Compass Rose

by John Casey

  There was Rose standing in the middle of the women who’d raised her. When Rose flew away, what then?

  May said, “Come say hello to your father. He’s out there on the side porch with your uncle Jack.”

  Mary laughed. “I can hear the silence all the way in here.”

  May and Rose left. Elsie watched Mary whirl around the kitchen, a peek at the ovens, a word in everyone’s ear. Mary came back to Elsie and said, “I’ve just got time to change. His nibs gave me a key card to the spa. Good for one day.” She laughed. “If it hasn’t expired by midnight, I’ll treat myself to a whirlpool bath.” She took Elsie’s hands. “You’re not still mad, are you? You seem …”

  “No.” Elsie sighed. “I don’t know. I’m not in the mood for a party. Not this party.”

  “Ah, well. Think of it as our party more than Jack’s.” And Mary was gone.

  There’d been a time when she could tell Mary everything.

  The sunlight was slanting into the screened porch. As Elsie walked in she narrowed her eyes against the glint from the forks and knives, the light refracted through the wineglasses. In the bright haze the people were faceless shadows.

  On a sideboard there was a row of framed photographs. Rose said, “Oh no. I hate that one. I look like someone just—”

  “Grabbed your ass,” Tom said, and laughed.

  “That’s enough of that,” May said. She turned to Rose. “I think you look pretty. And look at how the ribbons are flying out.”

  “Well at least I’m not the only one on display,” Rose said. “There’s one of that statue of Phoebe.”

  Mr. Salviatti cleared his throat. “I hope you won’t find fault with that one. My cousin made it.”

  “It’s a wonder,” May said. “And you’re generous to give it to the town.”

  “What I’m wondering,” Tom said, “is how all that wind got there. Your cousin set up a big fan or something? Get that robe all blown up against her … I mean, it looks great, no two ways about that. I was just wondering.”

  “There is the model, and there is also the imagination of the artist. La sua fantasia.”

  Everyone was getting jostled. Eddie and Dick were looking at a photograph of Miss Perry. Dick said, “That’s a nice picture. So don’t say anything about how she chased you off her land.”

  “Wasn’t going to. I know how good she was to you and your boys.”

  Dick said, “No need to bring that up, either.” He half turned and said, “Hello, Elsie.” He cleared his throat. “Just keeping Eddie here in line.” He turned back to Eddie.

  Here was Dick in this life. Not a flicker of anything else.

  Dick and Eddie moved apart, and Elsie looked at Miss Perry’s picture. It was an old picture, Miss Perry behind her desk at school. Thirty, thirty-five, years ago. If she hadn’t made Elsie her pet, coaxed her into Latin and botany, into believing that these woods and marshes needed her and that the genius of the place would reward her, she might have flown away. It had been an arranged marriage. Miss Perry gave her a piece of land, and Elsie built a house. But it was prepared by the teacher-student courtship, the long walks in the woods that had been a mixture of myth and science. One time the two of them had come into a pine grove in spring, the air a haze of yellow pollen shot through with sunlight. “It was perhaps observing this sort of fertile occasion,” Miss Perry had said, “that the Greeks hit on the idea that Zeus came to Danaë in a shower of gold.”

  Nature into myth, myth into nature. Had Miss Perry known that she was binding Elsie to her? To this place? Had Miss Perry been a wily spinster weaving spells? Or was she unaware, for all her eccentric knowledge, of how her generosity and loneliness spun around each other to make a magnetic field? Was that what had drawn Elsie into Miss Perry’s long old age?

  Elsie stepped back, found her way out the door to the lawn between the Wedding Cake and the docks. The grass was a perfectly even green. The sailboats bobbed at their moorings, all facing the last of the sea breeze blowing just hard enough to ruffle the water and make the halyards chime against the hollow metal masts. Near the mouth of Pierce Creek Eddie’s crew had already put up the new footbridge and the first bit of the boardwalk into the nature sanctuary. Neat work, but nature was meant to be a tangle.

  JB came up beside her. “Pretty damn gorgeous.”

  “If you’re a member.”

