Compass Rose (29 page)

Deirdre lay on her back on the floor and pulled her knees to her chin. She said, “No, thanks. But do you have a banana? Or some cranberry juice? Something with potassium.” She sat up, spread her legs, and lowered her chest between them. In a muffled voice she said, “You probably had some of the same problems with Dick.”

Elsie waited until Deirdre sat up. She said, “I’ll get you some cranberry juice.”

Deirdre said, “Oh, shit. I’m sorry. None of my business. I wasn’t fishing, I just thought you could maybe reassure me, like tell me that things just settle down by themselves.” Deirdre lay on her back and put her hands over her eyes. “I should remember I get high after I exercise. And you’re probably coming down after last night. That must have been something, your daughter up there … The thing is, I’m worried about Charlie out on that boat. After Charlie took off this morning I needed a good hard ride and someone to talk to.”

Elsie put the cranberry juice on the table by the window. Had she ever been like Deirdre? So at a boil about herself? She sat at the table and looked at Deirdre, who was doing some sort of breathing exercise. Had she ever told adventure stories about herself like Deirdre’s white-water story? With some nature mysticism thrown in? Yes. Had she ever told stories about her sex life? Yes—not part of her repertoire lately, but yes, she’d told Mary Scanlon about Johnny Bienvenue, and yes, in her red-dress days she’d said some things that counted as sexual swaggering.

Deirdre got up and sat across from her. She said, “Oh, thanks,” when she saw the cranberry juice, put one hand on her chest, and took a swallow. She leaned forward and looked Elsie in the face. “It’s not just that we look alike.”

“Oh?” Elsie leaned back in her chair. “I hadn’t really … And I’m a good bit older than you.”

“Maybe chronologically. Your biological age is what counts. We
both keep in shape. But the reason we look sort of alike is we’re both free women. We’re not slaves of the glass city.”

“Walt said something about … He said Phoebe’s a slave of the glass city.”

“Yes. Good. So you know the story.”

“No, just what Walt mentioned.”

Deirdre nodded. “I’ll bring you the book. Are you into science fiction?”

“No,” Elsie said. “Unless you count Ovid’s
Metamorphoses.
” She wasn’t sure why she threw that in. She said, “That was years ago, when I was doing Latin with Miss Perry.” She didn’t like the eager claim Deirdre was making, but she didn’t like herself as a snob.

Deirdre was unrebuffed. “I don’t know about Ovid. But sure. All that Greek stuff—sort of science fiction.”

“Ovid was a Roman.”

“I really want you to read it. It’ll make our getting to know each other go faster. You’ll see what I mean. It’s not just that we’re both outdoors people. We make our own rules. We’re like sisters.”

Penance, Elsie thought. It’s part of my penance to come face-to-face with this doppelgänger, this would-be doppelgänger.

Deirdre said, “And I know I could learn stuff from you that would help. I mean, it’s eerie that you hooked up with Dick, and here I am with Charlie. What I don’t get is how come May hates me and she seems sort of okay with you. You slept with her husband. I’m just sleeping with her son.”

Elsie sat up so fast her chair creaked.

Deirdre stood. She said, “I should put some water in this cranberry juice. I should be rehydrating.”

Elsie laughed. The woman was like a kid’s paddleball game. She smacked out a thought that got as far as somebody else, but then her attention reached the end of its elastic cord and bounced back to herself.

“What?” Deirdre said. “Is it because I’m so intense about nutrition? No, wait, I get it. I’m wired. I used to get like this when I’d been alone in my cabin, and I’d bike into the general store and I’d be way too on. It made some of the old codgers laugh, too.” When she got to
the kitchen sink, she put her glass down. Her shoulders fell. She turned and said, “After a while they got to like me.”

“Oh, Deirdre,” Elsie said.

“No, they really did. I wasn’t flirting with them, either. It was winter, and I was wearing so many clothes I looked like the Michelin tire man.”

“No, it’s not that.”

“It’s that I’m annoying you. I should get on home. It’s still a ride to Narragansett.”

“I’ll give you a lift—I have a bike rack. Drink your juice and relax a little.”

That was enough. Deirdre walked around silently, looking at Elsie’s bookshelf. After a while Deirdre said, “Thoreau. You’ve got a lot of Thoreau. Have you ever wondered what he sounded like? I’ve tried to imagine his voice. It’s kind of sad that voices disappear. I love the Maine accent. When I was alone in my cabin for a long while I’d start hearing one of the old guys from the general store, the one I liked the most. It was like he was there. You know how you get when you’re living by yourself. One time I was splitting wood for kindling, I was holding the log with one hand round it and swinging the ax with the other. His voice said, ‘Not so fast, they-ah, young lady. You might just want that thumb late-ah on.’ ” Deirdre laughed. Elsie was struck dumb. Deirdre said, “I thought what he said was pretty funny. Right, too. Next time I saw him, I told him what he’d said. He laughed at my version of a down east accent; he said it would take me a few years to get it right. It’s just right for setting someone straight. I hope it doesn’t die out. Children don’t talk the way their parents do. Maybe it’s TV. But Charlie didn’t watch TV, and he has less of a Yankee accent than Dick and May.”

