Compass Rose Part 22

Even Elsie had seen it was a preposterous idea but so Eddie-like that she'd started laughing, too.

And there it stood now, looking as if it had always been there, unmarked by the effort, not even a streak on the mirror, since Walt had wiped it with the hem of his T-s.h.i.+rt, a surprising delicacy after all the heave-ho.

Elsie began to feel better, as if reliving the men's heavy lifting was the exercise that she'd needed. She unfolded the doubled-up bare mattress on the cot and stretched out. The women she'd been snarling at were dwindling, as remote as the waif from County Clare, as the grade-grubbing prize girl, and soon they were no more than dust motes pa.s.sing through the bar of light.

She woke up. The sunbeam had moved just enough to be bouncing off the mirror, dit-dit-dah-dit. But the blinking seemed to be making a puttering noise. She rubbed her eyes. It was a motorcycle idling. She got up, combed her hair with her fingers, and looked at herself in the mirror. She raised the window. Walt waved and yelled, "I figured it was you." He killed the engine and said, "I saw you riding your bike. Thought you were Deirdre. Lucky it's you. I can't find the key. I left some beer and lunch meat in the fridge. I thought the lunch meat might go bad."

"I've got the key. Shall I toss it down?"

"No, don't do that. It'll get lost in the ivy or you'll ding my bike."

"Okay, I'll come down."

"Or you could let down your hair."

She was at a loss for an instant. She knelt on the window seat and raised the screen, as if the screen made it harder to hear. "What?"

"Let down your hair. Like in that fairy tale."

It wasn't that she hadn't heard him. "Yes," she said. "Rapunzel." She leaned out and lifted one of her short curls with her fingertips. "I think you've got the wrong girl." He went back to his motorcycle. She called out, "For all you know I might be the wicked witch." He didn't say anything-had she been too obviously fis.h.i.+ng for a compliment? He hung his helmet on the handlebar. All right, he was going to stay around.

"Tell you what," he said. "You could open up that window seat, and we could test that escape ladder."

"You want me to climb down?"

"Or I could climb up."

She opened the lid of the window seat. She began to lower the chain-link ladder over the stone sill, letting the links slide through her hands. When it was halfway down she grabbed a rung and held it. She felt the ladder sway. She let the rung slide from her palm to her fingertips, then let it fall. She stepped back and watched. The chains grew taut as they took Walt's full weight. As he climbed, the top links scratched the stone sill, scribbling white marks, lines and arcs of a hieroglyph easy enough to decipher.

chapter sixty-four.

Mary missed JB terribly as soon as he went back to Boston. She regretted whatever bad moods she'd let him see. She feared he'd come to his senses as soon as he got to the big city. He said he'd be back as soon as he could. G.o.d knows she'd heard that before, though not lately. A part of her was loopy as a teenager, but another part administered a slow drip of wryness. So her fingers trembled when she got a letter from him care of Sawtooth, but she wasn't undone when it wasn't a love letter.

Dear Mary, you never answer your d.a.m.n phone. You're the only person I know who doesn't have an answering machine. So call me. Best time would be next Sunday after you get through with the Sawtooth brunch.

He didn't pick up the phone right away-in fact the message on his answering service was well under way when his real voice cut in. He said, "Wait a second, we'll have to wait," while his recorded voice was saying, "... to send a fax, or leave your name and number after the beep." "Okay. Mary, are you there? It'll record for a bit, then click off. Sorry, I've been right by the phone, you just caught me the one minute I was in the can. Wait. I'll turn the TV off."

Not sweeping her off her feet.

"Okay. Here we are. Look, something's come up. Don't know where to begin. Do you know Tory Hazard?"

"I know who she is. So how have you been?"

"Yes, you're right. How are you? You sound great. I can't wait to see you. What day is today? Oh yeah, of course it's Sunday. Are you still at Sawtooth? At your place?"

"I just got home. Is something wrong?"

"No, no, could be good. I can be there in two hours. Would that be okay? Sunday traffic's all the other way, could be an hour and a half."

