Strange Fits of Passion (20 page)

Though of course, I'm sorry to say, not everybody felt that way, did they? I mean to say, in the end, someone told that fella somethin'.

I have my ideas, 'n' I know Julia, she has her ideas, but I think that's about as far as I'm prepared to go right now.

Mary Amesbury sometimes came to my house with the baby for a cup of tea. And then I had her in the house on Christmas Eve. She fainted on the common on Christmas Eve.

I was on my porch, and I saw it happen. I had been thinking of walking over to Mary. I specifically wanted to make sure that Mary had somewhere to go on Christmas Day. I didn't like to think of her alone in the cottage, with nowhere to go on Christmas. I didn't want to leave my porch just then, however, as it seemed to me the bonfire was burning too intensely.

Everett has explained to you about the bonfire? I know we've never had an accident, but still I like to be prepared. I stay on my porch with a few buckets of water just in case of stray sparks. I do this, too, on the Fourth of July, when we have fireworks on the common for the children. Everett is in charge of the fireworks too. I know he says he's got his fire truck behind the store, but all it takes is one stray spark. These houses are very old and entirely built of wood, and if one were to go, there'd be no stopping it.

As I say, I saw her fall. I thought at first that she had been pushed, but when I got there, her face was white. I do mean white; you could see this even in the dark. This does happen to a person. I've seen it before. They say that my face turned white when they told me about my husband's drowning, but that's neither here nor there.

Jack Strout, my husband's cousin, was bent over her when I got there, shouting for people to give her air. Elna Coffin already had the baby out of the sling. The baby had been scared. That was all. You could see she was all right. And when I got the baby inside the house, I undressed her and checked her all over. Jack helped me get Mary to her feet. You couldn't leave a body on that cold ground. She would get pneumonia or worse. And as we got her up, she came to. I have salts in my house, and I think I might have told someone to go for them, but they weren't necessary. She came to right away. She was terribly em~ barrassed and kept asking me about the baby. She was badly shaken. There might have been an injury to the baby if she'd fallen the wrong way.

I took her into the house and tried to get some brandy into her and some hot tea, and I didn't want to let her leave until she'd had a meal, but she was in shock then and couldn't eat much. I thought she might have fainted because of malnutrition, that she wasn't taking care of herself, but she said no. She'd just gotten dizzy, she said, and I had an idea that the fighting had upset her.

Yes, if you want a reason, that's it. The fighting had upset her. Possibly it had triggered some unpleasant memories for her. That would be my guess. She didn't say much, and I didn't like to pry.

She'd taken it to heart, if you understand my meaning.

I offered to drive her home, but she said no, that she would be all right. She was quite insistent. She thanked me for the invitation to come to dinner the next day, but she said she didn't feel comfortable yet in front of other people, and she thought she would probably not come. But she did say that she had to make a phone call, and she asked if it would be all right if she came by the next day to use the phone, since the A&P would be closed on Christmas. I got the idea that she wouldn't want to be there when Jack and Rebecca and the children were there, so I told her to come by about noon. The others weren't due until three or so.

Yes, she did come to make the call.

She made the phone call in private, so I don't know who she called or what she said, and I'm not sure it's any of our business, anyway. But she did give me four dollars for the call. I wouldn't take the four dollars, so we settled on two.

***

I didn't see Mary for some time after that. I was very busy with whatnot, and after Christmas I always like to rest a bit, so it was nearly two weeks before I was able to get over to the cottage.

I mention this only because it took me somewhat longer than it might have to realize what was going on.

I fainted on the common. I had never fainted before. It happened. It just happened.

I recognized a man's face over mine. His eyes were old, and his face was weathered. He was telling me that the baby was OK, and asking if I could stand. Then I saw Julia and remembered Caroline. Where was Caroline? I asked, looking frantically around. A woman next to me showed me Caroline but wouldn't give her to me. Caroline was fine, they kept saying.

