Storm Tide (43 page)

Owen, still holding tight to the edge of the sink, turned his head and looked at the table. “Eggs?” he said thickly. “
Eggs!
” The brown of his face became greenish. He looked horribly sick. “Oh, my God!” he said, and plunged toward the door.

Stevie sighed. “Keep my dinner warm,” he directed Joanna, and followed Owen without hurrying.

She put the food into the oven, and poured out a cup of coffee for herself. Her own stomach shrank, quivering, from food. She was annoyed that she should be so upset; in the old days she would have taken it in her stride. But somehow everything was different now—so different that it frightened her. Once, to see Owen so drunk, no matter what the reason, would have disgusted her; she would have despised both him and his weakness. Today she felt a pity for him that made her ache. It was too much, having to worry about Mark and Helmi, and feeling pity for Owen. No one ever worried about her, or pitied her—not that she wanted it! She must never let herself get so weak as to want pity.

She spoke briskly to Stevie when he came in again. “Where is Owen?”

“I bedded him down in the shop.” Stevie washed again and sat down to his re-warmed dinner.

“He should be in his own room,” Joanna said.

“Nope. He's sick as a horse, and the shop's easier to clean up than a bedroom.” Stevie looked tired. “Poor cuss. When they turned him down it just about knocked the tar out of him. Then I didn't know if I could get him back home again. He set out just as tight as he could go to join the Merchant Marine.”

Joanna sat down opposite him and rested her chin in her hands. “But what's the
matter
with him, Stevie? Owen's always been so healthy.”

“At first I was kind of worried,” Stevie admitted candidly. “I thought maybe—well, you know what could happen to a guy who's been raising hell for five or six years. Sometimes he isn't as careful as he ought to be.—

Joanna felt a cold emptiness where her stomach should have been. Stevie took a mouthful of food and went on. “So I asked around, and finally got a chance to speak to the doctor and ask him . . . said my brother wouldn't tell me, and was it anything we ought to take care of. He was a nice fellow, gray-haired, gold braid. . . . He told me it wasn't anything too bad. Owen's pulse just sort of gallops when he gets excited.”

“What do we do about it?” Joanna said. “Will it get worse?”

“It shouldn't, the doctor said. But he says Owen's high-strung, and living wild didn't do him any good. Then that pneumonia . . . ” Stevie shook his head. “Anyway, he's going to be damn' hard to live with for a while. I'm sorry for you, Jo.”

She returned his affectionate smile, her mouth steady. “When do you have to go?”

“They've given me a week to get my traps in and haul up my boat. Then I have another going-over in Boston, but there won't be any hitch about that. Doc said I was tops in everything.”

“I'm glad of that, Stevie. . . . I'll miss having you to talk to, though.” It was the nearest thing to an admission of weakness that she could make.

“Golly, Nils'll be back before I'm gone, probably. . . . Any dessert, Jo.?”

“Devil's food cake.” She set it before him with a ceremonious flourish. “Cut your own, as big as you want it. I'll get you more coffee.” She went over to the stove and paused, her hand on the handle of the coffeepot. She looked back at Stevie, who was cutting the cake with the same happy absorption with which he'd painted his toy boats, when he was six. He still had those long black eyelashes that he'd tried to cut off with the scissors once—and they'd only grown thicker.

In a week Stevie would be going to war, and she would be alone with Owen. Unless Nils came back, as Stevie said. But Stevie didn't know that Nils had left her; that she was a woman without a husband. When he found it out, as of course he must, he would be away from home, perhaps in foreign waters, and someone's letter would tell him. And perhaps, out of them all, Stevie would be the one who wouldn't blame her.

I
N THE LATE AFTERNOON
of the day before Stevie was to leave, he borrowed the
White Lady
and went to Brigport for Ellen. It meant she would lose one day of school before the weekend really began, but Stevie was set on having her home, and Joanna consented. It would be a dull enough leave-taking for him anyway, with Owen either drunk or sullenly furious, and Mark, who would ordinarily be in and out of the house, staying away because of the unfinished situation between him and Owen.

Ellen walked up from the harbor alone; Stevie had stopped to talk to Jud.

