The Seasons Hereafter (3 page)

“Where's your other half?”

She shrugged.

“You mean he's not in yet? God, it's after eight and blowing like a man out there. You can't hear anything in this morgue, but it's keening around my window like a banshee.”

“Oh, he's been in,” she said vaguely. “After eight, you said?” She leaned past him to see the clock.

“It's a wonder you saw him.”

She got up and went to push the teakettle forward on the stove. She was ravenous now. She saw the fish on the dresser and remembered Barry's voice saying something about a haddock. She put it in the refrigerator and looked to see what she could eat right away. There was not much there besides eggs. Sometimes she had an urge to cook, to make hearty stews and meatloaves, and bake sweet things, but she hadn't had such an urge for a long time. Behind her Mooney said, “I suppose a bookworm's better than a rummy wife or a nympho. What's the matter, isn't he man enough for you, kid? You too scared to step out?”

He was close behind her and she hadn't heard him coming. She stood with the frying pan in one hand and two eggs in the other, tensed for the hand on hip or arm, but it didn't come.

“I thought you were getting him a job on a dragger,” she said quite naturally.

“I did. Didn't he tell you? No, he turned it down today. If that ain't some notional son of a bitch.”

“He turned it down?” She slammed the frying pan onto the stove. “Are you lying to me?”

“I am not.” He laughed and spread out his arms in a gesture of surrender. “So don't I get A for effort? A reward for my good intentions?”

“Sure,” she said with a cold little smile. “Brenda was looking hungrily at your room this afternoon. Next time I'll let her have it.”

“What've you got to be so snotty about?”

“Oh, get out,” she said in a bored tone.

He swung his arm up as if to strike her with the back of his hand, then called her a bloody bitch and went out of the kitchen. She locked the door behind him. Then she fried the eggs and ate them with bread and butter and coffee. She wanted to go on reading
Black Narcissus
, but she had been reached from the outside—the wound was too deep. Mooney had got the job for Barry, and Barry had slyly refused. If she'd known, when he came in with his eyes lit up as if he were a five-year-old just given a ride on a fire engine . . . Let him go, she thought in a fury. Straight out to the Promised Land and lick the Bennett boots, gurry and all. I don't need him. If I ever thought I did, I got over the notion within six months.

Now she abhorred the kitchen and took her book into the bedroom. The room smelled fresh and clean because she kept the windows open most of the day, but it was a jumble of everything—clothes heaped on chairs, the bureau top a solid clutter, candy papers and ashtrays everywhere, the floor littered with objects dropped and never picked up again. At Vanessa's side of the bed a chair was loaded with books and magazines. One day she would clean the room with such a passionate loathing of untidiness that even a wrinkle in the quilt could cause her acute pain, but until then she would be oblivious of the mess and move through it without seeing or disturbing it, like a cat.

She settled in bed to finish her book and start a new one. In June she would smell the lilies of the valley when she went to bed. She would begin to spend her days in the yard then, in the undersea light of the green grotto she'd made under the immense old trees and among the thick lilacs and syringas. Neither Barry nor Mooney existed in this leafy world, no one but Vanessa.
There was a woman named Vanessa, and nobody around her knew what she was or who she was; every single one of them saw her in a different light, and they all hated her because they could not break her down and make her into something they could understand. But she didn't care, she hardly knew they existed. She was waiting for The Day
.

Vanessa never let herself go any farther than this. It was a condition imposed upon herself at the age of twelve, when she had first realized that The Day was to come. She had made the rule then that she should never try to imagine what The Day would bring—she must never wonder or guess. She would recognize it when it came, or when she came to it.

Barry was sitting on the edge of the bed, heavy against her legs, and she was trying to hold up her eyelids and focus on him. In the lamplight she began to see that his face was red and he had been drinking. She was befuddled herself from deep sleep. His voice came fuzzily as if through layers of cloth over her ears.

Listen,” he said. “We're going out there, you hear me? I've been thinking all night.”

“Drinking and thinking,” she said. “That's a rhyme if you take it in time. Who do you think you're sweeping off their feet?”

