Compass Rose

by John Casey

  Phoebe didn’t seem to notice that May pulled back some. “Boats,” Phoebe said. “There’s something to do with boats I wanted to tell you. It’ll come to me. Did you hear about the smugglers? That’s not it, but it does have a boat. They were bringing in bales of marijuana and they stacked them in a hayfield and stacked real hay bales on top. But a bird-watcher who was up before dawn saw them in her nightscope. I love it—the little old lady in tennis shoes. Oh. I remember. The smugglers used a Zodiac to come in from the mother ship. It was near the oceanography school, so they probably thought people would think their Zodiac had something to do with the Trident. Anyway, I met the captain of the Trident, and he’s just crazy about Charlie. He said a lot of the researchers he takes out aren’t very handy with small boats. What he actually said was, ‘Some of them are piss-to-windward sailors.’ It took me a minute to figure it out. Have you ever heard that?”

  “Yes. Often enough. What’d he say about Charlie?”

  “He said Charlie’s the only scientist he trusts to handle the boat. One time the motor in the other Zodiac stopped working, and it was getting pushed onto some rocks, and Charlie drove his Zodiac right in next to them and towed the other boat. I’m not sure I understood everything the captain said, but apparently it was hard to do, what with the rocks and big waves. So Charlie’s a bit of a hero, like his father.”

  Phoebe looked pleased. May shook her head. She’d been worrying about Charlie keeping away on account of his pain and anger at Dick, and Phoebe had added the possibility that Charlie was mad at Tom as well. May’d been thinking of Charlie as more or less safe on the Trident, but now there he was tearing around in a small boat. He might have done the right thing, but he was most likely driven to it just to get even with his father. Men. Men wanting more … Now she had another man out at sea to worry about, thanks to Phoebe’s chirping.

  It helped to blame Phoebe. Vain, flibbertigibbet Phoebe. May tried to be fair. Phoebe wanted to be her friend, came in to brighten the day, had no idea how she’d made it darker. All right, then—poor, fluttering Phoebe.

  But what was she up to with Mr. Salviatti? Didn’t people ever get done with all that?

  chapter thirty-one

  Mary had become the person everyone told things to. Or had she always been that person? Come to think of it, yes, God help her. Rose told her about May and Tom, and how her uncle Jack fussed over her but then ignored her if a pretty woman came along. Eddie, God love him, was always a beat or two behind the rest of the band, at least when it came to that sort of tune. May hadn’t so much told Mary about Phoebe’s visits to Mr. Salviatti’s as asked, wanting to be reassured that her friend Phoebe wasn’t a bad person. May hoped that Mary could offer, from what everyone seemed to think was Mary’s large store of worldliness, an assessment of possibilities ranging from completely innocent to dangerously but not wickedly flirtatious.

  As May questioned her, Mary had two trains of thought. The first was about May herself. Mary had always liked May, thought she was long-suffering—God knows Dick was a hard man to put up with, even to himself—but also that May had something in her that matched Dick’s fierceness, that he could live with. But listening to May worry about Phoebe, Mary heard a tone that made her wonder if May wasn’t so much thinking of sexual urges with disapproval as thinking them not worth all that fuss.

  Lord knows it could come to that.

  The second train of thought was that Mary wondered just what Phoebe was doing up there in Mr. Salviatti’s grand house and walled garden all set about with Italian statues and fig trees. She’d pooh-poohed it to May by saying that Mr. Salviatti was a mysterious figure and that Phoebe was just the kind of person who couldn’t leave a mystery alone. Not so much actual mystery, which was much less his doing than the fact that he’d spent too much money setting himself up on his hill, above most of the county but not to the taste of the gentry. But they all still talked, and what Phoebe probably found irresistible was being one up on all the talk. And then, looking at Phoebe from Mr. Salviatti’s perspective, why wouldn’t an older man look forward to Phoebe’s pretty face and figure? Wasn’t there always a man or two lingering by the tennis court whenever Phoebe was playing? Just to take in the way she bent over to pick up a ball, not scooping it up with the edge of her racket but giving the ball a little pat to start it bouncing. “She knows how to add an ornament,” Mary said. “And what’s going on up there on the hill is most likely just ornamental.”

