Lottie was podgy as a puffball. She looked as though she’d either burst or bounce if you tapped her. The Driesers always ran to fat. I didn’t remember her mother very well, who’d died so conveniently young with a bare left hand, but the dressmaker aunt who reared Lottie used to waddle like a goose force-fed for Christmas.
Lottie wore navy blue that day, a tailored silk, probably thinking the dark color would reduce her girth. What a hope. And of course she hadn’t been able to resist looping her neck with a dozen dangling strands of artificial pearls. I wasn’t very slim myself, it’s true, but I was solid—never that flabby fat that seems to quiver and tremble by itself, unbidden. I wore the dusky rose silk suit I’d bought on sale that spring, and hat to match. Lottie seemed quite stunned to see me looking so smart.
We got down to business.
“Of course, you couldn’t find a nicer boy than John,” Lottie said, her bird’s eyes darting away from mine. “It isn’t that. He’s been foolish the odd time, I’m bound to say. I’m sure you know that, too. But Arlene claims he’s settled down now, and I hope she’s right, I’m sure. Of course, we all thought it was good of him to come back and look after his dad. I don’t suppose a doctor could have done much anyway. John’s never said a word about Bram, any time he’s been to our house. I always have admired loyalty. His father couldn’t have been easy that last year, being so sick and everything.”
“Arlene’s a lovely girl,” I said. “Being an only child, of course, she’s had advantages not everyone can have. I don’t suppose she’s ever had to manage economically, but I’m sure she wouldn’t be really extravagant, like some of these young girls are, who’ve never learned how the world really is. Well, it seems strange, doesn’t it? When we were girls, Lottie, we’d never have dreamed of this happening, would we?”
That touched her on the raw, all right, but it served her right, to have her roots flung up at her, after the way she’d spoken of my son and husband. She fanned herself with a magazine, held out a sapphired hand for my cup.
“More tea, Hagar?”
“Thank you. I believe I will. Arlene’s such a pretty girl. Such pretty hair.”
Lottie relaxed. “Yes, isn’t she? She’s lucky to have that real honey-blonde shade. It’s always been naturally wavy. When she was small, I used to brush it for her, a hundred strokes every single night.”
She preened a little, and glowed, mother of peacocks, queen-maker, Rapunzel’s dam. She smiled with such a sudden trust I almost changed my mind about my next remark. But it was too good a chance to miss, and might not come again.
“She doesn’t look like either you or Telford,” I said. “Who does she take after?”
“She’s the spit of Telford’s mother,” Lottie said, in a voice distant as the pole star.
Satisfied, I quaffed politely at my tea.
“I haven’t got a thing in the world against their marrying at some future time,” I said at last. “The only thing I question is their doing it now. They haven’t got a cent.”
“Telford and I feel just the same. If they could only wait until times are a little better and they’ve got something to live on, and by then they’d know if they really felt serious about each other.”
I nodded. “It’s a mistake to marry hastily and then find out it’s only been some kind of infatuation. I know that only too well.”
I could afford to throw that crust now.
“I’m sure you do” Lottie said, a soothing pat of a voice.
“Nevertheless, the money’s the main concern,” I said.
And in truth, it was. As I spoke the words I almost forgot Lottie. I thought of the two, living on relief, perhaps with children, and I, duty-bound to send them what I could, but never able to spare enough. I saw them with a covey of young, like Jess’s had been, clustered like fish spawn, children with running noses and drooping handed-down pants four sizes too large. I couldn’t face the thought. All else diminished in importance beside it, when I thought what I’d gone through to get John away from just that sort of thing. The smell of it came back to me, the bone-weariness, the gray eternal scum of soap on tin washbasins.
I looked at Lottie and saw a similar panic in her eyes.
“Hagar—what if they had children? Telford and I—you might not believe it, but we’ve got very little put by. We couldn’t—we simply couldn’t—”
“I couldn’t either,” I said. “I don’t know, Lottie. I just can’t feature it at all.”
