Reprisal (37 page)

Charis stopped raking, knelt looking down at the carton of small green plastic boxes of pansies, rows of little flower faces. "... Are you sorry you did that?"

"Yes. You bet I've been sorry. It was an act ... it was an act of cowardice.

Selfishness. The father was definitely not interested, and that left it up to me and I didn't want my life interrupted, taken out of my control by anything." Joanna leaned over to pick out a flower, try the size of the small hole she'd dug. "--I thought I was too important, too valuable for that, so I gave the baby away like a new sweater that didn't fit."

The pansy was lavender, a gay little lion, roaring. She eased it from the plastic basket, then troweled more room for it. "I saw the baby once, in the hospital, and it was given away for adoption."

"Hard choices," Charis said.

The flower fit. Joanna tamped soil carefully around it. "... When you make a decision like that, it has permanent consequences. At least, it did for me. It meant that I wasn't the person I'd thought I was. I was ... less. I have never forgiven myself for it." She planted a second pansy, bright orange, pressed the soil firm around it. "We need to remember to water them. ..." She reached into the carton for another flower, picked one blue with black borders, took it from its basket, and bent to tuck the little flower in.

"Joanna, everybody makes mistakes--but you can correct mistakes."

"Not all."

"Determination and love can correct mistakes." Charis chose a lemon-colored pansy from the carton. "This one next."

"You're asking a lot from love, sweetheart."

"I believe in it. Joanna, it's the only perfect thing ... if you can start over again, with love." She held the little flower in her hand, gentle as if it were a baby chick.

They worked awhile in silence, Charis selecting and Joanna planting, pleasantly lost in labor.

Joanna came to the end of a row, and sat up to ease her back. She heard a car pull up in the street. Its door open, and slam shut. ... Then footsteps down the gravel drive. She supposed Carl Early might have come back. ...

"Can you stand a visit?--Or would you rather not?" Captain Lowell, wearing loafers, good gray slacks, and a blue short-sleeved shirt, might have been a prosperous tourist except for his arms' exaggerated muscles, the wear of weather in his face. There was a narrow neat white bandage around his left forearm. He was carrying a small brown paper bag.

Joanna stood. "No ... no, a visit's fine." And here was the man she'd struck with a knife, a man who had at least contemplated killing her.--Had life always been so odd, so risky and unstable? And how had that been concealed from her for so many years?

Lowell looked slightly older than she'd remembered, certainly in his early forties. "... Just wanted to stop by, tell you how sorry I was to hear what happened--and ask if there was anything at all I could do for you." The island speech, its pleasant drooping cadences. "... Any chores, any work needs to be done, I'd be pleased to do."

"Thank you, Captain, but really there's nothing. ... This is a friend, Charis Langenberg. She's staying with me."

"Hi."

"Hi. ..."

Lowell smiled, held out the paper bag. "I brought you some fresh oatmeal cookies from Cooper's. Not much to bring. ..."

"Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you."

"I thought of a pie, but I didn't know what you liked."

"Captain, believe me, we'll enjoy the cookies." Joanna stepped out from among the boxes of flowers, and saw Charis still kneeling in the grass, small rake loosely held--and on her face, besides a slight social smile, an odd expression ... familiar.

"We have lemonade, if you'd like some."

"I would like some lemonade."

"Charis? Would you like some?"

"Yes, I would--and I'll get it. You stay and talk." She put her small rake down, stood, and went across the yard to the back steps.

"Pretty girl," Lowell said, and came to look at the flower beds. "You've done a hell of a lot of work."

"Yes ... she was Rebecca's roommate at college." And having said that--and satisfied at how smoothly she'd said her daughter's name-Joanna was reminded of the expression she'd seen, recalled to her by Charis's just then. It had been Percy's intent and collected consideration, as she'd walked into the red dog's yard.

"--How's your arm, Captain?"

"My arm is still damn sore--two doctors visits for it, and a shot. Good thing you didn't go for the liver." There'd been no humor in the fox face, only in the pleasant uneven stresses of his speech--"Good thing you didn't go for the livah."

