Jessie's gaze dropped to the large dark blob on the floor.
Correction, she thought. There's Gerald. Can't forget about him.
She put her head back and closed her eyes, aware of a steady low pulse in her throat, not wanting to wake up enough for that pulse to transform itself into what it really was: thirst. She didn't know if she could go from black unconsciousness to ordinary sleep or not, but she knew that was what she wanted; more than anything else--except perhaps for someone to drive down here and rescue her--she wanted to sleep.
There was no one here, Jessie-you know that, don't you? It was, absurdity of absurdities, Ruth's voice. Tough-talking Ruth, whose stated motto, cribbed from a Nancy Sinatra song, was "One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you." Ruth, who had been reduced to a pile of quivering jelly by the shape in the moonlight.
Go ahead, toots, Ruth said. Make fun of me all you want--maybe I even deserve it--but don't kid yourself. There was no one here. Your imagination put on a little slide-show, that's all. That's all there was to it.
You're wrong, Ruth, Goody responded calmly. Someone was here, all right, and Jessie and I both know who it was. It didn't exactly look like Daddy, but that was only because he had his eclipse face on. The face wasn't the important part, though, or how tall he looked--he might have had on boots with special high heels, or maybe he was wearing shoes with lifts in them. For all I know, he could have been on Stilts.
Stilts Ruth cried, amazed. Oh dear God, now I've heard evvverything! Never mind the fact that the man died before Reagan's Inauguration Day tux got back from the cleaners; Tom Mahout was so clumsy he should have had walking-downstairs insurance. Stilts? Oh babe, you have got to be putting me on!
That part doesn't matter, Goody said with a kind of serene stubbornness. It was him. I'd know that smell anywhere--that thick, blood-warm smell. Not the smell of oysters or pennies. Not even the smell of blood. The smell of...
The thought broke up and drifted away.
Jessie slept.
15
She ended up alone with her father at Sunset Trails on the afternoon of July 20th, 1963, for two reasons. One was a cover for the other. The cover was her claim that she was still a little frightened of Mrs. Gilette, even though it had been at least five years (and probably closer to six) since the incident of the cookie and the slapped hand. The real reason was simple and uncomplicated: it was her Daddy she wanted to be with during such a special, once-in-a-lifetime event.
Her mother had suspected as much, and being moved around like a chesspiece by her husband and her ten-year-old daughter hadn't pleased her, but by then the matter was practically a fait accompli. Jessie had gone to her Daddy first. She was still four months away from her eleventh birthday, but that didn't make her a fool. What Sally Mahout suspected was true: Jessie had launched a conscious, carefully thought-out campaign which would allow her to spend the day of the eclipse with her father. Much later Jessie would think that this was yet another reason to keep her mouth shut about what had happened on that day; there might be those --her mother, for instance--who would say that she had no right to complain; that she had in fact gotten about what she deserved.
On the day before the eclipse, Jessie had found her father sitting on the deck outside his den and reading a paperback copy of Profiles in Courage while his wife, son, and elder daughter laughed and swam in the lake below. He smiled at her when she took the seat next to him, and Jessie smiled back. She had brightened her mouth with lipstick for this interview--Peppermint Yum-Yum, in fact, a birthday present from Maddy. Jessie hadn't liked it when she first tried it on--she thought it a baby shade, and that it tasted like Pepsodent--but Daddy had said he thought it was pretty, and that had transformed it into the most valuable of her few cosmetic resources, something to be treasured and used only on special occasions like this one.
He listened carefully and respectfully as she spoke, but he made no particular attempt to disguise the glint of amused skepticism in his eyes. Do you really mean to tell me you're still afraid of Adrienne Gilette ? he asked when she had finished rehashing the oft-told tale of how Mrs. Gilette had slapped her hand when she had reached for the last cookie on the plate. That must have been back in ... I don't know, but I was still working for Dunninger, so it must have been before 1959. And you're still spooked all these years later? How absolutely Freudian, my dear!
