The Village by the Sea (5 page)

“You don't sound okay,” her mother said.

Uncle Crispin had gone back to the dining room. Emma pressed the phone against her mouth. “Is it true what Aunt Bea said?” she said, almost whispering. “That when you're young, heart trouble is more serious?”

“The same old Bea,” her mother said grimly. “Listen, Emma. Heart trouble is always serious. But everything is looking hopeful for your father. I want you to be hopeful, too.” She was speaking slowly, trying to be patient. Emma longed for the weight of her mother's arm around her shoulders, the way she would run one finger across her forehead and around her face as though she were tracing it.

“I'll be hopeful,” Emma said, wondering how you could feel hope when fear, like a thick fog, hid everything but itself. “Are you going to call me tomorrow?” she asked.

“Of course I am,” her mother said. “I'm going to call you all the time.” Emma pressed the receiver closer to her ear. “But Uncle Crispin—he is nice, isn't he?” her mother said. “A patient, kind person.”

“Yes … he's cooking our supper right now,” Emma answered.

“I have to go back to Daddy, Emma.”

Emma thought she could actually hear the miles between them as though each one of them was a small bell, sixty-five of them all striking, the sounds growing ever fainter. Her mother was only half there on the other end of the wire; the rest of her was walking back down the hospital corridor to her father.

“When will you call?” asked Emma.

“As soon as I can,” said her mother. Then the phone went silent; her mother was entirely gone.

She went to the window that looked out on the bay. The water was as red as blood in the sunset. The far islands bloomed like blood-red roses. She turned away to the dining room. Aunt Bea was playing a hand of solitaire. Her fingers tapped the back of each card before she put it down. Tap, tap, tap, her fingers clicked like fast heartbeats.

“Supper,” announced Uncle Crispin. Emma went in. The table reminded her of something she'd read in a story long ago. There were balls of wool, playing cards laid out for solitaire, the brown teapot, empty cups, the newspaper with the filled-in crossword puzzle, Aunt Bea's silver pen, and three plates and flatware. She remembered. It was a bit like the Mad Hatter's tea party in
Alice in Wonderland.
Aunt Bea looked as sleepy as the dormouse but her hands were moving, touching the plate in front of her, the pen, the wool, with restless fingers.

The roast chicken and baked yams were good. Uncle Crispin told Emma about one of his students, an elderly woman whose arthritis had nearly disappeared because of the exertion of playing the violin.

“What the violin requires is talent,” Aunt Bea interrupted shrilly.

“It needs physical strength, too,” Uncle Crispin said. For a little while, Aunt Bea ate and was silent. Still, Emma found herself waiting as though for a loud alarm clock to ring. She wasn't as startled as she might have been, earlier in the day, when Aunt Bea exclaimed loudly and scornfully, “Canned peas!”

“At least, they're French canned peas,” Uncle Crispin observed with a smile.

“At least …” Aunt Bea mocked. But she smiled, too.

When the saucers of chocolate ice cream were set down on the table, Aunt Bea looked at Emma. “Have you seen the Connecticut estate?” she asked.

Emma looked at her blankly.

“The house my father built for your grandmother?” she asked more loudly, as though Emma were deaf.

Emma shook her head. “They both died before I was born,” she said.

“Well, of course, I knew that,” Aunt Bea declared. “You're grandmother
made
him build that place—using my poor, dead mother's wealth. Everybody knew that! I admit it was a beautiful house. My father had style and your grandmother had push. I was at Smith College then. They never invited me—not once—to visit there.”

“That isn't quite true, Bea,” Uncle Crispin reproached her. “You've often told me about spending Christmases there.”

“Those are fairy tales,” Aunt Bea said self-righteously. “I was just a lonely girl. Can you blame me for making up stories? It's too pathetic! I thought Philip might have taken you, Emma, to see the place where he grew up. God knows what sort of people own it now. I'm sure it's worth a fortune.” She swallowed a spoonful of ice cream and scraped the saucer fiercely. “All I inherited was this nightmare of a cabin.”

“This is a fine house,” Uncle Crispin disagreed. “We're lucky to have it, and the bay and the countryside are splendid.”

