The Season of Open Water

by Dawn Tripp

  Even when her wound is healed and she is strong enough to work, she stays near the house. Soft chores. She cooks and sweeps and cleans. She draws water from the well, mucks out the barn and the hayloft. She feeds the hens and prepares the seeds for the spring planting. From time to time, she helps her mother with the laundry.

  Luce moves out of the house late that winter. He takes an apartment with Johnny Clyde on Forge Road, up by Westport Factory, north of the Head. He stops by the house every few days, but Bridge bothers little with him and the work he does. There is a certain comfort in doing the simple tasks she’s always done. She notices that she is more settled, Noel more settled, and their life, apart from Luce’s occasional comings and goings, is almost back to how it used to be.

  Noel’s shares begin to climb. He reads about it in the papers, in the block letters of the headlines. He makes out what he can, and he has Bridge dig around through the finer print and read the rest aloud to him. There are a few rocky months early in the year. The Great Bull Market appears to be stumbling. Then it gives a snort, a mighty hoof and a roar, and takes up its run again. Noel settles in for the ride.

  One day, late that April of 1929, Owen Wales comes by the house looking for Cora. He has brought two dress shirts that need to be whitened and pressed, and would she have the chance to get to them by Tuesday next?

  She smiles at him, and he looks down at the hat in his hands. “I’ll drop them by your house when they’re done,” she says. “I’ll just leave them by the door.”

  “No, no,” he answers quickly. “I can stop back around for them. It’s right on my way. I’d be happy to.” He pauses. “If that’s alright?” He looks up at her, and his eyes are unsteady, filled with sunlight and the question and wanting her somehow.

  “That would be alright,” she says slowly.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  He smiles at her. “So it’s settled.” And then he leaves and she thinks about him through the afternoon. The following morning, when she is flipping through the spring Sears catalogue, she spots an advertisement for a new-style swimming suit. Later that day, she takes the mail truck to the trolley stop up by Lincoln Park, and then the trolley into New Bedford. Downtown, at a secondhand store, she buys a bathing costume—not the exact one she saw in the catalogue, but close, a slightly older style.

  She brings it home, takes it into her bedroom, and folds it away in the bottom dresser drawer. She wears it under her clothes—not every night, but some nights. On the first week of May, she wears it down to the river below the field at dusk. She wades in. There is an icy chill to the water, electric on her skin, and she floats on her back and watches the crows and the great blue herons with their heavy wings, their eerie calls. The shadows of the birds pass across the clouds and she floats through the new spring smells of thaw and wild orchid. The fabric of the swimming costume is tight against her body. It wraps her waist, her breasts, the tops of her thighs. It holds her, touches her as she floats through the colors of the sky turning toward darkness. The river is cold through her scalp, and her hair streams out like long dark grass.

  That year, a fluke snowstorm strikes in May followed by a three-day frost that blackens the grass and the green bean pods. The hens set their eggs too early, and they are painfully small, the shells soft, nearly translucent. Even the asparagus are weakened. Their stalks shrivel and curl down toward the ground. Noel goes out with Bridge into the garden to pare back the dead harvest.

  In June, the weather turns. The summer bursts open and it is glorious. They call it “the golden summer.” The summer of wealth.

  Luce buys a new car. A 1929 fancy soft top with chrome headlamps and a full backseat. He drives it off the lot, and before he goes anywhere else he brings it by Honey Lyons’s house. He has thought this out. He does what a young man would do. He comes by and shows it off to him.

  “Took me awhile to save for it,” he says smoothly as they are standing by the car, “with the cut you pay me, but I’ve done okay, I guess, saving. She’s a beauty, don’t you think?”

  Lyons takes a walk around the car, stops once and wipes a smudge off the fresh paint on her back fender. He offers a soft compliment, then says casually, “Like you said, you sure have been saving, Luce.” He pauses. “Haven’t you?”

  “Sure have.” Luce nods, and flashes an easy grin. “But the other truth is, of course, I got a good deal on her, and my ma, she gave me a bit to help out.”

