Barry brought a lamp into her room and woke her. She surfaced out of a hot, muffling blackness and put her arms over her eyes. “Go away,” she said. There were curious sounds in the room with him, rattlings and thumpings. “What’s that?” she asked thickly from under her folded arms.
“It’s the storm. It’s backlashed, coming north now, straight into the harbor like all hell’s broke loose. Come on, get up.”
“What for? The house washing away?”
“They’re coming to watch the boats from here. In case one starts ashore.” He tried to pull her arms away from her head, half-laughing, half-exasperated. “Get up, will ye? Make us up a big pot of coffee and some sandwiches. It’s only nine o’clock. Owen’s coming down and Willy’s bringing Gina with him, if they don’t get blowed away coming around the harbor. She’s scairt to stay alone.”
“Over here?” She sat up and glared at him. “What’d you have to invite her for? Why can’t they go and watch at Campions’? Terence has to keep an eye out for his boat, doesn’t he?”
“For Christ’s sake, they got three sick kids over there, Now are you getting up and acting like a normal human being, or aren’t you?”
“You mean I’ve got a choice?”
The lamp threw his shadow over the slanting ceiling with an impressiveness he never had. “Come on. You don’t have to talk to her, you can work on those trapheads. But if you don’t come down it’ll look funny.”
“Say I’m getting the chicken pox too. No, bubonic plague.” Ignoring that remark he said excitedly, “Owen ought to be showing up pretty soon. That boat of his is doing some fancy larruping around on her mooring, and she’s some heavy son of a bitch. If she comes down on me and Willy, that’s it, period. We’re likely all three to come ashore and break up.”
“What good does it do to watch?” Seal Point’s harbor had been almost completely sheltered and a man could get to his boat very easily in any kind of storm. What did Barry think they could do in this gale?
“We’ve got a big seine dory with an outboard tied up alongside the wharf here. When you see a boat coming ashore or moving down on another one, the thing is to get a man aboard her to start up the engine and get her on the lee side of a wharf. If the engine starts, that is,” he added jauntily. He ran downstairs whistling. Barry never became gloomy or apprehensive about an emergency with boats and salt water; it was the one field in which she could quite objectively admire him.
She sat there a moment looking at the dark doorway, listening to him downstairs. A new gust shook the house and rain beat like hail against the windows. The lamplight flickered and Barry’s whistle was drowned out. Then she remembered that Owen was coming, and she was frightened. She didn’t know how she could sit in the same room with him and Barry. The cove would be there in the room with them. Everything. She touched the back of her neck, trying to remember if it was the maimed hand that had taken hold of her there.
Finally she got up and into fresh slacks and a clean blouse, brushing her hair but not bothering with lipstick. When she went downstairs Barry was in the darkened sun parlor, flashing his five-cell torch out at the moorings. She measured coffee into a pot and added water. He came out into the kitchen grinning as if it were the start of a party. “Somebody’s buglight on the way. Must be Willy and his child bride.”
Gina, shucked out of boots and red rain clothes, wore another of her immense sweaters, lavender this time, with violet stretch pants. For once her hair was out of rollers. She gave Barry a languorous smile and Van an indifferent nod, then sat down at the table and laid out the contents of her handbag. She began to groom herself with the concentration, but not the tidy charm, of a cat. Vanessa, disliking hairbrushes on the table, watched coldly sidewise as she made sandwiches at the dresser. Willy, flushed with happy embarrassment under his acne, talked loudly with Barry about the storm and lobstering. Barry took on a mellow twinkle and called him “son” quite often, though they might have been only ten years apart in age.
