Twice Loved (copy2) (20 page)

“Touch me,” he begged, and she did, only to be reminded of Rye’s so different body. The thought brought an immediate backlash of guilt, so she put more into her kisses and caresses than she felt. But the thought of Rye released the first faint sensation between her legs, so she went on thinking of him, to make this easier, even as Dan shed his clothes and blew out the light, then took her down. As his body moved over hers, she thought of orange sections—sweet, bright, and juicy—slipping between Rye’s lips, leaving succulent droplets on his smiling mouth. She pictured Rye’s tongue taking the droplets away, though it was Dan’s tongue moving in her mouth. But at last her body was receptive, and his hips moved against hers for a brief time before he plunged hard and shuddered. It was over for him while it had scarcely started for her.

With Dan’s body heavy on hers, Laura pictured the loft over old man Hardesty’s boathouse, remembering all those times with Rye. And she wanted to weep. Oh, Rye, Rye, if only it were you beside me ...

But as Dan settled into sleep, Laura was steeped with shame at her own duplicity, using thoughts of one man to arouse herself for another.

Chapter 9

THE FOLLOWING DAY, 
Josiah said nothing when Rye went upstairs at the usual time, then came back down with fresh comb marks in his hair and his shirt tucked tightly into his waistband.

“I won’t be gone long,” the younger man said, setting off through the wide double doors with a confident step.

But he was gone longer than usual, having waited and watched and searched the square only to give up after thirty minutes. His booted feet clumped out a warning even before he strode angrily through the door of the cooperage, his lips narrowed tightly, a look of suppressed rage about him.

Josiah squinted behind his pipe smoke; his gaze followed Rye.

“So, she didn’t show up t’day,” he noted tersely.

Rye’s fist came down like a battering ram on top of the tool bench. “Goddamnit, she’s mine!”

“Not so’s Dan’s admittin’.”

“She wants t’ be.”

“Aye, and what does it count for when the law’s on Dan’s side?”

“The law can free her, just as it tied her to him.”

Josiah’s scowl nearly hid his blue-gray eyes beneath grizzled eyebrows. “Divorce?”

Rye pierced his father with a look of determination. “Aye, it’s what I’m thinkin’.”

“On 
Nantucket?
"

The two words needed no further embellishment. The rigid Puritanical beliefs of Nantucket’s forefathers still clung; in his whole life Rye had never heard of any couple from the island divorcing.

With a sigh, he sank onto an upturned barrel, bending forward to twine his fingers into the hair at the back of his head while staring at the floor.

Josiah braced one handle of his drawknife on the floor, withdrew his pipe, and abruptly changed the subject. “Been thinkin’. Y’re not much good t’ me lately, swingin’ tools as if y’d like t’ kill somebody, breakin’ perfectly good staves and forgettin’ y’ left the wet ones out of the water.”

Rye looked up: his father never complained—Josiah was the most patient man Rye knew. Now his dry New England drawl continued.

“Be needin’ t’ set up our agreements with the mainlanders for our winter supply of staves.”

With no source of wood on Nantucket, Josiah got his rough-rived staves from the mainland farmers, whose wood supply was limitless and whose hands would otherwise have been idle during the long winter. Each spring a full year’s supply of dimensional boards was delivered in exchange for finished barrels and pails, the arrangement benefiting both farmer and cooper.

“Best be gettin’ over there and talk t’ them Connecticut farmers.” Here Josiah pointed his pipestem at Rye. “Thought y’ might be talked inta goin’ and gettin’ the job done.”

At Josiah’s words, Rye’s anger began losing sway.

Josiah bent his curly gray head over his work again, and the drawknife created more spiral shavings and the smoke wreathed and dissipated overhead. As if to himself, Josiah muttered, “If it was me sittin’ on that barrel, I’d be thinkin’ about chattin’ with them mainland lawyers about what my rights was. Wouldn’t take the word of Ezra Merrill that things was all cut ’n’ dried.”

