The Rim of Morning

by William Sloane

  “Anne!” I said and felt like laughing at something pleasant when I said it.

  “Uncle Dick!” She checked her rush forward and stood looking at me. “Good heavens!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  She grinned again. “Why, just that . . . well, I guess I didn’t remember you very well.” She came over and shook me by the hand. “Welcome to Setauket Point.”

  “What’s the matter with me?” I demanded. “Have I changed?”

  “No. I thought you were an old man. I mean, not exactly old, but a lot older than you are.”

  “You don’t seem to like my . . .” I couldn’t think of a word that wouldn’t sound worse than inane. “After all, you can’t expect me to grow gray hair at thirty-three.”

  She sat down on the sofa beside me and went on looking at me in silence. The expression on her face delighted me—it was so obviously surprised and amused. After a time she remarked, “Well, I’m used to it now. But I’m not going to call you ‘uncle’ any more.”

  “That’s all right with me.” I didn’t want to be called anything of the kind after that first look at her. “You startled me when you came in, yourself. For a second it was like seeing Helen again.”

  She looked away quickly. “Don’t say that.”

  It had been a stupid remark and I was sorry the moment I’d said it. “Anyway,” I went on, “I’m glad to see you here, Anne.” Even that was awkward.

  “You’ll never know how glad I am to see you. I’ve been pestering Uncle Julian to write to you, but I never dreamed he really would. Why didn’t you let us know you were coming?”

  I told her about the telegram and the taxi driver.

  “That’s the way they are around here,” she observed. “They don’t like strangers. At least, they don’t like us.”

  “It’s just the old New England reticence.”

  She looked doubtful. “Probably. Only . . . well, let’s not talk about that now.”

  “How is Julian?”

  There was distress on her face. “He’s changed. You’ll be shocked when you see him. I was.”

  “Mrs. Walters told me the same thing.”

  “So you’ve seen her—” she said, and then stopped abruptly. I thought she was listening. “Where is she, do you know?”

  “She said she was going out in the kitchen to get breakfast.” Anne glanced back at the door quickly and then began to speak in a low voice. “Look Unc—I mean Dick, I’ve got to talk to you, but not here. Later. Just follow any lead I give you, will you?”

  “All right. But—”

  She interrupted me by standing up. “Let’s go see if breakfast is ready. You must be ravenous.”

  “I had something at what my driver called the Elite.”

  She grinned again. “All you need is a couple of soda mints and another breakfast and you’ll get over that,” she said, and led the way out of the room. “That is, if Elora Marcy’s already here.”

  I followed her. Her yellow sweater made the dark hall seem bright, and I noticed that she could wear slacks and not make the toe of my foot itch. This, I felt, was not going to be such an uncomfortable visit, nor so dreary as its opening had made me fear. I was still not adjusted to the idea of Anne’s being grown-up. After all, the first time I had seen her was when Helen left her in my charge for an afternoon and, not knowing what you did with girls of eleven, I’d taken her out to a drugstore and given her two chocolate malteds in succession. From then on she had been just Helen’s small sister as far as I was concerned, a youngster that I liked, but a little girl for all that.

  “Remember the chocolate malteds?” I said to her back as we went down the hall.

  “Yes.” Her laugh sounded good. “They make a pretty smooth malted in the Rexall store in town, the only good thing in Barsham Harbor as far as I’m concerned.”

  “We’ll go sample them,”

  I said. “It’s a date.” At the door to the kitchen she paused. “Remember what I said,” she whispered and pushed the door open.

  To my surprise the kitchen was an agreeable room. It was in the northeast corner of the house, behind the room where I had been sitting and, though it was as dingy as the rest of the house, it looked a good deal more lived in. The sun was coming through the windows on our right and making the place bright; I noticed immediately that there was no dust and that both the old stone sink and the kerosene stove were clean and as shining as their age and wear permitted. One thing that pleased me out of all proportion to its actual importance was a geranium growing in a chipped pot on the window sill. It struck me as almost the first evidence I had seen that anyone thought of this house as a place in which to live.