I went inside with Julia and the baby. I felt the man's hands at my side, and then he was gone. I drank the brandy Julia gave me, but I had trouble eating the food. I couldn't tell her of what I had seen, of the images that had confused me. I was aware only that I had caused a scene and that people had been buzzing around me. I was aware, too, of how lucky I had been. When I thought of what might have happened to Caroline...

***

I don't remember Christmas Day at all. There is nothing about the day I remember. My mother says that I called her at midday and told her that Harrold and Caroline and I were just sitting down to Christmas dinner, but I don't remember any of it.

I did not sleep that night or the next.

I got your letter this morning. Yes, I understand about September and the timing of the article, and I will hurry with the next batch of notes.

I write all night now. I seldom sleep. My cellmate and I are a perfect pair. The more I am awake, the more she sleeps, as if to redress the deficit.

I sometimes wonder about your life. I have written you so much about myself, and yet I know almost nothing about you. I think about that imbalance, wonder what you will do with all these pages that I have sent you.

Several days after Christmas, a thaw, as predicted, warmed the coast. And with the thaw came the fog. One morning I awoke knowing something was amiss. I hadn't heard the motor on the lane. I went to the window but could not see out. I went downstairs and opened the bathroom window and watched the fog spill in over the windowsill.

I stood in the kitchen. I heard the foghorns then, one to the north, one to the south, slightly out of sync, one a low mournful note, the other slightly higher, speaking to each other across a vast expanse of wet gray air and water. In between the foghorns you could hear a gentle lapping of the water.

We had six days of fog, off and on. On two or three mornings during the thaw, I woke and there wasn't any fog. And then, in the late morning, while I was feeding the baby or washing the dishes, the fog drifted in with stealth, blotting out the colors, then the shapes, then the sun. First there would be puffs of fog blowing across the bar, and soon the island would be gone. That was it—gone just like that. It didn't exist.

The green-and-white lobster boat did not go out on the first day of the thaw, or the second, but I heard the truck on the third morning. It was a day on which the fog had not come in yet, and I, not understanding the pattern of the fog, felt buoyant at the sight of the islands becoming visible in the distance at daybreak. When I saw how my own spirits had lifted with the return of the sun—and we had only had two days of continuous fog—I began to understand better the depression Willis had described, the depression that sometimes settled upon the women of the town. I wondered why it was that Willis had mentioned only the women becoming depressed in the winter. Did the men not mind the days of grayness too? Or was it easier for them because they were able to meet the grayness as a challenge when they went out on the water?

Caroline seemed to catch my mood and was unusually contented and cheerful that morning. She had been practicing balancing on all fours for a couple of weeks now and had learned how to pitch herself forward. Crawling, I could see, as I watched her from the kitchen table, was imminent. But I had no impatience for anything. With Christmas behind me and no need to go anywhere or to do anything, I was becoming more and more content to allow the days to dictate themselves to me.

I was reading, and Caroline was napping upstairs, when the fog came back. First there were wisps, ethereal and transitory, and then the fog became a shroud, blanketing everything. The light dimmed so that it seemed like dusk when it was only midday. I had to turn on a light to read. With the fog, the room turned chill as well, or perhaps it only seemed that way, with the sun gone. I went to the window. I could not even see the fish house now, although I could make out the barest hint of the back of a red pickup truck. The end of the point had disappeared entirely.

There was a knock on the door.

Willis came in like a figure emerging from the sea. The fog seemed to cling to him in the form of billions of droplets of moisture—on his denim jacket, on his mustache, on his hair. He carried a mug of coffee.

"Brought my own this time," he said, shutting the door behind him.

I was glad I had gotten dressed early.

"Socked in," he said.

"I thought the fog was over," I said.

There was a recording of a string quartet playing on the radio. The elegiac music seemed to underscore the view outside my window.

He made a disparaging sound, the sort of sound you make when the other person has just said something incredibly naive.

"No way. We'll have fog for days yet. Hey, Red, better get used to it. Bother you?"

"No," I said, lying. "Not at all."

"Well, that's good." He took a seat at the kitchen table. He looked at my face.

"Jack's out," he said.

"Oh," I said.

