T. Boyle: San Miguel

By seven, she felt she had things under control, or mostly, anyway, the lamb scored, studded with cloves of garlic and set aside in the cool room, the hot sauce simmering on the stove, the loaves browning in the oven, and breakfast — oatmeal with brown sugar and cinnamon, and coffee, of course — all ready to go. Reg and Freddie came in first, both of them looking pleased with themselves — they were looking forward to a break in the routine as much as she was. “Smells good,” Reg said, hovering over the table, cap in hand. “Need any help?”

“No,” she said, glancing up, “I think I can manage.” If Herbie was still at odds with them, she wasn’t. Over the course of these past months, she felt she’d come to understand them — it wasn’t their fault they were stuck out here. They were good at heart, both of them, and they’d gradually begun to pitch in more, once they began to realize how lucky they were — as lucky as the lucky Lesters — to be out of the real fighting, where every day men were drowned, crushed, burned to death in a rain of bombs and torpedoes. To be bored was a small price to pay.

“Today’s the big day, huh?” Freddie said. He’d removed his cap too and was standing just inside the door, careful to stay out of her way as she flew from the stove to the counter and back again.

“Wait till you see how excited the girls are,” she said.

“God, I hated school,” Reg said, casting his eyes to the ceiling. “Couldn’t wait for the last day. And then summer seemed to go by like nothing and it was back to school again. It was like prison.”

“Oh, it’s not so bad, not for my girls.”

A compliment now, from Reg, who wasn’t above currying favor: “But they’ve got a special teacher. If I had a teacher like you instead of those nuns that didn’t seem to care about anything except seeing how hard they could whack you with a ruler, I’d probably be president of a college someplace now.”

“Yeah, sure, Reg,” Freddie put in. “You’re a real scholar. But, Mrs. Lester, should we help ourselves today or are we going to sit down with the girls?”

“Catch as catch can this morning. Coffee’s hot. And you can spoon out your oatmeal and take it into the dining room. Herbie’s not awake yet and I’m up to my elbows here.”

* * *

The morning flew by. She had Marianne in the schoolhouse doing her final exams, so she brought Betsy out to the courtyard and sat her down in a chair on the porch to test her on her reading. The day was cool and overcast, typical for June, but she was comfortable enough in a sweater and the temperature had held steady through the night so she didn’t really need to start a fire in the schoolhouse. She was down on her knees in the garden, edging the flowerbed with abalone shells she’d been collecting on her walks with the girls, looking up from time to time to correct Betsy’s pronunciation and keeping an eye on the harbor — they expected the boat in the afternoon, but there was no telling when it might come. She’d seen it pull in hours before they’d expected it in the past. Betsy’s voice flowed on, fluid and musical, though the text was difficult: “‘The counterpane was of patchwork, full of odd little parti-coloured squares and triangles; and this arm of his tattooed all over with an interminable’—is that right, Mother?”

“Yes, ‘interminable.’ Go on.”

“‘Cretan laby-rinth—’”

“Labyrinth.”

“Right, ‘Cretan labyrinth of a figure, no two parts of which were of one precise shade — owing I suppose to his’”—and here she broke off and Elise looked up to see Herbie standing there above her on the porch. She’d seen him going back and forth all morning, from the shed to the forge and in and out the gate, but hadn’t taken much notice — he was busy with something, that was the important thing.

“Elise — sorry to interrupt, and that was good, Betsy, very good — I was just looking for that pad of notepaper, and I wondered if… I can’t seem to find it.”

She looked at him oddly. It would have been right on the desk in the living room where he did his accounts and she sat down to write letters, but there was something in his voice that caught her out. He was asking her for a reason, asking her to take note. Did he want to say something to her privately, out of Betsy’s hearing, was that it? She pushed herself up, rubbing her palms together to brush off the dirt. She looked down at Betsy, who sat poised at the edge of the chair, the book spread open in her lap. “All right, honey,” she said, “why don’t you take a five-minute break?”

And then Herbie followed her into the house, where she went straight to the desk. She saw the book she’d been reading the night before lying there amidst the usual clutter of papers, unanswered letters, envelopes and stamps, the large manila folder from the school district for the children’s exams and the desk calendar, and there, beneath it and only partially obscured, the notepad. “Is this what you’re looking for?” she asked, swinging round and holding it out to him.

“Yes,” he murmured, his voice subdued, “that’s it.”

“You need an envelope?”

“Yes.”

She pulled open the right-hand drawer, separated an envelope from the stock there and handed it to him. “Just one?”

He nodded.

“All right, well, if you intend to send out a letter be sure to leave it where I can see it or I’m apt to forget all about it — I mean, today of all days.”

There was a moment when they both stood there inches apart, husband and wife, something unspoken hanging between them, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. He looked into her eyes, then down at the notepad, and the moment was gone.

Ten minutes later he was back out in the courtyard, interrupting her again. He’d changed into his white shirt, the one with the epaulettes he wore for special occasions, and put crème oil on his hair, which always tended to curl up across the top, and brushed it tightly to his scalp. He waited till Betsy became aware of him and stopped her reading. “I just wanted to say that I’ll be out on foot, gathering wood, and don’t know when I’ll be back.” He paused, fingering the pocket of his shirt, then waved a hand in front of his face as if to scatter the bugs away, but there were no bugs, not that she could see, anyway. “So be sure to send the boys down with the sled when the boat comes in. All right?”

“Yes,” she said, “I’ll be sure to tell them.”

He bent and pecked a kiss to Betsy’s cheek, then leaned forward to kiss her. “You think it’d be okay to interrupt Marianne for just a second? I can’t go off collecting wood without saying goodbye, can I?”

She wasn’t thinking. She wasn’t listening. “Sure,” she said. “But just a second — and don’t distract her.”

He walked off across the courtyard and she saw him pull open the door of the schoolhouse, vanish a moment, then reappear and carefully shut the door behind him. He didn’t look up as he passed by on his way to the gate, Betsy on to the next passage now—“‘In black distress, I called my God, / When I could scarce believe Him mine. / He bowed His ear to my complaints—/ No more the whale did me confine’”—and then he pulled back the gate on its creaking hinges and went on out of the yard.

* * *

When the boat came in just after four, the boys were there to meet it with the team. She was too busy to go down herself, fussing over the table setting, basting the lamb, rolling the clams in bread crumbs and greasing the frying pan, but she let the girls go down with them, and she contented herself with picturing the scene, Bob Brooks spreading his arms wide, the presents she’d ordered for the girls’ matriculation wrapped resplendently in gold foil, Jimmie hauling things ashore like a man half his age, the dog yapping and the waves rushing in. It was a scene she’d been part of a hundred times, her pulse quickening and her face flushed with the joy of company, of relief and resupply, of things made beyond the shore and presented against the backdrop of the dunes in an accelerating fantasy of privilege and abundance. The parcels came ashore. They found their way to the sled. The sled found its way to the house. That was the way it always was and always would be. Never mind that she’d had to make do with onions that were soft down to the core or that the twin roasts had eaten up the last of her garlic and she was nearly out of flour, cornmeal and sugar, the boat had arrived!