John Casey - Compass Rose

Elsie said, “A lawyer’s coming over this evening.”

“Is it Jack? I should very much like to see Jack.”

“No. It’s someone Jack recommended. We’re just going to go over some papers.”

Miss Perry said, “I see,” but after a moment she said, “What does ‘over’ mean?”

“Oh. Sorry. Go over, look over. Over is like on. You remember on. ”

“ ‘Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.’ But you said, ‘Over.’ ‘A lawyer is coming over.’ ”

“I should have just said a lawyer is coming.”

“Very well. A lawyer is coming. Am I to meet with him?”

“No. He and I are just going to put a few things in order. I thought I’d tell you so you won’t worry when the doorbell rings.”

“All this fuss.” Miss Perry suddenly glared at Elsie. “It is tiresome. Now please go change your clothes. What will he think when you open the door? He’ll think you’re the cleaning woman. Your clothes are covered with something, I don’t know what.”

“It’s just bark. I brought wood in for the fire.”

“The fire is not … You look slubben … slubbenly.” Miss Perry closed her eyes and clenched her fist. She beat her forearm on her hip, not hard but over and over. She stopped and opened her eyes. “Slovenly.”

It was the feebleness that evaporated Elsie’s spurt of anger. She said, “All right. I’ll take care of everything.”

Elsie got to the bottom of the stairs and sat down. She felt dumb. What did she know that could change anything? How had she ever thought she knew what was going on? How had she imagined that anyone could do anything but mumble a few words about what little they knew? Jack’s lawyer’s words, the doctor’s what-we-know-about-the-brain words, her own wonders-of-nature chirps. They all might as well be Miss Perry exhaling stale poems and Latin prepositions and then a burst of bad temper. Every living thing had a few bubbles of one kind or another going in and out one kind of hole or another. When the in and out was over, it was back to matter. She saw it — particulate matter fluttering down through darker and darker water toward the seabed. A stupor spread through her, weighing down her arms, her chest, her head. She reached across her chest and put her fingers in the grooves of the newel post. They fit smoothly. She rested her cheek on the back of her hand, smelled her skin. She ran her fingertips up and down the grooves until another thought came to her. Not cheerier but on a smaller scale. Dick had told her she was spoiled, called her house “the toybox”—of course, that had been part of his pleasure as well as his irritation. He should see her now. He should get down on his damn knees and think of her taking care of his baby, taking care of his friend and protector Miss Perry …

The truth was … The truth was she’d be doing everything she was doing anyway. She’d wanted a baby. She’d loved Miss Perry since her first Latin class. She wasn’t bossed into this by Dick. She wasn’t bossed into this by Jack. Maybe this paperwork she was about to do with some bozo protégé of Jack’s — that was something Jack owed her for.

When she opened the door to Johnny Bienvenue she didn’t get a good look at him. He was wearing an overcoat and scarf, and a hat with a brim. He pulled off his glove to shake hands, then turned toward the coatrack. She started off toward the library before he was through hanging up his things, and she was lighting the fire when he followed her in. She said, “I hope you don’t mind the uniform. I haven’t had a minute to change since I got off.”

“You’re a Natural Resources officer, right? Jack calls you the warden of the Great Swamp, but that’s not the official …” He stopped, probably because she was staring at him so intently. The Queens River. He was the man who’d caught the trout, made the fire, and drunk the wine — the man she didn’t arrest. She tucked her hair back and blushed. And then, thinking that she’d thought of him from time to time, when she pedaled her Exercycle or when she fit back into her uniform, she blushed again. “Yes. I mean, no. Warden of the Great Swamp is what the guys at work say. Kind of a joke.” And then more coolly — after all, she’d seen him, he hadn’t seen her—“But I get around other places. The salt marshes. The Queens River.”

But he’d put on reading glasses and started to look over the papers on the desk. He said, “Jack says Miss Perry is recovering. Do you think she’ll be able to manage her affairs on her own?” When Elsie didn’t answer right away, he looked up. He said, “I know. It’s hard to say. Does she strike you as knowing what’s going on?”

“Yes.”

“Does she understand numbers?”

“I don’t know. We talk, but numbers haven’t come up.”

“On this list of books here — gifts to Charles and Thomas Pierce — where do these figures come from?”

“I found the receipts. The first figure is what Miss Perry paid for each book. I called a rare-book dealer and he gave me a rough idea of what they’re worth now — that’s the second figure. The dates I got from her appointment books — Charlie and Tom’s birthdays.”

“But I understand these books are still here.”

“Yes.” Elsie pointed to the glass-paned bookcase. “She gave them reader’s copies. She always said the same thing — it was sort of a joke after a while. ‘If you don’t scribble in this book or tear the paper I’ll give you a new one when you’re grown up.’ What’s in the bookcase are first editions of the same books. Some of them are worth two or three thousand. But Jack told me there’s no problem if the gifts are under ten thousand in any one year.”

“That’s right. But the donor — Miss Perry — said, ‘If you don’t scribble in them.’ An outright gift has to be unconditional. This wouldn’t be a problem if the total was under ten thousand. But each boy’s collection is worth …” He scribbled on a notepad. “Roughly twenty-five thousand.”

“It was a joke! Maybe when she started saying it, when Charlie was six or seven, maybe she meant it then. I was there for their birthday — not this year but before — and Miss Perry laughed and the boys laughed. The reason she was giving books this way was that if she’d said to the boys’ father that she was going to pay for them to go to college, he’d have said no. He’s very …” Elsie saw them, saw the day, Miss Perry catching a flounder, reciting a bit of Beatrix Potter. Dick and the boys, not May, May was fixing the cake, Miss Perry and Dick and the boys in the skiff. The late-afternoon light on the water, the summer-green spartina. A year later, the boys’ next birthday, they were at Charlie’s baseball game, Miss Perry innocently attentive, May rigid with pain.

Elsie sat down, closed her eyes. She saw May. She saw May looking at her. She felt May. She felt a space in herself fill up with cold astonishment. And then a sense of desolation — as if she were May looking at her house after the hurricane, the broken corner posts, the roof sagging, the wall gaping open, the things inside strange, hers but not hers.

“Are you okay?”

Elsie said, “Just a minute.”

“We can do this another time.”

“No. Let’s go on.”

Elsie looked at one of Miss Perry’s appointment books, found the dates of Charlie’s and Tom’s birthday party. “There. Look at that one. ‘Gave Charlie Pierce Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum. First edition, mint. Gave Tom Pierce Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana. First edition, good condition.’ ”

Then she started crying. It was a sudden burst, her body bent forward, her face jerking in her hands, the appointment book at her feet.