"Probably thought he could beat the fog back."

"Oh."

"Wouldn't catch me out on a day like this."

"No."

"So what you goin' to do all day?"

"Same thing I do every day," I said. "Take care of the baby."

"You don't miss it?"

"Miss what?"

"Your old life. Where you come from."

"No," I said.

"Musta been pretty bad," he said. "Your old man."

I said nothing.

"Syracuse, huh?"

I nodded.

"Nice place, Syracuse?"

I shrugged. "I like it better here," I said.

"You're lookin' better," he said.

"Thank you."

He sighed.

"So OK, Red, I'll be off now. Goin' home for lunch. I'm supposed to start drivin' for a haulage company next week. I hate doin' it, but we got to have the money. You need anything?"

He asked me this every day.

"No," I said.

Caroline began to cry. I was glad.

"Hope I didn't wake her," he said.

I shook my head. He got up to leave. He walked to the door, opened it, and hesitated. The fog blew in around him.

"Keep your eyes peeled for Jack," he said, and smiled.

The green-and-white lobster boat did not come back at two o'clock, as was its custom. I thought that probably the fog would delay it some, so I wasn't exactly worried. It was merely that I was alert to the fact that it had not returned. As I have said, it was a kind of punctuation to my day to see the boat emerging from behind the island, and without it the day felt incomplete, like a sentence with no ending.

I was knitting a second sweater for Caroline, and I was halfway through the back piece. Caroline was in bed for her afternoon nap. I picked up the knitting, with the radio on in the background.

It's odd, now that I think of it, that I didn't write. Or perhaps not odd at all. To write would have required remembering.

The boat did not come back by three o'clock or by four. I had become attuned to all sounds emanating from the water or the point, and I went to the window frequently to peer out into the grayness. By four, it had grown dark, and all of the trucks but one were gone. Indeed, when it was foggy, night fell early on the point. I carried Caroline, or I nursed her. I made myself a cup of tea. I listened to the news on the radio. Eventually I made myself some supper. At six, the darkness outside was impenetrable. I began to wonder if I oughtn't to walk up to the blue Cape and alert someone that the green-and-white lobster boat wasn't back yet. Was this my responsibility? I wondered. Who else would know that he hadn't returned? His wife and his daughter? Would they resent my alarm, my interference? Was this natural, not to come back from time to time? And what if he had decided to moor his boat at the town wharf? He had mentioned that when the weather was bad, he took his boat into town. Perhaps he had done that earlier, knowing of the fog to come, and I had waited all day for the boat's return for nothing. If I raised an alarm then, I would simply look foolish, as naive as Willis had indicated, and I would only draw even more attention to myself.

At six-thirty, I bundled Caroline into her snowsuit and into the sling and took us both for a walk. I could no longer bear it in the cottage. I didn't care that I wouldn't be able to see much of anything. I had to have some fresh air.

I made my way gingerly along the spit. I felt I knew the way well enough to walk without any danger to myself or the baby. I would feel the gravel underfoot, or the grasses, or the sand, and would be able to navigate with my feet.

The air was drenching. You felt it soak you through almost at once. I kept Caroline close to me. I could feel the pebbled beach under my sneakers. I hadn't walked fifty feet when I turned to look back at where I had come from. Already the cottage was gone. The lights burning in the living room were extinguished. I could see only about two or three feet ahead of my feet along the ground. That was it. The sensation was eerie and otherworldly. I don't think I was frightened, exactly, but it was a feeling I shall never forget. The world had disappeared entirely. There was only my baby and myself. I could hear, from time to time, sounds from the world I had come from—the foghorns, an occasional car along the road at the end of the lane, and a strange squealing overhead, like that of bats—but in that darkness you could not really believe in the world. Perhaps I
was
frightened, but I was also exhilarated. The anonymity, the privacy, the safety—it was perfect. No one, no one, could ever get to us now: not Harrold, not Willis, not even Julia or my mother, well-meaning though they might be. It was as I had imagined it in my dreams: my baby and myself, protected and enshrouded.