“Was that in the book?”
“The book?” He shook his head. “I’m finished with that. The real work is in the brain, considering what’s known and determining how to pursue what’s not.” With that, he helped himself to several sheets of paper, tapped the stack smartly on the tabletop, and settled down to form the squiggles and arrows of his brainwork.
Our schedules had become unmatched, now that I had the children in the morning and the housework in the afternoon, while he still manned the night shift. When he stood up from the table and took my wrist, pulling me away from the story about eels that I’d begun to print in large block letters for Nicholas and Jane, I felt slightly irritated at the interruption of the rhythm of my daytime life. From our bed, while he moved his hands around my body as if testing for holds on the face of a cliff, I could hear the children’s shouts, Mr. Crawley talking to Mr. Johnston as they passed on the path, Mrs. Crawley shooing the chickens aside.
“Ma! I can’t find any blackberry jam!” Jane’s voice penetrated the membrane between their world and ours.
I opened my eyes to smile at Oskar in collusion, but his face was turned toward the window, his gaze focused beyond the horizon.
∗ ∗ ∗
When he fell asleep, I got up again. After all, there were windows to rub with vinegar and floors to be scrubbed with a rough brush and a cake of lye soap; Mrs. Crawley had shown me the trick of such tasks by now. And the woman herself might come to the door with a job that demanded the two of us, rug beating, for instance, or linen boiling. There were always the stories to write as well. Even The Five Little Peppers had turned out to be too difficult for the children, so I’d begun composing tales for them myself, full of oversized letters and jaunty illustrations. Along with the eels, I’d done one about a crab who wore a bowler hat and slid down the rock canyons on a broken cigar box; one about a starfish who took a train to Indiana (prompting much map drawing and some disjointed discussion of Lewis and Clark); and one about a mermaid who untangled her hair with a silver-backed brush.
“She lives in a cave,” Jane said.
“All right,” I agreed.
Drawing was Jane’s particular pleasure, so I let her sketch the mermaid’s house and wished that I had watercolors for her to paint with, so lavishly did she decorate her picture with ropes of kelp and abalone shells larger than soup bowls.
CHAPTER 13
THE AUTUMN PICNIC on the beach, Mr. Crawley explained, was an annual treat. “Before the rain begins,” he said. I assumed he was joking. Not a drop had fallen since we’d arrived at Point Lucia, and what was a day or two or even a week of rain?
“When does it start to snow?” I asked, and Mrs. Crawley admitted that she’d never seen the stuff.
Oskar and I, thinking of the ice and freezing winds that would soon be assailing the East, laughed at the idea of a final hurrah before a little wetting. Nevertheless, we were happy to picnic. On the designated Sunday, the sky was a rich, saturated blue, and the sun promised to bake the beach all day.
We were to grill abalone and whatever else Mr. Crawley, who loved to fish in the surf, might catch, as well as boil mussels, and Mrs. Crawley set a hamper in the yard so that we could all contribute from our own stores the most delicious foods we could spare. Oskar made several trips from kitchen to hamper with cans labeled California Fruit and Boston Baked Beans and squares of chocolate.
We adults all rode decorously down on the platform. The tide was very low; the sea, as I was mildly scandalized to hear Mr. Crawley say in a soft voice to his wife, had “hitched up her skirts,” and an undulating surface of dark, treacherous rock was exposed a good way out. The three older children followed their father onto it with sharp sticks to pry abalone from their beds.
While Mrs. Crawley and Mr. Johnston collected dry wood—Mrs. Crawley energetically; Mr. Johnston pausing often for long, scrutinizing looks up the shoreline as if he expected someone or something to appear out of that endless, rocky wilderness—Jane and I were sent along the beach with a sack to hunt mussels. Our progress was slow; we had to pause often for Jane to bend and poke at the sand with her miniature finger, examining pebbles and the like. We were in such an attitude, her hand clasped in mine, pulling me down to her level, when a dark shadow rushed up behind us. I was frightened for a moment, but it was only Oskar. He tapped me lightly on the shoulder.