They stood side by side, observing the garden beds. There were faint sounds of preparation in the kitchen. ... Captain Lowell smelled of cigars and clean cotton. There was the lightest, very lightest of beginnings--beginnings almost certain to come to nothing at all. And if anything, if ever, then not for a very long time. ... Still, Joanna felt that faint vibration in the air, of things unsettled between them, after that violent and foolish adventure.

"See you got a little bandage of your own, there."

"Not serious. I was prying up a can lid, and the knife slipped."

"I suspect you're just not safe with anything sharp." Light-gray eyes observing her.

"Could be. ..."

And of course it was precisely the immediacy of tragedy, of her losses, that had roused the instinctive tropism toward a man, to resume any possibility left of life, whatever her griefs. ... The bestial element of cock and cunt, of continuing, risen swollen out of a billion years of loss and recovery. To that process, her sorrow--however fresh, unbearable--was beside the point.

"You two have done a lot of digging. Planting just the flowers?"

"Yes, we thought just flowers. We've got pansies, marigolds, petunias ... and some perennials, too. Phlox--it's low-growing, so the wind won't bother it ...

and sea lavender."

"It'll be very pretty," Lowell said. There was a long silence, then he cleared his throat. "--Really came by here to apologize to you, personally, help any way I could. Apologize for coming up here after you that way, when you'd lost your husband and dad ... and worse to come." He took a deep breath. "We must have seemed pretty much a pack of hoodlums to you, that night."

"Yes, you did. But I understood how serious it was for your people."

"--Would never have let George hurt you, Mrs. Reed. I wanted you to know that."

"I do know. I knew it then; I relied on it, Captain. But the truth is, all that seems unreal now--as if it were a scene in an opera. Do you know what I mean?--Something very dramatic, and slightly ridiculous."

The captain had a rusty laugh, apparently not exercised lately. "--Damned if it doesn't. Us ... and Bobby. I'd say by those Englishmen, Gilbert and Sullivan. We had everything up here but the music." And after another long silence while they stood examining the garden beds, the first row of pansies.

"--I still want to apologize for my behavior, handling you roughly, and so forth."

In that old-fashioned formality, Joanna saw a young fox-faced boy with a grimly traditional island father--a hard-handed captain himself, no doubt.

"Apology accepted, Captain. I'm collecting apologies on Asconsett."

"Tom--not "Captain.""

"Tom."

"Well, you've been hit hard."

"I have been hit hard. ..."

"Here we are!" Charis came down the steps with a tray. A small pitcher of lemonade, three tall plastic glasses with ice cubes in them, and a plate of the oatmeal cookies. She was smiling, and Joanna saw nothing else in her face.

"I'll hold it." Lowell took the tray, shifted it slightly to take more of the weight with his uninjured arm.

"We need a chair." Charis went back up the steps to the kitchen.

"We need lawn furniture.--We saw some at the hardware store, but we were busy with the flowers."

"Hardware's the place," Lowell said. "--Light-built stuff, but it'll last a few summers. ..." When Charis came back with a kitchen chair, he set the tray down on it and took two cookies.

Joanna enjoyed watching him eat. First cookie was gone in three quick bites.

"How's the fishing going, Tom?"

"Not going at all, just now. Eleanor's down --getting her diesel fixed--and that'll take a while, since I'm the one doing the fixing. Doing that, days--and preparing construction sites with a backhoe tractor."

"Sounds like hard work," Charis said, and finished a cookie.

"Well, the hard work is hand work, going in with a shovel at night, finish shaping the excavations-septic pits and drainfields for those two new-built houses down South Sound. ... Good medicine for excess pride." He smiled, and bent to take another cookie.

"Excess pride?"

"You bet. A while back, I thought I was a real special article. Lot of us did, out here. Owned three boats--well, half-share in the third--making very good money."

"But not now. ..."

"Now, I'm digging-in septic tanks.-Good for me, is the truth of the matter. My dad would have said so."

The three of them stood in summer sunshine, drinking lemonade, chewing bites of oatmeal cookie. A slow breeze from the sea, passing through, shifted the sea-grape stems.

"He likes you." Charis, in green pajamas, was standing brushing Joanna's hair by floor-lamp light as she sat in the bedroom rocker. "--Likes you even better because you stabbed him."

"Charis, that doesn't interest me at all. Just the idea makes me tired."

