The Village by the Sea (6 page)

A bypass was a little road off a main one. As she visualized such a road, it changed into a country lane she and her father and mother had walked along one early evening in upstate New York. She could see herself on the lane, carrying a musty bird's nest her father had just plucked from a bramble bush and handed to her.

A main road to her father's heart was blocked. Now there would be a lane, a bypass. She shivered and got up and quickly dressed. She had paused at the foot of the staircase, drawn a deep breath and braced herself for greeting Aunt Bea. When she discovered only Uncle Crispin in the dining room, she realized by the relief she felt how much she had dreaded seeing her aunt.

“Please, what time is it?” she asked him now. She could hear bacon frying and see Uncle Crispin's back as he bent over the stove.

“Eight-forty exactly,” he replied.

Emma looked down at the bread and butter on her plate. To take one bite of it would be like swallowing a whole loaf.

Uncle Crispin was suddenly beside her, pulling a chair close to hers and sitting down. He took a table knife and cut the bread into little pieces.

“Try eating it that way,” he said in a kindly voice. The worry on his face was gone; it showed only concern for her.

“Mom's going to telephone me,” Emma said breathlessly.

“She certainly will,” he said. “The operation is not likely to take very long. You can go down to the beach after you eat. I'll call you the second the telephone rings.”

She didn't think she could do that—leave the house before she had heard her mother's voice.

They both looked up at a shuffling noise in the living room. Aunt Bea appeared on the dining room threshold. Her hair stood up all over her head like milkweed in a wind. She was wearing one of the cotton robes Emma had seen in the bathroom. It was printed with tiny faded pink rabbits. Her feet were bare.

“Crispin. One would like the room to be darker. Can you draw the shades?”

“Good morning, Aunt Bea,” Emma said.

“Tea,” Aunt Bea said.

Perhaps Aunt Bea is drunk on tea, Emma thought. As she slumped into a chair, Emma realized she had just seen her aunt standing up for the first time. She was much taller than she would have guessed. It wasn't that she looked small when she was sitting down—it was that she seemed so shapeless. Uncle Crispin had drawn the shades and set the kettle to boil on the stove. Aunt Bea's eyes were closed; her hands clutched the robe, but one finger tapped against her ribcage as though something about her always had to be moving.

Recalling the voices in the middle of the night, Aunt Bea's awful wail, Uncle Crispin's angry protests, Emma looked for a sign of what had happened.

She ate two bits of bread. Uncle Crispin poured hot water into the teapot and sat down to eat his bacon.

“How cheerfully you poison yourself!” Aunt Bea exclaimed, her huge eyes open now and staring at her husband. Uncle Crispin didn't look up. He said nothing, but he certainly didn't look cheerful. Perhaps his silence was the sign, Emma thought.

“I'll go upstairs and make my bed,” Emma said.

“I should think so,” remarked Aunt Bea. “It's the maid's decade off. Who else would make it?”

“Bea!” protested Uncle Crispin.

Aunt Bea's fingers tightened on her robe.

“I'm sure Emma doesn't expect anyone to make her bed,” he said smoothly.

Aunt Bea had been sitting rigidly, her head held high as though she were posing for a photograph. Now she sank down into her chair, looking at Emma through half-closed eyes. “Oh … I don't care! What do I care about bed-making.…” She giggled suddenly. “Poor Crispin. You're the only one who worries about such things in this house.
We
don't—do we Emma?”

Being near Aunt Bea was like being surrounded by a cloud of gnats. She was smiling and Emma could see the glint of her chalk-white, rather long teeth. Slowly, she pointed a finger at Emma, reaching out as though to poke her.

“A watched phone never rings,” she said.

“I think I'll go read,” Emma said.

“Don't tell me you're one of those children who reads all the time!” shrieked her aunt.

“Bea! What on earth are you saying!” cried Uncle Crispin.

“I say what I think—unlike other people,” Aunt Bea said sulkily, and grabbed up her cup of tea.

Emma escaped into the living room. It was better yesterday when Uncle Crispin had been hearty and cheerful with her aunt—even though he had sounded a little fake.

