Strawberries in the Sea (31 page)

“I'll bet you could,” Rosa said. She imagined the tough little boy, like pictures she'd seen of urchins on Italian streets. Velvet-eyed, twiggy arms and legs, cigarette hidden in a cupped, small-boy hand; wits sharp and feral.

“Hell, I was going on twelve, I could read anything, I could write better than Mick, I could do arithmetic. I considered I was educated enough. Besides, I was going to be a fisherman. Dammit, I
was
a fisherman. A haker, anyway. I figger I've baited about a thousand miles of trawl in my lifetime.”

They laughed together. In the middle of it she remembered Jamie. He rose up on one elbow and leaned toward her, saying, “What's the matter?”

She started to say
nothing
but gave it up for a shake of the head, turning away from the bright inquisitive eyes. “You're thinking about
him
, aren't you?” he accused her. “I'm thinking about him too. That's why I talk so much. Look, you always so alone up here? Don't anybody neighbor? It's like you're miles from everything.”

“Isn't that what you want? Yes, they neighbor. Sometimes the kids come. But they're mostly all related to
him
.” She couldn't say the name. She couldn't even think it, she saw only pictures, and that was worse. “So nobody's thinking much of me today, and I can't blame them. Let's just hope everybody stays away till your friend Danny's been and got you.”

They wouldn't, though; somebody would be around collecting for flowers. For the first time she thought of the cemetery where she had walked with Edwin. The deaths had all been so long ago, it had been a pretty, peaceful place. But no more. Not with Jamie in it. She got up quickly.

“You'd better stay there,” she managed to say, and took the tray and went downstairs. She left the tray by the sink and went out. A boat was coming in fast, then the engine stopped. A Bennett coming home from the mainland, maybe. She bowed her face into her hands.

So she'd had Con and lost him; so what? At least there'd been the first of it, and never mind what they said, she could believe in his early good intentions if she wanted to; it was her own affair. Maybe, with a good childhood like hers, she'd had a little trouble coming to her, it was like saying you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die. But God alone knew the reason for giving some babies trouble as soon as they're born. Like that one upstairs. Abused as far back as he could remember, surviving in spite of it, the way the rats in the alley survived. Why bring God into it? “God is dead,” Edwin wrote to her once, “if there ever was a God, which I doubt.”

He's right, she thought fiercely. I never did want to believe in God who saw the sparrow fall but didn't do anything to save it.

H
e was both restless and reckless, for all his fear. When she went back into the house she could hear him moving around upstairs, and she didn't want him coming down. She took up an armful of paperbacks and a lamp. “Stay,” he said eagerly, but she refused.

She longed to get away from the house just for a walk to the back shore, but she went only as far as the well, after dark, for two buckets of fresh water. After that she made up her own bed, and then went in to check on his lamp. He had fallen asleep. He reminded her of Con who, when something was bothering him, slept in the same tormented way, never still a moment, arms and legs flung about in spasmodic gestures.

“No, no,” he muttered, then on a rising note, “
Look out!
Grab him!” He sat up straight in bed, staring at her in horror; her heart beat hard, it took her a moment to realize he didn't see her. He fell back on the pillows and slept so quietly that for a moment she wondered if he were dead, until she heard his breathing.

She took the lamp to her own room, so he couldn't knock it over in the next spasm, and undressed and went to bed. The sheets felt good to her body. She felt as if she'd been beaten, even her skin was sore. Her arms were bruised from the maniacal strength of his fingers last night. She wondered achingly how Nils and Joanna were resting tonight, and Linnie. Her eyes filled. She sighed heavily and longed for sleep. For a week of sleep.

As a child she had lain in bed listening to crickets. She made herself listen now, and they comforted her by the very sameness of the sound.

Once she woke in the night and heard him sobbing again. She sat up, hugging her knees, wondering if this time she should wake him, or just let it go on and wear itself out. When it seemed to subside she slept again, thankfully.

She woke suddenly because someone's hand was feeling delicately for her face in the dark. She was paralyzed with fear; he's going to strangle me, she thought. He really is a maniac.