  “Ah.” He turned to her. “Try thinking of them as a tribe with their own peculiar rituals … No, wait. I’m sorry. There I go again. Annoying good cheer. Gets me into all sorts of … At Logan one time I was in a long shuffling line, only one ticket agent for the whole mob of us, so I was humming a tune. Maybe I sang a word or two. All of a sudden the little old lady in front of me lifts her head and says—you could hear her the whole length of the line—‘What a little songbird we have here! What a puffed-up little rooster going cock-a-doodle-doo!’ ”

  JB tipped his head of white hair to one side, and his face wrinkled. She wasn’t sure if it was from amusement or renewed embarrassment. His eyebrows crept down and then up. She thought, If those eyebrows were caterpillars, we’d be in for a long, cold winter. That tripped her into laughing.

  “Oh, fine,” JB said. “Take her side.” But he was laughing, too.

  “I wish we could just stay out here,” Elsie said. “I either want to pull myself into my shell or bite everyone.” His eyebrows went up again. “Oh, I don’t mean you. In fact, I want you to sit next to me at dinner and tell me another story.”

  “Nothing I’d like better, but I’m afraid there are place cards.”

  Phoebe opened the door and called out, “So there you are, you two. We’re about to sit down.”

  Walt stuck his head out over Phoebe’s and said, “Yeah, soup’s on. Hey, Elsie, I brought something for you.”

  “Not now, Walt,” Phoebe said. “We’re trying to get everyone to sit down. Elsie, you have Mr. Bienvenue and Piero, you lucky girl.”

  Elsie thought, I should grow older, have peaceable friendships with people like JB.

  Phoebe said, “And Mr. Callahan, you have Sally and me.”

  “Then I’m a lucky boy.”

  “Oh my,” Phoebe said. “You do turn a girl’s head.” She batted her eyelashes. Elsie couldn’t tell if Phoebe was already tipsy or just trying too hard. At least she was keeping Walt in check.

  The four tables were set in a square, all the chairs on the outside. In the pit in the middle there were potted flowers and ferns, all below eye level. Phoebe apparently thought that the seating arrangement meant that conversation was supposed to be general. She asked May what she was planting in her garden. May murmured her list; Phoebe gave a cry of delight and sang a bar or two of “Oats, Peas, Beans, and Barley Grow.”

  Elsie thought of saying, “What a little songbird we have here!”

  Phoebe kept on around the table. She asked Johnny Bienvenue how his campaign was going. Johnny said Patty was a great help—she’d given a speech in Italian. Phoebe gave a little trill. “Me, too. Anch’io parlo un poco italiano.” She turned to JB. “Oh, you’re going to just love it here in Rhode Island. It’s tiny, but it’s really very cosmopolitan. I mean, think of Dick’s boat!”

  Half the people here didn’t want to think of Dick’s boat. Elsie winced on her own and then again at the hard silence.

  “I mean the crew,” Phoebe said. “There were Captain Teixeira’s nephew, who’s Portuguese, and that nice little Vietnamese man.”

  There was a low chorus of the older men clearing their throats. Elsie saw Jack drawing himself up, but it was Dick who spoke to Phoebe. “You mean Tran. When I first met him he said his name was Tran. I got used to calling him Tran. Turns out that’s his last name. His first name’s Khang.”

  Elsie wondered why Dick was getting Phoebe out of trouble. He didn’t like Phoebe. To be nice to May, then? Penance?

  Phoebe murmured, “Khang Tran, Khang Tran. Thank you.”

  Everyone turned to a neighbor. Mr. Salviatti said to Elsie, �
�I have seen a mysterious bird. I believe you know birds, yes? I saw a flock of pigeons over my garden. As they all turned I saw a flash of green. I thought it was perhaps a trick of the light. But they turned again and I saw an entirely green bird—an emerald in that gray setting. Are there green pigeons?”

  Elsie savored the pleasure of knowing, the pleasure of another white-haired old man attending to her. “I’ll bet it was a monk parakeet. It’s a kind of parrot. People imported them as pets, and some got loose. There’ve been a lot of sightings. They’re doing okay in the wild.”

  “But why is it flying with the pigeons?”

  “Monk parakeets like company. They even build nests for three couples.”

  “Ah. How satisfying to find someone who knows such things. And I have meant to ask: Phoebe—that is the name of a bird?”

