The Saberdene Variations

by Thomas Gifford

  I kissed her and we got back to practicing. We practiced all night long.

  We spent the days fitting ourselves into the life and rhythms of the town. We stocked up on food. We bought a grill at the hardware store and charcoal at the market and took it down to our beach at twilight. We bundled up in sweaters and jeans and cooked burgers and steaks and lobsters over the coals with the wind whipping the smoke to shreds. We found an old net and racquets in the garage and played badminton and walked barefoot in the icy surf. We sat on the rocks watching the Atlantic sky go dark with the sun setting red and orange behind us. We would walk into town to get the newspapers and sit in the grassy square and read them and check out the townspeople, who were so different from New Yorkers, so much slower, so much calmer. Teenagers looked like survivors of another age altogether: they seemed quieter, more at ease with the world around them, with the result that they reminded you of a time when kids were just like real people. Never once did I hear kids screaming the simple word Fuck! at one another, at the world in general, while they hung around downtown killing time. We might as well have landed on Mars. Or maybe it was New York that was Mars.

  It was quiet in Hackett. It was beyond mere quiet at the house. It was still. There was just the surf, the birds, the wind in the trees and nibbling at the chinks in the old walls. At night we would sit and feel the fire’s warmth and read and listen to the Red Sox games on the radio, Ken Coleman’s reassuring voice from Fenway Park and points west.

  And we would make love, hour upon hour, and fall asleep, Caro in the crook of my arm, breathing softly against my chest, her hair against my cheek. One night she woke, shivered, clung to me. “I never had any idea it could be like this. It’s like … childhood, only I never felt like this. It’s like I never had a childhood, Charlie. It’s like I never was … innocent, somehow. Now I feel innocent, Charlie. And happy. Life is just beginning, isn’t it, Charlie?”

  But she also had dark times, too, as if she were slipping back into that other life where everything kept ending.

  THREE

  One night when I came up to the house after making sure the fire was out and our bits and pieces gathered together in the canvas carryall, I couldn’t find her for a few minutes, then came upon her, feet curled under her, clasping her knees, in a dilapidated old rocking chair on the porch. I heard the squeaking of the rocker first and that led me to her. She was rocking quietly, staring out across the surf, which lay like a white ruffle in the moonlight.

  “You okay?” I went to stand at the spindly railing, turned to lean against it and face her. The wind brought gooseflesh to the back of my neck.

  “Not exactly,” she said.

  “Want to have an old-fashioned chin-wag?”

  “You do sound odd when you dredge up the spare Englishism.”

  “I always think it’s strangely amusing and seductive, doncha know. Fact is ‘chin-wag’ is sort of a John Cleese-ism from Fawlty Towers. It was funny when he said it. On the other hand, ‘Henry Kissinger’ was funny when he said it.”

  “Because it has a ‘K’ in it, I presume.”

  “So why aren’t you okay? Tiring of bucolic peace and quiet?”

  “I’d never tire of bucolic peace and quiet. There’s not enough of it to last my lifetime. No, it’s not that …”

  “Come on then, my princess. What’s the problem?”

  She gnawed on a knuckle, spoke softly into the wind, and I strained to hear.

  “Sometimes I get into a dark mood, Charlie. It’s like a dark version of me emerging from the shadows, crooking a finger at me to come along, come along. And this enticer from the shadows is sort of oddly irresistible, like a man with a sack of sweets trying to get a little girl into his shiny car … I don’t want to go but I want those sweets. Silly little girl, giving into one temptation too many …”

  “My beautiful Caro, where is the enticer leading you? Or us, I should say, because I won’t let you go alone—”

  “Oh no, you mustn’t come. You must keep me from going, that’s the trick.”

  “Where is he taking you?”

  “Oh God, I don’t know! I’m being a precious, self-indulgent nitwit! It’s just that I’m afraid of the enticer … Charlie, I’m so afraid that none of this can last, all this …” She gestured, flinging one hand in an arch to take in the house, the beach, the ocean, me. “All this that is so perfect, so much a part of me all of a sudden.”

