Storm Tide (45 page)

It was as silent and swift as the way snow begins to fall, the way Helmi cried. She didn't put her hands to her face, she merely turned her head away from Joanna. “And I thought it was a dream,” she said harshly. “All this time I thought it was a dream, and that I could keep on dreaming it after Mark went.”

“You thought it was a dream that Mark held you, and you held him?” Joanna's head felt thick with bewilderment.

“Not Mark!”
the girl said fiercely. “I don't want Mark! I didn't ever want him! I wanted—” She caught her breath in a gasp that was like a sound of pain.

Joanna felt the coldness of shock settle over her. Her numbness made it possible for her to speak so evenly. “You wanted—”

“Stevie,” said Helmi. “The first time he came in the library. It was always Stevie . . . but it was Mark who liked me and talked to me . . . and said all the things I wanted Stevie to say. Only Stevie wouldn't have said them like that.”

“Then why did you marry Mark?” asked Joanna.

“They were coming out here and I knew I wouldn't see Stevie again.” As quickly and easily as the tears had come, her words came out; and Joanna realized, in that moment, that all Helmi's poise and quiet manner had not been the stillness of repose, but the instinctive freezing of a wild spirit which hopes to be unseen, and knows that any move, however slight, will show its hiding place.

“I know now how crazy I was, Joanna. I'm crazy now to tell you this. But you know half of it already. . . . You remember the night when Owen kissed me, and I ran out? That was a foolish thing to do, but I couldn't help it. Do you know,” she said wonderingly, “that Stevie kissed me once? After the wedding. Then I used to think how it would be if he kissed me as if—as Mark does. The night Owen kissed me, I couldn't bear it. Because I thought at that moment:
What if this was Stevie?”

Joanna leaned against the cemetery gatepost. She was, for once, hopelessly mute. Helmi was wiping her tears away with her mitten, and her voice was natural again.

“Do you think I'm a bad woman, Joanna?”

“No,” said Joanna truthfully. “And I can see how you love Stevie so much. But you know you've done something wrong, don't you? I pity Mark. Where does he come in?”

“He thinks I'm a good wife,” Helmi said. “It makes him happy—even though he's worried—to think I can't live without him.” She moved around until she could face Joanna squarely. “Are you going to hate me for this? I couldn't help loving Stevie. And he didn't know, and I couldn't make him know, and when I knew he was going away I thought I would die if I didn't see him again. So when Mark asked me to marry him . . .” The desperation began to creep back again. “Then when we came here, I wanted to die. Those first few weeks . . . to be Mark's wife, always pretending, and to see Stevie all day long, and not be able to touch him, and the way he looked at me, so sweet and friendly, like a brother. I knew then what a terrible thing I'd done. So I made up my mind that when he was through working every day down at the Eastern End, it would be all over. I would be a good wife and not think of him again.”

Her voice held an ironical little smile. “I was doing all right until the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor. And he came down that night to say he was going to enlist. . . . So now you know all about me, Joanna.”

“Not all,” said Joanna. “I don't know what you're going to do next. What do you
want
to do? Tell Mark and Stevie?”

“No,” said Helmi instantly. “I never intended to tell them. Stevie would be embarrassed. He would feel awful, as if I'd made a fool of him.” She spoke tenderly. “He's so innocent, Joanna. He sees me as his sister. Imagine what he'd think if I told him all this. . . . And there's no sense in hurting Mark.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“Nothing.” Helmi shrugged. “Go back to the house. Be a good wife.”

Joanna gave way to an impulse and put her arm around the girl's rigid shoulders. “Helmi, I'm sorry. Believe me. It's hell to love anybody like that, and never be able to tell him.”

“Every time I see you with Nils, it's a double hell for me,” Helmi answered with a quiet bitterness. “Because you can tell him you love him whenever you please, and you can see it in his eyes, what he thinks of you. When you tell him, you get an answer. Joanna, a woman like you is the richest woman in the world.”

“No.”
Joanna's lips formed the word, but she caught herself before she said it aloud. Helmi, after stabbing herself, must turn and stab her. Only she didn't know what she was doing. . . .

All Joanna could think of was to move. She began to walk down through the orchard, keeping her arm around Helmi's shoulders. She was so cold she thought she would never be warm again.

