The Village by the Sea (11 page)

Her arms fell to her side. She felt weak. She did as he said.

“I can't explain anything,” he said in a low voice. “I don't ask you to forgive her. One of the tutors I had as a boy was much given to adages. Do you know what an adage is?”

She shook her head. She was barely listening to him, thinking of the destroyed village, of the place where it had stood which would, in a few days, look just like any other part of the beach.

“An adage is a way of summing up a kind of wisdom in a few words … like ‘haste makes waste' or ‘a stitch in time saves nine.' They're boring, I know, but so often true. This tutor I was speaking about always spoke in adages. I recall a few. One was this: ‘Envy's a coal comes hissing hot from hell.'”

He was staring at her. His face was partly in shadow, the kitchen light falling on his white hair.

“Emma,” he called softly as though she were far away. “I'm the only person Bea doesn't envy. That is because I'm married to her. Do you understand what that means?”

She heard herself sigh.

“It means she knows about herself,” he went on. “That hot coal is inside her. She feels it more terribly than anyone else. She feels helpless—that's why she says those dreadful things.”

“She did something this time,” Emma said. “She didn't just say something.”

“Yes,” he said. “You can't imagine how funny and nice she can be … when we're alone here.”

Emma felt terribly tired. She didn't want to hear anything more from Uncle Crispin. “She hates me so,” she said, thinking that would put an end to the talk. Then she could go to bed and sleep.

“No!” he said fiercely. “It's not you she hates. It's the world. She feels left out.”

“It would have blown away in a storm,” Emma said. “Or a high tide. People would've stepped on it.” She looked up at the Monet poster. She remembered her aunt saying, “the silliness of human beings against the force of nature.” But human beings were a force of nature, too.

“I was taking her a cup of tea,” Uncle Crispin said sadly. “She is very unhappy. I didn't know what was wrong. She'll regret what she's done forever.”

Emma didn't quite believe that. All she wanted now was to be in her room. The morning was near.

“You're going home today,” he said. “Listen. You were so happy building your village. You mustn't forget that.”

The skin on her cheeks felt tight with dried tears.

“I guess I won't,” she said. She got up and left the dining room, aware that he continued to stand next to the table, perhaps looking at the chair where she had sat.

10

Home

When Emma awoke, her eyes felt grainy as though someone had flung sand at them. The sky was as gray as a camp blanket. For the first time, she noticed the chipped paint on the window frames, a long crack that ran the width of the ceiling, a thin layer of dust on the floor. There was a large yellow stain on the braided rug, and dust had gathered around its edges, a tide of dust that would cover it after she had gone and the room closed up as though she'd never been in it.

The silent house, the grayness of the morning that seemed to press up against the grimy windows, made her feel that everything had stopped—she had felt that way before on certain rainy days when she hadn't wanted to get up, dress, when the day ahead was like a long, dreary test for which she wasn't prepared.

She looked at the alarm clock. Time hadn't stopped. It was nearly ten, the hour when she and Bertie had agreed to meet. She got out of bed, listening. She didn't think she could have gone into the hall if she'd heard them.

But she must get down to the beach before Bertie saw the havoc. Why was it that she felt ashamed when it was her aunt who had done the awful thing?

She tiptoed to the bathroom, which Uncle Crispin must have straightened up. When she was dressed, she went back to the hall. She heard a faint murmur of voices and movement from their bedroom, and, as she went down the stairs, a soft padding of moccasined feet, Aunt Bea going to destroy the bathroom, she guessed.

There was scum on the tea in a cup on the dining room table. Uncle Crispin must have forgotten to take it to Aunt Bea after Emma had told him what had happened. She stepped on something hard. It was a blue bead. What had Uncle Crispin said to Aunt Bea when he went upstairs?

It was windy outdoors. The bay looked thick as porridge. Emma didn't pause at the place where the village had been, but went to the stairs that led to Bertie's house. She sat down on the bottom step, pushing her feet into the sand until they were hidden.

How would she tell her?