“Hello, darling,” Joanna said. She gave Ellen a swift, hard hug and a kiss, cherishing the feel of the slim, strong little body in her arms.

“Hello, Mother.” Ellen hugged her back. But there was an anxious, strained quality about her smile. Joanna helped her off with the heavy ski suit, which Ellen usually took off alone, and made no comment on the child's lack of sparkle. She established her at the table with a cup of hot cocoa.

“That'll hold you till supper time, I should think,” she said and went on peeling apples for a pandowdy. If Ellen wanted to talk, she would talk; no sense to question her about anything, even her spelling paper, until she wanted to answer. It could be almost anything that had bothered her. A touch of seasickness—it was a bright, windy day, the water was choppy, and the
White Lady
bucked and plunged sometimes like a wild horse between Brigport and Bennett's. The little
Elaine
was steadier, but she was on the beach now, for the duration.

Or it could be Stevie's going that saddened her. No one knew what thoughts moved in endless procession through a child's head; and what fears and terrors of the war lay under Ellen's yellow crown, Joanna could only imagine, and not hope to find out.

Or—and the thought made Joanna's hand heavy and slow with the knife—she'd set her heart on seeing Nils. Joanna felt a surge of resentment against him; for what was she to say to Ellen about him? She glanced at her daughter now; Ellen was gazing remotely into space, her cocoa untouched, her mouth pale and tight-lipped in her small face.

There was a clatter at the door of the shed, and Owen came in. He'd been working out in the barn; working and drinking—the lobster smack had come that day, and Richards had brought him some liquor he'd ordered. Joanna stared across the kitchen at him, in pity blended with exasperation. He
would
have to come in now. . . . But he didn't see her. He was looking at Ellen, who gazed back at him somberly.

“Hello, Owen,” she said. Owen didn't answer. He looked at her scowlingly, almost as if he were trying to see past some obstacle; then, without a word to her or Joanna, he walked across the kitchen and into the sitting room. They heard his slow, heavy step on the stairs. At the top, he stumbled.

Life came into Ellen's face. “Mother, Owen's sick!” she cried out. “He didn't see me very good, and he walks funny.”

“He'll be all right after he's slept a while,” Joanna said.

“Poor Owen,” Ellen sighed. She began to drink her cocoa.

The sun slid into the sea, leaving a trail of red and gold on the sky behind the black saw-toothed spruces; the meadow became a pool of shadow that grew deeper by the moment. The evening star shone out from the wash of pure turquoise that spread above the fading sunset, and it was time to light the lamps in the house, and draw the shades.

Joanna and Stevie and Ellen ate supper together; Owen didn't come down again, and Joanna was relieved. Stevie's last evening might be dull, but at least it could be pleasant—as pleasant as she could make it.

After supper, while Joanna washed the dishes and Ellen wiped them, Stevie smoked and talked. He was in a cheerfully expectant mood; he was the only one of them who didn't have something on his mind, Joanna thought. Even Ellen was deeply intent on her own affairs; she wiped the dishes in silence, her face shadowed.

But it was Ellen who, pulling back the shades to look out at the stars which clustered so thickly over the Island tonight, saw the flashlight moving up the path to the house. “Company coming,” she announced. “We better hurry with the dishes.” A faint sparkle came back into her face.

“Caleb and Vinnie, probably. Or Jud and Marion.” Joanna stacked the dishes away. Ellen hurried through the last of the silver. “I'd better start a fire in the sitting room,” Stevie said lazily, and went into the other room.

Whoever owned the flashlight didn't knock at the outside door, but came straight through the entry into the kitchen. It was Mark and Helmi.

“Thought we'd walk up for a little visit,” Mark explained quickly, as Joanna overcame her first swift astonishment. It was the first time Mark had been inside the kitchen since the trouble he'd had with Owen; and the frrst time he and Helmi had come to the house to call.

Joanna moved forward, holding out her hands for Helmi's things. “Well, I'm glad you came up! This is wonderful.” Helmi, smiling, pulled off her kerchief; her silvery-blonde hair made Ellen's look dark in contrast. She spoke directly to the child.

