Strange Fits of Passion (21 page)

I heard the motor then. I knew its idiosyncrasies by heart. It grew louder; louder still; then it stopped. I wondered how he had found the mooring. I heard the slap of the dinghy, the sounds of the return ritual. Perhaps I walked in the direction of those sounds. Perhaps my feet knew the way better than I had imagined.

I wonder now, and I have often wondered this: whether things would have developed as they did if we had not come upon each other in the fog, if we had not had that perfect sense of isolation, of the world around us vanished.

He appeared out of the dark mist, as if emerging in a dream, and I must have too. It occurred to me that he'd be more startled to come upon me than I him, and so I spoke at once.

"You're back," I said.

I thought my voice sounded casual, cheerful.

He
was
startled. He'd been walking from the dinghy to the truck, but he stopped. He had two buckets, one in each hand. I could hear the lobsters inside those buckets more than I could see them.

He put the buckets down.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. "I'm fine."

"What are you doing out here?"

"I was just taking a walk. I'd been feeling cooped up."

He looked at my face, then at the baby in the sling.

"You shouldn't be out here," he said. "This fog is nasty today. You could lose your way."

"I don't see how," I said, but my voice lacked conviction.

"I've lived here all my life. I know the coastline and the water as well as I know my own kids. But in the fog, I'm a stranger. You don't trust anything in the fog. Nothing."

"Why did you go out, then?" I asked.

He looked out toward the water. "I don't know. I thought I'd beat it back. But I got caught the other side of Swale's. Took me all day to creep back in. Foolish. It was a foolish thing to do."

His voice was low, and he spoke matter-of-factly, without much emotion, but I understood that he sometimes took risks too. That he had been foolish was merely a statement of fact, not cause for much remorse. Beyond his voice, you could hear the foghorns.

"Your wife will be worried," I said.

"I've been on to her on the CB. She knows I'm in."

He looked at me as if he was thinking.

"You come with me to the truck, let me put these in, and then I'll walk you to the cottage."

"I'll be—" I started to say.

"I couldn't leave you out here without seeing you were safely back," he said, and picked up the two buckets as if there were nothing more to discuss.

I walked a little ways behind him. He had long sloping shoulders beneath the yellow slicker. His hair was covered with mist, and his slicker was wet. He wore tall waders that came up high over his knees, over his jeans. He had large hands with long fingers. I was looking at his hands gripping the handles of the buckets.

At the truck, he slid the buckets onto the bed.

"Well, then," he said.

He turned, and we walked in the direction of the house. He seemed to know better where to walk than I, and so I followed his lead, again a few steps behind him. He'd been right; I realized it at once. The fog was disorienting. I'd have gone in a different direction, south along the coast. I'd have missed the house at first, but I did think I would probably have found it after a few tries.

The cottage loomed out of the mist. First there was the glow of light from the living room, then the outline of the house itself. The light inside the rooms looked warm, inviting.

He walked me up the slope to the door. I had my hand on the latch. I felt like a schoolgirl who'd been seen home by a teacher who was too shy for conversation.

"Thank you," I said.

He looked at me. "I wouldn't say no to a cup of tea," he said.

His voice was so low I wasn't sure I had heard him right. "Would you like a cup of tea?" I asked.

"Thank you," he said. "I've got a chill on from the damp."

"Will your family...?"

"They know I'm in. They won't be worried now."

I opened the door, and we both walked into the cottage. I went directly to the stove and got the kettle, filled it, and lit the burner.

"Keep your eye on the kettle," I said. "I have to go upstairs and put Caroline to bed."

In the living room, I wriggled out of my coat and removed Caroline from the sling. I carried her upstairs, put her into her pajamas, and nursed her on the bed. After a time, I could hear the kettle whistling, then the sounds of cups and saucers being fetched from the cupboard. I heard him at the sink, washing his hands. The refrigerator was opened and closed. I heard him rummaging through the silverware drawer.

