Authors: Susan Minot
She sat down near Ann. Where did you disappear to last night? she whispered. Ann smiled, this would be discussed later.
Mrs. Wittenborn came out of the phone closet. Vee and Dee are getting in around five, she said.
Ann was conscious of Harris Arden busy at the sink with Gigi, and did not look over.
Something has already happened hasn’t it
Vernon asked if you were up, Ann. Mrs. Wittenborn raised her eyebrows.
He’s still not over Ann, Gigi said over her shoulder.
Ann directed her attention to salting her eggs. She heard branches snapping, the back at the sink did not turn around.
Gigi kept talking. I don’t think he’ll ever get over you. He’s even got another girlfriend. Was Gigi touching him?
Kingie, said Ralph, holding up a spatula.
Kingie? Carl said to Lila.
I told you, Lila said.
Have I met her? said Mrs. Wittenborn.
She was the one in the yellow dress at the Morgans’.
The sort of lace affair? Mrs. Wittenborn shook her head. It wasn’t good.
Here, Gigi said to Harris. Hold this?
Ann could not see Harris’ face.
Has Ann met her? Ralph said, looking at Ann.
No. I don’t really—
Well she’ll meet her later. Vernon’s bringing her. Mrs. Wittenborn looked for a place to flick her ash. Morning darling.
Morning Linda. Dick Wittenborn brought in the smell of aftershave and a faint whiff of alcohol. Morning all.
Harris Arden turned to join everyone in the greeting. He caught Ann’s eye and showed he had not forgotten and the same charge of the night before ran through her again.
Harris’ fiancée is coming with them too? said Mrs. Wittenborn.
Harris turned around the other way to her. Yes, he said with a polite open face. Maria.
Ann felt Lila’s glance but wasn’t prepared to return it.
Maria? Ralph said. He stepped forward, this was new information.
Maria di Corcia.
She from Chi-town too? Buddy said.
Harris nodded.
What does she do? Lila said.
The conversation went on.
Fiancée Harpers Bazaar in the Chicago office wedding in September
. Ann felt as if a heavy boot were on her chest, slowly crushing her lungs.
Her breathing was shallow. The I.V. rose above her like a flagpole festooned with transparent ribbons. A swollen plastic bag dangled from the top and at the end of its tube was a narrow cap over the needle which could be inserted into the plastic valve which had a permanent place in the back of Ann Lord’s veined hand.
Her legs and arms were being moved and she watched the sheet fold back then rolled on her side then felt the sheet being pulled under her and rolled back. The nurse tucked it. This was not her body she looked at, the leg with the long bone, the hip jutting out.
She recognized it but it belonged to someone else. My God, it belonged to her mother.
Let’s slip this off, this arm first. That’s it
. A warm sponge moved over her shoulders. Strange how little people were naked.
Won’t you take off your coat can I take that for you here let me thank you not at all would you mind if I undid this what are you doing just one button I can’t reach the hook would you mind I can’t seem to manage what would you do without me here let me take this off I like to undo it may I will you let me I want to see you I think I better leave this on
. There was a black sky and black lawn and the dwindling of a car motor. She stood high up at a sealed window with sheets behind her twisted on the floor and the sky pink and water towers like bullets dotting the rooftops. She stood at tall French doors in bright noon light with a shower running behind and when she opened the latch the loud revving of
motorinos
and cars going round and round, the black and white statue of horses and pointed wings, the balcony shallow in this foreign place thinking what to put on and wear and standing naked at the window thinking this might be the nearest thing to showing herself truly.
Someone was sobbing down the hall in one of the guest rooms then it turned into waves. The sea, she thought, the sea, she’d not seen the sea in the longest time. God she’d love to swim.