  “Yes. A little gray bird, so it’s hard to tell apart from the other little gray birds, but its call really does go, ‘Phoebe, Phoebe,’ and it wags its tail a lot.”

  “And sometimes its tongue. Poor Phoebe. She meant no harm, but there is an old saying—‘One does not speak of rope in the house of a hanged man.’ ”

  For an instant Elsie warmed herself to the idea that Mr. Salviatti preferred her to Phoebe. Knowing things, getting credit for knowing things, murmuring complicitly with a nice old man—in fact, her second nice old man of the evening—these were minor pleasures, but pleasures.

  Jack looked at Mary, who nodded to the waitress, who set about clearing the soup plates.

  Elsie added a Miss Perry footnote. “Phoebe is also the name of Diana when she’s the moon goddess, the same way Phoebus is the name of Apollo when he’s the sun.”

  How long before she turned into Miss Perry? Mixing nature and myth, teaching at the Perryville School, bird-watching and botanizing with a pet student, surrounding herself with nice old men? Elsie felt the bark forming on her skin.

  “Diana,” Mr. Salviatti said. “She is the goddess of the hunt, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, that, too. Although she did something terrible to a hunter. He saw her skinny-dipping, so she turned him into a stag, and his hounds tore him to pieces.”

  Mr. Salviatti said, “A drastic fairy tale. I wonder what is the point—to make men fear the sight of a naked woman?”

  “Well, he was a Peeping Tom. Of course, you’re right, she was drastic. But all the gods had their bad days. Think of Zeus and all the women he raped. Even Apollo was going to jump on Daphne—she had to turn herself into a tree.” Elsie couldn’t stop; footnotes were sprouting from her like leafy twigs.

  Mr. Salviatti said, “I envy you your knowledge of these gods. They are human, at least. As a boy I was instructed in the lives of saints and martyrs. Saint Francis throwing himself in a thornbush to rid himself of desires of the flesh. How sad and inhuman …”

  Two waitresses carried in the suckling pig and started around the tables. Rose jumped up and put the yachting cap on top of the holly wreath.

  “Right, right,” Jack said. “We’ll make him a member, and then we’ll eat him.”

  He made room for the waitresses to put the pig in front of him, but Mary waved them on. She said, “They’ll carve it in the kitchen. Just time enough for Rose and me to sing. Come on, Rose. We’ll stand over in your corner so everyone can look out at the boats. The barcarole from The Tales of Hoffmann.”

  Mr. Salviatti said to Elsie, “A barcarola is a boat song.” So he was leafing out, too.

  Rose started singing. Mary leaned toward her, put an arm around Rose’s waist, and joined in, “Oh, how lovely is the evening, is the evening …”

  How Mary loved Rose; how Rose loved Mary. Elsie looked around at all the faces tipping with attention and pleasure. How everyone loved Rose and Mary. Elsie watched them sing, watched them sway together, watched them breathe. She could hear their voices go up and down, she could hear the rhythm and see them swaying in time, but it was as if everyone else glided with them like fish while she wallowed.

  Applause, applause. Walt whistled. Phoebe said, “Walt. Really.”

  He said, “Come on, Phoebe. Let the good times roll.” He cocked his head and yelped.

  Rose patted him on the head and said, “Down, boy.” Tom and Deirdre laughed.

  Elsie felt left behind by rowdiness, too. It wasn’t that she disapproved. She wasn’t Phoebe, for God’s sake. She used to be the one to start trouble. She’d said she wasn’t in the mood for a party—that was turning out to be an understatement. It wasn’t that she was sour on these people—she was sour on herself.

  Patty said, “Aunt Mary, how about one of your Irish songs?”

  “Maybe later.”

  Jack said, “Quite right. There’s an order to this … to these festivities.”

  Walt got up and began working a book out of the side pocket of his jacket. His cuffs rose halfway up his forearms. Elsie guessed he was wearing a suit of Eddie’s, a size too small. It made Walt appear even larger.

  “What?” Jack said.

  “I’ve got a little present for Elsie.”

  “Walt,” Phoebe said, “not in the middle of—”

  “There are a number of presentations,” Jack said. “I’ll be sure to call on you when the time comes.”