“She’s everything in the world to me,” Lottie said. “Everything. I lost two before I finally had her. She’s all I’ve got. You don’t know—”
And then I did know, and cursed myself for my meanness before, for thinking myself the only one.
“He’s been the same to me,” I said. “You hope and hope that nothing will go wrong, and if it does, it’s almost more than you can bear.”
She nodded, and we sat a while in silence. How odd that we should have been friends, in a manner of speaking, all our lives, yet never once felt kindly disposed until this moment. There we sat, among the doilies and the teacups, two fat old women, no longer haggling with one another, but only with fate, pitting our wits against God’s.
“Telford’s cousin in the East has always wanted Arlene to visit,” Lottie said. “She’d go, perhaps, if they could only find some kind of job for her there, or even pay her a little for helping out—Caroline’s got a great big house and she doesn’t keep a maid any more. I’ll write to her tonight.”
That would be best,” I agreed. “And let the suggestion come from Caroline.”
“Of course,” Lottie said.
We chatted of this and that, old times, people we’d known. Then, from somewhere in the junkyard of my memory, a certain afternoon was cast up unexpectedly into sight. Impulsively, I spoke of it.
“Remember those chicks that day at the dump ground, Lottie, when we were girls? I always marveled that you could bring yourself to do what you did. I haven’t thought of it in years, but I used to wonder—didn’t it make you feel peculiar?”
“Chicks?” Lottie said, amused. “I don’t remember that at all.”
For the following month, life went on as before, and Arlene was out at our place so frequently it got on my nerves.
“Does she have to be here every mortal day?” I said to John finally.
“If you feel that way about it,” he said furiously, “I won’t bring her here at all. Would that suit you?”
“Yes, it would,” I said. “As a matter of fact, it would.”
What made me say it? As soon as I’d spoken, I regretted it. But I couldn’t humble myself to take back my words.
All that long month while the heat haze hovered like a mirage of water over the yellowed bluffs, and the devil’s breath of a wind charred the sparse grass and blew the fields away, the two of them had for their home the ditches and the dust-clogged roadsides where even the weeds were faded and dried. I never found out where they went or where they made their momentary bed or what it was they knew there for a while.
With a start, I come to myself. I’m holding a hairy slab of coarse moss in one hand, and at my feet a long blind slug hunches itself against one of my shoes. What possessed me? I must have been sitting here on this fallen tree trunk for ages. The woods have grown chilly. I’m hungry, and the night is coming on.
I can’t go back to that house. The stairs are too much. Besides, if intruders came, they’d come to the house, more than likely, not to the old cannery. I’ll go there. I’ll be safer there. I’ll hear the sea, and the air will be fresher.
Cautiously, I make my way back. I stop to drink again from my bucket of rain water. Then I cross the weed-grown lane, open the cannery door, and look inside.
Eight
A PLACE OF REMNANTS and oddities, this seems, more like the sea-chest of some old and giant sailor than merely a cannery no one has used in years. The one enormous room has high and massive rafters like a barn. The planks in the floor are a greasy black
, stained by years of dark oil and the blood of fishes. Fragments of rusted and unrecognizable machinery are strewn around haphazardly as though someone placed them there for a moment, meaning to return for them and never doing so. Oily hempen ropes lie like tired serpents, limp and uncoiled in corners. Wooden boxes, once stacked neatly, have been scattered and jumbled, but each one still clearly bears its legend of class—Choice Quality Sockeye, Best Cohoe. Festooned like sagging curtains across barrels or draped along the floor in sodden musty folds, the discarded fishing nets must have been left by the last fisherman to come here with his catch. Some of them are quite dry, and when I shake them, only the paper wings of defunct moths flutter out. Not much of a blanket, but better than nothing.
At the far end of the long room stands a derelict fishboat, perched up on blocks, stripped of gear and tackle, faded blue shavings of paint falling away from its hull. Not even a ghost vessel, this. Only a skeleton, such as one that might have been washed up somewhere centuries after it had set out for heaven with its Viking dead. I don’t much like the look of that boat. I’ll settle myself here among the boxes and the nets.