Mary thought this might well be what she wanted but that he needed a few pointers on presentation.

He said, "What time is it? Not three yet. So it'll still be light."

Their first three days had been a tumble of energy, and then, after she got over her Monday-morning snit of wanting to be alone and he'd gone for a swim and come out with his teeth chattering, she'd taken him home, put a warm quilt over the two of them, and they lay there, good-humoredly chatting and dozing. A bit more poetry out of him, not his own, Yeats-" 'And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow ...' "-and he'd trailed off. Now here he was tumbling again.

"So when were you doing all this calling?" she said. "Maybe that's my fault-I shut the ringer off if I've worked late."

"Oh, all the time. Doesn't matter, here we are. So where were we? I'm all set. How are you?"

"Wait-what's this got to do with Tory Hazard? And why does it have to be daylight?"

"Will it drive you nuts if I hold off till I'm there? I'm listening to myself and I'm not doing it right."

He was at the door before she finished the Sunday paper-she'd read more thoroughly than usual. She'd brushed her hair and put on a dress as soon as she'd hung up the phone.

When they headed south on Route 1 she said, "We're not going to Sawtooth, are we? That's the last place-"

"Not quite."

He pulled into the driveway of the old Hazard place; the name was still on the RFD mailbox. He stopped between the barn and the small house. Years ago she'd been to Mr. Hazard's bookshop in Wakefield, never here, though the stone wall on the far side of the house marked the beginning of the Sawtooth property. He walked around the outside of the house, nodding to himself, turning to look at her with an expression on his face that left her even more puzzled. Eagerness and confusion?

He had the key. He let her go in first but then went into a trance in front of the full bookshelf in the main room.

He said, "She's pretty sure he'd just bulldoze this."

"Okay," Mary said. "Time's up."

He ran his hand through his hair. "I've known Tory for a while, not from way back, not from when her father was still alive. So I never met him, so I can't tell what she means when she says I remind her of her father."

Mary had seen Tory at Miss Perry's funeral. Haggard, attractive. Mary wondered for a moment, then was sure that he'd had an affair with her. An instinct and then an additional reason: women who have doted on their difficult fathers don't bring them up lightly. "Let's clear up the bulldozing," she said. "Just to start with something easy. You mean Jack Aldrich."

"Right."

"And he's made your Miss Hazard an offer."

"Right."

"But she'd rather sell to a rumpled old guy who loves books and reminds her of dear old da."

"Okay, close enough."

"But here, my dear Watson, is where the trail becomes more difficult to follow. One possibility is that you just want my expert advice as a former owner of South County real estate. That's too simple for all the fuss you're making. Another is that your old pal Tory Hazard wants to install you here with an eye to the pair of you starting up again. That would mean you're hopelessly obtuse in more ways than one."

"Jesus, Mary. I knew this wasn't going to be easy."

"And I'm ruling out your dropping to one knee and proposing to me. I'm certainly taken by your full head of lovely white hair and your spouting poetry, but neither of us is that headlong. At least I'm not."

"I'm glad you-"

"So what are we doing here?"

"What do you think of the place so far?"

"You should buy it. For all your talk about being immune to extraneous impulses, you're being smitten by an impulse. What does she want for it?"

"Two-thirds of what Jack Aldrich is offering. And my guess is he hasn't completely untied his purse strings. I would do it; I'd do it tomorrow."

Mary began to laugh. She said, "If I'll go in on it. Do I just guarantee your mortgage, or do I get to move in?"

"Move in."

"With you."

"With me."

"So we'll have a candlelit dinner tonight, throw ourselves into bed, and first thing Monday morning we'll seal our vows in front of a mortgage-loan officer at the Wakefield Trust."

"Are you making fun of the idea as a way of saying no, or are you making fun of the idea as a way of getting used to it?"

"Have all your affairs with women been on such firm financial grounds?"

"Not when I was younger. I was married for eleven years."

"Any children? Wait-don't tell me. We may need something to talk about during the long winter nights."

She was enjoying herself. She thought she should have been horrified, but she liked that he'd come unraveled. She also liked that there was no one she would ever tell this story to, however it turned out.

