“It’s Ship I’ve come t’ bunk with, not you, you old salt, so y’ can wipe the smirk off y’r briny face and have done with teasin’!”
Josiah broke into an appreciative roar of laughter, the pipe in jeopardy, scarcely anchored between his yellowing teeth. At last he removed it. “Haven’t changed a bit, Rye, and it’s my guess y’r woman’s wonderin’ what t’ do with that spare husband of hers, eh? Well, stow y’r gear and welcome to y’. Ship and I are happy enough for y’r company. ’Tis been a quiet house f’r two years now. Even y’r sharp tongue will be welcome.” Again he pointed at Rye’s nose with his pipestem, and added, “Up to a point.” Their eyes met and they shared the moment of levity—an aging parent and the child who’d grown taller and stronger than himself.
At the saltbox on the hill, Laura was still trembling from the shock of seeing Rye again, of kissing him. As soon as he disappeared down the path, none of it seemed real. But facing Dan made reality sweep back, along with the need to accept the bizarre truth and deal with it.
***
At the door, Laura closed her eyes for a moment, pressed a hand to her fluttering stomach, then stepped inside.
Dan sat at the table, but his elbows rested on either side of an untouched plate and his mouth was hidden behind interlaced fingers. His eyes followed her across the room, hazel eyes she’d known for as long as she’d had memory. Hazel eyes she now found difficult to meet.
She stopped beside the trestle table, wondering what to say, and if the man who sat studying her so silently was still her husband. His eyes moved to her hands, and she realized her fingers were nervously toying with the waistband of her apron, so she dropped them quickly and took her place on the bench across from Dan. Her nerves felt as if they were made of spun glass. The room was painfully silent, all but for the constant sounds of the island: hammers, gulls, bell buoys, and the faraway breath of a steam whistle from the Albany packet as it pulled into Steamboat Wharf below.
Suddenly Laura wilted, resting her elbows on either side of her own plate and burying her face in her palms. Several long, silent minutes passed before she raised her eyes to confront Dan again. He was absently toying with a spoon, pressing it firmly against the tabletop and cranking it around as if to screw it into the wood.
When he realized she was watching, he stopped, and his well-groomed hand fell still. He sighed, cleared his throat, and said, “Well ...”
Say something, she berated herself. But she didn’t know where to begin.
Dan cleared his throat again and sat up straighter.
“Where is Josh?” she asked quietly.
“He finished and went out to play.”
“You haven’t eaten anything,” she noted, eyeing his plate. “I ... I wasn’t very hungry.” His eyes refused to meet hers. “Dan ...” She reached to cover his hand with her own, but his did not move.
“He looks healthy as a horse, and very much alive.”
She couched her hands in her lap, studying the plate that Dan had filled for her sometime while she was outside. “Yes, he does ... he ... he is.”
“Was he here long?”
“Here?” She looked up quickly.
“Here. In the house.”
“You know when the Omega came in.”
“No, not exactly. Nobody said a word to me about Rye’s being on board. Funny, isn’t it?”
Again she covered his hand with hers. “Oh, Dan, nothing is changed ... nothing.”
He jerked his hand free and spun to his feet, turning his back on her. “Then why do I feel as if the world just dropped out from under my feet?”
“Dan, please.”
He turned and took a step nearer. “Dan, please? Please what? Sit here ... at his table, in his house, with his—”
“Dan, stop it!”
He whirled away again, the words his wife echoing through the room as distinctly as if he’d uttered them. Almost everything here was Rye Dalton’s, or had been at one time—people and possessions both. Dan Morgan found himself floundering for a way to accept the fact that his friend was very much alive and had walked in here expecting to reclaim it all.
From behind, Laura watched as Dan grasped the back of his neck with one hand and dropped his chin onto his chest.
“Dan, come and sit back down and eat your dinner.”
His hand fell to his side and he turned to face her. “Laura, I’ve got to get back to the countinghouse. Will you ... are you going to be all right?”