  Mrs. Walters and Anne exchanged good mornings in an insincere fashion. I noticed that neither of them looked at the other.

  “I laid a place for you, Mr. Sayles. I’m sure you’ll want something more besides coffee.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  We all sat down at the table. The toast was just like the Elite’s, but the coffee was not so bitter. On the other hand, it was considerably weaker. I ate as much as I could in order to seem like the untrouble-some guest, but I saw Anne watching me in amusement.

  “Where’s Mrs. Marcy?” she asked after she had sampled her own helping of egg—which looked not so much scrambled as smeared.

  “Late,” said Mrs. Walters in a tone that implied she didn’t care what Anne thought of the eggs. Then she smiled and remarked, “You two young people must have some good times together.”

  “Unaccustomed as I am to entertaining college professors . . .” Anne remarked in a thoughtful tone, “I shall do my small best.” She turned to Mrs. Walters with what looked to me like a sweet smile— too sweet. “We already have a date.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. For the cocktail hour and in the local drugstore.”

  This fencing between the two of them seemed likely to make an awkward moment even more so. I cut in quickly, “That is, unless Julian and I are busy then. After all, he’s got first call on my time.”

  Anne’s eyebrows went up but she said nothing. Mrs. Walters began to stack the dishes in the sink, her own plate scarcely touched. I wondered how she had managed to grow so heavy if that was all she ate. She looked from me to Anne thoughtfully and finally remarked, “I’ll leave the dishes to you, Anne.”

  “Let me dry,” I said. “I’m a great drier—All-American my sophomore year.”

  “Very good.” Mrs. Walters sounded indifferent to the problem of the dishes. “If Mrs. Marcy doesn’t come soon, we’ll have to find out what’s delaying her.” She turned in the doorway. “I’ll let you know, Mr. Sayles, when Julian is awake.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Do you want me to fix a room for him?” asked Anne.

  “Later. After Julian is awake. I’ll attend to that,” she replied and disappeared.

  Anne chucked a dish towel in my direction. “I didn’t know you were planning to do any work with Uncle Julian,” she observed.

  “He asked me to give him some advice.”

  Anne said nothing for an interval of two plates and a coffee cup. Then she looked up. “What did she say when you told her that?”

  “She didn’t believe it at first. She acted odd about it.”

  “She would.”

  “Look here,” I said. “What is going on in this house? Who is this Mrs. Walters? What is she doing with Julian?”

  Anne turned from the sink and looked at me steadily. She was not smiling any more. “I don’t know.”

  The answer floored me. “But surely you must have some idea?”

  She shook her head. “I landed the first of August and I’ve been up here ever since, but I tell you, Dick, I haven’t. I can’t find out.”

  “But hasn’t Julian told you?”

  “No. I hardly see him anyway, except at meals, and she’s always there. I haven’t been alone with him four times since I came.” She stopped abruptly and looked toward the door. It
was still open but there was no one there. “Anyhow, we’ll take a walk later and a swim. I’d rather say nothing till then. She has ears like a cat.”

  We went on with the dishes. Just as we finished, the back door opened and a woman came in quickly. She was out of breath and there was a comical look of apology on her thin face.

  “Morning, Miss Conner,” she said quickly. “I’m sorry I’m late, but I had to help Seth in the barn this morning. He’s not so good again.”

  By the way Anne smiled at her I could see instantly that she liked this little woman. “That’s all right, Mrs. Marcy. We’re making out.”

  Mrs. Marcy looked at the sink and gave a horrified gasp. “You’re doin’ dishes! You ain’t had breakfast already, surely?”

  “Not really,” Anne replied. “Just something that Mrs. Walters prepared with her own fair hands. But that’s not your fault. Professor Sayles, here, arrived on the 6:20 and so we were roused out early. Dick, this is Mrs. Marcy, the only sane member of our happy household.”

