Strange Fits of Passion (9 page)

And then there's other things to think about.

Well, I been thinkin' about it. Afore Mary Amesbury come here, this was a peaceful little town, right? Not much to write home about, but the people here is decent, law-abidin', and so forth, you know what I mean. Then she comes, and it's like some hurricane blew through town. Don't get me wrong I liked her and all. And I'm not sayin' she was tryin' to cause trouble. It's just that she did, didn't she?

I mean, look at it this way. By the time she left us, we got one murder, we got one alleged rape and assault, we got one suicide, and three kids don't have mothers anymore.

I mean, she's got somethin' to answer for, don't she?

I watched Willis Beale make his way down the hill to his truck. He stepped up into the cab and started the motor. I saw him turn the corner, and then he was gone. I moved back from the window, still holding the baby. The tide was going out now. Fast. Already I could see almost fifty feet of salt flats below the waterline. Just a couple of hours earlier, the tide had been high, licking the seaweed.

I didn't know what time it was, but thought it must be the middle of the afternoon. I made a mental note to buy a clock, perhaps a radio. The sun was weaker than it had been; on the horizon there was a darkening, like a gathering of dust. It would be night by four-thirty, I thought. The sun would set behind me.

I stood by the kitchen table, watching the waning sun turn the navy of the water to a teal, the boats in the channel catching the light at anchor. I saw the afternoon and evening stretching ahead of me. Empty time, empty spaces. I was glad the day would end soon, that darkness would come early. The night had a rhythm of its own, with a meal, with putting Caroline to bed. I could cope with that. Then I remembered that I had no book with me, I had nothing to read.

I heard a car engine in the lane and thought briefly that Willis had come back, that he had forgotten something. But it was a different color truck, a black pickup with a cap. I watched the truck drive along the hard wet sand almost to the end of the point. A man got out, and the wind blew his hair and filled his short yellow slicker like a sail. He wore long black boots, and his hair was the color of the sand. Turning his back to me, he withdrew one oar and several coils of rope from the back of the truck. He walked to one of the rowboats, beached by the low tide, and untied a rope, pulling the boat down to the water. He pushed the boat out, hopped into the stern, and began to scull with the oar, standing up in the boat as if it were a punt. When he was far enough away from shore, he sat down, sculled expertly with the oar in the direction of the green-and-white lobster boat. I watched him tie the rowboat to the mooring and leap onto the bow of the larger boat with his coils of rope. He walked along the narrow deck to the cockpit, jumped down inside. I saw him disappear into the little cabin at the front and then reappear without the rope. He reversed his journey then, from the larger boat to the dinghy to the shore, pulling the rowboat high up onto the beach to the iron ring at the waterline. The small boat tilted onto its side. He carried the oar to his truck. He looked up, saw my car in the driveway, swept the cottage with his glance, but I didn't think that he could see me. Then he got into the cab of his truck, turned it around, and drove back up the spit, into the lane.

The landscape was suddenly quiet, seemingly motionless. The water lay flat, like a pond. The wind had stopped; there were no gulls. Inside, it was as still as death, except for dust motes that were slowly moving in a beam of sunlight. The baby had fallen asleep in my arms. A wave of something like fear started then, even as I held the baby.

I decided I would clean the cottage. It would keep me busy for hours, keep the fear at bay.

I found the tools that I would need—a broom, a dust mop, rags for dusting—in a broom closet next to the hot-water heater. I had bought a can of Ajax and a plastic bottle of dishwashing liquid. These would have to do, I thought.

I worked on the house. I swept all the floors, wiped down the walls with the dust mop. I ran the rags over all the furniture, scrubbed the tub and toilet in the bathroom. In the kitchen, I cleaned the sink and cupboards and washed the linoleum floor with hot water. I sponged down the refrigerator, scrubbed the shelves.

When I could, I left the baby in the basket to sleep or, when she woke, on the rug to play. Sometimes I stopped to nurse her. Once, when I was mopping the kitchen floor, I looked up to see that she was on all fours, trying to propel herself forward. I watched her make a tentative move. My heart swelled. I looked around as if there might be someone in the cottage I could tell about this feat, this milestone. But I was alone. There was no one there to see my daughter. I went to her and picked her up and kissed her. I held her then a long time.

