The Season of Open Water

by Dawn Tripp

  When he has finished, she clears his place and puts the fork and plate in the sink.

  “Are you tired?” she asks.

  He nods.

  “Go upstairs to your old bed and have a sleep.”

  He looks at her then, his eyes full, tears on the brink of them, and although he will not say it, he cannot say it, she can see that he is grateful. He tells her to wake him at nine, and she listens as his feet take the stairs, and then there is silence. All through the house, silence.

  She finishes her mending, then goes outside. She sweeps down the hen yard, shoos the chickens into their shed and bolts them in. She mops the kitchen floor and sorts out her wash for the following day. She draws the curtains in the front room that face the road.

  It is a beautiful night. A perfect swimming night. But she will not go down to the river. She will stay in the house with her son asleep in a room above her. There is a rightness in the house that she feels when he is in it.

  She dims the light, sits in the kitchen, and unpins her hair. She runs the brush through. She peels the strands off the horse-bristles, winds them around her finger, and puts them in the shoe box that she keeps in a cupboard under the stairs. For ten years, she has saved her hair, these strands given up off the root. She has marked the color changing, the lightening from brown toward silver, as if with age it gains some value.

  She waits until the clock strikes nine times, and when the striking is done, she waits a few minutes more. Then she wakes Luce, and he leaves. When the house is empty again, she walks with her aloneness through the rooms. She unpacks the blackest spaces, the closets, the corners, the long and untouched shadows under a bed, a bureau, a chair.

  The darkness bleeds together. One shape is equal to the next. The design of the world, every hierarchy in it, leveled.

  After ten, and still her father is not home yet. He does not see well in the night. It is unlike him to be gone so long past dark.

  Noel

  Every other Sunday through that summer, Noel and Rui meet at Lincoln Park on the bench in the pine grove between the carousel and the casino ballroom. They smoke and watch the children playing on the swings and chasing one another through the trees; men in suits, ties, straw hats, women in summer cotton dresses strolling by.

  Sunday is the big day at the end-of-the-line park. It is the one day of the week the mills are closed and ten cents buys an all-day trolley pass. Rui and Noel sit on their bench through the late afternoon and into the evening. They toss scraps of bread to the pigeons and watch the ebb and flow of queue lines at the concession stand and the Japanese rolling games. They yarn about nothing in particular—old times, stocks, baseball. They listen to the tin music playing on the carousel. The late sun glints off the polished brass, the painted horses slipping by.

  “The old carousel, the first one, had lions,” Rui remarks one day. “Do you remember that, Christmas?”

  “Never came back then.”

  “Never with Hannah?”

  “Hannah didn’t like parks.”

  Rui laughs. “A tough-to-chew woman you chose. I was never so fond of her.”

  “I remember.”

  “She might have liked those lions though.”

  It is early evening and the lamps are lit. Two girls pass by, their hands sticky from tearing at a warp of cotton candy. A younger boy straggles behind them. He scuffs his shoe through a tuft of wild grass.

  Rui clears his throat.

  “Bit of a cough?” Noel asks.

  “Had it awhile.”

  “It’s from those cigarettes you smoke. Get yourself a good pipe.”

  “Cough’s nothing much.”

  “Didn’t expect it was.”

  They fall to silence.

  “But I’ve been thinking some lately, Christmas, about our shares.”

  “Thinking what?”

  “I’ve been thinking things are looking a little slush these days.”

  “Are you off your socks?”

  Rui shrugs. “Just a gut sense. It might be time to make a change.”

  “What would you sell?”

  “Most all of it.”

  “What would you buy?”

  “Don’t think I would for a while.”

  “Would what?”

  “I don’t think I’d buy in on anything right now.”

  “You’re saying you’d just cash out?”

  “For a while.”

  “String it up with your rats? Are you nuts? I could lend you a safekeeping place in my panbone.”

  “I’m not messing with you, Christmas. Everything’s looking scrap to me these days.”

  “You talk rot.”

