The End of the Point (12 page)

“Mrs. P.’s wanting to have a word with you, Bea,” he called as he got nearer, and when she reached for the railing, he added, “She said it’s nothing to worry about, so take your time. I’ve got to get back to the Mister, myself. Good day!”

He turned and started marching back, his duty done, but not before giving the two of them an open look of curiosity and, Bea was quite sure, disdain. How she disliked him—his high-Scots airs, his thinking he was better than the rest of them, knowing all the news—though he did take proper care of Mr. P.

“What’s this about?” Smitty asked, hands on her shoulders. “On your day off?”

“I . . . I’ve no idea. I hope nothing has—oh my Lord. What could it be? Smitty—I must go.”

“He said it’s nothing to worry about!” Smitty called, but she was already climbing the stairs, then the steep path up the hill, moving as fast as she could.

A summons, a word with you. On her day off. Nothing to worry about. But the Porters treated days off like holy days; it could be nothing good. Smitty was behind her, calling, then at her side on the road, but while she let him take her arm, she did not slow down, and when they reached the house, she left him to make a sharp right turn across the lawn. She was out of breath by then, but only Janie could have stopped her, so great was her fear—formed and grown larger as she walked—that something had happened to the child, who was not making chalk pictures on the road, or skipping on the lawn, or reading in the hall on the way to Mrs. P.’s bedroom door.

Bea knocked.

“Come in.” Mrs. P. was at her roll-top desk, writing. How could she write at a time like this (like what?).

She put down the pen and turned to Bea. “My, you came quickly. You’re soaking wet! What happened?”

Bea looked down at her dress, which stuck to her in all the wrong spots, and crossed her arms over her chest. “I was . . . I went swimming in my slip. What happened? Stewart came—”

“Everything’s all right. Don’t you want to change? I don’t mind waiting—”

“No, please, tell me now. I won’t sit down.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Mrs. P. sounded exasperated. “You’re just soaked, you’ll catch cold.”

“You know I never do,” said Bea.

XIV

H
ELEN MUST, SHE
realized later, have been up in the attic in the sodden heat when it happened, trading back and forth the binoculars with Dossy, two stupid, childish girls. They’d thought they’d seen something at sea—a pipe, a sub—and trained the spyglass on it for a good ten minutes, only to have it disappear, and should they report it to the soldiers when it was probably just a piece of driftwood, or nothing at all? But if it wasn’t? If it was something? Dossy thought for sure that they should tell.

Summer was almost over, and nothing had happened. Not true. Charlie had proposed to Suky, she’d gone out to Oklahoma, they’d eloped. They were married; Suky was back with her parents in New Jersey, a war bride (Married, Helen’s mother kept saying with disbelief but also admiration—seize the day. It helped that she’d been friends with Suky’s mother all her life). Helen was happy for them, and disdainful, and jealous of them for getting more of each other while she got less of them, and, mostly, astonished—that life could actually move forward like this into adulthood. A ring, a signature, ta-da! Bea had a fellow. The war was heating up, Charlie still stateside but rising through the ranks. Still, for Helen, nothing had happened. No enemy had come ashore. After the dance, she had not set foot upon the base. Henry had not fallen in love with her; in fact he’d barely spoken to her after the dance, just a nod and hello if he passed by. Was it something she’d said? Something she’d done (she’d told him brashly that she viewed the belief that God was literally in the wine and wafers as akin to voodoo, not to mention unsanitary. She’d been tipsy, even drunk). Had she let him go too far with her? Was she too loose? Too rich? Not pretty enough? Too smart? Not smart enough? Whatever it was, it stung.

Helen had cracked no codes, broken no hearts. She’d kept her nature diary, written letters, read several novels and half a history book on the Civil War, but she was no closer to understanding (much less participating in) the workings of the world. Soon school would start, the grind of homework, the press of proper clothes. The summer had been largely miserable; still, any thought of packing up for New Jersey incited in her the same feeling she always had in August as the parting date grew close: a low-level, constant nausea, laced with dread. The sea was her refuge, and she swam long and hard, entirely purposeless but in the best way, and she’d stay down for as long as her breath held out, eyes open in the murk. Afterward, in the outdoor shower, she’d strip off her suit to find her torso covered with seaweed, brown feathered fronds and bright green blades.