After the sun had gone down, and I thought it must be close to seven o'clock, I dressed Caroline in her pajamas and put her to bed upstairs in the crib.

Hungry now, I made my first real meal in the cottage—a bowl of canned soup and a salad. I drank a beer while I was cooking, another while I ate at the table with the green-and-white-checked tablecloth that I had scrubbed nearly raw with a sponge and the dishwashing liquid. The soup tasted good to me. I liked looking at the cottage from the table, felt a sense of accomplishment in the cleaning.

When I had finished my dinner and washed the dishes, I decided to reward myself with a bath. I walked into the bathroom. The tub looked inviting, sparkling. I filled it with water as hot as I thought I could bear. I took off my clothes and lowered myself into the tub. The steaming water stung at first, then was soothing. I lay back against the rounded lip of the tub, let the water close over me. I picked up a washcloth and a cake of soap and gently massaged my skin, wanting to make myself as clean as I had made the cottage.

My skin was pink when I emerged from the tub. I dried myself gingerly with an orange towel hanging from the rack. I slipped on my nightgown and put over that a large white cardigan sweater that I had decided would do for a bathrobe. When I sat at the table, to dry my hair with a towel, I could hear that the wind had started up again outside. I heard the press of waves against the rocks, a loose rattling of the windowpanes. I thought that I would indeed like a radio, just to have a bit of music in the background. I had never experienced quite so much silence and wondered if it was good for the baby.

The chores or the beer or, more likely, the long soak in the tub had made me finally drowsy. I did not know whether it was nine o'clock or ten o'clock or even later, but I thought that time didn't matter much, anyway.

When my hair was almost dry, I hung the towels on the rack in the bathroom, turned off the lights there and in the kitchen. I felt my way around to the stairs, climbed them to the landing. Inside the bedroom at the top of the stairs, I could hear the soft rhythm of Caroline's breathing. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the small bit of moonlight coming through the bank of windows, then peered over the crib. I could just make out the dark shape of Caroline's head on the sheet, the bundled body under the blankets.

I drew back the covers of my own bed, took off my socks and the cardigan. The sheets were cool cotton, and I shivered slightly as I slipped between them. I thought I would just drift off to sleep: I was tired now, very tired. The baby would wake early, I knew, and would need to be nursed.

But I didn't drift off to sleep. I didn't sleep at all. Lying on my back in the bed, I had instead a clear and distinct vision of exactly where I was—a luminous vision of myself perched on a high bed at the top of a cottage on a hill overlooking the Atlantic. I had driven to the edge of the continent; there was nowhere else now to go. The slight shiver I'd felt earlier deepened along my spine.

I had been foolish to imagine I was safe. It had been silly to mop floors, wash tables, as if I could scrub away the past. He would not let me get away with this. He would not let me take his child. He would not let me outwit him. He would find me; I was sure of this. Even now, he might be in his car, driving toward me.

In the darkness I covered my face with my pillow—for there was something else that I knew.

This time, when he found me, he would kill me.

We met my first day of work. I came around a corner—he was in an office. I saw him only, though it was another man, my editor, I had come to speak to. Harrold had been standing, hovering over a desk, looking at a layout. He straightened up, watched me walk toward the desk. I had on a blouse. It was new, ivory-colored, and I had worn a necklace—a string of beads? I brought my hand up, touched the beads. I had forgotten already why I had come, and I cast about for a question I could ask: It was, after all, my first day on the job, and I had an array of questions to pick from. My editor said our names. We didn't speak, and he felt compelled, I think, to fill in the gaps: She is from Chicago, just out of college; he is off to Israel in the morning. Maybe I asked a question then: What would he do in Israel in the morning? and perhaps he answered, Find a decent cup of coffee.

