“Saturday. If you’re free. Around seven o’clock. Nothing very elaborate of course.”
“Seven o’clock,” Avery said. “I think that’s fine. I’ll just check with Emma, of course, but that sounds fine.” They nodded to each other rather excessively until Avery walked away. “Thanks very much,” he added.
So there it was.
Isabelle barely looked up from her desk for the rest of the day.
ACROSS THE RIVER in Oyster Point the school was being made ready for a new year; the floors were waxed and buffed, the gymnasium floor especially glowed a honey gold; graffiti in the bathrooms had been scrubbed off, the walls repainted, a leaky faucet in the upstairs girls’ room fixed. The supply closet next to the teachers’ room in the basement was filled with boxes of brown folded paper towels, toilet paper, erasers, and chalk. Mrs. Eldridge, the school nurse, came in to go through her files and draw up her requisition list: alcohol, bandages, iodine; she put a plant on the windowsill.
There was a pleasantness to all of this: without the disarray of an anxious student body the building seemed to hold the promise of what it was meant to be, the benevolent center of learning run by capable adults. The principal, Puddy Mandel, worked steadily, rearranging lastminute kinks in the scheduling and being, his secretary reported to a lunchroom worker, nicer than he had been before.
The janitor, a man named Ed Gaines, who had worked for the Shirley Falls school system for twenty-eight years, stepped out the side north door for a moment to have a cigarette and saw a young girl walking past the school slowly. She turned her head frequently to gaze at the windows of a first-floor classroom. Ed Gaines recognized her at once, although she looked different. She was the girl he had seen leaving the building often with the Robertson man. (Here the janitor exhaled, shaking his head, flicking the ash from his cigarette.) He had seen plenty of things in this school over the years, but he kept his judgments to himself. He was a quiet, solitary man who preferred to believe the best about people, though perhaps because of this his presence was frequently discounted. Teachers, for some reason more than students, tended to ignore him, and he had often been privy to salacious, surprising remarks made to one another by members of the faculty. He had seen things as well: the biology teacher—a heavy, married man of fifty with thick glasses that enlarged and distorted the pupils of his eyes—had, on the stairwell one late afternoon, actually slipped the librarian’s woolen skirt clear up over her bottom when below them Ed Gaines had finally bumped his broom, scaring them like birds. (He graciously pretended not to see them as they fled.)
Yes, he had had time over the years to come to one conclusion: The behavior of human beings was a curious thing. Ed Gaines could not recall ever having seen that biology teacher laugh, for instance, and why the librarian, a pleasant woman with four children of her own, would allow, or even desire, this particular man’s hand to run itself over her ample thigh was, to Ed Gaines, a curious thing. There was no accounting for taste, his sister always said, and he could only think that she was right.
The girl had seen him. She ducked her head in embarrassment at having been watched. Ed Gaines thought she was shy—you could see it in the way she walked: pigeon-toed, with her long skinny legs and big bare feet. She glanced up again, as he knew she would, and he waved this time in a friendly, easy way.
She waved back, a slight, tentative raising of her hand, and then unexpectedly she turned and walked across the lawn to him.
“And how are you?” Ed Gaines said, while she was still some yards away.
She gave him a wan, apologetic smile; up close she looked quite different from how he remembered her.
“Got your hair cut,” he said, and seeing how she seemed to flinch at this, added, “Looks good, like a real grown-up lady.”
Her smile grew fuller, relaxed; she dropped her eyes. Kids, he thought—just wanted to be treated nice.
“Do you know where Mr. Robertson went?”
Ed Gaines nodded, dropping his cigarette onto the cement step and grinding it hard beneath his dark work boot. “Back to Massachusetts, I believe.” He kicked at the flattened cigarette butt, sending it sailing a good two feet across the weedy lawn. “He was in here just last week, cleaning some things out of his classroom.”
“Last week?”
Her look made him feel careful. “Believe it was last week I saw him about the place. He only had a year contract, you know, on account of Miss Dayble’s broken hip.”
“Oh, I know.” The girl spoke this in a murmur, looking down, turning away.
