Strawberries in the Sea (17 page)

As if he felt the weight of her thinking, he stared back at her. They were both serious, even somber. She broke away first and went to gather mussels and goose-tongue greens for their supper.

In the afternoon they went down to the fishhouse and worked. They carried the trash out to the wharf, to be taken down and burned that night on the rocks at low tide. They stored potentially useful articles up in the loft, and here she showed Edwin the box of glass balls. He didn't know anything about them, but was as pleased as she had been; he took some downstairs and arranged them on the workbench for a possible still life.

“Hi!” Linnie appeared in the doorway, breezy today, her hair down again, her jeans disreputable. She gave Edwin one fast glance, and concentrated on Rosa. “Vic's baking. Can I help clean the fishhouse?”

“How'd you like to sort out that box of nails?” Rosa suggested, waiting for the refusal. But Linnie smiled with innocent happiness and carried the box to the bench where Edwin would have to walk around her. He nodded at her, and when he did he saw the branding iron hanging beside the long window over the bench. He reached past her head for it, and laid it beside the glass balls. She said brightly to Rosa, “I never knew an artist before. It's so
interesting
.”

“Mm,” said Rosa. She picked up a sagging carton of debris and carried it down the wharf. It was high tide now, still without wind. The faint precipitation darkened fishhouse shingles, made buoys shine, and misted the harbor like breath on glass. Wood smoke blew down from Philip Bennett's fishhouse; where his young helper built trap bottoms just inside the open doorway with his transistor radio for company, mercifully turned low. Rosa could barely hear it, and then it was drowned completely as distant engines grew louder along the west side, and Matt Fennell and Jamie came roaring abreast around the breakwater.

Rosa admired the boats in action until they slowed down to cross the harbor, then went back to the fishhouse. Edwin had given up his arrangement for the time being and was using a broken shovel to scoop up old shingles into a tar-stained washtub. Linnie sat on the bench, legs hanging, sorting nails, and looking actually radiant about it. Lucky kid; it was enough for her merely to be in The Presence.

About ten minutes later Jamie appeared without warning in the open doorway. Rosa, coiling old pot warp, saw him first. She started to greet him, but austerely he avoided her, ignored Edwin, and spoke to Linnie in a low voice.

“Come on.”

“I'm busy.” She kept her eyes on what she was doing, but color began in her throat and swept upward.

His voice was still low, and heavier. “I said, Come
on
.”

“What for?”

“You're wanted at home, that's what for.”

“You haven't had time to get home and find out,” Linnie said. She gave Rosa a furtive and desperate glance. Edwin went on scooping up shingles as if no one else were there, though he had obviously seen Jamie by now.

“Thanks for helping out with the nails, Linnie,” Rosa said. “I hate that job.”

“I do most of the time, but today I love it,” Linnie said fiercely. “But some people can't stand to see other people doing something as—as harmless and helpful as sorting nails. Doing something
neighborly
. They don't know what the word
means
.”

Impervious as stone, Jamie waited. She slid down off the bench and he moved aside so she could pass stiffly by him and out to the road.

“Saved in the nick of time,” Rosa murmured. “In another minute,
rape
.”

Jamie ignored her and followed his sister. Edwin straightened up and gave Rosa an inquiring look. She shrugged and shook her head. She was more amused than annoyed by Jamie now. No wonder he didn't have time for a girl of his own.

Sunday came off fine. Rosa and Edwin went on a leisurely cruise in
Sea Star
to see the seals on their ledges, and out around Matinicus Rock light to get a glimpse of the puffins and medricks. They circled Pirate Island and the outlying islets of Brigport, then they went around the big island itself, jogging slowly past coves and beaches and identifying ledges from the chart. Finally they went into Brigport Harbor, which was as busy with small-boat activity as a mainland harbor, even though Sunday wasn't a working day for the fishermen. The
Ella Vye
had brought out a crowd for a day excursion, a cruise schooner lay at the harbor mouth, two big herring carriers and a broad-beamed seiner,
Centurion
, took up a good deal of space. Because of all the extra people the store was open, and Rosa and Edwin bought bread, salami, and cold soft drinks, and walked over to the broad white sand beach that was one of the island's glories. There were other picnickers there and a few brave swimmers, but the space was great enough to give everyone a sense of solitude.

