Dick didn’t say anything.
“The boys’re getting grown up and on their own,” May said. “Tom’s fifteen. When school’s out, he and Charlie spend more time with Eddie than with me. They work with him all day, every Saturday.”
“Pretty soon we’ll all go work on our house together,” Dick said. “The insurance money’ll come through.…”
“Did you ever ask what I thought about your spending three weeks out of every month at sea?”
Dick was stung. He was about to say, “What the hell you think I was building a boat for?” He swallowed it. May got up from the bed and looked at her watch. She said, “The boys’ll be back from school in an hour. You want to take your shower?”
“Eddie still out?”
“He comes back late these days. Around six.”
Dick didn’t want to go to bed with May in her state, but he was afraid he’d cause more trouble if he didn’t want to. He said, “Maybe you’ll feel better back in your own house.”
May didn’t say anything for a while. Then she said, “It’s funny. I didn’t think I’d like living at someone else’s place. But it’s nice here.”
“It is,” Dick said. “Eddie’s handy at making things homey. Steady Eddie. You ever think you’d have been better off married to someone like Eddie? Nice and homey. Good disposition.”
May surprised him by laughing.
“Poor old Eddie,” she said. “He’s never going to get anywhere with that woman. It’s not just on account of her being up there with the big-house people. I don’t know about that. But if she was interested, he’s too nice. It’s okay the way he helps you out, the way he is with the boys. But with her he’s too bent-forward and agreeable.”
Dick couldn’t believe her mood had changed so suddenly — she sounded almost cheerful about Eddie’s problem.
“He gives up his own mind,” May said. “He just turns into a feather pillow for her. I think she had more fun out of Tom than out of Eddie. Tom got a little sassy, and you could see her perk up. I don’t know what she would’ve done if you’d come in the door in one of your slam-bang moods. Probably gone down on her knees to help pull your boots off.” May laughed again. She’d brightened up entirely.
Dick said, “I thought your complaint was I was too disagreeable.”
May said, “I’m saying that to show what she’s like, not to encourage you.” She added, “Nobody wants things all one way or the other. Go take your shower.”
46
That fall Dick and May spent in Eddie’s house was companionable. Spartina brought in pretty good hauls. Even with time out for some November gales, Dick got out more pots, found a window of bright, cold, calm weather in December. He’d hired an old Portuguese who suited Tran and him fine. The food on board was excellent — both Tran and the Portuguese, Tony Pereira, took an intelligent interest in meals on board. The food at Eddie’s was good too. Eddie took out his crossbow and shot another swan for Christmas dinner. Dick had never figured on how cheering good meals could be.
But Dick still hadn’t told May about Elsie. That worry would swoop in on him so that he was stabbed with panic. But then it would leave quickly. Later he realized the sharpness was dangerous: it made him think he was actually paying a price for things’ going well; when the stab of panic was over he was lulled back to regular life.
He told May in January. There’d been a foggy thaw and all of them had gone down to their house with Eddie. The insurance money had come in and was enough so that Eddie and what was now Eddie’s regular little building crew could do quite a bit more than just shore up and patch the old house. They were going to add a little greenhouse on the south side, and a screened-in porch off the kitchen. May was very pleased. Eddie went back with the boys to start supper. Dick went down to check the wharf. When he came back, May was poking in the garden with a spade fork. There were beads of foggy dew on the nap of her new wool coat and on her cut-short hair. Her cheeks were pink from the little bit of digging she’d done. Dick told her she looked pretty good. She stopped digging. “It’s not just those beauty treatments,” he said. “Maybe it’s things looking up. That was a bad patch last summer. I see now it weighed you down too. Maybe even more than it did me. I was almost crazy with getting that boat in. It’s sometimes easier to get through something like that when you’re a little crazy. But that made you the one had to be normal, had to keep things going. I can see that must have been hard.”
May was happy to hear this. She took his arm, brushed the water drops off the cuff of his slicker.
Dick said, “That stuff with Parker. God, I got up to crazy stuff. You were right to get me to go to Miss Perry after all. I damn near missed that on account of her going into her spell. But you were right to get me to do it.”
“You won’t have any trouble making that payment, will you?”
“It’s not till the end of next August. Even with a bad swordfish season, it’s no trouble.”
“And you don’t have to deal with Parker.”
“Parker taking me on his boat is how I made some money. I didn’t actually get money for his little smuggling deal.”
May said, “Well, you’re clear of him. And you won’t have to do a clambake for Sawtooth Point. And you won’t have to fool with that fellow that was making the movie, that friend of Elsie Buttrick. I heard things about him.…”
“We did get him to pay for the spotter plane. Some of that turned out lucky. Even poaching clams out of the bird sanctuary made some money. But that was another piece of craziness.”
“Wasn’t it the movie fellow that caused the accident where Elsie Buttrick fell overboard?”
“No, that was her getting the outboard foul of the line.”
May said, “Well, even that turned out to the good, then. She ended up lending you another thousand. And your boat came through the hurricane.”
Dick said, “Elsie’s going to have a baby.”
May seemed to know everything just from that.
She walked off a short way, then came back to face him. She looked at her watch. “We have to get back soon. It is your baby?”
“Yes.”
“So all that about how near crazy you were, you told me that by way of an excuse.”
Dick hadn’t thought of that, but now he saw it might be true. He didn’t say anything.
May said deliberately, “You better tell me some more. One thing you better tell me is how come an up-to-date woman, gone to college, gone to two colleges, how come she gets pregnant? Or was it out on Parker’s boat? And she didn’t …”
Dick said, “I guess she made a mistake.” Dick could see anger move up May’s face. But May didn’t explode.
May said, “This was last summer? Before you put the boat in? How long did all this go on?”
Dick looked away. “Once or twice. No, two or three times.”
May laughed at him.
Dick felt that. He said, “I’ll tell you exactly. It was right after Parker’s smuggling run. Elsie was on duty for two nights. She was riding her bicycle home and I gave her a ride. It was raining.”