“Or was it her skull. Cracked her skull first, I guess, then broke her hip.” Ed Gaines shook his head with lingering wonder over this.
“But I thought he was already gone. He was in last week?” The girl turned back to him, her large eyes were just faintly red-rimmed.
It was making her feel bad, this news—maybe he ought to take it back. But it was not in the nature of Ed Gaines to lie, and so he said kindly, “You ask in the office and maybe they’ll give you his address if you want to send him a letter.”
She shook her head, looking down again. “It’s okay. Well,” waving her hand slightly, “see you around.”
“See you around. You enjoy your last days of summer now.” He watched her walk away.
ISABELLE WAS HAVING some doubts, of course. But she imagined herself in conversation with her cousin Cindy Rae, and Cindy Rae told Isabelle it was an excellent idea, inviting the Clarks to her house, that Isabelle had always been too shy, people responded to friendliness; frankly, Isabelle didn’t realize this, but shyness was often mistaken for unfriendliness, and maybe the women at church—including Emma Clark—had for these number of years thought Isabelle was snubbing them, instead of the other way around.
All this imagined advice Isabelle agreed with, was inspired by. Still, she had expected Emma Clark to call her on the telephone, to thank her in person for the invitation that Avery had relayed.
But never mind.
Avery, at least, was practically his old self at work, giving her every morning a cheerful wave, though he was busy catching up on things after his vacation and didn’t have time for long chats. But that was all right; after his initial surprise at the drinking fountain that day, there was nothing to indicate she had blundered by inviting him to her house.
Her mind was busy with the planning, though she did not tell Dottie and Bev that she was entertaining Avery Clark this weekend because they might read into it some snobbiness. Besides, it seemed rude to be anticipating some happy event while Dottie was still struggling with her newly realized misery; skinny as a rail, she continued sucking the life out of her cigarettes while Bev kept watch, plying her with brownies and fruit. For Isabelle, whose own vigilance she understood was being counted on in this camaraderie, there was an uneasy sense of lying, because, truth be told, it was a terrible thing to have to watch Dottie’s pain, to have to think about that pain—much nicer to dwell on the possibility of Avery’s liking her once more, and because at the same time she was exchanging glances of approval with Fat Bev over the unremarked-upon consumption of a peach by Dottie, she was wondering if instead of making chocolate cake for the Clarks she might not do better with a peach Melba instead. Or both. No, both would be excessive, but a nice bowl of fruit perhaps to go with the cake.
“I’d like to wring her husband’s neck,” Bev was murmuring as she watched Dottie, who, in making her way out of the lunchroom, was being forced to stop and listen to Arlene Tucker’s latest pontification on whatever it might be (Dottie was gamely nodding her head), and Isabelle herself nodded at Bev, feeling again—reeling in her thoughts of fruit bowls for the Clarks—that she was, on some level, lying. Still, Isabelle had been living with variations of this feeling for a very long time, and would have been astonished had anyone described her as “cagey”; she thought of herself as discreet.
On Friday afternoon when it was time for Isabelle to leave work, Avery was on the telephone. She waited to speak to him, but havi
ng used up ways to linger—straightening all the paper on her desk, fussing with the plastic typewriter cover—she finally ducked her head through the doorway of the fishbowl and said softly, “Are we all set then, Avery?”
He nodded, briefly turning the phone piece upward from his mouth. “All set,” he said, giving a thumbs-up sign.
She waited until they were almost finished with dinner before saying to Amy, “Avery Clark and Emma are coming here tomorrow for dessert.”
Amy, who had been silent for most of the meal, looked up with surprise and said, “Here? They’re coming here?”
“Yes,” Isabelle responded, the level of the girl’s surprise making her uncomfortable, “and after saying hello very nicely, you might want to go upstairs and read in your room.”
“Forget it.” Amy spoke flatly, pushing back her chair. “I don’t want to see them at all.”
Isabelle said, “Amy Goodrow, so help me God, you will do as you are told.”
But Amy, placing her dishes into the sink, said a few moments later in a conciliatory tone, “I’m supposed to meet Stacy at the library tomorrow. She wanted to know if I could have dinner with her, maybe spend the night. Since you’re busy, that’s probably what I’ll do.”