She shot herself out of a cannon and flew from the house. The lawn below grew small and the rooftops of the Cambridge houses turned flat and square. She followed the grey snake of the Charles River up to the Tobin Bridge then swung inland at Saugus up Route One’s strip of giant liquor stores and candy kitchens and Chinese restaurants off toward the green summer hills of New Hampshire passing into Maine and the ridge of captain’s houses above Portland onto the two lane road winding by shimmering marshes and fields of Queen Anne’s lace and farmhouses and cornfields and pear orchards over Wiscasset and Waldoboro and Thomaston past the cement factory with its brown grass onto the
Main Street of Rockland built of brick down to the ferry landing and its fat pilings over the fish factory into the harbor soaring over the narrow stone breakwater nearly a mile long with the lighthouse at the end past Owls Head across from it blinking into the bay by the gong and the stone monument and into the channel with the smaller islands and cormorants drying their wings over the pole-held floats squeaking into the center of town and the slanting lawn with its curving picket fence and the elm tree shadows out past the school’s dusty swings over the fork in the road dipping by the rushes by the shining mudflats with the islands way off in a hundred dark humps past the white cube of the Grange Hall around to the Bishops Harbor bridge and the flat water of the inner harbor up over the cedars to the house on the bluff where the tent tilted in the field and the long porch flanked the house and below a path cut through high grass to the rock garden then the stone steps down to the dock above the curved flint-scattered beach where in the morning the water was still and green waiting
The dull thud of stakes being hammered echoed in the still air.
They stood beneath a limp flag. The world was as still as if there were no air and the sky was bleached out and the water like spilled paint. At the end of the Wittenborns’ dock a schooner was being busily cranked at and unfurled while people stood waiting holding bags and towels and baskets. They arrived in sunglasses. Gail Slater wore a man’s shirt over her bathing suit, Carl’s quiet friend Monty had a nose of white zinc, Mrs. Wittenborn’s straw hat cast a checkerboard across her face. What had they said? Was Lizzie Tull talking about the seating for the bridal dinner, or Ralph checking to make sure the sandwiches were in the plaid bag? Ann could not remember. But she remembered Harris Arden stepping under the boom then stepping over the railing and holding down the cord so they could come aboard. His hair was a fine cloud in the bright air. And after they were under sail she remembered sitting beside him in the center of the boat in the shade while he showed her how a
heartbeat has two beats inside one,
tha-thump tha-thump
, and the sleepy feeling she had as his fingers thumped her arm.
The wind did not pick up. The surface of the bay stayed soft as poured glass. They motored out from shore then turned off the engine and drifted. She sat near him in the bright shade of the mainsail and they didn’t talk about who was arriving later on the plane. There was no point in talking about that though Ann Grant had grown more curious about what this Maria di Corcia looked like and what else had gone on between them and how it was different. Harris Arden told her about his family, he was the youngest, his father was nearly eighty. The brother had pretty much gone off into shady business practices. His sisters were both married with children. She saw his family as if it were steps up to a monument. The monument was not something she had.
Up at the bow Gigi lay with her cheek pressed to the studs on the gunwale staring at the molten water moving slowly by. Her legs were stretched out behind her slightly apart. There was no wind, no air, no breath. Ann sat beside Harris Arden. She did not need to touch him, she didn’t need anything as long as he stayed near. The men had taken off their shirts and his arms were bare against the milky sea.
There was a terrible racket, the halyards clanging, the canvas snapping. Something flipped in her head and the sea was navy blue and blown into white tips and the sails heading into the wind were careening. The Coast Guard captain was holding onto the side of the boat bobbing up and down and Ann brushed the hair from her eyes and saw Oscar’s face turning and the look of pity and fear.
There was no wind, it was still. The schooner sat on top of the bay. The boom glided from side to side and people were dragging behind in an inner tube further slowing the boat’s progress and he walked up the deck carrying a plate into the shade beside her and
held out the plate as if they’d known each other a long time and didn’t need to speak and she took a sandwich triangle with the crust cut off and they watched the water go by.
Carl stood at the stern with his hand on the huge wheel, people in the cockpit chatted softly over Bloody Marys, their words inaudible. A herring gull cawed. In the distance a motorboat buzzed by and they could hear people talking beneath the sound of the motor then it was quiet again.
There was a splash. Ann turned to a space beside her. She looked in the water. He was swimming alongside the slow boat.
Aren’t you coming in? he said as if it were something they’d discussed.