  “No.”

  “It’s rot to me. This is the first time in my life, Rui, I’m getting somewhere. I’m doing just what you told me to do. I have my money in and I sit back. I sit on this bench and watch that carousel turn. I’m doing nothing and I’m getting somewhere. The whole world’s pouring in now. I see it. Hear about it. New money coming in from overseas. Everyone’s hankering for a piece. Why the hell would I want to pull out now?”

  Rui weaves his hands together, turns them back. His wrists crack. “Back in 1755, Christmas, time of my grandfather’s grandfather, there was an earthquake that came in off the sea, hit Lisbon. Brought in a giant of a wave. Her trough came first, arrived at port, sucked all the water out the bay. The whole town came down to see it, crowding in, pushing over one another—don’t you imagine it must have been a thing to see. All drowned, of course, when the crest struck.”

  “You’re telling me to get out.”

  “I’m just saying watch yourself.”

  “I know what you’re saying without saying, and I know you’re saying to get out.”

  Rui shakes his head, his eyes fixed on two pigeons bickering in the dirt path. “I wouldn’t be the one to tell you that.”

  “Are you getting out?”

  Rui nods.

  “You’re selling all of it?”

  “Might leave a buck or two in.”

  From the direction of the casino, there is the sound of an orchestra band striking up. The first few notes of the Charleston. A young girl steps out of the ballroom onto the terrace. A red dancing dress, her hair slicked back. She leans against the rail and lights a cigarette.

  “Why would you get out now?” Noel says. “Everything’s up. Breaching. Sky-bound. Bridge reads it to me out of the papers. I hear talk. They’re calling it a perfect season. All new rules.”

  Rui shakes his head. “It’s like the rum-work, Christmas. It’s like whaling. Things are good early on, then the world gets in and wants a cut. Stocks are no different. I took the trolley the other day down to the wharves, stopped in to see Stinky Howard, still wearing his old slops, overalls and jumper, still selling rides in skiffs nobody wants to take out, so sprung with leaks and rot—so there was Stinky and he started in talking about how he’d just bought four hundred shares of some puddler company out of Illinois.” Rui pauses and takes a long drag on his cigarette. He exhales. “The whole world’s coming down from the town to see it.”

  Noel watches the girl on the terrace of the casino. Through the swinging door, he can see the gleam of the dance floor. A man in a lounge suit strolls outside. He comes toward the girl and leans against the railing near her. He draws a flask out of his pocket and offers her a drink. She turns her back on him.

  “It’s easy for you, Rui. You’ve made your money.”

  “Made some.”

  “You’ve made enough.”

  “What’s enough? As I recall, you aren’t the one best at knowing when enough’s enough.”

  Noel doesn’t answer.

  “We’ve never had weather like this,” Rui goes on. “And doesn’t it make you dizzy? Such perfect sunshine day after day?” He follows Noel’s gaze to the casino, the girl on the terrace. She tilts her head back and her throat is lit like smooth alabaster in the electric light. Rui leans in toward Noel’s shoulder, his voice taut. “When yo
u see a woman, Christmas, just that kind of woman, the most beautiful woman with baubles, a body, rich hair. You feel her in your blood, and that’s when you know in your gut, don’t you, she’s the woman who’ll dance you right down the drain.”

  There is a shriek from the giant coaster. The cars shake against the tracks as they climb. The front car reaches the top, slows, arcs over, and begins to dive. Noel can hear the screams off the cars hurtling down.

  Rui stretches out his legs. “You want a frankfurt, Christmas? Let me spot you a frankfurt.”

  “No thanks.”

  “We’ll walk down to Crawford’s then for a duck sandwich.”

  “Not hungry.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure.”

  “Suit yourself then. I’m going to buy myself a frankfurt.” He stands and ambles across the dirt path toward the concession stand. The pigeons skip ahead of him, then scatter.