“Wait,” Elsie said. “Did Charlie say anything about the play? About the way Rose talked when she was pretending to be the maid? When she said, ‘I’m
smaht
enough to know the
fu-cha
you have in mind.’ ”

“Oh.” Deirdre squinted. “No. Not about that. Of course, I didn’t go backstage with him, so they might have talked about it then. I don’t think so, though, because he told me pretty much everything. Someone
said Mary Scanlon taught Rose how to sing, and Tom said that he’d taught her how to be funny. Charlie thought that was a laugh. Charlie hadn’t ever heard Rose sing. He missed Miss Perry’s funeral, and he didn’t go to Sylvia Teixeira’s wedding—which he should have, it might have helped him see that people can just move on.”

“That’s it?”

“About the play. But one thing Charlie really liked was when the old guy, the actor with white hair … when he came over he said, ‘These are your proud parents,’ and Rose said, ‘And this is my father, Dick Pierce. His wife, May. And these are my brothers, Charlie and Tom.’ It wasn’t just that she handled it. All the other kids from the play were just running around, making a fuss over themselves, and there Rose was … Charlie really liked her saying, ‘These are my brothers, Charlie and Tom.’ ”

Elsie resisted imagining the sound of Rose’s voice, resisted imagining Rose’s state of mind when she’d grabbed her in the parking lot. She dug in harder—her argument might have been wrong, but she was right to worry. She thought of Rose’s saying, “If I can’t find a spare bed, I’ll sleep on the floor”—pathetic teenage self-pity. Then Elsie gave way. Rose had said, “This is my father … These are my brothers,” when Rose was the center of attention.

She’d been horrible to Rose.

M
ay was just finishing ironing when the phone rang. She said, “Hello?” There was a pause. A women’s voice said, “Mrs. Pierce? Please hold, I have Mr. Aldrich on the line for you.” Another pause and she heard a booming voice. “Hello, May! Sorry about that. I’ve got people running in and out. This is Jack Aldrich.”

“Hello, Mr. Aldrich.”

“Jack, please. I saw you were at Rose’s play—wasn’t she great? I knew she had a voice, but what stage presence. We couldn’t have guessed, could we? It seems like yesterday she was a little girl. Look, I’m sure you’ve got lots to do. So I’ll get to what’s on my mind. I want to apologize. I’ve been remiss about being a good neighbor. I’ve been thinking about how many ties we already have. I guess you must have heard from Rose that I’m going to put her play on over here.” May wondered how Mr. Aldrich knew about her and Rose. It could be Phoebe’d been a chatterbox. She hoped Mr. Aldrich wouldn’t go on about that. “And your boy Tom,” he said. “I can’t say enough about him. Great job building the new dock. More than building—he’s got good ideas about our whole waterfront. I could see a future for him here at Sawtooth. I know he works for Eddie Wormsley, but one of these days he may want to be part of something bigger. I like the cut of his jib.” May supposed she ought to say something, but she was still nervous and bothered by Mr. Aldrich’s trying to sound like an old salt. Mr. Aldrich kept right on; she didn’t have time to say thank you. “There are all sorts of ways we can get together. One thing just occurred to me. What if I bought a little easement from you, just to put a footbridge across Pierce Creek so a few of our Sawtooth nature lovers could get across to the nature sanctuary? Way down at the tail end of your three acres. I don’t think you’d even see it. If Dick is changing over from the red-crab fishery and getting back to lobstering, there might be a readjustment period, and a healthy payment for an easement might bridge the gap. More than bridge the gap.”

“Dick’s at sea.”

“Yes, I understand that. I’m looking forward to talking to him, too. I just want to give you time to give it some thought on your own. You could talk to Eddie Wormsley—he’d be the one to build the bridge—and Eddie could tell you he and I work things out fair and square, like old shipmates.”

There he went again. But what bothered her more was his saying he and Eddie work things out fair and square, and not a minute before he’d been talking about hiring Tom away from Eddie. She said, “Eddie is Dick’s oldest friend. He put us up after our house got knocked in.”

