Strawberries in the Sea (36 page)

She could not get out the word
beauty
. She felt her way up to her bed, blinded by both the dark and her tears.

T
he next day there was no overt strain between her and Edwin. He had not gone on drinking last night, and there was a morning freshness about him that made her feel haggard and ugly.

“You look like one of those sexy yachtsmen in the whiskey ads,” she wrote to him across the table. “Getting some girl aboard to ply her with strong drink so you can seduce her.”

“My name's a handicap. Whoever heard of a seducer named Edwin?”

“Change it then, create a new image. What's your middle name? I never knew.” She heard herself with wonder; it was like watching herself walk a tightrope over a canyon, her gloom was so profound.

“Jerome. It's not much better.” Maybe he was walking a tightrope too. After breakfast he went down to the store for pipe tobacco, and when he came back he wrote her an invitation to come out to Sou'west Point with him.

“The surf's building up. We're going to have a gale by nightfall.”

“You go ahead and I'll fix us some lunch and come later.”

“Right now,” he insisted. “We don't need food. Pick up a couple of apples, and that cheese.”

The very thought of hurrying made her sweat. “I feel as if I'd been sick. I've got to take my time.”

He stood looking hard at her, and his lips moved as if he might actually speak, or attempt to. Finally he picked up his watercolor kit and went out. Disturbed by his odd behavior, she almost went after him, then she decided to take at least something to drink, some crackers for the cheese, a few tomatoes. She wouldn't mind staying away from the harbor all day. The more she thought of it the more eager she became.

She packed the thermos and the food in a plastic bucket, and went upstairs to get an extra sweater. From habit she went to her window and looked down at
Sea Star
. A strange boat was tied up at Mark's wharf, and there was a heart-stopping familiarity about her. Of course there can be more than one like that, Rosa told herself witheringly. But she couldn't stop looking.

Voices erupted from below, and she looked down and saw the Cam-pion children coming up from the direction of the store, on their way to the Percy house.

“What's the name of that boat at the wharf?” she called to them.

“
Phyllis
,” Cindy Campion answered. She stood back the better to see up to where Rosa knelt behind the screen. “I think that's a pretty name. It means a green bough. I know what practically every name means. Mine means some Greek goddess.” She preened and said her name lovingly. “Cyn-thia.”

“That's nice,” Rosa said. “Thanks, Cindy.” She started to withdraw, but Johnny Campion called, “Hey, Mrs. Fleming, did you hear about the man hiding in the woods?”

“Yes, I heard. Wasn't that something, though?”

She ran downstairs and picked up the plastic pail. She felt sick to her stomach, yet incongruously she remembered they should have salt for the tomatoes, and she took the salt shaker off the table and unscrewed the cap and filled it. She wanted to run away, yet she knew why she was delaying.

Still, when Con went past the windows she began to tremble. He walked in without knocking, saying, “If I had a hat I'd throw it in. . . . Good God, Rosa, what
happened?
”

“I fell downstairs. It looks worse than it is.” She was loud and brash. “You don't look so good yourself. Married life turning out to be kind of wearing?” Older, she was thinking. A lot older. Tired. Beat. . . . Money? Was he coming to her for
that?
Did he have the nerve? Of course he did. He had the nerve for anything.

“I'm not married,” he said. “Rosie, I couldn't go through with it. When I knew the divorce was over, I was—I was—well, I can't describe how I felt, except it was awful.”

“Yes, it was that,” she agreed. “But for me, the awful part was long before the court part of it. Now that it's over, I'm—” she snapped her fingers. “Like that. Nothing to it. It's like going to the dentist. You come out walking on air.”
I'm not married
. Had he really said that?

He dropped into a chair without taking his eyes off her. “You put up a good front, Rosie. But look at you. Thin”

“I find that a considerable improvement.”

“But when you're off your feed, Rosie, there's something bothering you.”

“It's just the other way around,” she said crossly, “but I couldn't expect you to notice that. What do you want, Con? I've got things to do.” She tucked the shaker in beside the tomatoes.