  Years ago Elsie had been at a dinner table at which there were three men she’d slept with. She’d had several reactions almost simultaneously—a thrill, a sadness that whatever desires she’d had were gone, and a fear that somehow everyone would know. Her reactions had been to all three men as one group. This was different. Walt was an embarrassment. Johnny was a sigh. Dick was part of her life. This time there was no thrill, no wonder at the transience of desire. There was only the fear that Walt would blurt out some galumphing remark that would strip her naked.

  Walt said, “It’s your party, chief.”

  Rose and Tom laughed. Encouragement from that corner of the room. Jack and Phoebe trying to shut him up. Stirring Walt up both ways.

  Dick had said, “We live in South County.” All right—she got that part. She could see almost all of the people she knew in South County sitting in this room. Why wouldn’t Dick see that they could sit in a roomful of South County without anyone knowing anything—without knowing anything worse than what everyone already knew? There wasn’t a soul here who didn’t know that Dick was Rose’s father. But that brought her hard against Dick’s notion that his sleeping with her was violating a taboo because she was Rose’s mother. God knows fishing-boat captains had their superstitions—they had their logbooks and their charts, but as often as not they’d decide where to fish using some sense they couldn’t explain. All right, then—she wouldn’t reason with him. She’d find a way to drift into his mind as another sign, as gently irresistible as the wind in his dream.

  Mr. Salviatti raised his glass to Mary, seated across the pots of ferns and hollyhocks. “Exquisite! The singing and the pig.”

  The waitresses cleared the plates. Jack stood up. “And now we’ll hear something from our new neighbor, who has written a poet … a poem. A poet who has written a poem. Mr. Kelly.”

  Mary said, “It’s Callahan.”

  “Yes,” Jack said. “Mr. Callahan.”

  “ ‘Wading in Sawtooth Pond,’ ” JB said, and went on in a conversational tone. “The pond is like an oculus …”

  Elsie hoped for more from JB. In the few up-to-date nature poems Elsie had read, the poet saw something and right off the bat it reminded him of something else, usually about himself. At least JB was committing his offenses against nature on paper. Jack was actually fucking it up.

  “Marsh-elder leaves sift sun and shade,

  And on the shallow maze of rocks

  A leopard changes spots.”

  Elsie looked at JB. Hearing this prettiness from this large man was like watching a bear crochet. People shouldn’t write about nature until they’d been bitten by something larger than a tick. Now she sounded like Deirdre O’Malley showing her scars.

  JB continued his processional
wading around Sawtooth Pond.

  “Pierce Creek brings in a haze of silt.

  The light sinks in—goes flat—until

  It gilds a sunken stone with shafts—

  Child’s drawing of the sun.”

  It was hard to tell when it was over, since JB hadn’t been standing up. Phoebe peeked at him and then patted her hands together, setting off a polite clapping. Phoebe raised her glass and said, “I love it. It’s so … It’s so relatable to.” She emptied her glass.

  Walt got up again, holding his book. Jack waved at him to sit down. Walt said, “I’ll just slip in here in the middle of the order, and then you get to bat cleanup.” Walt put a finger on the cover. “Can you see? This woman warrior here … I’ll pass it around.” Even ten feet away Elsie saw the picture. A woman in a fur skirt and halter was pointing a spear at a man cowering beside a swan with an arrow in its breast. Walt said, “This really happened. Elsie caught my dad when he killed a swan with his crossbow. And what’d she do? She let him go. So here’s to Elsie, for knowing what’s what and for letting Dad bring home Christmas dinner.”

  Eddie said, “I wasn’t the only one going after some free-range meat. One time Elsie was onto Dick for poaching clams right over there in the nature sanctuary.”

  Johnny Bienvenue laughed. “I guess that gives us all something in common. Elsie was hiding in the bushes when I poached a trout.”

  “Oh, Elsie,” Phoebe said. “What an adventurous life you lead! Is it all in Deirdre’s book?”

  “It’s fiction,” Deirdre said.

  “Well, that’s right,” Walt said. “But it’s sort of based on Elsie.”

  “It’s set in the future,” Deirdre said. “It’s science fiction. The heroine has superpowers.”

  “Right,” Walt said. “But there’s a picture of Phoebe posing as an angel—”

  Eddie said, “Knock it off, Walt.”

  “Hey, all I’m saying is that Elsie’s picture ought to go up there alongside the others.”