John Casey - Compass Rose

Elsie’s eyes flicked open so fast there was a pop of light. She blinked and looked at his face. “I’m glad you came by.” She touched his cheek. “And don’t worry. Everyone’ll get to know Rose, and then Rose will just be Rose. Don’t worry. Go see Miss Perry. Go out in your boat. It’ll be all right.”

When he got to his truck she said, “Be sure to call first. Before you go see Miss Perry.”

She closed the door. “You’re a minx, Rose. I saw you. He made you laugh, you little minx, and now you’re too excited to eat your supper.”

Elsie had learned very early how to separate things — one day from another, one place from another. Herself at one time and place from herself at another time and place. When she had Rose inside her she didn’t have any reason or any wish to move in space or time. Now that Rose could tell the difference between herself and her mother, and, although it wasn’t quite the same process, now that Elsie could tell the difference between herself and Rose, Elsie’s skills at compartmentalizing reemerged. Not the simple difference between her in her green uniform on this side of the bay and herself in her red dress on the other. The new array of possibilities would be more complicated and less clearly marked. One new variable was her house: from being hers alone, whether as toybox or the place she’d seduced Dick, it changed into a nursery, a more serious kitchen, a place where Mary Scanlon sprawled on the sofa, offering comfort or annoyance, a place that instead of being empty when she left was full of Mary with Rose.

So her old gray Volvo station wagon was where she kissed Johnny Bienvenue. While they were playing tennis it snowed again. The Volvo was a mound of new snow. The Wedding Cake was dark except for a faint glow from a chandelier in the front hall. Elsie locked the door to the tennis court and turned off the outside light. Johnny opened the passenger door. He said, “If you’ve got a scraper I’ll get your windshield.”

“Get in for a second. It’s like being in an igloo.”

He said, “When were you in an igloo?”

“I built one once. A school project. The boys tried to build a big one and it caved in. Mine was just a little den. Perfectly comfortable — snow is a good insulator. The thing you have to watch out for is your body heat melting the snow”—she didn’t mention letting one of the boys in—“melting the snow under you. I made a mattress out of the tips of hemlock branches.”

“Didn’t the twigs stick into you?”

“No — the ends all droop the same way. That’s why hemlocks look so mournful. I was so warm I had to unzip my sleeping bag halfway and sleep naked.”

“You still do stuff like that?”

“Winter camping? Not lately. If there’s snow, I try to get out on skis during the day. And try not to get shot by some nut from au coin. ”

“I am sorry. But he has sworn—”

“I’m teasing you. And thank you for bringing back my skis. But look. See how peaceful it is in here. Snow all over the car. Snow over everything. I don’t understand why people get depressed in winter. Snow makes me feel more alive.” She leaned back and put her hand on the sleeve of his overcoat. She wondered how shy he was, how inexperienced at noticing encouragement. Or maybe he thought he was too old to neck in a parked car. Wait — if she had Miss Perry’s power of attorney and he was Miss Perry’s lawyer, did that make him her lawyer, too? Was that a problem? She knew that psychiatrists and doctors got into trouble … The teacher-student problem hadn’t stopped her old college prof. But she’d acted freely, she’d known what she was doing, and she couldn’t imagine putting a different face on it. It wasn’t a point of honor, it was a matter of not being pathetic. Did Johnny think she’d go crying to the Bar Association? Haunt his political career? Tell Jack?

All this busy wondering made her take her hand off his arm.

She said, “You’re not getting cold, are you?”

“No. You’re right, it’s peaceful. I like snow, too.”

“And trout.”

“What?”

She got onto her knees and faced him. She said, “I saw you last fall. On the Queens River. You caught a trout and cooked it.”

He lifted his head. She leaned closer to his ear. “I could have run you in. You used live bait, you built a fire, you even brought a bottle of wine.”

“And where were you?”

“Across the stream.”

“So why didn’t you—”

“You were enjoying yourself. You looked around and you liked the water and the trees. I thought, There’s a perfectly nice man taking a day off. Why not let him have his one trout in peace?” She moved her mouth even closer to his ear and whispered, “So your secret’s safe with me.”

He laughed. He whispered, “I think it’s okay to talk. I don’t think anyone can hear us.”

She touched his cheek, turned his head, and kissed him.

She was more aware of her mouth than when she’d kissed Dick. Kissing Dick had been irresistible impulse; kissing Johnny was art, not so much showing off as exploring the form, the discipline, of a restricted medium. For one thing, the gear shift between them; for another, their winter clothes. These restrictions made her singularly aware of her lips and his. He had full, wide lips, and she was enjoying pressing softly, brushing sideways, finding the corner of his mouth, moving back to the center.

She sat back on her heels and took her left glove off. It dropped in his lap. She touched his hair, his forehead, his cheek. She couldn’t tell if that was what he liked or if his sigh was for her fingers on his mouth. She moved her hand to his other ear and traced around the rim, then inside the ridges. A jagged breath — good — not everyone liked that.

She was enjoying her deliberateness, the effect of her deliberateness on him, so it surprised her that a piece of her mind lagged behind and spun out a line of thought: her life — maybe everybody’s life — crystallized around the things in it as much as around people. Her own life around her house, her car, her badge, her revolver, her bicycle, her skis (yes, her toys) … Miss Perry’s around her house and garden and books … Mary Scanlon’s around her stockpots and griddles and her songs (songs, things — why not?) … Dick’s around his boat … Jack’s around Sawtooth Point … (men seemed more limited, or perhaps more focused). So many parts of all their lives — thoughts, emotions, skills — were thing and self, self and thing.

She had thoughts and emotions about Johnny, but at the moment her skill was certainly part of the thickening of the air between them.

She was seducing herself as well. She was feeling deeper and heavier jolts. She kissed him on the mouth and, distracted by the heat of his hand on her knee, slid her tongue between his lips.

It was almost dark inside her gray Volvo. What light there was came from who knew where — Wakefield? Narragansett? It bounced off the clouds, then into the field of snow, and then seeped through the frost on the car windows. Inside, there was a dark glow in which their bodies were visible only because they were even darker. It was in her mind that she knew how to find the buttons of his overcoat. And it must be in his mind that he knew how to find the lever that tipped his seat backward. Buttons, a lever — how human and modern to register these things as stages of the courtship ritual. Nothing like a male fiddler crab waving his one outsized claw, fireflies blinking, herons bobbing and bowing … The middle button of his suit coat, the belt buckle, top button of his pants, zipper. Carefully unzipping.

He cleared his throat. Did that mean they should have the conversation now? She said, “Just a minute,” and found the opening in his boxer shorts — a raccoon at night fishing with her delicate paws. When she slowly filled her mouth she imagined his eyes widening. His fingertips combed her hair, brushed her scalp. When his hand began to tremble, she lifted her head and climbed between the seats into the back. She’d folded the backseats flat to make room for her skis. She shoved them aside and put her tennis racket on top of them. “It’s all right,” she said.