"But you like him."

"I think he's a nice man. He's ... interesting."

Charis had waited for the captain's story since his visit. Waited all afternoon, very patiently, while they planted the rest of the small flowers

... prepared the back beds for the perennials--the phlox, calendula, and sea lavender.

Joanna had seen no reason not to tell the tale, with the basement cargo--its only evidence-long since gone off-island. ... But embarrassed relating her self-important adventuring, the show-off in-and-out of Manning's, she'd been startled by Charis's reaction.--No surprise or disbelief, no cautionary uneasiness at all. Instead, there'd been a clamor of delighted laughter over dinner's hamburger and mashed potatoes, enjoyment almost masculine in its force. The girl had listened, leaning forward in physical sympathy--with Joanna all the way.

"Oh, that is absolutely wild!--And shit, I missed it!" Charis restless in her chair. "I would have helped you; we could have gone in together. Then, if they'd chased us, that would have been just too bad." And hearing the last of it--nighttime melodrama in the cottage, in this kitchen--she'd said, "He was lucky." Meaning Tom Lowell had been lucky.

"Don't you know how to use a knife?" Charis had put down her glass of milk and gotten up from the table with a small steak knife, to demonstrate. "Never overhand, Joanna. Always up from under--left and right and left and right.

..." Doing a little dance down the kitchen, grunting, striking quick as a sewing-machine needle, guarding with her left hand.

Sitting down, she'd said, "A major creep showed me that. I guess it was all he had to give." Then salted her salad.

"Sweetheart," Joanna had said, "--y're as odd as I am."

Charis had seemed pleased. "Merci du compliment."

... The brush was smoothing, soothing its way down Joanna's hair. "So, not even a future interest in the captain?--Maybe in a year or two, if you do decide to come out to the island to stay?"

"Charis, I suppose anything is possible. But if the time ever comes that I can bear to think about that, about some man--even if I was living out here--I probably wouldn't consider a fishing captain."

"No? He seems very nice."

"No. ... It's an occupation thing, a cultural difference. There have to be at least a few interests in common."

"But your husband--wasn't Mr. Reed a soccer coach?"

Charis had been right, the shrewdest stroke was up from under--and as if Joanna had forgotten completely until now, as if he hadn't died until now, Frank stood in front of her, listening and merry--and then was torn away.

Charis stopped brushing. "Oh, that was so stupid. That was such a stupid thing to say."

Joanna tried to answer, reassure her, tell her that she'd already spoken names, herself. That persons had to be mentioned sometimes.--Were better mentioned, than not at all. She intended to say that, but she couldn't, and sat silent.

"Forgive me," Charis said, and the brush recommenced its slow massage.

... That night, in light uneasy sleep, Joanna dreamed she was crewing on the Eleanor II. They were at sea--riding a rough swell the color of steel being twisted and turned under light. She was crewing, greasing something in the machinery of a winch. She didn't know what she was doing, but her gloved hands seemed to.

Frank came forward, a happy man in stained coveralls and rubber seaboots. Salt spray had soaked the right side of his coveralls. He came forward as she was working, stood beside her, swaying to the sea's motions, and watched. Then he reached out and touched her shoulder. "Use plenty," he said. He needed a shave.

... Then the job was somehow done, and Joanna walked around to the starboard side--the boat was rolling as Lowell turned her. Looking up at the bridge's side window, she saw his face, the motion of his shoulder and left arm as he spun the wheel.

The boat was rolling heavily in the trough. Joanna felt vibration surging through the deck plates as the engine worked to bring her round. She reached out to steady herself, gripping the wire rail with her right hand. She must have taken her gloves off; the wire was so cold it burned.

Rebecca, bundled in yellow oilskins, was standing far down near the stern, holding on to the wire rail and talking with a friend--a tall girl, her face familiar, her dark-blond hair broken loose in the wind. The girls were laughing at something Rebecca had said. ... In the distance, rain was coming, slanting into the sea.

"Oh, dear." Joanna, sounding to herself like a dismayed old woman, woke. She lay recalling the dream, but remembering no emotion in it--as if it had been a painting of people at sea, in which she was only a figure standing by a trawler's rail.