Holding him isn’t what Maggie expected. She hoped its familiarity would be a relief, but his body doesn’t feel right, doesn’t fit. She draws away and resumes walking toward the gate.
“Pauline’s been at her uncle’s,” he says, “and this week Brid stayed at my place. But lately—” There’s a hitch in his step. “Well, she’s got the idea that she should spend some time on the farm.”
“What, now?”
“She thinks you need looking after. I told her you wouldn’t want visitors, but when she’s got something into her head …”
They pass through the gate and onto the street, waiting to let a man go by with three spaniels straining against their leashes, leaping together like one animal.
“She’d be a handful,” says Fletcher. “If you don’t want her, you should just tell her no.”
Maggie tries to imagine Brid back at the farm and remembers her last night there, her fury, her glassy eyes.
“Fletcher, I’d take her, but it’s really not a good time.” Surely she can’t be the answer to Brid’s problems. There must be someone else. “What about Wale? Still no word from him?”
“Not since he left the farm. Don’t mention him to Brid, okay? To be honest, I thought the sanatorium was wrong to let her out, but somehow she convinced them she was doing better.” He pulls a set of keys from his pocket. “Will you come say hi, at least?”
Maggie looks at her watch. “I’m due at Aunt Harriet’s—”
“Just five minutes. Please?”
A little way down the sidewalk, he stops beside a silver Bentley. The dented, rusting camper van sits farther down the street, where she parked it. Opening the car’s trunk, he draws out a cardboard box. As he lifts it, there’s the clang of metal against metal.
“Here,” he says. “The camera’s in there with the reels.” But she can’t bring herself to reach for them, and he has to press the box into her hands. “You don’t want them?”
“I don’t know. For a long time I did.” She rests the box on a hip, thinking of what’s inside. “You edited out—” Solemnly he nods, and Maggie has a terrible, cruel thought. “Hey, did you show it to Cybil? She might think it’s a turn-on.”
He only stares at her with pained eyes. “I told you, Cybil and I aren’t—”
“I know,” she says. “But sometimes I think it would be easier if you were.”
In their separate vehicles, they drive half a mile before pulling into a small parking lot with a row of storefronts. Brid sits on the other side of the coffee shop window reading a book. She isn’t wearing sunglasses or makeup, and her coat is draped around her shoulders like a blanket. With a wave, she greets them from behind the glass, then frets over a run in her stocking until they enter and she stands to give Maggie a long embrace.
They begin to talk with fragile smiles, and Maggie has a sense of growing distant from herself, observing the conversation from outside. At one point Brid starts up and runs for the bathroom, leaving Fletcher and Maggie to stare at one another across the table. Finally Maggie goes off in pursuit. A few minutes later she returns with Brid on her arm and nods to him. The coffee shop door jingles as they exit. From the trunk of the Bentley he retrieves a suitcase and loads it into the camper. He and Brid hug, exchange a few words, hug again. Then Maggie and Brid get into the van and drive off.
The farmhouse at night. No crickets, moon, or stars. In Maggie’s bedroom, all is dark but for a line of light from the hall. A shadow disturbs it and the door swings open.
“You awake?” says George Ray. “I brought company.” He has Elliot over his shoulder. When he sets him down, the cat crosses the floor with headlight eyes and jumps onto the bed, starts purring, gently pummels her with his paws. George Ray remains at the threshold.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she whispers. “We agreed you’d stay in the barracks tonight.”
“Don’t worry, I came with great stealth.” He steps into the room and closes the door behind him. “Are you all right? You want to talk?”
“Later. God, I’ve missed you. Hurry, get into bed.”
He takes off his clothes and lies down next to her. At the edge of the mattress the cat grooms itself. George Ray touches her a long time between the legs until she squirms away.
“Enough,” she says. “Inside me.” He shakes his head.
“Why not?”
“I’m shy,” he replies, and she gives an unbelieving laugh. “No, not shy, but, you know—it’s a sad time for you …”
She climbs on top of him. Afterward, she can’t stop crying.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “It was just so horrible all week.” He strokes her hair. “You think Brid heard?” He doesn’t think so. “Is it okay, her being here? She bawled when we crossed the border.”
“Don’t worry. Only a few more days for me anyhow.”
She groans and holds him tighter. He says he wishes they’d met long ago, when he was still young. She asks him if he was being honest when he said he’d liked her even in the summer, and he says it’s the truth. Then she starts to question him about his wife. At this, he rolls to the far side of the bed, but she pursues him across it. Will Velma meet him at the airport? Will they make love the first night, or will she make him wait to pay him back for being away so long?
“Do you ask these questions to punish me?” he demands. “Or to punish yourself?”
“I don’t care what happens, I’m resigned to it,” she says. Turning onto her back, she asks, “You think Velma’s had lovers?”
There’s a flicker of impatience on his face. “Seven years for me in Canada,” he replies, “six months apart each year. Long time to be lonely.”
Maggie cogitates on these words. She tells him he should go back to the barracks, and he says he doesn’t want to.
“Go,” she insists. “Think about your beautiful wife and children.”
“Don’t say such things. You had a sad day. I want to be with you.”
“Why? What can you do?” He tries to hold her, but she shrugs him off. “You should leave. It’s good practice for later.”
He lets his head drop heavily on the pillow. “All right, if you insist—”
When he starts to get up, though, she grabs his leg.
“Wait, not yet!”
And laughing quietly, he falls back to the bed.
That night in her dreams, she’s at the Syracuse airport again, waiting for her father’s ashes to arrive. The plane lands, and with its appearance her trepidation begins to build. The aircraft taxis down the runway, stopping some distance from her, and passengers start to disembark, a line of tourists in Bermuda shorts along with soldiers in uniform. Maggie hopes that this time her father will appear among them, but there’s no sign, only a pair of men in dark suits who wait ominously by the tail. Maggie doesn’t want to be here. When she wills herself to turn, something won’t let her. She tries to scream and discovers that fear has stopped up her mouth.
A shadow falls across the ground. Someone’s standing behind her. His voice speaks into her ear.
“Who are you waiting for, little girl?”
At the moment his hand clutches her neck, she leaps awake.
All morning, Brid doesn’t leave her room. Maggie putters in the kitchen while terrible images run through her head, but she’s afraid to go upstairs and knock, fearful that Brid will sense the reason. Maggie shouldn’t have let her come. Half the time she can barely get out of bed herself; how can she be expected to look after someone else? Brid took pills, for God’s sake. In a panic, Maggie goes upstairs and clears out the medicine cabinet.
Afterward, she stands in the hall by Brid’s room listening for signs of life. When she hears the creak of bedsprings, she decides she’s had enough. An impulse has been growing in her ever since she awoke, but until now she hasn’t been able to act. Now she goes to her bedroom and retrieves the Super 8 camera, loads it with film, and carries it into the orchard.