by Sarah Blake
The Pratts and the Rhinelanders danced into view, grabbing hands and then letting go. She saw them without thinking much about them. She didn’t think much of other people’s marriages—think, that is, whether or not they were happy. Happy was a word for people who stopped with the small beer of themselves. The idea that life could splay outward, like the five fingers on a hand, and grasp something larger, that was what she aimed for. What Ogden wanted her for. Happiness was small beer indeed compared to moments of glad satisfaction, sharply felt, as she had just then out in the dark, the job well done.
They were so beautiful, these boys and girls. So beautiful, and so utterly unaware of why. All day she had been in the grip of this watchfulness. All day, she had been staring at the children and their friends—though they weren’t children, they were in their twenties, she had already had Moss by this age—and been made sad. They would grow old. They would lose their beauty. Because all beauty, in the end, was youth. Evelyn with her heart-shaped face turned toward Dick, turned toward him with the flush of love, her eyes glistening. One looked at Evelyn and one couldn’t help thinking there is the hope for all of us. That was the reason for beauty like hers in the world. She made the rest of us believe, for a moment, in the very strength of the species. In carrying on.
But there was Joan, she saw, also standing a little apart from it all. Kitty tossed her cigarette and stepped on it, putting it out and watching Joan now, the usual worry unfolding. At the edge of the dance Joan stood without moving a muscle in her body, fanning the mother’s alarm. She couldn’t see her daughter’s face, just the nearly electric rigidity, the staring fixed as a stone. From here it looked like the start of one of her fits. Did anyone else see the girl frozen at the center of the party? Kitty moved slowly back toward the barn, out of the darkness and toward her, wanting somehow to cover her daughter, to make Joan invisible. Wanting to help her slip away so as not to embarrass herself.
Len Levy also moved. And Kitty stopped on the threshold of the barn, dumb with apprehension. He would get to her first. The intensity with which he bore down on her daughter should have soothed her; he wanted her, it was clear even from here. Life with him would mean Joan would always be talked about, she’d enter every room as “the girl who married a Jew.” That was too hard. But harder to bear, Kitty thought, harder would be if the Jew gave her up when he found she was not, completely, all there. Kitty stepped inside the barn door and halted. Because Joan’s face had opened into a beautiful, heartbreaking smile.
A deliberate smile. Len slowed. A beautiful, deliberate smile, as bright and distant as a star. But it was no good. It was a hiding place. And he tried to think what she could want to hide. He kept going toward her, his eyes on her face. She still smiled as he came, and then he realized she wasn’t smiling at him, it was for someone behind him, and turning he caught sight of Mrs. Milton, standing on the threshold of the barn. That was it, then, Joan was smiling this armored smile because of her mother. Len stopped right where he was.
“Come on,” Reg said as he came up beside him, “come here to the piano.” And he took his elbow and moved him through the crowd, toward Moss, who was playing with a steady abstracted look in his eyes. It had been nearly an hour of music, and he looked to Len like a sleepwalker. But Moss snapped into a smile when he saw the two of them coming, and nodded, playing the chorus again.
* * *
“JOANIE?” EVELYN WAS standing right next to her. She had been on the other side of the room and now here she was. Joan’s mind unclenched. Her sister was holding her hand. “All right?”
Joan picked herself slowly through the tunnel she imagined in her head when this would begin to happen. When she felt the stop in her brain, when she froze. Inch by inch, she eased back into motion, and squeezed Evelyn’s hand once.
“Yes,” she was able to say, the word rolling up from inside, slowly up from where it had stuck, like bowling balls coming through the chute back into play.
* * *
WHEN LEN TURNED around, he saw Evelyn had come to stand beside her sister and, taking her hand, was very close and whispering in her ear.
Something had happened, Len realized. It hadn’t been a fit, but something had stuck. He reached into his pocket and felt for the spoon he always carried now. Something had happened and he had walked away. He had allowed himself to be walked away by Reg. He started forward, but Moss finished the song with three final chords and then stood up. The room went wild, clapping and shouting for more.