“You’re it!” he cried, running on, his bare feet slapping the wet sand.
I began running, too, Janie shrieking with excitement beside me, and we went perhaps twenty steps at a speed nearly fast enough to catch him, although only because he’d turned and was running backward. That was as far as I could go with the shallow breaths my corset allowed.
“I thought you could keep up.” He smiled and shook his head. “You disappoint me.”
“You try running in this thing.” I pressed my hand to the garment that constricted my ribs.
“For heaven’s sake! Why are you wearing it?”
“Because,” I said, “it’s what one wears! I would look . . . peculiar . . . without it.”
“That’s ridiculous! You would not look peculiar. In any case, who’s here to see? Janie? Mrs. Crawley?”
“There’s you,” I said in a small voice.
“I’ve seen you without your corset, Mrs. Swann, and I assure you that you do not look peculiar.”
I glanced away, embarrassed to show that this pleased me.
“Mr. Swann! Come and help us!” the older children called from the rocks, and he dashed off like a kitten after a tail of yarn.
“He’s right,” I said to Jane, knowing she couldn’t understand. “It’s a ridiculous vanity. I renounce it!”
There were caves of a sort at the south end of the beach, almost directly below the lighthouse, abscesses where the ocean had licked away the black rock. They filled with water at high tide but were empty now, and in the dimness of one of these natural cabanas, I unbuttoned my dress and released the clasps of my Chicago waist. Putting my clothes back together without the undergarment was a struggle, for when my torso was uncinched, the buttons at the bottom of my rib cage would no longer meet. “I’ll simply fold my hands, so,” I said to Jane, covering the spot through which my petticoat peeked. She giggled, but I sighed, knowing that if I didn’t put the corset back on, I’d have to drape my shawl around my waist when we joined the others, and then I would indeed look peculiar. I ran a few steps in the wet sand, testing my power now that I was free to draw full breaths.
“Look! A mermaid baby!” Jane squealed.
The girl was crouching in the far corner of the cave beside a bundle of kelp that was the size and shape of an infant. I bent close, unable at first to make sense of the tangle of slick green ribbon and rubbery tubes. With horror, I saw misshapen arms and legs, dark brown and clawed, and then a flat black nose.
“Is it sleeping?” Jane asked.
The creature’s eyes were closed. Its smell was astounding, a ripe combination of animal, vegetable, and salt, the smell of sea beings exposed too long to the harsh air, but I picked it up and held as tightly as I could to its slippery covering. And then I ran.
“We found a mermaid!” Janie shrieked, and I must have been screaming, too, for the two men and the children began to move across the rocks back toward the beach, and Mrs. Crawley and Mr. Johnston looked up from the scant pile of driftwood they’d been arranging.
“Oh, why do they just stand there? Why aren’t they coming?” I whispered, my heart louder in my ears than my voice.
I held the bundle out to Mrs. Crawley, but she didn’t take it. With one hand, she gently moved a rope of kelp away from the brown face. “Ah, poor little thing.”
“What is it?” I gasped. My breath burned down my throat and in my chest.
“A baby otter,” Mrs. Crawley said. “A killer whale probably got its mother.”
“A whale would be more likely to take the baby,” her brother said. “I’d guess one of them Portuguese smugglers clubbed th
e mother. A load of furs’ll be headed for Russia.”
“What should we do?” I asked.
“There’s nothing we can do about smugglers,” Mr. Johnston said. “They’ll be long gone.”
“No. About the otter.”
“You can see it’s hurt,” he said. “Best to kill it fast.”
“Kill it! Oh, no!”
“I’m afraid it’s nearly dead already,” Mrs. Crawley said. “Look, it’s struggling to breathe, and it can hardly open its eyes.”
Its eyes were open slightly, enough for me to glimpse the living being in their bright darkness. “I’ll take care of it,” I said, pulling it closer to my chest. Without my corset, I could feel through my clothes its still-warm body under the wet fur.
“Unless you’re planning to hit it over the head with a rock, you won’t. You’ll just make it suffer,” Mr. Johnston said.
