Late in the Season (22 page)

They spent the next few hours having a leisurely breakfast and then packing for the trip to the city.

The sun came out briefly around noon, bringing up the temperature to an uncomfortable damp warmth, but it never completely burned off the mist. By the time the two houses were deemed ready, the sun was gone, and a sickly yellow green mist had replaced the earlier yellow gray one. At sunset it would turn a gray green. It would be an eerie night out here. She was almost glad she would miss it.

After a phone call, Jonathan discovered there would be no seaplanes flying because of the bad weather. Visibility was too low.

His attempts to get them a limousine on the other side of the bay were tiring and fruitless, despite his calling three cab services. They’d have to ferry across and take a train into the city.

Their walk to the harbor was silent, both of them oppressed by the weather and the almost alien shapes the familiar landscape evoked with the sudden coming and going of the heavy mist.

Closer to the bay, the mist seemed almost fog. It was white, however, rather than that awful color. The ferryboat they rode across the bay was one she’d never been on before: small, closed-in, small-windowed, musty, as though seldom used—although Jonathan said it was the usual off-season boat. It was the last ferry; the boat schedule had been reduced to four crossings a day. She and Jonathan sat in the back section, surrounded by luggage, most of it his. The front of the boat was occupied by haggard-looking workers returning to the shore side: construction men, carpenters, plumbers, a few clerks from the two stores still open on the island. From behind, one of them looked like Matt. But of course, Stevie reminded herself, Matt was a ferry hauler himself; he would ride across on one of the flatboats he’d loaded and unloaded.

Jonathan was, if not in good spirits, at least not as grim as when she’d awakened him. He’d taken two large leather valises in addition to the flight bag slung across his shoulder, saying that now was as good a time as any to start moving stuff back to town. He sat back among them in the corner of the boat, reading a book on Italian art. She kept her hand in one of his, in his lap. Sometimes he held it. Sometimes he would let go of it, to turn a page, and forget to take it back again.

The shore side of the ferry station—ordinarily a bustling scene of people, cars, trucks, and shops—was as desolate as the island side.

The railroad station, a half green lean-to, its paint much chipped and discolored by bad weather, surrounded by tall trees, was as lost in the fog, as mysterious to her as any depicted in a nineteenth-century Gothic novel. It was much cooler on shore than it had been on the island, where heat was retained by the mist and lack of breezes. They sat on the rickety built-in seat, along with two elderly ladies who occasionally stared at them. Once more Jonathan held her hand. They didn’t speak. Both had put on windbreakers. Hers was bright blue, his a brilliant yellow.

The train that finally arrived was an express, but as it went in the wrong direction to attract many passengers during rush hour, it was initially deserted. They took a double-facing seat in the back of one car near the doors. Jonathan soon went to sleep against her shoulder. Stevie remained awake, checking outside the dirty green-tinted windows at the bleak and dreary passing scenery. She tried not to think about anything, and succeeded fairly well, but she couldn’t bring herself to nap. She reminded herself that he’d only gotten an hour or two out on the deck after being awake all night.

At one stop, two young women came into the car, at the door nearest her. They seemed to be about her age, working girls, just on their way home. They stopped, and were turning to come into the section of the car where she and Jonathan were, then hesitated.

As they paused, Stevie could suddenly see herself and Jonathan as though she were one of the two girls. The older, handsome man sleeping against her shoulder: their casual clothing, obviously summer wear; their deep tans; the bags around them, on the seats and floor; his art book face down on the opposite seat. The girls’ eyes rose to meet Stevie’s and seemed to ask her: Is this true what we are seeing? Is he your lover? Are you just back from a vacation? Are you both wonderfully attractive and happy and terribly in love?

Stevie’s look back to them was bold, confident. “Yes!” it said, “Yes. It’s all true.”

They turned around then, embarrassed or happy or upset—she didn’t know which or in what combination of the three—and went away toward another section of the car. They never looked back.

She exulted. Yes, she’d told them, without words, but told them clearly enough anyway. And, yes, they’d seen and believed, and left her, unwilling to invade the delicacy of her love bubble. She said yes because now, in their eyes, at this moment, if not forever, it was true. She loved and was loved, was happy and could make someone happy; she was strong, getting stronger all the time.

It followed her throughout the trip, would follow her for a long time to come, she suspected.

When the train next stopped and Jonathan shifted in his sleep, she slipped off his shoulder, kissed him lightly, on one cheek, and said so low that he couldn’t hear her, “Thank you. Thank you for giving me this moment.” He mumbled a bit, and she let him put his head in her lap, while she contemplated the various futures that lay in front of her—until the train went into a tunnel, and she knew they would be at Penn Station in Manhattan in a few minutes.

“Rest well?” she said, awakening Jonathan.

“Terrific. You make a great pillow.”

“Thank mother nature,” she said. “Built-in padding.”

“I really needed that,” he said, getting up, rubbing his eyes, looking out the windows at the blackness. Even though it wasn’t a smoking car, he lighted a cigarette.

“Where are we?”

“Almost there,” she said, gathering the bags together. The train pulled into the station a minute later. The platform was filled four deep with people who Stevie knew would be getting into this car, charging right by her, whether she was in or out.

It took them as long to stand up and organize the carrying of the bags as it did for the train to stop and the doors to open.

They managed to get out of the train and halfway through the crowd pressing to board. But as he was encumbered with more bags than she, she was out before him, at the empty side of the platform. So she was able to spot Daniel Halpirn among the stragglers trying to get into the next car.

He was back, as Jonathan said he would be. He was on his way to Sea Mist.

She couldn’t let him get on, not after the long, tiring airplane trip across the Atlantic already today. He would take this long trip by train and wait for the ferry to the island and still not find Jonathan there. That would be too awful for him. For all of them. She couldn’t let it happen.