“Taking a break,” Moss said, cupping his hands around his mouth. “I need a drink! Joanie—” He called to his sister where she still stood. “Joan!”
Evelyn and Joan looked up at the same time, and Len shivered. Again he had the sense he had had that first time, of the two cats regarding, slowly, the world before them. Joan shook her head at something Evelyn said and then started forward to Moss.
“No, goose,” her brother said when she was nearer. “You were standing next to the beers.”
“Oh!” She shook her head, trying not to look at Len. “Oh dear.”
“I’ll go,” Len said, moving quickly away. Joan flushed and looked down. Reg leaned against the wall but wasn’t listening.
Moss reached for her hand. “Joanie?”
“Shh. I’m okay.”
He squeezed. “You’ve fallen for him, haven’t you?”
She didn’t answer.
“It’s possible,” he said.
“Oh, shush, Moss—shut up.” She turned to him. “You’re hopeless.”
He held her hand. “It’s so simple,” he said. “I heard it tonight. It’s a round—that’s the song, ‘On the Rocks,’ that’s what I’ve got to do. It’s one voice joining another, then a third. A fourth—”
She looked at him. There was a dim pain in her head, and the noise around them came from a ways away.
“I’ve never believed anything more than this. There are no more—”
She heard him searching.
“Walls.” He found the word.
The pain was growing, as though someone were knocking far, far in the back of the house and she had only just begun to connect the thudding with the sound. Someone was going to get in. Someone was bursting forward. What did he think he meant? No more walls.
“Where’s the music? What’s happened to the music?” someone yelled.
“Hold your horses,” Moss grumbled amiably. He pushed the transistor to the front of the piano and turned the knob. Static crackled out of the box as he played with the tuner, and slowly a station swooned forward from the mainland eight miles away, a clear station. It was Saturday night, and there was dancing over there. Len thrust a beer into his hands, cool, but not cold, sweating the can.
Reg leaned over the piano, and Moss looked up at him, smiling.
“Let’s get some air,” Len said, his eye on Joan.
* * *
KITTY SAW THAT the danger had passed. She watched her daughter cross in safety over to Moss, and turned away to find Priss Houghton standing alone at the edge of the room, the bright, hard spots of too much drink showing on either cheek.
“Hello, pal.” She came to stand beside Priss; Priss looked up at her gratefully.
Kitty glanced again at the four by the piano and saw Reg say something, and saw a softness arrive on her son’s face in answer, a wonder she remembered seeing there when he was a boy; and it occurred to her with a start that quite possibly she had been watching, she had been worrying about, the wrong pair.
But that was ridiculous.
“Kitty?” Priss recalled her.
“Yes.” Kitty turned back to her.
When she looked again, she couldn’t find either Moss or Joan in the crowd. Moss or Joan, Len Levy or Reg Pauling. She stood up, searching over the heads of the partygoers. But they were nowhere to be found.
Thirty-nine
DOWN THE HILL, PAST the Big House and toward the moonlit water, the four of them moved farther and farther away from the party, the mus
ic from the barn reaching them in pockets, in the dips and hollows of the lawn, bound by the unspoken desire to get deeper into the night. Reg and Moss walked slightly ahead of Joan and Len. The white of Reg’s sleeve moved in and out of the tunnel of light cast by the lantern Moss held. He was saying something, but the words passed back on the air didn’t amount to a sentence, even a phrase. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered to Joan anymore but being in the arms of the man beside her in the dark.
They walked through the boathouse toward the water, where the stars bounced on the calm surface offering them light up ahead. It was low tide and the sea unmoving. If she put her hand out right then, she would hold the fabric of his shirt in her fist. Moss reached and pulled open the gate at the top of the gangway. “Come on,” he called over his shoulder. “Let’s turn the lights on.”
“Moss,” Joan laughed.