“It's a nightmare,” Aunt Bea said insistently, “and the countryside is nothing but a tired suburb.”

Emma helped to clear the table. Aunt Bea grabbed up her cards and spread them out in another hand of solitaire, slapping the table with them.

In the kitchen, Uncle Crispin washed and Emma dried. She heard the scrape of chair legs against the floor. A moment later, television voices murmured from the living room.

Emma had never heard of any Connecticut estate. Those grandparents had always seemed far away from her, buried in time, like people she might read about in a history book. The way Aunt Bea had spoken made her feel she was to blame for some mysterious trouble that had occurred years before she was born.

“You're a helpful girl,” commented Uncle Crispin.

She wanted to ask him about that trouble. Aunt Bea had been smoldering so, banging her plate, slapping down the cards. “I don't think Mom and Daddy have a lot of money,” she said. “I never heard about the estate.”

Uncle Crispin sighed. “It's all ancient history,” he said. “I think the place was sold for taxes years ago. I know your father had to work hard to stay in music school. I'm afraid your Aunt Bea broods about the past too much.”

Emma leaned against the counter, watching him scour out the sink. She felt a hard lump in he jeans' pocket. She reached in and took out the plastic deer.

“Look what I found in the bathroom,” she said, holding it up to him. “It's only plastic but it's pretty, isn't it?”

Uncle Crispin dropped the sponge he had been using and snatched the deer from her hand to look at it closely.

“Where was it?” he demanded. He stared at the deer as though it were a biting insect.

“Under the sink, in a dust ball,” she answered uneasily.

He dropped it in his shirt pocket. Without another word, he put away the scouring powder and sponge.

Emma went to the living room and stood uncertainly for a moment next to the fireplace.

Aunt Bea patted a cushion on the little sofa. “Come sit with me and watch this movie,” she said, smiling at Emma. “It's a good one. I've seen it three times. You see that little boy? You can tell he's lower class by his cheap suit. Look at that ridiculous suit! But he's
adorable,
isn't he? And he's going to get into all kinds of trouble, carrying messages between that man and woman who are in love.”

Emma, astonished by this outburst, sat down. Aunt Bea suddenly put her arm around her and giggled. “We'll be all cozy here and watch together, shall we? Now … ssh!”

Uncle Crispin came into the room and went to the long table where he sat down and began to look through a sheaf of music. He sat stiffly as though he were balancing an object on his head. When Aunt Bea withdrew her arm, Emma was relieved. It had begun to feel like a log on her back.

“Don't you want to see the wonderful English countryside in the movie, Crispin?” Aunt Bea called out gaily.

“I have seen it,” Uncle Crispin replied curtly.

Emma glanced at her aunt, who had made a little moaning sound like a puppy. She was staring at her husband's stiff back, looking as baffled as Emma felt. She doesn't get her way all the time, Emma thought to herself.

She turned her attention to the movie. The little boy who carried messages for the man and woman who loved each other didn't understand what was going on between them, any more than Emma understood why Uncle Crispin had grown so distant since he had taken the deer from her hands, or why Aunt Bea was acting so fondly toward her.

“Don't you hate commercial ads?” Aunt Bea asked during a break in the movie. “Everybody seems so stupid—talking in those horribly cheery voices!”

Emma hadn't given much thought to the people who tried to sell you things during commercials. You waited until they were over. But her aunt's friendliness encouraged her to ask a question. “You said there was a girl next door? The one who's so good at watercolors? Is she here yet?”

“Oh—that girl. The grandmother is an old busybody; she used to drop in, uninvited, but I put a stop to that. What is that girl's name, Crispin? Ontario? Quebec?”

“Alberta,” stated Uncle Crispin, not turning around.

“Why, yes,” said Aunt Bea. “Imagine naming a child after a Canadian province! She'll be someone for you to play with. Of course, some children play wonderfully by themselves. I always did. But then I was imaginative.” She gave Emma a sunny smile as though she'd complimented her.

Two weeks isn't long enough to get used to such a person, Emma thought.

“I think I'll go to bed now,” Emma said.

“But the movie isn't nearly over—don't you want to watch it with me?” Aunt Bea asked her plaintively.