Well-lll ... you know ... just a little. She widened her eyes, trying to communicate the idea that she was saying a little but meaning a lot. In truth she didn't know if she was still scared of old Pooh-Pooh Breath or not, but she did know she considered Mrs. Gilette a boring old blue-haired booger, and she had no intention of spending the only total eclipse of the sun she'd probably ever see in her company if she could possibly work things around so she could watch it with her Daddy, whom she adored beyond the power of words to tell.
She evaluated his skepticism and concluded with relief that it was friendly, perhaps even conspiratorial. She smiled and added: But I also want to stay with you.
He raised her hand to his mouth and kissed her fingers like a French monsieur. He hadn't shaved that day--he often didn't when he was at camp--and the rough scrape of his whiskers sent a pleasurable shiver of goose-bumps up her arms and back.
Comme tu es douce, he said. Ma jolie mademoiselle. Je t'aime.
She giggled, not understanding his clumsy French but suddenly sure it was all going to work out just the way she had hoped it would.
It would be fun, she said happily. Just the two of us. I could make an early supper and we could eat it right here, on the deck.
He grinned. Eclipse Burgers a deux?
She laughed, nodding and clapping her hands with delight.
Then he had said something that struck her as a little odd even at the time, because he was not a man who cared much about clothes and fashions: You could wear your pretty new sundress.
Sure, if you want, she said, although she had already made a mental note to ask her mother to try and exchange the sundress. It was pretty enough--if you weren't offended by red and yellow stripes almost bright enough to shout, that was--but it was also too small and too tight. Her mother had ordered it from Sears, going mostly by guess and by gosh, filling in a single size larger than that which had fit Jessie the year before. As it happened, she had grown a little faster than that, in a number of ways. Still, if Daddy liked it ... and if he would come over to her side of this eclipse business and help her push ...
He did come over to her side, and pushed like Hercules himself. He began that night, suggesting to his wife after dinner (and two or three mellowing glasses of vin rouge) that Jessie be excused from tomorrow's "eclipse-watch" outing to the top of Mount Washington. Most of their summer neighbors were going; just after Memorial Day they'd begun having informal meetings on the subject of how and where to watch the upcoming solar phenomenon (to Jessie these meetings had seemed like ordinary run-of-the-mill summer cocktail parties), and had even given themselves a name--The Dark Score Sun Worshippers. The Sun Worshippers had rented one of the school district's mini-buses for the occasion and were planning to voyage to the top of New Hampshire's tallest mountain equipped with box lunches, Polaroid sunglasses, specially constructed reflector-boxes, specially filtered cameras ... and champagne, of course. Lots and lots of champagne. To Jessie's mother and older sister, all this had seemed to be the very definition of frothy, sophisticated fun. To Jessie it had seemed the essence of all that was boring ... and that was before you added Pooh-Pooh Breath into the equation.
She had gone out on the deck after supper on the evening of the 19th, presumably to read twenty or thirty pages of Mr. C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet before the sun went down. Her actual purpose was a good deal less intellectual: she wanted to listen as her father made his--their--pitch, and to silently root him on. She and Maddy had been aware for years that the combination living room/dining room of the summer house had peculiar acoustical qualities, probably caused by its
high, steeply angled ceiling; Jessie had an idea that even Will knew about the way sound carried from in there to out here on the deck. Only their parents seemed unaware that the room might as well have been bugged, and that most of the important decisions they had made in that room as they sipped after-dinner cognac or cups of coffee were known (to their daughters, at least) long before the marching orders were handed down from staff headquarters.
Jessie noticed she was holding the Lewis novel upside down and made haste to rectify that situation before Maddy happened by and gave her a big, silent horse-laugh. She felt a little guilty about what she was doing--it was a lot closer to eavesdropping than to rooting, when you got right down to it--but not quite guilty enough to stop. And in fact she considered herself still to be on the right side of a thin moral line. After all, it wasn't as if she were hiding in the closet, or anything; she was sitting right out here in full view, bathed in the bright light of the westering sun. She was sitting out here with her book, and wondering if there were ever eclipses on Mars, and if there were Martians up there to watch them if there were. If her parents thought no one could hear what they were saying just because they were sitting at the table in there, was that her fault? Was she supposed to go in and tell them?
