T. Boyle - San Miguel

“It’s you,” he accused. “It’s all your fault. And why I ever let you talk me into this shitty weather job, I’ll never know.”

“Me talk you into it? You were the one who couldn’t stop going on about how it was like picking money off a tree—”

“I don’t care, I want to quit.”

“And what about the money?”

“To hell with the money. I say we write Billy Rose — or no, go ashore and wire him, wire him right this minute, today — and tell him we accept his offer.”

“We’ve been through that already.” Billy Rose was one of the impresarios of the San Francisco Exhibition and he’d wanted to fly them up there to be his guests onstage for a limited engagement, the Swiss Family Lester arrayed for everyone to see while Billy Rose teased out the jokes about sheep and islands and cooking on a woodstove, then turned to Marianne to mug and wink and lean in close and ask, “You like any of the kids in your school, honey?” while the crowd howled and the dollars poured in. They’d both rejected it, as they had the offer from Movietone News to make a newsreel feature, because they both— both —agreed that they wouldn’t want to subject the children to that kind of poking and prodding and cheap commercialism.

“I don’t care. I want to wire him.”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“It’s a chance to make money, maybe big money—”

“No.”

“Who are you to tell me no? I’m the authority here, I’m the King of San Miguel, not you. You’re not the one they all want to come see, you’re not the one they interview — it’s me. Me . And I’ll do as I damn please, whether you like it or not.”

She had a cold, she was irritable, her nose was dripping and her head ached, and Marianne, running a low-grade fever, had kept her up half the night. She wasn’t herself and she should have left it there, she knew it, but she couldn’t. “Stop fooling yourself,” she shot back, “we’re the king and queen of nothing, it’s a joke,” and her voice wasn’t even her own — it was somebody else’s, somebody strident and heartless. “Are you kidding me? We’re as broke as we were when we got here — what do we own besides your guns and my books and the clothes on our backs? And we’re at the mercy of Bob Brooks, who could close this operation down tomorrow if he wanted to — and you know it.”

He was leaning over the bedside, lacing up his boots, his hair mussed, his shoulders slumped, his every motion jerky with anger. The stove had gone cold. The house smelled of ash, cats, something gone rotten in the walls. She was at the bureau, wondering what to wear (not that there was a lot of choice: she tended to wear the same thing every day, skirt, blouse, sweater, support hose and flat shoes), when all at once he jumped to his feet, snatched his white shirt off the arm of the chair and shook it in her face till the epaulets blazed in the light of the bedside lamp. “I’m king,” he shouted, “whether you want to admit it or not. And Bob Brooks would never in his life even think of doing anything to hurt us and if he ever did that’s just all the more reason to wire Billy Rose right this minute and get on that airplane.”

They never quarreled. Or hardly ever. It set a bad example for the children, for one thing. She could read his moods, play to him, wait him out. And more often than not she gave in to him. But not this time. Not where the children were involved. The rain grew suddenly louder, as if they were hearing it broadcast over the radio and someone had turned up the volume. “No,” she said.

“Elise,” he said.

“No,” she said.

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

* * *

Gray skies, a month of gloom, no visitors, one day indistinguishable from the next. Three meals to put on the table. Seven hours in the classroom. Twelve midnight at the weather station and right back there again at six a.m. Floors to mop, pets to feed, dishes to wash, laundry to boil up in a pot on the woodstove that choked her lungs and made her eyes smart, her hands as rough as if they’d been carved of oak, her nails chipped and black with their half-moons of dirt no matter how faithfully she tried to keep them up. The girls were restless, the sun was a memory and Herbie was always out somewhere, shoeing the horses, mending fence, wandering far afield, as bored and weighed down as she was — blue and getting bluer. That month — it was March of 1940, Marianne nine and Betsy six and both of them growing out of their clothes — she found herself drifting around the house like an automaton, her legs in motion but her mind a thousand miles away. For the first time she almost wished she’d relented and let Herbie fly them all to San Francisco — at least it would have been a break in the routine.

One Saturday afternoon, when she felt she just had to get out of the house or go mad, she asked Herbie to look after the girls, shrugged into her jacket and went out for a walk. The girls had begged to come, but she was firm with them—“I just need a few minutes’ peace, that’s all, and I’ll be back for dinner, don’t you worry,” and then she told Herbie to keep an eye on the spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove, and she was off.

The day was mild, the wind light and blowing up out of the south for a change. It was spring, the first breath of spring, and the revelation took her by surprise — she’d come out to the island a new bride in this very month ten years ago, not knowing what to expect, and here she was living an adventure she could never have dreamed of when she was a girl at school. It was as if she were the heroine of a novel, like the stalwart mother of the shipwreck story the press kept identifying them with (who also happened to be named Elizabeth, which, in light of things, had seemed to her an ominous coincidence).

But what was wrong with her? Everything was fine. The girls were growing, everyone was healthy, the ewes dropping lambs and the wool bringing in a regular if niggling profit, while Herbie was doing his best to mask his disappointments and throw himself into the work of the ranch. And here it was spring and she was out walking in this grand majestic place she had all to herself. The sky stretched flat overhead, sheep glanced up at her, startled, and trotted off on stiff legs, still chewing, the ocean smells drifted up the cliffs and the gulls shone white against the bruised gray backdrop that ran out over the water and faded away to infinity. She felt sustained. Felt whole and free. At first she walked aimlessly, letting her feet take her where they would, and then on a whim she decided to go out to Harris Point, Herbie’s favorite spot, a place where they’d picnicked and gathered arrowheads and where the views wrapped round you as if you were in the crow’s nest of a ship at sea.

It wasn’t far, no more than three miles or so, though the terrain was rough, a checkerboard of the usual dips and gullies, loose sand, scree, dirt compacted like concrete. She traced her way along the narrow peninsula and hiked up to the point, where she cleared a spot for herself with a vigorous sweep of one shoe before spreading a blanket so she could sit in comfort and look out to sea. She didn’t know how long she stayed there, letting her thoughts wander till she wasn’t thinking anything at all, but eventually she pushed herself up and started back, the image of the stove and the steaming pot rising before her. The children would be hungry, Herbie impatient. And she would come in the door to their various murmurings and mutterings and the excited barking of the dog, boil the spaghetti, grate the cheese and serve the meal, as always, and be thankful for it too. As always.

She retraced her way across the broad apron of the plain, moving quickly now, the sun burning suddenly through the clouds to hover over the water in promise of better things to come and the sheep scattered in dense white clots across the hills. The breeze was light still, still warm, and even before the ranch house came into view, nestled like a long low fortress behind the running line of the perimeter fence, she could smell the smoke of the stove and the faint sweet scent of the marinara sauce mixed up with it. Before long she was there, making her way along the outside of the fence, listening to the gander stirring up a fuss in the yard and feeling better, infinitely better — she’d just needed to get out, that was all.