“He’s right,” Mr. Crawley said from behind his wife’s shoulder, his pale eyes pinked from the wind or from emotion. “You’ll only hurt it.”
Oskar had come up, and I looked pleadingly at him. “What’s the harm in letting her try?” he said stoutly.
“The harm, in my experience,” Mrs. Crawley said, emphasizing the last word, “is a slow and painful death. It’s cruelty, and I won’t allow it.”
Archie Johnston’s hard hands closed around the little bundle and I felt him tug at it. “I’ll take care of it,” he said in a strange echo of my own words. I held on.
“Let go, Archie,” Mrs. Crawley said, shouldering him aside. “Here.” Her large, capable hands slid between the baby and my breasts. Tenderly, she lifted the animal in its weedy bunting from my arms.
“Where are you taking the mermaid, Mama?” Janie asked anxiously as Mrs. Crawley began to step away from the rest of us.
“Back to the ocean just down here. Where it belongs,” Mrs. Crawley answered. “You take Jane now,” she added, nodding at me. “Go on. All of you children. We’ll have nothing to eat if you don’t hurry up with those abalones.” She motioned with her head toward the edge of the beach, where they’d dropped their sacks and sticks.
“Come on!” Oskar called. He began to run, sweeping the children up with the force of his exuberant motion. They followed like birds behind their leader.
I trailed after them, grateful to be dismissed with the children. But I couldn’t help looking back. Mr. Crawley had taken a few tentative steps after his wife, then had stopped and stood still, rubbing his hands helplessly against his trousers. Mrs. Crawley went on some distance across the sand and then knelt beside a log of driftwood. She laid the bundle on it, slowly taking her hands away.
“Don’t look,” a low voice, surprisingly gentle and solicitous, said beside me.
Startled, I stumbled, and Mr. Johnston caught my arm. “She’s used to it,” he said. “But you needn’t be.”
Although I let him lead me away, I glanced back through slitted eyes. Mrs. Crawley’s arm was high in the air, and her hand clutched a thick driftwood club. I did not, thank God, hear the thump, but the sound of her retching was plain.
∗ ∗ ∗
I didn’t give a thought to my corset until late that night, and the next morning I couldn’t bring myself to go down to that place again to find it. In any case, I was sure the waves would have dragged it away. Another piece of my old life lost. Until I fashioned something new with which to bind myself, I would have to give up wearing my cinched skirts and dresses and rely on the loose-fitting duster that until now I’d worn only for the dirtiest work.
CHAPTER 14
IF THE CHILDREN were not apt pupils, they were good company, and I began to appreciate their distinctions. Mary thrived on organization. She anticipated the materials we’d need and kept an eye on her siblings to be sure they were paying strict attention. She had a small silver pocketknife of which she was proud, and she was forever sharpening pencils with it and polishing the blade with her apron. She ordered by species the items we continued to collect from the beach, using the book she’d kept from the traveling library, and of all the items in the Sears catalog, she coveted most a spice cupboard with eighteen cunning drawers. She wasn’t quick, but she was dogged and would worry a problem or a passage until satisfied that she understood its meaning perfectly. If this tended to make her literal and somewhat humorless, it also made her careful and thorough, and I admired her for it.
As so often happens with siblings, Edward, quick, restless, and impatient, was nearly Mary’s opposite. She blamed him for breaking the points of his pencils on purpose to annoy her. Edward was confident and outgoing; it was no accident that he was the first person we’d met when we landed at the light station. He loved machines, either because he associated them with his father, who had taught him their workings, or from a natural proclivity, and he was fascinated by Oskar’s electrical contraptions. I liked to see them together, their heads bent over some mysterious bit of wire. Edward was protective of his siblings, always shouldering the heaviest burdens and stepping forward to test anything that appeared questionable or dangerous.
Nicholas was prone to daydreaming. He spent hours charging back and forth over the bridge to the light tower, waving a stick and mouthing encouragement to his troops. (I was gratified that some of his commands echoed those I’d read to him from The Battle of Mobile Bay). He was the most avid collector; he gave Christian names to nearly all of the items he picked up, including the stones and the weeds, and then told Jane little stories in which these creatures and objects figured as characters. He had a keen sense of fun and was the only one who dared to tease the formidable Mrs. Crawley. You could see that she was pleased to be allowed relief sometimes from her strictness.