When I came downstairs, he was sitting at the table. The slicker was on a hook on the back of the door and was dripping water onto the linoleum. He had removed his waders and was in his stocking feet. I could smell the sea in the room, from the slicker or the waders. I watched him for a minute from behind, and if he knew I was standing there, he gave no indication. His back was very long, so long that his sweater rode up over the waist of his jeans. But his back was broad, and he was not as slope-shouldered as he'd appeared in the slicker. He sipped his tea and did not turn around. At the place at right angles to his own there was a cup of tea for me. He'd let it steep, taken out the tea bag. He'd put milk and sugar on the table.

I sat down. I looked up at him. I had never seen his face in bright light. He was still, and his eyes moved slowly. I was again struck by the deep grooves at the sides of his mouth. His face had color, was permanently weathered. He looked at me, but we didn't speak.

"It's some warmth," he said finally.

"Did you get many lobsters today?" I asked.

"I was having some luck before the fog," he said. "But all told, it wasn't much. Doesn't matter, though."

"Why?"

"Whatever you get this time of year you're grateful for."

"Why do you do it? Go out when no one else does?"

He made a self-deprecating sound. "Because no one else does, I suppose. No, I like it out there. I get restless...."

"It seems dangerous to me," I said. "It seems I'm always hearing about men drowning."

"Well, you could...."

"If you're not careful?"

"Well, even if you're careful. There's things you can't control. Not like today. I should have been smarter today. But you can't always control a sudden blow, or engine failure...."

"What do you do then?"

"You try to get back the best way you can. You try not to make any mistakes." He leaned his weight on one elbow, turned slightly toward me.

"You've been all right, then," he said. "Since Christmas Eve, I mean."

"Oh. Yes. Thank you. It was awful, fainting like that. I've never fainted. I don't know what came over me."

"Just a bunch of kids protesting the war," he said. "My son probably would have been in it too, except he was home with ... my wife. You looked shocky. Like you were in shock."

"Oh," I said, looking down. "Did I?"

"What happened to you?" he asked quietly. "Why are you here?"

The question was so sudden, I felt I had been stung. Perhaps it was the quiet of his voice, or the way I had come upon him in the fog, or the way the simplicity of his question required a truthful answer. I put a hand up to my mouth. My lips were pressed together. To my horror, my eyes filled, as if I had indeed been stung. I couldn't speak. I was afraid to blink. I was afraid to move. In all of the days since I had left the apartment in New York City, I had not cried. Not once. I had been too numb to cry, or too careful.

He reached up and took the hand away from my mouth and put it on the table. He held my hand on the oilcloth. He didn't say a word. His eyes were gray. He didn't look away from me.

"I was married to a man who beat me," I said after a time. I let out a long breath of air after I had said it.

It sounded appalling, unreal, in the cottage.

"You left him," he said.

I nodded.

"Recently. You've run away."

"Yes."

"Does he know where you are?"

I shook my head. "I don't think so," I said. "If he did, he'd come and get me; I'm sure of that."

"You're afraid of him."

"Yes."

"He did that to you?"

He made a movement with his head to indicate my face. I knew the bruises were healing, were yellowish or light brown rather than purple or blue, but they were still visible.

I nodded.

"What do you think the chances are that he'll find you?" he asked.

I thought for a minute.

"Fairly good," I said. "It's what he does, in a way. Investigates things. He knows how to find out things."

"And what do you think will happen to you when he finds you?"

I looked at the place where he was holding my hand. His hand hadn't moved; it was firm on mine.

"I think he'll kill me," I said simply. "I think he'll kill me because he won't be able to control himself."

"Have you gone to the police?" he asked.

"I don't think I can go to the police," I said.

"Why not?"

"Because I've stolen his child."

"But you had to do that, to save yourself."

"That's not how it will appear. He's very clever."

He, too, looked down at where he was holding my hand. He began then to stroke my arm from the wrist to the elbow. I had a sweater on, and the sleeves were pushed up over my elbows, so he was stroking my skin, slowly and softly.

