The sound of the surf in the room was very faint, a distant threat.
“This is the busiest little hand I’ve ever seen,” Mrs. Wakefield said. “Busy hands can’t help having some left-over dirt. And look, aren’t you lucky? — you’ve got your initial written right in your skin. See the J right here?”
Sure enough, if you looked terribly hard, you could see a long skinny J with an X on top.
“What does the X mean?”
“Let me think. It could be a kiss, couldn’t it? A kiss for Jessie. That’s lucky, too. I’m sure it means that you will be loved.”
“Who by?”
“By the ones you love.”
“Just parents and aunts and things like that?”
“Oh no, everyone. Everyone you love will love you.”
“Animals, too?”
“Animals, too.”
Jessie nodded. “That’s nice. Can you see what I’m going to be when I grow up?”
“No, no, I really can’t.”
“Maybe if I gave you a hint you could see? I’m going to be an A. T.”
“A. T. No. I don’t...”
“It stands for animal trainer. Now can you see?”
“Why, of course!” Mrs. Wakefield exclaimed. “I should have noticed it before. The T’s just as plain as day.”
It was, too. An enormous T that stood, unmistakably, for Trainer. No A could be found, but that was unimportant.
“Well, that’s settled,” Jessie said, rather relieved at having her choice of profession confirmed, written, in fact, right into her skin so that her parents could never argue about it and want her to be something terribly common and dull like a pianist or a writer. “Can you see what kind of animals?”
“Well, no. I really can’t.”
“That’s all right. I expect it’ll be all kinds anyway, starting with little ones and ending up with elephants and eagles.”
Mrs. Wakefield laughed. “You’re a funny girl, Jessie. How will you train an eagle?”
“I’ll get him when he’s a baby and look after him and feed him so he’ll know I’m his friend. Then I can teach him to carry things, like my dolls.”
“You won’t have dolls then. You’ll be a woman.”
Jessie squinted thoughtfully. She couldn’t visualize the grown up and doll-less woman she would be any more than she could visualize the little girl Mrs. Wakefield had been. Time, to Jessie, was malleable. It could be bent and twisted so that she could be a grown woman who trained eagles but still played with her dolls and lived with her parents, and looked the same as she did now except for size.
“I certainly have a nice fortune to look forward to,” she said. “And you didn’t have to guess at all, did you?”
“No, it’s all here, in your hand. It says... it says, this child will have a long and happy life.”
The words had picked up echoes through the years, and it was these echoes that Jessie heard, with the sharp intuitive hearing of a child. They were sad words, no matter what they said; they struck mournful bells in her ears.
“But it doesn’t really say that,” Jessie protested.
“Don’t you want it to?”
“No.” She couldn’t explain about the sad words to Mrs. Wakefield; she only knew she didn’t want them in her fortune. “You were just guessing then, I bet.”
“I was just guessing.”
“Then I don’t have to count it. I’ll count the Animal Trainer and the part about being loved.” She took her hand away and hid it under the blanket, as if she was afraid that Mrs. Wakefield would read it too far. Too far and too sad.
Yawning, she lay down. The mournful bells faded, and the watch-cricket began to chirp again under her pillow, quite loudly, so she couldn’t be sure that she heard Mrs. Wakefield whisper:
“Good night, Jessie. Good night, my baby.”
She felt Mrs. Wakefield’s lips touch her forehead, cool and dry as moths. Jessie murmured, “I love you about ninth-best in the world.”
“Thank you, darling.”
The light clicked, the dark fell from the ceiling and leaped from the walls.
Good night, my baby. She stepped into the hall and closed the door, and turning, she faced Evelyn. She was half a head taller than Evelyn, but she felt, if only for a moment, unarmed and helpless.
She lowered the lids over her naked eyes.
“I was... was just saying good night to your daughter.” She emphasized the last words slightly as if to reassure Evelyn that Jessie still belonged to her, and that she, Mrs. Wakefield, had only borrowed her for awhile.
“She should have been asleep ages ago,” Evelyn said.
“She was awake when I went in. I didn’t wake her up.”
“I didn’t think you had, naturally.”
Unspoken words hung between them, like poised knives ready to fall.
You want my husband and child.
Yes.
You lost yours, now you must have mine.
Yes. I can’t wait for a child like Jessie or a man like Mark. I want your husband and your child.
Evelyn said, “If there’s anything you’d like, just ask for it.”
“There’s nothing, thank you.”
“Mark’s downstairs having a nightcap. Why don’t you join him?”
“That’s very kind of you, but I was just going to read in bed.”
“Well, good night.” I hate and fear you, Mrs. Wakefield.
“Good night.” I’ll fight you, Mrs. Banner.
“See you in the morning,” Evelyn said brightly.
14
Toward morning the sea lion moved inshore and cried.
Mark woke at the first sound as if he had been unconsciously waiting for the signal. It wasn’t morning yet, but the darkness was greying, and the air in the room felt heavy with moisture.
He pulled aside the drapes and saw that the fog had come in during the night. It floated in wisps through the window, but over the sea it hung thick, smothering the new day and muffling the solitary cry of the sea lion. The sound worried him. It seemed to be a cry for help, and he wondered whether the sea lion was wounded or whether it was looking for its lost young or a straying mate.
Putting on his robe he went out through the French door to the narrow platform built along the second story of the house. The platform served both as a sundeck and as a protection from the heat for the lower rooms. No one used it as a sundeck because one of the arms of the live oak tree had reached out and grown over it, dropping its prickly leaves and stony little acorns at the insistence of the wind. But it was a pleasant place to read in the afternoons or to smoke a final cigarette before going to bed.
The old tree was quiet in the fog, biding its time. It would outlive the drought, defeat the wind, drink the fog. It would not rust, like the iron railing of the deck which was wet to Mark’s touch and blistered with rust from the fogs of other years.
The cry of the sea lion hung in the air, trapped in the mist. Mark tried to visualize the sea lion, but the only image his mind evoked was the image of Mrs. Wakefield submerging, coming up, and submerging again with a flick of her black fins.
In the flare of the match Mark’s face was melancholy. Somewhere in the invisible sea something alive needed help, something with a heartbeat as strong as his own, and blood as rich. He felt a sense of pity and of kinship with the sea lion that he had never experienced before.
A door opened and shut.
“Mr. Banner?”
He turned, almost expecting to see her wearing her face glass and the grotesque duck’s-feet, with her wet hair streaming behind her like eel grass. She came toward him, her head brushing against the overhanging branch of the oak tree. An acorn fell like a stone, and the leaves rustled resentment.