Bea stiffened. “Well, then, pack.”
“If you like, but you could start tomorrow.”
“No harm in being ready.”
Mrs. P. looked hard at her. “Listen, Bea, are you—I hope you don’t mind my asking—but are you unhappy being here?”
Bea shook her head.
“I don’t want to pry—don’t answer if you’d rather not, it’s entirely your own business—but I’m wondering if something has happened recently, besides the incident with Janie. Concerning your soldier friend, maybe? Smitty? A matter of the heart, as they say? I’ve been concerned.”
Bea shook her head.
“Oh, good. And you’re not unhappy? I’d like to help, if I could, that’s all. As your friend. I do hope you consider me your friend, after all this time. I”—she flushed— “consider you mine.”
“I’m—” Bea struggled for words. “I’m very grateful for everything.”
Mrs. P. looked perplexed, almost angry. “We wish you every happiness. You’re part of our family. You always will be, no matter what happens. We’d be devastated if you left us, I can’t even imagine—but for you to want your own . . . that’s natural, of course, every woman wants—I just . . . I don’t want to pry, but I hope he hasn’t hurt you or taken advantage in some way. You seem . . .”
“He’s been”—in her own voice, she heard Mrs. P.’s—“a perfect gentleman.”
“Of course he has. And you . . . I mean—I hope you don’t mind my asking . . . will you be staying with us?”
What was Bea to say? It was not as if she had a choice to make, not in any concrete way, though it did feel—between what had happened to Janie and her own ricocheting heart—like she was being flung, a rag doll, through the air. Staying? She was not
not
staying, except that she was leaving, wasn’t she, leaving with the Porters, which meant staying—as in leaving together, as in staying with. She would hardly remain here, the only female for miles, when they left. She would hardly move onto the base, take up residence in a barracks, or live by herself in the Big House, rattling round. So “staying with us,” yes. Of course she was. She did her best to nod. Mrs. P. gave a great sigh, came forward and hugged her—a stiff hug, as awkward as it was kind. She was taller than Bea and much thinner; they almost never touched now that there was no baby to pass back and forth.
“Oh, I can’t tell you how relieved I am, though of course we’d have supported you whatever you did. But Janie, I don’t know how she’d manage without you.” She pulled away, laughed and wiped at her eyes. “Or how I would! Dear Bea. What a day this has been! We need to stick together, don’t we? The world’s”—she looked out the window—“so much more complicated than it used to be.”
BEA PUT THE BLUE SILK
dress in the trunk first, folding it flat, wrapping it in tissue, not because she’d ever wear it again but because her father had taught her how to pack a thing of value. Then her shellflower supplies, their box inside the trunk. Next, wrapped inside a pair of stockings, the box she had started making for Smitty; her hands moved faster and faster. A pile of underclothes, a nightdress. Better, wasn’t it, to leave no note. Better to leave no shell box; it wasn’t finished anyway.
Go if you’re going
, her mother used to say when she dawdled. And the children chanting outside the loo in the courtyard:
Shit or get off the pot!
Better to go back to New Jersey and think on it, for in fact, though she’d nodded to Mrs. P., she hadn’t decided, had she? She had not. Better to wait, to give it time. She told herself this even as her hands kept folding. Better to get Janie settled, inspect her for signs of damage. Think the whole thing through.
When Agnes came into the room, her trunk was already half full. Bea left her trunk. “Is Janie back?”
“No. Why are you packing?”
“Where is she?”
“At Garrisons. Listen, Bea, what’s
happening
?”
“With who?”
“You tell me.”
“No, I mean, who’s watching
Janie
at Garrisons?”
“Mrs. P. came, and Helen, and the Lyalls. Half the world.” She tugged at Bea’s sleeve. “Why are you packing? What has
happened
? Are you getting married?”
Bea shook her head.
“What, then? Has someone died? Your brother?”
“Lord, no.”
“What, then? You’ve got to talk to me. Just spit it out! I’ve never been so confused in all my life.”
“Help me pack.”
Agnes took a blouse out, unbuttoned it with swift fingers, removed it from its hanger. “Go on now, dearie. Talk.”