"You have a wife," I said.

He nodded. "My wife isn't—" He stopped.

I waited.

"She's sick," he said finally. "She has a chronic illness. We're together, but we don't have what you would call..."

"A marriage."

"No."

He was stroking my arm. I might have pulled it away, but I couldn't. I couldn't move. It had been so long since anyone had touched me this gently, this kindly, that I was nearly paralyzed with gratitude.

"We haven't ... been together," he said, "for years."

"You haven't even told me your name," I said, "although I know it."

"It's Jack," he said.

"My real name is Maureen," I said. "Maureen English. But I've become Mary. I've taken it on. I'll stay Mary."

"Your daughter's name is Caroline," he said.

"Yes."

"That's her real name?"

"Yes," I said. "I couldn't call her something she wasn't."

He smiled. He nodded.

"I can't do this," I said. "I'm no good at this anymore."

But even though I said this, I did not pull my arm away. The stroking of his fingers was soothing and rhythmical, like a warm wave washing over me, and all I knew was that I didn't want it to stop.

"I'm afraid," I said.

"I know."

"You're old enough to be my father," I said. It was something I'd been thinking—just that minute or for days?—and I thought it ought to be said, soon, to get it over with.

"Not really," he said. "Well, technically maybe. I'm forty-three."

"I'm twenty-six."

He nodded, as if he'd already guessed my age, give or take a year or two.

Outside, the foghorns were relentless—insistent and scolding.

He took his hand away and stood up with his teacup. He took his teacup to the sink.

"I'm going to go now," he said. He walked to the door, where his slicker was hanging. "I've been gone long enough. I can't leave my wife alone too long."

I stood up. I didn't say anything.

"But I'll be back," he said. "I can't say when...."

I nodded.

"You shouldn't be afraid of this," he said.

I woke when I heard the motor on the lane. There was just a smear of gray outside the windows, but I could see the tops of the trees. The fog had not come yet. I heard the motor stop, but it was not at the end of the point; it was below my cottage.

I threw back the covers and ran down the stairs to the kitchen. Harrold
can't
have found me yet, I was praying. My heart was drumming in my chest.

Then, through the window on the door, I could see just a glimmer of a yellow slicker.

I unlocked the door.

Jack came in and put his arms around me.

For a minute, I couldn't speak.

Then I said: "You smell like the sea."

"I think it's permanent," he said.

Later, before the sun had fully risen, we left my bed and returned to the kitchen. He had carried his clothes with him, and dressed standing on the linoleum floor. He showed no self-consciousness when he dressed, even though he knew I was watching him.

I had put on my nightgown and my sweater in the bedroom. I made us a breakfast of coffee and cold cereal. We did not speak while he dressed, and he lit a cigarette and smoked at the table while I made the coffee. I brought the bowls of cereal to the table.

"I usually make a breakfast before I leave the house, but I couldn't eat this morning," he said, putting out his cigarette on an ashtray I'd given him.

I smiled.

"Couldn't sleep, either," he said, and smiled back at me.

I wanted to climb upstairs to the bed and curl up against his chest and go to sleep with him, the blankets pulled up high over our heads.

"When did you decide to come?" I asked.

"Sometime in the middle of the night. As soon as I decided it, I wanted to get up right then and there and come, but I couldn't...."

I nodded. I knew he meant his wife.

"Do you mind having to get up so early for your work?" I asked.

"It's all right," he said. "You get used to it. It suits me."

"Willis said you went to college and had to come back."

He snorted. "Willis," he said.

I watched him as he ate his cereal.

"I did," he said finally. "I was in my junior year; my father broke his arms on his boat. I had to come back to take it over."

He didn't elaborate further.

"Were you disappointed?" I asked. "Disappointed you couldn't finish school?"

At first he didn't answer.

"I might have been, for a time," he said slowly, not looking at me. "But then you settle in, have your house, your work, your kids. It's hard to regret the things you've done that have led to having your kids."