"I don't theenk so, my deah," Jessie whispered in her snottiest Elizabeth Taylor Cat on a Hot Tin Roof voice; and then cupped her hands over a big, goofy grin. And she guessed she was also safe from her big sister's interference, at least for the time being; she could hear Maddy and Will below her in the rumpus room, squabbling good-naturedly over a game of Cootie or Parcheesi or something like that.
I really don't think it would hurt her to stay here with me tomorrow, do you? her father was asking in his most winning, good-humored voice.
No, of course not, Jessie's mother replied, but it wouldn't exactly kill her to go someplace with the rest of us this summer, either. She's turned into a complete Daddy's girl.
She went down to the puppet show in Bettel with you and Will last week. In fact, didn't you tell me that she stayed with Will--even bought him an ice cream out of her own allowance--while you went into that auction barn?
That was no sacrifice for our Jessie, Sally replied. She sounded almost grim.
What do you mean?
I mean she went to the puppet show because she wanted to, and she took care of Will because she wanted to. Grimness had given way to a more familiar tone: exasperation. How can you understand what I mean? that tone asked. How can you possibly, when you'se a man?
This was a tone Jessie had heard more and more frequently in her mother's voice these last few years. She knew that was partly because she herself heard more and saw more as she grew up, but she was pretty sure it was also because her mother used that tone more frequently than she once had. Jessie couldn't understand why her father's brand of logic always made her mother so crazy.
All of a sudden the fact that she did something because she wanted to is a cause for concern? Tom was now asking. Maybe even a mark against her? What do we do if she develops a social conscience as well as a family one, Sal? Put her in a home for wayward girls?
Don't patronize me, Tom. You know perfectly well what I mean.
Nope; this time you've lost me in the dust, sweet one. This is supposed to be our summer vacation, remember? And I've always sort of had the idea that when people are on vacation, they're supposed to do what they want to do, and be with who they want to be with. In fact, I thought that was the whole idea.
Jessie smiled, knowing it was all over but the shouting. When the eclipse started tomorrow afternoon, she was going to be here with her Daddy instead of on top of Mount Washington with Pooh-Pooh Breath and the rest of The Dark Score Sun Worshippers. Her father was like some world-class chessmaster who had given a talented amateur a run for her money and was now polishing her off.
You could come, too, Tom--Jessie would come if you did.
That was a tricky one. Jessie held her breath.
Can't, my love--I'm expecting a call from David Adams on the Brookings Pharmaceuticals portfolio. Very important stuff... also very risky stuff. At this stage, handling Brookings is like handling blasting caps. But let me be honest with you: even if I could, I'm not really sure I would. I'm not nuts about the Gilette woman, but I can get along with her. That asshole Sleefort, on the other hand--
Hush, Tom!
Don't worry--Maddy and Will are downstairs and Jessie's way out on the front deck ... see her?
At that moment, Jessie suddenly became sure that her father knew exactly what the acoustics of the living room/dining room were like; he knew that his daughter was hearing every word of this discussion. Wanted her to hear every word. A warm little shiver traced its way up her back and down her legs.
I should have knourn it came down to Dick Sleefort! Her mother sounded angrily amused, a combination that made Jessie's head spin. It seemed to her that only adults could combine emotions in so many daffy ways--if feelings were food, adult feelings would be things like chocolate-covered steak, mashed potatoes with pineapple bits, Special K with chili powder sprinkled on it instead of sugar. Jessie thought that being an adult seemed more like a punishment than a reward.
This is really exasperating, Tom--the man made a pass at me six years ago. He was drunk. Back in those days he was always drunk, but he's cleaned up his act. Polly Bergeron told me he goes to A. A., and--
Bully for him, her father said dryly. Do we send him a get-well card or a merit-badge, Sally?
