“And all from his memory,” Orson said. “Look, here are the fish shacks that were cleared out for the park. And the pilings left from Barrel Wharf before it washed away. It’s all done so carefully. I wouldn’t have guessed Georgie ever thought of anything except where his next meal was coming from and whether the liquor store was open.”
“You never know,” Hugh said, looking out across the bay. “Every single life is such a journey, every one.”
“I feel bound to point out that Georgie didn’t die a heroic death at sea,” Orson said. “He died of using Everclear as a solvent while he was cooking over an open flame.”
“In the cabin of the leaky old bucket called Rainha do Mar,” Franco said.
“Is that what happened?” Sam asked.
“The evidence suggests…”
“He left a legacy,” Hugh said, looking down at the mosaic.
“Does Georgie have relatives?” Orson asked.
“Sure,” Franco said. “I mean, he’s Danielle’s cousin… or second cousin, on her grandma Bemba’s side. Which means he must be related to Bobby Matos, too, and probably—”
“Anyone close?”
“The sister in Fall River. I haven’t seen her since we were young. Josie, Josefine. I’m not sure what her name would be now. They’ve called her, I’m sure.”
“It’s not like we have a body.”
“But we do have a show to produce,” Hugh said. “So, let us proceed?”
“Enter Ariel, like a water nymph,” Leo said with a delighted pirouette. “That may be my favorite stage direction in history.”
“I have a… text message… from Shyanne,” Hugh said. “She can’t make the rehearsal, so… Vita, would you mind reading Miranda, just so we can get through this scene?”
Hugh didn’t lift his eyes from the page as he said this; he wasn’t thinking of the things Vita had confided at Orson’s party. Dreams. Yes, well. He himself had dreamed of becoming a distinguished professor, his voice deep, his pronouncements wise, as round and perfect as smoke rings, rising to the highest point in the lecture hall as a hundred pens scratched a note, underlining it so as to recall the words of the great man. This dream, this bright image in the distance, had become more and more diffuse, vague, cloudy as he came toward it, as if he had pushed his way down the aisle to touch a movie screen only to have the image blur and dissolve around him. Dreams made him itch now; he had a play to produce and an audience of people who would come to be entertained, to let their minds wander for a couple of hours in the sea air, while these characters pranced (he must slip something of a rein over Sam’s lovely shoulders, yes) through an old story, so much like their own—the story of an isolated, superstitious community, its inhabitants scheming against one another, relying on one another, on their own enchanted island.
Hugh needed to run through two more scenes before four thirty, when Orson had to catch the bus to Boston. He had a ticket to Sweet Bird of Youth that night at the Huntington, had his valise packed and ready. “Vita! Vita Gray! Do not sit there as if entranced, please. This is reality! Would you please stand in as Miranda?”
Vita had prayed for this so often she hadn’t believed it at first. She knew Shyanne had a new boyfriend, and had told Adam she was sorry she’d gotten involved with Mackerel Sky, that she hadn’t realized how “lame” the whole thing would be. But to just not show up… well, it was nearly a miracle. Here it was, Vita’s chance to show them all. She hopped to attention like a fireman poised to slide down a pole, redid her ponytail in two urgent motions, and skipped into her place, with the locust blossoms floating down through the air over her.
It was her place—she knew it. She knew the lines, had memorized them by accident as she watched the scenes over and over. She felt the sense of Miranda come into her as if she were drawing it out of the ground. Miranda would be like Marie Antoinette, a young girl so privileged by her relation with power that she had no idea her whims couldn’t be chiseled straight into law. She banished Caliban as coldly as Vita herself would once have got rid of Franco. Seeing Orson go with the crooked arthritic gait he had developed for the part, she felt a pang—Miranda might have too, and how would she have shown it? And here was Ferdinand, the first young man Miranda had ever seen.
“What is’t? a spirit? Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir, It carries a brave form. But ’tis a spirit.”
