Anna Solomon - Leaving Lucy Pear

And so. Josiah ran for mayor. He tried for fatherhood. He rowed.

“How are the children?” he asked, to ask something. Emma didn’t answer. He considered asking why her husband had been off “fishing” for nearly two months now, when the longest ice could last in a hold was two or three weeks. Or maybe he would tell her how her daughter, the different, dark one, was working at the quarry dressed up as a boy, and how Josiah had seen through her disguise right away but hadn’t said a thing, and wouldn’t — he was that magnanimous! Maybe then Emma would forgive him.

Or not. She was looking at him now, harshly. She asked, “Have I been of use to you, Mr. Story?”

“I wish you would stop calling me that.”

“I know. Have I?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Has Beatrice Cohn agreed to endorse you?”

“She’s working on a speech. I thought I’d told you.”

“No.”

“I’m sorry.”

She chewed her lip with her big front teeth. He loved to lick those teeth, just as he’d known he would the first time they met. Josiah stopped rowing. He heard the roil of the cut now. He had forgotten that, too, the river’s agitation as it squeezed between the stone walls, how it churned with square waves, how a boat could jump and slide in the narrow passage. He rested the oars on the gunwales, hung his head on his neck. The tide began to push them back.

“You’re afraid,” Emma said. Her tone was gentler now — not accusatory but matter of fact.

“The Feds are out some nights, patrolling,” he said. He wondered why hadn’t he thought of this excuse before. “And the Coast Guard’s got seaplanes stationed on Ten Pound Island. Smack in the middle of the harbor.”

“Not afraid like that.” Emma lifted his chin with her finger and made him look at her. The dark pools of her eyes glistened — they seemed not to watch Josiah so much as take him in. She was the one who saw his unhappiness, he realized, saw that he was split in pieces.

“Susannah’s pregnant,” he said. “That’s why I didn’t come. I’m sorry.”

Emma’s finger dropped. “That’s good,” she said. “That’s very good.”

“It’s only three months in. Further than before, but still. She’s too excited. She’s talking about names.” Josiah stopped, conscious of Emma’s having retreated. He had not meant to talk about Susannah. The whole point was not to think of her, to trade her flat, taut stomach for Emma’s soft one, to assert himself, to take charge! How pathetic it seemed now.

The sound of jeers and whistles made him turn. He saw dark shapes on the drawbridge above the cut. Early revelers, perhaps the firework setters. He and Emma wouldn’t be seen from this distance, but they couldn’t risk going closer, either. They could not row through, thank God. Something landed on his neck and Josiah reached back to feel the nubby slime of a rotting tomato. He was always being saved like this, in ways he had not thought to want, from dangers he had not foreseen. Before he could react — he fingered the tomato, stunned — Emma had grabbed the oars, shoved him off the bench into the bow, and turned the boat around. She was far better at rowing than he. She started to pull and like that the stuff between them fizzed again, Josiah’s punishment complete, her hand’s imprint on his chest a hot desertion, his prick rising. Another tomato hit the stern but Emma rowed fast and well with the tide, her back rocking toward him and away. Stuffed onto the tiny bow bench, Josiah felt he had been stolen. He felt helpless and safe. They reached the sagging dock in a quarter of the time it had taken him to row them out, an instant, a blink, so that when he had cleated the line it seemed they had never left. His agony was erased. He let her wrestle him onto the dock, roll him off into the marsh, and pin him against the stabby grass, leaving bright red nicks in his back, which Susannah, he knew with glad and grievous certainty, would not notice.

July third. The Hirsch children’s visit slid into its ninth day. They would be in Gloucester four more before returning to their cities. Ira sat with Lillian at his bedroom window, watching his grandsons play ball on the lawn below as their mother watched from the terrace. Adeline had the nanny but rarely left her with the children, whether out of fear or discomfort or a genuine desire to be close to them herself, he couldn’t tell. She was the opposite of Vera, who didn’t hire anyone to take care of the children or take much care of them herself. So the nanny sat in the shade for appearances while Adeline watched her own children. Julian had gone for a swim at the club while Brigitte napped. Oakes was somewhere. He couldn’t be heard for once. The whistle buoy was quiet, too. It was a hot, still day, the children the only ones moving. A sailboat tried to tack. It heeled, it sat — one of the boys from the club would have to go tow it in.

“There she is.” Lillian pointed to the far end of the lawn, where Bea had appeared from between the trees that lined the drive. Unless she was with the others, Bea always walked the drive, not through the orchard. Around her neck she wore Ira’s binoculars, which she had begun carrying all the time now, claiming she was looking at the whistle buoy, and sometimes birds. She had left early this morning, when she heard that Lillian was coming, and Ira was surprised to see her back. He guessed she might have run into Julian, and fled.

“There she is,” he agreed.

“I don’t know why Albert couldn’t grace her with a visit.”

“He’s coming tomorrow.”

“Why not today? It’s Sunday, for God’s sake. Mph.”

“It’s very hard for Julian,” Ira said. “Bea. How she’s changed. He still won’t admit that she doesn’t play. He comes home expecting her to be sixteen.”

Lillian turned to face him.

“And Bea. She still has a crush on him, you know.”

Lillian’s red mouth fell open sarcastically, a mockery of a mouth falling open. “You busybody man. Of course she doesn’t.”

Ira nearly shouted, She does! He wanted to wring her neck. But his insistence would do Bea no good. What did he need Lillian to know for anyway? Company, he supposed. Another elder. He was torn between his son’s happiness — that beautiful wife, their first baby due soon, the boy settled in a good if uninspired job at the Post— and his niece’s, which was as elusive as Julian’s was evident. He wanted Bea to have something she wanted. He found himself wondering in odd moments: whom did he love more? He knew his loyalty should be with his son. The fact that it wasn’t that simple Ira blamed on his brother, who was not even here for the Fourth of July, who said he had to go sailing with clients in Boston Harbor to “seal a deal.” Even his language was rote, as if he’d stopped actually thinking. Forget feeling. At this point Henry had all but abandoned Bea here.

“She’s happy,” Lillian said, and Ira almost felt bad for her. She might have gone sailing, too, one presumed.

Bea walked across the lawn with her hand above her eyes, the sun glinting off the top of her head. Her hair was not slicked back as usual. Since her cousins’ arrival she had let it puff into its natural state, which at first Ira interpreted as a sign of comfort, even confidence, but now, as the days wore on, saw as a kind of giving up. She wandered, lost. She flinched every time the whistle buoy called.

“You know, it might be good for you to try to walk, just a little.” Lillian’s hand clapped Ira’s knee and bounced off. He could see her surprise at his boniness, though she tried to hide it in a brave smile. “You could lean on me,” she said cheerfully. “I can help you.”