Spartina (31 page)

“When he was a little boy he had a crush on the prettiest girl at the mill. Mabel O’Brien worked a treadle—pumping away all day, her skirt hiked up to her knees, her calf muscles swelling under her white stockings. She had three bastards by three different men. We think of that time as repressed and intolerant, as though sex got invented in 1960, but there’s Mabel O’Brien, and she went to mass every Sunday with her three boys. The old man remembered her at the Saturday-night parties. It was lovely how clear the old man saw Mabel O’Brien’s legs. Working the treadle or prancing around the O’Briens’ big kitchen on Saturday night. I’d go to the hospital and sit while he and his roommate would watch the Red Sox game. The old man would take a little nap and then wake up from a dream—almost all his dreams were of his childhood here. He saw Mabel O’Brien’s legs, of course, but everything else clear as day too. When he was eight he used to collect the men’s hot lunches from all the wives—the Irish workers lived at the top of the hill in company houses—and he’d load all the lunch pails in a barrel he’d nailed to his sled, and just as the noon whistle blew
he’d shoot down the hill, his legs wrapped around the barrel, his face freezing in the wind where he peeped around. He’d coast up to the door of the mill, and the men picked out their lunch pails and let him come inside to get warm, and they’d all talk a blue streak. There was no talking allowed during work, so they were all busting. He heard their voices in his dreams—most of them still had brogues in those days. And he remembers them not being able to stand still after being stuck at the machines. They’d arm-wrestle and dance and challenge each other to walk on their hands. My father’s father was famous for being able to jump over a dye vat from a standing start. My father saw him do it. He’d crouch down and disappear behind the vat and suddenly there he was flying through the air. I’d always thought the mills must have been hell, but when my father was dying it all seemed paradise to him. The way he talked, it was as though he’d never known anything since. He’d wake up from his nap and tell me about his sled shooting down the hill. Near the end he only felt hot or cold in his dream memory. And even taste. He dreamed of the first time he tasted maple syrup. None of them had ever tasted it. Someone gave them a bottle. They’d never seen it. His mother gave it to him as cough medicine until someone showed her how to make pancakes.

“And Mabel O’Brien, he adored her. They used to have parties in the O’Briens’ kitchen, just up the hill from the house he lived in. After the dancing and singing they’d tell stories. It was mostly ghost stories, you know, a man out alone at night and he hears a banshee. Terrified the old man, he was only six or seven at the time. One night he stayed later than anyone in his family, and he was scared to go home alone. Mabel opened the back door for him and the light from the oil lamps shot out along the snow right down to his own back door. So he started running down the beam of light from the open door and he could hear Mabel’s father shouting, ‘For God’s sakes, shut the door, Mabel!’ But she kept it
open. ‘Shut the door, Mabel, we’re perishing!’ But Mabel held on till he got safe inside his own house.” Mary leaned back and put her hands over her eyes. “You know, it’s not so hard that the old man died at eighty-four, though I’m sad enough for that. But it’s him as a little boy I see. It’s Tommy Scanlon, running down the path alone, little Tommy Scanlon, scared of the dark.”

Mary began to cry. Elsie put her arm around Mary. Mary pulled out her handkerchief and blew her nose, then she got up and poured herself another shot. Dick got up, and she poured him one too. She slipped off her shoes so she wouldn’t be taller than him, put her glass down, and held on to him hard.

Elsie said, “Are you a little jealous of Mabel O’Brien? I would be.”

Mary laughed. “Sure I am. But she never knew how he adored her. And look what she did for him at the end.”

Mary sat back down on the sofa. She made room for Dick between Elsie and her and patted the cushion. “She must be dead now. She was ten years older than the old man.”

Dick squeezed in. “What happened to her?” Dick said. “Her and her three boys?”

“I don’t know. Her father died, and she and her mother raised the three kids. She kept on till the mill closed, but what happened after that, I don’t know. Oh. Her mother worked as a maid for one of the few lace-curtain Irish families in town. So one time Mrs. O’Brien—Mabel’s mother—came into the parlor to clean up, and the daughter of the family and two girlfriends of hers were smoking cigarettes. Mrs. O’Brien said, ‘Shame on you girls. Nice girls don’t smoke cigarettes!’ And the daughter said, ‘How can you dare to say that to me, Mrs. O’Brien, when your own daughter has three children out of wedlock!’ And Mrs. O’Brien says, ‘That’s a different thing altogether! Mabel loves children!’ ”

Mary laughed, and it brought some color back to her cheeks, but at the same time she began to sag with fatigue. She finally leaned over toward Elsie, who put an arm around her.

