by Sarah Blake
Joan turned away so Evelyn couldn’t see the flush on her cheeks and started stacking the week’s newspapers. “It’s all right.”
“All right? It’s not all right, it doesn’t feel a bit right.”
“He works for Dad.” Joan set the guest book on top of the papers, lining up the corners.
Evelyn nodded. “Dickie says he’s full of himself.”
Joan bit back a retort.
“How did he get here?” Evelyn asked. “Add it up, Joan.”
“Add what up?”
“One doesn’t just show up on the dock and expect to stay for lunch.”
“He didn’t expect anything, I don’t think.”
“Don’t be so dim.” Evelyn rolled her eyes. “Of course he did.”
“Moss invited them, remember?”
“Was it a real invitation, do you think?” Evelyn was dubious.
“Of course,” Joan said stoutly. “I’m sure it was.”
“Pretty nervy to just come. Moss seemed as surprised as any of us.”
“Moss said you should come, and Len did,” Joan said quietly. Though she knew exactly what Evelyn was driving at. One didn’t generally just take an invitation at face value. And either Len didn’t see that, or—her heart tossed—he didn’t care.
“What about the party, Joan? Now they’ll have to stay. He’s going to ruin my party.”
“No, he’s not.”
“He is.”
“He is a friend of Moss’s,” Joan said again patiently, “and he works for Dad.”
Evelyn looked right at her. “But he’s staying because of you.”
Joan flushed.
“He is,” Evelyn vowed. “He’s watching you. All the time. You kissed him, remember?”
Joan turned from the window, straightening the shells on the hanging shelf without seeing what she touched.
“He thinks there’s something there,” Evelyn concluded.
Joan lifted her head and stared out the window. Dickie had the ball in his hand and was pointing down the lawn at a spot, and Len nodded, running just as the ball arced in the air toward him, leaped, and caught it, tucking the ball into his chest and folding his arms around it. She wanted those arms around her. She shivered and looked down.
“The whole mess is typical of Moss,” Evelyn fumed. “He hasn’t thought about this at all.”
“What is typical?” Kitty paused in the doorway with her flower basket.
“These friends.” Evelyn was dismissive. “Where will they sleep?”
Kitty stiffened. For a long moment, she studied her youngest daughter.
“We are not,” she said quietly, “we are never the people about whom it shall be said we have made anyone feel uncomfortable. Or unwelcome.”
Kitty drew the basket onto her hip and turned. “And I don’t think Moss knew they’d come today,” Kitty said on her way out the front door. “Though what possessed them to come all the way out here in the fog, I can’t think.”
“I know exactly what possessed them.” Evelyn looked at Joan.
* * *
LUNCH WAS SET out on the pier so as to catch any breeze from off the water. And though the fog had lifted slightly, the damp air still hung a thick curtain, blocking the view down the Narrows to the mainland. They had eaten the sandwiches and drunk the lemonade, and the group had loosened and scattered slightly, like petals fallen from the stem. Fenno Weld had appeared out of the fog, his white shirt lifting and lowering as he rowed forward, a ghostly apparition. Priss and Sarah Pratt had gone up for a nap. Roger and Ogden were in the boathouse filling the kerosene lamps for the party. There was much to do, but Kitty rested in this little gully of time after lunch. The others were arranged before her in clumps, Evelyn and Dickie down on the dock, Joan standing with Len Levy and Reg Pauling beside them, his back to the water, leaning on the railing, talking. Moss sat near her with his knees up against the slats of the pier, his eyes closed.
The tide was going out, and the dock rocked slowly, keeping time to the swells carrying the waters of the bay back out to the sea.
Len Levy shifted beside Joan. The man wanted, Kitty could see, to put his hands somewhere; he had thrust them down in the pockets of his jacket, but they crept back up and out. He was quite attractive, though Joan seemed not to notice, she seemed miles away. Good for her, Kitty thought. She was not taken in by all that brio.
