Compass Rose Part 10

She sat back on her heels and took her left glove off. It dropped in his lap. She touched his hair, his forehead, his cheek. She couldn't tell if that was what he liked or if his sigh was for her fingers on his mouth. She moved her hand to his other ear and traced around the rim, then inside the ridges. A jagged breath-good-not everyone liked that.

She was enjoying her deliberateness, the effect of her deliberateness on him, so it surprised her that a piece of her mind lagged behind and spun out a line of thought: her life-maybe everybody's life-crystallized around the things in it as much as around people. Her own life around her house, her car, her badge, her revolver, her bicycle, her skis (yes, her toys) ... Miss Perry's around her house and garden and books ... Mary Scanlon's around her stockpots and griddles and her songs (songs, things-why not?) ... d.i.c.k's around his boat ... Jack's around Sawtooth Point ... (men seemed more limited, or perhaps more focused). So many parts of all their lives-thoughts, emotions, skills-were thing and self, self and thing.

She had thoughts and emotions about Johnny, but at the moment her skill was certainly part of the thickening of the air between them.

She was seducing herself as well. She was feeling deeper and heavier jolts. She kissed him on the mouth and, distracted by the heat of his hand on her knee, slid her tongue between his lips.

It was almost dark inside her gray Volvo. What light there was came from who knew where-Wakefield? Narragansett? It bounced off the clouds, then into the field of snow, and then seeped through the frost on the car windows. Inside, there was a dark glow in which their bodies were visible only because they were even darker. It was in her mind that she knew how to find the b.u.t.tons of his overcoat. And it must be in his mind that he knew how to find the lever that tipped his seat backward. b.u.t.tons, a lever-how human and modern to register these things as stages of the courts.h.i.+p ritual. Nothing like a male fiddler crab waving his one outsized claw, fireflies blinking, herons bobbing and bowing ... The middle b.u.t.ton of his suit coat, the belt buckle, top b.u.t.ton of his pants, zipper. Carefully unzipping.

He cleared his throat. Did that mean they should have the conversation now? She said, "Just a minute," and found the opening in his boxer shorts-a racc.o.o.n at night fis.h.i.+ng with her delicate paws. When she slowly filled her mouth she imagined his eyes widening. His fingertips combed her hair, brushed her scalp. When his hand began to tremble, she lifted her head and climbed between the seats into the back. She'd folded the backseats flat to make room for her skis. She shoved them aside and put her tennis racket on top of them. "It's all right," she said.

He began to move, rustling and jostling that seemed to have no relation to his s.h.i.+fting darkness against the dim winds.h.i.+eld.

"I mean, we don't have to worry."

He moved sideways. He was trying to slide over the back of his seat.

She said, "Wait. I'll put that down. No, wait. You'll have to put your seat back up." He opened his door and the overhead light came on, which made the pulling and pus.h.i.+ng of the seat backs easier but did away with the spell of her igloo, of the subtleties of touch and sound.

He shut the door, managed his way between the front seats. He had the good sense to lie still. After a while he put his arm around her shoulders and said, "Nous voici."

She had enough French to translate: here we are. It took her a moment to think of why this plain phrase should stop her. It was what d.i.c.k had said when he'd appeared in her driveway and Mary had gone inside with Eddie, and Rose was nursing, and d.i.c.k had moved his hand in an arc and said, "Here we are." Maybe he'd said it just to say something, but it had landed on her then. And now.

Johnny said, "Are you a little tired? After all that tennis? It's okay."

From chill to anger. She wasn't ready to go home. She turned her anger on amiable, inadvertent Johnny Bienvenue. She wouldn't mind a little fierceness. She sat up and pulled a boot off. She threw it into the front seat. Then the other. What else? For an instant she forgot what she was wearing. The wool dress she looked good in. She'd admired herself in the locker room, come out swinging her gym bag so he'd look at her.

She hoisted her hips and pulled off her tights and underpants, then smoothed her dress back over her legs. "Tell me what I'm wearing," she said. "See if you've been paying attention."

"A goose-down jacket."

She took it off. She said, "That's too easy. Now what?"

"A blue dress. Wool ... Dark blue. And blue stockings."

"Wool is right. Blue is right. The rest is wrong. Too bad." She turned around and pushed her bare foot against his arm. She slid it along his sleeve until it reached his hand.