Jane was the most curious and forward. She seemed to suspect that information was being kept from her—perhaps it was; she was the youngest, after all—and she questioned vigilantly and exhaustively. She tried out roles for herself, sometimes aping her mother, sometimes her sister or brothers. I was flattered the day she tried looping the two front locks of her hair to the back, the way I did mine. But her own strong personality—inquisitive, willful, and self-assured—overwhelmed any she might copy. I saw something of myself in her, and while I’d quickly become fond of all the children, I believed that she and I had a special sympathy. I sensed that she’d chosen me as a model much the way I’d chosen Miss Dodson.
With Miss Dodson in mind, I gradually decided that, given our unusual situation and my students’ interest in aquatic life, I ought to become more of a real teacher of science. The children had recently found a sea urchin freshly expired on the beach. Some Species contained a picture of that creature’s insides with the parts labeled, and I thought it would be instructive to open the animal and observe the complex structures beneath the shell. I’d not expected its outside to be so hard, however. Because of the roundness and the spines, it was difficult to hold the thing steady enough to plunge a knife in safely.
“Edward, run and get your mother’s big shears, or we’ll never open it.”
While we waited, the others pretended to prick their fingers on the bright purple poisonous needles.
When Edward returned, I fitted the jaws of the shears around the middle of the urchin and squeezed until the shell broke with a snap. With dish towels to protect my hands, I pulled the halves apart. The children leaned forward for a better view. Inside were soft twists and folds, glistening clusters of red and gray ribbon, and drifts of yellow seed pearls.
“There”—I pointed triumphantly, feeling quite like Miss Dodson—“is Aristotle’s lantern!”
The whole looked like a tulip. Nature repeating her patterns, I thought, remembering Miss Dodson quoting Mr. Emerson. There was an important idea in this somewhere if I could figure out how to articulate it. Oskar, I was sure, would be able to explain it. The lesson, I believed, had been a great success.
Then Janie reached with her fork—utensils were our only dissecting tools—and poked at the soft ocher flesh. The briny smell of the sea
rose from it, and suddenly, the tangle of innards, which a moment before had been a gorgeous arrangement of colors and shapes, stood out to me as what they were, a cup of guts, some small measure of which had tipped out onto my kitchen table. What had possessed me to take the thing apart?
“I’m sorry,” I said. With great effort, I forced a feeling of sickness down, as cold sweat rose on my neck.
The children clamored for my attention.
“He spilled!”
“Can we open another?”
“Ow! Don’t poke me!”
Their voices scraped at me unendurably. My collar was so close about my neck; it seemed to restrict my breathing. When the bell clanged at last, calling the children to their lunch, I fled the kitchen and stumbled up the stairs to lie down.
∗ ∗ ∗
I slept for an hour or so, waking when Oskar slipped into the bed beside me for his “night.” Feeling better, I went back to the kitchen. Oskar had left his lunch plate of sardines and pilot bread atop the gore. I scraped the violated urchin into a pail and carried it to the edge of the rock to hurl the mess into the sea. Mrs. Crawley was there, disposing of her family’s garbage in the same way. I confessed my weakness.
“I’m surprised,” I concluded. “I’ve never been squeamish before.”
She gave me an appraising look. “Some women have these episodes when they’re with child, although I never did.”
My mother had admonished me to keep careful track of my bleeding, so as to avoid stained sheets and undergarments, but that was another instruction I’d resisted. I had no need of calendars and notebooks; I could tell by the tightening and the ache when the blood was due. My lax habits meant that I didn’t know how many weeks had passed since I’d last bled, although I’d been vaguely aware that more than the usual had gone by. I’d attributed this irregularity to the strangeness of the place, of the diet, of the entire life here. In reality, nothing extraordinary had occurred; the simplest, most obvious explanation was the truth.