She stood up, took off her sunglasses, snapped down the back of her bathing suit and dove in. The cold water was a shock, and colder down at her feet. But she was used to long swims. Past the breakers in Cohasset where the water was warmer she’d turn around to find the shore quickly far off and the houses small and the dune grass a feathery line. She liked the feeling of the swells lifting her up and rolling beneath her. They swam away from the boat. They went faster than the boat. Ann got ahead of him then he swam ahead of her. He said she swam well and she told him she used to be in swimming contests, not caring if it sounded like boasting.
She swam with Harris and thought of how his fiancée was arriving later that day and if she would have a chance to be alone again with him the way they’d been last night. It seemed it ought to be possible, but when she tried to imagine she saw that it was less and less likely. Maria di Corcia knew no one else and would naturally stay by Harris and he being Harris would look after her. He was that sort. Tonight was the bridal dinner at the Yacht Club then the wedding tomorrow and the reception after and then it would be Sunday and they would all leave the island and the whole time he would be with his fiancée. Ann would probably not get a chance to talk to him much more and then back he’d go to Chicago—with her—and he and Maria would … what would they do? What
would he do?
Stay like that stay like that always something has already happened
She did not want to stop swimming. She would have liked to keep swimming with him out into the bay forever.
They’d all stood at this door. Margie stood hesitating as she’d hesitated at so many other of her mother’s doors, waiting for her to be through with her nap, out of the tub, finished getting dressed, or in the middle of the night by some fluke to be still awake and willing to take her back to bed. A vase of cosmos she’d picked from the garden was balanced in one hand, not that they needed any more flowers but these were everywhere like small tangled trees. She unclicked the knob and gently pushed the door.
Her mother was awake and the nurse was bent over her and both their faces turned sharply toward the door.
Give us a minute, said the nurse, her profile melting into the window light behind. Behind her massive white back Margie saw her mother’s face unrecognizable with an expression of panic and she immediately backed out. It was an expression she’d never seen before and with the air of secrecy and preparation and the peculiar fused position of her mother’s body with the nurse Margie felt she’d walked in on some forbidden rite.
She stood in the hall with her heart beating in a sped-up unnatural way. She put the vase down on the floor off the rug and turned down the stairs. In the library she heard Constance on the phone speaking French. At the end of the hall she saw Teddy’s wife Lauren in the kitchen with Mrs. Kelley and Pat Vincent, each holding one of the twins on their laps. Margie snapped up her pouch with the satin cord on the hall table and knocked open the wide screen door taking the porch steps quickly, her tennis shoes flapping against her heels.
She took the gravel path through the granite posts between the hedge out to Emerson Street. She went in the direction of the Square. It was nearly seven and the streets were quiet and the lawns off the sidewalk humped in deep shade. She hurried across
the street, half-seeing the car which braked and honked, and didn’t look back. Her sneaker slipped off and she reached back impatient to hook it around her heel, not stopping, nearly tripping, catching herself in time. She turned at the end of the street. She was about to burst.
Around the corner. Finally out of sight of the house, finally away from the tall shutters along the porch and the lantern above the door and the black shingled roof and the upper windows watching after her. A pocket of air rose in her lungs, or a bubble of non-air, making it hard to breathe and she walked swiftly. Up ahead loomed the figures of two men walking a dog, she couldn’t face anyone, she turned onto a street she never took.
The pressure kept expanding inside her. The sidewalk erupted in cracks and roots and above her branches frayed and she felt that if anyone stepped out of their door the force whirling around her would blast them back in or hurl them down like a sack of rags.
Her mother’s face came back to her past the large arm of the nurse with an expression which seemed to say, Go away, you’re going to take away my comfort, go away! and the bulging knot in Margie’s chest popped and no sound came from her mouth as her body was wracked with sobs on this unknown street. She tried to stay ahead of the waves sweeping up from inside her. It was not unlike the surge she’d felt with Seth in Bali when she’d been so sick overboard. He’d held her forehead with a cool hand firmly not in the least put off and muttered soothing words. Now the sobs came longer remembering how she’d not been seasick after all. Then they decided they weren’t ready to have a baby, that is Seth wasn’t ready, not yet, they would, eventually they would, they were married weren’t they, but just not yet. So she’d gotten rid of it and had lost that. Then she’d lost Seth and now there was her mother … eventually one lost everything. She flushed with shame to feel sorry for herself while her mother lay there with so much more to feel sorry about and the sobs surged afresh.