She thought of his legs as he stooped beside the stream, of his forearms as he played the trout, of his thick, dark hair as he bent to pick up the papers in Miss Perry's library. She thought of herself thinking about him. Fantasy? Even though he was right here? Was that the discipline? It wouldn't work if she thought of him as a nice, solid, comfortable man. What if he'd got the guy off? What if he'd said he'd see to it that she got in trouble? She liked the thought of him as a bit mean.

She leaned forward and moved his hand onto her calf before this fantasy dissolved. It was flimsy stuff but carried just enough charge to draw a sound from her throat when he touched her leg. She came back into her skin. Part of her was lethargy, part urgency; her mind slowed, her nerves quickened. A current of pleasure spiraled up her ahead of his touch, subsided, then gathered again as he peeled her wool dress up to her ribs. She felt his weight. She smelled the wet wool of his overcoat where snow had melted on the shoulder, and that became part of the jumble of winter clothes and bare skin of which she was now the center.

chapter twenty-six.

The snowstorm made it a slow night in the kitchen at Sawtooth Point. The few cottage owners who came in ate early. Mary got home and offered to drive Sylvia Teixeira, but Sylvia said she was just going down the hill to Miss Perry's.

"I thought Elsie'd be back by now," Mary said. "I'm sorry to keep you late on a school night."

"No problem. Oh-I hope it's okay-Charlie Pierce came by to help me with math."

"As long as Rose got to sleep." Mary looked Sylvia over. "So Charlie's good at math, is he?"

"Oh, yeah. Math and biology. All that left-brain stuff."

"Is that right? I thought he might have a touch of the poet. All those books of Miss Perry's." Mary wondered at herself, trying to sneak a peek into Sylvia's love life.

"Well, sure. I didn't mean he doesn't read, you know, other stuff."

Mary looked at the snow on the greenhouse roof and said, "It's coming down some. It wouldn't take a minute to drive you."

Sylvia said, "I mean, he's really sweet." Mary heard the breathlessness she'd been listening for. She held up the car keys. Sylvia said, "Oh. No, I'll be fine. I've got boots."

Mary said, "It's not too much for you-taking care of Miss Perry on top of going to school?"

"I'm mostly there just so someone's there. It beats going home. Someone always has something for me to do at home. This way I'm doing something Uncle Ruy wants me to do."

"Captain Teixeira is your ... What? Great-uncle?"

"Yeah. But he's the head of the whole family. For instance, my cousin Tony asked him if it was okay to work on Captain Pierce's boat. And if I want to go to college, I'll have to have a talk with him. I mean, he's nice and everything, but still. Like he has this idea that everyone should spend a year in Portugal. Three of my cousins did that. I'm hoping that on account of my helping out with Miss Perry, I can maybe get out of it. At least till I'm out of college."

"You want to go to URI? Is that where most of the kids in your cla.s.s are going?"

"Yes."

Mary stopped herself from saying, "And Charlie Pierce." She didn't really want yet another piece of someone else's life. She saw Sylvia out the door. She looked in on Rose. Sound asleep, one arm hooked around the new teddy bear. Would she still be around to quiz Rose about her love life? Both yes and no terrified her. She loved Rose. She loved Elsie, even though Elsie burned her up twice a week. She felt for the first time the dulling effect of the choices she'd made. Each one was okay by itself. She'd been as much a sister to Elsie as Elsie's real sister, so why not move in and help out? And she'd been exhausted running her own restaurant, so why not get into something that didn't weigh on her every hour of the day? Because she was becoming the background. She'd been tired the year after her father died. But now that year was up, she was back on her feet, she had some money in the bank, and she was still living on sc.r.a.ps from other people's meals. Even little Sylvia Teixeira's.

She climbed on Elsie's Exercycle, got off and raised the seat, got on and pedaled. After two minutes she wondered what could possess someone to do this night after night. She remembered watching TV in her father's hospital room, an interview with a boxer at training camp. The reporter held the mike up near the boxer while he was skipping rope and asked what he thought about during the boring parts of getting in shape. Without missing a beat-in fact, keeping time with the whir and tick of the jump rope-the boxer said, "A million and change, a million and change."

So what did Elsie think about? A longer life? Getting good at games? Men?