He was large, I think massive; I have always said mas sive in my mind, though you could see he'd never had an extra ounce of fat. His hair was large too—that's how I think of it: large and loose and dark, and it curled slightly below his collar. But it was his eyes I remember most clearly. They were black and deep-set, almost lost beneath a wide expanse of brow. They were dark eyes and impenetrable, and when he looked at me I felt lost. I believe he saw this immediately, and it pleased him, possibly even thrilled him. He put his hands on his hips, brushing back his sport coat. His tie was red, loosened at his collar. His shirt was light blue. The sport coat was a navy blazer, and he wore khaki pants. It was a uniform of sorts. He smiled at me. It was a smile that started at one corner and stayed there. You would say, if you saw it, it was a crooked smile, and that would suggest he had charm, and he did. But that day I understood the smile differently. He had plans, and time was short, and he was off to Israel in the morning.

I left the editor's room, and I am absolutely sure I knew it even then. I knew it the way when you're told you have a certain illness you understand you will not get better; or the way when you see a particular house on a particular landscape you think: Yes, that is for me, I am going to live there.

I was given a cubicle in a maze of cubicles. I had a telephone, a typewriter, a small rectangle of desk space, a few drawers, a bookshelf. I remember most of all the noise, a cacophonous crush of telephones and typewriters, punctuated by staccato bursts from the wire services. Even so, everything I said in the cubicle could be heard by those adjacent to me, just as I could hear what they were saying. There was an intimacy in that large room, even as you were insulated by the noise.

I was assigned that day to a section called Farewell and told to write a one-paragraph obituary of Dorothy Parker, who'd died the day before. I had only six sentences to write, and though I put more thought into it than I would ever have time for again, I finished it before lunch. I had the rest of the day to kill. I read past issues of the magazine. I observed the faces in the office—the camaraderie, the hostility, the jealousy. You could see it all, in one afternoon: those who had power, those who didn't, those who thought a lot of themselves, those who had longings elsewhere. I wondered where it was that I would fit. People spoke to me, made jokes, asked questions. They smiled with their mouths but not with their eyes. Even the friendliest were cautious. There were pressures there, and for some the stakes were high. Or seemed so then. It was remarkable, the air of importance created in that office—extraordinary to remember now how much it all seemed to matter.

I saw him too, moving through the office—to his own office, adjacent to the editor's; to a coffee machine across the maze of cubicles; out to lunch; back from lunch; to another writer's desk. In each of these journeys, there was the fleeting look, the sidelong glance, the eyes locking quickly in a turn, and I felt—actually I knew—that I was sealing a bargain with those brief glances. So that when he came to my desk at five o'clock and said some words about a drink at six, I was not surprised, merely nodded.

We went to a bar around a corner. It was filled with men in sport coats and loosened ties. He knew the place well, moved through it like a regular, took a table in a corner—I had the feeling the table had been left for him. He ordered a gin martini and I said I'd have a beer. He laughed at that; he said I didn't look the type to drink a beer. I asked, recklessly, what type was I? and then he had his opening: an easy shot straight to the center.

He said that I made lists and that I never would be late. He said I would be steady, though I'd rather drift. He said I'd do the job, though my heart would not be in it—that routine was more important to me than the work. He said I would be fast and dexterous but that I would not enjoy reporting: I was the type to listen but not to pry. He said it was his guess I'd rather edit: It was quiet work, and I'd be left alone.

A waitress came and brought me a frosted glass. I put my hand around it—my hand was burning. Was I so transparent after all? He loved this game; he would always win. It was a dance, and he was leading. I wonder now, was he not high, too, with the knowledge that we had found each other, the perfect team, the perfect symbiosis?

I changed the subject and asked a question about the Middle East. I knew that there was heavy fighting in the Sinai. He leaned back, let his jacket fall open across his belt. His answers were full of understatement, but in the understatement you could hear his skill, his own dexterity. He had a byline I had seen before: Harrold English. Already when you saw the name you had images of the man. I was looking at his wrist, at his wristbone exposed beyond the cuff of his jacket. It was tanned, and I was thinking while he talked—fatal, lethal, self-destructive thought—if only I could touch him there.