She couldn't tell Bertie what her father would have called a bare-faced lie. And how could she look at Aunt Bea, at those great doll's eyes, and smile? Could something so dreadful just disappear inside of smiles and talk without a word being said?

She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned her head to look at it, a brown hand with strong, long fingers.

“Bertie,” she said, “you didn't make a sound.”

“Practice,” said Bertie. “Let's go see our village.”

“No! Wait!” Emma said, grabbing Bertie's hand. “I have to tell you something.”

Bertie sat down on the step below. Emma looked at her long golden braid bound by a rubber band, its tasselled end like a burst of yellow milkweed.

“We could take a swim,” Bertie suggested. “The water doesn't look so great. When is your mother coming to get you?”

“Bertie, there is no village—it's gone—everything is gone,” Emma said, speaking so quickly, her words ran together.

Bertie turned. She stared at Emma, her eyes narrowing. Without a word, she jumped up and ran to the place where the village had been. Emma sat still, watching her.

Bertie crouched. She reached across the sand and picked something up, looked at it, tossed it away. She stood up and kicked the sand, then raised her arms straight up in the air as though she were about to take a dive. She walked back slowly to Emma, her head down.

“That was no dog,” she said.

“No,” Emma said.

“There are a couple of kids down the beach who could have done it. They're always tearing up everything.”

Emma drew a deep breath. “No. It wasn't them,” she said. “It was
her
.”

Bertie's eyebrows lifted. “Lady Bonkers?” she breathed.

Emma nodded.

“But why?” cried Bertie.

“I don't know. Maybe because my uncle said it was so wonderful.” He had praised it too much, she thought to herself, but how could it have been just that? “I don't know,” she repeated.

Emma got up and the two of them walked to the water's edge.

“I don't feel like swimming,” Bertie said. “I don't feel like anything.”

“I wish it had been a dog,” said Emma.

They sat down. Bertie flipped pebbles into the water. They didn't speak for a while.

“Well, I've got the pictures,” Bertie said at last. “If they turn out okay. At least we'll know the village was really there. Why did she smash up the deer?”

Emma shook her head. It was a tangle of dead old roots. She couldn't pull them apart. After that, neither of them mentioned the village directly again, although Emma was sure Bertie was thinking about it just as she was. Instead, they spoke about September and meeting each other back in the city.

Gradually, as they talked about the things they would do together in the far-off autumn, Emma began to feel a kind of hope. She recalled a line from a poem by Emily Dickinson her father had read her. “Hope is the thing with feathers,” he had read. She had liked that, not really knowing what it meant. Despite everything, she was beginning to feel rather … feathery. The sky was clearing. As the sun emerged, the bay lost its thick look and flashed like small swords at play.

“I loved all those days we had,” Bertie said.

“So did I,” said Emma with feeling.

“Oh—you don't have to feel so sad,” Bertie said. “I've got an uncle who was a shoplifter when he was around fourteen. Well—he didn't pinch big stuff.” Suddenly Bertie laughed. “Granny always made him take the stuff back when she found out. The last thing he ever stole, Granny told me, was a big kangaroo doll in a frilly pink dress. The store guard spotted its huge orange feet sticking flat out of my uncle's jacket. My uncle claimed he thought he had picked up his gloves.”

“Did he ever get arrested?” Emma asked solemnly.

Bertie grabbed her shoulders and shook her back and forth. “Come on,” she demanded, “laugh a little. No, he went to a shrink for a while. Now he's got four kids and he won't let them go to a movie alone. Granny says there's one in every family.”

But it wasn't the same, Emma thought.

“I have to go,” she said. She smiled at Bertie, who took her hand and pressed it between her own hands.

“I'll see you,” Bertie said.

“See you …” replied Emma.

Emma stood for several minutes on the porch. She hated the thought of finding Uncle Crispin smiling and chatting as if nothing had happened, and Aunt Bea drinking tea. She hated Aunt Bea.

She heard no sound from inside. She walked softly into the foyer, closing the door carefully behind her as she had done that first day.