And what was she herself doing on this ridiculous machine but trying on another bit of Elsie's life? As if the machine were magic, a way to conjure health, adventure, romance: a way to spin a counter-spell to the routine of child care and work.

Be fair, be fair-Elsie wasn't on a joyride. She was good with Rose, had run to help Miss Perry with Rose on her hip, and then managed Miss Perry's household ... which was how she'd caught the eye of Johnny Bienvenue.

Mary pedaled slower. The Exercycle was minor witchcraft compared to the way she herself was being transformed into doting Aunt Mary, plumping into middle age, no longer bothering to pluck the gray from her long, red hair, happy to have Elsie bring Rose to her bed weekday mornings, to feel Rose nuzzle into her. Of course she loved that time-Rose and her under the covers. Rose making humming noises while Mary sang. And she loved the way Rose was with her all day. Rose was sociably happy to be held for a bit by this one or that one of the kitchen staff, but she called for Mary if she was wet or hungry, had begun to say something that sounded like Mary, Mayee, Mawee, something distinct from the "Mama" she cried out to Elsie when Elsie showed up at the kitchen door.

She wouldn't give up a minute of it. She wanted to teach Rose to sing, to tie her shoes, to read, to tell jokes, to stand on a footstool by the stove, taste the soup, and say, "It needs a pinch more salt." She would give in to time seeping through her if Rose would walk along the beach with her or shuck corn with her on the kitchen porch, and someone walking by-May or d.i.c.k or Elsie's sister, Sally-would hear Rose make a snappy comeback or sing a bit of song and say, or just be keen enough to think, "There's a good deal of Mary in Rose."

Mary stopped pedaling. What if Elsie got married?

And what brought that to mind? A test thrown up to measure her-a little race between good and bad. She was pretty sure she'd thought first of what would be good for Rose and Elsie, second of how she herself would be shunted into an outer orbit. Pluto, Neptune, Ura.n.u.s-whichever was coldest and farthest. Once she started examining her conscience she wondered if her eagerness to bring Rose over to visit May and d.i.c.k was a way to keep herself near the center of Rose's life.

And what if it was? It was still the right thing to do. May deserved whatever comfort she chose; d.i.c.k deserved some difficulty. And that brought her back to herself, to how she was busting into every life but her own.

Elsie came in laughing. She stomped snow off her boots, dropped her bag and tennis racket, slid out of her goose-down jacket and let it fall. She said, "I haven't done that in years." She glided across the room and sprawled on the sofa.

Mary got off the Exercycle and hung up the goose-down jacket. She swept up the snow by the coatrack and threw it out the front door. She said, "Where's your car?"

"I left it at the bottom of the hill. I'll call Eddie tomorrow." One arm lay across her eyes; the other trailed across her stomach. One foot was on the floor. Her knee swung out a little, then back against the sofa cus.h.i.+on. She said again, "I'll call Eddie," her voice floating out lazily.

Of course. Eddie to plow the driveway, Sylvia to spend the night at Miss Perry's, Mary to mind Rose, Elsie to purr on the sofa.

Mary squeezed her lips together. She would rather her hair turn completely gray than let herself turn cold and spiteful. She could live with her warm-blooded sins-anger, l.u.s.t, gluttony-but not this hiss of envy.

Mary thought of her old days on her own, the Sunday-morning brunches she'd prepared after closing on Sat.u.r.day night. How had she had the energy? Red-crab bisque, brioches stuffed with veal kidneys, smoked trout, oatcakes with lemon curd. Soups and stews were all the better for being in the pot a day or two, and the cold dishes had only to be laid out-it was the oatcakes and brioches that made for an early Sunday-morning flurry. But she'd loved it. She'd felt whole, more than whole-abundant.

Once in a while this boyfriend or that stayed after closing on Sat.u.r.day; once in a great while one of them actually helped. She'd give them a spoonful to taste, stir the lemon curd in the double boiler, roll out dough on the marble counter. They all thought she was s.e.xy in her kitchen.