A fish hawk wheeled from the top of one of the trees in the cove, its broad wings as taut as sails. And Reg Pauling’s eyes followed the point of the bird, his eyes sweeping over the group, resting briefly on Dickie at the end of the dock, pointing something out to Evelyn. Kitty felt the perception in him, the fine adumbrating mind that sorted and classed even as it took in the navy blue sleeve of Dickie’s Shetland sweater. She wondered what he thought of it all and wondered if she’d ever know.
And the fact of him, the physical fact of him, a black man standing there listening to the talk, talking himself, startled her at the same time as it soothed. This is what it looked like. Nothing more.
“Mr. Pauling,” Kitty called, “come over and talk to us.”
Reg turned. She patted the spot beside her on the bench. “Moss tells me you know the Lowells,” she said to Reg. “How is that?”
Perhaps his mother had worked for the Lowells, she thought.
Without opening his eyes, Moss drawled, “Reg was in Lowell House, Mum.”
“Well then, that explains it,” Kitty said, without missing a beat. He must be one of Jolly Lowell’s “projects.” “And what did you study there?”
“English,” said Reg.
And she smiled at him. She liked how still he sat beside her, how he tipped his body toward her when she spoke. Kitty liked this neat man beside her.
“It’s going to clear,” Ogden declared, coming out of the boathouse with two lanterns, followed by Roger Pratt. Kitty turned toward where he pointed. Far down the Narrows a rip in the fog had opened a bright impossible blue and a spot of sun just at the end of Vinalhaven.
“So it is.” She smiled.
“Dickens or Trollope?” Roger Pratt asked Reg.
“Excuse me?”
“You studied English. Are you a Dickens man,” Roger asked, more slowly, “or Trollope?”
Reg turned around and regarded him.
“Anthony Trollope,” Roger offered.
Reg smiled. “Yes, I know Trollope.”
“I ask the question to everyone now—” Roger set the hurricane lamp on the table beside Kitty.
“What is the difference?” asked Reg.
“I’m sorry?”
“What is the difference between the two?”
A swift look crossed the older man’s face, close to something like worry.
“The difference?” he said. “Why, it’s enormous. One of them cares about systems, the other about people. Writers always break down into those two groups in the end.”
“Do they?” Reg asked.
Moss grinned. “Reg is a writer,” he offered, opening his eyes.
“A copy editor now,” Reg corrected. “But I was a stringer in Europe the past three years.”
“What’s your impression of it over there, now that the Marshall money has run its course?” Ogden carried three more lamps out onto the pier, setting them at intervals along the railing.
“In Germany? Or Italy?”
“Germany.”
And as Reg answered, describing the wealth he had observed over the past few years, Ogden listened, clearly satisfied.
“This is what I’ve been saying—this is what Marshall saw in ’forty-six. Money, men, and know-how saved Europe. You sow good men, and good men mean good business, no matter where they come from. It worked in Europe, and it’s working here. Good men. Good ideas. Money to seed them.”
“Agreed.” Roger Pratt nodded.
“So why is it, then, do you think, there was no Marshall Plan for the Negro?” Reg asked quietly.
Moss sat up and looked at Reg.
“For the Negro?” Ogden folded his arms, perplexed. “The Negro is an American, not a war-torn nation. There is no need for something special; it would be demeaning. America is surging forward, and the Negro—with everyone—rides the tide.”
“And wasn’t the Negro devastated by war? Aren’t we a war-torn nation?”
Roger Pratt was mystified. “I’d say we all profited by the war. I mean,” he corrected himself, “not those poor souls who lost someone, but in general the late forties saw nothing but growth.”
“I think Reg means the Civil War,” Moss put in swiftly. “You are working on a theory, isn’t that right, Reg? Something for The Village Voice?”
The name meant nothing to the older men, but the question had safely been deflected. Moss had caught it, held it, and diverted it from its mark, and the window was open between him and Reg there on the dock.
“That’s right,” Reg said evenly, giving Moss a slight smile, as if to say, See that? There you go.
