After the Fire Read online

“That’s going to be a change,” Milly said, looking around. “Surprised me, Miss James did.”

  Red’s face had closed, and Milly knew her well enough to recognize the signal and back off. At that moment, Blackie arrived at the door, a low growl starting in her throat.

  “It’s all right, Blackie,” Red said.

  Milly laughed.

  “She’s not used to so many people,” Red explained, rubbing one of Blackie’s ears.

  “You remember about the highchair when she’s ready for it,” Milly said.

  “Thanks.”

  Milly walked back up the road relieved to have seen the baby and satisfied her curiosity about the way Red lived. Milly would certainly never have wanted to raise a child, children, alone. She would never have lived alone by choice. And to live that poor, like somebody out of a past century—Milly was sure she would have taken to the streets before she did that. Nothing was a real choice for a woman unless dictating among disasters counted. Maybe being alone wasn’t so difficult if you’d never been happy.

  “Certainly I’ve been happy,” Milly said to herself as she got into her car.

  Stuck behind a family of cyclists, the youngest no more than five, wobbling and weaving along behind the others, Milly dawdled along until there was a safe stretch of road to pass. Islanders cursed this summer traffic, and Milly did, too, but she liked the summer, remembering her own children on bicycles coming down the hill toward her like a flock of birds.

  Chapter XVI

  “MISS JAMES IS NOT going to just disappear,” Karen said with nervous firmness to Red’s silence on the other end of the phone. “Red?”

  “I’m listening,” Red replied softly, “I don’t want to wake Blue.”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” Karen said impatiently, “but either she’s awake so you can’t talk or she’s asleep so you can’t talk.”

  There was no reply.

  “With no funeral, with no memorial, Miss James doesn’t just go away,” Karen tried to explain. “Getting rid of her clothes didn’t help.”

  “What do you want to do?” Red asked.

  “Exorcise her,” Karen replied.

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “We have to do something to let her—or anyway this house—know she’s dead.”

  “Don’t you want to stay there?” Red asked.

  “I do … if I can,” Karen said. “But it’s your problem, too, Red. I can’t do it by myself.”

  “Can’t you ask Mrs. Hawkins?”

  “Hen didn’t inherit this house. You did.”

  “I know, and I’ll deal with it. I really will when I can.”

  “Listen, Red, if I give a sort of party, would you at least come to it?”

  “I guess so,” Red said, “if I can.”

  Karen hung up, disgusted.

  “Well, what do you think of her now?” Karen demanded.

  In the two days since she’d moved in, Karen had stopped talking to herself and addressed all her remarks to Miss James whose spirit in this house was too lively to seem like a ghost.

  “You’re meant to be her problem, not mine.”

  The house was so clearly designed for one person that trying to live in it without taking Miss James’ place left no comfortable place to be. Other chairs in the living room were adequate only if you didn’t want to read or watch TV. Even in the kitchen Miss James’ chair was the only convenient one if you were waiting on yourself. But whenever Karen tried to assert herself, to take Miss James’ place, she was filled with restless apprehension.

  Karen was grateful Miss James had not died in her bed, but she herself had not slept well in it for the past two nights, waking often with the peculiar sensation that she was trapped in someone else’s skin.

  None of the strategies she’d developed for living alone seemed to work in this house. She found herself reverting to all the tricks she had learned to avoid going home. She couldn’t believe that this might happen to her again wherever she went. That would be simply too discouraging.

  Red obviously didn’t know what Karen was talking about. Maybe by the time Red moved in, it would be all right, or she’d be too preoccupied and insensitive to notice. She had no trouble nursing a dead man’s baby. Maybe she could live comfortably in a dead woman’s house.

  Karen wondered why she’d ever thought she could make friends with Red. It wasn’t just that Red’s vocabulary was so limited that she couldn’t understand half of what Karen said; Red didn’t care. But then, who did?

  “How could you live all those years,” Karen demanded, “like this?”