  “Sounds like a mild case of depression which the Maine night can bring on, or the New York summer, or a summer cold—it is perfect and it needn’t end, Caro. Just because the nice things have ended in the past, that doesn’t mean this will. Life doesn’t necessarily work that way—”

  “Oh yes, it does! You’re an optimist so you don’t know the truth, that’s all. It always turns out that way, no matter which path you take. We pessimists accept the sort of general filthiness of things … but it’s too bad that it has to smudge the best parts, too. For instance, all this we have now, I’m afraid it’s not going to last—”

  “Why not, for God’s sake?”

  “Because I don’t deserve to have such happiness, Charlie.”

  “Don’t be silly, my love. No one could possibly deserve the good times more than you. Now, come on, let’s crawl off to bed and you can enjoy general ravishment.”

  And she went along, holding my hand.

  But in the night something woke me and I was alone in the old double bed with the, noisy springs and the mattress which wobbled with age. I lay there blinking, wondering what had wakened me, and then I turned in the damp, salty darkness to see if Caro was awake and found that I was alone.

  There was a shock in the discovery, the way it ran through me in my sleep daze. I threw my legs over the edge of the bed and sat there listening for something that would tell me why I awoke or where she had gone. But all that came was a memory …

  I sat there, heard rain lashing the house, realized I was damp with rain spraying in the window, then I heard thunder cracking but muffled, maybe it was coming from the ocean, and it all came back to me, waking in another strange bedroom, wondering why, then standing on the balcony looking into the living room, seeing Caro with the gun, the huge man thrashing at the curtains as rain spewed out of the night … It was like being a return passenger, headed back into that other nightmare, and I had to force my way out of it.

  I left the bedroom, padded along the hallway, and went down the stairway, into the living room. Lightning flashed and the room was revealed in that stark half-white light and she wasn’t there.

  “Caro,” I called and the word was lost in a thunderclap.

  My breath was jammed in my chest, as if I’d swallowed a coin.

  The door onto the porch stood open, rain spattering the floor and the throw rug. The gingerbread porch eaves dripped steadily. The wind blew the rain in my face as I stood in the doorway. It was like bathing in ice water.

  I went outside, stood shielding my eyes from the rain.

  She was standing at the point of the porch, like a figure in the prow of a storm-bound ship, rain all around her, wind whipping her robe, looking out into the darkness where the enticer must have waited.

  “Caro,” I yelled against the storm.

  She swung around toward me and I was deep in the nightmare again. Only I was playing Victor’s role.

  She was holding the old shotgun that had been propped in the shadows by the fireplace. The barrels reached out toward me like terrible accusations, lit silver by the lightning. The loud crack followed and I shook my head.

  “No, Caro,” I called to her. “No, it’s me, Charlie.”

  I felt as if the twin muzzles were swallowing me.

  “No, Caro!”

  Slowly she lowered it, stood still, staring at me.

  I ran toward her, slipping and sliding, and threw the gun down and closed her in my arms. I squeezed her to me, whispering to her. She was cold and wet and limp.

  “Oh God! Charlie, I thought I heard
him … it was happening all over again … another one of Victor’s damned variations, I was going to make the same mistake again … Victor was always saying we keep living the same life over and over again—”

  “Don’t worry, it’s okay, it’s all right now, I’m here … I love you, Caro, it’s okay now …”

  She sobbed, shivered, dug her fingers into me as if something, someone, the enticer, were trying to tear her away.

  “Oh, Charlie, Charlie … I don’t want to kill you, too …”

  Chapter Seventeen

  ONE

  BUT NOTHING LIKE THAT HAPPENED again. That was the worst she got. And by the time we’d been summer residents for three weeks our daily schedule had become a part of the town’s life. In our own way we fit in and they got to know us at the drugstore and the grocery store and the meat market and the fish market and the big flower stall across from the post office.