  May narrowed her eyes and tightened her lips. Mary couldn’t tell if May was satisfied. Then May sighed and changed the subject. To Rose, of course. The subject of Rose softened May’s face, and the softening made her surprisingly beautiful, though not, Mary thought, in a way a man would notice.

  chapter thirty-two

  A pulling boat. Sixteen feet length overall, with a four-foot beam, narrow and fast. A bit tender. Two sets of oars. Dick said to Rose, “It’s not just because you never know. You can set her up to have two rowing stations. The middle thwart slides aft like so … and then you put the pegs in and she’s still trim with two rowers. Or you can row from the bow and take a passenger in the stern sheets.”

  The hull was all curves—the gunwales flaring from the stem to the middle rowing station, then tucking back in to the wineglass transom.

  Dick said, “You learn to row, then I’ll add a little lug rig. She’s got a pretty long skeg under her stern, but there’s a well for a dagger-board. But first you learn to row.”

  On either side of the bow there was a compass rose and, in red lettering, “Rose.”

  “And this here’s something Eddie made.” Dick held up a long canvas tube inflated to a sausage shape. “You could use that as a life preserver, but it’s mainly a beach roller, so you don’t scratch her bottom if you haul her up.” Dick lifted the lid of the stern seat. “In here you got a little toolbox with some extra screws and such. A water bottle. A waterproof chart. A storm whistle—you can hear it a mile away. You know SOS, right? And here’s a little binnacle—”

  “Dick,” Mary said. “Not everything at once.”

  “Just one more thing. You see there’s a place for an oarlock in the stern. In a real narrow creek you can scull her along with one oar. You waggle it back and forth. It takes some practice, but it’s a handy thing to know. The basic principle is—”

  Elsie and May laughed. Dick frowned. Rose said, “It’s really neat.”

  “She, not it,” Dick said. “You row her an hour a day, four, five times a week, you’ll be as trim as she is.”

  Mary followed Rose as she stomped off.

  May and Elsie both said, “Oh, Dick.”

  Dick said, “Well, God damn it—she’s awful touchy.” Then he drooped. He opened his hands and looked at them. He looked at the boat and said, “I might as well take an ax to her.”

  “Forget the boat for now,” May said. She gave him a shove. “Go see to your daughter.” Dick left. May sat on a log and put her face in her hands.

  Elsie looked at the boat, at the reflection in the creek, motionless at high tide. The boat sat lightly. A beautiful boat. A patient gift undone by one slip of the tongue. Elsie said, “I don’t know which of them I feel more sorry for.”

  May said sharply, “You don’t?”

  Elsie could no more unsay her words than Dick could. She knew she owed it to May to turn around. May stood up. Elsie had feared what May would look like, but May looked purely reflective. May said, “I don’t guess you do.”

  After a bit May said, “We’d better haul her up. No telling when they’ll be back.” May stooped and got hold of the stern. Elsie got the bow. When May nodded they lifted her and carried her to a set of slings. She lolled onto her beam end on account of the skeg but lay steady. She looked awkward showing her white belly. May kept on up the path. Elsie lifted the stern and moved the sling forward so that the boat sat upright. May came back. Elsie said, “I just thought …”

  May took hold of Elsie’s wrists. She looked straight into
Elsie’s eyes. She said, “I’m not sure what I’ve lost on account of you. I suppose Dick might have gone off altogether. For a while I blamed Charlie’s staying away on you, but it’s not just you. All that’s as it happened. But Rose … Dick asked me once. He said, ‘Don’t you think it’s unnatural how you care so much for Rose?’ ”

  There was a silence. Elsie took a breath and asked, “What did you say?”

  “What do you think I said?” May held Elsie’s wrists together.

  Elsie said, “You probably didn’t have to say anything.” Elsie lowered her eyes. “You love Rose.”