Rushing, she stopped him by pulling his arm as he was stepping into the train.

He looked at her, without recognizing her; looked at her surprised, with irritation, as though to say, let go of me.

“Daniel!” she called into his ear, over the noise of the train and the loudspeakers and the people. “Don’t get on!” She tugged at him again.

He looked back again, then recognized her.

“Stevie?”

She nodded, and continued pulling at his arm. They were in the middle of a new rush of people trying to board the train behind them. She had to hold on to the side of the car to keep upright.

“Where’s Jonathan?” he asked her, having to shout it.

She nodded behind her. She could just make out Jonathan, stopped by a stairwell, looking around for her through the bobbing heads of the crowd.

“We came in,” she said, and managed to pull Dan out of the doorway, to a spot where they wouldn’t be buffeted by people.

Daniel looked confused.

‘‘I was just going out.’’

“Don’t have to now,” she said. She felt embarrassed. He looked over her shoulder at where she knew Jonathan was standing. Daniel’s face was tight, hard; he seemed very unsure of what to do, of what to say.

“Here,” she said, handing him one of Jonathan’s bags she’d been carrying.

Dan looked down at the bag, and recognizing it, took it, and slung it across his shoulder by the strap. But he was still confused.

“He’s already carrying too many,” she said.

He looked past her again, toward Jonathan, then back at her. The crowd was thinning out on the platform as people pressed to get into the train, rushing down the stairs.

“I don’t understand,” Daniel said to her.

She reached up to speak into his ear, and had to hold him by one shoulder to support herself, he was so tall. “Say good-bye to him, for me, will you,” she said. “Say Stevie thanks him.”

He stared at her.

“And please, don’t fight with him,” she said, “Please, don’t do anything bad to him, anything to make him unhappy.”

“Why are you doing this?” Daniel said, only half comprehending.

It was clear he would never do anything like it.

“Don’t ask me,” she said. “Just do it. And be happy.” He kissed her cheek lightly now; she smelled a cologne that had steeped Jonathan’s bedroom—as though Daniel were a tomcat who’d spread his scent everywhere on his territory. That persuaded her. She knew she was doing the right thing.

“Be happy,” she repeated. “Don’t fight with him.”

“I won’t! I won’t. I promise,” he said, and it was clear that he was overjoyed. “Good-bye. Good-bye. Thank you. Thank you.”

“Good-bye,” she said, and now her decision made, final, the tears she’d held back this morning started up again in her eyes. She turned away from the train and Daniel and walked away quickly, her vision slightly blurred, until she reached up and wiped her face.

Last-minute commuters raced down the stairs past her as she slowly ascended the steps.

At the top of the stairs, she turned around and looked back. Only a few latecomers were dashing madly into the cars. In the distance, by the next stairway, stood two figures with bags at their feet, staring at each other, not speaking, not touching.

“Good-bye,” she said. “Good-bye, lovers!” she said, finally. Then turned and went into the station to find a telephone and a taxicab.

Daniel was waiting for him in the Martinson’s coffee shop as he said he would be. He was sitting in a booth, facing out toward the station, a mostly empty cup of coffee on the table; he was reading
Variety,
intensely interested in some item. He looked so normal, in such an expected attitude, that for a moment Jonathan’s anger at him diminished. Vulnerable, he went and sat down. Daniel folded the paper and put it next to his seat, to give Jonathan his full attention. The expression on his face was unclear to Jonathan, who wasn’t certain he could trust it anyway.

“Any luck?” Dan asked.

So that was the tack he was going to take—the innocent bystander. Two could play that.

“I can’t find her anywhere,” Jonathan said. “What precisely did she say to you?”

“I told you before. There was so much noise down on the platform and it all happened so fast.”

“What were her words?” Jonathan insisted.

Dan didn’t waver. “She handed me your flight bag and wished me good luck or something. I thought she was talking about the films with the BBC. I wasn’t even sure who she was for a minute.”

Jonathan didn’t believe that. “Really?”

“I certainly wasn’t expecting to meet
her.
Or you either. I was on my way to beard you in your lair, remember?”

“And that’s all she said?”

“That’s all,” Dan said, relieved. Then, “No. Wait a minute. Of course that wasn’t all. She said to say good-bye to you.”

That was the key point. Jonathan’s entire body—stimulated into action looking for her the last three-quarters of an hour—suddenly sagged back, exhausted, into the booth.

“Just that? ‘Good-bye’?”

“No. ‘Good-bye, have a good life,’ or something like that. I’m afraid that’s what she said.” Dan’s face was a mask of sympathy and sincerity—feigned sincerity, Jonathan thought.

“Not call me later, or anything like that?”

“Why don’t you call her? If she left right after I saw her, she ought to be at home by now.”

“I couldn’t get her phone number. There were a dozen Lockes listed. None of the names seemed familiar. What is his name? Lord Bracknell?”

“Got me. Clifton? Paul?”

“No. That’s Lady Bracknell. Paula. No Paula Locke listed either.”

“Maybe we have it in the phone book at home,” Dan suggested. “We ought to have it somewhere, no? They’re our neighbors. What if their place went on fire at Sea Mist or something. I’m sure we can find it.”

Dan was right. Someone they knew must have the Lockes’ city home number. He’d get it and call Stevie and… What if Dan were telling the truth about her, though? What if she’d said what he told Jonathan, what if she had given him the flight bag and told him to relay her good-bye? Would she repeat that on the phone when he finally got through? Of course she would. Far more awkwardly. What could have prompted the sudden change? Seeing Dan at the station?

He looked at Dan, who was surreptitiously glancing down at
Variety
on the seat next to him.