  Was she really asking Miss James, or her mother? Neither would answer her, and perhaps she was a little crazy, having slipped first into talking to herself and now slipping further into talking with the dead. At least when she talked to herself, she responded.

  Answer me! she wanted to shout but instead rushed out of the house and down across the road to the sea. She stood watching the pleasure boats anchored out by the point. She hadn’t once been fishing. Adam had asked her, but she couldn’t have made friends with him. That wasn’t what he’d have wanted. Now that the pub was full of summer people, he hardly bothered to speak to her.

  Why was she suddenly so angry with everyone, the dead as well as the living?

  “I’m sick of this place,” she said aloud.

  “Then move on,” she answered.

  Oddly there was no blank wall of WHERE before her but an open, even inviting, horizon. She didn’t feel afraid.

  Karen walked back up to the house, went in and sat down at Miss James’ desk. She had cleared it of everything personal, but Miss James’ scent still clung to the blank stationery. Karen took out four sheets and began to make signs for the island’s billboards. You are invited to share memories and thoughts of Miss James at her house on Friday at 7:30 p.m. She paused, considering, then printed Karen Tasuki. Let them say it wasn’t her place to do it. Let them decide not to come.

  “I’ve got to make it my place until I leave,” she said to Miss James, who seemed a little more willing to share her desk than she had been.

  Now Karen had things to do to get ready for the party that might or might not take place. She baked a modest number of cookies, bought a few cold cuts and some cheese, a half a dozen bottles of wine, and arranged to borrow the smallest coffee maker from the hall, as well as cups and glasses.

  In the three days she prepared, no one mentioned her signs to her, and no one called to offer help. Perhaps they expected her to ask for it. She didn’t need any.

  On Friday afternoon, when she’d finished her duties at the ferry dock, she went home and began to make a small number of sushi.

  “Why not one last one in the eye for silly Milly Forbes?” she asked Miss James or herself; they both agreed.

  Adam, if he came, actually liked sushi. For a wistful moment, she admitted to herself that she wanted him to come, and Riley and Rat and his wife, Homer and Jane, all of them. But she stopped that hope by concentrating on what she was doing.

  In the middle of her task, it came to her that what she really wanted to do was learn Japanese. Why? Did she have to have a reason? Then she had one. She wanted to be able to read that gravestone she had so rashly claimed for her great-grandfather. If she wanted to learn Japanese, why not go to Japan? She would be little more of a stranger there than she was here. Her father would be appalled. Well, as he said himself, she was a grown woman. And she could afford it.

  For the first time, her inheritance from her mother occurred to her as a blessing. She was, after all, free to make her own terms with the world. Why on earth had she been hanging around the edges of other people’s lives when she had her own? Here she was in Red’s house, envying Red’s good fortune, even taking on what she thought of as Red’s responsibilities when she could be on her way to Japan. The world out there beyond this little island was full of people, among whom there might be someone she could risk wanting on her own terms.

  At seven o’c
lock, Red arrived, the baby asleep in a carrier on her breast, in her hand a basket full of things for the baby, on top of which was a pie.

  “I couldn’t get here any earlier,” Red said. “I don’t seem to be as well organized as I thought.”

  “I didn’t expect you to help,” Karen said, too relieved to see her to leave room for grievance.

  Red looked around at the food and drink.

  “It sure looks different,” she said.

  “It’s beginning to feel that way, too,” Karen agreed.

  “Is it okay if I put Blue on … your bed?” Red asked.

  “It’s Miss James’ or yours,” Karen said. “I just sleep there.”

  “Karen, I’m sorry you’re mad at me. I wish I could be your friend, but I can’t now. I don’t know how. It’s something maybe I’ll never learn.”

  Karen looked at Red, so lately in the bloom of pregnancy, now white and drawn with all the new demands being made on her, and wondered at her own anger. “You are my friend and a good one,” Karen admitted. “I haven’t any business being mad at you. I’m sorry.”

