She could hardly believe the happiness in which she awoke these mornings. She seemed to be budding like the lilacs, taking on a sheen like the new grass, a warmth like the spring sun. She realized that Barry was basking in it but it didn’t matter. She felt splendidly kind toward him and took a special pleasure in getting the meals ready and keeping the house neat. Sometimes she felt almost breathless with excitement when she opened her eyes in the morning, hearing the song sparrow that sang always from the fishhouse roof, because she did not know what the day held. But she was confident of its joyous surprises. This was the way fortunate children woke up, she knew, but she was experiencing it for the first time in her life. When she was alone in the house she hugged herself for her good luck in being born new when she was old enough to appreciate it.
She was glad Owen didn’t keep his boat in the harbor, because she would have been wanting to be up early enough to see or at least hear White Lady going, and she might not have been able to hide that from Barry. As it was, she never looked for a glimpse of him before mid-afternoon, when he would be in the harbor to sell his lobsters, and so she was sustained all day with this warm bubbling current. A glimpse was enough for now. Paradoxically it would not be enough to meet, to nod, and to keep her eyes blank.
“It’s going to storm,” Barry said one morning.
“Is it?” she said cheerfully. From the window over the sink, if you moved to the right angle, you could see Owen’s house against black woods and smoky red sunrise. But if he wasn’t in, it didn’t exist. The wife and children were everybody else’s fantasies, not his, not hers.
“Southwesterly,” Barry gloomed. “I hope to God we don’t lose those traps out on the Barn Ground. Of course Phil’s got five hundred more on the bank, but all those new nylon heads and warps. . . . We could lose in a day as much as I used to make in a year fubbing around.” He shoved back his chair. “Oh well, get moving, Barry. This won’t buy shoes for the baby nor pay for the ones he’s wearing.”
She stopped looking out the window and went back to folding his sandwiches in waxed paper. He came up behind her and put his arms around her, and nuzzled the nape of her neck. “Hey, damned if I don’t like it after all. Short hair, I mean. Speaking of babies—” He stopped and waited.
For an instant a hideous cold chilled her, and then she thought, I’m free from that now. “Don’t rush me, Barry,” she murmured.
“But you look so damn good these days.” He pushed harder against her, his fingers crawled up her ribs. “God, I feel like a young rooster.”
“What do they say to the last man out around here?” she asked. He chuckled in her neck. “Same as they say to the one who always wants a nap after dinner. I’d be proud. They’d be some envious now, I can tell ye.”
“Well, I don’t intend to give you a chance to grin like a Chessy cat this morning. Your lunch is ready, and if it’s going to blow you’d better get to work before it gets here.”
“You’re like all the women, got your eye on the almighty dollar.” But she knew how he’d brag when he got to the beach, muttering profanely that the wife wouldn’t give him anything this morning, that she’d kicked him out of bed and said, “Get to work, you leechous old bastard.” And when someone laughed at that, he’d be set up for the day.
She went to work on her ironing when he had gone, had finished, and was sitting down by the harbor windows with a fresh cup of coffee when there was a soft knock at the back door. The threat of interference clawed at her, and then she remembered she was free now, and got up to answer. At least with that timid knock it couldn’t be Kathy, whose signal was as uninhibited as she was.
The child had velvety black eyes, and round cheeks red with embarrassment. Her basket held turfs pierced by the new tips of lily of the valley. “I’m Holly Bennett. Mama sent these. Aunt Jo said you liked them, and we have millions.” The little smile was enough like her father’s to hit Van in the stomach. And Aunt Jo could mind her own damn business.
“Thank you,” said Vanessa. “I’ll find something to put them in, so you can take the basket.” You did not insult a child, even a fortunate one. “Or will it make you late for school to wait a minute?”
“No, we come early with Mama.”
“That’s right, she’s the teacher.” She set the turfs in a cardboard carton in the entry. “It must be strange to go to school to your own mother.”
It must be strange to know your own mother.
“Well, we’re used to it,” Holly said. “We’re just like all the other kids. We can’t call her Mama in school.” She was more confident now. “A lot of the kids call her Laurie outside, but they have to call her Mrs. Bennett in school. It seems funny for us to say that, so we just don’t call her anything.” She had a soft chuckle. Turning to hand her the basket, Van was surprised by the resemblance again, and its dull blow. “How old are you?” she asked.
“Twelve.” The coaly black hair grew in a drake’s tail down her neck. She jumped nearly with both feet together onto the walk. “Cindy Campion’s got chicken pox this morning!” she called back. “I bet everybody’ll get it now and we’ll have some more vacation!”
“I hope so,” Van said, marveling that she should sound so ordinary. She went back into the kitchen, feeling a dragging tiredness that slanted into nausea. For four days she’d protected her new splendor, and now it was dying, struck down by a child at the door, a handful of lily of the valley, a black-eyed smile. She looked around the kitchen as if she had never seen it before and didn’t know how she’d got into it. Twelve years ago the woman was delivered of his child. Nine months before that they’d conceived it. She couldn’t endure the picture and bit at a knuckle until the pain startled her. Twelve years ago she’d married Barry because there was nothing else for her to do. “And he was here,” she whispered in the empty kitchen. “All the time he was here but I didn’t know it. And he married her not knowing about me. Oh, damn, damn, damn!” she shouted suddenly. The tears began to run down her face. “Why did it have to be? Why couldn’t it just once be for me? All those rotten filthy despicable years, and I knew there was something else, there had to be, but where?”
