Reprisal (38 page)

She lay half in moonlight, and heard the soft crawling sound of beginning rain through the bedroom window. It must have wakened her. ... The sound grew gradually louder, but no rain came down.

A soft sound and clearer, now. Gravel crunching under a car's slow tires. ...

Joanna turned the covers back and got out of bed. She stepped fully into moonlight, went to the window, and looked down through the screen.

The VW was passing slowly underneath. Charis, in moonshadow, strained almost horizontal behind its open driver's-side door--pushing the little car along the drive. She stretched, silent, strove like a running leopard in slow motion, and the car moved along. It passed with soft shifting-gravel sounds under the window, steadily out the driveway ... then past the curb and into the street.

Joanna went to the bedroom's front window ... and saw Charis, blond hair burnished by moonlight, stand up from shoving and climb quickly into the driver's seat. Then, with the car's door still a little open, she freewheeled the VW silently down the hill ... under tree shadows, and was gone.

Joanna heard the car's engine start below, at the end of the street, and thought for a moment she might still be dreaming, it had been so strange ...

and seen in the moon's dream light. She started back to bed --then knew she was awake, by the cool specifics of the floor under her bare feet.

But it had been so odd that she went out into the hall, crossed in darkness to the other bedroom, and knocked softly on its closed door. No answer. And how could there be. She'd seen Charis leave.

Joanna opened the door and looked inside. This was a smaller, darker room.

Charis kept it very neat. Kept the bed neatly made up ... and it was neatly made up now.

"Charis ...?" It was becoming a habit, calling people who were not there.

Shame came to Joanna like a chill--shame at seizing on a young girl's kindness, and remorse at her roommate's suicide. Leaning on it, gripping it, stretching it to assist her loneliness through a summer--through a summer and into the next year. She'd grappled Charis to her with need, used her and used her up, even taking advantage of the girl's own loneliness, her childhood tragedy, to hold her closer.

... Now, at night and silently, Charis was apparently running for at least a little freedom. A short escape, if only a drive alone and without Joanna Reed.

A short escape, because all her things were there, her suitcase still in the corner. It should be funny--a savior angel having to steal away for a breath of her own air.

Joanna thought it would be funny, if it didn't mark so completely her future loneliness. Charis would be back, returning silently later in the night ... to pretend to contentment in the day.

Joanna went back to her room, and to bed-fled into bed under moonlight and the covers, to drive herself to sleep as she'd done before, when her deaths were fresh.

Charis drove south through Asconsett--the town deserted under a moon almost full, only the streetlamps warming its light. She drove through town and out on South Sound Road. There was no traffic at all. The night breeze, cool, saltier than the day's, poured through her as she traveled a rocky coast, its surf silver.

Charis was weeping, the wind chilling her tears as she drove. Unaccustomed tears.--Tears of anger at being disturbed, threatened even obliquely just when everything was perfect, perfect after so much time, so much effort. ... And anger at having to leave Joanna alone, having to sneak out of their house like a teenager dating a bad boy.-And all just to gather information in case of increasing intrusion, in case something needed to be done. But careful was better than careless; she'd learned that long ago.

More than a mile down South Road, the shore rising higher above a stepped reach to the sea, she'd passed several houses. Fishermen's cottages higher, above the road ... mainlanders' vacation houses down to the left, along the sea.

There'd been lights still on in two or three homes, but no work site, no work being done.-Charis drove slower, so as not to miss it.

The distant lighthouse's whitewashed granite was just visible, its beam sweeping ... slow sweeping ... to flash out over the sea.

That great light's passing made the night's dark deeper, so Charis noticed lesser lights down on a shelved clearing to the left, below the road's bluff.

She slowed, steered into the left lane ... and saw a big white pickup truck, worn and rusted, parked on the shoulder beside the top of a rough construction driveway. The driveway, graveled dirt, was cut into the bluff and ran very steeply down to the clearing, the grade apparently too much for the old pickup truck to manage.