“I'm pretty tired,” Emma said. She was never too tired at home to stay up on those special occasions when Daddy would say, Oh, let her stay up just this time, even when she could hardly keep her eyes open.

“Tired!” exclaimed Aunt Bea. “A young girl like you! How truly boring!” She turned from Emma and leaned forward intently, her eyes on the television screen.

“Of course you must be tired, Emma,” Uncle Crispin said. His voice was gentle and light again, not the way it had been in the kitchen when he questioned her about the deer. Emma looked at her aunt. “Good night,” she said softly. There was no reply.

At the foot of the stairs, Uncle Crispin asked, “Do you think you have enough blankets? It can be quite chilly even at this time of year.”

“I don't need any more,” Emma answered, wanting only to be alone in her room.

“Good night, my dear,” he said.

As soon as Emma closed her door, she turned on the small lamp on the bedside table and went quickly to the calendar she had drawn. She took a red crayon and drew a thick
X
in the first box. The first day was over.

She woke up and for a moment had no idea of where she was. The full yellow moon looked pasted to the pane like a little kid's drawing on a school window. She heard voices. For a while she lay there listening to the distant sounds of them. They grew louder. Emma got up and opened her door a crack.

“I didn't,” Aunt Bea was saying over and over again.

“Where did you hide the brandy bottle?” Uncle Crispin cried. “Where did you hide it, Bea! Don't you think I know where that plastic deer comes from? Didn't I find those deer all over the house where you used to drop them on the floor after you'd yanked them from the bottles?”

“It's an old one.” Aunt Bea's voice rose to a wail. “I swear it. You know I've stopped drinking, Crispin.”

“Have you, Bea? Have you? I want to believe it.”

“You know how I save everything,” her aunt went on in a calmer way. “You know I've stopped all that.”

There was a long pause. Then Uncle Crispin said, “I do want to believe that. But you act as if you're still drinking. As if in your mind—all right, then, now hush.”

“If you don't believe me, who will?” Aunt Bea asked sadly.

Their voices dropped to a murmur. Then there was utter silence. Emma crept back into her bed, pulling the cover over her head. “Daddy,” she whispered into the dark.

5

The Lonely Beach

“I can offer you coffee, plover eggs, and marmalade,” Uncle Crispin said. “I also have in my larder whistling cereals, bacon with nitrates which are not supposed to be good for you, hens' eggs, and cheese. Perhaps you'd like an orange and an omelet?”

“Could I have a glass of milk and bread and butter?” Emma asked.

“Of course. I don't really have plover eggs. I was thinking about English breakfasts this morning. They start you off into the day like an overloaded donkey. Which reminds me—” he paused to pour a glass of milk and set it before her on the table—“of the time years ago Bea and I started out on a picnic. Bea and I in a very small rowboat—all that was left of her father's fleet of boats—with several lobsters, a huge picnic hamper, blankets and so forth. We were going to one of those little islands in the bay. We hadn't gone thirty feet from shore when the rowboat began to sink, and the lobsters floated out of the sack they were in and swam away.”

He buttered a slice of bread, held up a jar of lemon marmalade and looked at her questioningly. She shook her head, no, wondering if Aunt Bea permitted the blackberry jam to be eaten only in her presence.

The worried expression on Uncle Crispin's face didn't match the cheer in his voice. Was he thinking about a hidden bottle of brandy? Had he thrown away the plastic deer? His voice often had a pattering effect like a light rain falling on a roof. Sometimes the patter made Emma restless.

“Now and then your Aunt Bea keeps to her room in the morning,” he said, not looking at Emma. “She doesn't always sleep well.”

Emma had seen people who were drunk on the streets, and once at home. A neighbor in her apartment house had come weeping to the door. He'd lost his key, he mumbled. Her father had supported him with one arm and found the key in a pocket of the man's jacket. Aunt Bea wasn't like the weeping man or the staggering people on the street. But there was something lopsided about her as though she'd lost her balance a long time ago and couldn't get it back. Emma wished she hadn't found the deer. It had been in her mind when she awoke that morning. It was quiet in her room. She heard a gull cry. She had thought of her father who, by that time, must be in an operating room.