“Rosa,” he whispered hoarsely. “I'm afraid to sleep. I keep dreaming about it. You stopped it last night. Let me in, please.”

He was already in, burrowing and pressing, whispering, “You're so warm. Put your arms around me, please.” His flesh was very cold.

“No, no,” she protested. “I'll make you something hot. I'll get you some flannel pajamas.” But the words were so much babble, and she know it. While she was saying them she was taking his icy body in her arms. She wrapped him in both arms and legs. He kept whispering, “That's good. You're so warm. Hold me tight. Keep it away. I keep dreaming I'm the one who's drowning and it's so cold . . . so cold.
He
shoves me down under. He's dead, and his eyes are like some blue glass aggies I once had. He's pushing me under.” He shuddered violently and she embraced him harder. “Christ, the way his hands feel.”

“Don't think about it,” she said. You could tell his hair was black. Con's hair felt red even in the dark.

They lay tightly entwined for a time. He was quiet, and she heard the crickets again. There was a familiarity about this contact and the drugged comfort of it. When she knew what was happening she was not surprised. He began gently to kiss her cheek and neck. With his lips at the hollow of her throat he began to pull at her pajamas, and she thought with a great burst of joy,
Why not?

That night he didn't dream again of dead men's hands trying to drown him; at least not that she knew of, her own sleep was so profound. She woke toward daylight, turning blindly toward a cooling and empty place, and thought Con had gotten up early to go haul. Then Quint came into the room, naked as he'd left her bed. “Where've you been?” she asked drowsily.

“Out back.”

“ Like
that?
”

He laughed. “Who'd see me? Besides, a quick jog in the cool dew sets a guy up. As you can see.” He dived into the bed again and laid his body against hers. “Ah, feel that. You're like satin, you know? What am I like?” He rose up on one elbow to look down at her.

“I can't tell you, you're too vain already.”

“Just for that, I'll torture the truth out of you. Hey, do you have to go?”

“I never have to go,” said Rosa grandly.

“Then you're the kind of woman I've always wanted. One that doesn't have to go pee every five minutes.” He gathered her into his arms, and made love to her again, not as desperately as last night, but with delight and mischief.

Afterwards he said in a slow, wondering way, “I feel safe with you. That sound crazy? Saying that about somebody you're making love to? But I do. It's not only the way you hauled me ashore that night and practically lugged me through the woods and into this house, and you keeping me here, feeding me, and—uh—tending out on me, you might call it, but it's the way you
are
. I knew it that night, crazy as I was. As long as I could see you and hang onto you, I felt safe. . . . You know something? I never slept so sound in my life as I slept with you. . . . Like if you were holding me I could dare to let myself go, because nothing could touch me. You wouldn't let it.”

She didn't know what to say. He went on. “I never felt so safe in my life, that I can remember. Because the earliest thing I remember is being so scared I messed and puked, both at once and they rolled me in it.”

She groaned at that, and tried to hold him even closer; like an actual attempt to rescue that child. “But you must have felt safe with Mick,” she said, “except for worrying about the truant officer.”

“Sure,” he said. She felt the vibrations of his laughter against her throat and under her hands, rather than heard it. “Except when I got to be thirteen or so, and Mick started chasing me around the place.”

“To
beat
you?”

“Not exactly. Seemed Mick liked pretty boys. But only when he was drunk. He fought hard against it. I'm sure as hell not forgetting that he took me in and hid me. And those first two years haking were all that a kid could ask, a kid who was crazy about salt water and boats, and been knocked around enough to addle his brains. Then when I began getting some size on me, and Mick had those long winter evenings to sit around getting drunk—well, we began a losing battle. Scared hell out of me. I'drun out and stay till I thought he'd gone to sleep. Next day sometimes he didn't even remember, and that was good, because if he did remember and try to apologize it was awful.”

He was silent, his face hidden from her, heavy with the weight of memory.

