John Casey: Compass Rose

“That was Phoebe,” Walt said.

“Don’t quibble. It’s very late. Just take your book and your motorcycle and leave.”

Walt’s head was down. Elsie was about to feel sorry for him, but he was just tucking the book under his chin while he buckled his belt. “Relax, I’m not hanging around. But it’s Elsie’s book.” He handed it to her. He wheeled his motorcycle to the steep part of the driveway, jumped on, and rolled away silently.

“I never liked him,” Sally said. “I never liked him, and I never trusted him. My God, Elsie! What happened to your dress? He didn’t try anything, did he?”

“No. That was me. I yanked the zipper off. Down by the pond.”

Somewhere near the bottom of the hill Walt’s motorcycle coughed twice and then revved.

Sally said, “I’m getting foggy. Must be that pill.”

The motorcycle faded away.

Elsie went in with Sally and sat by the bed. Sally said, “You’ll listen for the phone?”

“Yes. You can go to sleep. I can hear the phone out here. It’ll be all right.”

She went down to the pond to get her shoes and the rest of her clothes. A relief to be alone. She’d been holding on to herself all night.

She slipped her dress off. The air on her body was cool. She stuck out her right leg. It looked good, but everything looked good in this soft night glow. How long would she look good?

A cooler puff of air. The wind was backing to the southeast. Fog before long.

Sally was three years older and looked good. Of course, Sally was the pretty one. Pretty dresser, too. But even in Rose’s pajamas and getting on her high horse with Walt, she looked good.

A first wisp of fog in the treetops.

In two years Rose would go away to college. May dreaded it.

She waded in up to her knees. A frog, then another and another, plopped into the water. She pushed in, gave a little frog kick, and glided, steering herself with her trailing hands. Just another frog in the pond. Did a frog take pleasure in the slip of water along its skin? She turned onto her back and floated. May dreaded Rose’s leaving, but unless Rose went far away, easy enough for a mother to show up. They had days for that sort of thing. And here with the house to herself, on a day when Dick came back to port, she could offer this freshwater pond as a comfort, let him wash away the salt.

Unnatural mother to wish her child gone.

Now that she was floating quietly, the frogs were back on the bank or on their lily pads, croaking in chorus from one side of the pond to the other. The noise used to annoy Mary Scanlon. She said she got over it by imagining one side was saying, “Frog’s legs! Frog’s legs!” and the other answering “Supper! Supper!” A cook’s-eye view of nature.

The fog was coming on, shrouding the oval of sky over the pond.

And then Mary had made her claim on Rose, luring her into their duets. Did Mary know how they closed her off? That her own singing was no better than the two-note croaking all around her. Now that it was getting darker, it seemed louder.

Be fair, be fair. Mary’s singing lessons had been the making of Rose. And if Mary laid claim to part of Rose, she’d earned it. Perhaps there was no such thing as purely unselfish giving. Here she was herself in the pond, in the land that Miss Perry had given her. And it was Miss Perry’s making a pet of her that started her own immersion in nature … She remembered Miss Perry’s coming to a halt on one of their walks in the woods. Miss Perry had turned to her and said, “Do we stand outside of nature, or do we stand inside it? Is nature everything but us? Or is it simply everything?” Miss Perry peered at her and added, “I don’t expect an answer. It’s an unanswerable question.” But Miss Perry went on asking it. She’d given a little sideways hop with both feet. “Outside?” Hop. “Inside?” Hop.

It must have been years ago. Not many hops in Miss Perry after that. And finally Miss Perry had to cling to Elsie’s arms to lower herself onto the toilet seat.

All right, then — whether calculated or not, there was an undertow to giving. She herself wasn’t exempt. She had used her dutifulness to Miss Perry as a counterweight of goodness, not just in the balance of her own conscience but in hoping that Dick would weigh it in her favor.

The fog had settled, settled in so low and thick she couldn’t see it as fog. She held up her hand to see if she could feel the drift of wind. Nothing. Too many trees. She had an instant of panic, then laughed at herself. She was in her own little pond. She was a stone’s throw from her house. She dog-paddled toward shore, feeling for the bottom. She crawled onto the bank, stood up, and took small shuffling steps, hoping to run into her shoes or clothes. Maybe she’d left them farther from the bank. She took a sideways step and then inched forward. Turned and tried the other way. Nothing. All right — leave them till morning.

The frogs had stopped. Now she couldn’t tell where the pond was. She closed her eyes, tried to imagine where she stood. It only made her dizzy. She was breathing too fast, little shallow breaths. She made herself breathe deeply. She managed to calm her panic but then imagined everyone was laughing at her — Warden of the Great Swamp, Free Woman of the Wilderness. Everyone could see her standing there, ridiculous and naked.

The frogs began to croak again. At first the noise was everywhere. Then she heard the last half of a croak, a frog who ended late. She stuck her arm out toward it, the other arm away from it. Think slowly. Follow that arm away from the pond. The house is up. Away and then up.

She turned herself carefully and took a step. She jumped when something touched her leg. It stung her shin. She jerked sideways and fell. Thorns. She was lying on thorns. She saw red dots in front of her eyes as if the pricks and scratches were sending signals into the dark. The pain was fresh for a moment. It eased a little when she lay still. She was on her side. She pushed herself up to her knees. The frogs began to croak again. Had she stopped them by crying out when she fell? Or had being pricked and scratched blotted her hearing?

Stupid, stupid girl. She was in the bullbriars on the wrong side of the pond. How had she got so turned around?

With her finger she found a tendril across her shoulder, plucked it off, and held it away from her as she stood up. Another tendril scratched the side of her thigh. She slowly turned toward the frog noise, groped with her free hand, hit another branch of thorns. She stood still, holding briar shoots in each hand. Was it Mr. Salviatti who’d called this down on her? Him and his Saint Francis, who threw himself into a thornbush to rid himself of lust. Unfair. Yes, she’d gone to Dick and taken him by surprise. Unfair to call that lust. It was years of loving him that carried her, not lust. And when she saw Dick and Rose in Rose’s skiff she’d tipped her balance toward his wish, toward his grace with Rose.

She inched her fingers down the branch in front of her and bent it until it broke. She floated her hand ahead of her, touched another shoot. How many between her and the pond? She shivered, part panic, part cold fog.

Walt in the tower room. She’d let the ladder rungs rattle down before his motorcycle even stopped ticking with heat. Walt and his motorcycle, a prick on wheels. She’d fainted in Captain Teixeira’s radio shack from shock but from shame as well. All right then, thorns for that. She took a step toward the pond, scratched her legs, her arms that she held crossed in front of her. She kicked her legs free, tripped and fell forward, her knees on the bank, her hands sliding into the water.

She caught her breath, pulled herself into the water. The scratches stung. To make sure she was going straight across she measured the depth — waist deep, shoulder deep — and dog-paddled until her hands touched bottom. She clambered out. She felt the comfort of grass on her palms and knees. She got to her feet, took two, three, four uncertain steps. She could tell she was going uphill only because her calf muscles stretched. She put her hands out. She touched the wall. She trailed her hand along it, around the southwest corner. A steeper bit up to the northwest corner. Slower now, one hand on the wall, moving her feet carefully until they found the doorstep. She sat down.