Reprisal (34 page)

"It's very good."

"Eat it all," Charis said, and began finishing her own food. She ate as she'd cooked, swiftly, neatly, absorbed as a hungry child or fastidious animal, only glancing up from time to time. There was no conversation.

A vaporous, uncertain tail to Charis's comet, Joanna sat in the little convertible's passenger seat as the girl rowed through the VW'S gears at the bottom of Slope Street--then took a fast left turn to drive out Beach Road at Joanna's direction.

"This is your island," Charis had said, washing the breakfast dishes. "Take me on a tour.-We'll pee and hit the road."

... They'd peed, and hit the road.

They went out Beach, past the last of the town's weathered gray houses, to ride the slow rise and fall of sandy blacktop along the sea, the morning's heat and cool ocean breeze weaving together over the car's open top. The VW, an elderly metal turtle, its worn black shell sun-dazzled here and there, bucketed over the road's sandheaves past Trudie's, and went on.

"Good food, there," Joanna said.

Charis nodded, smiling. She was hardly talking now, was only present, a companion, as if silent company was the medicine Joanna needed most.

They drove up the beach, past stilted beach houses staggered along the dunes, past drifts of sea grass stirring to sea breezes. Joanna sat with her head back, resting, her eyes half shut to glittering light. She sat moving only to the car's motion, content to be carried and cared for.

They drove all the way to the end of Beach Road, then turned back a mile to go right on Willis ... and continue touring as if the island were Joanna's own estate, its heat and light and beauty enough to recompense any loss, and be bound to heal her.

They drove down through Willis, its sheds and shacks and rusted machinery--came to the Wainwrights', and Joanna saw Percy sitting alone by his tree in the front yard. Slightly smaller, stockier than she'd remembered him, the red dog sat watching as if he'd been waiting for her.

"Percy ...!" Joanna called as they went past, and had time to see the stubs of ears alert, to catch a glimpse of his grim one-eyed stare.

They drove to the Willis marina, where the sportfishers rocked at their moorings, and sailboats--anchored out--seesawed gently to a southwest wind.

"Beautiful," Charis said, pulled in beside Chester's Bait 'n Tackle, and stopped the car. They sat for a while, silent in a glass-and-metal dish of heat, looking out over the channel. The mainland shore was lost in heat haze and sun-mirrors flashing off a slight chop.

"Beautiful now," Charis said, "--and I bet more beautiful in winter, when you have to look for color."

"Probably so."

They sat watching a while longer, then Charis started the car and drove out the only road east of Willis--South Sound Road. And as they traveled along that hard-shelving stony coastline --so different from the island's north--the ocean came in booming, fetched for three thousand miles to foam and fountain against the rock.

They stayed on South Sound around the island's southeast tip--the lighthouse, built of blocks of granite, the last object off the Point--then drove almost two miles north into Asconsett Town.

... At Barkley's, carrying one of their two baskets, Joanna trailed behind as Charis shopped. Cans of tuna and sardines. Cans of corned beef. Saltine crackers and cans of pork and beans. Oatmeal, bran flakes, raisins and prunes.

Peaches, a dozen lemons for lemonade, and three grapefruit--spelled greatfruits at Barkley's.

"I'll pay today, then we can start splitting the bills. ..." Charis shopped very directly, no wandering; she sliced through the other women to the counters and bins she wanted, and picked out quickly. Two small yellow squashes, two yams, a bunch of carrots, string beans, six onions, a garlic bulb, broccoli, and the best head of romaine.

Two women--one Joanna recognized, had spoken to coming out on the ferry once, though she couldn't remember her name--these two women were stealing constant quick little glances at her as she followed Charis from one side of the store to the other. Quick looks, as children watched frightening movies, glancing, then looking away. The women were curious what catastrophe accomplished in a woman's face, what sores marked such a leprosy of loss.

Other women must be looking at her too, but Joanna kept her head down as she followed, so as not to notice.

"What the fuck are you staring at?" A clear snarling cavalry trumpet. The bustle and conversation stopped in Barkley's. A plastic blue basket swinging from her arm, Charis glared past others at the two women ... and they did as Joanna had done, and looked down as if for something in the sawdust, a dropped plum. "You keep your fucking eyes to yourselves!" It was the kind of order that promised enforcement, and prolonged the silence.

