John Casey - Spartina

Dick said, “I’m no tightwad.”

“Yes, you are. It’s just as stingy and graceless to tighten up when someone’s being generous to you as it is to be a miser. It’s just as unsympathetic, just as defensive. It’s all the same old Yankee vice.”

Dick let what she said lie on him. It wasn’t just one of her nettles.

She got up from the armchair, hoisting herself on the arms. She stood in front of him. “I’ve gone too far,” she said. “I don’t know why I do. I’m sure you and Miss Perry are nicer with each other than you and I are.” She took his head in her hands, ran her thumbs across his forehead until they met. She laughed a little and said, “At least in some ways.” She parted her thumbs slowly. “Models of comportment.”

He scarcely felt her fingers and thumbs, but he felt her presence. It concentrated around them, began to tug him up from a depth as though he and Elsie were being hauled together, thrashing in the same net, not touching the weave yet, still darting this way and that but feeling everything lift — what was there, what was around them — feeling the water bulge upward, the turbulence push on their lateral stripes.

He thought maybe Elsie wouldn’t notice, would just go on talking. He closed his eyes, opened them, saw her puffy bare feet. As she swayed a little, her feet spread at the edges.

He was still sitting on the sofa. Maybe she was still talking, maybe she still had her hands on his head. Elsie and he were all alone now, submerged together. No old light falling from a single star, not this time. It was all undersea, briny and blind. He felt her as though he were a fish, no hearing, just flutters of her disturbing the water. He felt them on the stripes along his flanks. Flutters on one side, then the other. Then flutters pressing equally on both flanks, running from gills to tail — that’s how he felt her dead ahead.

He was baffled by feeling. He was deep and dumb as a fish. He felt the pressure this way and that as she moved. Maybe she wouldn’t notice his hulking attention, hovering and swiveling in the stream of presence she sent out.

“Are you tired?” she said. “You must be tired.”

He looked up at her face. Maybe he would just sink. Maybe he could just give up and sink.

“I suppose you’ve been up since dawn.” She put her palm on his forehead. He felt her palm and leaned into it. He pushed himself up from the sofa. When his face came up to hers and up a little higher, she let her hands fall along his shoulders and arms. She said, “Oh my.”

He kissed her. He held the sides of her belly. “Oh my,” she said, “I ought to talk you out of this.” He kissed her again, moved his hands to her shoulders to steady himself.

“Well, yes,” she said. “But listen.”

He looked at her face until he saw it clearly. His sense of sight helped him veer off. Part of his imagination told him this would be a disaster, would shackle him to trouble for the rest of his days. But most of him was for going on, for finding her. He was touching her, his hands on her belly.

She put her hands over his, held his hands tightly while they rested on her belly. If she raised him too quickly, he might burst.

“I’m glad, I really am glad,” she said. “But listen.…”

Years ago he’d dived down to wire the bolt of a shackle on a mushroom anchor. One of the workers at the boatyard had screwed it shut but forgotten to wire it before he chucked it in. Not far down, maybe fifteen feet. He’d gone in in his skivvies, over the side of the yard skiff. He’d hauled himself down on the chain. Just five feet down in the silty water it was dark. Fifteen feet, not even a memory of light. He’d reached the shackle, got the wire in the eye, and twisted it round, his legs hooked around the stem of the toppled anchor. When he was done, he panicked. He’d forgotten which way was up. Dumb, dumb as could be, all he had to do was let go and he’d go up. Plenty of air in his lungs. But he’d gone dumb for a bit — it seemed long but it was probably just a few seconds. He’d clutched the stem of the anchor, couldn’t get himself to turn it loose. Didn’t even know he was holding on. He was all blank mind. Lost his body. In his blankness he couldn’t imagine anything, let alone what was holding him down there. Then he was loose. He saw dim brightness where he was headed, and that seemed to take a long time too, the brightness getting brighter.

The relief hadn’t been air or light. Or, after a jumbled second, being able to hear the two guys in the skiff talking to each other; nothing was going on for them, they were just passing the time, no time at all. The relief had been finding his fingers and toes, he’d been as dumb as that.

Now he popped up in front of Elsie, saw the corners of the room, the lamp, the fire. Amazed. Amazed at what he’d wanted, amazed at how completely.

Elsie was talking still. He pieced it together now — she’d been explaining in her seesaw way why they weren’t going to, but how glad she was, how nice he was, how funny it was.… He’d caught some of it. She’d been interrupting herself, but her voice had been steady and soft.

She held on to his hands while they sat down on the sofa. They slumped back. She was amazed too. She unbuttoned his shirt cuff and peeled it back, shoved back the loose sleeve of his union suit. She kissed his forearm, then put her hand on it. His arm lay between them. A plank lodged between two rocks after a big tide. He was relieved after all to be inert, glad she was soothing him.

Elsie lifted her head to speak. Dick said, “Don’t say any more, not just yet.”

Elsie said, “You’ll be glad.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“You don’t want to go, do you?” The way she said it she didn’t mean anything, it was just a light breath.

“No, let’s just stay a bit.”

T hey sat up till past midnight. Elsie talked, took naps, got up to go to the bathroom or get a bite to eat. She started, broke off, and resumed various conversations, in between various silences.

Elsie apologized several times for not making love. “I hope you don’t think I’m just being good. Or that I’m suddenly scared of being bad.”

Dick was amused, now he was calm.

Later on she said, “This isn’t any kind of self-pity — some attempt to get more.”

Dick was briefly impatient “I wish you’d quit being so suspicious of yourself. Or of someone. It sure isn’t me checking up on you.”

He was interested when she gave a real reason. “There are going to be lies about all this — about having a baby,” she said. “I didn’t see that as clearly as I do now. There are some lies I can’t do without, so I don’t want any extra ones. Extra lies or extra truths — you’d either have to lie to May or tell her. If we …” Elsie twirled her hand.

Dick nodded. Was it being pregnant that had cleaned up the way she talked?

Elsie said, “I don’t care what May thinks — no, I do care — I mean, I don’t care if … What I mean is I feel a bond to May, whatever she thinks. Her children and mine are related.”

“You said that,” Dick said. “It sounds simple and cozy when you put it like that. But I know it’s not.”

“If you were an Arab sea captain it would be that simple. Me in Abu Dhabi, May in Kuwait. You sailing back and forth between us in your dhow, praising Allah.”

“Yeah. That’d take care of everything all right.”

Elsie laughed. Then she said, “Look. As long as we’re getting rid of unnecessary lies … But, then, this may make you feel better about Charlie and Tom’s book.…”