  We would usually walk down to the dock with the sun shining off all the bright white paint and we’d watch the small craft negotiating the harbor and we’d hook our fingers together and smile at each other a lot. Then we’d go to the Sea View Cafe with the big picture windows looking out at pretty much that same perfect view. Kids on bicycles, dogs running around chasing Frisbees, the station wagons and pickup trucks, the gift shops, the band shell in the park. We’d have breakfast, cranberry muffins and eggs and bacon and coffee, and we’d look at the papers from Boston with the baseball scores.

  Then we’d dawdle back along the main drag, all the way back to the house, and sometimes we’d only see one or two cars once we got past the last of the little town. Lots of birds, the wind in the long grass and the constant rustling of the trees and the never-ending salt smell of the ocean. Maybe we’d make love for lunch and go play with the gardening tools and dig some weeds out of the flowerbeds, then get on down to the beach in our sweaters and build a little fire in a sandpit and have dinner as night fell behind us and the summer chill rode in on the Atlantic tide and fog.

  We had a life there for a while and it let me dream of how life might continue with her, how we might build it together.

  Then it was the Fourth of July. Rodgers and Hammerstein could have written a musical about this Fourth of July. O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness! could have been born in Hackett this Fourth of July. This day was a perfect illustration of our embryonic life, this newly born existence of ours.

  We walked into town in time to get a prime spot for the little parade. A VFW drum and bugle corps and a high school marching band and a bunch of kids decked out like Revolutionary War soldiers and there was a contest for dressing up like the Statue of Liberty. There was a sea of green foam-rubber headpieces and orange Styrofoam torches and old sheets for robes and the littlest girl won first prize and everybody else got a prize, too.

  There was a softball game over at the high school field and I got roped into pinch-hitting and damn near killed myself beating out a slow roller to third. Then I had to slide into second and got forced anyway and tore my pants. The crowd found this vastly amusing and cheered when I hobbled out to play left field and thank God, by some miracle, nobody hit one in my direction. I only had to play one inning. It was a lifetime.

  When I came out, Caro had a hot dog waiting for me. She had mustard on her upper lip. She said I was nothing less than heroic but she had to laugh. We went to a lemonade stand where the stuff was made from honest-to-God lemons and there were big chunks of freshly picked ice floating in the tub. Dogs were playing in the outfield while the guys chased the ball down. It was perfect. Just like a television commercial.

  In the evening the churches all pooled resources for a big picnic in the town square, back in the middle of town, everything centering on a large statue of an old-time fisherman who was frozen in time leaning into the gale with his sou’wester blown back, furling around him, a Maine man for all seasons. The kids dressed like the Statue of Liberty wouldn’t dream of taking off their pointed crowns so they carried on shrieking and jumping the way kids do and some glutton for punishment organized a three-legged race that petered out under the weight of its own sappy nostalgia. A barbershop quartet held forth from the back of a flatbed truck while a good part of the crowd got into the mood and sung along.

  Caro smiled brightly up at me. “Frank Capra is alive and well and living in Hackett, Maine. It’s almost eerie, isn’t it, Charlie?”

  “Like one of those old Twilight Zones. ‘Caro and Charlie have left the terror of the city behind and stumbled upon a nineteenth-century Fourth of July in a Maine village. Are they a uniquely lucky pair? Or have they just possibly entered the twilight zone?’ ”

  “Stop. You’re giving me shivers.” She moved closer to me, squeezing my arm.

  There was a big American flag hung from a rope stretched tight between a couple of old oaks and the stiff evening breeze straightened the other flag atop a pole next to the post office steps. Red, white, and blue lights were strung from the trees and drooped around the gingerbread roof of the bandstand. I’d lived a long time abroad and I was used to Guy Fawkes Day in London. I’d forgotten how the blood could stir for the Fourth of July.

  When the fireworks started I was all gooseflesh, cheering and oohing and ahhing with all the little kids at each starburst of orange and white and blue and red. Caro beamed and clapped and talked animatedly with some of the kids clustered on the grass in front of us. I slid my arm around her, drew her to me while the explosions went on overhead. She looked up at me with shining eyes. I kissed her hair. And when it was finally all over we took our time walking home.