  “That’s right. It’s no harm to Dick, it’s no harm to you. I love Rose as much as I love Charlie and Tom. As much as if I gave birth to her.” Elsie’s arms jumped. May loosened her grip but didn’t let go. “Don’t worry. I’m not asking anything more. I’m not out for anything. You and Dick got her, and you bore her, and when I got through feeling terrible, I felt empty. I wished you would go away. Then I asked for Rose to come to my house. I didn’t know and I don’t guess you knew how it would turn out. I don’t feel empty now. I get along with Dick. I can see you. It used to be the sight of you stung me. But right now I can see you and talk to you and touch you. I heard you get worried and tender for Dick just now. It doesn’t matter so much now. On account of Rose. She grew up around me.” May let go of Elsie’s wrists.

  “Yes,” Elsie said. “And Rose loves you, too.”

  But May had drawn back. May said, “And now we’re all going to watch Rose grow up and go away. Charlie and Tom are like Dick and me. Charlie may go to sea, Tom may go here and there, but they won’t settle anywhere but around here. You and your sister are different. You’re both good mothers, but you raise children so they can go anywhere. It’s not just money. It’s not books, either. Charlie and Tom have books. So what is it? When I drop Rose off to see Mary Scanlon, Rose goes up the front steps, says hello to the people on the porch. I don’t know how I know, but all of them sitting at those tables—they could go anywhere. It’s true what I’m saying, isn’t it? Rose is one of them.”

  Elsie said, “I don’t want Rose to go away any more than you do.”

  “Maybe you don’t. But you’re not saying I’m wrong.”

  Elsie couldn’t argue that she herself had given up all that. Not with May. She said, “Rose just turned fourteen today. She’s not going anywhere for years. Rose loves it here.” Elsie couldn’t bear another minute of May’s looking at her. Elsie said again, “Rose loves you.”

  May said, “Let’s go see if Dick’s pulled himself out of that hole he dug.”

  chapter thirty-three

  Rose said to Elsie that if Elsie didn’t stop being cross all the time, Mary might go away.

  Elsie said, “Mary and I have a solid friendship—a complete adult friendship—something I hope you’ll have when you grow up. Because you’re sure as hell a long way from it now.”

  “Like you’re a grown-up. You still fuck your boyfriend in the backseat of a car.”

  Elsie didn’t slap her. Elsie wanted to do something more painful and long-lasting. She said, “I can’t wait till you’re going to the Perryville School. And not just because you’ll be out of my hair. Mainly because I can’t wait to see you try being a spoiled brat over there and some of them will be smarter than you and better than you in so many ways, and you can be sure of this, too: some of them will be just as poisonous as you.”

  Rose laughed. “You can’t afford to send me to Perryville.”

  “You’re going as a scholarship kid. It used to be that some of the other kids thought that was cool, but nowadays that’ll be just one more thing for them to needle you with.”

  “You mean along with me being a bastard.”

  “That’s right. A poor pudgy bastard who isn’t good at games and hasn’t ever been to Europe.”

  “I’ll go live with May.”

  “May and Dick are with me on this. And your aunt Sally and uncle Jack.”

  “I’ll ask Captain Teixeira to adopt me and send me to Portugal.”

  “That’d work.”

  Rose walked out.

  Rose was calmer the next day, still hostile but her hostility was patchy, maybe clearing. At supper she ate salad and a few bites of fish and string beans. When Elsie offered her an oatmeal cookie she said, “What? You want the thin, rich girls to laugh at me?”

  Elsie said, “I was mad. I’m sorry.”

  “And you’re sort of a liar.”

  “Yes, you’re not a pudge.”

  “Not that. I talked to Aunt Sally and Uncle Jack, and Perryville isn’t like what you said. Uncle Jack said it’s got all kinds of kids. He’s on the board of governors, and he knows stuff you don’t. He said trips to Europe and being rich don’t count as much as character and … other stuff.”

  “I guess by ‘other stuff’ you mean he said not to forget you’re Jack Aldrich’s niece.”

  “Not just that. He said you and Aunt Sally going there counts, and so does our being friends with Miss Perry. Uncle Jack said she’s giving the school her house and everything. I mean, when she dies.”

  Elsie stared at Rose. Rose took a step back.

  “What?” Rose said. “I’m just saying what Uncle Jack said.”

  “No,” Elsie said. She wasn’t sure what she meant by it. She couldn’t name what Rose had done.

  “What?” Rose said again, turning one way and then the other as if looking for help.