“Of course.” She rose and accompanied him to the door, where she held his jacket while he slipped it on. She watched as he retrieved his beaver top hat from the tree, but instead of donning it, he brushed his fingertips distractedly along its brim, his back to Laura. Studying his despondent pose, her throat constricted and her fingers twisted into a tight knot.
Dan took a step toward the open door, halted, drew a deep breath, then spun and clasped her against his chest so hard, the breath swooshed from her lungs. “I’ll see you at supper,” he whispered in a tortured voice, and she nodded against his shoulder before he tore himself away and quickly stepped out the door.
As Dan Morgan moved down the scallop-shell path in the footsteps of Rye Dalton, it seemed to him that was where he’d been walking all his life.
When Dan was gone, Laura found tears in her eyes. She went back inside to find she must confront countless objects that bore witness to the curious melding of their three lives. At the trestle table she touched Dan’s fork, which still rested in the unfinished food on his plate, realizing that years ago Rye, too, had eaten with this very fork; he very likely owned it. Distracted, she put away the remainder of the interrupted meal, but still the memories persisted. She closed the doors of the alcove bed, cutting off the sight of the place where Rye Dalton’s son slept at night beside a row of wooden soldiers that had belonged to Dan Morgan as a boy. The humidor beside the wing chair had been a gift to Dan from Rye. The chair itself was one Dan had chosen after marrying Laura, though the cricket stool before it was a piece given to Rye and Laura by some guest at their wedding.
Almost against her wishes, Laura found herself at the door of the linter room, her eyes moving to the bed—how painful it was to look at it now—where she and Rye had conceived Josh and upon which Josh had been born and where Dan had come to sit beside the new mother and peer into the flannel blankets at the squirming pink bundle and predict, “He’ll look just like Rye.” Laura’s eyelids trembled shut as she remembered Dan’s words and how they’d been spoken because he’d sensed it was what Laura had needed to hear at that moment. This bed, above all, seemed a testimony to their convoluted history. It had been used by all three of them; the pineapple carving on its headposts had held the jackets of both men and the rails in between had been clasped by Laura’s hands in the throes of both ecstasy and pain.
Her throat constricted and she turned away.
Which of them is still my husband? Above all, this question needed answering.
Thirty minutes later, Laura had her answer. She stepped out of the office of Ezra Merrill, the island’s attorney, suddenly unable to face the house again, with all its reminders. And though she was twenty-four and a mother herself, Laura was smitten by the overwhelming urge to run to her own mother’s arms.
Having left Josh at the Ryersons’ house, Laura made her way to the silver-brown saltbox on Brimstone Street where she’d grown up. Returning to it, the memories grew stronger, of Rye and herself and Dan trooping in and out at will, in those days before commitments had been made. Nostalgia created a deep need to talk about those days and these, with someone who knew their beginnings.
But Laura had scarcely put foot inside her mother’s keeping room before realizing Dahlia Traherne wasn’t gong to be much help.
Dahlia could scarcely handle the everyday decisions of her own life, much less offer advice to others on how to handle theirs. An inveterate whiner, she had learned to get her way through chronic complaining about the most trivial problems; when tri
vialities failed to surface, she invented imaginary problems.
Her husband, Elias, had been island-born, a sailmaker who had sewn canvas all his life but had never sailed beneath it, for at the merest mention of his signing articles, Dahlia had come up with some new malady to make him promise never to leave her. He had died when Laura was twelve, and there were those who said Dahlia had driven him to an early grave with her habitual complaining and hypochondria, but that he’d probably gone to it gladly, to get away from her. Some said Dahlia should have stepped down a little harder on her daughter after Elias Traherne’s death, for the girl ran free as a will-o’-the-wisp after her father was gone, tramping the island without curfew or call, following the boys, and learning the most unladylike habits while Dahlia sat home and made not the slightest effort to control her. And there were still others who condescendingly explained away Dahlia’s weak nature by pointing out, “Well, after all, she’s an off-islander.”
No, Dahlia had not been born on the island, though she’d lived here for thirty-two years. But if she lived on Nantucket another hundred, she would still bear the stigma from which no mainland-born person could ever be free, for once an off-islander, always an off-islander. Perhaps it was because she sensed this wry disdain that Dahlia lost confidence and became so weak and puling.