WAS IT THEN, WHILE THEY
filled the trunk together and Bea recounted what had happened to Janie, that Smitty, with a bit of help from Henry, broke all the rules and beat up Dale, who (bruised, battered and having learned his lesson or nothing at all) was sent home with a demerit on mental health leave and dropped forever from the family’s sight? Or did it happen while Bea, Agnes and Lizzy swam together, and Annie watched? Or was it later that afternoon, while Bea, weary of hearing how it was her day off, finally got hold of Janie and took her up to her own room to draw, the child quieter than usual, exhausted? At one point Janie put down her crayons, rested her head on Bea’s lap and lay dozing while Bea stroked her tangled hair.
“Poppet,” Bea said.
It was what her own mother had called her. Little child, little doll. When Janie was fully asleep, Bea undressed her and put her in her nightclothes, then carried her to bed, no matter that her teeth were not brushed nor her hair combed. Bea climbed in next to her and lay there for a good half hour, eyes wide open, far from sleep, before she returned to her own room.
T
HE NEXT NIGHT,
later than was considered polite, Smitty knocked on the door of the Porters’ house for the first and last time. Stewart answered and called Bea, and Smitty asked Bea for a walk, during which he told her, with no small amount of pride and satisfaction, how he’d beaten Dale to a pulp. They were, by then, on the road again, heading in the direction of town.
“I knocked the wind right out of him, gave him two shiners, might’ve broken his arm, left him for dead in the grass.”
Bea knew she was expected to applaud him. Instead, she ducked her head and walked faster. His violence frightened her—its energy and strength—at the same time that she almost envied his ability to get even. Except there
was
no getting even. No scouring clean or turning back the day. Smitty quickened his step. “I did it for you.”
“For me? But
I
should have been watching her. I should never have gone off like that!”
“It’s Sunday, Bea. She’s got parents.”
“No matter. I should
not
have gone swimming.”
“Well, I’m glad you did.”
“Glad?” The breath drained out of her.
“Swimming’s got nothing to do with what happened to Janie,” said Smitty. “She wasn’t on your watch. That bastard—I really let him have it. I don’t care what they do to me for it. I got him good, I can at least say that.” He stepped ahead and faced her, his voice almost pleading now. “Our swimming’s got nothing to do with it. You see?”
In the water with his hair wet, he had looked smaller but stronger too, a muscled seal. The buoy was red; she’d swum toward it, toward him, until she was close enough to see his face lit with surprise. Swimming wasn’t the problem, not by itself. The problem was her falling for Smitty in the first place, for she’d fallen badly, hadn’t she, and she was falling still.
Keep your eye on the ball
, Charlie used to shout as he tried to teach Janie to play baseball. Bea had been good at it, surprising Charlie, surprising all of them: the thwack as the bat met the ball, the ball sailing out.
Out of left field
. Was that the expression? She had not kept her eye on the ball.
“I heard you’re leaving early,” he said.
She nodded.
“When?”
“I don’t know. It always takes time to pack the summer up.”
“The summer?”
“Their things. Everybody’s things. And Janie wanting to take home half the beach.”
Smitty took her arm and she let herself lean against him for a moment, her forehead against his jacket. She turned her face sideways, laid her cheek on his chest and pressed her ear close. He held her, then. Through the fabric, through skin and muscle and whatever else lay mysteriously inside a man, she could make out the faint but steady beating of his heart.
IT WAS ON THE HEELS
of this moment that he asked her to marry him, pulling back, clenching his fists, a longish silence, then the difficult question pushed bravely forth: He hadn’t come just to talk about Dale but for this, really for this. The timing wasn’t great, not what he’d hoped for (a ring in hand, dinner in New Bedford, flowers, the works), but with her leaving, he figured it was now or never, and so . . .
And then the words. Marry. Will you. Me. Perhaps he said them in order, perhaps not; either way, they reached her oddly warped, so that she wondered if she had misunderstood.
“I—” Bea said. “I . . . I—”
His question did not come entirely as a surprise, not by now, even as she had a peculiar sensation that she was someone else entirely, this not her own life, but one she might read about in one of Agnes’s romance novels:
War Bride
or
Lest All Soldiers Fall
.
“What?” he asked.