  “Of course,” says Lyons, nodding. “Just to say, Luce, I’m glad you know it’s always a smart idea to let me in on that other truth.” Luce can see that Lyons does not quite believe him. He can see that Lyons is ticking up dollars in his head, the dollars that he himself has already counted. He knows that the number Lyons comes up with will be a stretch to what it must have cost Luce for the car, but it could have happened. And that is what matters. They both know this. Luce could be lying, but he could be telling the truth.

  After he leaves Lyons, Luce brings the car by the house on Pine Hill Road. His sister walks out of the shop, carrying a crate of lead deadeyes, paint on her face. Her eyes spark when she sees the new car, the sleek curves of the sides. She touches the hood. She can feel the heat from the engine burning.

  “Come on,” Luce says, “get in.” And she gets in and they drive fast down the swift, hilled turns of Pine Hill Road, and he is happy, for the first time in so long it seems, he is happy, she is with him and she is laughing, her dark hair flying off her shoulders. He takes a hard twist in the road, he takes it fast, and she shrieks and the sunlight swerves and breaks down across the windshield, its soft warmth on their faces with the cool fast wind.

  “You’ve made a lot, haven’t you?” she asks him once when they slow at South Westport Corner. “This isn’t even the half of it, is it?”

  He doesn’t look at her. His right hand is on the wheel, his arm taut, his body coiled tight as loaded springs. “Don’t ask me,” he says. He lays his foot down hard on the gas, and they drive.

  The summer continues. Day after day of dry, undaunted sunshine. The stock market is giddy, full of strident joy. Prices soar, shares split, and prices soar again.

  The fine weather washes the summer people in. The town explodes, seems to double overnight. By the beginning of July, there has been just enough rainfall to turn their lawns a brilliant green. It is a summer of long steamy days and clear cool nights for surfbathing, boat trips, angling off the angler stands, picnics on the sandflats, and they are all in a capital mood by the time Lady Judith Martin decides that the rather humdrum clambake the Bordens threw on the Fourth was simply not enough. Another celebration was in order. They would have to dig up a new occasion. Such a summer—a most successful summer, the kind of summer they would look back on and not remember where it had begun—certainly warranted more. So she sends out a round of invitations to a spur-of-the-moment party on the Fourteenth of July, le Quatorze Juillet. A night to commemorate the storming of the Bastille.

  One afternoon when Luce stops by the house, he finds Bridge on the back steps shelling peas. He sits down with her, picks through the basket, takes out a handful, nibbles on them.

  “How can you eat the shells raw like that?” she says.

  “I like ’em raw. You making supper tonight?”

  “Thinking I might. You staying?”

  “Thinking I might.”

  She smiles. “How’s your car?”

  “Oh, she’s fine.”

  “You give her a name yet?”

  “Thinking I might call her after you.”

  “Aw no,” she says. “Call her Betty. Or Polly.”

  He laughs. “Something sweet.”

  “Yeah. How’s your place?”

  “Good enough. We’ve been thinking about getting electric.”

  “The bee lady just got it.”

  “No joke?”

  “Yeah. I rode by the other night on my bike. Her house was all electricked up. Too much light, I’d
say, for such a cranky witch.”

  Luce laughs. He takes another few peas from the basket as Bridge goes on shelling. He chews on one, and then he tells her about Lady Judith’s Bastille party.

  “Where is it?”

  “Down the beach, this Saturday coming.”

  “You going?”

  “Might as well, I suppose. Swing in. Make a show. Have a feed.”

  She doesn’t break from her work. “I’ll go with you,” she says.

  “What?”

  “I said, I’ll go with you.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  “Last year, I couldn’t have dragged you to one of their flings.”

  “Well, I can’t stay home every night.”

  “No, I suppose.” The steps are worn. He runs his hand into the smooth concave tread of one. He picks at a needle-shaped piece of wood that has come loose. He pries it up, revealing the lighter wood untouched beneath. He snaps it off.

  “So are you staying for supper or not?” Bridge asks.