Elsie said, “Spend the night, Mary. There’s a bed on the porch. We’ll have a good sleep and a good breakfast, and then we’ll go down to see them launch Dick’s boat.”

Elsie took Mary’s glass from her hand, and walked her to the sleeping porch. She sent Dick out to get Mary’s suitcase. Elsie took it in to Mary. Dick sat and listened to the two women talking softly. Then Mary passed through in her nightgown, her red hair straight down her back, her toothbrush in her hand. When she came back out, she gave him a kiss that smelled of toothpaste and whiskey.

Mary went to bed. Elsie came out. She sat beside Dick on the sofa, one leg curled under her. She finished Mary’s whiskey and blew out a long breath. She said, “I can’t tell if she’s okay or not. I don’t know what it’s like.”

“He was eighty-four,” Dick said. “She seems pretty clear about that. And she’s here with you.”

Elsie nodded. “Is the way she was the way people are at wakes? All those jokes? Was that a wake?”

Dick laughed. He said, “I’m sorry—I’m not Catholic.”

“Don’t tease me,” Elsie said. “I feel very odd.”

Dick was touched by Elsie. He took her hand. “Maybe you’re being too good again, feeling like you’re becoming Miss Perry.”

“Not as good as all that,” Elsie said. “I was about to screw your brains out when Mary came in.”

Dick shook his head. He still wasn’t used to her talking like that.

“It wasn’t just jokes,” Dick said. “You can tell she liked her old man.”

“That was nice, the story about Mabel O’Brien,” Elsie said. “I think I’d rather be as nice as Mabel O’Brien than as good as Miss Perry.”

Dick laughed at Elsie’s getting herself in the story somehow. Then he felt bad for her again. He said, “Maybe you are.”

“Why’d you laugh?”

“Here you are all grown up and you’re like a kid worrying about whether people think you’re nice.”

Elsie looked suspicious.

Dick said, “You’re nice—you don’t have to worry.”

“What I’d like is for you to like me even if I’m not nice,” Elsie said. “That’s one of the things I like about Mary. She just likes me whether I’m nice or not.”

“Well, sure,” Dick said. “That’s not so hard.”

Now Elsie laughed at him.

“I made you a little boat-warming present.” She got up and gave him a package. He opened it. It was a thermos bottle done up to look like a White Rock soda-water bottle.

“Thank you. I can use a thermos.”

“Look at the White Rock girl.”

Dick held the thermos out under the lamplight: the White Rock girl—kneeling on her rock, bare except for a little wisp of a skirt, and little dragonfly wings on her back.

“You don’t see?” Elsie said. “Look. That’s the pond. That’s the rock. And that’s me.”

“Jesus, Elsie.”

Elsie laughed. “I made this myself. Used an old label, put in my picture and used photo offset. It looks like the real thing, doesn’t it?”

“I guess it does. Where in hell am I going to keep this?”

“On your boat.”

“Jesus, Elsie—I don’t know.”

“Look—if
you
didn’t recognize me, who will?”

“Who took the picture?”

“Oh, for God’s sakes, Dick. Just tell me I look gorgeous.”

“You do. I don’t know though. I’m going to have Charlie and Tom on board sometimes.”

“They won’t be able to tell.”

Dick looked again. “I guess that’s right.”

“But
you’ll
know it’s me,” Elsie said. “Oh. Do you mind if I shoot some film tomorrow? I’ve still got Schuyler’s camera here.”

Dick was struck by how agile she’d suddenly become again. It was as though she was making herself the way she was with him before. It had crossed his mind that she might want to go outside with him, find a nice spot in the grass, damn the mosquitoes, full speed ahead. The idea had struck him, but he was relieved it somehow didn’t seem likely now.

He didn’t know whether he should speak plainly. He wasn’t sure she understood their sleeping together was over with. He didn’t dare ask what she thought. He was still bothered by the thermos—he looked at it again, a nice thermos, glossy with thin, even coats of varnish, the picture label set in nicely. The whole thing had taken some work.

“I really like this,” he said, “even though I don’t see where I’m going to fit it in. Do you see what I mean?” He put the thermos down and took her hand. “Jesus, Elsie, I don’t know what to do about all this. I could give up the going-to-bed part, but then what? There’s something I’m going to miss. I don’t want this to be like the one time I went to the West Indies. But my life is going to be on pretty regular courses. If I come up here to see you, there’s a chance I’d just float right up to you again. That day I picked you up in the rain I wasn’t planning on anything. I don’t say I hadn’t taken notice of you. But suddenly there I was.”