  TWO

  I was caught up in, hypnotized by, the exhilaration of the day. I didn’t want it to end. I suggested a walk along the shore in the bright moonlight. Caro was all for it.

  We stood in the long grass at the edge of the sand. The wind was picking up. We could still see the occasional flare of a firework over the harbor. I could still smell the acrid smokiness that had hung over the square.

  Caro said she needed a windbreaker to go over her sweater and ran up to the house. I watched her go, bare legs flashing in the moonlight, a dream of my own.

  I sat down on one of the damp rocks and lit a pipe, shielding the match against the wind. I smoked and thought about Caro and the day itself and the world it symbolized. Why not live here, I wondered. I could have the house outfitted and made truly habitable for the entire year. I could write my books. I could be a member of the community. I could easily enough go to Boston and New York for research and entertainment. And I thought that maybe Caro would like the idea of sharing the life. If she didn’t like the house we could certainly afford to build another one. We could travel. We could have children of our own and buy them Statue of Liberty outfits …

  The night fog was rolling in, gray and clinging and damp. I must have lost track of time, hypnotized by the sight of the approaching fog, so soft yet so relentless, thick enough to cover all of one’s sins. Finally it was all around me and I was alone, encapsulated, and I couldn’t have found her in the fog if she had come back. And she hadn’t. I checked my watch. She’d been gone nearly half an hour.

  I knocked the pipe’s ashes onto the sand, smudged them around with my shoe, and climbed up off the beach to the slippery grass. Slowly, moving carefully so as not to trip over a rake or fall into a flowerbed, I went back to the house.

  I came across the porch, past the hanging pots of sturdy vines Caro had hung, let the screen door bang loudly behind me as I always did when I came home, and called her name.

  The word bounced around, the way it would in an empty house.

  The feel and smell of the fog had invaded the house, giving me a clammy feeling. I’d have to get a fire going.

  “Caro?” I called again. “Honey? Where are you?”

  I went toward the kitchen where the lights shone brightly through the doorway. It looked like an Edward Hopper, the cream-colored cabinets with glass knobs and glass-paned fronts, dishes gleaming behind them. A wedge of countertop. The
old-time linoleum on the floor. One very still life.

  I went to the kitchen doorway. Stopped.

  She was standing by the sink, half-turned, staring back at me, her face smudged as if she’d been crying. Her mouth was open slightly as if she were trying to speak but couldn’t quite get the words out.

  My first thought was that she had taken another dive into her own private pool of despair and depression. She’d been able to avoid it for weeks but now—maybe the simple, unfettered happiness of the day’s celebration had brought it on, the sorrow and unworthiness she felt in her guts. I didn’t know where it came from. Maybe she’d been born with it.

  “Hey,” I said, “what’s going on? I almost fell asleep out there …” I was trying to keep it light. I’m no shrink.

  She shook her head at me, almost imperceptibly, stared at me almost as if she couldn’t blink, had forgotten how.

  “Oh, Caro,” I said, “are you okay? Everything’s going to be all right …”

  I went through the doorway, slipped on something, looked down. Buttons … I looked back at her, not getting the point, then realized she’d clasped her arms across her breasts to hold her blouse together. The windbreaker and sweater lay on the kitchen table. Suddenly she sobbed.

  And then, too fast to react against it, I was in a powerful vise. I felt like someone was snapping me in half.

  An arm like a crowbar came around my neck from behind, jerked me tight against the hard barrel of a man’s chest, and I was hit by the overwhelming smell of cheap men’s cologne mingled with sweat and liquor and cigar smoke, and my windpipe was closing, and I couldn’t swallow and I was being dragged backward, downward, my legs buckling.

  A Panama straw hat tipped forward, came forward over my own head and rolled toward the table, then onto the floor with an awful, endless slowness.

  Somehow he’d found us.

  My vision was blurring so quickly I was afraid I wouldn’t last long enough for Caro to get away. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t wanted to leave me to him, stood staring at us as he throttled me. She was frozen like a rabbit in the headlights’ glare.