T. Boyle - San Miguel

Edith said nothing.

She wasn’t going to cough. She wasn’t going to have a spasm. She was going to control her breathing, control herself. A cloud drifted across the sun so that a running sheet of darkness fell over the yard and raced up the far hill. The turkeys set up a gabble from their pen. She heard the sound of the dog barking at something somewhere. Finally — she wasn’t going to cough, she wasn’t — her voice came back to her. “Edith, you get out of that now,” she said, and knew it was wrong, knew it was inadequate to what she was feeling and the tone she should have taken. Don’t make a scene, she told herself. Not in front of the help .

“We’re only playing.”

“Playing? He — I saw him.”

“He’s my slave.” Edith turned to the boy, who wouldn’t raise his eyes. “Isn’t that right, Caliban? Isn’t it?”

Miserably, his voice hoarse with hopelessness, resignation, lust, he said, “Yes.”

“I’ve had him fetching seashells.”

Marantha tried to lift her feet from the mire, tried to edge closer, furious now, but it was as if she were frozen in place. “You’re not to go unsupervised, unchaperoned, that is—”

“It’s only a game, Mother.” Edith looked to the boy now, to where he stood beside her in the mud, shrunken, slope-shouldered, his features pinched in concentration. “He’ll do anything I say. Isn’t that right, Caliban?”

“Yes.”

“Speak up. I can scarcely hear you.”

Louder now: “Yes.”

“And what’s my name?”

“Edith.”

Edith snaked her hand out and slapped him so quickly he didn’t have time to flinch. “What’s my name?”

“Miranda.”

“That’s better. Now pick up that basket, take it around the house and arrange the shells on the porch there — and make sure you put the prettiest ones in front.”

The boy bent to the basket without a word, lifted it — it was heavy, she could see that — and braced it on one hip. Then, the mud sucking at his boots, he struggled round the corner of the house and out of sight.

“You see, Mother?” A faint imperious smile, a cruel smile, a smile of superiority and willfulness. “He’ll do anything I say.”

* * *

That night, for the birthday dinner, Ida served an abalone chowder that was even better than the one she’d made on New Year’s, followed by a pair of stuffed and roasted chickens (a special treat, since the flock had been decimated by the foxes and, Will claimed, an eagle that had made off with one of their best layers right before his eyes) with a side dish of rice and beans and a puree made from the last of the turnips Charlie Curner had carried over the previous month. She herself lit the candles and brought out the cake. Edith, in the new green dress that just exactly caught the color of her eyes, leaned over the table to make her wish and blow out the candles and everyone applauded.

“A toast!” Will proposed. He was at the head of the table, dressed in his best shirt and jacket, his hair newly washed and combed and his mustache neatly trimmed for once, and he reached down under his chair and came up with a magnum of the Santa Cruz Island wine he was always singing the virtues of, as if they too could establish a winery just by snapping their fingers, as if it were just one more money-making venture the island would give up to them in good time, though to her mind, the wind — and here it was again, picking up, rattling the panes and keening under the eaves like a chorus of the drowned dead — would blow the whole business, vines, trellises and grapes, right on out to sea. Everyone watched him draw the cork in silence as if it were a rare operation and he a magician in cape and top hat and she couldn’t help notice Jimmie’s eyes wandering to Edith, but then how could he resist — how could any boy, deprived or not, unless he was blind? Edith had never looked more beautiful. Maybe, she was thinking — and here the cork eased from the bottle with an audible sigh — maybe there was something healthful about the outdoor life after all.

Will made his way around the table, filling each of the glasses in succession, starting with her own, then Ida’s, Adolph’s and even Jimmie’s— Jimmie’s —and finally stopping at Edith’s place. She wanted to say something, wanted to interfere — it wasn’t right that a girl of Edith’s age should take intoxicating beverages — but Will was already pouring. Edith had been animated all night, in high spirits, but she went silent now. Will poured the glass full, then poured for himself and lifted his glass high. “To the prettiest girl on this or any other island in the world! Or no,” he said, correcting himself, “to the prettiest young lady!”

Marantha watched her daughter bring the glass to her lips, watched her sip and make a face before trying it again, emboldened, and taking a long greedy swallow. “You’re not to go off with that boy alone,” she’d lectured her the moment Jimmie had vanished round the corner of the house that morning. “It’s not proper.” Her heart had been beating wildly. The sun, so welcome a moment ago, hit her like a hammer. “Do you really imagine I have any interest in him?” Edith said, looking her straight in the eye. “He’s a boy, a child, a weakling. And he’s ignorant, as stupid as the stupidest sheep in the flock. Stupider.” And what had she felt? Relief, certainly. But she had to stop herself from making a lesson out of this too, from reminding her daughter that there was no need to be cruel, that every person, no matter his station, deserved to be treated with dignity and respect, that — but what was the use? Edith was growing away from her, growing up, and here she was drinking the wine, drinking it greedily, and already holding out her glass for more. Which Will poured. And still her mother said nothing.

Edith led off the singing with “Blue-Tail Fly” and then Will sang his favorite, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” in his strong cascading baritone, and everyone joined in. Ida got up to sing “The Rose of Tralee” and when they all applauded — was she tipsy? — she sang it through again. Jimmie was next. He rose to sing “Men of Harlech” in a voice so reduced you had to strain to make out the lyrics (“Men of Harlech, stop your dreaming / Can’t you see their spear points gleaming?”), after which Edith excused herself and came back a moment later in a new costume altogether, in a loose flowing skirt without her corsets, and before Marantha could object, Edith announced that she was going to perform one of the dances she’d learned at school that went to the tune of Beethoven’s “Für Elise.”

“Since we don’t seem to have a piano”—Edith was pushing back the chairs now and arranging the lamps for dramatic effect on the shelf behind her—“or anyone to play accompaniment even if we did have, I’m going to hum the melody myself.” She paused to glance round the room. “Unless we can borrow a piano from one of the neighbors. And a pianist.”

They were all watching her intently — Adolph, unfathomable Adolph, with his heavy brow and hooded eyes; Jimmie, with a faint fading smile pressed to his lips; Will, grinning proudly; Ida, sloppy suddenly, slouching, her mouth hanging open. Edith made as if to look out the window, the hem of the skirt rising daintily round her ankles as she bent forward and put a hand up to shade her eyes. “Do you think there are any wandering pianists out there?” She held the moment, bathing in the attention, and then looked directly at her. “Could you find one for me, Mother?”

Will let out a laugh and said to no one in particular, “Charming girl, isn’t she?”

And then the dance began, shakily at first, Edith clearly having trouble coordinating her movements to the tune she had to produce herself, but she got stronger as she went on, so that even after Ida rose discreetly and vanished into the kitchen and the men passed round the bottle till there was nothing left, even after her voice faded away and the only sounds in the room were the rhythmic tapping of her feet and the wind in the eaves, she kept moving across the floor in a slow graceful arc, her limbs swaying to the music only she could hear.