Her thoughts chased each other so fast she could barely get hold of them. Act the part, blush at the sight of Adam… because he’s Ferdinand. If he were just Adam, of course, the thing would be to avoid blushing. But Adam would understand she was only blushing as Miranda, that the soft hush in her voice was only for Ferdinand. He wouldn’t think she meant all that feeling for him… except that she did. Her mind raced on as she spoke and glanced and blushed, beseeching Prospero’s kindness, keeping her diction clear, trying to use every ounce of her feeling for Adam to show Miranda’s for Ferdinand, without, God forbid, causing Adam to assume…
As she spoke the lines, it struck her that Miranda was like her. She too had seen her mother killed, and lived on with some memory from “the dark backward and abysm of time” haunting her. She had lived at sea, waiting, hoping, trying, but it was like climbing back up the dune on the back shore—you couldn’t. The ground kept slipping down beneath you.
She felt a sympathy for the character that she had never felt for herself. Of course she was solitary and awkward—the poor girl.
“My affections are then most humble. I have no wish to see a goodlier man.” Tears started as she spoke the line. She felt it as if it were her own. What it would be, to meet a kindred spirit after a life spent alone!
“And… you two stand there charmed, transfixed by each other. You can’t move,” Hugh said. “Ferdinand, Prospero’s powers are pulling you away, but you reach back, a hand at her waist. You know you’ll lose, but you have to show her how you feel before you’re taken.…”
Licensed by Shakespeare, he reached toward her, too shy to give the movement any force, but his eyes were honest. She felt a trapdoor open and there she was, in a new world. The air smelled of honey from the locust blossoms; that fragrance would revive this feeling every June from now on. There were veins of rust and black through the tide flats and the brilliant silver of the still water as it ebbed, the carcass of the Rainha, and Sam and Leo and the others, moving through the landscape but no more than apparitions now.…
“Good—that was good,” Hugh said. “We’ll go through it more completely when Shyanne’s back, and a last dress rehearsal with full tech tomorrow, five p.m.”
No! He had been supposed to see into her heart, find the radiance there, recognize her gift and tell her that from now on she would be playing Miranda! She was scalded. She looked around to see if they had noticed her shameful, ridiculous hope and seen it dashed, but they had forgotten her altogether.
“And one last announcement. Opening night will be held as a benefit for a local girl whose father just died. They’re trying to get up a scholarship fund for her.” He smiled at Franco. “A good cause and a good way to bring in an audience that’s not familiar with Mackerel Sky yet. So it should be a full house.”
“And a full moon,” Orson said. “Fair weather for the next ten days at least.”
“You coming?” Adam said, starting toward the car, looking away as if there was danger in looking at Vita. The closeness, his hand at her waist, had spun a web over them. She fell in behind him, and they drove in silence as if a word might break the feeling. They waited for a stream of BMWs and Mercedes to pass before they could cross the highway, but then they were back in their own territory. Grace Pond lay still and black in its hollow and the white tree marked the entrance to the driveway, two sandy tracks with a grassy middle and beach roses blooming along the side. And the house—her home—looking as cozy as a hobbit hut with the clematis vines flowering over the front door. LaRee wasn’t back from work yet; Bumble came trotting around from the corner, saw the car, and rolled onto
her back in the sand. When Vita reached to undo her seat belt, Adam caught her hand and nature just pulled them together, too suddenly, bumping against each other, her lip bruised against his teeth.
“Wait.” She put up her hands and took a breath. “Like this,” she said, kissing softly so it was like a question, and he seemed to understand, to give an answer with the next one. He was holding her so tight, as if he was afraid she’d escape. Something gave way within her and she was adrift in a new element, alive, awake as she had never been. Had something beyond this mattered to her? Why?
25
A VISIT TO 1612
The kiss broke; they had to breathe. And there they were, two naturally awkward people who had followed some instinct down a blind alley and found themselves face-to-face. Adam’s face was so beautiful—so amazed and unguarded—it drew her back to the kiss. Neither of them knew what else to do. LaRee would be home any second, though. She would drive in behind Adam’s car and then would have to back out again so he could back out, and it would be unthinkably, unspeakably, tragically awkward.