Don't be flip. You almost broke the man's nose--
Yes, indeed. When a fellow comes into the kitchen to freshen his drink and finds the rumdum from up the road with one hand on his wife's behind and the other down the front of her--
Never mind, she said primly, but Jessie thought that for some reason her mother sounded almost pleased. Curiouser and curiouser. The point is, it's time you discovered that Dick Sleefort isn't a demon from the deeps and it's time Jessie discovered Adrienne Gilette is just a lonely old woman who once slapped her hand at a lawn-party as a little joke. Now please don't get all crazy on me, Tom; I'm not claiming it was a good joke; it wasn't. I'm just saying that Adrienne didn't know that. There was no bad intent.
Jessie looked down and saw her paperback novel was bent almost double in her right hand. How could her mother, a woman who'd graduated cum laude (whatever that meant) from Vassar, possibly be so stupid? The answer seemed clear enough to Jessie: she couldn't be. Either she knew better or she refused to see the truth, and you arrived at the same conclusion no matter which answer you decided was the right one: when forced to choose between believing the ugly old woman who lived up the road from them in the summertime and her own daughter, Sally Mahout had chosen Pooh-Pooh Breath. Good deal, huh?
If I'm a Daddy's girl, that's why. That and all the Other stuff she says that's like that. That's why, but I could never tell her and she'll never see it on her own. Never in a billion years.
Jessie forced herself to relax her grip on the paperback. Mrs. Gilette had meant it, there had been bad intent, but her father's suspicion that she had ceased being afraid of the old crow had probably been more right than wrong, just the same. Also, she was going to get her way about staying with her father, so none of her mother's ess-aitch-eye-tee really mattered, did it? She was going to be here with her Daddy, she wouldn't have to deal with old Pooh-Pooh Breath, and these good things were going to happen because ...
"Because he sticks up for me," she murmured.
Yes; that was the bottom line. Her father stuck up for her, and her mother stuck it to her.
Jessie saw the evening star glowing mildly in the darkening sky and suddenly realized she had been out on the deck, listening to them circle the subject of the eclipse--and the subject of her--for almost three-quarters of an hour. She discovered a minor but interesting fact of life that night: time speeds by fastest when you are eavesdropping on conversations about yourself.
With hardly a thought, she raised her hand and curled
it into a tube, simultaneously catching the star and sending it the old formula: wish I may, wish I might. Her wish, already well on the way to being granted, was that she be allowed to stay here tomorrow with her Daddy. To stay with him no matter what. Just two folks who knew how to stick up for each other, sitting out on the deck and eating Eclipse Burgers a deux ... like an old married couple.
As for Dick Sleefort, he apologized to me later, Tom. I don't remember if I ever told you that or not--
You did, but I don't remember him ever apologizing to me.
He was probably afraid you'd knock his block off, or at least try to, Sally replied, speaking again in that tone of voice Jessie found so peculiar--it seemed to be an uneasy mixture of happiness, good humor, and anger. Jessie wondered for just a moment if it was possible to sound that way and be completely sane, and then she squashed the thought quickly and completely. Also, I want to say one more thing about Adrienne Gilette before we leave the subject entirely ...
Be my guest.
She told me--in 1959, this was, two whole summers later--that she went through the change that year. She never specifically mentioned Jessie and the cookie incident, but I think she was trying to apologize.
Oh. It was her father's coolest, most lawyerly "Oh." And did either of you ladies think to pass that information on to Jessie... and explain to her what it meant?
Silence from her mother. Jessie, who still had only the vaguest notion of what "going through the change" meant, looked down and saw she had once again gripped the book tight enough to bend it and once again forced herself to relax her hands.
Or to apologize? His tone was gentle ... caressing ... deadly.
Stop cross-examining me! Sally burst out after another long, considering silence. This is your home, not Part Two of Superior Court, in case you hadn't noticed!
You brought the subject up, not me, he said. I just asked--
Oh, I get so tired of the way you twist everything around, Sally said. Jessie knew from her tone of voice that she was either crying or getting ready to. For the first time that she could remember, the sound of her mother's tears called up no sympathy in her own heart, no urge to run and comfort (probably bursting into tears herself in the process). Instead she felt a queer, stony satisfaction.