Yours Until Morning

by Patricia Masar

  The party was winding down and now there was nothing to look forward to for the rest of the summer but the fishing derby on Labor Day weekend. It was the big town event that marked the end of the summer and Claire loved the excitement, the boats jostling in the harbor, flags flying, the thrill of waiting for the winner to be announced. She had never gone out on her father’s boat for the Derby before, but her mother had promised that when she and Evie turned twelve they could both go, and Claire could hardly wait to be part of the fanfare this year. The fishing derby was an even bigger event than the Fourth of July and she was hoping to ask Paul to go along. It would be their last big hurrah together. After that, school would start and Paul would go back home. She was starting to wonder if she’d ever see him again. There was no sign of life over at Stone cottage. They must all be down at the beach. Something told her the Hutchinsons wouldn’t be coming back to Lockport next year.

  12

  The sky flushed vermilion in the deepening dusk. Red sky at night, sailors’ delight, June mused as she shifted the bag of groceries onto her hip. She was taking the long way home from the market, winding past the harbor and down the street she liked best where the big houses crowded up along the waterfront. She passed by the Harbor View Hotel, a grand old clapboard building with a wrap-around veranda, perched on a little rise with a view of the sea, and some motion, a flash of gold or the twinkle of glass made her glance up at the lighted restaurant.

  She stopped cold. Through the big plate glass window that looked out over the water she could see Richard seated at a table, holding a tumbler of Scotch in his hand. His wife sat across from him, wearing a pale yellow dress, a choker of pearls around her throat. Another couple was just joining them, a lovely brunette in a pink sleeveless dress with a deep tan, and a heavyset man with thinning blond hair and a ruddy complexion. Richard stood up and kissed the woman on the cheek and clapped the man on the shoulder. There was much laughter and fluttering of hands on the part of the women. June watched all of this like a deaf woman at the theater. There was no sound coming from the restaurant, only this tableau of laughing, beautiful people and one of them was her Richard who twice reached out and touched his wife on the arm. Tibby responded with a radiant smile.

  She turned away and stumbled along the road, wanting nothing more than to dive into a hole, to blot out the scene she had witnessed. Running awkwardly with the heavy groceries, she tripped and her hair tumbled down from its bobby pins. She must look a fright. A couple of people who had come out to watch the sunset turned to stare at her. I’ve got to pull myself together, June thought. All she needed now was to have the town gossips wagging their tongues about that odd June Kerrigan. She walked quickly down the rest of the street, desperate to get to the edge of the town. The canned goods in the grocery sack bumped painfully against her hip. So that’s what Richard did when they weren’t together! Went out for fancy dinners with his wife and their rich friends. She and John had never been to the restaurant at the Harbor View, not once, not even for an anniversary. Richard and Tibby probably had dinner there every other night, there or at the yacht club that was members only. And they looked so happy as they sat there with their friends, flushed with liquor and sunburn. Whenever she had pictured Tibby and Richard together she imagined Tibby as this relentless scold and Richard as the henpecked husband, broken and cowed.

  She reached the edge of town and slowed her pace. Her heart hammered against her ribcage. Sweat streaked her face and neck. She stopped and set down the sack of food, waiting for her breathing to return to normal. She didn’t know what to think or what to do. Everything seemed different now. She had always thought of Richard as belonging to her and her alone. He loves me, he loves me, I know it, she groaned. But he wasn’t hers and he didn’t love her. It had all been a lie. He belonged to Tibby. His wife. Miserable, she picked up the groceries and dragged herself home.