  “How do you do,” she said with a smile twitching the corners of her mouth. I could see that Anne delighted her.

  “Look out for him,” that young lady went on. “He’s a college professor and you know you just can’t trust them. Absentminded. Lots of mornings he forgets to put on his trousers, even.”

  Mrs. Marcy giggled. “Looks like you both remembered this morning,” she observed with an eye on Anne’s slacks.

  I laughed. “Good for you, Mrs. Marcy,” I said and we shook hands. “I see you know how to handle the younger generation here.”

  She laughed. “It’s not so easy, but I do my best, Professor. Now you give me that,” and she removed the dish towel with one dexterous swipe. “I don’t allow any men to dry dishes in my kitchen. They ain’t trustworthy.”

  Anne observed, “He’s not so bad.”

  “Maybe not. But as time goes on they get less and less help, more and more of a nuisance. Take my advice and start keepin’ him out of the kitchen right now.”

  Anne avoided my eye. “The voice of experience,” she said lamely. “Yes, child. I’ll have to hump myself now, so you two run along. Oh, Miss Conner . . .”

  “What?”

  “Is she mad on account of my bein’ so late?”

  “Good heavens, Elora! You’re only a few minutes late. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I don’t want no ruckus with her.” She looked as if she meant it. And yet, it was hard to imagine that even Mrs. Walters could be severe with this person. She had the bright eyes and quick movements of a bird, and there was something ingratiating about the way she talked and smiled. Neither Anne nor I made a move to leave the kitchen in spite of her edict.

  Probably I wouldn’t have believed, at that moment, that she was only thirty-two. She looked ten years older and her hair was already fading into gray. Fourteen years of farm housework and the bearing of four children had faded her hair and skin, if not her eyes. She looked as if she didn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. Later, after she was dead, I learned something of her story. Married the year she got out of high school, and plunged at once into the grim business of making a living on a Maine farm, she hadn’t really had more than half her youth. The children had come along at intervals of a year or so, and after the fourth she was middle-aged; when she smiled you could see what having them had done to her teeth, for one thing.

  Prematurely aged she may have been, but she was not old in her heart or her courage. She must have had to get up at four to do the housework at her own place before she came down the road to Julian’s, but she was as lively that morning as if the day were just beginning for her, instead of half over by any ordinary standards. Nothing daunted her, and the last thing she must have thought about was sparing herself. As I remember her again, I feel the sadness that comes when one thinks of a lost opportunity. I should like to have been able to do something for Mrs. Marcy.

  Anne was putting dishes away in the cupboard. “Never worry about Mrs. Walters,” she advised. “If she doesn’t like your being late, walk out and let her see how she enjoys running one place, let alone two.”

  Mrs. Marcy shook her head. “We need the money. Seth’s sciatica’s back on him again. I don’t know what we’ll do if it gets any worse.”

  “That’s a shame. I wish you’d let me help you.”

  “That’s sweet, child, but I’ll make out.” She poured a cup of water into the geranium pot and I understood then where the plant had come from. “You folks goin’ to be staying on much longer? They was here till November, last year.”

  Anne shook her head. “I’m going away the fifteenth. But of course I don’t know about Uncle Julian. I don’t suppose he’ll stay here all winter, but he might. And she’ll stay as long as he does.”

  “Oh, yes,” agreed Mrs. Marcy. “Well, the longer the better for us.” Anne said, “You need a vacation,” in a tone that expressed how impossible she knew that idea was.

  “Not me,” said the little woman brusquely. “But it would be right nice for Seth if he could go south this winter. The cold doesn’t do him any good. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just put the mop to this floor.”