  “You need something to wear?”

  “What?”

  “To the fling. If you like, I can buy you a dress.”

  She shakes her head and laughs. “I’m not that far overboard,” she says. “I’ll scare up something.”

  Henry

  He arrives late and immediately regrets that he has come. It is not even ten and most of them are well on their way to being tight. Alyssia Borden comes up to him as soon as he steps into the hall. She leads him into the dining room. The long table is spread with canapés, biscuits and cheese, smoked meats, Limoges china, half a dozen crystal punch bowls. Alyssia points to one of them. “Gin lemonade,” she whispers. “I would recommend it.” Her breath is sweet and warm and dusky, close to his ear. Around the table, damask napkins have been folded into stiff triangles. Pale flowers embroidered through the hem of the tablesheet match the border on the window-cloth. Will Borden comes up to them, and the three of them talk for a while, shouting from time to time over the music off the gramophone. Dick Wheeler is fiddling with the volume knob, turning it up and down, higher and lower and higher again. He tinkers with the records and sings alone, loud and off-key, until someone smartly cuffs him and makes him turn the music down.

  The guests mill through the room, dancing, drinking—champagne, punch, whiskey, single malt Scotch—the glasses shimmer in the white and glistening light thrown off the chandelier. Alyssia has her hand on Henry’s sleeve, and as she talks to him, she keeps her grip on his arm, gentle but firm, her fingers on his wrist. Once, when she turns to have a word with Lady Judith, Henry murmurs an excuse, slips his arm loose, and melts back through the crowd. He goes to the fireplace at the edge of the room. He sets his drink down on the mantelshelf, wipes his face with a handkerchief, and rehearses a few lines in his head that will buy him an early departure. When he looks up again, Bridge Weld is standing in the doorway. She has come in with her brother, Luce. Her eyes play over the room—a slow and democratic gaze—almost disinterested, almost bored. She sees him. Her eyes still for a moment, then pass on. Henry reaches for his drink. The glass is cool and smooth and wet and he can hear the sound of the ice shifting as it melts, and he realizes then that she is the reason he came. He has been waiting for her—without expecting that she would arrive, without expecting he would see her on this night or any other night. Still he has been waiting. He is suddenly aware of his body, the tight shirt collar, the bow tie, the scrape of linen against his thigh. He is about to take a step toward her, a step toward crossing the room. He stops abruptly, catches himself, and in the same moment, Luce takes his sister’s arm and steers her along the fringes of the crowd toward the French doors flung open onto the back terrace. As Henry watches, they step outside and her slim body is cut to shadow in the loose red light flickering off the paper lanterns. They move deeper out into the night and disappear.

  He follows them. Without thinking, he does it. He leaves his drink and crosses the room, weaving through conversations, suits, cigar smoke, elbows, scattered greetings. He reaches the doors. Luce is at one end of the terrace, turned toward the rail, in an intent conversation with Albert Devereaux. And Bridge, where is she? Henry scans the terrace, the steps, the yard, and he sees her then, down below. She is walking across the dance floor toward the soft sand and the long folding table where they have set out the fireworks.

  She has never seen so many. She imagines the explosion they could make. She imagines lighting them, not slowly, not one at a time, the way they will be lit, but all at once—a ferocious, volcanic sound, sparks, shoots of light bursting out of the black night as if the sky itself had split and it was the blood of the stars that was falling.

  She wants Henry to come out after her. He had seen her inside. She was sure of it. He had looked at her from across the room, and she had almost smiled—it wasn’t that she didn’t want to—she had almost raised her hand. But she didn’t. Why? Because of Luce? Of what he would have thought? Of the scowl that might have crossed his face? Why should that matter? Perhaps it wasn’t Luce at all, but rather something unbrave in her. Either way, she had let Luce steer her through the room and out onto the terrace. There, he had stopped to have a word with someone and Bridge had wandered away, down onto the sand, trying to collect her thoughts. What was it about Henry Vonniker that made such a shambles of her thoughts?

