Wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t see it one night before long.”
“Oh, I hope so,” Elizabeth said. “I can’t remember ever seeing it.”
“Well, I have, lots of times,” Happy said. She was holding what appeared to be a glass of pure amber scotch, and I tried to catch her eye to warn her to go slow. But she was looking at Elizabeth. “Daddy used to take me out on the boat to see them better,” she said. “They’re nothing like as pretty on land as they are on the water.”
Peter looked at her neutrally and smiled. I knew he had never taken Happy out on the
Hannah
to watch the northern lights.
“Oh, Peter, if they come this summer will you take me out?”
Elizabeth cried. “I’d so love to see them. I don’t think we get them in Europe.”
“Well, Lord, Elizabeth, Scandinavia is their very home.”
Happy snorted. “What a stupid thing to say.”
Elizabeth flushed, and Peter said, “Of course I will, if they last long enough. Sometimes they just flare out and are gone.”
“We saw them the night you were born, your mother and I,” I said. “Didn’t she ever tell you? You were literally born under the northern lights.”
“Well, scotty-wotty doo-doo-doo,” Happy said sarcastically.
“No,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t think she ever did.”
When we went back into Liberty, Parker Potter was there, half sitting, half lying on the wicker sofa, dressed in a gaping bathrobe and nothing else, drinking scotch out of a half-empty bottle. The assemblage fell silent. He looked dreadful, corpselike, sick unto death, obscene, with his shrunken flaccid penis and testicles showing and the monstrous stretched belly shining fish-white beneath the robe. Amy gasped and ran toward him, and Elizabeth made a sound of horror and nausea deep in her throat. Peter started for him behind Amy. No one else moved.
“God damn him to hell,” Elizabeth said in a deep, shaking voice. “How did he manage to get over here? Sonny Norton was supposed to be watching him.”
Just then Sonny Norton, the large young man who was assistant postmaster that year and who had long helped Amy with Parker and chores around Braebonnie, came stumbling into the room. There was a rapidly swelling cut over his eye, and blood had dried on his face and shirt.
“Jesus, I’m sorry, Miz Chambliss,” he gasped. “He hit me with the liquor bottle, and by the time I got my wits back, he was gone.”
Parker looked at the room full of his friends and neighbors, and up at his hovering wife and Peter, who was attempting to pull the robe together over his stomach, and smiled, fully and dreadfully. And then he drew the scotch bottle back as far as he could and hit Amy across the face with it. She went straight down, without a sound.
The living room erupted into horrified noise and motion.
George Stallings caught Amy just before she hit the floor and pulled her onto the sun porch. Micah Willis and Peter pinned Parker’s arms behind him, scotch from the flying bottle splashing them. The crowd surged toward the struggling group like a tide, and then stopped, wavering, as Caleb Willis held his arms up for silence.
“You folks go on home, please,” he said in the deep voice that was so like his father’s. “If Frank Stallings is here, maybe somebody could run get his bag and he could see to Miz Potter. Doesn’t look like she’s much hurt, but we ought to see. I know Miz Chambliss would appreciate it if things could quiet down, like. She’ll most likely call around and tell everybody how Miz Potter is in a while.”
“Thank you, Caleb,” I said over the fading babble, trying to wade through the crowd to Amy’s side. Micah and Peter had taken Parker into the big bedroom behind the kitchen that was mine and Peter’s, and George Stallings had Amy on the sun-porch sofa. I could see she was moving her hands, feebly, and her eyelids were fluttering. There was a dull red spot high on her cheekbone, and only a thin runnel of blood cut her white skin.
Happy stood motionless beside the bar, drinking her drink, watching Elizabeth.
Elizabeth stood in the middle of the sun porch, looking down at her mother, and began to scream.
Frank Stallings, Albert and Louise’s visiting physician son, came running back from the Compound just then with his medical bag and dropped down beside Amy.
“Somebody give Elizabeth a smart slap,” he said, “and then I’ll get her a sedative. The rest of you move back and give us some air. Better still, go on home, like Caleb said.”
People began to move away and straggle out the door, talking among themselves in low voices, and Elizabeth continued to scream almost abstractedly, like a machine. Her eyes were closed and her face was paper-white. Happy put her glass down and walked over to her and slapped her so hard she rocked back on her heels. Elizabeth took a great, gulping breath, stopped crying, and opened her eyes. Then they narrowed to slits. It was, suddenly, the face of a Medusa, a Chinese were-tiger. I drew in my breath and Happy slapped her again, as hard as before, smiling a small, casual smile.