Greeting her daughter now, she wheezed like the airy whine of a calliope. “Why, Laury, I didn’t expect to see you today.”
“Mother, could I talk to you?”
The expression on Laura’s face made her mother suddenly suspect there was a problem, and the older woman hesitated, as if reluctant to invite her daughter in. But Laura swept inside, dropping to a bench at the table, heaving an enormous sigh, and saying in a shaking voice, “Rye is alive.”
Dahlia felt a pain stab her between the eyes. “Oh no.”
“Oh yes, and he’s back on Nantucket.”
“Oh dear. Oh my ... why it’s ... what ... Dahlia’s hands fluttered to her forehead, then massaged her temples, but before she could dredge up an ailment, Laura rushed on. The whole story tumbled out, and long before it ended, Dahlia’s expression of dismay had intensified to one of alarm.
“You ... you aren’t going to ... to see him, are you, Laury?”
Disheartened, Laura studied the woman across the table. “Oh, Mother, I already have. And even if I hadn’t, how could I avoid it on an island the size of Nantucket?”
“B ... but what will Dan think?”
Laura resisted the urge to cry out, What about me? What about what I think? You haven’t even asked me. Instead, she replied tonelessly, “Dan’s seen him, too. Rye came to the house.”
“To the house ... oh my ...” Dahlia’s fingertips fluttered from her temples to her quivering lips. “Whatever will I say to people?”
Insecurity had always been Dahlia’s fundamental problem. Laura realized her folly in expecting her mother to analyze a situation in which security was clearly personified by Daniel Morgan, who had been the stalwart in Laura’s life for so long, while Rye had gone away and left her “high and dry,” as Dahlia had often said. But Laura couldn’t help herself from admitting, “I’ve already talked to Ezra Merrill and found out Dan is still my legal husband.” She raised troubled eyes that needed comfort. “But I ... I still have feelings for Rye.” Immediately, Dahlia presented her palms. “Shh! Don’t say such a thing. It will only cause trouble. You shouldn’t even have seen him!”
Laura became exasperated. “Mother, it’s Rye’s house. Josh is his son. I couldn’t possibly keep him away.”
“But he could ... could take everything from you!” “Mother, how could you think such a thing of Rye!” How
typical of Dahlia to be concerned about such a thing at a time like this. Laura sprang to her feet and began pacing.
“Laury, you mustn’t get yourself worked up. Are you feeling all right? I’ll have to speak to Dan about getting you some drops to calm this—”
“There’s nothing wrong with me!”
But to a woman who could conjure up a convenient ache at the mention of anything disagreeable, it seemed imperative to discover an ailment. She came forward, attempting to press a palm to Laura’s forehead, but Laura adroitly sidestepped.
“Oh, Mother, please.”
The fussy hand dropped. The pinched face with its everpresent expression of suffering seemed to take on several new wrinkles. Frustrated by her mother’s inability either to cope or sympathize, Laura felt perilously close to tears.
Oh, Mother, can’t you see what I need? I need reassurance, your cheek against my hair. I need to go back with you into the past so that I can sort out the present.
But Dahlia had never been a calming influence; whatever had possessed Laura to believe she would be now? Dahlia’s flustered twittering only made things worse, and Laura was not surprised when her mother drifted to a chair, rested the back of her hand against her forehead, and said, “Oh, Laury, I fear I have a frightful headache. Could you mix up a tisane for me? There ...” She fluttered a hand weakly. “On the shelf you’ll find some valerian root and anise. Mix it up ... with some water ... please.” By now she was breathless.
Thus, Laura found herself administering to her mother instead of being comforted, and by the time she left the house on Brimstone Street, she herself had a headache. She returned home to pass a tense afternoon reflecting upon the past and worrying about the future.
When Dan returned at the end of the day, his eyes scanned the keeping room as if he half expected to find Rye there. He hung up his jacket and caught Laura’s glance from across the room, but neither of them seemed able to speak.
Dan’s stare followed Laura as she put supper on the table, but throughout the meal the strained atmosphere remained while they avoided the subject of Rye Dalton.