Here’s a pile of scallop shells. Someone meant to take them home for ash trays, and forgot. They’re sandy inside—the sea clings to them still. The outside of each is pale brown, intricately striped and frilled. I pick them up, turning them in my hands, feeling the rough calloused surface, and the bland inner shell coated with a silken enamel of diluted pearl.
I have everything I need. An overturned box is my table, and another is my chair. I spread my supper and eat. When I’ve done, the light still holds and in one shell lying on the floor at my feet I see that half a dozen June bugs have been caught. I prod them with a fingernail. They’re not alive. Death hasn’t tarnished them, however. Their backs are green and luminous, with a sharp metallic line down the center, and their bellies shimmer with pure copper. If I’ve unearthed jewels, the least I can do is wear them. Why not, since no one’s here to inform me I’m a fool? I take off my hat—it’s hardly suitable for here, anyway, a prim domestic hat sprouting cultivated flowers. Then with considerable care I arrange the jade and copper pieces in my hair. I glance into my purse mirror. The effect is pleasing. They liven my gray, transform me. I sit quite still and straight, my hands spread languidly on my knees, queen of moth-millers, empress of earwigs.
All at once I’m worn out, aware that the nudging pain in my chest can’t be ignored any longer. My feet seem swollen in these tight shoes, and the heavy veins throughout my legs burn like long blisters. This day has exhausted me, although I’ve done nothing, really, except walk a little. I can’t recall exactly what I did this morning. Did I go to the forest then, or was that after lunch? It’s not important, but it bothers and irritates me not to know. I rack my brains, but the morning is hidden. Perhaps I cleaned that other house. I can’t abide a messy house.
Sickeningly, my head spins. There. Now I’ve done it. I’ve slipped from my box, and I’m sitting on the floor, my legs jutting stiffly out like fence posts and my hands pressing at my balloon belly as though it would escape and drift away if I didn’t hold it down.
A sea gull is flying in this room. I feel the brush and beat of its wings as it swoops and mounts. It’s frightened, trapped and flapping. I hate a bird inside a building. Its panic makes it unnatural. I can’t bear to have it touch me. A bird in the house means a death in the house—that’s what we used to say. Nonsense, of course. But the way the thing pulses—it scares and disgusts me. It darts low like a piercing hawk, and I, hardly knowing what I’m doing, pick up the wooden fish box and fling it, expecting it to miss, intending only to shoo the creature away. Horribly, the crate catches the gull, stuns it, and it falls. Squawking, it crawls, ruffling a bloodied wing, only a hand-span from where I’m sitting. Has its wing been snapped, or what? Should I kill it? If I were miles away, and being told of this, or imagining it, I’d feel something for the broken gull, at least a token regret, recalling its white curved soar into the wind. But now I only want to get it away from me, to shut its open beak so I needn’t hear its cry. I’d gladly kill it, but I can’t bring myself to go near enough.
If Marvin were here, he’d know what to do. He’s practical. He always knows what to do. The sea gull has so much strength. It’ll never drop. It flounders, half rises, sinks, batters itself against the floor in the terrible rage of not being able to do what it is compelled to do. Finally it drags itself onto a pile of nets and lies there throbbing aloud. I can’t move a muscle. It’s not fair that I should have to sit here and listen to it.
Why doesn’t Marvin come? He hasn’t a thought for me. He’s off gallivanting with Doris. At the movies, more than likely, the pair of them, not giving a care whether I live or die. Well, I won’t. They needn’t think they’ll get my house that easily. If he tries to sell it, I’ll get the lawyer on him.
The night has begun to thicken. What I’m doing here I couldn’t say, not if my life depended on it. The last light seeps insipidly through cracks and crannies, and the staining darkness spreads. The old boat and the pieces of machinery stand awkwardly, gaunt and angled. Nothing looks right. All is distorted, haggard, scooped out and the empty places filled with shadows. Should I sing?