Might she have seen it happen that Sunday morning, if she’d turned the spyglass toward the land? Seen it and actually have done something useful by stopping it, instead of watching flotsam or a product of her restless imagination bobble in the waves? Janie told her mother first, who told her father and then Bea, and it was only by chance that Helen, down from the attic by then, heard her mother’s voice coming from the master bedroom, the door shut. She listened from outside for a moment—
need to stay calm, not turn this into
—before pushing open the door to find her mother by the bureau, gripping its edge, and Bea by the windowsill.

Her mother turned. “Helen? What are you doing here?”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. Don’t look like that. Goodness. We’re just talking. It’s nothing that concerns you. You may go.”

Helen moved forward. “Why are you all wet, Bea? What happened? Did someone drown?”

Bea shook her head.

“Then what?”

“It’s just . . .” Her mother sighed and sat down on her bed. “Janie had a little incident. I’m telling Bea, I only just started. Please, dearie. Go.”

“You can’t just start to tell me and then make me leave—” Helen couldn’t stop moving, from bureau to bed to window to chair. “She’s my sister. I won’t say a word if you let me stay.”

Her mother exhaled. “Fine. Close the door. And sit. And
stay still
.”

Helen closed the door and sat on her father’s bed, forcing her leg not to jiggle. Her mother stood and cleared her throat. Bea moved away from the window, her skin too pink. Watching them, Helen had the sense that they were rehearsing a play, blocking out scenes, stage left, stage right, “The Mistress and the Maid.”

“It’s—I don’t quite know how to say this . . . it’s just that something has happened to Janie, and I, well, we’re trying to figure out—”

“Oh, oh—” Bea reached to steady herself on the sill.

“
Shhhh
.” Helen hissed. “Let her talk.”

“The main point is that Janie is fine, unhurt—it’s nothing terrible.” Her mother’s voice sounded stiff, almost angry. “All right? So try not to overreact, both of you, for everyone’s sake. For Janie’s most of all, and mine. You don’t even know what happened yet, and I’ve told you, she’s
fine
.”

Out playing, her mother went on to say. Out playing Sardines with the two children of the family that was visiting—Katherine and Christian—and some of the soldiers joined in the game, they must have been off-duty, and one soldier, well, he, according to Janie, and we’re inclined to believe her because why would she make up such a thing, hid with her in the field, just the two of them, and he—well, apparently he lay on top of her for a moment, and then, thank goodness, Christian came along and found them . . .

Bea let out a moan.

“We must stay
calm
.” Mrs. P. glanced toward the door. “That’s all that happened. Janie seems fine, though she did know it was worth mentioning to me, and I’m glad for that. It couldn’t have been too bad; she waited until she’d had her sandwich and brownie, which she gobbled up.”

“So that’s all she said?” Bea asked. “That’s everything?”

“That’s all. If she says anything about it to you, tell her very calmly that she’s fine and it will never happen again and she’s entirely safe, and then let me know precisely what she said.”

“Oh, Lord, I haven’t seen her since breakfast.” Bea looked at her wristwatch. “I—I took a walk.”

“You took a
walk
?” Helen said. “While this was happening? You’re supposed to be taking care of her!”

“It’s Sunday,” said her mother. “Bea’s day off. Helen, really—you must let me handle this.”

“No, she’s right,” Bea said. “I should have been watching her. And to think—all this time, we had our eye on the wrong one.”

“Excuse me?” said Helen. “What?”

“Not now.” Mrs. P. gave Bea a warning look.

“Which one?” said Helen, though she already knew. “
Me?”

Her mother sighed. “We were a bit concerned about your friendship with the soldier. Henry. Daddy was, especially. You know how he tends to worry.”

“Henry?
You
were keeping me from Henry? Without telling me? How dare you?” Her fury mounted, though behind it was a small measure of relief that it wasn’t Henry who had jilted her. “Are you spies, all of you?” she asked. “Don’t you have anything better to do with yourselves? We just
danced
.” She turned to Bea. “Speaking of which, I might have ratted on you and that . . . Smitty, but I didn’t—”

“Bea,” her mother said, “is a full-grown woman.”

“I should have been watching Janie,” Bea repeated woodenly.