“Don't like it, do ye?” he jeered. “You're supposed to do all the sweeping. Like when you told me we better get married quick. My mother wanted tests made but you convinced me that was an insult. No, it had to be done
your
way, because you knew damn' well there wasn't any baby, didn't you? And when I found that out, you went on with your little sweeping jobs so I wouldn't have time to think. Everybody told me you'd ruin me and I told 'em to go fly a kite, but now by God I believe 'em!”

“They threw you out, I didn't.” She yawned. “You could have gone back any time you wanted, as long as you left me behind. Why didn't you?”

“Because you were my wife. Because I still thought I was a goddam lucky bastard to get somebody with so much class.” He laughed and shook his head. “Goddam
foolish
bastard, some folks said. But I believe a man has a duty to his wife.”

“Consisting of what? Parking her in shacks while he digs clams or cuts pulpwood? We never had any real home till I got this place for us.”

Suddenly the fury went out of him and he became small and crumpled. “It's like I told you before,” he pleaded. “I know I haven't been much, I guess I wasn't much to begin with even if you thought so, and it knocked the guts out of me when the old man turned me out. But I've got this chance to take care of you the way I should've been doing all along, and make up to you for all the hard times.”

“Look,” she said patiently. “You go. I'm not stopping you. You start your new life, but I'm staying here.”

“How'll you live?”

“I've got my rents and I can get a job.”

He hooted. “Think you can hold it any longer than you held the others? You were always too damn good, remember? Low company in the sardine factory, stupid company in the stores, and a bunch of lechers in all the restaurants. Shorthand and typing bored hell out of you in high school, and I thought that showed how much spirit you had. I still like your spirit Van,” he said desperately. “Don't get me wrong! But it doesn't seem to do much for us, does it?”

“I suit me,” she said. “Go to bed, Barry. Or go somewhere. Just stop trying to change my mind.”

“You can knit twine like hell,” he argued, “and there's not many women want to do that nowadays. Out there you'd have all the trap-heads and baitbags you could handle, and make yourself a damn good penny.”

“Out there, out there,” she mocked him.

He leaned over her suddenly and tried to kiss her, and she drove him off with her hands against his chest. He held her wrists, but she turned her face away when he tried to rub his against it. “It's been like this for too long,” he muttered. “And it's been plain hell for me but I never thought you were saving it for somebody else. If you don't go with me now, that's what I'll think. You asked Mooney to get me that job, didn't you? What'd you promise him?”

“I promised him nothing! I wouldn't have his paws on me, or anybody else's! Now get out and leave me alone.”

He released her and stood up. For a moment he looked down at her, and then went around the foot of the bed and out of the room closing the door very quietly. She was surprised to find herself shaking. It had been a long time since anything so violent had arisen between them. She felt like shouting after him, I
will
get a job! I'll show you! But as she reached for her book she was able to comfort and calm herself by thinking, But I won't need to go to work and mix with those people, because he'll never go away from here without me. That was just the cheap liquor talking. Barry'd be afraid to do anything without me. He doesn't hate me; he just hates his dependence on me.

Pleased by her logic, she could almost believe that the violence never occurred, and she read until she fell asleep again.

S
he knew when she woke up that Barry hadn't been in bed all night. It wasn't the first time that he'd slept in damp blankets in the little cuddy of his boat; he'd come home with a streaming cold, and be sheepish and sorry. The sun was shining, and a strong wind tore at the tree tops and sent the slaty clouds bellying along. The restless brilliance of the day penetrated the house, and Vanessa was affected as cats and children are. Stimulated by the prospect of Barry's repentance, she felt a powerful urge to clean and cook. When he showed up she would have a proper meal ready, hot water for a bath, clean clothes. The Bennett's Island myth would have dissolved overnight, and would never be mentioned again.

