“I got the picture, Elsie.”
Elsie laughed and laughed. When she stopped, she said beep once more and knocked herself out all over again. Dick waited.
The sun was long down, and the sky was losing its glow. He could just see her face when it tipped up, her single pearl earrings little moons in the dusk of her dark hair, her teeth as white as the moon.
He got out of the canoe. He said, “I got to get home.” He took her hand to help her out. When she got to her feet on the soft earth of the marsh he put his arms around her. He felt awkward. “I don’t know, Elsie.” She felt small and cold. As he pulled back, his hand caught on the handle of her revolver. “Damn, Elsie. What’re you wearing your gun for?”
“We’re on special duty. They even called up the National Guard. In case of looting.”
Dick said, “Pistol-packing mama,” and began to laugh.
“You think that’s funny?” Elsie said. “Mine was much funnier.”
The canoe slithered along easily on top of the marsh. He could pull it by the painter with one hand. Elsie took his other hand. She said, “One of my problems is that I like hanging around with you. What do you say we keep it a secret, keep on hanging out together?”
“I know what you mean,” Dick said, but he couldn’t say any more.
“At least for a couple of months,” Elsie said. “Just hang out some. I won’t use my ray gun on you. I’ll be off to Boston by Christmas.”
They got to the truck before Dick answered. Dick slid the bow of the canoe up on the roof of the cab, and he and Elsie lashed it on.
“We’ll see each other,” Dick said. “I don’t know how much hanging around I’ll be doing. You’ve seen my house. And I got to check my pots.”
“I could go out with you to check the pots,” Elsie said.
“You remember how sick you got last time?”
“I’ll take seasick pills.”
“I’ll have Charlie along, and another hand too.”
“I could help.”
“What’s Charlie going to think? And, more to the point, if May gets to know about you and me, it would get to her a lot more if she knew you’d been out on Spartina with Charlie and me.”
“Maybe not,” Elsie said. “Maybe she’ll take it that I have some decent good will toward her children. She’ll be reassured I’m not out to break up a family. Maybe—”
“Maybe,” Dick said. “You’re a great one for saying maybe. But there’s some things there’s no maybe about.” He felt he’d been a little short and hard. He added, “You can see that, Elsie. There’s some things there’s just no point in being fanciful about.” Elsie cocked her head in a way that irritated him. He said, “Maybe May’ll be overjoyed about the whole thing, want the kid to come stay with us. Maybe she’d like having a little baby girl to fuss over now she’s through having kids of her own. Maybe she’ll want us all to move in together at Eddie’s, maybe you and her’ll sit around together shelling peas while I’m out on Spartina.”
Elsie said, “You want me to ask her?”
Dick felt the unpleasant glitter of Elsie’s nerve. It exasperated him — just when he was feeling sorry for her, she’d get pissy. But that was the way it was with her. She’d be going one way and then dart off another. Whether this was a skittish fashion she’d picked up from the kind of people she grew up with, or whether this was her own nature, he couldn’t tell. Maybe she couldn’t tell either. Whichever it was, it made him skittish along with her. He sometimes liked the feeling — he had to admit that — but it made him doubt her. Not her liking for him or even her intentions of loyalty, but her place in a life like his.
It saddened him. They got in the truck and drove slowly back on the causeway. She put her hand on his arm and said, “I’m sorry.” He was still sad. Elsie said, “The Eskimos live like that. I read a book about the Greenland Eskimos, it’s no big deal for them who gets into whose igloo.”
“There you go,” Dick said. He laughed. Sooner or later she did get him laughing. “We’ll just leave that book around for May to pick up and our troubles are over.”
The other thing he’d miss was telling her stuff. He couldn’t tell May about Parker and Marie. If he did, he knew how May would take it — get those slugs out of my garden. He understood that, he had that feeling too. But Elsie would crack up when he told her about Marie’s skirt suddenly flopping up, about the two pairs of sneakers. And what else would she say? He couldn’t tell. There was something to be said for that, for not being able to tell which way she’d fly.
It didn’t change the fact that he was in trouble.
But when they got to her house Dick said, “There’s this to be said for having kids.” And he told her about the middle of the hurricane, about how he’d started thinking of Charlie, how he’d kept repeating to himself, “ ‘O Leerie, I’ll go round at night and light the lamps with you!’ ”
She was puzzled for a bit. He explained some more, told her about reading to the boys when they were in bed, about how when Charlie was six and seven Charlie had followed him around, admiring everything he did, wanting to do what he did. “O Leerie, I’ll go round at night and light the lamps with you!”
And Elsie did surprise him. She said, “Oh shit.” Dick looked at her. She said, “Why did you tell me that? What am I going to do if it’s a little boy — is that why you told me that? Because I’ll never be Leerie to a boy?”
Dick felt whirled away a hundred miles. “No,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you.”
“Why did you tell me that?” She was still irritated and puzzled. “The only point to it I can see is that little boys need fathers.” She opened her door, but turned back to say, “That is just narrow-minded. Even if you’re right, you’re wrong.”
She was out. “Elsie.” She started for the house. He shouted, “Elsie! You forgot your canoe!”
She said, “Put it in the garage.” But she came back.
He said, “Look, Elsie. All I meant was—”
“Yes,” she said. “All you meant was …”
“All I meant was to cheer you up, for Christ’s sake. Just that it’s nice having a kid around.”
Elsie said, “I see,” but helped him stow the canoe in the garage alongside her Volvo.
Mary Scanlon came into the garage from the house. She gave him a hug and patted him on the shoulder. “Elsie told me you got back okay. Can you stay for supper? I made a stew, plenty for everyone.”
“I ate, thanks. I got to get home.”
Elsie hadn’t moved. He said, “I’ll be by. Maybe we can go see Miss Perry. Talk her into hiring Eddie back to clean up her driveway.”
He drove along the narrow lane down the hill, branches switching the sides of the truck. He saw his mistake. The stuff about remembering Charlie as a little boy was for May. The other story was for Elsie. He said out loud, “Watch yourself.”
He drove to the boatyard to take a look at Spartina. He took his big flashlight, found the buoy with the beam, ran it up the mooring pennant to the chock. Okay.
The only electric light visible was from the South County Hospital high on a hill above the salt pond. Emergency generator. No traffic to speak of. Halfway home Dick cut off his headlights, drove slowly by the light of the moon. He got his story straight. Sawtooth Point. House. Blue canoe? Yes, blue canoe. Spartina, had to check on her.
What surprised him was how he was still looking forward to getting under the covers with May. How soft her lanky bones could get in a big soft double bed. How she got to like it if he took the time to mess with her hair, comb it out with his fingers.