“Through crying, Elizabeth? I’d love to do that again,” she said. Elizabeth made a sound like a teakettle beginning to whistle and drew her own arm back, then stopped, looking over Happy’s head. Following
her gaze, I and the others left saw Peter standing in the kitchen doorway, staring at Elizabeth and his daughter.
Elizabeth’s frozen, chalky face crumpled into tears, and she ran straight into Peter’s arms. He held her and looked at Happy. For a long moment, there was no sound but Elizabeth’s choking sobs.
“Did you have to hit her so hard?” he said to Happy.
His voice was quiet and awful. I did not remember ever hearing it before. Happy’s face began to melt as if a candle had been held to it.
“Dr. Stallings said to,” she quavered, her voice that of a small child.
“I trust he didn’t say to knock her out,” Peter said.
“Oh, Peter, take me home, I want to go home,” Elizabeth wept, and when he did not answer she looked up into his face. For some reason the sight of those two heads so close together, those two faces only inches apart, struck me like a fist in the stomach. They looked…one of a piece, sculpted from the same radiant rock. A scene out of Elizabeth’s childhood flashed into my mind, perfect and living. Peter at the yacht club, drinking punch and bending down to whisper something in nine-year-old Elizabeth’s ear, and the voice of old Augusta Stallings saying loudly, “Look at those two. Like as peas in a pod. She should be yours, Peter; except for that red head there isn’t God’s bit of Parker in her.”
“Then you shall, sweetie,” Peter said now to Elizabeth, and started with her toward the door, his arm tight around her.
Breathless with dread and something I could not name, I looked mutely after them. Everyone else did, too. I heard Gretchen Winslow murmur, “Looks like Peter has another high-strung daughter on his hands this summer, doesn’t it?”
and then I heard Happy laugh. It was an
ugly sound. “Daughter?” she said. “Is that what you think, Mrs. Winslow? She’s in Daddy’s hands, all right, but I wouldn’t exactly call her a daughter!”
The silence in the room had the quality of deafening sound.
Peter stopped and looked back at Happy.
“Go upstairs to your room, Camilla,” he said, in the cold new voice. “I’ll speak with you later.”
“You can’t order me around any more,” she shrieked. “I’m a grown woman with a son; you can’t tell me what to do!”
“Go,” he said, and turned and walked out the door, still with Elizabeth crying quietly in the curve of his arm. No one spoke.
Happy turned and bolted up the stairs and slammed the door behind her.
Everyone left after that, of course. Frank and George Stallings took Amy home, and soon only Micah and Christina Willis were left. I thought miserably that I could not have imagined a more destructive and appalling scene, from start to finish, if I had tried. No one would mention it to me, of course, but no one would forget it either. It would become one of the ugly, livid threads in the tapestry of Retreat, a story told and retold over the years, losing some of its heat, perhaps, but none of its clarity. I raised my head and looked at Micah and Christina, who had brought a tray of coffee and set it before me on the tole tray table.
“The Chamblisses have just added their hieroglyphics to the others on the cave wall,” I said heavily. I was so tired I thought I might simply never get up again. Christina poured coffee and Micah handed it to me. He regarded me silently for a moment and then said, “I reckon it’s not exactly your hieroglyphics, Maude. More likely Mrs. Villiers’s doing.
Peter’s too, come to that. Nobody’s going to read your name up there.”
“Happy didn’t exactly acquit herself wonderfully,” I said.
“Nope. Don’t reckon she did,” he said. “But it isn’t Happy the colony’s going to talk about, if that’s what’s bothering you. Happy’s guilty of nothing but wanting her daddy. Bit old for it, maybe, but it’s not unnatural. The sooner Mrs.
Villiers puts some water between her and Retreat, the better we’re all going to be. Don’t be too hard on Happy. And for God’s sake, don’t be hard on yourself. If you got to sling mud, point it toward the right person.”
“Micah’s right,” Christina said, putting her hand on my hair and smoothing it off my face. “It doesn’t take a genius to see who’s selling the snake oil around here. Get some rest and let Mrs. Potter tend to her own. Peter doesn’t need to do it, and you sure don’t.”