“Why not?” He was down the gangway and had walked to the edge of the dock, turning his back to them. Moss perched himself on the tip of the dock, fumbling with his pants, then he thrust his hips forward and a circle of light appeared in the water just beyond him. A circle of light that moved and unrolled like a ribbon up and down and around and disappeared in a flash of tiny sparks.
“Phosphor?” Reg asked.
“And piss,” Moss answered cheerfully over his shoulder. “Poor man’s paint.”
“Anyone else?” Moss zipped his fly and turned round to face the three of them ranged in a line on the gangway.
Len cupped his hand around the flame on his lighter and drew it to the tip of the cigarette in his mouth. The puff puff puff as he drew in was the sound of bird wings. Reg pushed the gate open and walked down to join Moss standing at the end of the dock, the last of the phosphor on the dark water fading. There was no breeze. The squares of yellow light from windows across the Narrows shone steady and solid in the black.
She waited for him to turn toward her, willing him to look at her. They stood together without touching.
“Let’s get out on the water,” they heard Moss say to Reg, standing on the dock. “Let’s take a row.”
“Let’s go,” Len said at last. They turned around and walked back through the boathouse and onto the lawn.
At the turnoff to the picnic grounds, Len reached for Joan’s hand, still saying nothing. Now, away from Reg and Moss, they walked hand in hand through the grass to the trees that marked the beginning of the climb down to the picnic grounds. He dropped her hand for a moment, reached and drew the flashlight from his pocket and switched it on. Then he led the way forward, heading for the twin eyes of the bonfires, now burned to dull red spots in the dark. When they reached the open clearing of the picnic grounds, he turned and took her hand again, moving them past the table cleared of bottles and silverware, the vases of flowers standing guard above the bare wood. There was a bench at the end, right on the water, near the rocks, and they sat down.
Across the cove in front of them the lantern on the boathouse lit up the bows of three boats, all tied to one ring on the dock. And the half-seen hulls of other boats bobbed like white shadows behind these nearer ones. The night was perfectly clear, and the stars bent over them in the sky, making patterns of light on the water that shivered and withdrew with the turn of the tide. She thought she saw the shadow of Moss and Reg sitting at the end of the dock.
Her hand was warm in his. Warm and firm, and stirring.
“Joan.”
She turned her face, and he tipped her chin toward him and bent to find her in the dark. Her lips were as warm and firm as her hand, and wet. In one motion, he lifted her onto his lap, tucking her legs sideways, her chest turned against his, sidesaddle. A groan started deep in his chest and pushed up through his lips and into hers. The sound joined them. She kissed him back, not carefully anymore, harder, and her arms went around his neck so he could pull her in tight. He kissed her throat and down to the cleft of her blouse, and a little gasp escaped her and she put her hands around his head. The first button slid easily out, and very slowly, his lips traced the middle line, button after button opening until he had reached the top of her skirt and her skin gleamed around him. She reached and unhooked herself and then pushed herself off him and stood to undo her skirt.
They left their clothes and walked down to a softer, mossy place at the edge of the water. The tide was dead low and the drop was steep. In the moonlight, the wide white granite humps looked soft and the black water, hard. The breeze that had blown the fog out to sea earlier had dropped and the night was humid and still. It had been hot in the barn, and down here it was simply still. A cage of air.
He cupped her breasts in his hands and held them, then leaned down and kissed each one, as she reached and put her arms around his neck. And sighing, she pulled him down with her, gathering him, rocking with him, and he came in quick and so hard she opened her eyes and saw a face she’d never seen, saw then how much he wanted as they rode all the way to the end together, alive to the very core.
And afterward, as the tumult inside quieted to a hum, she lay there, drowsing. She couldn’t have moved if she tried.
“Look at me,” he whispered, still inside her.
His face was the moon. And she stared up into him and smiled.
His finger landed on her neck and traced the line down to the hollow.