“Did you just ask me to marry you?”
He laughed. “That I did!”
“I can’t, I—”
“Are you . . . gosh, Bea, are you saying no?”
She shook her head. “No. I can’t think right now, that’s all. I’d like to . . . to marry you, I just need—” She turned away from him, facing the wall. She felt—though she knew it was awful of her—as if she might be sick.
“What? What do you need?”
Two whole lives, a person might have. Three or four or five. If only. Never before had she felt this fanning out of possibilities; one life had seemed plenty, difficult sometimes, other times fine. Either way, her lot. “I don’t know. I need . . . some time.”
“To think on it?”
She nodded. She half wanted to lay her open palm on his cheek, out of love or sorrow for one thing or another (Janie? Smitty?) left or lost, but something stopped her. They were on a brink; he would take her touch as a yes and kiss her, and the kiss would crack her open, into what?
“So what do you need? A day? Until tomorrow?” Smitty groaned. “This is—come on, Bea, you’ve got to help me here; I don’t ask this question every day. What do you say? We could, if you want, if the war is a problem—we could do it right away. You could board with a family in town—other girls do that. Remember Louis, he met that girl Lydia at the Rations Board, and there’s a fellow who brought his wife here from—”
“I need a little time,” she interrupted and had a flash of Janie a few days earlier, holding up a sprig of the thyme that grew on the lawn—
Time for thyme!—
the joke itself time-worn, passed from one child to the next, and Helen looking up from her book to say, “Time for a new joke,” before declaring (from her book? from her head?):
“To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”
Board with a family in town? Which family? Bea pictured dark Portuguese with strange food and customs, or Quakers who slept on wooden planks.
“What?” Smitty was pacing now. “Is there someone else? In Scotland? Or New Jersey?”
“Of course not. For goodness’ sake.”
“So what? The war? If it’s that, we can wait until after. It’s not my first choice, but if you want, we can get engaged now . . .”
Again, she shook her head. “I have—it’s just, people depend on me. Janie—”
“
Janie
.” Smitty pounced. “You’re worried about leaving Janie. That’s it, isn’t it? It’s nuts, but that’s it! Good grief.”
Bea nodded miserably. “I . . . I love her like my own. It’s not like you think. I’ve raised her. She depends on me.”
“Ha! She’ll grow up before you know it. Can’t you see that? She’s halfway grown already, and then what’ll you have? They’ll let you go tomorrow if they feel like it, out into the streets. Don’t you want your own children, your flesh and blood? With me, you could—”
Bea touched her stomach. “I might not be able to.”
Through the dark, he stared at her. “Do you mean . . .”
“I’m . . . yes, there may be something wrong—”
It was a half-truth, based on half-knowledge, though her intuition told her it was true. Her monthlies were not monthly but came every six weeks or so, sometimes every two or three months, and when they arrived she either bled like a stuck pig or let out a mere rusty dribble of a stain. Either way, something was wrong, too much or not enough, though the one time (she was in for a rare visit, with a cough that would not go away) the doctor asked her how her monthlies were, she mumbled Fine. And she had hairs—five or six, dark and wiry—that grew out of her chin; daily she looked for them and plucked when they appeared. That was unnatural for a woman. No one but her mother, who’d bought her a private pair of tweezers in a discreet brown case, ever knew. Her mother had borne Bea and Callum, but four or five other babies had died in the womb, and then there were the two who did not make it past the first year, something in the heart for Lucy, the girl before Bea, something in the lungs for the other one, a boy called Collin, born between her and Callum. She remembered that sweet, sad baby; he had looked wrong from the beginning, a tiny old man, and he would not feed from her mother or even from a bottle, but had to be given goat milk dripped from a boiled rag into his mouth. Bea, two and a half, had stood by the pram and tried to help.
Smitty looked at her. “You can’t? You never told me . . .”
He would hold on to this, she realized. This was something he would hold on to all his life if she allowed him to.
“I might have trouble,” she said. “I have some . . . and I’m not young—”
“Young enough—not even thirty.”
So she had lied about that too; she had forgotten. She was not a liar, any more than she was a woman standing on a dark road in America with a soldier from St. Louis asking her to marry him.