Her howl hung in the air. She was as startled as if someone else had shrieked. She looked quickly outdoors to see if anyone could have heard, but the mild cloudy morning was empty except for the birds. The boats were all gone. Trembling as if she’d almost been caught committing a crime, she locked back and front doors and tried to restore herself. “No, you are not insane,” she said between deep breaths. “Anybody can shriek in frustration. It’s the same as swearing. It makes you feel better. You feel better, don’t you? Don’t you?”
She didn’t. The wasteland of the lost twelve years surrounded her. She went upstairs and crawled into bed, covering her ears against the insistent song sparrow.
She didn’t go to sleep after all, and imperceptibly the sense of shock and outrage died down. The sound of wild geese, like dog barking in the distance, got her up; it had always excited her. With her head out the window she was lucky enough to see the long V fly low over the island under the thickening clouds. Exhilaration replaced depression; the geese had been like a sign to her. V for Victory, she thought jauntily, and went downstairs to have the coffee that Holly Bennett had interrupted. After all, the twelve years hadn’t been a lifetime. She didn’t have to dwell on them; she was freed from all that because The Day had come.
By mid-afternoon the wind was blowing hard and boats were beginning to come in ahead of the storm. She went out into the damp blustery air smoky with spray, and odorous with churning rockweed. Children seemed to be everywhere, wild as cats in the wind. Women were out too, skirts whipped in the gusts, and the men were picking up loose gear around their fishhouses. On her way to the store Van met Maggie and Rob Dinsmore; Rob’s hand was heavily bandaged. Mag gave Van her happy small-boy grin. “I was just going over to your house. We want you and Barry to come to supper Saturday night. The kids talk about you all the time, after the way you took hold that day.”
“Ayuh,” Rob said in his slow mild voice. “We’re much obliged. That was some doin’s that day as near as I can remember.”
“He can’t remember it all, ain’t that funny?” Mag said. “But maybe it’s a blessing. I’ll never forget it,” she said militantly. “I might’s well be honest, I didn’t want to come back! I figgered it was a warning, what with my dreams and all. But Rob he never said a word, just lay there and stared at me like Diane while I carried on.”
“To tell you the truth,” Rob said, “while she was carrying on so, I was thinking I was all done anyway.”
“Then Owen called up. Ain’t it strange,” Maggie demanded reverently, “that it’s the same as what happened to him, only in a different way, and Rob works for him? And he said, ‘You tell that man of yours it didn’t do me in, and it needn’t do him in unless he’s so minded. So he’s still working for me, and I’ll get somebody to help out till he can manage again.’”
“That’s Owen for ye,” said Rob.
That’s Owen, said Vanessa behind her smiling nod. That’s pure Bennett doctrine. Grapple them to your heart with hoops of steel or something. A kind word and they worship you for life. They’re all like Barry, seeking salvation from bum hood and ready to grovel. Owen. The word scalded where it touched.
“I’d better get my shopping done before it rains,” she said.
“But what about supper?” Mag put her hand on her arm. Van started to stiffen, but controlled it and kept on smiling.
“Baked beans,” Maggie urged. “Barry says he’s crazy about ’em.”
“Yes, he is. All right,” she heard herself saying. “Saturday night.” Incredibly she was adding, “It will be nice.”
Maggie squeezed her arm with both hands. “Won’t it!” Rob smiled gravely. He did look like Diane, his round eyes were ridiculously fringed. She walked away carrying the image with her, as of some odd flowering plant with twin blossoms.
In the store she had to wait until Mark finished telephoning an order for trap stock and nylon twine. The only other Bennett there was Charles, who didn’t share the family compulsion to make conversation. Feeling amiable and relaxed, she listened to the thud and slosh of water under the floor, and decided to give Barry one of his favorite suppers tonight; fritters, bacon, and applesauce.
She was almost back to the house before she realized that her side of the harbor looked strange; something was either out of place or intruding. A boat lay where there had been none before—White Lady, using the empty mooring that lay beyond Barry’s and Willy’s smaller boats. She looked as big as a yacht. Van was unreasonably excited to see her there, as if there must be some profoundly significant reason for it. She walked faster, not able to shake the conviction that she was on her way to a meeting with him, though she kept telling herself there was no sense to it and that she was behaving like a love-sick fifteen-year-old.
When she passed Terence Campion’s, Kathy came out on the porch. “Hi! I’ve got one popped out with chicken pox and two to go. They’re miserable, poor peanuts.”
“What’s that doing here?” Van gestured toward White Lady.
“Schoolhouse Cove’s a mess in a storm like this, so he always brings her around to the harbor.”
“Oh. I’m sorry about the kids,” she added. “Anything I can do?”
“Just pray for them to break out tonight. So long!” She went back inside. Van felt cheated and forlorn. So it was nothing out of the ordinary after all. But still, if she hadn’t stood there being so damned sweet to the Dinsmores and if she hadn’t had to wait in the store, she would have seen him when he rowed ashore from the mooring; there was the strange skiff tied up next to Barry’s in the lee of the wharf. He might have come into the house, saying he wanted to check on the knitting, using that for an excuse. And she hadn’t been there. . . . She was dreadfully tired.