Elsie laughed. “Yes,” she said. “You’re a sweet man sometimes.”

Dick shook his head. “There’s two things I swore I’d never do. One is be caretaker for a summer house, the other is mess up my family.”

“You haven’t done either one. You went along with what May wanted when you borrowed money from Miss Perry and me. You know, even if May found out about you and me, I’ll bet her chief complaint about you would still be that you’ve been bitter, jumpy, pigheaded, and generally impossible. As marriages go, that’s about par for the course. And as men go, you’re not so bad. If you get a
little nicer and more cheerful now that things are picking up for you, May’ll be okay.”

“You’re pretty damn free and easy.”

“I know,” Elsie said. “And that’s not even the worst thing about me.”

Dick laughed.

“Don’t worry,” Elsie said. “No one’s going to know. I’m going to be the soul of discretion.”

“But what are we—”

“We’ll see,” Elsie said. “Whatever it is, it won’t be bad.” She got up and walked him to the door. She came out to his truck. He put the thermos in the glove compartment and sat, hanging on the steering wheel. Elsie leaned in the open window.

She said, “Maybe we’ll be like Miss Perry and Captain Texeira.” She stuck her head in and kissed him briefly. She said, “We’ll see. We’ll both be around for a while. You go on home and dream about launching your boat. I’ll come and take pictures. Around noon, right? It’ll be okay, I’ll bring Mary.”

As he drove down the narrow driveway he saw she’d whirled him around another way. He’d as much as said it was over. He especially felt the weight of his remark about Elsie and him having wired into each other when his father died, a remark that had slipped out but that he’d considered so light as to be secret to himself. He now heard it as so heavy and doltish that he jammed the brake on with disgust. No way Elsie hadn’t finished the thought for herself: And here’s Mary fresh from
her
father’s funeral to snip us apart. Elsie at first had protested, she’d said no, her schoolgirl crush started before that, before he knew anything about it. And yet she’d gone on to agree with him in some way, had gone on to send him home. And now he could feel himself turning, felt a pull that whirled him as neat as a wrestler’s trick.

He switched the engine off. It didn’t matter whether he was
making it up. When he said she was good, she’d said no, she was about to screw his brains out.

If he’d been paying attention when he drove off, he might have seen her stop at the front door, her hand slow on the knob, just touching it. If he’d turned the motor off then, she would have turned.

Now she’d be brushing her teeth. Or finishing off her glass of wine. Maybe pacing the room. Maybe stepping outside once more, going down to the pond in her bare feet.

Dick walked back up the driveway, staying on the grassy crown so he wouldn’t make the gravel crunch. When he got to Mary’s little pickup he carefully skirted it, stepping along the edge of lawn, moving slowly so as not to rattle the forsythia tendrils that just touched the side of Mary’s truck. When he turned to face the house, he saw the lamp on the sleeping porch was on. Just turned on? He couldn’t see very clearly. The waist-high planking cut the lamp from direct view. The overhead moon shone down bright enough to dazzle the screen mesh. He moved beyond the forsythia, stopped behind a new-planted hemlock, still shorter than him. Mary was awake, he heard her voice. He saw Elsie leave the sleeping porch. He could wait until Mary went back to sleep. No. Elsie came back. She sat down beside Mary’s bed. He heard a scrape of chair legs. He could make out Elsie’s head through the screen. He started to leave, decided to wait until Elsie left. At this point all she had to do was turn her head to see him scuttling away.

His ear became accustomed to the insect drone, and he could make out Mary and Elsie talking about some friend of Elsie’s, a woman who’d been married to Jack Aldrich before Jack married Elsie’s sister.

The mosquitoes began to find Dick. Served him right.

Elsie’s voice. “… Lucy had an IUD all along. Jack’s an asshole in some ways, but he didn’t deserve that. The poor man was probably worried about his sperm count.”

Mary’s voice. He couldn’t hear what she said.

Elsie said, “Oh no. He wouldn’t do that. They make the man beat off in a Dixie cup. Anyway Lucy told
me
, after their divorce. But she still wouldn’t tell Jack. Lucy and I had a big fight. I told her she was a really hideous liar. She said it wasn’t a lie, she just hadn’t told him
anything
, and apparently he never asked, at least not directly. I haven’t ever had a fight like that with anyone else. I’ve quarreled with my sister, but that’s nothing. I have fights with Jack, I’ve told you about some of those, fun really. But I still feel terrible about Lucy Potter. So of course
now
, irony of ironies,
now
I get a letter from her. She’s getting married again. Wants me to be a bridesmaid.”