“How can you keep apart so long?” Helmi asked her, wonderingly. “How can he let his uncle's boat keep him away from you? Joanna, I would go in tomorrow and go up to Camden, and walk into that boatshop and say, ‘I love you, Nils.' Like that.” Her voice was shaking. “Just to remind me that I could say it whenever I wanted to.”

“Helmi, don't talk like that, or you'll be crying again, before we get back to the house. . . . And I don't think we'll go to Nora's tonight.”

“I'm through talking,” said Helmi. “And I will never hurt Mark. I promise you that.”

They walked under the great spruces with the stars perched on the ends of the boughs, and found the slanting path across the meadow. Their feet made a swift, crisp sound on the frozen earth. They didn't stop or speak until they were just below the house, so near that it began to look like a house instead of a long dark blot against the sky; they could see a faint starshine on the white clapboards, and hear one of the boys laughing in the kitchen, where lamplight streamed down the slope and touched their faces.

“You know, Joanna,” Helmi said diffidently, “it's a little easier now. Because I could say it aloud, I think. Now I have more courage.”

“I'm glad,” Joanna said, and that was all, because her throat was beginning to ache, the familiar tight throbbing that came from wanting suddenly to cry. But she reached for Helmi's cold hand and held it tight in her own the rest of the way to the house.

*   *   *

Stevie didn't want them all to go to Brigport with him to meet the mailboat. Owen would take him over in the
White Lady
, since Mark had to go early to haul. The good-byes were said in the kitchen, while outside the house a raw, brilliant day was boisterous with wind and sea, alive with color and a piercing cold. Mark and Helmi had come up, Ellen hadn't developed measles or chicken pox during the night, Owen was shaved and reasonably sober, and not too savage.

There was a moment when Mark and Helmi came in, when Joanna's eyes met Helmi's, but did not linger. There must be no trace or mention of last night—even though Joanna had slept in restless, dream-beset snatches after she'd gone to bed.

Everybody had a final cup of coffee with Stevie, and then it was time to go. Owen shrugged into his jacket, and tossed Stevie's to him. “Come on, Steve. Don't drag it out. You'll probably get stationed in Portsmouth and be home every two weeks.”

“Oh, that would be nice!” said Ellen. Stevie lifted his niece off the floor to hug her hard. “Don't forget my picture,” she reminded him.

“You bet I won't,” Stevie promised. He put on his jacket and zipped it up, looked around for his cap and gloves. Joanna held them out to him, and found herself caught tightly in his arms. “Behave yourself now, kid,” he said. “And if Nils wants to sign up, tell him to just mention my name. I'll probably be Chief Petty Officer in another month.”

Laughing, his thin dark face vivid with excitement, he kissed her soundly. Then, releasing her, he went to Helmi. “Here's my other sister,” he said, and before she could save herself he had her in his arms.

She held her head down, she put her hands against his chest to push. “Oh, kiss the guy!” said Mark impatiently. “He's in a hurry.”

The pain began again in Joanna's throat when she saw Stevie's brown fingers take Helmi's chin and tilt her head up so that her shining hair fell back from her lifted face. Her own muscles ached as Helmi's must have ached in that torturous effort to stand there, to keep from putting her arms around Stevie's neck and clinging to him as she had dreamed of doing.

It was only an instant—too quick an instant for Helmi's face to stop being a mask. Then Stevie kissed her with a brisk, unromantic, brotherly kiss, and let her go.

She said, “Best of luck, Stevie. And when Mark goes, can he mention your name, too?”

“You bet. Just say, ‘Hey, Steve Bennett sent me,' and they'll give him the works.”

At last he was gone, still smiling. The first one to go, but not the last. . . . Joanna watched from the window, as the three brothers went down to the harbor. When at last she turned back to the room, Helmi was tying her kerchief under her chin.

“Don't hurry,” Joanna said.

Helmi shook her head. “I want to do some housecleaning,” she explained gravely.

Ellen said wistfully, “Can't you tell me another story about when you were little, before you go?”

It was Joanna who answered her. “Helmi hasn't time today, dear.”

“After today,” said Helmi, “I will have plenty of time.” She smiled at Ellen quickly, and went out.