She walked to the long table and touched the violin case. She wanted to look inside it. It might be one like her father's. He had taught her to name all the parts of a violin before she could read.

“Here. Let me show you,” Uncle Crispin said, opening the cover. He had come so silently to her side, she hadn't heard his footsteps. Maybe he, too, wanted to get away from the dining room.

“It looks just like Daddy's,” she said. The instrument was as beautiful as a bird in flight. When her father played, the hair-thin strings of the bow often broke. He would replace them, completely absorbed in what he was doing, his fingers so quick and practiced as he tightened a peg screw.

“Purfling,” she said as she touched the border.

“That's right. Clever girl,” Uncle Crispin said, and picking up the violin and placing it under his chin, he played a cadenza.

There was a loud groan from the dining room.

Uncle Crispin's face went blank. He replaced the violin in its worn blue velvet bed. “Come out on the porch,” he said. “The day will lift your spirit.”

He pushed aside a tattered beige curtain revealing a narrow door she hadn't known was there. It would be a way of getting out without having to go through the dining room, she thought, a way of avoiding Aunt Bea.

A cool wind, scented with pine and roses, touched her skin. “If you read out here, you will be able to hear the telephone yourself,” Uncle Crispin said. “It was thoughtless of me to suggest you go to the beach.”

Uncle Crispin was making her feel uneasy, too. “It's okay,” she said as she usually did when she didn't understand what some grown-up person was saying to her.

“No one ever uses these sweet old rocking chairs,” he said. “It's a pity.”

Aunt Bea is already off her rocker, Emma thought to herself.

“I'll read here,” she said to Uncle Crispin. Her spirit might lift just a little if she could be alone for a while. He was looking at her worriedly. It was hard to reassure grown-ups when you weren't certain yourself what you were feeling and thinking—when thoughts dissolved before you could name them.

“I'm fine,” she said. “Really.”

“Crispin!” Aunt Bea called from the dining room. He gave Emma a quick smile and went back into the house.

She sat down for a moment in one of the chairs, imagining all six of them filled with identical Aunt Beas, rocking away the long day, cackling about the horribleness of everybody in the world except themselves and that painter, Monet, until they tipped their chairs right off the edge of the porch.

She jumped up and ran down the steps. There wasn't a book in the world that would interest her this morning.

Her father would be sleeping now—the false sleep of hospital operating rooms which she remembered from the time her tonsils were taken out. It had been like sinking into something soft and furry and thick and damp.

White clouds tumbled across the blue dome of the sky as though the wind were a great broom sweeping them all west forever. The water of the bay curled, broke into whitecaps. The islands were so distinct, Emma could see a line of yellow beach around each one of them. Down the rickety stairs was another beach, shadowed by the cliff at this hour of the morning. She leaned outward, holding to the stair post which was warm and splintery in her hand. She couldn't see a living thing below, not even a shorebird scissoring along the water's edge.

Yesterday morning her father had given her a small paperback guide to seashore life, and she had looked through it while she was waiting for Uncle Crispin to pick her up. She knew the beach was not empty, that it was teeming with tiny living creatures, some as soft as custard, others hard as stone, hidden in shells and sand and seaweed.

Yesterday morning! It seemed a week ago.

How lonely it looked down there! She imagined herself standing motionless on the sand, alone. She imagined a ring of stones around her feet, and each stone an hour that had to be spent before she walked through her own front door. “Oh!” she cried out softly, and turned back to the house.

She could hear voices from the television set. The roses on the trellis seemed to flow in the wind as though they rode a calm tide. Beneath the overhang of the porch, a small rabbit stood, its nose twitching, its paws held up. She felt terribly sleepy as if it were past midnight—a midnight, with a brilliant sun burning in the dark. She sat on the grass, then lay down, and sleep broke over her like a wave.

“Emma, Emma. Wake up. Your mother is on the phone.” It was Uncle Crispin, shaking her shoulder, calling her name.

She rose and took the steps two at a time. As she raced to the phone, she saw Aunt Bea, leaning forward, smiling, toward the television set. She heard Uncle Crispin say, “Turn it off, Bea!”

Emma pressed the receiver against her cheek.