“I couldn't keep running out in snowstorms or in zero cold, there wasn't anybody near I could go sit with. We never mixed, anyway, because of the police and the welfare and everything. So I got a padlock and used to lock myself in my room. I had the loft, and he had the downstairs. . . . It was cold as hell up there with the door shut but it was—Well, sometimes hearing him trying to make it up the stairs I'd think, ‘Oh hell, with all he's done for me I ought to . . . well, it wouldn't hurt me any, I mean it's not like being a girl and getting knocked up,' but—” Even now he flinched. “I just couldn't make myself unlock that door. I'd sit there staring at it and shaking and I couldn't make myself do it.”

“No.” She stroked his shoulders. “I'm glad you couldn't. . . . What happened? How long did you stay after that?”

“He fell backward down the stairs one night. What a noise, like a sack of old rocks tumbling down, and what a groan he fetched. It turned my stomach. But I waited, to be sure it wasn't a trick. He was so damn strong and he had no sense in him at all when he was drunk, you'd never know he could be so easy and gentle when he was sober. . . . When I still didn't hear anything after a long while, I snuck down and looked. He'd fetched up against the wood box, and he must've had a hell of a thin skull because it was caved right in.”

“Dead?” she whispered.

“Dead and cooling off. The fire'd gone out. I guess I was in shock. I remember covering him over, and then I went upstairs and locked my door again and crawled into the sack. At least I must have, because that's where I woke up. The window was the first thing I saw, all thick with frost and the sunrise shining through it orangey-gold, and I could see my breath like smoke, and I didn't remember what happened last night. I thought he was already up and out, but there'd be a fire downstairs and the coffee made, and some oatmeal. He was a great one for that, he called it his porridge, and he said growing boys needed plenty of porridge. See, that's how he was when he was sober.”

“He couldn't help the other thing, Quint. He was sick. But he was strong too, if he could fight it when he was sober.”

“Yeah, yeah. . . .” He was dreadfully intent on getting this over with, he couldn't stand interruptions. “I always slept in my clothes those cold nights. So did he. Made us kind of gamy, but what the hell, we weren't moving in the most refined circles, you might say. . . . Anyway, I grabbed my shoes and unlocked my padlock and started down. The cold met me first, and then I saw this—this
thing
down there, all covered up with this filthy old Hudson's Bay blanket. I didn't know what to do. It was like the end of the world. Crazy as he was when he was drunk, he was all the family I had. And where could I run to? It was the dead of winter. I couldn't even figure on living on clams and mussels in some empty cove somewhere. A kid's born a victim, you know that? He doesn't ask to be born, and he'd got nowhere to hide. Nowhere till now,” he muttered, and began kissing her shoulders and breasts.

“Tell me what you did,” she said. “Where did you go?”

“I don't want to talk about it any more. Later, maybe.”

She expanded under his caresses like parched earth under rain. But it was full morning in the room now, and she had to get his letter mailed. Damn his letter. Why should the drought begin again? Oh well, she thought, her fingers on his cheekbones, palms cupping his jaw, nobody will come tomorrow anyway, and maybe there'll be a storm. . . . Let there be a storm, all day and all night, with the trees thrashing and the surf booming in, and nobody stepping outside their doors.

Except for the funeral.

“What's the matter?” he said against her mouth. “Had enough?”

“I have a terrible confession to make.”

“You can't tell me you've been faking because, sweetie, I know better. You are one magnificent lay, and you love it.”

“Of course I do,” she said. “But I'm not a superwoman after all. I have to go.”

“I'm disillusioned,” he said, rolling over. “I'll never trust a woman again.” She sat up and looked down at him, and he reached for her breasts. “What a pair of beauties. No wonder I sleep so good with you. All right, you can go, but you'll have to climb out over me.”

“No funny business,” she warned him, “or I won't answer for the consequences.”

“I never argue with a woman's bladder.”

She slid out across his legs, watching him warily. He pretended to grab and she jumped away, they both burst out laughing. She didn't mind his watching her dress, she felt light and lithe in her motions as she had always felt after love and foolery with Con.