  Laid out on the table are boxes of red Roman candles, sparklers, cannon crackers, ladyfingers, pinwheels. She stops at a box covered in blue silk and lifts the lid. Inside it are the skyrockets. They lie wrapped in white tissue, braided wick to wick.

  A short distance away from the table, a man in a black waiter’s suit is kneeling in the sand. She knows him by face but not by name. He lives next to the Poor Farm on Drift Road. He is a mason, and they have hired him for this. He has shoveled out a short trench and now he is digging a deeper spot in the belly of it to set a small launching pad. He lays blocks of wood and stone in a square around the hole, and places a small stand inside to hold the rockets, their wicks straight, angled out to sea and up toward the sky.

  She feels someone behind her and she turns. It is Henry. He says, “Hello,” and she finds she cannot think of anything to say. She can feel the current pass between them, again. Her heart is wild, and they stand there, close together, their feet sinking into the soft sand.

  “So tell me more about your life,” she says.

  He laughs. “More?”

  “Tell me something.”

  “I am afraid when it comes to life, if you haven’t yet noticed, I am a bit of a passerby.”

  She doesn’t answer. Her eyes are steady on his face, but they feel cool and it makes him nervous.

  “I came by your house last fall,” he says. “To see you. To make sure you were alright.”

  “My mother told me.”

  They stand for a moment, an awkward silence.

  “You went away this winter?” she asks.

  “I did. For business.”

  She nods.

  “Did you notice I was gone?”

  “I did.”

  “Did you miss me?”

  She smiles. “I might have.”

  He doesn’t know what to say. He feels that he should offer her something. Some explanation, confession, apology. He remembers the day she came by his house at the beach, the day of the box wrench and the teacup. He remembers her mouth on his. He wants to tell her that he remembers that moment as if it happened yesterday.

  “Any run-ins lately with an oil pan?” she asks lightly.

  He shakes his head.

  “Not once?”

  “No. I brought the car to the garage.”

  “The garage?” Her voice bends, and he is uncertain if the slant in her voice, the slant in her eyes, is intended to include him. “You give up easily,” she says.

  “I think you know that’s not true.”

  She is still looking at him with those cool and empty eyes, eyes dark and blue, currents at thei
r surface, rippling light, and down below that, swift dark running water.

  He rights himself, clears his throat. “Have you eaten?”

  “No.”

  “They have food inside. Quite a spread. Some sort of fish. You do eat fish, don’t you?” He is blundering now. Flustered. “Are you hungry?”

  “Sure.”

  “Will you go in with me?”

  She pauses for a moment, still looking at him, then she nods and takes his arm, and they begin to walk back across the dance floor through the soft red light of the paper lanterns, and for the first time that night he feels that things are good, they are more than good. He is with her and she is holding his arm, and they are walking together toward the steps and the terrace, toward the clink of glasses, the clatter of silver and china, the shimmering waves of light and jazz and voices, barely contained by the thin-shingled walls.

  Bridge sees the woman coming toward them before Henry does. They are on the first landing, and she is above them on the terrace, her tight blond curls and long white arms. She has noticed them. Bridge recognizes her as Alyssia Borden from Horseneck Road. The woman who was talking to Shorrock that day Bridge saw Henry at the store. She is with her husband. She calls out Henry’s name. Her voice is strong and she is gorgeous, walking toward them as they step onto the terrace. She wears a white sheath dress and stockings. Her mouth is painted red.

  She reaches them and puts her hand on Henry’s other arm. “We need you, Henry. I must steal you, for just a moment.” She does not look at Bridge.

  Will Borden comes up behind her, smiling broadly. “She seems rather desperate over it, Henry.” Henry feels a twinge of disgust toward Will, his friend, for being so blind and, at the same time, disgust toward himself for the old betrayal.

  “This is Bridge Weld,” he says curtly. “Bridge, Alyssia Borden and her husband, Will.”

  Alyssia’s gaze plays over Bridge. She gives her a stony nod, then looks back at Henry. “We do need you, Henry. Please. For a moment.”