She turned from the sink. “If that’s all right.”
It was a problem these days, worrying as to Amy’s whereabouts, now that her job at the mill was through. Except the girl had relatively few options of places to go to; Isabelle recognized that. The library, or sometimes Stacy’s house, and Isabelle was not inclined to deny her access to either. She had made a few discreet calls during the summer, both to the school and to a certain apartment complex, and she was sufficiently convinced that Mr. Robertson was gone. That, obviously, was her main concern. Beyond this, however, she remained uneasy—and who wouldn’t—whenever Amy was not at home. But there was not a lot of summer left; soon she would be back in school.
“We’ll see,” Isabelle said now to Amy. “If Stacy has invited you to dinner, well, yes, I guess so. That may be all right.”
ISABELLE SLEPT POORLY that night and was embarrassed by the fact. She doubted that Barbara Rawley (Isabelle could still recall the woman standing in the A&P, a jar of olives in her hand—“And what are you two ladies doing tonight?”) had trouble sleeping before her dinner parties. Isabelle would have to leave time in the afternoon for a little rest. She had once read in a magazine that one should always leave time, after bathing, for a nap on the day you planned to entertain.
But first she baked the cake, hoping the warm scent would linger throughout the day so that when the Clarks stepped through the door the smell would be inviting.
Then she dusted. She dusted all the furniture, including the legs of the table and chairs. She dusted window sashes, lampshades, the lightbulbs themselves, the mop boards, the banister. She washed the windows, the floors (at some point Amy left the house, saying she would call when she knew if she was spending the night at Stacy’s), vacuumed the rugs, and spent an inordinate amount of time scrubbing the sink in the tiny bathroom off the kitchen, because that was the bathroom Emma Clark would be using if she needed to use one at all.
“Oh, certainly,” Isabelle would say, “right around the corner there. It’s awfully small, I’m afraid.” Pause. “But it’s clean.” This last phrase would be spoken with some degree of merriment, and Emma, being friendlier than Isabelle ever gave her credit for, would answer, “Well, that’s all that really matters, isn’t it.” And then she’d duck into the bathroom—and see what? See this. Isabelle, a number of times, tried to pretend she had never seen her own bathroom before, and opened the door again and again to see if the impression was a good one, or bad.
She couldn’t tell. Still, it seemed the bathroom needed something. And then she realized: of course, it needed flowers.
WALKING INTO THE florist shop, Isabelle passed by her daughter, who was standing barefoot in a phone booth, smoking a cigarette. Isabelle did not see her. If she had, if she had lifted her eyes just slightly, or if she had not been so preoccupied with her own excitement and vague sense of shame over purchasing flowers (something she never did) to beautify her surroundings for her guests that night, then events might have been altered; for it is hard to imagine that the discovery of her barefoot daughter, whose lips were covered now with a purplish frosted lipstick, the smudged circle of which was present on the cigarette she held in her hand—who was not in the library after all, or even in the presence of Stacy—would not have precipitated some sort of scene, resulting in Amy’s being returned to her house and stored safely away in her bedroom upstairs.
But it did not happen. Isabelle stepped inside the florist shop, a bell tinkling on the closing door behind her, only moments before Amy stepped squinting from the phone booth, tossed her cigarette into the street, and walked up the sidewalk in the other direction, toward the apartment of Paul Bellows, her sandals held loosely by their straps in her fingers—for Amy could not, when she did not have to, bear anything on her feet.
Before making this phone call, Amy had been experiencing an odd period of panic: she had nothing to do for the day. Nothing at all. She had been aware all along that Stacy had gone off for two weeks with her parents, to some farmhouse somewhere, and when she told her mother she would spend the day and possibly the night with Stacy, it had simply been a lie—because she had no desire to observe her mother’s anxious preparations, and no desire at all to be present for the arrival of Avery Clark and his queer, stupid-looking wife.