When she went into the dining room, she saw Uncle Crispin in the kitchen, standing in front of the stove looking down at the burners. Nothing was cooking. He turned and looked at her. “Hello, Emma,” he said pensively. As if he'd read her mind, he added, “Bea won't be down this morning. She's not feeling well. She said to say good-bye to you.”

Though he spoke quietly, Emma felt as though an iron door had been closed and bolted. She would never know what had gone on in their bedroom when Uncle Crispin returned, without the tea, with the news of Emma's discovery. “Good-bye,” that was to be all.

She guessed what would happen when her mother arrived. She would thank Uncle Crispin for taking care of her; she would ask politely after Aunt Bea. Her mother would be happy not to have to see her. What would it be like? To be a person people were happy not to see?

Suddenly Emma knew that Uncle Crispin would be glad to see her go—not because he didn't like her; she was pretty sure he did—but because he had his wife to take care of. They were all right, the two of them, as long as they were alone. When someone came, Bertie's grandmother, or Emma herself, or anybody at all, it was like ripping open the nest of two creatures in hibernation.

She remembered the hot coal Uncle Crispin had talked about. Was he safe from the heat of it? Burnt to a Crispin, she said to herself, thinking he would have liked that joke—at least, part of him would.

She would have been happy now except for that lump of hatred that had lodged in her throat—something she couldn't swallow. Her father had come through the operation; she was going home at any minute.

It happened as she had imagined it would except for one thing. While her mother was putting her things in the back seat of the rented car, Uncle Crispin bent down and said softly in her ear, “I can't say how sorry I am about your sweet village.” She couldn't say how sorry she was either. She had not thought of the village as “sweet.” She didn't like that description of it; it seemed to make the village less than she knew it to be.

She shook his hand. He was not a person you could throw your arms around and hug. She said thanks for everything—she meant that—and good-bye. And it was over.

Her mother gripped the steering wheel as they drove out from the sandy road, over a bump, to the main road.

“How was it—in a word?” she asked Emma, turning to give her a quick smile.

“Long,” replied Emma.

“For me, too,” said her mother.

When she had embraced Emma, Emma had felt her rib cage, the sharp bones of her wrists. She had lost weight and she was very pale.

“I'm so relieved to get away from hospital smells,” she said. “Walking by those rooms every morning, seeing patients sitting up, looking stunned and weak and scared.”

Emma knew her mother was telling her something she wouldn't have told her father. “Daddy's in good shape,” she went on. “Although getting completely well takes time. After you've been really sick, you have to think about doing the right thing all the time. It changes life.” She sighed. “I missed you so much. Tell me how it was. What did you do every day? Was it hard with Aunt Bea?”

“Like Daddy said,” replied Emma.

“You mean—a terror?” her mother asked.

Emma didn't reply. She had suddenly recalled Aunt Bea crying out that morning that her heart was broken.

“Emma?” her mother questioned. “Well—all those days. I guess a lot happened, too much to tell all at once. I can't help being curious about Bea. I'm sorry she and Daddy aren't close. I always wanted a brother or a sister. But, of course, she was nearly twenty when he was born. It might have been tough even if she wasn't always so—” she hesitated, searching for the right word—“so unhappy. Not that I really know her.… I've only seen her a few times over the years.”

“But you knew Daddy's mother?”

“Yes, she was a merry, generous woman. Bea made her very glum though, Daddy told me. He said it was as if Bea carried a sign whenever she saw his mother, like someone on strike, saying:
You are an interloper.
And she never once put that sign down.”

“I met a girl,” Emma said, not wanting to think about Aunt Bea for a while. She told her mother how she and Bertie had spent every day on the beach, collecting shells, finding their pictures in the guide to seashore life. She couldn't bring herself to speak of the village yet. To even mention it was to see the torn starfish, the ruined houses, the crushed deer in the yellow circle of the flashlight.

“There are oatmeal cookies in the glove compartment,” her mother said.