Gina’s black hair was pushed with the brush into a different kind of tangle from the one she’d come in with; eyelashes were minutely scrutinized, and the long black lines drawn under the eyes were refreshed, the green iridescence on the lids renewed. Two lipsticks were used in a process which for Van had a certain repulsive fascination; they left Gina’s mouth much larger than life, so dark and thickly glistening she wondered how the girl could move her mouth to speak. After that powder was fluffed vigorously over the whole ensemble, also dusting the table, which Gina wiped off with a swipe of her arm. She picked up a small gold-colored vial, squeezed it, and scented herself heavily with a fragrance that reminded Van of rotting hyacinths. Everything done, she packed away her equipment, took out her cigarettes, and with a manner ineffably languid and cynical, lit a cigarette and sat gazing into space. If Barry glanced at her, a large smile flashed on with mechanical brightness, and a kind of twitch ran through her body as if by automatic impulse; it happened so often in just the same way, beginning with a toss of the head, a switch of the shoulders, a wriggle of her skinny seat, that each time Van was fascinated all over again. If Willy looked at her, which he did often, and said, “You all right, honey?” she sagged instantly into boredom.
Van suppressed for the time being the desire to scrub the table with hot suds. She sat down across from Gina and began to fill needles with nylon twine. “Have you ever been through a bad storm like this before? Out here, I mean?” she asked. There was the hike of a shoulder toward one ear, a lift of an eyebrow, smoke blown professionally from the nostrils.
“Oh, yeah,” Gina said in-differently. “But nothing ever happens.”
“Well, that’s a help.” What would Gina look like, scrubbed?
“Would be a help if that goddam boat really did come ashore and smash up.”
“Listen to her!” Willy erupted in a bray of nervous laughter. “She’s got a sense of humor,” he assured Van, but she saw the expression in his eyes. You young fool, she thought, you’re Barry all over again, though I wasn’t the rotten little trollop you’ve got.
Gina went on in a dead voice, touching the elaborate mass of hair with pearl-painted nails. “I’d like to see every boat in this harbor smash up tonight. We’d be off here tomorrow with me dancing a jig.”
“Kind of hard on the rest of us, aren’t you, dear?” Barry asked her. “Some of us like it. Some of us got a living to make, including your husband.”
“Him.” She slanted Willy a glance that turned him dark red, and he forgot to try for a laugh but looked abjectly at his feet. “He could do something else besides being a—” She flickered her thick lashes, and almost smiled. “He could maybe get on a dragger and make damn good pay.”
“What would you do, darlin’ mine, while he was on a trip?” Barry teased her. Willy’s hand lifted from his knee in a small futile gesture of protest.
“Oh, I’d make out,” she assured Barry. “I could get a job too. I could wait on tables anywhere.”
Not quite anywhere, Vap thought. Aloud she said, “If you hate it here so much why don’t you go ashore and work anyway?”
The sound might have been a laugh, but looking at the unchanged face one couldn’t be sure. Gina blew out more smoke and her eyes became glazed; her mouth dragged down into an expression of sulky idiocy.
“She wouldn’t want to live apart from me, Mrs. Barton,” Willy explained earnestly. “We married to be together, and even if she don’t think much of it, being a city girl, she knows this is where I can make a hell of a good living.”
“He makes a hell of a good arse-wiper, too,” said Gina. Barry laughed very loudly and thwacked Willy on the shoulder. The boy smiled feebly. Vanessa decided to scrub the table and then to go back to bed.
“Hey let’s set a game going here,” said Barry, jumping up. “Hey, Van, where’s the cards? We’ve got some, haven’t we?”
“In the table drawer,” said Van.
The door to the entry swung open and Owen stood there, needing room to get out of his streaming oilclothes. His face was red with rain and wind.
“Hey, Cap’n Owen, you’re drowning us!” Willy protested as a wet sleeve swung past him.
“You’re likely to be wetter than that before the night’s out. Hello, sweetheart. How’s the poor man’s Cleopatra?”
Gina giggled. “I haven’t found Mark Antony yet.”
“Everything’s all secure out front so far, Admiral,” said Barry.
“You’re just in time for some of the best coffee you ever doused a lip in.”
“Here, we can liven it up a dite.” Owen set a fifth of whiskey on the table in front of Gina, who giggled again.
“Oh, boy, this’ll be the best storm-watching I ever did!”
“Gina likes to pretend she’s tough and drinks a lot,” Willy explained. “She don’t really touch it, hardly.”
Gina made a raucous sound, and Barry laughed obligingly.
“You pouring, Admiral?” he asked Owen.
