. Herkimer asked Elizabeth. Before she could answer, Mrs. Herkimer continued, “My people were, so to speak, born to the mast. My grandfather used to sail out of Newport—”

“He used to sail out of the local bar three sheets to the wind,” muttered Deirdre.

“And win any race he entered,” Mrs. Herkimer went on blandly, ignoring Deirdre's words. “But I must say, John has become quite a good sailor even though he was born in western Ohio and never saw the sea until I showed it to him.”

“You can last in these waters exactly one hundred twenty seconds,” Mr. Herkimer said cheerfully to Elizabeth, as if he were telling her good news. “It's been timed, though I can't think how. The fog is the other menace. It will seem perfectly clear. First there's a haze, and suddenly you're enveloped. Can't see your hand in front of your face.”

“Maine sailing was my own father's specialty,” Mrs. Herkimer said. “Cora, didn't you have a little sailing dinghy once?”

“Helen, you've forgotten. I sold it years ago in Molytown. My arthritis got so bad.”

“And then you're so busy with your little paintings,” Mrs. Herkimer said in a fruity voice.

For a moment, Gran looked grim. Then she smiled, as though someone had whispered a joke into her ear. “That's right, Helen,” she said. “No time for hobbies like sailing.”

“Perhaps Elizabeth will come with us on our boat one of these days,” suggested Mr. Herkimer.

“You'll have to wear a life jacket,” Aaron whispered to her. “But it won't matter if the ship goes down. We'll all freeze to death, anyhow.”

“And what grade are you in?” Mrs. Herkimer asked Elizabeth, a question asked her by grown-ups as far back as she could recall, and which always seemed more significant to them than her name.

“I go into the sixth in September,” she answered.

“Only the sixth?” Mrs. Herkimer said thoughtfully. “I would have imagined—Deirdre is already in the tenth. Of course, she skipped a grade. It may be a problem for her to graduate at sixteen.…”

“You're boasting, Helen,” Mr. Herkimer admonished her in a tentative way, as though he were only half-serious.

“Boast? Me?” exclaimed Mrs. Herkimer. “Why, I'm the least boastful person in the entire world!”

Mr. Herkimer passed around food, but no one, not even Mrs. Herkimer, took second helpings. Deirdre was pushing a string bean from one side of her plate to the other. Mrs. Herkimer began to complain about Jake Holborn, how he rammed their dock more often than he used to, and was damaging it. “He's too old to run that boat,” she said. “I think he should retire. He's certainly stuffed a mattress full of money by now, after all these years.”

“I don't think so,” Gran said firmly. “He only delivers to one or two other islands besides Pring.”

“Mama! He's poor!” Deirdre said indignantly. “I remember that time we stopped by his trailer to order some lobsters when we were on our way here. His place looked like an old freight car.”

“Our little socialist,” Mrs. Herkimer said.

“I'd like to live on a train,” Aaron told Elizabeth. “I'd be the passenger who never gets off.”

“You'd get bored,” said Elizabeth.

“No,” he disagreed. “I'd have the whole car to myself. I'd only invite certain people to visit and have tea. If you got on my train, I'd ask you to stay.”

“If the conductors found out you were on one of their trains, they'd make sure the car was pushed onto a siding. Then it would rust, and weeds would grow as high as the windows, and stray cats would be your only visitors,” said Deirdre.

“Perfect!” said Aaron delightedly.

Gran had begun to tell a story about being locked out of a house. The children fell silent to listen.

“My father got a part in a gangster movie—just a small part, really—but on the strength of it, he and my mother rented a house in Hollywood. I recall it had a waterfall you could turn on and off with a switch. I was living then with my aunt Emma. They sent for me, and Aunt Emma and I went west on the train. While she was in San Diego visiting a friend, I renewed my acquaintance with my parents. They went out the first night I was there, leaving me alone. I must have gotten worried, or curious, and I went out the front door of that big house. The door slammed shut and locked itself. So there I was, about six, I think, in the Hollywood Hills.”

Aaron gasped. “I'd like to get locked out,” he whispered excitedly to Elizabeth.

“Anytime,” Deirdre said.

“I ran into the garden to look at that waterfall,” Gran was saying. “My father had neglected to switch it off before they left for their party. The water fell into a big pool full of goldfish. Something about the dark garden, the falling water, the orange glimmer of fish, must have startled me. I ran back to the front of the house. I had begun to be scared. Soon, a man came along who'd heard the waterfall and thought he'd left his lawn sprinkler on. He took me to his house, and his wife cut up a banana and poured cream on it to give to me. She put me to bed. I can still see the quilt she covered me with, its diamonds of bright colors, though it's sixty-eight years since I last saw it.”

“Heavens, Cora!” exclaimed Mrs. Herkimer. “My parents would never have left me alone!”

“There's another part to the story,” Gran went on. “Before Elizabeth was born, when my son and her mother were living with me in the farmhouse, I locked myself out for the second time in my life. I'd gone to a painter friend's opening and party in Boston. I got home around two
A.M.
It was winter and very cold, and I'd misplaced my house key. Elizabeth's father, my dear son, let me in. Now and then, life balances out.”

“Could you tell that story again?” asked Aaron.

“When you come to visit me,” Gran said.

Mrs. Herkimer rose. “I've made blueberry duff from an old family recipe,” she said.

“Help your mother clear, Deirdre,” ordered Mr. Herkimer.

“Do I have to?”

“No. You can retire to your room instead.”

Elizabeth was preoccupied. Why did she feel so uneasy? Was it because Gran had looked only at her as she talked? Was it because Gran had revealed how different her life was from other people's lives?