But Ogden was shaking his head, still struck by what Reg had described in Europe. “It’s the way to ensure peace.”
“Money?” Roger shook his head. “Money alone won’t do it.”
“There is a right way and a wrong way,” countered Ogden. “French Indochina will prove that to be true in the end. You’ll see, Pratt.”
“Nothing is black and white about the truth there.” Roger shook his head. “You’ve got to have an endgame. You’ve got to give a people the tools to get them there.”
“Speaking of which, Levy, tell these characters what you told me.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“How we are missing”—Ogden glanced at Roger—“a market.”
Len pulled his hands out of his pockets and straightened.
“Honestly, Ogden,” Kitty protested. “It’s Saturday.”
“Tell Dickie,” Ogden said, waving Dickie forward, “what you were telling me in my office about expanding.”
“Expanding?” Dickie pushed through the gate, joining them on the pier.
“Len thinks maybe we might expand a little. Instead of just advising companies where to invest, we advise the people who work there, as well.”
Len nodded at Dickie. “If you take Milton Higginson out into the rest of the country, you would open Wall Street wide—you would show that the financial center need not remain in one place—and everyone profits.”
Roger Pratt shook his head doubtfully. “Wall Street is Wall Street because it is run by men who understand the business, just as Washington is run by men who understand statesmanship. I was sent to Vietnam, for instance, because I know what I’m looking at. Doctors are trained, lawyers likewise.”
“Granted, sir”—Levy didn’t skip a beat—“but a carpenter might invest in a corporation. A carpenter might take financial power into his own hands. And if it were poised in various offices around the country, Milton Higginson would have put it there.”
(How the man talks, Kitty thought, looking past him down the Narrows. How he just steps in and takes over. She watched him bend toward Ogden like a conspirator, and she frowned. As if he were in on something. As if he believed he could be in on something with Ogden.)
“See that, Pratt?” Ogden approved.
Dickie looked from Len to Ogden. “Are you proposing to send Milton Higginson into the public realm?”
“No,” Len answered mildly. “Just looking to expand where we already are.”
A mulish expression settled on Dickie’s face at Len’s use of the word we.
“I’d say where we are, at the heart of New York, is pretty much dead-on.”
“There are many people who don’t put New York as the only center of the country’s power,” Len said.
“And they would be wrong,” Roger Pratt answered comfortably, rising to his feet. “The centers of power have always been right here.”
“Yes,” Len pointed out smoothly, “but centers move. They always have. And they move before people know they are gone. For instance…” He turned to Reg. “Tell them what you told me—about Gary Cooper in Paris.”
“Paris?” Dickie whistled.
“The scene in the saloon?”
Len nodded. Reg folded his arms, looking at the group.
“The French are nuts about the movies,” he said. “American movies, and Westerns, most of all—I’d say there’s a theater tucked in just about every corner of the city. Last fall I saw there was a showing of High Noon, in a tiny theater just off the Rue de Rivoli, so I went in. The place was full of Frenchmen. I may have been the only American—I was certainly the only Negro.”
That was the second time he had done that up here, Moss realized. Called attention to himself like that. It worked like a bell they all heard, a finger tap on the skull. It seemed to Moss that Reg was enjoying himself. As if he’d loosened his tie and dove in.
“In High Noon,” Reg was saying, “Gary Cooper pushes into a saloon, throws his hat down, slams his fist on the bar, and shouts: Give me three fingers of red-eye!”
Ogden grinned. “Go on.”
Reg smiled, pulling back the arrow before he let it fly.
“But in Paris, Gary Cooper walks into the bar, slams his fist down, and demands: Une verre de Dubonnet, s’il vous plait.”
There was a little pause, and then everyone on the dock burst out laughing.
“See that?” Len was buoyed by their reaction. “The cowboy is what’s coming, and the French don’t know how to translate him.”
“Why, that’s not the point at all!” Dickie remarked, dismissing Len, appraising Reg newly. The man spoke French.