When the lids were back on the pots, the raw oatcakes stashed in the fridge, the trout sprinkled with dill and covered with wax paper, she'd collapse into a chair, drink a cold beer, let her hair down. She'd sometimes put the long cus.h.i.+ons from the window seat in front of the fireplace and spend the night, wake up with the winter sun, take a bath standing in a metal gardening tub, sponging off the smell of dill or cinnamon or s.e.x. She liked s.e.x, just hadn't had a lot of luck finding companions.h.i.+p, a sense of humor, and satisfying s.e.x all in one person. Two out of three wasn't enough to set up house. She'd only had pa.s.sing glimpses of men who set off full fantasies of lovemaking, conversation, and breakfast. She sometimes thought she could have been happy with the short, bald musician-one of a trio she'd taken pity on when they'd showed up just as she was closing on a snowy night. The last she'd heard from them was a postcard from all three-they were playing in Vancouver.

And here she was with Elsie. Elsie, who thought a big meal was sabotage, who thought singing was so much noise, and who now lay swooning on the sofa.

Mary made an effort. When she was ten she'd got an English bicycle for Christmas, a bigger present than the baseball mitt and football her brothers got. They stared at her bicycle, slouching and sour-faced. Her father said, "Never mind all that. We're off to Ma.s.s, and I want to see the two of you on your knees praying for the decency to rejoice in your sister's good fortune."

The phrase became a family joke. She couldn't remember how long it took to fade, maybe as long as it took her to outgrow the bicycle. She did remember that being the object of envy was painful. This sensation lingered in a fragment of memory that detached itself from time but drifted back across her clear remembering, the way a floater drifted across her eye.

She got back on the Exercycle. She gripped the handlebars and began to pedal slowly. "... On your knees praying for the decency to rejoice in your sister's good fortune." Elsie lolling on the sofa, her lips a little puffy-not exactly the good fortune the old man had in mind that Christmas morning. But if you gave him enough time he'd get the joke, even if it was on him. At least he'd got that one. But what about this one? What's my favorite daughter got up to now? (That was an even older joke: "Ah, here she is-my favorite daughter." "But Dad, you've only got one." "Is that right? Just the one?") And here she is pedaling a bicycle that's going nowhere, minding a baby that's none of her own, wis.h.i.+ng away a pang of envy, and hearing his voice, hearing now the shy love in it.

She began to cry. Just tears and a sniffle at first, then a sob she couldn't help. Elsie took her arm from over her eyes. "Mary?" Elsie sat up and came over, tried to hug her but b.u.mped into the end of the handlebar, came to the side and had to fend off Mary's knee with both hands as it cycled up.

"Jesus," Mary said, and took a breath. She was still crying as she started to laugh. "This thing is a menace."

"Mary," Elsie said. Mary could see Elsie was also caught in between-wasn't sure if she should laugh yet.

"It's okay," Mary said. "I was just remembering some stuff. Look out now-I'm getting off this thing before it kills us both."

Elsie took a step back, reached forward to take Mary's hand. Elsie said, "I'm sorry I was late. I'm sorry for ... whatever it is."

"I'll tell you in a bit. What with pedaling and crying, I'm ready for a beer. So. You and Johnny hit it off?"

There. Halfway there.

Mary went to the fridge and held up two bottles of beer. Elsie nodded. They sat on the sofa. Elsie said, "In my station wagon," and laughed the way she had when she'd come in.

Mary heard Elsie laugh, heard herself laugh, felt the beer go down her throat, heard Elsie go on talking, but she herself wasn't all the way back from where she'd been. She'd always been proud of her memory; she remembered songs, stories, conversations; she was the one her brothers called late at night to remember things for them. When her memory jogged along the regular paths, it was a pleasant little outing. Now she was wary. Time might be less ordering than she'd thought. The tenses-I am, I was, I will be; I love, I loved, I will love-lost their certainty when she was engulfed in memory that pulled her ... Where? Why was the North Pole up, the South Pole down? She could get dizzy thinking about the earth in s.p.a.ce, and once the earth turned or fell over onto its beam ends, all the other pretty pictures, the solar systems, the-What next? The galaxy?-she got the spins.

It was only luck, a little puff of memory that brought back the favorite-daughter joke. Brought back from where? There might be no end of moments that weren't in the calendar of Christmases, birthdays, school years-that hadn't snagged on another memory but sifted into the time that was beyond the gravity of her memory. Time flowed into everyone and then out again, more of it unremembered than remembered. She thought of time growing fainter and fainter as it lost what gave it life-what people heard or saw or touched or smelled or tasted-and then going back to being nothing.