But in the evening, Josh, with the intuitive accuracy of a child, shot a question that hit two marks at once. Dan was sitting at a small oak desk with a pen in his hand when Josh leaned across his lap and asked, “Why did Mama get scared today when that man was here?”
The entry on the ledger sheet went awry. Then Dan’s hand stopped moving over the page, Laura’s over her crocheting. Their eyes met, then Laura dropped her gaze.
“Why don’t you ask Mama?” Dan suggested, watching the red creep up Laura’s cheeks while he wondered again what had gone on between the two of them when Rye first got here.
Josh galloped over and flung himself across his mother’s lap. “Are you scared of that man, Mama?”
“No, darling, not at all.” She ruffled Josh’s hair.
“You looked like you was. Your eyes was big and you jumped away from him like you make me jump away when I get too close to the fire.”
“I was surprised, not scared, and I did not jump away from him. We were talking, that’s all.” But guilt flared Laura’s cheeks to an even brighter hue, and she could tell Dan was studying her carefully. She lit into her crocheting as if the doily had to be finished by bedtime. “I think it’s time you marched your soldiers to the shelf and got your nightshirt on for bed.”
“You and Papa wanna talk grown-up talk, huh?”
Laura couldn’t hide her smile. Josh was a bright and witty child, though there were times when she’d cheerfully have gagged him for his innocent comments. But there was a new discomfort between Laura and Dan that would have been there with or without Josh’s remark, and as the evening rolled on toward bedtime, it became more and more palpable. By the time they retired to their room, Laura felt as if she were walking on fishhooks. And to make matters worse, there was the problem of disrobing.
Clothing of the day was styled for ladies with maids; both dresses and whalebone corsets were laced up the back, so it was impossible to don or doff them without aid. Laura had protested when Dan insisted on her purchasing such dresses instead of making her own, but he had a fierce pride in his ability to provide for her, thus she’d obliged and bought the inconvenient garments, though twice daily she needed his assistance to get the
infernal things on and off.
But tonight she felt a disquieting reluctance to ask the favor, though it had come to be part of their bedtime ritual, as automatic as the pinching of the last candlewick.
But tonight was different.
Dan set the candle on the commode table, untied his cravat and hung it on the bedpost, followed by his shirt. Laura, trussed up like a stuffed turkey ready for the spit, silently rebelled at women’s plight. Why did women dress in such absurdly restrictive clothes? Men had no such inconveniences with which to contend.
How she wished she might unobtrusively slip out of her things and into her nightie and quickly duck beneath the covers. Instead, she was forced to ask, “Dan, would you loosen my laces please?”
To her horror, his face went red. She whirled to present her back. After nearly four years of unlacing her, Dan was blushing!
He released the brass hooks down the back of her dress and tugged at the laces, which were strung through metal grommets along the back of her corset. She felt him fumble, then he muttered under his breath. When at last she was free, she stepped from the garment, laid her corset over the cedar trunk, and unbuttoned her petticoat. That left only her pantaloons, which buttoned at the waist, and the chemise—it tied up the front with a satin ribbon.
The wrinkles of her chemise had been pressed into her skin all day, leaving a crisscross of red marks that itched terribly. Often Dan teased her when she slid into bed and immediately began scratching.
But tonight all was quiet after they’d dressed in nightgown and nightshirt-standing back to back—and lay beneath the coverlets, with only the after scent of candle smoke remaining. From outside came the incessant wash of sea upon land, and from nearer, the cluck of a whippoorwill that always precedes its song. Again it clucked, and Laura lay in the dark, equally as tense as Dan, telling herself there were many nights when they went to sleep without touching. Why was she so aware of it tonight?
She heard him swallow. Her ribs itched, but she forced her hands to be still. The silence stretched long, until at last, when the whippoorwill had called for the hundredth time, Laura reached for Dan’s hand. He grasped it like a lifeline and squeezed so hard, her knuckles cracked softly, while from his side of the bed came a throaty sound, half relief, half despair. She heard the shush of the feather pillow as he turned to face her and ground his thumb into the back of her hand with possessive desperation.