He came over to the counter, leaning his back against it so she couldn't avoid him. “I want you, Rosie,” he said in a low voice.

Something seemed to shift in her head. It was happening as she had dreamed of it in those first agonizing days, and she could hardly believe what she was hearing. She put her hands swiftly in her pockets before they could give her away.

“Why now?” she asked. “You've had over two months to find it out. More than that, if you go back to before you got her pregnant. You knew when the divorce was coming off. Are you telling me that you didn't know you wanted me back until
now?
”

“Oh, God, Rosie,” he said exhaustedly. “Everything was such a mess those last few weeks. Stuff didn't come, or got lost, the wiring was all bollixed up because we were hurrying to get her launched on schedule. The divorce crept up on me, Rosie, I swear. When I saw it in the paper, my God, I—”

“What about your unborn child? The little feller you got all teary about, who had to have a name? The son I couldn't give you?”

“It's not mine,” he said.

Her mouth open, she stared into his face. He looked back with slightly reddened eyes, his mouth working as if trying for a jaunty grin that wouldn't come.

“Some joke, huh? She almost made it too. If it wasn't for some drunk throwing it at me, I'd be married now. The night I went into that bar was the luckiest night of my life. . . . I mean, after the night I met you.”

“I don't get it,” she said. “Whose child is it?”

“She told me finally. Nearly washed me out the door with hot tears. He's not a fisherman, he's some Limerock white-collar type who keeps his boat at Birch Harbor. He wouldn't break up his home to marry her, so she put the finger on me. After she told me
that
”—the grin finally came, weak but game—“I unshipped oars and rowed out of her life. Oh, Rosie, you don't know the half of it—it's like coming home—”

He reached for her, but she backed away. “What's she going to do now?”

“I don't know and I don't care. It's no skin off my nose.”

“You could have been the father. You thought you were.”

“You mean I should have stuck with her? Or
been
stuck with her?” He laughed. “You've got to be kidding!” He came toward her and she kept out of reach.

“If she'd been sleeping with the two of you, how could she be sure it was him? She was good enough for you to use, 'specially if she'd inherit a third of Adam Crowell's property. You could have accepted that child.”

“With half the coast knowing it wasn't mine? Oh yeah, it had got around, all right. It's the kind of secret you can't keep. . . . This drunk had spilled his guts about it more than once, and he was the guy's cruising chum, so he knew where the body was buried. Hey, that's pretty good, isn't it?” Jauntiness had been attained at last; it took years off him while she watched.

“Ayuh, the prospective bridegroom was the last to know,” he said. “Everybody's been snickering, but I don't care, I'm safe now.”

She walked away from him into the sitting room and he followed. “Rosie,” he said softly, “if anybody laughed at you on account of me, you're even now. But with us back together again, the way we should be, there'll be no more laughing, unless we do it at the rest of the world.”

“Until when?” she asked. “The next time?” She turned on him. “What you want is to save your face, that's it, isn't it? You'll tell how relieved you are, you were only marrying her to do the right thing, but you were having your suspicions and finally you bullied the truth out of her.” By his weak protests she knew this was how he'd planned it, and she thought, At least I've learned to figure them out in advance. I never could, once.

“And as soon as you got the truth, you rushed straight back to the one love of your life, which is what you wanted all the time. Con Fleming's the winner again.” She raised her clasped hands over her head. “The Winner!”

He was pale. “You
have
got hard.”

“No. Up until a few weeks ago I thought I couldn't live without you, Con. It was so awful sometimes, like somebody getting a real case of smallpox from their vaccination. Which means you'll never need another one. It took. I'm not hard, Con, I'm just immune.”

He looked so tired and so woebegone. He had come to her with his wounded pride, sure she would make it well again, and all her instincts were to do so. He searched her face in disbelief, and she turned away abruptly.

“You don't mean that, Rosie,” he said behind her. “You
don't
.”