“No. It’s your day off. You should not have been. They were just playing in the field, like the children always do.”

“Which field?” Helen began to circle the room again.

“Behind the stables.”

“Did she say who—”

“It was one of the soldiers who came to dinner. The one with the stutter. Do you remember him? He seemed so young to me, pathetic really—I remember thinking that—and with something not quite right. . . . Do you know who he is, you must—” She winced. “The
bastard
,” she went on, in an altogether different voice. “They’ll take anybody for this war, they’re so desperate, whether they’re fit or not. And then send the best ones overseas.”

Helen knew who her mother meant; the boy was tall and skinny, all legs and spastic arms. The other soldiers teased him for his clumsiness. He stuttered when he spoke. They called him Scarecrow behind his back. What was his real name? Drew, she thought, or Dale. At first she had wondered if he was, in fact, not quite right in the head, but he was assigned gate duty like all the others, and he was popular because he had a car on the base and drove the boys to town. He’s rich, Henry had said about him once, with something like disdain. Rich but not the brightest bulb. Helen had felt for him pity mixed with revulsion but also amusement, for he’d done tricks for them on the road—ungainly leaps over fences, spidery hobo dances. They’d fed him dinner, sung with him on the porch, laughed both with and at him. He had seemed harmless. She might even have said he seemed the most harmless of the lot.

“I wish—” Bea looked up. “Oh Lord, I wish I’d been with her.”

Say
So do I
, Helen thought to her mother. Was there not a blood-borne mother love, a throwing yourself before the approaching train, a clawing at the grizzly bear? Instead, a sort of coldness.

Her mother shook her head. “You didn’t know, Bea. This has always been the safest place in the world. Anyway, we can’t look back like that. She’s fine.”

“Where is she?” Helen asked. It seemed, suddenly, of great importance to be able to locate her sister precisely, as if on a map with a thumbtack, the way her father and Stewart charted the progress of the Allied troops on a map.

“Janie?” said her mother. “With Agnes.”

“Agnes? Why not with Daddy? Where
is
Daddy?”

“He went to speak to the colonel at the base.”

“Oh.” So it was serious. Very.

“But where,
exactly
, is Janie, Mrs. P.?” Bea asked.

“I told you, she’s with Agnes. And Mr. Lyall and the Lyall children. Please, you two, we can’t lock her up, or any of them, for that matter. They’re at Garrisons while Clara Lyall packs up—they’re leaving today. We need to keep her from the soldiers, that’s all. She knows that too, poor thing, so it won’t be hard. We all need to watch her more closely. I do, and”—she paused—“we all do.”

Helen spun around. “I’m going to Garrisons.”

“Good.” Her mother nearly pushed her to the door. “Just don’t mention anything. Not to Dossy, either. You must let your father and me handle this.”

“I’ll go too,” Bea said.

“Actually, Bea,” said her mother, “stay a moment longer.”

In the doorway, Helen turned. “Why?”

“I need to check in with her about some household matters.”

“Like what?”

“Clothing.”

“Clothing?”

“
Go
,” her mother said.

“You lead,” said Helen, and her rage was an undertow she could neither master nor resist, “such fascinating lives.”

XV

W
ITH HELEN FINALLY
out the door, Mrs. P. smoothed the bedcovers and sighed. “We’ll be leaving earlier than usual this year, Bea. I don’t want the girls to know yet—they’ll kick up a fuss—but it’s only a few weeks until Labor Day, and Mr. P. and I feel that the whole situation is just”—from the floor, she picked up a pair of her husband’s dress shoes with their braces still attached and set them side by side—“too much. With the war. I know you like to plan ahead. With Jane’s clothing and everything.” She laughed weakly.

“Oh.” Bea stood, then sat, the breath knocked out of her by this second, sudden piece of news. “So will we leave today?”

“Today! How could we possibly be ready? It’s not an evacuation!”

“Tomorrow, then?”

“I don’t know, I don’t think so. In a few days, when we’re organized. I haven’t thought it all through yet. Just sooner than we’d—”

Bea started toward the door. “I’ll go find Janie. She can help me pack.”

“No, please don’t. I’d like to spend some time with Janie myself. And say good-bye to our friends. And it’s your day off.”