Charis pulled over to the right side of the road and stopped. She opened the glove compartment, found a clump of old Kleenex, wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Then she got out of the car and walked back to the pickup. Keys had been left in its ignition--an Island habit--but the big truck was a mess, nothing anyone would want to steal, anyway.

She stood, looking out over the site. ... There were two houses below. New, still scaffolded for painting, they stood side by side in moonlight out at the clearing's edge, above a stony shore. They were big two-story houses, elaborate with decks, widow's walks, and cupolas.

The work lights were nearer, set on wooden poles down by the foot of the drive.--They lit a small backhoe tractor bright orange. It was parked to the left of a hole that looked, to Charis, about ten feet by ten feet, and ten feet deep. Big enough for a really major septic tank.--This side of the excavation, along the bottom of the drive, they'd built a rectangular barrier of heavy planks, propped up at each end by heavier timber ... angled to hold an uphill mound of spoil out of the hole.

... And there'd been considerable digging besides that. Off to the left, beside the bluff, parallel ditches of the drainage field ran out from a smaller pit. It all looked like a lot of work.

She stood watching in moonlight, the sea wind stroking her, gently combing her hair. ... And after a long while, she saw a man climb out of the excavation on a ladder ... then begin hauling at a rope running through two pulleys chained to the top of a tall steel-pipe tripod set beside the pit. ... A big metal bucket came slowly up out of the excavation, heave by heave, and the man tied the rope off, swung the suspended bucket to the side, tilted it, and dumped its dirt up over the planking onto the mound of spoil.

Then he lowered the bucket into the hole, and stood for a moment ... either tired, or thinking a problem out. The work light threw such shadows, Charis couldn't see his face clearly.--Then he moved, and she could.

It looked like very hard work--night work, too. The contractor must have said,

"Get this done, all right? Finish it up. What you can't do with the machine, you do however.--But get it done."

And Captain Lowell, fisherman down on his luck, must have said, "Okay."

Charis watched for a long time. Saw Lowell go down the ladder into the pit again ... and after a while of digging down there, climb out to haul more dirt up and away. She watched him do that three times. Interesting work, interesting to watch.

It was going to be a big septic tank.

Joanna woke in early morning, dawn luminous at her windows. A door quietly closing had wakened her. Then there were soft, sneakered footsteps past her room ... and on down the stairs. Charis, returned during the night from whatever short passage of freedom she'd required.

Joanna wanted to get up, get dressed and go downstairs. She wanted to see the girl--be certain she was home and all right, though she certainly was. It was an impulse surprisingly difficult to resist ... to go down to see her, to make sure.

Lying awake, Joanna waited for full morning ... for sufficient time to pass so the girl wouldn't feel pressured, watched for, her presence required to salve a stricken woman's loneliness. ... What a sad thing it was to be so needy; to be left with only the requirement of courage so as not to burden others with that neediness.--And what was left of life, if so much of it had to be spent enduring?

... When sunlight touched the windows, spilled a little on the floor, Joanna got up, put on her robe, and went downstairs.

Charis was sitting at the dining table, entering in her laptop amid a confusion of notebooks.

"Hi. ..."

"Good morning!" The girl looking bright, rested. "--I got up a little early.

This math. ..."

"I'll do breakfast."

"Okay. We have sausage."

"Sausage and scrambled eggs?"

"Great. ..."

Beginning breakfast, and a pleasure to do even something unimportant for the young woman working on her Statistics in the dining room. ... Modern college work now such an interesting combination of superficial courses--the various

"Studies" of this or that sex, group, or culture--and very difficult work, like Cavelli's painful statistics math. It must confuse the students as to the effort required for mastery of any subject. ...

"Two patties?"

"Sounds good." Charis peering at her laptop's screen.

"I think if we're doing country sausage, we ought to do it."

"Right on."

The blessing of concentration on tasks. Setting the table, then buttering bread, making toast. Frying sausage ... then scrambling the eggs. Soft scrambled. And coffee, putting the coffee on. Small accomplishments, that in a while come together.

"Sweetheart--breakfast." Joanna put the plates on the kitchen table, went back to the counter for the coffee.