“You can do the honors.” Owen sat down at the table and began shuffling the cards. They flowed and snapped through his hands so that the missing fingers were not missed, and Willy said in admiration, “Gorry, anybody’d think you used to work in one of them big gambling houses.”
“They keep writing to me all the time from Vegas,” said Owen.
“Let’s see, Gina, Willy says you get just a sniff.” Barry gave her a twinkling smile, and she whooped.
“Willy says! Who cares what Willy says? I want a glow, and when you gotta glow you gotta glow.” She rocked with laughter. Barry poured out half a cheese-glass full. Willy, smiling desperately, said, “Make it last, honey. . . . Tastes better if you sip it real slow, don’t it, Barry?”
“I wouldn’t know.” Barry splashed liquor into another glass. “I’m a gulper myself. Here you be, Willy. Drink her down and join the human race.”
Owen went on laying out a game of solitaire. Van stood at one side. She had never felt quite as invisible in her own home, or whatever shelter passed for her own home. She had always been in control. Tonight she was here but not here. Owen hadn’t given her even a glance. Gina was blossoming nastily in the presence of the men, and Willy was so concentrated on her that Van wondered why the others couldn’t feel the agony of that concentration. Barry had got drunk with the occasion even before the whiskey had been poured. From now on he would become progressively profane and salacious. He might be sorry for Willy, but that wouldn’t keep him from entering into a duel of juvenile double-meanings with Gina. He was too stupid to realize that Owen was already bored with them all.
Is it insane to hide in a book from this? she thought. If she could move quietly now toward the stairs, they’d never miss her. But as she turned her head hungrily toward the dark corner Barry slammed down his glass and shouted, “Hey, how about getting the grub out? We’re about to have us a little poker game. I’m leaving it to Gina to decide whether it’ll be draw, stud, or strip.”
“When I’ve had a few more drinks I won’t care,” said Gina.
“Gorry, here!” He tipped more into her glass. Willy got up, almost knocking over his chair.
“I’ll take a look at the boats,” he mumbled and went into the other room, cracking one elbow against a door casing on the way. Gina leaned her head against Barry’s arm. Her giggle had now become a gurgle.
“Say when,” Barry commanded, and she breathed, “Any time.”
“Don’t you know I never tamper with married women?”
“Think of all that experience lost to the world.” Gina rubbed her face along his sleeve. All that goddam makeup wiping off, Vanessa thought, and me washing by hand.
“Ayuh, ain’t it fierce?” said Barry. “But I don’t mind you working on me. You might just weaken my good resolutions.”
“Here’s your cards.” Owen slung the pack across the table, and they slithered and spread out. Gathering them up, Barry said, “You playing, Cap’n?”
“I’m not much of a card player.” He tilted back in his chair and looked restlessly around the kitchen; his gaze skipped Van, whose face began to burn. Willy came out, blinking and forlorn. He sat down without speaking and stared at his knobby hands.
“Come on, son,” Barry said with a benign twinkle. He began to shuffle the cards. Owen swung his chair around till the lamplight came from the side, picked up a magazine, and began to read. Gina maneuvered her chair until she was elbowing the back of Owen’s and cozily leaning her head toward his.
Van got out a plate for the sandwiches of canned luncheon meat and relish, put out mugs for the coffee, and sat down to knit from a cuphook screwed into the edge of the dresser. The scene around the table lacerated her nerves, and yet she could not bear to go away from the oblivious black head. . . . He could at least look in my direction once, it’s his trapheads ruining my hands. . . . Choosy, is he? The bouquet from that one should be strangling him. I don’t think her hair’s been washed since she was born. I wish all their damn boats would come ashore at once. Then you’d see some hopping and swearing. And I’d sit here and laugh. I’d laugh myself sick and I’d never stop. That’s what Gina said. Sisters under the skin. What a nauseating thought. . . . She drove the needle hard through the loop and gave a vicious pull. A good bit of nylon around the neck and twisted just right would get rid of that giggle. Gigglotomy. And that Willy. He makes me want to puke too. The pair of them.