“Emma, dear. Daddy is in the recovery room. He's still pretty knocked out. I can talk only a minute—I want to be there when he comes out of the anesthesia. The operation went well. All the news is good.”

“When will he wake up?” Emma asked.

“Oh—very soon. Then he goes to a special place called Intensive Care. And if everything goes right, he can come home in a week.”

“Oh, Mom …” Emma said.

“I know, Em. I know how you feel,” her mother said. “But I must go. I'll call tonight.” Then she was gone. Emma put the phone down and turned. Her uncle and aunt were staring at her.

“He's all right,” she said. Her heart was thumping loudly the way it did when she was frightened. Aunt Bea leaned forward and turned up the volume on the television.

“It's the best news in the world,” Uncle Crispin said.

Aunt Bea looked back at Emma. “He'll like staying in bed for a while,” she said. “My brother is very lazy.”

“Oh, Bea …” muttered Uncle Crispin.

“He isn't,” cried Emma.

Aunt Bea began to work on her fingers, grinning to herself. “Oh yes he is!” she said. “I know him better than you do.”

An announcer's voice sounded very loud in the living room as he said, “We will now return to the hearings.”

Aunt Bea stopped scratching her fingers. Her grin had broadened. She was staring at the set as though it were a delicious meal set before her. She looked up at Emma briefly. “Well, it's a good thing the doctors did something right for a change.”

That was the most she was going to say, Emma felt sure. Uncle Crispin was speaking to her in a low voice, though he needn't have bothered, for Aunt Bea's rapt attention was bent on a man in a soldier's uniform whose face filled the screen. “She does care about your father,” he was saying. “But you know that people express their feelings in different ways.”

She could have told me she was glad, Emma thought to herself. Maybe she
wasn't
glad. Maybe she didn't know how to be glad for another person's good fortune or sad for their troubles.

“I think I'll take a walk,” Emma said.

“Good!” said Uncle Crispin. “I'll make lunch and call you when it's ready.”

“I'm trying to listen to these important hearings,” Aunt Bea said irritably. “Give me a break!”

“Where do you get those awful expressions, Bea?” Uncle Crispin snapped.

Emma went out to the porch. The day was hers now. She walked into a small pine grove where the scent of resin pricked her nostrils. She leaned against a tree trunk, its scratchy bark against her forehead. Suddenly, to her surprise, she felt tears on her cheeks. She cried a few minutes, her arms around the tree as though it were a beloved person, thinking how odd it was that all those tears had been there inside of her, stored up like rain in a barrel.

6

Bertie

After lunch, Uncle Crispin suggested they celebrate the happy outcome of the operation with a trip to Montauk.

“You'd like that, Emma, wouldn't you?” he asked her.

What would happen if the three of them were cooped up in a car together? wondered Emma. It was hard enough in this big house.

“How far is it?” asked Aunt Bea without enthusiasm. She was sitting at the dining room table, which was strewn with sheets of cream-colored writing paper, envelopes of various sizes, the silver pen and, of course, the teapot and a cup and saucer.

“You know how far it is, Bea,” he said patiently. “We've made that drive often enough.”

“I have letters to write today,” Aunt Bea declared.

“You could write them when we return,” replied Uncle Crispin.

“Oh, yes!” cried Aunt Bea indignantly. “After you get lost, and after we spend hours in traffic jams because of all the greedy summer people who come out here in herds only to shop in those new stores that have ruined our villages. And besides, I'll miss the afternoon hearings.”

“I thought you'd like to get out of the house for a bit,” Uncle Crispin said. “You haven't been anywhere for days and days.”

There wasn't any patience in his voice now.

“I have friends who are dying to hear from me,” Aunt Bea said sulkily.

“I'm sure they can wait a few more hours,” he said.

Aunt Bea looked at him suspiciously. “I hope you're not being sarcastic, Crispin,” she said.

It was so hard for Emma to write letters. I did this—I did that. But Aunt Bea didn't do anything. She could write: I had eighty cups of tea today. A dreadful young person has come to stay with us, and Crispin must cook and slave for her. What kind of friends would she have? Would she write them at the same time she was watching television?