The sun had sunk low enough to be pouring though the west windows, raising the temperature and a stuffy smell. She went out to the back porch, where there was a light breeze, just enough to make the porch swing sway on its chains. She sat on it and began to push herself back and forth with one foot.

He came out and said, "Well, how would you have done it?" She laughed and shook her head. He sat down on the porch step and stared at the ground. He said, "I know what it is. It's money. I can't even talk about it. It makes me shy. And then that makes me go nuts."

"You're not broke, are you?"

"No. I have a brother who takes care of my money, the family money, such as it is. He's younger than I am, but he's a lawyer. I asked him if I could buy a house, and when I told him how much, he said I shouldn't aim so high."

"So you thought of me."

"No. I thought of you before. If he'd have said, 'Go ahead, you're rolling in dough,' I'd have laid it at your feet."

"Your brother-you get along with him?"

"Oh, yeah. There's no arguing with him, but he's the right man for the job. My sisters and I would have p.i.s.sed it all away. I would have invested in plays, none of which made a dime. I suppose I could have pressed a little, but aside from the fact that talking about money seems to puree my brain cells, I'd have felt bad poking at him after all he's done. He arranged college loans for my two daughters, for my sisters' kids, too. He does our taxes, does something smart about everyone's old age. Of course, he has a lawyer's mind-always thinking about what could go wrong."

"So how do you live? Do you teach? You sometimes sound like a teacher."

"Used to. I gave that up once I was through supporting a wife and two girls. Now I just scribble away; some of it makes lunch money. When things get tight something turns up-a book review, a theater review, someone wanting help with a script. I used to do advertising jingles, but I was walking down the hall at the end of a day and I pa.s.sed this guy's office. He was talking on the phone; he said, 'Hey, if you're stuck you can always call Callahan. He'll give it some fizz.' Then he laughed and said, 'And he works for peanuts.' p.i.s.sed me off. p.i.s.sed me off enough I jumped right over my neurosis about money. I sent in a bill for a thousand bucks. They paid it. That p.i.s.sed me off even more-made me think of all the times I'd got peanuts. p.i.s.sed me off so much I never went back. I thought, Well at least I'm over that neurotic tic about money. But it was just on vacation. When it occurred to me to send the check back, I couldn't find it. Turned out I'd cashed it. After a while it came back to me. I'd paid cash to get my car fixed. Okay, but what about the rest of the dough? Then the weather turned cold and I went to get my overcoat, and next to it was this other overcoat, this great big Irish tweed thing the size of a tent. The label said, 'As woven for the sporting princes in the days of Irish kings.' I mean, you don't fall for that sort of blather without remembering it. It was as if someone had slipped me a Mickey. It's worse when I have to deal with money and people I don't like. It's not as bad when I'm with guys I get along with. Like this musical with Rose-if that gets picked up, I'll make a few bucks out of it and I won't go haywire."

"You mean you didn't get paid anything up front?"

JB, who'd been perking up a little-though still looking at the backyard rather than at her-slumped. "That's just what my brother said."

Mary laughed. She tried to stop. She tried to stop because she doubted she could explain to him that she was laughing at herself, at how she'd been thinking of him as a font of knowledge, a master of the world and good fortune, and herself as girlish and unsteady. And here she was old enough to know a good thing was never as grand as it seemed at first.

"Anyway," he said. "That's why I mixed up everything and it came out ... half-baked? Raw? Would you say raw?"

"Underdone and overdone. But never mind all that now. We'll catch our breath and see where we are in the morning."