  Noel looks away into the pine grove. It is not quite dusk and there are a few children still at play on the swings. He can see their white shapes flitting through the trees. In a patch of clear air, he can see packs of gnats. They swarm up through the dying light—a sure sign the next morning will bring fair skies.

  He takes his time going home that night. He strolls through the darkness down Reed Road, the soft loose shape of the summer wind bending through the trees.

  He will not sell his shares. He told Rui as much. Not now. In nine months the value of what he put in has more than tripled. The paper he owns is almost thirty-five hundred dollars. He will let it go to four. He will take it out when it has reached an even four.

  He knows that Rui is right in saying that at a certain point, the wealth won’t keep coming. An age can’t last forever. Every stretch of luck—wrong or good—has a finite time—and eventually it swings around to become the other.

  But now, it is a summer darkness, a warm smooth wind, the deep smells of wild grape and honeysuckle, and he will keep his money in for just a while longer, he will hold his shares just a while longer through this season. As he walks through the night, he hears the call of a whippoorwill, and he feels something close to joy in his heart, something he has not felt perhaps since he lost Hannah. The stars are nimble in the sky, and he lets himself fall back into that smooth summer darkness, without trying to see too far ahead. He walks home through the night, and as he lies awake in bed, the damp air pressing through the open window, he feels her close to him, Hannah, close to him. The next day and in the days that follow, still he feels her. She moves like soft hushed light across his shoulders, over his hands. The summer draws out long through Labor Day and into September. He does not go to meet Rui. He works in the shop. He takes the skiff out on the river. He fishes, pulls crabs and eels, and digs quahogs on the flats. He stays close to what he loves, deep in what he loves, still with that sense of Hannah knitted everywhere around him, her voice like the sound of a distant sea in his ear, her hand on his shoulder as he tends the hens, mucks out the barn, tills over the garden, pulls what is ripe and lets the soil reseed. It is only Hannah, and she is loving him, forgiving him for what he has done, for what he did not do, for what he gave her, for what he could not give.

  Mornings, he takes the wagon down to the beach. He rakes sea muck and gathers clams. He takes his walks through the dunes. He wanders off the road and up into the sand hills, along the paths through the dune grass and the scrub flowers, the dusty miller, the sea oat and the beach pea, the gnarled roots that hold fast and grow in such a harsh and unkind soil. He knows that in the fierce winds, the winter winds, these plants will break apart, shed their seed and sleep through the dead-time buried in the snow. It is the earth he loves most, this rugged sandy earth, the resilience of its creatures, its stubborn steadfast life. And above all, the salt rose. He loves it because it was her flower, Hannah’s flower. He loves it for how it throws its bloom again and again and again, so even now, coming into fall, the scent of it fills the air, a last and rich and unexpected scent, reckless, in the lulls of softer weather after rain.

  From time to time, on his way down East Beach Road, when he looks across the bay at the wind as it moves in gusts, pressing out in sheets across the sea, he will sense her there. He will see her in the swells, in how the water bends.

  Through those weeks, he feels himself grow transparent, his body more and more transparent. He is water and light, the sounds and smells of the world passing through him. He lets his sight turn inward, and he finds himself more gentle, softened, even to Luce, gentle in the warmth of the long and Indian summer, the lushness of the trees still unwilling to turn, gentle in the sweet dank reek off the marsh, the halcyon days, the swallows and the line storms, the ebb and flow of the moon tides, the aching autumn light.

  One day, when he is working in the shop with Bridge, he describes it to her this way:

  There is a door at the end of his mind, and when he walks through it, he is with Hannah again. When he walks through it, he is back on the island. His old life unfolds slowly, floating on the vast belly of that other ocean. When he walks through that door at the end of his mind, he can pick up the coarse black lava rock, he can smell the plumeria, the gardenia, the sudden fresh reek of the air before a storm. He can smell the burning cane.