Moss laughed with the others, his eyes never leaving Reg’s face.
There comes a turning, a turning point, not a climax, not the top of a song, but a turn when you realize the bass had been there all along, all along and under. Suddenly, you understand the steady, rich, insistent note was the tie, the bass was the tide. And Moss saw Reg was that. Reg was the anchor. Reg was the steady beat. With Reg at the center, with Reg telling stories here on the dock, Moss understood, they could all listen, they could imagine themselves to be the good men they were. They could believe a dream about themselves, and about the country. Why not? They were all standing right here. In fellowship. Laughing together.
But Moss heard another tune. His eyes upon them, Reg answered and asked and beat the bass to the bass, the note that troubled, disturbing, even as it preserved the tune. The men on the dock were on their best behavior, behaving around him, for him; and the notes Reg played, played them—and showed the sham of fellowship, showed up the stage. Watching him, Moss had seen for the first time what they all must look like to Reg. Moss saw white. He saw black. The dream of themselves was a dream.
Reg was the bell and the crack in the bell, the steady note that tapped at the back of the skull and wouldn’t stop.
That’s what it was, Moss realized now. The slow beat of race—heard, unheard, and heard again. Always there, always sounding. Here was Moss’s song for America, this moment right now. Moss’s pulse quickened; he knew he was right. Reg was the ground. Moss stood up, hearing the notes in his head, hearing how to get this, how to show what he had seen here on the dock, in music. That was the center of the song. And it had always been here. There was no American song without it. Reg was the bass. Reg was the bell.
“Moss?”
“I just need to write this down, Mum,” he said to her, but looking at Reg, his face opened into his crooked, contagious grin.
“You’re the bell, man. You’re it.”
“No need to get carried away.” Reg looked back at him, smiling. Moss chuckled and turned away.
“Don’t vanish, Moss,” Kitty called after him. “Dad will need you soon to dig the firepits.”
“Sure thing.” Moss nodded without really hearing, hurrying toward the boathouse. “I’ll be quick.”
His footsteps pounded away and then were muffled by the lawn.
He would never give up this music, K
itty realized, as he disappeared into the fog. He would go and work for Ogden, but his heart would not be in it. It would not hold. A sudden spasm of fear gripped her.
“Joan,” she said sharply. “Joan, these dishes need clearing. Where is Evelyn?”
Joan stood up abruptly from her spot beside her mother and started gathering plates.
“Can you give me a hand?” she said over her shoulder to Len.
Swiftly, Len pushed away from the railing, held the big wicker basket for Joan as she lowered the stack down in. They didn’t exchange so much as a glance.
Kitty watched them. So that’s it. It was the oldest trick in the book. The man worked for Ogden but wanted Joan.
Well, she thought. Well, well.
Beside her, Reg bent and lit a cigarette, and then, exhaling, kept his eye on Len following Joan through the boathouse until the two disappeared.
* * *
JOAN WALKED STRAIGHT through the boathouse and up the hill without pausing, stopping at last at the top of the lawn, where Len caught up with her and put down the basket. Though they had left the group behind, they were not hidden. Anyone could see the two of them standing together on the lawn, side by side. She held herself very still beside him, refusing to look at him, which only underscored to him their bond. He’d not been able to look directly at her himself. So this was how it would be.
And yet, what had he thought? That he could stride up here and ask her father, his boss, what he had done in the past—or what it looked like he had done? That he could whisk the girl from the castle? Here she was beside him, and it was clear she belonged to the castle.
The fog had lifted enough to show the low line of the opposite docks across the Narrows. A sail angled across the Narrows, heading toward the point, three heads turned into the wind.
He crossed his arms. A single gull swept across the sky before them and disappeared behind the darkening fringe of spruce trees in the cove across the lawn.
The air was very still. Music came from the piano up at the barn.
“You are driving me crazy,” he said, very low.
And then she turned, at last, to look at him, and he saw she was trembling and his—his girl—again. Her smile was her hand put into his.