So Amy had left the house with only a few dollars and no plans, and by the time she reached town and bought a pack of cigarettes and shoplifted the purplish lipstick (her first try at this, and it was surprisingly easy), she was beginning to have serious doubts about how exactly she would spend her day. And she did not know what to make of the fact that the janitor at school had said Mr. Robertson had so recently been in town. Mr. Robertson would have called her—she was certain of that. Which meant (and it was so distressing to think) that the telephone on the kitchen counter had been ringing while she sat in a doughnut shop with Paul Bellows, smoking her cigarettes. Or, not knowing of course that Dottie Brown had seen a UFO and come back to work early, perhaps he had tried to reach her at the mill. Although that seemed risky and unlikely.
The thought that Mr. Robertson had returned to town and not attempted to find her did not stay long in Amy’s mind. Instead she became more and more certain that this man who loved her (“You know you’ll always be loved, don’t you?”), who had touched his mouth to her newborn breasts with such loving and exquisite tenderness, gazed at her naked middle with such seriousness, had returned to town not to clean out his classroom (which made no sense, he would have done that earlier) but to find her. It seemed to Amy, whose mind was always filled with him, and who assumed his mind was filled with her, that Mr. Robertson had gone to the school in hopes of finding her there, or near there, because she had in fact walked by the school compulsively since being released from the mill, the way one is compelled to return again and again to scenes of earlier exaltations.
She had gone there today even, after buying her cigarettes and lifting the lipstick, walking past the brick building cautiously, for she did not want to be observed again by the kind janitor, Mr. Gaines. But it was Saturday and Mr. Gaines would not be working. No one would be working, Amy thought, walking up the south lawn toward the school’s front door; but there was Puddy Mandel walking across the parking lot, and so she had hidden herself behind the lilac bushes, peering toward the windows of Mr. Robertson’s classroom—and had seen nothing.
Finally she had walked back into town and then over the bridge toward the Basin, feeling exposed on the sidewalks of Oyster Point, feeling on some instinctive level that the broken, tarry sidewalks of the Basin provided greater anonymity, as well as the chance of running into Paul Bellows, who might at least be free to drive her around in his car. She couldn’t rid herself, however, of the thought that if she walked around the back ro
ads enough that day, Mr. Robertson, driving by, would find her. But by four o’clock she was tired and hungry, and she stepped into a phone booth to call Paul Bellows.
It turned out to be the right thing to do. Paul was just headed out the door—he had to drive to Hennecock to see some insurance guy about his car; he’d be glad to have her come along. “I’m kind of hungry,” she confessed, pressing her fingers against the glass of the telephone booth while the cigarette she held sent a spiral of pale blue smoke directly toward her eyes, so that she turned her face away and therefore just missed her mother walking by, “but I don’t have much money on me.”
“No problem,” Paul said. “We’ll stop somewhere.”
Hanging up, Amy thought maybe Stacy had been too hasty in dumping the guy.
ISABELLE HAD DELIBERATELY gone to the rather dingy florist shop on Main Street in the Basin rather than the more open, lovely one in Oyster Point in order to avoid the chance of bumping into Emma Clark. She had a horror of being “witnessed” in her hostess preparations. It was Emma, after all, who had to be won over. It was Emma who might say (if all went well, God willing), driving home tonight, “Really, Avery, what a shame we never paid more attention to Isabelle all these years.” And it was Emma who might get on the phone tomorrow and say to whoever it was she gossiped with that they had misjudged Isabelle Goodrow; that having spent a lovely evening in her home, she realized that Isabelle was actually an awfully nice woman, she’d made that Crane cottage a sweet little home and …
And what? Isabelle was tired from having slept poorly the night before. She was making far too much of this, she thought, nodding a greeting to the old man who ran this dingy florist shop, and there was very little here to choose from—plastic flowers, for heaven’s sake; she ought to have simply snipped a few flowers from her own back garden. But there by the cash register was an abundance of yellow tulips. What a surprise so late in the summer. Isabelle reached her hand toward them; yes, she would take six of these. They were terribly expensive. She stood silently while the man rolled them with great elaborateness in two sheets of flowered paper, and then she carried them to her car carefully in the crook of her arm, as though holding a newly swaddled baby.