The mainland hills were blue as hyacinths in the north. One could not see to the west where Seal Point was, so there was nothing here to blemish the hour. Rosa felt that given a choice she would still choose to be here, as long as she didn't examine the question too closely. The real choice would have been Con, before Phyllis, and with no Phyllis to be. Con, herself, and a baby son.

But the way things were now—no, she couldn't ask for anything better than this, she assured the invisible donor of choices.

But as usual she couldn't leave well enough alone. She had to wonder what Edwin was thinking as he gazed out from under half-closed lids at the glittering blues and greens. The colors, maybe? The never-repeated patterns of water breaking and swirling over the white sand? Something as simple as that and not of a woman with a long throat and a head thrown back in laughter? Now why did she have to keep coming back to
that?

When they came home in the late afternoon, Bennett's seemed unnaturally quiet after the activity at Brigport. The children had all gone across the island to Schoolhouse Cove. Philip Bennett and his wife were on their front porch when Rosa and Edwin came up from the fishhouse, and Philip called to them to come and have a drink.

Rosa was still under the influence of her day, moving as effortlessly through the atmosphere as a fish through water; she was conscious of this, enjoyed it, and hoped it would last. At least it kept her from being wretchedly self-conscious with Mrs. Philip in the porch swing while the men sat on the steps. She could even stand off and admire the progress she'd made in less than two weeks from a horribly solid lump of snuffling anguish to this slightly thinner and outwardly poised creature, sipping a Tom Collins and discussing puffins and medricks like a charter member of the Audubon Society. For some reason, perhaps the drink, she wanted to laugh out loud at herself.

Ralph was mowing his lawn when they got home, and expansively she invited him to supper without knowing what it was going to be. She told him that and he said solemnly, “Lady, if you was to cook up a mess of grass and put it before me, it'd taste good because somebody else fixed it.”

“I can do a little better than grass. I think. Or do you mean something else by grass?”

“You mean you actually got your own little marijuana patch? Is that why you won't let Edwin mow your lawn?”

“No, I'm saving the daisies. I eat the centers, and, boy, do they turn me on.”

When she set oven-browned corned beef hash on the table, with sliced tomatoes and cucumbers on the side, he said, “Hey, where's the stewed daisies? I can't get high on this stuff.”

“Have you ever tried chewing dried peas?” Edwin wrote. “You get great visions, all colored green, along with broken teeth.”

She thought that the whole day had been one of the best in her life, because for so long she had expected never to be even halfway happy again. It was like waking up after a bad accident to your eyes to find out you weren't blind after all. Broken in places, bruised all over, but the slash across the eyes hadn't destroyed them.

“I'm sorry, I haven't got dessert,” she said to Ralph.

“Sing me a song, then.”

She felt gracious and generous, taking down her guitar, “What do you want?”

“Your choice. Something not too sad.”

She laughed, thinking how before she lost Con she'd liked the melancholy old ballads. Now she couldn't even stand
Careless Love
or
Old Smokey
.

They went out into the sunset light both quieted and emphasized by the screen of trees. Edwin sat on the railing of the back doorstep, Ralph sat on the top step, and Rosa went to the bulkhead where she could put her back against the still-warm clapboards and be surrounded by the lilac scent. Without thinking she started to play
Green Grow the Lilacs
, but that wouldn't do. She switched to
The Ocean Child
and her own tune. While she was singing, the girls filed quietly up from the lane, trailed by some smaller girls who kept staring around the yard with awe and curiosity, not able to choose between her and Edwin for chief oddity.

The older girls sank down crosslegged in the grass, and the little ones imitated them, politely silent, trying not to giggle when Ralph winked at them. Linnie sat holding her ankles, head bent, her hair hiding her face.

Rosa finished the song and was applauded. One of the younger ones, now recognized as Dinsmores, asked bashfully if Rosa knew
Old Dog Tray
.