  We went out the back door into the yard and stood there in the sun for a while. I filled my pipe and Anne lit a cigarette. She must have seen some sort of look on my face, because she remarked “I’ve acquired a few bad habits, Dick,” and laughed. I apologized and told her not to mind me. The more I looked at her, with the sun putting red-gold lights into her hair, the more I felt that it was going to be difficult to find a new basis for our relationship. If she had been a pupil in one of my classes, it would have been easy. I had long ago developed an immunity to all of them, no matter how charming. But Anne was a different problem. I felt responsible for her in a way, and there was the past in which she had loved me as her “favorite uncle” and I had played with her, helped her when her homework was puzzling, given her elaborate toys at Christmas, and done all the other pleasant things which had seemed to stem naturally out of being Julian and Helen’s closest friend. When they had married, I had been glad of Anne. She gave me an outlet for the frustration I had felt . . .

  Five years had changed everything. That much I perceived. But what to do about bridging the gap I could not wholly see. It was a problem that solved itself quickly, but at the time, it perplexed me. I did not want to go back into the past, and the present was decidedly odd. So I said nothing, but stood there smoking and looking at the sky and the bay, and every once in a while at Anne.

  Finally she threw the end of her cigarette into the road. “Well, this is nice, but I want to talk to you, Dick. And we’re too close to the house.”

  “You know more about this neck of the woods than I do. Anywhere you say.”

  “Did you bring a bathing suit?”

  When I told her that I had, she suggested that I get it, and I returned to the hall and my bag. Mrs. Marcy was dusting in the living room. I waved to her but said nothing. In three minutes I was back on the road.

  “Good,” said Anne when I rejoined her. “There’s not much to do hereabouts, but the swimming makes up for it.”

  We wandered along together and it was pleasant. The air was beginning to feel warm and you could smell the grass and the rich scent of the earth itself. My pipe tasted good and the sun was warm on my back. Our shadows went across the field ahead of us, and by their lengths I judged that it was about nine or perhaps later. I felt too content to bother with a watch.

  After ten minutes or so we came to the edge of the bay. Here, almost at the Point’s end, the shore line was not marshy; we were actually standing several feet above the water and on the edge of a cut bank. Below us was a twenty-foot crescent of brownish sand which was still in shadow and looked damp. Across the bay and at least a mile to the southwest the town lay white and green along the farther shore.

  “This is where I swim,” Anne said, breaking a long silence. We sat down and hung our legs over the edge of the bank. “I co
me here twice a day sometimes,” she went on. “It’s almost as private as if you were on an island. You need a place like this to come to, away from that house.”

  “I see what you mean.”

  She turned her face to me and there was a look of quiet contentment on it that I had not seen before. “I came up here just to be with Uncle Julian a while and because I thought I ought to come. It hasn’t been much fun so far, but it was almost worth it just on account of lying in the sun here and watching the water. Sometimes it seems to me the river is alive.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes.”

  She kept on looking at it for a time without speaking and, as I watched her, I thought that it had been a long while since I had felt so baselessly happy and relaxed. The whole world was fresh and shining, the water was one shade of blue, the sky another, the meadow grass along the bank was stirring in a faint breeze, the air was sweet, and the sun was making Anne’s hair gleam. Her face was half in shadow, but as I studied it, I could see that it was a woman’s face and not that of a child or a young girl. There was character in it, strength in the spring of her jaw and the line of the cheekbone but not obstinacy, humor in the corners of her lips. The young fellow that got her, I reflected, would have something worth holding on to. That thought ended by annoying me.

  “I’d never believe Julian would pick out a place like this,” I said.

  “That’s the way I felt, at first,” she answered slowly. “But I think he likes it. Not the way I do, but because it’s so far away from everything. He doesn’t want people.”

  “For that matter, he never has.”

  “I know.” She pulled a long stem of grass and put it between white teeth. “But he’s more of a hermit than ever. Dick, he’s changed. I said that before, didn’t I? Well, I don’t want to prejudice you, but I’m . . . worried about him. He’s so thin, too. He’s not well at all.”

  “Of course Helen’s death was an enormous shock to him. It was to all of us.”

  She nodded and without looking at me asked, “You were in love with her too, weren’t you?”