“Let’s… I have something I want to show you…” she said. “Let’s drive up to the Outer Beach.”
He blinked and she realized he was frightened. She was too. The sudden possibility of love made everything dangerous. It was right there in front of them; suppose they drove it away?
“It’s just… a place where I like to walk to. It’s where I got the wood for Caliban’s hut.”
“I’m supposed to go home.…”
“Oh. Okay. Okay, bye.” She opened the door, hoping she could get into the house before she started crying.
“But—but! My mom’s at yoga!”
Vita stopped, trying to think what this could mean.
“She won’t care if I’m home,” he explained. Vita hesitated. Having stood her ground with LaRee and survived, she had the courage to wait for him, to listen even though she might not like what she heard. “My affections are most humble…” he said. From the play.
“My affections are most humble, too,” she said, making her voice as soft and confiding as Sam Rosenmayer’s and putting her seat belt back on.
They started to park at Doubloons, but Shyanne’s old Jeep convertible was in the lot. She had turned eighteen and would be waiting tables this summer, edging through the crowds in cutoffs and a clingy T-shirt, plucking up twenty-dollar bills. The same as her mom had years ago. Seeing the Jeep, Adam drove on.
“Park in the Shillicoth house—they never get here till the fourth,” she said. “It’s that big gray hulk up on the bluff.”
“Yes, my lady.”
They went up the steps and over the porch, which had been fixed and painted since Vita’s last visit. It wasn’t the stark, sere place she’d been haunting all winter; the sun was shining and the waves spilled up the beach one over another like lace. A man walking his dog had stopped to watch something—she saw a whale spout and then another, then a slick black tail.
“Kind sir,” she said. “Look!”
“They’re so happy out there.…” He took her hand—the whales seemed to have sanctioned this.
She led the way, running down the beach steps to the wreck. More sand had fallen away at the bottom, so it was a big jump—a celebration. They were fast and strong and able. Vita barely glanced at the shoals where the riptide had formed the summer before, leading Adam up the beach to the wreck.
“My wreck,” she said. “They found it.” It was cordoned off with stakes and caution tape and there were footprints all around it.
“Those bastards!” He leapt the caution tape and strode into the middle of the wreck, holding up an imaginary sword. “Whoreson, cur, this wrack belongs to my lady, and I shall strike thee thrice if thou com’st near!”
“Well, it does! I found it first!” But her feet wouldn’t move; she was a good girl first and last. Her heart sank to think this—Miranda was the “more braver daughter” of the King of Naples. How could she hope to play such a role if she couldn’t even cross the caution tape?
“I was out here with it months ago—I found it back in April after the big storm. I came out to…” Really, she’d come to visit the site of the riptide, where the father and daughter had died. Together. The way a family ought to. “I came out to see it every day.”
“And it shall be yours until the sea covers it again… which will be soon, looks like.” It was true. Silt had covered the front timbers already. A few more tides and the hull would be buried again—for years, or decades, or centuries.
“I want another piece before it goes,” she said. To prove she’d been here, really seen this. Without some memento she might stop believing it had been real.
“Vita, you didn’t—the wood in Caliban’s hut didn’t come from this wreck, did it?”
“Some of it,” she said. “That big piece that’s like a stump. And I’ve got stuff at home that I pried off the timbers—pieces of metal and stuff.”
“You’re not supposed to do that. This is like… a historic artifact.” He knelt down and brushed the sand away where two beams were fixed together. “Look—there aren’t nails, only pegs and notches—they put this whole ship together like a puzzle.”
“It’s just going to be covered up again, and eaten away by the water,” Vita said. She had been alone with it, in her own stretch of wilderness, and now there was caution tape and footprints and she was breaking a law.…
“No,” he said. “If I’d found this I’d have hauled the whole thing out if I could. It is massively cool.” He started to examine all the joints, to sift the sand beside them—apparently the wreck was cooler than kissing.