Then Charis said, "Lamb chops," to Joanna in an ordinary voice, and went over to the meat counter. Other women there, all silent, were examining the trays with great attention. The lamb looked very good, beef very good. Pork less attractive.

... At home, Charis set a kitchen chair in the backyard, then brought out the string beans in a big blue plastic bowl to be snapped, stripped of their small threads, and put into a smaller blue plastic bowl, part of the set.

"You do this," she said to Joanna, "while I put things away and make lunch.

Then we can garden."

"Okay. ..."

Joanna sat in the sunshine, snapping string beans; she needed a paring knife to cut the sharp little ends off. She was listening to her heart--could barely hear it thumping, moving her blood around-and sat listening until Charis brought the paring knife from the kitchen as if Joanna'd called for it.

They had sardine-and-chopped-onion sandwiches for lunch. Peeled peaches, banana bread, and glasses of milk. Charis enjoyed the banana bread, had two slices. "But coconut cake is really my favorite. ..."

Joanna had been anxious to lie in the backyard grass--see what she'd done, what she had left to do ... see how the weeds were managing. She hurried her lunch and tried to leave some of her sandwich and the peach, but Charis asked her to eat them, so she did. Then she had to wait while Charis finished--eating in that neat, deliberate way, and looking up from time to time as if to prevent surprises.

It was such a relief, afterward, to change to clean caving clothes--then go outside and lie down in the grass, feel things she might remember draining out into the ground ... and then the hot sun slowly putting something back into her, something simpler and more bearable.

Charis came and crouched to work beside her, using a foot-long flat pry bar and large screwdriver --both rusty from lying on a garage shelf--to dig out the weed roots so she could pull them, since Joanna was using the trowel.

"I'll get my gardening tools in the morning," Charis said, and seemed happy to join Joanna in this safari--giants laboring over a miniature jungle more savage than the Mato Grosso, a patch where a thousand thousand hunters roamed, six-eyed spiders, searchers and small spinners and more tens of thousands of others less theatrical ... smaller and smaller. The grass was full of deaths dreadful beyond consideration, but none with malice. Deaths innocent as ice cream.

It seemed to Joanna that she and Charis were soldiers, volunteers against the weeds, but lacking a lethal enemy to give them honor. "We need a giant weed,"

she said, histo come hissing along the ground into the garden."

"You mean to make it fair?"

It was such a startling completion that Joanna woke from her weeding, woke from her dreamy day, and looked sideways at that alert and angular face

--elegantly spare, even smudged and sweating in the sun.

"Yes, that's exactly what I meant."

The girl looked at her, hazel eyes bright as if illuminated. "And that woke you up, didn't it?" Then she turned back to her weeding, slender hands deft and merciless. "Fairness would only weaken weeds."

At dinner--they were having lamb chops-Joanna found it difficult to stay awake to eat. Charis had to remind her ... remind her twice to finish her milk.

Afterward, while Charis did the dishes, Joanna went upstairs by herself, undressed, put on her robe--and sat dozing in the bedroom rocker until Charis locked the doors, turned off the lights downstairs, and came up to wake her for her shower ... then brought the yellow nightgown for her, and put her to bed.

Charis tucked the covers, kissed Joanna on the cheek, then turned the bedroom lights off so the rising moon could substitute softly, and left the door half open when she went.

In bed, though very tired, Joanna lay still, and still awake, recalling. ...

But the moonlight, so silver, helped her. The bed floated in it like a boat, so Joanna cruised that small quicksilver lake of light until she grew too tired to remember, and gave herself up to sleep.

... Charis waited awhile in her room across the hall, then came quietly to stand outside Joanna's door. She listened there a long time ... and heard Joanna's breaths lengthen and deepen, becoming, in almost an hour, gradually harsher in the sleep of exhaustion.

She opened the door and went into the bedroom then, and stood just beside a bar of moonlight falling through the seaside window. She stayed there for some time, watching Joanna, listening to her.