“You here, Ellen? This is nice.” Her voice was warm and honest. Stevie had come out of the sitting room by then, he and Mark were talking; but Joanna hadn't missed Mark's narrowed, keen glance around the room.

“Owen's asleep,” she said smoothly.

“He's sick,” added Ellen. Mark looked down at her, his dark face somber. But only for a moment.

“Okay. I see,” he said, and went to sit down and stretch his legs out to the fire. Joanna turned to Helmi.

“Let's go into the sitting room and leave the men to their own company.” She caught sight of Ellen beyond Helmi's elbow, and glanced at the clock. “You're up late, Ellen. I tell you what. You go in with Helmi and keep her company while I put your lamp in your room and light the stove.”

The cool silence of the upper floors she met gratefully. There was no way of heating this part of the house, except by the small portable oil stoves; but tonight she didn't find it too cold. And it was so blessedly quiet. . . . She was glad Mark and Helmi had come up, she told herself; but she knew how desperately tired she would be at the end of the evening. If only Helmi would carry along the conversation sometimes. . .

Carrying Ellen's lamp, she tiptoed past Owen's closed door, and then halted for a moment to listen for his heavy breathing. When she heard it, she was reassured. He wasn't waking up, then. . . . She walked down the hall in a circle of yellow light; the lamp in her hand bathed her in radiance, and yet found odd hollows and shadows in her face.

In Ellen's little room, which had once been hers, she lighted the small round oil heater, and turned back the bedclothes; she laid Ellen's flannel pajamas over the back of a squat red-painted chair, near enough to be warmed by the stove, not close enough for danger. The teddy bear which Stephen Bennett had given to his granddaughter on her second birthday was already tucked under his share of the covers; he looked at Joanna with his shiny, wistful, shoebutton eyes as she went by the foot of the small bed and stopped by the window.

The ceiling slanted, and one had to kneel to be able to see, really, from the window. Joanna knelt now, and looked out at the Island in the winter night. The stars looked back at her, a thick and glittering throng. A feeling of nostalgia came over her, almost too strong to bear. It made her lean her head forward until her brow was against the cold pane.
Do I really want to go back?
she thought.
Do I really want it to be as if nothing had happened?
Alec and Ellen would have to be wiped out then; and Nils, as he had been in the last year. If she could go back, me would have Nils as she'd had him once, when they had been comrades with never an instant of doubt between them.

But how could she wish Alec had never come to Bennett's Island, or that she did not have Ellen? . . . She rose from her knees, and turning, met the pathetic gaze of the teddy bear.

When she went downstairs again, Ellen was kneeling on the floor in front of the sitting room stove, her small face uplifted and rapt. Helmi was leaning forward in her chair, speaking in a low voice. There were more color and laughter in her voice than Joanna had ever heard before.

She sat down near the door and listened. Helmi was telling Ellen a story; it was about herself, when she was a little girl. Strange to think of Helmi as a child. It seemed as if there were never a time when she was not tall and birch-slender, and curiously remote from those around her, even from her husband.

Except, Joanna remembered involuntarily, when she cried in her sleep, and turned to Mark, sobbing, to put her arms around his neck. . . .

The story was finished. Helmi leaned her fair head against the back of her chair and said, “That's all, Ellen.”

Ellen drew a long breath. “Tell me some more.”

“No,” said Helmi. “Not tonight. It's your bedtime now.”

Ellen got to her feet, and came to Joanna. Her blue-gray eyes looked dark and big.

“Did you hear it, Mother? Wasn't it a good story?”

“The best in a long time, dear.” She put her ann around Ellen and held her close to her side for a moment. “Now say goodnight to Helmi and go up to bed. I'll come in a few minutes.”

Ellen took her grave departure of both Helmi, and her uncles, in the kitchen. Joanna heard her going up the stairs, walking carefully, quietly.

“Ellen has something on her mind tonight,” Helmi said. “That was why I told her the story. But whatever it was, it came back to her after the story was finished.”

“I think it's something to do with Stevie,” Joanna answered. “I'll see if I can find out, when I go up.” She took her knitting bag and moved nearer to Helmi and the stove. Now the evening was about to begin; already her leg muscles were crawling with nervousness, and the palms of her hands were sweaty. From now to bedtime looked as long as a year.