"Coming. ... Oh, it looks great."

Joanna sat, and reached for the sugar. "Charis. ..."

"Mmm. ..."

"You've been playing nurse out here for quite a while, and I know you said you're fine with that. But really, wouldn't you like a break? Maybe just take off to the mainland for a week or two?"--Close as it was possible to come, without mentioning last night's quiet exit down the drive ... the apparently even quieter return.

"Joanna, I don't need to do that." Charis put a dab of scrambled egg on a piece of toast, and ate it.

"But would you like to do that?--I'm very much better, sweetheart, and I don't want you to feel you can't come and go as you please. Because you can."

"I know that. And I want to stay--unless you need some space, some time alone."

"I don't want any time alone, Charis." Joanna took some marmalade, and passed it.

"Neither do I."

"All right. ... Then I guess we're stuck with each other."

""Stuck with each other,"" Charis said, smiled, and spread marmalade on her toast.

Leaving the midnight passage a mystery. "--Okay. Another subject. You know, I mentioned going over to White River?"

"Right."

"I really have to--things have piled up over there. And I thought we'd definitely do it, go this weekend."

"That would be good."

Joanna decided not to mention Rebecca's ashes ... that she wanted to bring them out, scatter them on the hill. "So, we'll leave early-take the morning ferry, day after tomorrow. And that'll get us off the island for two or three days. ... Where's the pepper?"

"Here; it was hiding."

"And since we'll be going across the state anyway, I thought you might like to try some caving. --Probably on our way back."

"You bet!" Pleased enough to pause between bites of sausage. "I know I'll like it."

"Well, you may--and may not. Lots of people don't. But it is a spectacular cave. Immense ... and miles and miles of it. The only formation of the kind ever found in the Northeast."

"Oh, Joanna, I want to do that!"

"... Then we will." A pleasure, of course, that entailed another trespass--no question a stupid and selfish thing to do. And only to be happy, at ease in the cave ... and enjoy introducing Charis to something she might find wonderful. "--I'm getting more coffee; want some?"

"Yes. ... Here's my mug."

At the sink counter, Joanna filled the mugs from the coffee-maker's pitcher.

"This isn't keeping the coffee hot enough. ..." She came back to the table. "I brought out my old harness and helmet, just in case I could persuade Frank down some sea cave.--Against all odds, I might add. He didn't like caving."

She felt some satisfaction at how smoothly, with almost no pain, she'd spoken of him. "So, we have two fairly complete equipment sets. ... This coffee is barely warm."

Jerry Peterson, the boy who'd waited on Joanna when she'd needed paint for the window frame, came over, smiling, when they walked into the store. He was smiling at Joanna--paying no apparent attention at all to Charis, as if she were too bright to look upon.

"Hi, Mrs. Reed. ..."

"Good morning, Jerry. We bought some flowers here yesterday, pansies, from ...

somebody."

"Must have been Mr. Shepherd. He's part owner."

"Mr. Shepherd, right.--And today we're looking for lawn furniture--the least expensive you've got."

"We have lawn chairs and stuff in the back."

"That's what we need to look at. ... Jerry, this is a friend who's come out to stay with me. Charis Langenberg."

""Charis,"" the boy said. "Charis." And looked directly at her for the first time. "... That's a very pretty name." A compliment surprisingly direct from an island boy.

"Thanks," charis said, and smiled, a Christmas gift. "When I was a little girl, I hated it."

Jerry had nothing more to say. He stood grinning.

"Lawn furniture," Joanna said.

"Right. Right. ..."

Most of the lawn chairs and tables were molded white resin--a few with tied-on plaid plastic pads.

"Without the pads, I think.--Charis?"

"No pads. They're always wet."

"Well, Mrs. Reed--we have just these two sets without pads. They're almost the same, except one table has the clear plastic top, and the other top is glass.

Glass is more expensive--and that whole set's a little more sturdy."

"Glass," Charis said.

"Four chairs and the glass-top table--how much would that be?"

"This set--" Jerry bent to check price tags. "This set is ... eighty-nine dollars."