Elsie was laughing again. "In the middle of it-not the middle middle but the middle of the beginning-I suddenly got mad. Have you ever ...? When you were a little bit angry? It reminds me of how you put lemon juice on figs or that fancy Italian vinegar on strawberries and they taste sweeter. Is that like homeopathy? You put in a little bad thing to make the whole thing better?"

"No," Mary said. "Not homeopathy. I don't know about homeopathy. The acid breaks down the fibers, and the fruit gets juicier."

Elsie laughed.

Mary made an even bigger effort but only got as far as saying again, "So you and Johnny hit it off."

Elsie turned so her back was against the arm of the sofa, tucked her knees to her chest, and took a swig of beer. "What was nice in another way, in a completely other way, was that afterward we both burst out laughing. We must have thought the same thing-here we are, like a couple of teenagers. The windows steamed up, clothes all tangled. A couple of teenagers."

"Like Sylvia Teixeira ..."

Elsie looked up. "Oh, G.o.d, Sylvia. Was she okay about staying late? I told her nine o'clock. Have you been back awhile?"

Mary pressed her lips together and took a second. Mary said, "She was fine. I got back early. Rose was asleep. Sylvia walked down to Miss Perry's. Everything's fine." Elsie closed her eyes and rested her head on her knees.

Mary said, "When do babies start remembering? I mean, remember for life. When Rose is four she won't remember what's going on now, but she'll remember from then on, right? I'm picking four because that's when I remember stuff from, it might have been three, but maybe it could happen even earlier with Rose-she's smart for a baby."

Elsie lifted her head and looked hard at Mary. Mary heard the tone of what she'd just said as if it was on a tape recorder-her voice higher than normal and breathlessly needy. If she was tending bar she wouldn't give that woman another drink. Mary said, "Never mind all that." She sounded like her father, though he never used the phrase to cancel anything he himself said, just to get everyone else to pipe down.

Maybe it was that bit of wry remembering, maybe it was that Elsie finally concentrated on her, or maybe it was that Elsie said, "Oh, Rose knows who we are." There. Elsie said "we." Mary resurfaced into the present. Elsie said, "She's like a baby duck or a goose; we're imprinted on her. You can read Konrad Lorenz about that. His geese hatched and he was the first thing they saw, so they followed him around as if he were their mother."

Trust Elsie to give a nature lecture. But Elsie's effort met her halfway, as good an effort as Mary herself had made, good enough to call it a night.

She and Elsie were in orbit around Rose. The two of them might be aligned or opposed, they might spin their days and nights at different intervals, but round and round they'd go ... Until when? Until Rose grew up? Never mind time. Time wasn't the only thing that mattered. Rose would be in their memory, and they would be in Rose's. Elsie had said "we"; she'd said, "Rose knows who we are." Never mind the geese. Never mind Elsie's night out. The three of them would move together, making a force field of shared memory that would catch more of time than if each of them was alone.

This vision held for a moment, then slid away. Mary felt she'd performed a mental act that obtained grace as surely as she'd once believed in grace through prayer. She felt the ghost of all those novenas and rosaries and composition-of-place meditations ("Feel the crown of thorns on our Savior's brow; feel the weight of the Cross"). And if it was all that that brought her to the same near swoon she used to feel when she'd been lifted up from her aching knees and clasped hands, and the smell of her wet wool scarf-if that piety came back to her in the here and now of how she loved Rose-what of it?

It was hers-she remembered what she remembered without worrying about blasphemy or sacrilege. And all the other old tunes of her life, when Rose grew old enough to sing them, would snag the new parts of their life, keep them on earth, keep them from flying unremembered into s.p.a.ce.

Elsie had nodded off. Mary woke her up enough so that she could sleepwalk to bed. Mary reached under the quilt and pulled Elsie's boots off, left her in her wool dress. It looked comfortable enough. She turned Elsie's alarm on, checked the woodstove, and went up to her room, looking forward to breakfast, to Rose, to the day when she and Rose would be sitting at the table by the window having a long breakfast together.

Part Two.

chapter twenty-seven.