“Yes, indeed. Eddie is the salt of the earth. I loved my cousin Lydia, but I’m afraid one of her few faults was that she was unfair to Eddie.” It took May a second to realize he was talking about Miss Perry. Another second to realize he’d heard what she said about Eddie but that he didn’t understand it. He swept on. “Of course, to her credit Lydia held Dick in high regard, and Charlie and Tom were great favorites of hers, too. She was a model of how fortunate people help out …”

May heard the unspoken “those less fortunate.” That bothered her. But there always seemed to be two things to be bothered about in every breath this man took in and let out. The second thing this time was that in his hearty speechifying voice he was talking about the biggest things in her life. It was like being hugged by someone you didn’t know.

“I’m sure you’ve got things to do, so I won’t keep you. I’m glad we had this talk. Oh. I’ll be sending over a couple of guest passes to Sawtooth. They’re good for everything, including Rose’s play. I know you saw it at the school, but this promises to be even better, something all of us South County folks will be proud of. Best to Dick when he comes in. I’m glad we had this little chat.”

What on earth?

The call had made her so nervous she had a shaky time getting Rose’s uniform onto the hanger. She’d said hello to Sally now and then, but she didn’t believe she and Jack Aldrich had said ten words to each other in as many years.

She drank a glass of water and was able to iron the maid’s cap with its two long ribbons. She called Phoebe, got the answering machine at the office. Mary Scanlon was likely over in the Sawtooth kitchen, not a good time to bother her.

She put the cap in a paper bag, punched a hole in the bottom so the ribbons hung free, and taped the bag to the hanger. She’d just talked to Elsie on the phone about Rose’s costume, and that made it almost natural to call her.

Elsie’s voice was a little odd, but there was no going back. “I’ve just had a phone call from your brother-in-law. I don’t want to be unfriendly to him—”

“What’s Jack up to now?”

“He was pleasant enough, but I have to say it was out of the blue. It made me a little nervous. He said how we were neighbors and how he was doing things for Rose and for Tom—”

“And then he wanted something.”

“Yes. He said just a little easement.”

“Look, May. You don’t have to do anything; you certainly don’t have to do anything just because Jack wants it. You remember those
Just So Stories?
Miss Perry read them to Charlie and Tom. There’s one about a camel who asks if he can just put his nose in the tent—it’s a cold desert night—and the guy in the tent finally says, ‘Okay, just your nose,’ but before you know it the camel’s inside, the whole hump and hooves, and the guy’s out. So you’re right to be nervous, especially if Jack’s sounding extra-nice and jolly. I don’t want to alarm you, but I know Jack. He’s got his eye on Tory Hazard’s house; he’s got his eye on your house. It might start with an easement. You’re on the only piece of land between Sawtooth and the wildlife sanctuary, and he’d dearly love to have a nature trail right through to it, so be careful if he starts talking about letting people from Sawtooth make a little path. It’ll get bigger. Jack’ll talk about community, he’ll talk about nature, but he’s really only for Sawtooth. He’s Sawtooth, and Sawtooth is him.”

May was alarmed. She’d thought of Jack Aldrich as a phantom neighbor, a ghost that made itself known by producing cottages, tennis courts, and docks. Now he condensed into a sharper picture, a real man in a suit who talked to her as if he knew her better than she knew him.

Elsie said, “I’ve warned him off once about your place. If it comes to anything, I think Sally would be upset, and he’s reached that age when he doesn’t want trouble at home. And now that I think of it, Rose has come into his worldview—well, this little piece of the world—and she can be fierce these days. And I don’t mind taking him on, either. I’ll certainly keep an eye on him. Anyway, I’m glad you called. And thanks again for taking care of Rose’s costume.”

May couldn’t remember if she’d thanked Elsie. She found herself out the back door halfway to the wharf, staring at the creek. That didn’t surprise her. She occasionally thought she was still in the
kitchen and found herself in a different room, having forgotten what she was looking for. What surprised her was that in the same way that her notion of Jack Aldrich had suddenly condensed into a person, her notion of Elsie was changing. She’d called Elsie almost by accident, but now that she had, now that she’d called purely for herself, she saw Elsie all of a sudden and awful clear. It was like the time when she went wading for quahogs with Charlie. They were waist-deep near the mouth of the creek, feeling with their toes. Charlie gave her a face mask. The bottom jumped up at her, but in the squeezed-up space there was a bit of wrack fluttering in the current, specks of silt streaming past it so clear you saw each one and how one was deeper than another even though they were just a hairsbreadth apart. It was a world of life down there. She didn’t want to see all that each time she went feeling for quahogs with her toes, but there it was. And there was Elsie talking on the phone, talking fast that way she had, going off one way and back another, right there in front of you with all that energy running through her.