Light Over Water (8 page)

          “Remick!”

          Dr. Dan Granger stood
up so quickly that his chair leaned back precariously until he caught it. 
After setting it upright, he hurried across the crowded room and embraced his
eldest son for a long moment.

          Then, as the rest of
his family rose too, wonder and pain written on their faces, another figure
hurtled towards Remick Granger, sobbing as she reached him.  Esther Eliot, who
for so long had presented a face of composure and nonchalance even at the
mention of Remick, made it wondrously clear how she felt.  She cried as she
hung on to him, completely unmindful of their audience.  Remick held her with
his one arm, his cheeks flushed.  As he patted her back, he smiled in some
confusion.  She moved away as the rest of his family surged around them.

          “I went home,” he
said above their heads to his father, “but no one was there.”

          “Come on,” urged his
father.  “Let’s go back outside.  Why didn’t you let us know?”

          His answer was lost
as they moved out the door with Esther determinedly holding to his arm.  And
the villagers found their voices again.

          Remick was changed. 
While he had always been the quiet one, and more sensitive by nature than
Alison, she knew his withdrawal was more than that.  It was as if he’d rallied
all his strength for his homecoming, then it was depleted.  His father examined
his injured arm, endeavoring to be detached and clinical.  He allowed Alison in
the room, in the name of science, while he stared at the stump, its skin tight
and shining.  Then she was astonished when her father staggered back to the
edge of his desk, fumbling for his handkerchief, his face as white as a
seagull’s wing.

          “It’s a good clean
wound,” Remick offered.  “No infection.”  His face remained impassive as he
studied his father’s reaction.

          Dan Granger finally
spoke.  His voice trembled as he said, “I’m sorry, son, that this has happened
to you.  It’s a…” He swallowed.  “A good clean wound.”  He left his office
then, wiping his eyes with his handkerchief.

          Alison helped her
brother button his shirt back up.  Remick watched her tight-lipped as he saw
that her eyes too were brimming with unshed tears.

          “Don’t pity me,
Allie.  I’m one of the lucky ones.  I’m not coming home in a box, or blind, or
burned, or paralyzed.”  He pushed her hands away and awkwardly worked the
buttons on his shirt himself.  “I thought he’d…”  He stopped then and shook his
head.  He breathed slowly for a moment, finally meeting his sister’s eyes.  She
was working hard not to cry, and looking miserable in the effort.  Remick
lowered his eyes.  “I’m going to lie down.”

          He spent hours in his
room.  He ate as if food meant nothing to him, causing Aunt Pearl to double her
efforts.  They were living with the newly introduced “food conservation”, which
made it difficult to make his favorite desserts, with less sugar and less
butter.  He would sit on the porch with Esther when she could come away from
her added responsibilities, although she too seemed unable to draw him out. 
But she was so happy to have him home that she didn’t mind just sitting with
him. 

          The cat, Maggie,
purred in a hard rattling purr whenever he let her jump onto his lap. He would
settle for her quiet presence with a loosening of the strain in his features,
patting her lumpy fur or studying her yellow eyes until she slipped into happy
contentment.

Alison watched him
closely and observed that he acted as a person in shock would be.  Her father
told her that when a sudden or traumatic event occurred within the body, shock
was a protective reaction to manage pain.  This was how Remick acted, like he
was in pain but somehow protected himself and everyone else from it.  She
thought that might be worse than feeling the pain, like being dead.

          Remick made no effort
to try to dissuade Owen from his enthusiasm over all the war news.  He answered
Davey’s questions about the battles and the Germans, but as if he were reading
accounts from the newspaper, as if none of it actually happened to him.

          Alison found it a
great relief to have him home, but was frustrated that he was so different.  “I
can’t see the old Remick there,” she confided to Esther as they walked home
together a few days after the funeral.  The air had changed and felt like a
layer of velvet on their skin.  The sunlight pooled around them as it set in a
peachy glow and they carried their sweaters, too warm now to wear them.