“This is the picnic grounds,” she said dreamily.
He didn’t answer. She tried to sort out what she wanted to say.
“But from now on,” she said, looking at him, “it’s our spot and—”
“The spot that marks us,” he broke in tenderly. “Where we began.”
“Began?” Her voice caught.
He nodded. He was serious. “Here is where it happened.”
He rolled onto his side, lifting up on his elbow, and folded her hand into his, mooring it on his chest. She lay on her back on the moss looking up through the spruce boughs to the starlit sky, her hand in the thicket of his chest as it rose and fell.
“We’ve made love before.”
“Not like that.” He stroked her arm. “Not like this. You came away with me tonight. You left the party.”
She looked up at him uneasily. The confidence, the vital assurance, kin to triumph, was unmistakable.
“Accident is not accidental,” he said quietly. “We were meant to meet that day in the station. You were meant to be mine, to come with me. You are meant to—”
“You believe that?”
He nodded.
“We have something big and real. You see it. You love me,” he whispered in her ear. “I thought I had lost you up there, but you love me. You do.” His mouth found hers again, and she felt herself give up, she felt herself give as he whispered above her, kissing her, whispering into her ear. And she listened. She listened to him conjure a life out of words and lips and air. He would dress her and keep her, and never let her go. There was the whole world to see. There was so much. So much more than here, and they would see it together.
But she also heard for the first time something she hadn’t yet understood—the image came flooding in—that after her own apartment, perhaps there’d be another, but there was always this room afterward, the one that men held the door open onto. Len was about to offer the door to this room. She had a sudden exhausted vision of them all, each with a door and a woman just about to enter. Men build the walls of the room and the women step inside them, and then they close the doors on the woman inside. There was sex, there was this flood that burst through the rooms, but here it was, nonetheless.
She uttered a soft little moan. And even as he boxed her in, here was not enough He wanted more, more than this place could offer. He could not see how the Island held everything and more—how it could hold everything not yet made or thought or spoken between them. The Island held the unseen world bending and opening around the two of them, the world she felt when they made love, a beckoning, a calling from something more than each of them. The Island held them.
He could not hear the Is
land’s call. She could see he thought he was bigger. And he was bigger, and a little blind. That too she could see.
She could not go with him. And it would hurt. She loved him with every atom, every brush of his fingers on her skin, she loved him. And she loved past him, here. But she would not go with him.
“Stop.” She pulled her hand free gently and sat up, a little dizzy. “Stop talking.”
She rose from him, naked, and made her way across the smooth granite to the water. After a little, he followed.
* * *
THERE WERE TWENTY-ODD boats tied up, and boats tied off of other boats, and at the very end, the dinghy that belonged to Crockett’s swung on the tide. Moss and Reg picked their way across cushions and along wooden decks made slick by the night’s dewfall and landed in the rowboat, winded. All the drink had cleared from Moss’s head, and he felt alert and alive. Reg climbed into the stern, and Moss climbed in after him, untied the bow, and pushed them off.
A fish splashed off to the right. The water hiccupped around the prow, and Moss shoved out the oars and took a stroke to pull free of the nest of boats and glide out into the Thoroughfare. Out into the middle of the channel. Moss rowed for several minutes and then stopped, crossing his oars and letting them skim the surface, the boat gliding under its own momentum. The moon spilled light onto the water. The air was humid and still.
Moss pulled and then leaned away, and the boat sprang easily forward. Closing his eyes, he pulled again, and the water closed over the oar and released as he pulled up on the catch. The boat moved, and when he opened his eyes, Reg was looking to the side, his eyes on the dark hump of the island sliding by. Behind Reg’s head the water shimmered away, a carpet unrolled between them and the mainland where the Camden Hills climbed, lodged in Moss’s mind’s eye. He pulled and pulled and he felt he could row right out of the bay into the sea, with this man in front of him. He kept on, and then out in the middle, he stopped. The boat bobbed in the sudden arrest.
