Compass Rose (9 page)

“Why didn’t you make partner? Did Jack tell you?”

“Yes. When I worked for one partner or another I was competent at research and writing briefs. The firm’s main income is from two sources—there are corporate clients like Ciba-Geigy or Electric Boat, and there are some rich families. I wasn’t good at attracting clients of either kind. In fact, one of the few clients I took on was some guy in an accident. The insurance company got him to sign a release for peanuts. There were more things wrong with him that they wouldn’t pay for. I won the case, on the grounds that the boilerplate form doesn’t represent an agreement between two parties in equal bargaining positions. The firm doesn’t represent that particular insurance company, so there wasn’t a conflict of interest, but the precedent has been a thorn in the paw for all the insurance companies, and some of them
are
clients of the firm. When I did it again I guess they thought ‘plaintiff’s attorney,’ the polite way of saying ambulance chaser. Of course, that’s a story that makes me a good guy. David beating Goliath. There were other times when I did an okay job when I should have done a very good job. I have no grievance. And when I was on my way out, Jack suggested to the governor that I could be useful.”

“But Jack’s Republican. A right-wing Republican.”

“Jack knows lots of people. A law firm can’t be attached to one party or the other. Jack’s views are no secret, but he manages to keep on speaking terms with whoever’s in. Sure, he can be … overemphatic.”

“That’s delicate.”

“Okay. He can put his foot in his mouth, but that’s when he’s on his own time. When he’s at work, he focuses. But there’s another thing. He likes to know what’s going on—not for work, just stories. He knows odd things about every corner of the state.”

“That’s because he thinks it’s his.”

He looked up. Out of amusement at first but then a slower satisfaction. She guessed he didn’t spend much time talking like this, certainly not a lot of time talking to women. He looked like someone surprised by a small pleasure, like a woman stroking the sleeve of a silk blouse.

When he finished his coffee and gathered up the folders, she walked him to the door. As he put his overcoat on she had an impulse to touch his back. She resisted it—he had enough to think about. He shrugged to settle the collar, turned around, and said, “You’re okay, are you?”

“Oh, yes. That was just … I’m fine.”

“So I’ll be in touch.” He tipped his head at his briefcase. He put his hand in his overcoat pocket. She read the lift of his face.

“Your pipe,” she said. “Maybe next time. I’m afraid I have to let you go now.”

After he left she suddenly didn’t know what to make of it. Had she embarrassed herself? Or had she had the pleasure of pleasing? She’d certainly gone into female display—in fact, several variations of it. She puffed her cheeks and popped a breath out. Now all she was was tired.

She slogged up her driveway, checked on Rose, paid Nancy Tran, and waited up for Mary, the comfort of telling Mary.

When Elsie was done, Mary said, “Aw, go on. You’re awful hard on yourself. By tomorrow Miss Perry will be all apologies. And so what if you busted out crying in front of the lawyer?” Mary laughed. “Were you still sniffling when you said, ‘I’ve never cried in uniform’? I’ll bet that charmed the socks off him.”

P
hoebe was now taking her lunch hour with May once or twice a week. May liked this arrangement, especially now that Phoebe worked her way through her own complaints more quickly and cheerfully. There was Eddie’s roughneck son, Walt, but the bright side was that Eddie was beginning to notice
Walt’s erratic comings and goings. There was that awful rent increase, but Phoebe was making more money. “Eddie and I are really a very good team. You remember you asked me about that strange glow you’ve been seeing over at Sawtooth? It’s an inflatable cover for a lighted tennis court. Jack Aldrich put it up because the tennis players wanted it, but then he saw it at night and he said it looked like a giant sea slug. So he called Eddie, and Eddie and I went over there to meet with Jack and Mr. Salviatti.