“Abide with me,
Fast falls the eventide,
The darkness deepens,
Lord, with me abide—”
My voice quavers in tremolo, breaks in low mournful grunts, and I might as well be singing the directions from a knitting book, for all the good it’s doing me.
Then I hear the wintry baying of dogs. There’s a heartlessness in the sound. Facing them would be like facing a maniac—no use to plead; they wouldn’t comprehend.
Two dogs. Two deep coarse voices sounding from the hillside, distant and muffled, then growing more and more distinct as they come nearer. I can hear them crashing through the wet ferns. They’re excited, in pursuit—but of what, of whom? It seems to me they can’t avoid discovering me here. Perhaps it’s my scent they’re tracing through the forest.
Again the wolfish voices, eager and vindictive. They’d not spare a soul if they had their way. I can’t get to my feet. On my hands and knees I crawl to the paltry shelter of the heaped boxes. Beside me, I can feel the tangle of nets where the gull lay. I’d forgotten it. I can’t hear it now. Did it find its way out, back to the sea, to be healed by the salt water or perish there in the gust of a single green-black wave?
Among the boxes I wait. Outside the dogs are snuffling, rooting through grasses and fallen leaves. One of them trumpets suddenly, a high yelp of triumph, and the other races to see. I cannot breathe, thinking they’ve found a way to get in here. I wait and wait. They’re silent. Then I hear an inexplicable snarl and scuffle, and they’re off. I can hear them panting past, and the faint crashing as they hurtle back among the trees and up the hill. Have they really gone? I can’t believe it. Will they return? I must move, get to some safer place. I lie here, shaking and sweating, yet almost past caring. Let them return and do their worst. If they were to attack me this minute, I’d put up no resistance.
But one slight snicking sound is all that’s required to make me change my mind on that score. I hear the door opening, and someone steps inside. I can’t see anything. The night is complete now, solid and lightless. I only know a person is standing there.
A struck match, and the sham star flares for a moment. Peering around boxes, I catch a glimpse of a man’s face—the glint of a cheekbone, eyes blinking against the shadows of the brief light. Then a sharp gasp. Has he drawn in his breath that way, or have I? The match goes out. We face each other in the darkness.
“Who’s there?” His voice is high and fluting as one imagines a eunuch’s would be.
“If you want what’s in my purse,” I say, “then take it, although it’s little enough.”
He steps closer. His step is cautious and stealthy. He strikes another match.
“An old woman—” His expelled breath is like a sob. “My Go
d—I thought—I don’t know—”
Only then does it occur to me that he has been as startled as I. The falsetto in his voice was only fear. How peculiar it seems that anyone should be alarmed by me. The match scorches his fingers and he drops it. He burrows in his clothing and when the next small fireworks of light appears, he’s holding a candle. He stares at me, and then I’m aware of myself, crouching among these empty boxes, my cotton housedress bedraggled, my face dirt-streaked, my hair slipped out of its neat bun and hanging down like strands of gray mending wool. I put up a hand to straighten my hair. My fingers meet something brittle. I pinch it—it squashes and snaps under my nail and smells putrid. Then I recall the June bugs and could die with mortification.
“I hope you’ll excuse my appearance,” I say.
“Think nothing of it,” he says. “Are you all right, lady? How come you’re here?”
Then a thought strikes me. I know why he’s here. I’d rather he were a thief.
“You’ve come for me, have you? Well, I’ll not go. Marvin didn’t tell you what he plans to do with me, I’ll bet. Oh no, they’d not tell a soul about that. Those places have nothing to do with nursing or homes—the name’s all wrong. Once they get you in, you’re there to stay. They don’t consult you. I won’t be lugged around like a sack of potatoes.”
“Please, lady, calm down, calm down,” he says hastily. “I don’t know a thing about it, honestly I don’t. I didn’t come for you. I’m Murray Lees, Murray F. Lees, and I’ve been with Dependable Life Assurance for twenty-odd years.”