Compass Rose

by John Casey

  “I built one once. A school project. The boys tried to build a big one and it caved in. Mine was just a little den. Perfectly comfortable—snow is a good insulator. The thing you have to watch out for is your body heat melting the snow”—she didn’t mention letting one of the boys in—“melting the snow under you. I made a mattress out of the tips of hemlock branches.”

  “Didn’t the twigs stick into you?”

  “No—the ends all droop the same way. That’s why hemlocks look so mournful. I was so warm I had to unzip my sleeping bag halfway and sleep naked.”

  “You still do stuff like that?”

  “Winter camping? Not lately. If there’s snow, I try to get out on skis during the day. And try not to get shot by some nut from au coin.”

  “I am sorry. But he has sworn—”

  “I’m teasing you. And thank you for bringing back my skis. But look. See how peaceful it is in here. Snow all over the car. Snow over everything. I don’t understand why people get depressed in winter. Snow makes me feel more alive.” She leaned back and put her hand on the sleeve of his overcoat. She wondered how shy he was, how inexperienced at noticing encouragement. Or maybe he thought he was too old to neck in a parked car. Wait—if she had Miss Perry’s power of attorney and he was Miss Perry’s lawyer, did that make him her lawyer, too? Was that a problem? She knew that psychiatrists and doctors got into trouble … The teacher-student problem hadn’t stopped her old college prof. But she’d acted freely, she’d known what she was doing, and she couldn’t imagine putting a different face on it. It wasn’t a point of honor, it was a matter of not being pathetic. Did Johnny think she’d go crying to the Bar Association? Haunt his political career? Tell Jack?

  All this busy wondering made her take her hand off his arm.

  She said, “You’re not getting cold, are you?”

  “No. You’re right, it’s peaceful. I like snow, too.”

  “And trout.”

  “What?”

  She got onto her knees and faced him. She said, “I saw you last fall. On the Queens River. You caught a trout and cooked it.”

  He lifted his head. She leaned closer to his ear. “I could have run you in. You used live bait, you built a fire, you even brought a bottle of wine.”

  “And where were you?”

  “Across the stream.”

  “So why didn’t you—”

  “You were enjoying yourself. You looked around and you liked the water and the trees. I thought, There’s a perfectly nice man taking a day off. Why not let him have his one trout in peace?” She moved her mouth even closer to his ear and whispered, “So your secret’s safe with me.”

  He laughed. He whispered, “I think it’s okay to talk. I don’t think anyone can hear us.”

  She touched his cheek, turned his head, and kissed him.

  She was more aware of her mouth than when she’d kissed Dick. Kissing Dick had been irresistible impulse; kissing Johnny was art, not so much showing off as exploring the form, the discipline, of a restricted medium. For one thing, the gear shift between them; for another, their winter clothes. These restrictions made her singularly aware of her lips and his. He had full, wide lips, and she was enjoying pressing softly, brushing sideways, finding the corner of his mouth, moving back to the center.

  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?) … Dick’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 buttons of his overcoat. And it must be in his mind that he knew how to find the lever that tipped his seat backward. Buttons, a lever—how human and modern to register these things as stages of the courtship ritual. Nothing like a male fiddler crab waving his one outsized claw, fireflies blinking, herons bobbing and bowing … The middle button of his suit coat, the belt buckle, top button 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 raccoon at night fishing 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 shifting darkness against the dim windshield.

  “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 pushing 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 Dick had said when he’d appeared in her driveway and Mary had gone inside with Eddie, and Rose was nursing, and Dick 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 han
d.

  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 class 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 scraps 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 Dick 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, Uranus—whichever was coldest and farthest. Once she started examining her conscience she wondered if her eagerness to bring Rose over to visit May and Dick 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; Dick 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 cushion. 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, lust, 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 Saturday 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 Saturday; 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 sexy 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 cushions 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 sex. She liked sex, just hadn’t had a lot of luck finding companionship, a sense of humor, and satisfying sex all in one person. Two out of three wasn’t enough to set up house. She’d only had passing 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 Mass, and I want to see the two of you on your knees praying for the decency to rejoice in your sister’s good fortune.”