  Yesterday Rose had fought her to a standstill. Now Elsie could crush her, whether she called Rose the names that began to occur to her or whether she stared at her in silence.

  “All right,” Rose said. “I talked about Miss Perry dying and she’s like your religion.” Elsie held still, was relieved by this note of rebellion. Rose took a breath and let it out. She was close to tears. She said, “You love her more than me.”

  “No,” Elsie said. She touched Rose’s shoulder, and they stumbled into each other. We’re drunks, Elsie thought. We’re drunk on fighting.

  chapter thirty-four

  For a while Elsie thought there wasn’t much left of Miss Perry. Miss Perry’s day started late and ended early, and most of it was subdued. Then one day she watched Miss Perry make her way to the bathroom with small steps. Miss Perry paused at the door, one hand splayed across the grooves in the doorjamb. Out of nowhere—not from anything in Miss Perry’s face, which was turned from her, not from any sympathy for Miss Perry’s effort—in fact the feeling came during the moment Miss Perry paused, it came into her and rose in her all at once: This is Miss Perry, whom I love now.

  Everything was easier after that. Gathering up the skirt of Miss Perry’s nightgown, holding Miss Perry’s upper arms to lower her onto the toilet seat after making sure that Miss Perry had closed her fingers around the bundled hem. Even the conversation with her boss when he furrowed his brow over Elsie’s application for “compassionate leave” and said, “I don’t see how …” Elsie saw that he was bracing himself. She’d flared up enough over the years. She put her hand on his desk as though she was putting it on his hand. She said, “I know. I know it doesn’t quite fit.” She spoke to him in a voice she hadn’t ever heard from herself. “Just so you’ll know, and then maybe something will occur to us—I love my daughter, and I love Miss Perry. I know it’s a funny sort of family tree …”

  When she was through, he swung away from her in his swivel chair. “Let me think about it. If it were just up to me … I can see how you feel, I really do. But look, for right now you’ve got a lot of sick leave.”

  She said, “Yes, but I’m not sick.”

  She told all this to Sally, not as a problem but just to let Sally know her state of mind. But Sally told Jack, and Jack called her up. “Oh, for God’s sake, Elsie, I’ll take care of it. You’ve got enough to do.”

  “Jack, you don’t understand. I don’t want some backdoor deal. I can’t explain—”

  “I do understand. You always think I don’t understand when i
n fact I have a perfectly clear understanding. Miss Perry needs you, she has no one else, and now some little time-server behind a sheet-metal desk … That’s who doesn’t understand.” Jack was getting so loud that Elsie held the phone away from her ear.

  “Fiat justitia, ruat caelum.”

  There was no talking to Jack when he got to Latin. Elsie said, “Could you put Sally on?”

  But Sally’s line was that Jack was more upset about Miss Perry than he let anyone see, and why not let him feel better by letting him do something? She’d be sure he didn’t do anything that hurt anyone’s feelings. “I know he sounds furious, but he’s really very temperate when he’s actually doing something.”

  Elsie let it go.

  She apologized to her boss when he handed her the approved leave request. “I really didn’t ask anyone to poke in; I tried to head it off.”

  “No, it’s okay,” he said. “I’m off the hook. They worked it out up in Providence, CCed me on a memo in legalese. You know, ‘Immediate family may be considered to include another relationship if in the judgment of the office of the attorney general …’ and so forth and so on. So I’m okay, you’re okay. Sorry. I didn’t mean … I just meant okay as far as this goes. I’m sorry for your trouble.”

  Elsie was about to say, “No trouble,” but she recognized the phrase from a Mary Scanlon story. “I’m sorry for your trouble” was the canonical Irish condolence at a wake.

  She became calmer and more careful, not by an act of will but by the continued emanation of that moment in Miss Perry’s bedroom. It was strongest when she was in Miss Perry’s house, but it had also worked just now to make her softer with her boss.

  chapter thirty-five

  When Rose climbed onto Mary’s bed, Mary was having a musical dream or had just had a musical dream. The notes were all over the room, the room in her dream, the room she was in, the bed she was in, the bed that listed toward Rose. The notes faded in the sunlight that was blinking in her face.