Then Charis went quietly out of the room and downstairs into darkness--and, her arms outstretched as if she were preparing to glide a distance, began to slowly turn and turn in the entrance hall, stepping to waltz time in silent sneakers. She turned, dipped, then spun sideways into the living room ...

danced there ... then whirled out and down the long hall. She wept silently with happiness, her tears shining in moonshadow as she danced into the dining room, whirling, touching nothing.

After breakfast--grapefruit and cold cereal --the day became a day like the one before, the only changes what Charis served for breakfast, lunch, and dinner ... her checking Joanna's arm to be certain the knife cut was healing

... and their stop at the hardware store for gloves, trowel, spade, and a hand rake. Otherwise, the girl allowed no novelty, introduced nothing new.

There was breakfast, the stop at the hardware, then the drive--the same drive out around the island, with the same turns onto the same roads ... and nothing new except variations in sunlight and cloud shadow, variations in the ocean's colors and motion. From the town, they drove the north beaches ... then southwest to Willis--Percy in his yard again, head cocked for his good eye to see them pass.

They parked down at the Willis marina to watch the tethered boats for a while--then went east along the harsher coast, its stone shelving struck by the sea. Passed the lighthouse ... and so up to Asconsett Town, home, and gardening through the failing heat of afternoon.

The next day was the same.

And the day after was the same, except that day there was shopping, and Charis didn't take Joanna in with her. That was the only change.

Those nearly duplicate days--guarded by the girl against difference--became several days more, all alike, so Joanna nested in their sameness as if in a swinging hammock fastened to unchanging trees, that swayed only so far ...

then swayed back, allowing resting, requiring nothing from her but being cared for.

Charis appeared to need no changes either, and seemed content ... seemed very happy.

After more than a week, Joanna--spading one of the long, cleared beds in the afternoon--began to be able to whisper familiar names, whisper them to herself and call no ghosts when she did. It was as if the dead were beginning to become only acquaintances.

... The next morning, Charis, tuned to her like a companion instrument, suggested for the first time that Joanna make their breakfast--pancakes with maple syrup--then asked her in what different way she would like to spend the day. ...

So, after preliminary hours walking the beach, they lay glistening with sunblock in their bathing suits, below the dunes past Trudie's. Beside them, in a grease-stained cardboard box, a large steamed lobster waited, with a container of melted butter, ice-cubed root beers, two oily paper bags of french fries, and two pieces of peach pie.

Joanna had noticed Charis's body as they took their beach robes off and spread their blanket. Long-legged, long-armed--her forearms pollen-dusted with down--Charis was slightly too solid, too heavy-boned, for delicacy. It was a lean body-type familiar enough; had been Joanna's when she was young.

Charis's forearms and wrists looked thicker than most women's--her rock-climbing, like Joanna's caving, had wrapped fine cords of muscle around them. ... Rebecca had always been slightly plump ... a partridge.

They lay side by side--Joanna in her old one-piece Catalina, gray stripes on lighter gray, Charis in a two-piece, in blue bandanna material. Lying so close, they looked nearly the same height, almost the same weight--Joanna slightly taller, heavier, a little softened by age. ... In time, as they rested cocooned in heat and light, the patterns of their breathing gradually accommodated to each other, then to the rhythm of surf softly thundering in.

Under the odors of cooked food and sunblock, hot sand and salt air, Joanna smelled again, as she had on the ferry coming out, the girl's faint sweet scent.

Drifting, drowsing, enjoying their silence beside the sea's sound, Joanna considered Charis, and the girl's willing sacrifice of a summer just to nurse her, keep her company. Some eccentricity there ... and it had been taken advantage of.

"Charis, I need to thank you--and thanks can't be enough for what you've done these past days, and before that, in the hospital. I know it's partially because of Rebecca. ..."

"I wanted to be there." The young woman's voice sounding smooth as polished stone. There had only been that snarl of challenge in Barkley's, when the women were staring. Otherwise, Charis's voice sounded as she looked, certain of its next note--except when she was singing.

"I hope that's so. I can't tell you what it's meant to have you here."

Gratitude spoken with closed eyes, face up to the sun as if that brightness were intermediary, a messenger of light.