We finished shoveling the dirt out. We scrubbed the floor and dusted the furniture, we replaced the broken steps with cinder-blocks that Abbie found down by the water. Darcy washed the kitchen cupboards and the mismatched dishes she found stacked in them, and scoured the sink. The little ones polished the windows, their favorite job. I taped cardboard patches over the broken panes. We tore down the curtains and the great meshy spiderwebs, we ripped the tacked-on oilcloth off the table and the draggled calico skirt off the sink. From the boatyard store we bought brighter lightbulbs, a bucket of disinfectant, a flashlight for walks in that deep, country dark that is so startling after a life in the city, and finally — three days later, when I stopped thinking we might be leaving at any minute — aluminum cots for the children to sleep on and more blankets to cover them with. The store had no pillows except the life-preserving kind. My children have always slept on pillows. “Never mind,” I told them, “this way is good for the spine. You’ll be healthier.” Not that health seemed to be any problem. They worked hard every day fixing up the house, as if it were a game; they ate enormous meals and slept like rocks every night — pillowless and sheetless, crackling about on the red vinyl pads that came with the cots. I wondered what I would do with them if we had to stay here so long it stopped being a novelty. Should I put them in the local school? But it was so close to the end of the year by now — nearly May. The weather was getting warmer. We peeled off some of the layers of clothing we’d been wearing day and night. And as we slacked up work on the house the children simply took to the outdoors. They lugged Rachel with them through the tall grass and pestered the boatmen and hung around the docks. They weren’t allowed to touch the water, even — it was foul and filmed with grease. “What about summer?” Pippi asked me. “Won’t we get to go swimming?” I said, “Of course not. I’ll get you a wading pool, if it’s hot.”
Summer! Would we still be here when summer came?
Brian stopped by almost every day. I told him not to but he said he had to come anyway — he had his boat moored out on the river, a little blue ketch bobbing in front of our house. “How are things in the city?” I asked him. “What’s happening in Baltimore? Is the show going well? Do you have many buyers?” All except what I wanted to ask most: Why doesn’t Jeremy miss us?
The only time he mentioned Jeremy was once during the first week, when it was still cold. I remember the cold because he asked me to step outside with him a minute, away from the children, just as he was leaving. I came in my sweater, with my arms folded across my chest for warmth, and he said, “Not like that, get a coat. I’ll wait.” Then out beside his car he said, “Mary, I feel I’m in an awkward position here.”
“Do you want me to leave?” I asked.
What would I have done if he’d said yes?
But what he said was, “No, of course not, but I’d like to know what you expect of me. Am I supposed to be keeping your whereabouts a secret? Because if I am, now—”
“Oh no,” I said. “Jeremy knows where I am.”
“I wasn’t sure that he did.”
“He knows. I told him, I wrote him a note.”
Then I thought, Suppose he never saw the note. Is that why I haven’t heard from him? I said, “Did he say he doesn’t know my whereabouts? Have you seen him? Did he ask you?”
“I saw him, yes. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even seem to want to mention your going.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, you can tell him, Brian.”
“Of course I wouldn’t bring the subject up myself. But if he asked, you see, I felt that I was in an awkward—”
“Bring it up, I don’t mind. Tell him, It isn’t as if this were a fight or anything.”
“What is it, then?”
I pulled my coat tighter against a breeze.
“I don’t want to pry,” Brian said, “but is this something permanent you are doing?”
I didn’t answer. I had questions of my own. I wanted to know how Jeremy had looked and whether he was getting enough rest and eating right. (He was always so fond of sweets and he didn’t like meat.) But I knew those were housewifely questions that would make Brian smile, and anyway he wouldn’t have been able to tell me. Oh, sometimes I think of other artists’ wives, people that Brian must run into all the time. I picture them fragile and blond and hollow-cheeked, the kind that model in the nude and lead unscheduled lives in garrets and never, never complicate things with children and plumbers. When I used to come clumping into the gallery every month, wearing my nursing bra and my best black dress with the spit-up milk down one shoulder, I imagined that Brian looked stunned. He would stare at me, and if he happened to be talking with other women they would hush and stare too. I suspected that they were feeling sorry for Jeremy. “An artist — married to her?” Then I would pull my stomach in and stuff the straggles of hair back behind my ears, and when I was looking at paintings I spent longer before each one than I wanted to, just showing I could appreciate art. I wouldn’t have been caught dead mentioning anything domestic. And now all I allowed myself to say was, “I hope he’s making out all right.”
“Oh, you know Jeremy,” Brian said. I had no idea what that was supposed to mean. He smiled down at me and said, “Don’t worry, Mary. I’m sorry I brought it up. Go back inside now before you catch a cold.”
The next time he came he didn’t mention Jeremy at all, and I was afraid to ask.
Now more and more boats were tethered at the docks and bobbing on moorings. Weekdays, when not many people sailed, I could look out over a stretch of black water prickling with masts, and I liked to pretend that I was some fisherman’s wife living in a hut at the edge of the ocean. The river did have the feeling of an ocean. There was no opposite shore in sight; from this boatyard you sailed due east into the Chesapeake Bay, which looked like white veils at the limits of our vision. Late Friday afternoon the city people would begin to arrive from Baltimore and Washington — couples dressed for yachting, carrying ice buckets and windbreakers and Hudson Bay blankets. My children would crowd along the dock to stare at them. We saw their sails scudding away all Saturday, converging on us again all Sunday evening like birds flocking home. While we ate our supper doors would be slamming in the parking lot, motors revving, voices calling goodbyes. By Monday morning all that remained were their tire tracks in the gravel and those naked masts lined up again beside the docks. A few people drove in during the week to sail on their own or make minor repairs, but they were quieter and the only time I was aware of them was when I ran into them at the store. Then their solid, confident city voices startled me, and I would stand gawking like any country woman as they read off their long extravagant lists. Ice, they wanted, and a Phillips screwdriver and a can of rust remover and a sack of potato chips. Luxuries, every one. We took our food unchilled, or bought it from the store refrigerator just before time to eat; our tools we borrowed from neighbors or made ourselves from scraps; we stripped that everlasting salt-air rust off them with the Coca-Cola left in discarded cans. As for potato chips! I made the children eat protein foods instead. I have never liked being stingy with food but what else could I do? I fed them lots of eggs and cottage cheese and powdered milk. I gave the baby bits from my plate. Gerber’s was too expensive. Even doing the laundry was expensive. Once a week I carried the dirtiest things to the store washing machine and dropped my quarter in the slot and sprinkled on the detergent, rationing every grain. I lugged the clothes home wet and hung them up to save fifty cents, even if it was rainy and I had to drape the living room with them and bat my way between damp blue jeans for a day and a half till they dried. Then here came this city man with his list so long that it filled two separate pages of his memo pad, not to mention what he idly tossed in from the counter displays as he wandered about the store whistling through his teeth. I doubt if he noticed me. If he did he probably thought I came from one of those shacks beside the store, where the boat mechanic lived or the carpenter or the old retired steelworker and his daughter. Poor white trash with dusty paper flowers before the madonnas on their windowsills and cotton balls on their screen doors to keep the flies away. That was what I had become. My children ran in and out between counters with their faces dirty and their dresses unironed, their feet bare and callused even before the summer had set in.