Still leaning his elbows on his knees, Rye studied the old man’s back. It flexed rhythmically as his burly forearms pulled, then retreated for a new bite at the cedar billet. Watching, mulling, Rye felt a softening about his heart. Silently, he unfolded, got to his feet, and crossed to stand behind his father, on whose tough, flexing shoulder Rye clasped a hand. Beneath his touch the muscles bunched and hardened as Josiah completed the stroke. Then, wordlessly, he let the knife rest and lifted his wise gaze to his son, who looked down at Josiah with eyes erased of anger. Josiah’s lips pursed closed. They opened and a puff of smoke came out. Rye squeezed the shoulder and said quietly, “Aye, I’ll go, old man. It’s just what I need ... thank you.” Josiah nodded agreement, and Rye squeezed his shoulder once more before his hand fell away.

***

Laura heard that Rye had left the island, and it made it easier for her to keep her promise to Dan. But she felt as if her husband could see into the hidden recesses of her mind. More and more often she’d glance up to find him watching her with a look of consternation on his face, as if he had detected secret thoughts at work in his wife. It became an irritation to her to realize he had a right to mistrust her, for though in body she remained true to him, in her mind she again wandered the hills with Rye.

She owed Dan so much. He 
had
 been a good husband, and if possible, an even better father. He’d taught Josh how to fly a kite, how to walk on stilts, how to tell a gull from a tern, and how to handle the difficult quill pen. Why, already Josh was learning the alphabet, his shaky letters a constant inspiration for praise from Dan. The two spent long sessions bent over the trestle table with their heads side by side. And when the ink spilled, there was patience instead of anger; when the letters were inept, there was encouragement instead of criticism.

But most evenings when the lessons were over, Dan remained in the house only a short time before donning his coat and hat and heading toward the solace that alcohol seemed to provide. Then Laura would wander about the house restlessly, touching the countless luxuries Dan had bought for her—the zinc sink, the brass roasting kitchen before the fireplace, and at its top the clockjack for turning meat. Sometimes her fingers skimmed along the mantel as she paced the quiet room and stared at the pieces of whitewear that Dan had insisted upon her having so that she need not be constantly melting down and recasting the pewter, which was forever breaking or bending or springing holes.

Then he started bringing her presents, coming first with fragrant soap and discouraging her from the drudgery of making her own. When she protested, he made light of his gift, insisting it was inexpensive, since every candler on the island made it with the same materials and processes used in candle making. When a ship from France put in, he came home and presented her with a colorfully painted and varnished sugar box and tea caddy made of the new French toleware.

But she knew why he’d been bringing her gifts more and more often, and these constant offerings created an evergrowing sense of guilt within Laura. For even while she accepted them, she was wondering how to break away from the good life he’d provided her and her son, without bringing lasting hurt to all of them.

Rye returned from his trip to the mainland to find a check had been delivered—from Dan. House rent. Rye stubbornly refused to cash it, bellowing to Josiah that it’d be like accepting rent for Dan’s use of Laura!

She, meanwhile, needed someone to talk to, someone who could help sort out the mixed emotions of a woman who pondered her duty to one man and resisted the temptation to seek out another man, whose busk was still pressed to her heart by day and whose image filled her dreams by night.

Laura discarded the possibility of going to have a talk with her mother. Her married friends, too, were out, for they were Dan’s friends as well. That left Laura’s sister, Jane, who lived on Madaket Harbor, a half-hour’s walk to the west.

Jane’s husband was a commercial fisherman who followed the seasonal schooling of fish on and about Nantucket—in March, the herring that crowded the island’s channels, in April, the cod and haddock off the east end of the island. But now Laura knew John Durning’s ketch would be out taking cod off Sankaty Head, so she and Jane could talk privately.

Laura took a warm hooded cloak and crossed the hills west of town paralleling the high cliffs along the island’s inner curve, happy to be once again on the salty heath, though the day was overcast and threatened rain. With Josh skipping ahead, she followed Cliff Road as it bent between the strung-out sections of Long Pond. As she approached the hills on the northwestern edge of the island and looked out beyond Madaket Harbor, Tuckernuck Island was scarcely visible through the dimming drizzle that was falling. She shivered and hurried on.