“Tell me what to do,” Gina commanded, waving her cards around in front of Owen’s face.
“Well, good God, get ’em off the end of my nose.” He turned in his chair, hooked one arm over the back of it, and studied her cards, then touched one. “Play that.”
She hunched up a shoulder and moaned, “Ooh, your breath is warm. Makes me feel all funny.”
Willy put down his cards, pushed back from the table, and stumbled out through the entry. Barry looked around, and Owen said, “He’s sick.”
“I better go see,” said Barry, getting up.
“Oh, let him heave and get it over with,” Gina said gaily. “He’s not used to drinking. He’s an awful baby. I don’t know what I married such a green kid for. I coulda had an older man.” She gave Owen an oblique glance from under heavy green eyelids. “I go for older men, you know?”
“Is that so?” Owen grinned at her. “I wonder why.”
“Experience,” she breathed. “They know how to give a girl a good time, you know?”
“Well, it takes two to tango,” said Barry, and doubled over the back of his chair in appreciation of his wit. I might join Willy in the back yard and we could vomit together, Van thought. Outside Willy yelled something, and then came crashing in, spattered with rain.
“Hey, they’re tearing around Foss’s wharf! Looks like a boat’s ashore!”
Barry seized his big light and ran into the other room. “Ours are all okay!” he shouted back. Owen was already hauling on his rubber boots and Willy was scrabbling around for his in the entry Barry got his from behind the stove. Owen moved the fastest. Without stopping for oilpants he took his oiljacket and went out pulling it on. The others slammed out behind him, and when they were gone the kitchen was still full of them; it vibrated with the urgency and confusion of their departure. Gina, who had stared at it all without expression, threw down her cards and said in a flat voice, “Well, how do you like that? And it’s not even one of their boats.”
“You ought to know how fishermen operate,” said Van. She began to clear the table of glasses and the remaining sandwiches, then gathered up the cards.
“Yeah, I know how they operate,” said Gina. “These Bennett’s Island bastards.” Then she giggled. “Hey, that was some poker game. I was doing good, in more ways than one. Boy, I didn’t know anybody could have so much fun out here. That Owen’s right ready for it, isn’t he?”
“Ready for what?” Van asked, neatly squaring the pack.
“You know. You been watching him. Well, I suppose he’s getting to the age. They start liking ’em younger and younger, kind of works them up more, you know? Now Willy,” she went on complacently, “he’s always ready. He don’t need any working up. It’s because he’s young,” she explained.
I must tell Owen all this, Van thought. He should know that he’s just a lecherous old man. She leaned against the sink, shuddering with the attempt to control her laughter, then overcome by it she reached for a towel to wipe her streaming eyes, and then was shaken by new convulsions.
“Hey, what’s so funny?” Gina demanded angrily. “Me? Well, let me tell you, your own husband’s just as horny, and—Hey, are you all right? I mean, are you having high strikes or something.” The vicious edge had given way to the shrillness of fright. “Maybe I better go get Barry—” She was halfway to the door.
“No, don’t go, I’m all right,” Van assured her. Still gasping, she pumped cold cistern water into the basin and splashed it several times over her face. “It’s something I can’t share, but I wasn’t laughing at you,” she said through the sloshing. She straightened up and dried her face.
“You scared me,” Gina accused her. “I’ve heard people go off their heads like that and they ended up in Bangor.”
Vanessa thought of telling her she’d already been in Bangor for committing a gigglotomy with a carving knife, but it was too much work. She lit a cigarette, supported one elbow in the other hand, and gazed placidly at Gina, who began to fidget. Suddenly her small claw sized the huge handbag and groped for the compact, in whose mirror she gazed at her reflection with the concentration of a scientist cooking up a miracle mixture. Then, as if she had found the reassurance she needed, she put the compact away and said, “It sounds like it’s slacking off. I guess I’ll go see what they’re doing and then go home.”
Van watched her getting into her red rainclothes. She was frankly in a hurry now. . . . I suppose it’ll be all over the place tomorrow that I acted like a crazy woman, or that I am a crazy woman. . . . But it didn’t matter any more.