“Don't I? Look, Con, you want to shut everybody up, because you think they're laughing at you. But I'm willing to bet that even if Phyllis confessed to you that you weren't the baby's father, but you could be sure that nobody else knew it except the man, and he wouldn't tell it— well, you'd still be right there, Sunny Jim, because a third of Adam's property is quite a chunk. But I've got no more than my house,
Sea Star
, and what I stand in.”

“What kind of a man do you think I am?”

“I think you're just the kind of a man you are.”

“I can't believe—Rosie—” He tried to take her around the waist. She pushed him away with a thrust of her elbow.

“Look, Con,” she said, “You've got the boat free and clear, and you're free and clear. So why don't you consider you're pretty well off and go on back? There's a blow coming up the coast, and you don't want to get caught in this harbor with a boat the size of yours.”

“
Ours
.” One last try.

She shook her head at him. “Yours. . . . They'll stop laughing after a while, Con,” she said kindly. “They probably did at me. Of course I ran away. You might have to do that, but a change is as good as a rest, they say.”

He wouldn't go and she wondered how much long she could stand this. He stared wildly around the room, his blue eyes distraught, the new creases deepening. Suddenly he saw one of Edwin's small sketchpads. He pounced on it, snapped through the leaves, and threw it down.

“Is he out here?” he demanded. “The dummy?”

“
Edwin
is here,” she said coldly.

His face went red. “To hell with both of you! You're two of a kind. A couple of nuts if I ever saw any. Well, if I don't have you, I don't have him for an in-law, and that's a bargain.”

He walked out, almost taking the screen door off the hinges. This time she didn't watch him disappear beyond the spruces. I'm getting a fixation about them, she thought, I'll ask Edwin to cut down some and trim the others so I can see through to the field and the well . . . he's going he's going I can still call him back he came for me he wanted me we could start again and just take what there is not ask too much not think behind or ahead it would be something . . . it would be almost the way it was once I would take him on any terms. . . . She stood blindly gazing, her fists in her pockets, until she knew he must be at the wharf.

Then she took the plastic bucket and went out. When she came to Barque Cove
Phyllis
was just emerging past the breakwater. After the first glance of recognition she wouldn't look again. From that glimpse, Rosa knew how sweetly she cut through the gray-green swells. That one glimpse would have to do her for the rest of her life.

Halfway across the beach she stopped and looked fixedly at a place where the water broke foaming and ran in miniature channels carved through a patch of sand among the rocks. Three nights ago Quint had crawled ashore there. —She stood as if between the two men and knew them for twins.

Not quite identical; Con's cruelty was worse than Quint's, which was at least direct. There was less indignity in the beating than in being so tenderly used or apologetically cast aside by Con whenever the occasion demanded. And at least Quint didn't require that his conscience be salved.

She climbed the far side of the cove, where the black rocks reflected heat from the diffused sunlight that glared over everything with a hazy pallor. She followed the track among the goldenrod, asters, and juniper down into the next cove, across its steep slope strewn with driftwood, and on to the next. The air was filled with the sound of surf and the rattle of the smooth stones in the undertow.

She came at last to Sou'west Point and looked for Edwin in the sea-burnt wilderness. Away from the wind the air was lifelessly warm. Sweating, she began to climb the final slope, and finally saw him on the granite prow, above the surf where she had seen him with Linnie that time. He was sitting cross-legged, the big watercolor tablet flat before him, and he was painting. Two gulls walked calmly around him.

She sat down at some distance from him.
The hell with both of you. You're two of a kind
. How right you are, Con, she thought, and I needed you to tell me. She glanced involuntarily toward Brigport. In the poor visibility the boat was no longer to be seen. She was fast, and he wouldn't favor her.

She got up again and went on toward Edwin. The gulls took off past his head, alerting him, and he looked around and saw her, waved his brush, and went on working. She sat down nearby and turned her face into the cold briny wind, letting it flow into her open eyes and assault them until she was forced to close them or turn away.