          “He’s there, Allie. 
I think he just has to get used to…the changes.  The losses. And to being home
and knowing that everyone knows how hard it must be for him.”  She smiled and
looked away.  Alison realized suddenly that Remick had talked with Esther more
than she thought.  She felt an irrational flare of jealousy when Esther spoke
again.  “It gives me such comfort, him coming home when he did.”  She gripped
Alison’s hand suddenly.  “It’s almost as if it were planned, isn’t it?  I felt
I couldn’t bear it, Momma dying, and I prayed that God would help me.  Then
Remick came home!”

          Alison watched her
best friend’s shadowed profile.  She squeezed her hand back as they walked up
the path to the Eliot’s house.  She doubted suddenly that God had anything to
do with it.

Chapter Six

Grim Necessity Indeed

          With a basketful of
damp laundry under one trembling arm and baby Caroline clutched in the other,
Mary Reid carefully crossed the back yard to the clothesline.  The younger
boys, Richard and Peter, were playing in a patch of dirt with a set of blocks their
father had fashioned from wood scraps.  The ten year old twins, Ivy and
Isabella were taking turns on the swing that was hanging from the branch of a
maple tree.  Caroline, at seventeen months, was more than old enough to walk,
but she cried every time Mary put her down.  Her white blonde curls were sweaty
and her cheeks had splotchy red spots that got hot when she cried. She
whimpered even when she was carried, missing her momma and the things only she
could provide.
 

Earlier, the twins
cared for Caroline while Mary, Esther and Cleo did the washing.  Mary was used
to doing her own bits of washing; not the clothing and bedding for eleven
people, including diapers.  Nothing had been done for a week since the funeral,
so Mary told the girls at school on Friday that she would come over to help. 
Now her back was knotted with sore muscles, her arms were throbbing with pain
and the skin on her hands was raw and wrinkled.  But Esther and Cleo moved
easily, running the clothes between the ringers, then whipping them out,
getting each other soaked.  They laughed while they were hanging the clothes
and diapers, and draping sheets over a hedge of cedar.  The sun was strong,
married to a stiff breeze, which made short work of the wet clothes.

          Mary hung up her basketful,
leaving Caroline in the grass by the basket.  The child screwed up her face and
cried again, so her skin flushed red and her eyes were tight bunches.  “Oh,
give way, baby, give way,” Mary muttered as she lifted one of Reg’s shirts and
shook it.  She grieved for the man as much as for the loss of her friend. Reg
was the opposite of Caroline; empty, lifeless, not speaking of his wife’s death
or the overwhelming loss she knew he felt.  But Mary could read it in his
eyes.  It was the face she used to see in the mirror every day, back when she
first lost Ian.

That morning, before he went to
work, Ivy ran to him to fix one braid that had come loose from its ribbon.  Reg
sat up as if slapped.  Then he looked carefully at the braid and held out his
hand for the ribbon.  Mary met his eyes with a look of mute sympathy from the
bottom of the stairs where she was sorting laundry.  Reg held one end of the
braid awkwardly, while he twisted the ribbon into a knot.  The braid was loose,
but his daughter looked at it happily.  She circled her arms around his brown
neck and whispered something that caused his lips to tremble.  Then she kissed
his cheek and skipped out of the kitchen.  He rose abruptly and left for the
day without a word or a look back at his family.  He needs a good cry, Mary
concluded; then she followed her own advice, wiping her tears on the dirty
laundry.

She knew the utter
misery residing in him.  The younger children were transparent in their grief,
crying at intervals, cheerful and unblemished by it at others.  The older
children, especially the boys, tried not to show their feelings.  But they
acted either stoic or surly in the classroom.  Esther had stopped coming to
school, which grieved Mary in itself, but Reg could not care for the home and
do his work too.  Esther carried on as if in a daze, by times cooking and
cleaning with tears dripping down her cheeks.  Other times she seemed caught up
in another world, thinking, Mary knew, of her Remick, home and safe from the
war.  Cleo meanwhile, used her grief to gain attention at school, carrying it
like a banner.  Mary would see her in the corner of the school yard during
recess with her face in her hands, and her friends clustered around her,
helpless but enjoying the attention by proxy. 