Wasn't this the way she'd been with men in the old days-feeling excitement, feeling herself the lesser, and then having to be Wendy for some oversized Peter Pan? She gave that game up in her mid-thirties. She'd thought she was old then. She felt younger now. Was that in spite of or because of her years with Rose and Elsie? Perhaps she wasn't feeling young at all, just weightless. The last thing she'd said to them, G.o.d help her, was that she'd bang their heads together. The words had flown out of her crazily, more in anguish than in anger-an explosion as inevitable as the bursting of a milkweed pod, each of them blown out and up in separate arcs. Only weeks ago, but it seemed it was on the other side of a break in time. But the cruelest trick of time was how it rushed you by the good parts. As soon as Rose had got so much of what Mary wished for her, became so like the girl Mary hoped she would be, all those wishes and hopes, having spent years in the future, gave off one spark in the present and pa.s.sed into memory. A minute ago she'd been laughing. It served her right. Yes, he'd been gruff and brusque, then b.u.mbling, and finally ending up flailing like a beetle on its back trying to get right side up. She'd poked him and laughed, fairly tortured him with her cross-examining.

She said, "Come on, then. Come sit on the swing with me. You'll be better off here than sitting down there staring at your shoes."

One thing he did nicely-he didn't push off too hard, just a brush of his foot in time with hers.

The sun sank low enough to take on its first stripe of red. The shadows of the stone wall and the scrub cedars grew longer.

This slowness was an unlooked-for relief. The time with Rose that had stung her near to grief was inside her-out there, time was moving more peacefully, a slow slip of the land through its veil of changing light.

Her first thought when she came to was that he had the sense to let her be.

chapter sixty-five.

When she was reduced to one word it was thorough.

He came through the window headfirst and pulled his body into the room, walking his hands along the floor. He ended up full-length at her feet. So far, it was her idea. She could laugh it all off. She could help him get up and see what happened when they put their hands on each other. She was pleased for the moment to turn the idea in her mind, register the flush of her skin against her second thoughts. But during the time he lay there without moving-perhaps only seconds-the room seemed to tilt toward him. He got to his feet and pulled the ladder up, carefully folding it into the window seat. He closed the lid, looked out the window. He said, "There's our bikes out front." He pulled the window down and said, "I guess that's okay."

So she was next. He held her shoulders, kissed the side of her neck, lifted her hair-all the preliminary attentions. When he kissed her, her mouth felt faraway. She was impressed by the way he unzipped the front of her bicycle suit and slid it down both her arms at once. When he moved his hands down her bare back and inside the suit, she clenched her b.u.t.tocks. That reflex of vanity was the only bit of response her mind provided. When she'd been the girl in the red dress her thoughts had woven through her, little strands of commentary that made her s.h.i.+ver as much as skin on skin. Now her mind was blank. She certainly felt this and that-she felt his unpeeling the suit down her legs. She may have lifted one foot and then the other. Another set of attentions and she felt herself divided into more zones-his hands on her rear keeping her upright, his mouth ranging up and down her front, and her own breath brus.h.i.+ng the roof of her mouth. Nothing on the screen of her mind, although she could tell that her hips were moving. And soon enough her breath was stuttering out of her, and then she was being tipped onto the bed. She felt her hand touch the bare mattress. For an instant the hand was distinctly hers. Then it disappeared from her mind as abruptly as it had appeared.

After he made her yelp he propped himself up on his hands and knees. She felt the air on her skin as one more touch urging her on. It was then that the word thorough occurred to her. He rolled to one side and lay still.

When he began to touch her again, her head felt heavy, but her skin tightened. She closed her eyes. Her brain felt stoned, but her body began to jitter again, a circuit of nerves humming in the dark.

This time, when she thought thorough, the word seemed coa.r.s.er.

The sun was almost down. She lay on her side along the edge of the narrow cot. She looked for her bicycle suit. In the dimness the red looked black. She stretched her arm out. She couldn't reach it. She didn't feel like moving. She let her hand rest on the floor. Her stomach growled. She put her hand on it and realized she had to pee. She went down the hall, feeling her way to the bathroom in the windowless dark. When she came back she put on her bicycle suit. She thought, Well that's that. It was a surprise to hear herself in her own mind. She thought that she'd never noticed the noises she made. She tried to remember the noises she used to make. She must have made noises, because one time someone had put his hand over her mouth. But now, as if there were an echo in this strange little room, she heard herself yip.

The late light from the sky filtered through the leaves of the copper beech. There were no shadows, just a steady half-darkness.