  But when she reached the road that would take her back to the house, she decided she was not ready to go home yet and headed instead out toward the lighthouse, the place of their first meeting, when she had clutched onto Richard’s neck like a woman who’d lost her head. June could still remember the way Richard’s hand felt on the back of her neck, his breath in her ear. She placed the sack of groceries on the ground and walked the rest of the way to lighthouse. From its base she stared out at the water, hoping the motion of the sea would calm her, trying to figure out what to do, to make sense of her shattered feelings. Of course she had always known that Richard and Tibby were husband and wife, June reasoned with herself. It’s just that she had never really been able to picture them together. Or if she had it was of the two of them sitting across from each at the kitchen table in Stone cottage, not talking, not getting along, Richard bearing up the best he could in a difficult and loveless marriage. But now she had seen them together for the first time, out in the world, laughing and affectionate. If he was happy with Tibby, how do I fit into his life? June thought. She wished she had remembered to bring her cigarettes. She desperately needed a smoke. Or a drink. A tall glass of gin on ice. Yes, that would calm her down.

  Or maybe she should just walk out to the far edge of the rocky outcrop and fling herself into the sea. She gazed out at the dark water, flat and calm, with only a thin line of surf flashing white against the rocks. Perhaps it was a trick of the light or the result of her own galloping nerves, but something out in the distance broke the surface of the water, a dark hulk, like a whale. A light winked at her briefly and then sank below the surface. What was that? June walked closer to the water, straining to see in the deepening dusk. The surface of the sea was flat again. There was nothing. I must have imagined it, she thought. I must be going mad. Suddenly she was cold and she rubbed her arms to warm them. It was getting dark now and she turned to go home.

  The air in the hut was stifling and close. Like the stale air, June imagined, in a bunker underground. She pulled her skirt down over her knees and reached up to smooth her hair, fumbling in her bag for her lipstick to apply a new mouth. Richard offered her a cigarette from his pack and after lighting it she sucked the smoke deep into her lungs. They leaned back on the boat cushions propped against the wall. June hugged her knees to her chest and tried to rest her head on Richard’s shoulder, but her position was awkward and the movement hurt her neck.

  She reached down and played with his fingers, tracing the blunt nails, stroking his palm. Their lovemaking had been passionate, with Richard kissing her lips and her throat as if he couldn’t get enough of her. It was June who held back. Nothing could erase the image of Richard and his wife at the Harbor View, laughing and touching. She wanted to tell him she’d seen him through the window, but she didn’t dare. He would think she’d been spying on him.

  “Lordy it’s hot,” June said, fanning her face. “I wish we didn’t have to meet in here. It seems so – sordid. Couldn’t we go to a hotel sometime?”

  “Where?” Richard squeezed her shoulder. “Everybody knows you here. It wouldn’t be safe.”

  “We could drive up the Cape. Or head toward Boston.”

  “You couldn’t be away from home that long. What would you tell your husband? Besides, this may not be the Ritz,” Richard said, “but it’s ours.” He dropped his hand into his lap and she stared at his class ring. A dark red garnet set in gold. Harvard 1949. June avoided looking at the wedding band on his left hand. She could tell Richard was becoming impatient with the conversation. It had become a pattern between them. While they were kissing and undressing and making love, he was sweet and tender, whispering in her ear, his breath excited and warm, but as soon as they were finished, he pulled away from her, retreating into a place she couldn’t reach.

  She shifted her body and curled up against his chest. The summer was going fast. When it ended Richard would go back to New York. What was she going to do when he left? Stay on in Lockport and cry in her coffee? They had so little time.

  He snuck another look at his watch. June could feel his impatience to lea
ve.

  “Please don’t go. Not yet.” She held onto his arm. “We haven’t even had a chance to talk yet.”

  “Okay.” Richard playfully tweaked her nose. “What should we talk about?”

  “I don’t know.” June blushed. Richard was making fun of her. Why shouldn’t they talk, get to know one another better. What was so funny about that? “Well. We could talk about you. What do you do when we’re not together?”

  He looked at her, his eyebrows raised. “What do I do? Nothing special. Play a little golf, spend time with Paul. Read the newspaper. Sneak a look at some papers from the office” He grinned sheepishly. “Not much. I’m supposed to be on vacation.”