However, Reg felt
the responsibility of his family and the inherent necessity of showing himself
strong and capable.  How would all of these children react, Mary wondered, if
Reg acted upon his feelings of loneliness and grief.  If he curled up in his
bed, immobile in his despair, as she had done after Ian?  At least grieving
women were given the room in their mourning for honest emotions.  She always
felt that the stoicism required of men was unfair.  When Ian’s mother had died,
Mary remembered urging him to release his emotions, that a good cry was like a
cleansing, but he scoffed at her and insisted that he couldn’t cry.

          People brought over
meals every day, but feeding ten people, eleven really, counting Aubrey Newell,
took such quantities of food.  Just at lunch Mary had seen Sam eat three
helpings of creamed salt cod and mashed potatoes, while leaving the table with
a hungry look.

          Sam would leave for
his army training next week.  Alison Granger was often here now, helping Esther
in the kitchen.  Mary perceived a change in her also through the week - an
understandable grief, with an added tenderness, especially towards Sam.  Mary
noted how Alison’s quick blue eyes often strayed over to Sam, seeming to absorb
the sight of him before his departure.

          Leaving the basket by
the clothesline, Mary stooped again with a groan to lift up Caroline.  Her
cries subsided to hiccupping whimpers, but she did something she’d not done all
day.  Where before she had held herself away from Mary with rigid little arms,
studying Mary’s face through her tears, this time she leaned into Mary’s neck,
dropping her head on her shoulder and slipping her thumb into her mouth.

          Mary closed her eyes
and sighed.  Her other hand rubbed the baby’s back, which still vibrated with
hiccups.  This was exactly what she’d been longing for.  She stepped carefully
across the lawn, up the stairs onto the wide porch and eased into a cane
rocker.  She stayed there rocking while the children swirled around her.  Her
aching arms found ease in the steady movement of rocking with the baby.  From
here she could hear the harbor sounds; the rote of the sea, the thump of oars
as men drew their fishing boats in with the turn of the tide.  She didn’t know
when Reg would be back, but she waited and stayed.  She wanted him to find her
here, with his baby asleep in her arms.

There was a party
for those who had enlisted and would be leaving for training.  Among the young
men were Sam, Robbie Bell, who was Rena Mayhew’s young man, and Tim Cooper. 
Others were older; men who were young enough to fight but didn’t have a family
depending on them, or who just wanted to be a part of the war despite their
circumstances. The church Youth League arranged it for all who would be meeting
the train Saturday morning in Bath, heading for basic training in New York
State.  Sam didn’t want to go, still in a somber, guilt-ridden state following
his mother’s death.  He had been working with his father and Aubrey as much as
he could, then eating his meals and retreating to his room.  He shared a room
with William and Henry, but they spent every hour apart from school outside
with their friends or doing chores that Esther now assigned.  Alison left Sam
alone, baffled as to how to help him.  She wanted to be with him every moment
until he left, but settled for glimpses of him from the schoolyard or at
church.  His gaze, when it met hers, was intense and confident, but not
curiously uninviting.

          The party, to be held
on the beach near the schoolhouse would include a clambake and bonfires.  Warm
humid air had rolled across from the southwest making the day summer-like.  Reg
finished setting out pots with Sam and Aubrey by mid-afternoon. They rowed over
to the store to pick up items from a list that Esther had given her father and
were visible there from the schoolhouse just as classes were dismissed.

          The Eliot kids,
seeing them, swarmed to meet them on the road.  Reg smiled and slowed to walk
with them, his rough hands reaching out to stroke their hair or pat a
shoulder.  Little Ivy hung on his arm chattering about the party for Sam.  Sam
hung back after seeing Alison standing by the steps with her brothers, helping
Davey pick up some papers he’d dropped.  She saw him there and said something
to Owen, then ran over to meet him.  Cleo was dawdling along also, asking
Aubrey Newell just at that moment if he was going to the clambake.