Miss Perry's recovery from her stroke had been, according to the doctor, remarkable for someone her age. He had given her pa.s.sing marks in motor and language skills. Elsie thought the recovery was remarkable in a different way. It wasn't that Miss Perry wasn't Miss Perry, but that-as Elsie struggled to describe it to the doctor-the colors of her moods were more intense. The doctor nodded and then said, "You've been a great comfort to her," and Elsie understood that they weren't going to have a discussion, certainly not one that might become metaphysical.

Sylvia Teixeira, although now a student at the University of Rhode Island, still came in the morning and again at suppertime. It was Mary Scanlon who told Elsie that that's how Sylvia put off having to go to Portugal for a year. Elsie dropped in on Miss Perry after work before going to pick Rose up at Sawtooth and, later, day care.

When Rose started going to kindergarten, Elsie said to Miss Perry, "My daughter isn't a baby anymore."

Miss Perry understood at once. She said, "You may bring the child with you, and we shall see. Do you remember what ages Charlie and Tom were when I found them agreeable companions?"

Elsie said she didn't.

"I do remember they knew how to s-swim," Miss Perry said. She stuttered slightly on some sibilants. "The first time we all went out in d.i.c.k Pierce's skiff, I asked, perhaps overcautiously, if the little boys knew how to swim. d.i.c.k no more than nodded, and without a word they took off their s.h.i.+rts, jumped in, and dog-paddled to the far bank and back. d.i.c.k held out a length of rope, they both took hold, and d.i.c.k swung them up over the gunwales. He held them in the air for a moment, their little brown legs dangling, both of them grinning. d.i.c.k smiled one of his shy, proud smiles, and I was quite enchanted. It wasn't simply the display of s-strength, though the boys together may well have made up a hundredweight, but rather the sensation of being the single audience for their larking about. A fortunate consequence was that the boys were released from feeling that I was an inhibiting presence." Miss Perry paused. Elsie thought she might have lost her train of thought, but Miss Perry was simply composing her next sentence. "When I fear from time to time that I have not done enough with my years, I find that my consolation is not so much in the active parts of my life-although teaching, particularly teaching you, certainly required a good deal of activity-but rather in moments like that in d.i.c.k's skiff, when affection and pleasure simply rose up around us. You have a more vigorous nature than I ever had, and on the whole I admire it, but I hope that after a few more hectic years, when your daughter is grown and I am dead, you will let yourself become a more reflective tutelary spirit. One of the things that contributed to the flowering of New England was that the powerful families almost all had a poor cousin, either actual or figurative, who acted as their conscience. You have devoted a good deal of your energy to defending the natural world. But there is s-something else for which I can't find a name. I can say only that Captain Teixeira, Everett Hazard, and d.i.c.k Pierce are more essential to South County than Jack Aldrich. I am fond of Jack, but he has skewed ordinary life by isolating his part of the community in private luxury. It is disconcerting that someone I don't much care for, I mean Phoebe Fitzgerald, has taken a wider interest in everyday life than Jack has. When I am in a disparaging mood, I see her as a schoolgirl trying desperately to be popular. When I am in a more sympathetic mood, I grudgingly admire her darting about as the self-appointed town crier." Miss Perry opened her eyes wide, as if staring at what she'd said. "Oh, I see I'm lingering in the disparaging mood. Let us pa.s.s on. What I am attempting to say to you is that you can be a better form of what I have tried to be. If I had to say in a single phrase what my life has been, it is this-a love affair with this small piece of rock-strewn woods and ponds, and the people who truly live in it. It has been perhaps too pa.s.sive a love but keenly felt. The general confession in the Book of Common Prayer will have to stand for the rest. 'We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.' I have been s-sn.o.bbish about Phoebe Fitzgerald, mean-spirited about Eddie Wormsley, too timid and reclusive to accept Captain Teixeira's invitations to his family parties. And, of course, I have taken your affection for granted." Miss Perry sat back in her armchair, rested her head on the antimaca.s.sar, and closed her eyes. Miss Perry's rehea.r.s.ed speeches made Elsie rigid with the effort it cost them both. She hoped Miss Perry hadn't fallen asleep. She didn't like waking her up, but she couldn't leave her asleep in a chair until Sylvia Teixeira came.

After a few moments Miss Perry opened her eyes. "Rose," she said. "It is Rose. Does Rose know how to swim?"