E
LLEN LAPSED INTO HER THOUGHTFUL MOOD
as soon as the excitement died down; and Joanna, watching the child wander through the rooms like a disconsolate little ghost, felt chilled and sad herself. But she didn't show it, nor did she hector Ellen with questions. Besides, there was no need to ask. She had asked her last night, and been satisfied that Ellen hated to have Stevie go away.

She left Ellen by herself in the sitting room, kneeling in a chair pulled up to the harbor-side windows; elbows on the sill, chin in her hands, Ellen gazed steadily down across the meadow to the shore, where the
Elaine
rested in her cradle. In mid-harbor the
Donna
lay restlessly at her mooring, her masts bobbing against the sky.

Joanna fixed two of Ellen's favorite dishes for dinner. Neither one, and more particularly the creamed toast brightened with slices of hard­cooked egg, filled her with enthusiasm; but this concoction, with chocolate custard for dessert, never failed to cause an ecstatic excitement in Ellen. She had it rarely, because it was not a meal to serve when the men were home. Sometimes food worked miracles; perhaps by the time Ellen leaned back, pink-cheeked and replete, from her first custard, she would already be over the worst part of missing Stevie, and would be looking forward to receiving his first letter, and his picture.

Joanna set the table with a bright cloth and napkins, and the flowered dishes the other women in the sardine factory had given her when she married Nils. Ellen loved those dishes. Joanna used them seldom. Though she had been touched by the gesture, she didn't like to think back too often to the five years when she'd worked in the sardine factory at Pruitt's Harbor, making a living for herself and Ellen; she'd begrudged every moment of those years, for they had kept her away from the Island. Then Nils had come home; and because of that, she had come home too. . . .

Nils made it possible for me to come back
, she thought, as she laid the plates for her and Ellen.
Now I'm here and he's gone
. The sound of it was wrong. But it was like the storm that blew up after they'd bought Grant's point; she'd had that foolish sense of guilt, and there was no need of it. There was no need of guilt now. She called Ellen to dinner, her voice crisper than she meant it to be.

Ellen didn't answer, and Joanna went to the doorway of the sitting room. Ellen still knelt like a small statue in the chair. She didn't turn her head toward her mother.

“What are you looking at, dear?” Joanna asked her finally.

“I was watching for Owen,” Ellen said.

“He won't be home for dinner, Ellen. It's just you and I today. Owen was going to haul as soon as the mailboat left.”

Ellen looked over her shoulder at Joanna. Her narrow-boned face seemed smaller and paler than ever, and Joanna wanted all at once to sit down and rock her and sing to her, as she'd done when Ellen was a baby. But Ellen was almost nine now; and besides, she had her own young dignity.

“If somebody was on the mailboat to come over here, Owen would bring them, wouldn't he?”

“I suppose so”, said Joanna. “But then Owen would have been back long ago. Come to dinner, Ellen. It's special.”

Ellen got out of the chair slowly, rubbing her cramped and reddened knees. “I thought maybe Nils would come today,” she said. She walked by Joanna into the kitchen; and Joanna, looking after the slight straight figure with the blonde braids, had the bewildering and painful sensation that Ellen was more Nils' daughter than hers.

Ellen put her apron on over her brief pleated skirt and white blouse, washed her hands, and slid into her chair. “That's nice,” she said politely, as Joanna set her steaming plate before her. “But I don't feel like eating any dinner, Mother.”

“But you always like this, darling!” Joanna said. “Is your throat sore? Do you feel sick?” Then, before the sheer despair in Ellen's colorless face, her heart quailed. “Ellen, what is it?”

“I'm not going back to Brigport,” Ellen said, “till Nils comes home . . . and maybe not then.”

Joanna sat down in the low rocker. “Come here, Ellen,” she said. The child came to her, her young composure broken. Her lips were beginning to quiver. Joanna pulled her gently into her lap and began to rock, slowly. “Now tell me, Ellen,” she commanded, keeping her voice easy and sure of itself, though inside she was trembling.

She knew too well why Ellen didn't want to go back. It didn't take gossip long to reach the schoolyard. Something had been said about Nils' staying away so long; some cruel jibe flung at Ellen—God alone knew what those older children could say and do. Joanna had been a little girl once herself; she had come home just as bewildered and afraid, trying hard to tell what bothered her, yet sensing that there was something shameful and bad about the remark that had been made, the word written out in the sandy schoolyard and erased quickly as the teacher approached.