  June stared at the coal of her cigarette. She tried to picture Richard out on the golf course, smacking a little white ball into the air, kidding around with his golf buddies, drinking highballs in the clubhouse. Except now, when she thought of Richard away from her, she saw Tibby, a constant presence at his side, doing all the wifely things June wanted to do for him. Ever since she’d seen him with his wife, there was no denying that Richard belonged only to June in his heart, or that he and Tibby had looked happy together.

  “Tell me about your wife. We’ve never talked about her.” June looked down at her hands. The nail polish on her left index finger was chipped. “Do you love her?”

  Richard gave her a strange look. “Tibby? That’s a funny question. She’s my wife. The mother of my son.”

  “I mean, do you love, love her. How did you meet? Did you fall madly in love? Are you in love with her now?”

  “June.” Richard eased her off his shoulder. “What’s this about Tibby all of a sudden?”

  June made a big show of examining her nails. “I don’t know. I just assumed that…since we started meeting here, since your feelings for me are so…oh, I don’t know what I’m saying. Just forget it.”

  Richard sighed and stroked her hair. “Listen, June. I’m married, just like you are. You know what marriage is like. It’s neither all good nor all bad. It just is. Now let’s not talk about my wife anymore. Let’s enjoy the time we have together.” He launched into another subject as if the mere mention of his wife had set his skin jumping. Maybe he did feel guilty after all.

  “There was quite a ruckus in Lockport today. That factory on the other side of town? The workers were striking. Blocked traffic all the way to the harbor.”

  June shifted her hips on the hard floor. “That’s the fish cannery. They’ve been striking off and on all summer. Lord knows what they want this time.”

  “It’s prime property over there. A great site for development. I’ve got a friend who does housing developments. Suburban homes, seaside cottages. Maybe I’ll mention it to him. If the cannery’s in trouble, I know plenty of people who’d love to snatch up the property for development.”

  “That would be nice,” June said listlessly. She agreed with him, of course, and if her mood were different she would have loved to tell him her ideas about it, but she didn’t want to talk about the cannery, she wanted to talk about the future. Their future.

  “Richard.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What’s going to happen to us when you go back to New York. How are we going to see each other?”

  Richard looked down at her anxious face. He ran his hand over her hair, smoothing it back from her forehead. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. I’ll miss you, that’s for sure. These past weeks have been wonderful. I can’t remember the last time I felt this good.”

  “Really? But have you…?” June stubbed out her cigarette and turned her whole body to face him. “Have you ever thought about what it would be like if we could be together? For always?”

  Richard flushed and looked away. Then he shifted his body on the floor and looked at her queerly. There was a shadow in his eyes. “What are you saying? That I should leave Tibby? And Paul?” Richard looked down at his hands. “I never meant to give you the idea that I would leave my wife.” The side of his neck was red and mottled. A vein pulsed in his temple. “And what about you? Would you leave your husband? What about your children, you’d just walk away from them and not look back? That’s madness.”

  “But…”

  “Shhh. Richard pulled June’s head to his chest. “Let’s not talk now. Let’s just be together while we can.”

  June squirmed in his grasp. She wanted to talk. She wanted to discuss their future. They were in love with each other. She knew he loved her, he said so while he was making love to her, whispered it in her ear. All that frenzy and desperation. That was love, wasn’t it? How could he think about going back to New York with his wife and go on living with her as if nothing had ever happened? Richard held her firmly against his chest and stroked her hair. He did not talk.

  After a while Richard sneaked another look at his watch. “I’d better get back. I told Tibby I was just going into town to pick up a few things.” He kissed June on the top of her head. “Aren’t your children waiting for you?”

  “Evie’s watching Ben,” June said dully. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth. “They’ll be all right.” She bit her lip to keep it from trembling. “I think I’ll stay here for just a little while longer.”

  “Good idea,” Richard said. “It’s just as well we don’t leave together. We wouldn’t want anyone to see us.”

