John Casey - Spartina

“You wouldn’t have seen much out there. Just a lot of water close to.”

“Anyway he’s on a roll. I’m not sure he deserves it, but he’s going to be a golden boy again. He does have nerve. In a funny way the nerve that it took to stay in Galilee during the hurricane is the same nerve that he uses to make deals. What pleases him even more than the money is getting back on top. He went to some TV executive in New York who wouldn’t return his calls last year. Schuyler had found out the executive’s boss wanted the film clips, and Schuyler kept getting up to leave. ‘I made him grovel’ is what he says. He’s so full of himself he’s about to pop. His wife can’t stand it. She put up with a lot during the hard times. She really admires him for his jauntiness when he’s down. She forgave him for all sorts of stuff.… It’s odd. They’re very like each other in lots of ways. They think alike, they talk alike, they even look alike. But he’s neurotic in an active way, and she’s so passively neurotic she could spend the rest of her life in a deck chair. She seems to soak up Schuyler’s thrashing around in his desperate funny way. He is very funny — when everything is about to cave in and he’s dodging bullets. But when he’s doing well and is plugged in right, there’s no buzz for her. In fact, she’s repelled by him when he’s in good order. She really is a kind of vampire who sucks up his desperate energy.”

Elsie stopped, her hands in mid-air. “I’m being a bitch, aren’t I? What I don’t like is I’m harder on women than on men. Is that right? Have you noticed that? Or in this case is it that the two of them are both spoiled, but Schuyler is at least redeemed by his work? So I’m just … Of course he is being monumentally self-centered these days.… But, then, he’s still funny. Of course maybe she’s just as funny but doesn’t say it. But, then, that’s her fault for not speaking up.”

“ ‘But, then,’ ” Dick said. “ ‘But, then.’ But, then, maybe he talks so fast she can’t get a word in.”

“Ah.” Elsie straightened her legs. “Okay.” She pulled her uniform skirt up above her knees to sun her legs. “You know the way I talk to you has changed. The only other people I talk to like this are my sister and Mary Scanlon. I used to talk to you more the way I talk to Jack, sort of put-up-your-dukes.

“I realize I’m just pouring out now, but it’s because I may not get to see you so much.… Still. I’ll try. It’s funny because at the same time I’d like to just sit here and not say a thing.” Elsie reached in her lunch box and unwrapped a sandwich. “Here, have half. It’s huge. Mary made it. She baked the bread too.”

Dick took half. Cheese and bean sprouts and fancy mustard. The bread was cut so thick, he had to stretch his mouth open. He watched Elsie smooth her skirt between the back of her thighs and the hatch cover. The problem hadn’t gone away, but here he was eating Mary Scanlon’s bread, being warmed by the sun, cooled by the sea breeze, and feeling the blue sky press closer and bluer and yet open up out to sea, channels of light into the distance.

Everything might be okay. Days like this day might be ordinary. May might say, “Well, all right, Dick, but don’t you do it again.” She might say, “Well, she’s a nice girl and you can go on being friends so long as you behave yourselves.” She might say, “I always wanted a little girl and Elsie’ll just have to bring her around as often as she can.”

Spartina swung a little on her mooring. If he was going to tell May, it would make sense to wait until he’d been out a couple of times and some money was coming in. Get the house back in shape. Maybe get her a dishwasher.

Dick burst out laughing at himself.

Elsie looked over at him, pleasantly curious.

He said, “I was thinking along, and I got to where I go out and buy May a dishwasher.”

Elsie looked puzzled, then laughed.

“If you tell her,” Elsie said, “you don’t think she’ll leave you, do you?”

“No. Now I’ve thought about it, I don’t think so.”

Elsie said, “I hardly know her.”

“If I’ve got a halfway-decent number of pots left out there, I can make seven, eight thousand dollars by Christmas. Net. That’s more loose money than we’ve seen …”

“There isn’t anything I can do,” Elsie said. “I can’t think of anything that wouldn’t just make it worse. There isn’t anything, is there? I can’t even imagine her mind.”

“I’ll be doing more than imagine one of these days.”

“You’ve made up your mind, have you? Maybe you could wait till Christmas, when I’ll be gone. Wouldn’t that be easier?”

Dick nodded. He said, “I guess I ruined your picnic.”

He was about to say something else, when he surprised himself by taking hold of her stocky slack calf, running his hand up behind her knee. He pulled his hand back.

Elsie cocked her head. “That’s something else I’ve wondered about. I mean, you could say to yourself, ‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’ Or ‘Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.’ Or you could say … what?”

Dick shook his head.

Elsie said, “I’m sorry, I’m being flip, but I can’t stay this earnest for very long.”

Dick shook his head again.

Elsie said, “I see. I’ve lost my looks, my girlish figure is gone.”

“Come on, Elsie. Quit fooling around.”

“I’m just kidding, for God’s sakes. I mean you’re the fellow who started playing with my leg — not that it wasn’t nice, absent-minded though it may have been. No, look, don’t mind me. Okay? I’ll start over, I’ll be serious.”

Dick said, “You go ahead and be whatever way you want. You can say anything you want about this pickle, and it’d be true.” Dick paused. “Maybe not. I wouldn’t want to say we’re like Parker and Marie.”

“What?” Elsie said. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

Dick thought he’d told her. It worried him he wasn’t keeping straight what he’d told who and what he hadn’t. He said, “Parker and Marie.”

“What about Parker and Marie? Do you mean Parker told you he’d … Parker might say he had, Parker might say anything. Or do you mean their characters in general? Of course in some horrible way it makes sense. She’s furious at Schuyler.… You do mean something in particular?”

“Yes.”

“Well, how do you know?”

Dick was sorry he’d brought it up. He felt the mattress, it was pretty well dried by the sun. He got to his feet, picked it up, and headed for the cabin.

“Where are you going?” Elsie said. “You can’t leave now.”

He went below, tossed the mattress onto a bunk, and came back on deck.

“Tell me,” Elsie said. She made room on the hatch cover. “Sit down and tell me.”

He wondered how on earth he’d ever thought he’d like telling Elsie this story. He must have thought that she’d see what was funny, that she’d make it lighter. Now he was irritated at her eagerness. He was embarrassed. And he was fearful that one way or another the story would stick to them.

“Dick, for God’s sakes,” Elsie said.

He told her, not looking at her. He started with his walking around the Wedding Cake and his reflections on his great-uncle Arthur. That made her impatient. When he got to Parker’s car she shut up. He told it step by step, trying to make it far away and funny, right down to the two pairs of sneakers doing their barn dance—“Duck for an oyster, dig for a clam.”

Elsie said, “Good God.” He looked up. She put her feet together and pulled her skirt down over her knees. “There’s a grisly little tale.” She puffed her cheeks and blew out her breath. “Poor Marie. I’m sorry I was so mean about her just now.” She shook her head. “I mean, Parker. Poor Marie. And that sort of thing gets worse as you get older.… And Parker is such a tick.… He looks like a possum snout. I wish you hadn’t told me about it.”