“Look at this!” It was a long white shell, hollow at the center. She’d never seen one like it.
“It’s a pipe stem, I think. My dad has some like it—he used to take me beachcombing when I was little. They had pipes made of clay.”
The dog walker was gone; blue shadows fell across the dune face and over the wreck, though the water still sparkled way out and she saw another whale blowing, and gulls gathering around it.
“It’s no different here from what it was then,” she said. “There’s nothing to say it’s not 1612.”
“I wonder what it was like back then?” he said. Somehow they both knew that in 1612 there would have been no barrier between them, no caution tape, no mistrust, not so much as a thin cotton shirt. He took her hand and she stepped over the tape into that century when they imagined love must have been easier to speak out. His eyes were gray, and amazed to be looking into hers. His beard seemed designed to show how soft his skin was. It scratched her when they kissed and made her want to kiss more.
“I love it here in 1612,” she said.
“I’m so glad you brought me here.”
26
MAGICAL CREATURES
Orson got back from Boston on the first bus. Sweet Bird of Youth had been a disappointment—all drained of sweat and longing so as to be crammed with clever cultural allusions instead—so he left at intermission, rented a room at the Mandarin Oriental and picked out a most excellent-seeming fellow on Manhunt.com. Heavy linen, beveled mirrors, velvet drapes, and a decidedly working-class bedmate… perfection. But the partner did not live up to expectations any better than the play had, and Orson dispatched him as quickly as possible, then sat at the window, allowing regret to lap over him like the incoming tide. By four a.m., he had fallen into a nostalgic daze, recalling the bus station encounters of his youth. To defile, to be defiled and exalted at once, in the service of some searing need… He packed his things and headed to the Trailways terminal.
It was spotless; even the bathrooms were made of some unassailable material so that nothing could be written on the walls. A skinny security guard sat at the door, playing a video game on his cell phone. This fellow’s lust was likely directed toward some comic book heroine or one of those wet-eyed anime figures. Orson folded his cape under his head and napped until the first bus arrived. There were two other passengers, and
in Hyannis they picked up two more, nurses’ aides at Infinite Horizons, by the color of their scrubs. They’d be in Oyster Creek by eight a.m.
Summer was upon them. He could feel it as he stepped off the bus. The street was silent except for the dripping window boxes at the pharmacy. The warmth rising from the ground promised the fog would burn off, and the low tide smelled of clam chowder. He started up the hill toward home, but decided to walk over and check the theater first. Mackerel Sky’s opening night was not generally much of an event, but now that they were doing it as a benefit he expected a crowd, and he wanted to be sure all was ready. Somehow even the disappointment of the trip began to inspire him. Nearly seventy years old, and he was still yearning, suffering—alive!
The lawn at Mackerel Bay Park was as luxurious as velvet now, green and cropped close the day before, with clumps of violets flowering, wet with dew. The cottages across the street had a fresh coat of white paint, yellow for the shutters. Sam and Leo’s laundry was pinned up expertly but had been on the line overnight—they were too dewy themselves to understand dew, Orson thought, delighted with his own cleverness. What a foolish old goat he had been, looking for physical fulfillment when it was clear that his life’s calling was to admire these boys, to dream back to his own youth and imagine himself in their place.
The screen door to the harbormaster’s shack opened and shut—Hank opening up for work, putting out the BEACH PERMITS sign. The tent faced diagonally so the Rainha was the backdrop on the left side and the locust grove on the right. The chairs were set up for the audience, klieg lights on side posts; Caliban’s hut had been moved in for the night and the tent sides were tied down to protect everything. A ghost light stood center stage, keeping watch over the scene. Orson poked his head in, then lifted the flap and took a seat at the back. Everything was settled, right. They’d incorporated Georgie’s mosaic into the set—the shells made a softly reflective surface, a proper contrast to the knotty wood and thick old ropes Hugh had used for the rest.
The Harbormaster's Daughter Page 27