  “No, we wouldn’t want that,” June said. Her voice had a bitter note in it, but Richard didn’t seem to notice. He was busy putting on his clothes, straightening the creases in his trousers, pulling on his socks and shoes. He was whistling, smiling. He looked happy and June couldn’t believe he could feel that way. Not when their time together was about to come to an end.

  Back in his clothes, looking every inch the captain of industry he was, Richard bent over June and kissed her on the forehead. “You’ll be all right here?”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said, hugging her knees to her chest. “I’ll leave a few minutes after you.”

  “Good girl. And don’t be sad. You know how much I care for you.”

  Richard opened the door to the hut. “See you.” He gave June a little wave.

  When he was gone, she tried to contain her anger, but fury rose in her throat till it choked her. Hot tears stung her eyes. Damn him! How could he be so casual about her feelings? She was willing to sacrifice everything to be with him, everything, but it was becoming all too clear that she was little more than a diversion in his busy life. A few quick tumbles in the hay to distract him from his boring home life and nothing more. In another week it would be over. He would go back to New York and she would be left in Lockport alone with her dreams and her desire.

  June stood and brushed the sand from her dress. She looked around in the dim light of the hut, at the stained walls and concrete floor. So this is what my life has become, she thought: meeting in a place like this to make love to a man, who all along has been planning to leave me. She could even picture his final exit: Sayonara. It’s been fun.

  She stepped out of the hut and into the warm air. Her throat burned. Her eyes felt puffy and swollen. The sky was overcast and the air oppressively thick. It looked like it might rain and she hurried home through the dunes, trying to compose her features and her thoughts, so that when she arrived at her house she could transform herself into the exemplary wife and mother her family needed her to be.

  The girls were on the back porch playing cards and Ben was in his playpen. June took a deep breath and called out to her daughters. “I’m back.” Her voice sounded all wrong. Her face felt like a bruised melon. She didn’t have the energy to pretend. All she wanted to do was run upstairs and fling herself on her bed and never get up. But there was dinner to make and it had been days since she’d done anything around the house. The kitchen floor needed to be mopped and there was a layer of dust in the living room.

  June opened the refrigerator and pulled out a package of ground beef for meat loaf. They could have that along with corn-on-the-cob and vanilla ice cream for desse
rt. She started in on the meal, chopping the onions which stung her reddened eyes. She plunged her hands into the glass bowl and mixed the chilled meat and bread crumbs and eggs with her hands. The smell of the raw meat reminded her of death.

  The wind was picking up and the sky had grown dark. June washed her hands at the sink and stopped her work to look out the window. In Stone cottage the lights had already been turned on, but the house was too far away for June to see anyone silhouetted against the windows. She averted her eyes. She imagined Richard standing in the kitchen with a drink in his hand, Tibby in a frilly apron at the stove, whipping up some fabulous meal. Lobsters or filet mignon. Paul at the kitchen table, making Richard laugh with a funny story. Her fingers contracted in pain and she almost dropped the bowl of meat. Oh God, oh God. She covered her face with her hands, pressed her palms against her eyes till stars appeared in the blackness.

  If only it would rain. A little rain would clear the air, make it easier to breathe.

  June plodded through the dinner preparations, mechanically preparing the meal, one of thousands of meals she had prepared in this house. The girls wandered in and out, wanting a snack, asking when dinner would be ready. She responded to them automatically, hardly hearing what they said and, puzzled at her behavior, they went away. She sighed heavily and washed her hands at the sink again, scrubbing the grease from her fingers, dreading the sound of John’s truck. How could she face him and act as if nothing were wrong when her heart was dying. This was the first time since she’d starting seeing Richard that she had misgivings about their affair, and a dreadful gnawing in her stomach told her that nothing would make it right. All this time she had thought things would work out. In her daydreams they had a future together, but now she was beginning to wonder if she hadn’t been fooling herself all along, that from the very beginning Richard had been planning to go back to his real life without her.