Jane’s house was a weathered gray saltbox to which two linters had been added as her family grew, for Jane had six children, all under nine, and on any given day at least three extras seemed to be underfoot, until it seemed children squirted from between the wallboards! Jane managed the noise and fighting with surprising calmness, taking in stride the spats she was asked to arbitrate, the constant demands for food, and the cleaning up that inevitably followed the children’s treats of milk and jam tarts.

The moment Laura walked into Jane’s house, she knew it was a mistake to have chosen a rainy day for a confidential talk with her sister. The weather had chased all six of her nieces and nephews inside, and it seemed as if each had brought along a battalion of friends. Josh was in his glory, for he was immediately included in their game of hide-the-thimble, which sent the tribe scrambling to every corner of the keeping room, sometimes even across Laura’s and Jane’s laps, as the children probed the two women’s pockets, their ears, their high-topped shoes, and even their chignons in search of the hidden thimble.

Jane laughed and abetted their scramblings by suggesting likely hiding places, while Laura grew more and more impatient. But just when it seemed that no chance would come to broach the subject, Jane herself introduced it.

“The whole island’s talking about you and Rye ... and Dan, of course.”

“They are?” Laura looked up in surprise.

“They say you’ve been meeting Rye secretly.”

“Oh, it’s not true, Jane!”

“But you have seen him, haven’t you?”

“ Yes, of course I ’ve 
seen
 him. ”

Jane studied her sister for a moment, then confided, “So have we. He looks wonderful, doesn’t he?”

Laura felt herself color, and she knew Jane watched her closely as she went on.

“He stopped by here, brought some little things he’d carved for the children, though he didn’t know we’d had the last three. Surprised him plenty to see us with enough to man a whaleboat.” Jane chuckled, then her expression sobered as she leveled her hazel eyes on Laura. “He’s been seen out walking the moors a lot, and they say he haunts the shore with that dog at his heels, looking like a lost dog himself.”

The picture of a forlorn Rye walking the islands with Ship at his heels at last made Laura’s face crumple. “Oh, Jane, what am I to do?” She covered her eyes, which were suddenly streaming tears.

A child came squealing past, but Jane ignored him for once and laid a sympathetic hand on her sister’s hair. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to keep everyone from getting hurt,” Laura sobbed miserably.

“I don’t think that’s possible, little one.”

At the endearment, Laura grasped her sister’s hand and held it against her cheek for a moment before lowering it to the tabletop, where she held it between them. “I have made them both miserable then, if what you say is true. Rye, wandering the hills with the dog, waiting for me to tell him yes, and Dan leaving the house every night to drink away his fear that I’ll tell him no. And between them, Josh, who doesn’t have any idea Rye is his father. I wish I knew what to do.”

“You have to do what your heart tells you to do.”

“Oh but, Jane, y ... you haven’t seen the look on Dan’s face when he comes home at the end of the day bringing me another gift, hoping ... oh, it’s just awful.” Again Laura dissolved into a pool of tears. “He’s been so good to me ... and to Josh.”

“But which of them do you love, Laura?”

The red-rimmed eyes lifted. The trembling lips parted. Then she swallowed and looked down again. “I’m afraid to answer that.”

Jane refilled Laura’s teacup. “Because you love them both?”

“Yes.”

Jane moved her hand across the tabletop and gently rubbed the back of Laura’s. “I can’t tell you what to do. All I can say is this: I was married already when ... well, when you and Rye turned from children into adolescents. I saw you both growing up before my eyes. I watched what happened between the two of you, and the way Dan followed you with the same look he’s probably got in his eyes now when he brings you gifts in an effort to win your love. Laura dear ...” With a single finger Jane lifted Laura’s trembling chin and looked into her troubled brown eyes. “I know how it was with Rye and you long before you married. I knew because John and I were so happily in love at the time that it was easy for me to recognize it in someone else. The two of you couldn’t keep your eyes off each other—nor, I suspect, your hands either, when you were by yourselves. Would I be out of line to ask if your misery now’s got something to do with that?”

“Jane, we haven’t done anything since he’s been back. He ... we ...” But Laura stumbled into silence.

“Ah, I see how it is. You want to.”

“Dear God, Jane, I’ve fought it.”

“Yes.” Jane’s pause was eloquent. “So Rye walks the hills with his dog, and you come to my kitchen to cry.”