“No,” Rosa lied. “How's it go? Come on over and sing it for me.” The child came up on the bulkhead and began singing the song in a husky but true little voice, and Rosa picked out the chords. Halfway through, she saw Linnie's head come up and slowly turn, her eyes large and solemn, her mouth pathetically drooping. She glanced in the direction of Linnie's gaze and saw that Edwin had disappeared from the railing.

She and Tammie finished the song together, and Ralph and the others clapped strenuously. Tammie, stiff with pride, marched back to her place; Linnie arose like a sleepwalker, crossed the yard, and went into the path. Vic sat up alertly and called, “Hey!”

Linnie gave no sign of hearing. Her pale hair and long legs glimmered for an instant in the leafy twilight of the path before it twisted out of sight. Holly and Betsey whispered, laughing secretly behind their hands. Ralph said candidly, “Well, there's no harm in trying.”

“There's no sense in throwing away your pride, either,” Vic said in a dry, harsh voice.

Rosa said to the other Dinsmore child, “Don't
you
have a song to teach me?”

“
The Bluebells of Scotland
?”

As the evening began to dampen and darken, Rosa had to take the guitar indoors. She invited the others in for manners' sake, not really wanting them. The Bennett girls were eager, but Vic said in her new lifeless fashion, “These little kids should be home, they're out on their feet. I'll bet you're tired too, aren't you, Rosa?”

“Frankly, yes.”

The others gave up. They went off into the dusk, trying to teach the Dinsmore children to sing
Row, Row, Row Your Boat
. Vic thanked Rosa, looked once toward the dark tunnel of the path, and then walked away through the ghostly floating moons of the last daisies.

“Want some coffee, Ralph, or some cold beer?” Rosa asked. “I'm dry.”

“I wouldn't mind a beer, but I don't want to keep you up.”

“Oh, come on.”

She lit a lamp and got out the beer. They sat at the table talking about lobstering, Bennett's Island, Rosa's father, Ralph's family. On the surface it was a pleasant interlude. Ralph was easy to be with; he didn't seem to take her either as a renegade woman or an imitation male, but simply as a human being.

But beneath the superficial peace of the moment she was both anxious and irritated. She didn't care how hawsed-up Jamie Sorensen got about his sister; it was good enough for him, he was a born troublemaker. But she wished Edwin would come back. Sometimes it jolted her to realize he was a stranger in so many ways. Bad enough for Con to astonish you like a violent fall that knocked the breath out of your lungs. But Edwin—as reliable and familiar as your own two hands—Well, nobody really knows all about anyone else, she argued under cover of the desultory talk. Look how little anyone, even Edwin, knows about
me
. But I don't like him being out there with Linnie. And who says he's with her? She may be home by now. Took a roundabout way up from Barque Cove past the Fennell house. He could be—

“Here's the man now,” said Ralph, and as Edwin came in she jumped as if awakened roughly from sleep. He leaned against the counter, arms folded, frowning against the lamplight. She got up and went to the refrigerator, but he put out an arm to bar her and shook his head.

“Coffee then?”

He refused that. Ralph finished his beer and stood up. “Time for me to be crawling under the kelp,” he said. “Back to work tomorrow morning. Thanks, Rosa.”

“Any time. Come again, and bring your fiddle.”

“I'll do that.” On the way out he touched Edwin's shoulder and said, “Good night.” Edwin gave him a curt nod. He came over to the table and sat down to write. Rosa watched, wondering if her stomach were roiling from the cold beer or something else. Edwin would never lay a finger on Linnie. Never. She was just a kid. No. She was a tall seventeen, and she was asking for it. Edwin was not a monk, Edwin was a healthy male. He hadn't wanted her to see the sketches and now she wasn't sure it was just out of mischief. The impact of her first impression had repeated itself again and again, and was always as strong as the first time. In some frightening way it had gotten all tied up with Linnie, Linnie following him, silent and determined.

Darned kid. Cussid kid. Tramping through a mine field in ski boots. But Edwin would never. Would never
what?
. . . And the whole miserable, worrying argument began again.

He was waiting for her to read.

“Leaving tomorrow. Been here too long. Have to get back to work.”