She made a chowder with the haddock, and baked a custard pie. Then she began to tidy the bedroom. Its shabbiness offended her today, and she decided to take some of the saved-up rent money and buy paint and new curtains. As she filled a box with rubbish, the old-fashioned doorbell jangled in the kitchen, and she left off with annoyance; she wanted to work fast and hard until she was finished, she couldn't bear to be interrupted. In a rage she ran through the front hall and pulled open the front door. Mr. Burrage was on the doorstep.

Her rage went as they smiled at one another and exclaimed “Good morning!” Mentally she reviewed the house behind her; silence from Mooney's room, Brig long since stumbled out in search of breakfast, the roomers quiet upstairs. “Come into the kitchen,” she invited “You're just in time for a cup of coffee.” She hoped Barry wouldn't show up in the middle of the visit, looking as if he'd been dragged through a knot-hole.

“No coffee, Mrs. Barton,” the lawyer said as he followed her down the hall. “I can't stay long enough. . . . These old places smell, no matter how well you take care of them, don't they? But this was a great house in its day.”

“It still is for me,” said Vanessa. “It's still the most elegant house in Limerock. Won't you sit down?”

“Only for a moment.” He was graying and soldierly, with a shrewd youthful eye and a taste in clothes that always gave her pleasure and a sense of luxury. “Good Lord,” he exclaimed, “how do you stand this kitchen? “

She laughed. “I'm very fond of it. It has real charm. I was never in love with these modern kitchens, they look too cold and heartless.”

He seemed preoccupied as he offered her a cigarette and lit it. “How's your husband doing?”

“Pretty well. The lobsters are starting to come now. But better than that, he's got a chance to go out on one of the Universal Sea foods draggers.”

“Fine, fine! Nice chap, Barry.”

“How about a piece of fresh custard pie?” she asked.

“No, no, I couldn't.” With an air of having suddenly come to a decision, he crushed out his cigarette. “Mrs. Barton, I don't like the news I'm bringing, because I know how much you love this house But change comes to all of us, and you're young, so it's good for you, and necessary.”

She felt a sick shivering in her and couldn't control her facial muscles; she felt that her chin was shaking and her mouth loose as she faced him. “It's about the huh—huh—” She could not say
house
. She could only try, and hate him for his obvious pity as he took the word away from her.

“Yes, the house. The estate has sold this land and the parcel across the street. The house will be torn down, and new buildings put up, four-apartment houses. If you'd like, I'll give your name to the new owner so you can get one of the flats—they'll be moderate in rent.”

The kitchen was quiet, and yet his words seemed to come through a great deal of interference. “You have two weeks' notice,” he went on. “I wish it could be longer, but I heard about this only yesterday. The heirs conducted the business in Boston,” he said dryly. He stood up. “If I were you I'd waste no time getting settled somewhere else, at least until the new places are ready. It's not pleasant to see anything old knocked down—a tree, a house, or a man.” He touched her arm lightly. “I'll let myself out, and you'd better have that coffee.”

She was humiliated to think that she looked upset. “Oh, I was just thinking of my lodgers,” she said airily. She walked down the hall with him. “They'll survive, I imagine. They were getting to be a bother, anyway.”

She said goodbye like a hostess and went back to sit by the kitchen table, her knees drawn up and her body hunched over them as if to shelter a deep pain. She tried to think, but she could not. Wherever she looked she saw something to push her mind further into chaos. She was aware of a great formless fury, like a black cloud mass blotting out light and landscape, directed against the company of destroyers and murderers. Distantly she heard someone rap at the kitchen door. She didn't move, and heard footsteps going away, and a mutter of voices; Brenda going to work had just encountered Mooney on the way out, and they would walk up Water Street together, unaware.

She was still sitting there when Barry came in. He stood by the table looking down at her. “You sick?” he said finally.

“Cramps.”

“Oh.” He waited, and she gazed at his rubber boots. Now she felt neither kindness nor hatred for him. After a moment of silence he said politely, “Well, I don't like to bother you when you don't feel good, but I'm going out to Bennett's Island on the mail boat tomorrow. If you want to come along with me or on the next boat, I'll be pleased to have you. If you don't want to, I'm going anyway.”