“Somehow it came up that Mr. Salviatti has relatives in Westerly, and I said, ‘Oh, where they make those beautiful statues.’ I happened to have seen an exhibit at RISD. I gushed about them. Especially the angel statues, and it turns out they were loaned by guess who. He invited me to come see them again—they’re in his garden. So that got us off on the right foot. And then Eddie was good with Jack. The problem with the inflatable thing is that it’s a great success. It’s booked every night. Now that it’s fall a lot of people can only play after work, and Jack doesn’t want to shut it down while we build something that’s not so ugly. He’s making an awful lot of money. As I well know, and I only play twice a week. Anyway, Eddie walked around the outside and said he could put up a building
around
it. Something that would look like a traditional barn. Mr. Salviatti thought that was fine. Jack, who had
asked
us to come, was the naysayer at first. He said a barn would get too hot during the summer and it would cost a fortune to air-condition. At least he could deflate the inflatable thing and have an extra outdoor court. Eddie said that the lights would bother the cottage owners. A barn would keep the light inside. As for the heat, we could put two ventilation towers on it, same as a barn. He said, ‘That way the sea breeze’ll suck the hot air right out the top. No sense in paying for something that nature’ll do for free.’ So then we went inside and there was Elsie Buttrick all by herself batting back balls—there’s this machine that shoots them out. Jack called out, ‘Ahoy, there, Elsie! Can’t find anyone to play with?’ She ignored him, hit another ball, but then the machine was out of balls so she came over, probably to say hello to Eddie; she’s very fond of Eddie. But Jack said, ‘I hear you and Johnny Bienvenue hit it off.’ As if we weren’t there or as if we don’t
matter, as if Eddie and I don’t know … Then Jack said, ‘I knew you’d get along. Diamond in the rough. I’m thinking of making him a member. He said he doesn’t play tennis, so I gave him a three-month guest card, told him he should learn, get his game up to a weekend level. It’d be nice if you took him under your wing. Fun for both of you.’ Elsie looked very uncomfortable. My guess is that it wasn’t just from Jack’s bossing her around. I have a sixth sense, and I think she already has her eye on this fellow as a new beau. I thought that might ease your mind.”

No. It didn’t ease her mind. No, she shouldn’t have told Phoebe if Phoebe was going to make it her business. And no to Elsie. Elsie should know to keep to herself, not go prancing around as if she was free as air, as if she could flit back to Sawtooth Point as if nothing had happened. Elsie was the mother of Dick’s daughter; that baby was Charlie and Tom’s sister. If there wasn’t a baby, she and Elsie could have been ghosts to each other, but there was no pretending away flesh and blood.

“Oh, May,” Phoebe said. “I honestly thought … But okay. Let’s forget that part. The part that’s good is there Eddie and I were with two of the men who pretty much run things, and Eddie fit right in. I mean, he was himself but the best part of himself. He really does love to think of ways to fix things. At first I thought it just might be little things, but he turned to Mr. Salviatti and asked what was under the tennis court—all that about gravel and frost and soil compression. Just a friendly chat about what most people don’t stop to consider. I was really proud of Eddie. And when Jack said, ‘Can you get it done before winter?’ Eddie said, ‘Depends on two things. The weather’s one. The other’s what Phoebe can work out with her schedule. She’s the manager.’ After all the snubs I’ve had—and it’s not just Miss Perry; Jack Aldrich looks at my legs but can’t be bothered to remember my name—I felt validated.”

Phoebe had distracted her for a moment. May was glad for Eddie, and she tried to hold on to that bit of cheer, but when Phoebe swung round at the end to toot her own horn, May went into the dark again. Elsie, Phoebe—they were like water, water running into everything, wherever there was a crack or a weak spot, they puddied
up and then streamed on through. And then no again. If she felt helpless, it was her own fault. If she ducked away whenever she heard Elsie’s name, it was her own fault. No sense in blaming Phoebe for bringing the news about Elsie Buttrick. There might be no end to Elsie Buttrick, but there was no way of knowing about that unless she got out and took Elsie’s measure. Let Elsie know that she and her daughter didn’t live in some other world. Elsie might get herself up in her uniform, she might have the run of Miss Perry’s house, she might play tennis in that bubble at Sawtooth, but she got her daughter out of this family right here.

May said, “That’s good for you and Eddie. You got your work cut out for you, though. There’s usually a good-sized gale about now.”

“Oh, I know,” Phoebe said. “I love summer, I love winter. It’s fall that depresses me.”

May kept from saying “You can’t pick and choose.” She herself liked fall, the hard November fall—the first bite of cold, the trees bare, the spartina in the salt marsh blown into a tangled cover for the part of life that was meant to winter over.

E
lsie let Miss Peebles go, kept Sylvia Teixeira on for a couple of hours in the afternoon and Nancy Tran to spend the night. Miss Perry could now use the telephone and even the answering machine. She and Elsie took short walks around the garden and then longer ones up and down the driveway, Miss Perry’s arm in Elsie’s, “
Bras dessous, bras dessus,
” as Miss Perry suddenly remembered.

Miss Perry was now quite fluent. If she got stuck on a word, she flowed around it. One day she asked, “Is there another … another sending our army to fight?”

“War,” Elsie said. “No. Not now.”