I stood up and kissed her cheek gratefully and pressed Micah’s hard brown hand, and they left and I sat down again, heavy and empty. Presently Sean came back from the young people’s square dance at the yacht club, looked warily and silently at me, got himself a glass of milk and a piece of cake, and came back into the room.
“You okay, Grammaude?”
“Go on to bed, darling,” I said dully. “I’m not very good company tonight. There was an awful scene with Mr. Potter, and your mother and grandfather had words. Grandpa’s gone to take Mrs. Villiers home, and it would be better if I could talk to him alone when he gets back. Things will be back to normal in the morning.”
He looked, all of a sudden, desolate, stricken.
“Oh, Grammaude,” he said in a low, tight voice, “Mother’s going to make me go home. I know she is. She threatens to do it every time she and Grandpa have a fight, or she thinks he’s been mean to her. Last
time she said next time it happened we were going home and never coming back to Retreat again. Oh, jeez….”
Tears stood in his gray eyes, and he turned his head away.
I reached over and took his hand.
“Darling, your mother wouldn’t do that,” I said. “We wouldn’t let her. Your grandpa wouldn’t let her. All of us know what these summers mean to you. This is your place; there just couldn’t be any summers up here without you.”
He looked full at me then, a skinny, sunburned child with fine gray eyes and a hurt almost too heavy to bear on his face. It was at that moment far too old a face for a young boy. I felt tears start in my own eyes. He blinked and looked away again. When he spoke it was to the middle distance.
“You don’t know,” he said. It was almost a whisper. “You just don’t know what the winters are like, Grammaude. I hate them. I hate every minute I’m not in Retreat. Mother and Dad…together, they’re…I don’t know. Not like other people’s folks. You don’t see them, but they’re not. If I couldn’t come to Retreat and be with you and Grandpa in the summer, I think I would die. I wish…I wish I could just stay here forever.”
His face twisted.
“And so you shall,” I said, pulling him to me so that he could not see my own tears. Damn Happy, damn Tommy O’Ryan, they did not deserve this large-hearted boy. Why had I never wondered what his winters in the dingy little house in Saugus were like? Why had I never thought about his coming to us to live or starting at Northpoint?
But I knew the answer to that. Tommy O’Ryan would not have it, and he was, after all, Sean’s father. There was nothing we could do. Well, then, we would just have to make the summers even better, Peter and I.
“We love you very much, darling, your grandpa and I,” I said.
“I love you, too,” he said, his voice muffled against me.
Then he gave a great rattling sniff and hugged me hard and pulled away.
“I better hit the sack,” he said. “Grandpa said we’d go over to Little Deer tomorrow, if the weather holds. That is…do you think he’ll still want to?”
“Are you kidding? Wild horses wouldn’t stop him,” I said, smiling, and he gave me a little salute and galloped up the stairs toward the sun porch where he slept, taking them two at a time. I sat back down to wait for Peter.
He came in barely five minutes later.
“That ought to hold everybody for a while,” he said, sitting down heavily on the sofa next to me and reaching for the coffee. “Frank’s given all three of them a sedative, and he’s going over first thing in the morning to check on them. I will too. Amy’s going to have to have Parker hospitalized. She can’t take any more of this, and neither can Elizabeth.”
I waited for a moment, and then I said, “Peter, I think you’re going to have to stop going over there every time Elizabeth calls you. Somebody else is going to have to do it, after tonight. It’s just…too costly to all of us.”
He looked at me.
“You buying into that stuff Happy was spewing, Maude?”
he said finally, and his voice was edging close to that cold, dead new note I had heard earlier.
“You know I’m not,” I said. “You
know
that. But darling…it’s a small place. People misunderstand. People talk. Your mother once told me that in Retreat, as nowhere else on earth, appearances are everything, and I can finally begin to see the truth of it. You don’t want your friends talking behind your back about your…relationship with Elizabeth
Villiers, for Happy’s and Sean’s sake if no one else’s. It’s terrible for Happy; you know she’s jealous of Elizabeth. Why rub her face in it? And I just found out tonight that Sean bears the brunt of it when you fight with her. Let me tell you—”
“I’m not going to discuss it,” he said, and rose. “I can’t believe you’re saying this. Elizabeth is…a child. A child, Maude. Would you have me turn my back on a child that needed me?”