  He pauses, and she can see that he has drifted away from her, far away from the room in the shop, and she knows that he is back somewhere on Kauai, somewhere with Hannah, in a lost place perhaps that he led her to through shade and tumbling sunlight, high in the mountains behind the cliffs, toward the sacred falls above the heiaus, cold clear water running off the streams, and he is with her there and their bodies are young and strong, brown skins turning through the sweet green fern.

  “Papa,” Bridge says softly, and she can see how he draws himself back in again, his eyes swing off the wall to her face—the one eye broken with the weather inside it, the white cataract fog. For as long as she can remember, this eye has been broken. It has always been the aspect of his face that she most loved.

  Someday, he says, you will have a door like this in your mind.

  It catches in her—not what he says, but how he says it—with intent, almost as if he is taking her shoulders in his hands and turning her gently and deliberately toward what he has left unsaid. She can sense that he is asking, without asking, for her to confide in him, to tell him about Henry and the stolen hours at the cottage, the ivy plant in the window, the shadows of its leaves like folded paper birds. She can sense that he is asking her to tell him where she goes, why she goes, what calls her.

  And she hears too in the silence—she can see in his old eye—the ancient eye, the eye of sorrows, so beautifully worn like a conch by the sea—that he is telling her perhaps what she already knows— that this will be the season of her life that she looks back on—years from now—this will be the summer that she meets when she walks through that door at the end of her mind—this will be the time in her life—brief, endless, full of youth and love and hope and joy— that every future happiness will be weighed against.

  That evening, she rides her bike down to the cottage. She and Henry sit out on the porch chairs. They smoke and watch the swallows in the dusk—a long country of hammering wings. They flood the sky. Henry lights another cigarette, and he tells her about a theory—beautiful and ancient, as old as Aristotle—of how swallows lived out the winter underwater. Bedded down among the reeds, they would sleep through the long cold months clustered together beneath the ice. It was a belief that lasted for centuries, he tells her, and there were tales to prove it: tales of fishermen hauling up the birds in their nets—clumps of swallows frozen, the wings of one folded into the wings of another—he braids his hand into hers as he says this—there were other tales too of how they could only be thawed, slowly, by fire, restored to a brief quickening life.

  She smiles quietly in the chill darkness gathering around them. She knows that it is his own story he is telling her—he is a man waking up, and she is that fire. They are quiet together, w
rapped in their coats. They watch the last light pass out of the sky. The night is cold, the sea drawn still, and they move inside.

  Luce

  On a late afternoon in October, Luce comes by the house on Pine Hill Road. Noel’s wagon is gone, the shop door closed. The kitchen is empty. He calls up the stairs for his mother. No answer.

  He feels shredded, unglued. She has always been the place he could return to at the end of a day when the world got wild.

  He comes back into the kitchen and sits down in a chair, his head in his hands. He can hear the sound of his own breathing, shallow, as if his throat is half closed and he is holding air in his lungs. He presses his thumbs into his temples to ease the splitting ache in his head, and for the briefest moment, he wishes that he could empty himself here, in her kitchen, into this worn familiar room of comfort and warmth and smells.

  He stands up and walks outside.

  He finds Bridge down in the garden, throwing hay over the garlic.

  “Hey you,” she calls out as she sees him walking toward her down the hill. She shifts the basket onto her hip.

  “Hey yourself,” he replies, managing a smile. As he comes up to her, she takes him in detail by detail: his unshaven face, unkempt clothes, an odd feverish light in his eyes.

  “Where is everybody?” he asks.

  “Noel’s up at the sawmill.”

  “Where’s Ma?”

  “Went to the store, I think. You feel alright?”

  “Sure. Yeah. Why not?”

  “You look like you’re full of pins. Like you need a sleep.”

  He laughs. “Sleep’s been a little rocky. You k now . . . since Johnny.” He looks down at the green shoots of garlic poking up through the hay. He pushes the toe of his boot against one of them. “They’re tough rascals, aren’t they? Setting in like they do right through winter?”

  He digs into his pocket for his cigarettes, hits one out of the pack, swears as he drops it. He picks it up off the ground and strikes a match.