And then one day as they were walking, Miss Perry said, “Yes. Shall we go up to your house? I feel quite fit today.”

“I’m afraid it’s a mess.”

“We don’t have to go in.” Miss Perry stopped and freed Elsie. “I am sorry I called you a ragamuffin. These days I can’t say why I say some things. Senseless. The parts of me that ought to keep silent make bubbles that burst. And the things I want to say all too often elude me.” Miss Perry took Elsie’s arm again and started up Elsie’s driveway. “What is odd at my age is to feel oneself as unaccountably changeable as an adolescent. I was reading a simple little poem from
A Child’s Garden of Verses
. ‘The Lamplighter’—‘O Leerie, I’ll go round at night and light the lamps with you!’—and I began to weep. I read those to Charlie and Tom Pierce when they were little. It may have been that. When I was a child we had an Irish maid of whom I was fond. Possibly that, too.” Miss Perry stopped to readjust her arm in Elsie’s. “On the other hand, some things strike me as funny in a new and peculiar way. At first my snappishness and weeping and laughing made me feel as if I was not myself. Now I suppose I am myself but that my boundaries have shifted, perhaps for the better, in the long run for the better. Though not intellectually.” Miss Perry’s shoulder moved. Elsie wasn’t sure if it was a sigh or a very soft laugh. “Quite the reverse. I fear this will be too grand a comparison, but I have been reconsidering the last days of Rome. The emperors are transient and weak, the senate fearful, the people dwindling. The Huns have come and gone, the walls have been breached and will be soon again. If one’s point of view remains Roman, it is indeed bleak. But there is a great deal going on in Pannonia, Gaul, Iberia, North Africa, even the British Isles. Amazing voyages of tribes, some admirable chieftains. Gibbon is helpful here in his way, but I imagine there is much more than marches and countermarches. Gibbon leaps from battle to battle, pausing only for a plague or a scandal at the Byzantine court. But there are decades and decades of unrecorded life, which I am now imagining as full of the enterprises of unlettered but resourceful people.”

Elsie was astounded.

Miss Perry said, “Did I say that clearly? I may have muddled—”

“No, no, I understand. Rome is your … Rome was your center, your mind. And now your feelings are moving on their own like the barbarians. And you’re changing your mind about the barbarians. Maybe there was more to them …” Miss Perry stood still. She looked at Elsie, her eyes enormous behind the lenses. Elsie said, “I think you’re speaking better than the ninety percent the doctor thought.”

Miss Perry shook her head. “I must confess I rehearsed that speech. I said it aloud when I was alone.”

It was only a few more steps to her house. Elsie felt warmed and confident. She said, “Shall we go in? We can have tea.”

After Elsie opened the door she took Miss Perry’s hand. There was a step down into the main room. She settled Miss Perry on the sofa in full view of the playpen, the baby bottle on the table, the swing set with a padded safety seat. Elsie watched Miss Perry look from one thing to another. She paused at the Exercycle. Elsie said, “Oh. That’s mine.” And then in a rush, as though to another mother, “If Rose is still awake when I want to exercise, I put her in the swing seat and wind it up—it has a spring mechanism that rocks her. And she seems to like the sound of the Exercycle.”

Miss Perry said, “Rose. And where is Rose now?”

“She’s with Mary Scanlon. I usually pick her up about now.”

“But Rose is your child?”

“Yes. I’ve been meaning to tell you, but it was … difficult to know when. I didn’t know … I didn’t want to add another perplexity, but at the same time I thought—and then I knew you remembered.” Elsie took a breath and said, “But mainly I was afraid of what you would think of me.”

Miss Perry sat still. After a while she said, “I’m being quite slow. But I think I would be slow even if I was not … already slow. I am supposing … your last remark leads me to suppose that you are not married.”

Elsie said, “No. Not married.”

“How very difficult. And I’m afraid I have made your life even more difficult. That is the first thing that occurs to me. But you are
worried about what I will think of you.” Miss Perry closed her eyes, breathed, opened them. She said, “I never thought you would do as you were told. I knew that much long ago. I admired your spirit. My only worry then was that you would involve other people in your adventures, other people who did not have your resilience. You and I are coming back to me as we were then, and I’m afraid I can’t avoid a schoolmistress sigh. But perhaps the father is as resiliently free as you, and perhaps your daughter will be as well.” Miss Perry rested for several breaths. “Now,” she said. “Now we are friends. There is no justice between friends, as Aristotle has it, which is to say there is no judgment because each one wishes the best for the other.”