  Milly sat at the desk which had been Forbes’, finishing a letter she had promised to write to Bonnie. Writing was far easier than she had expected, not only because it didn’t have to be a performance for everyone else on the party line but also because she felt so much closer to Bonnie since she’d been here. Milly’s sense of mortal power over her daughter had faded considerably, but her affection for her had not, nourished as it was more and more often by memories of her as a child, memories of all the children in those long sunny summers here on the island. She could recall to Bonnie a remark she’d made when she was around twelve: “I’m so glad, Mother, you don’t make jelly and pies. We get to eat all the berries we pick.” There had been a time when her children had approved of her. Though Bonnie certainly had her reservations now, Milly sensed that she was now more in her daughter’s good graces than she had been for some years.

  When she had finished the letter, she sat for some time, thinking not of Bonnie but of Nora, the daughter lost to her whose blue eyes could be as cold as her own. Yet she had been there in Milly’s memories with Martin and Bonnie, Nora their leader always, the brightest and bravest of the lot, and Forbes’ favorite, Milly had always suspected. Though he had been a fair father, she had to give him that. How had they managed these things so badly that they’d lost a child in the process? And was she really lost? Nobody had made any real attempt to find her.

  Dear Forbes, Milly wrote. This isn’t a request for money; so don’t throw it away before you read it.

  She was tempted first to blame him once again, but they’d both been disgusting. All she really wanted now was to offer Nora a chance to forgive them.

  Please find Nora, she wrote. It’s time.

  When she addressed that letter, she went to her closet to look for something appropriate among her summer things for a memorial evening. As she looked, she thought how much too young as well as too shabby and too small her clothes were for her. By now she hadn’t much idea what fashions were. And what difference did it really make? She took out a wraparound navy skirt and the freshest-looking of her white blouses. If she was beginning to look more and more like a real islander, why not? There were worse things to be.

  As she picked up the platter of raw vegetables and dip she was taking, she wondered how old she’d have to be before she could get away with coffee or tea bags.

  Henrietta was not waiting at the end of her drive as she had done before Hart died. She was waiting at her door and came slowly and tentatively to the car carrying a plate of sandwiches.

  “I couldn’t face the oven on so hot a day,” she confessed.

  “Do you feel a bit funny about this?” Milly couldn’t resist asking.

  “No, why?”

  “Well, it just doesn’t seem to me her place to do it.”

  “I don’t know why not,” Henrietta said. “She’s living there now, and Red’s too busy with the baby to take it on. Oh, I feel a bit guilty, to tell the truth, but then I thought how nice that a young person would think of it and do it.”

  “Did she ask you to bring something?” Milly asked.

  “No. But I thought she’s probably too shy to.”

  “Well, when I go, I hope my memorial won’t be announced on the bulletin boards like a washing machine for sale.”

  “It’s a way to make sure everybody’s welcome,” Henrietta said. “I think Miss James would have liked it.”

  “Whatever happens, this time I’m not taking Sadie home,” Milly determined.

  “I don’t think she’ll be there somehow. She didn’t even want to go to Dickie’s funeral.”

  “And she wants nothing to do with that baby. She thinks of it as Dickie’s revenge.”

  “Just as well,” Henrietta said. “Red really isn’t interested in sharing that baby with anyone.”

  “Except the dog,” Milly said.

  Henrietta laughed.

  Milly glanced over at her to catch sight of that vitality which would now only occasionally rise into Henrietta’s face. Henrietta was too old to recover completely. Milly liked her better, being able to feel always a little sorry for her. And Milly was particularly glad of her company as they walked through Miss James’ wildflower garden because alone Milly would have felt far from sure of welcome. The only way this invitation could include her was on a bulletin board.

  Miss James’ small house was already crowded, and Milly was surprised at the number of young people there. She’d never had the impression that Miss James had much to do with the young, except for her dependence on and attachment to Red. Were they this hard up for a party?

  “Would you like wine or tea or coffee?” Karen asked her.

  “Wine, thank you,” Milly replied, relieved to be able to respond just as she would at the pub.

  “Try one of these, Milly,” Adam said, holding out a plate of sushi.

  “Thank you, no,” Milly said, sweeping past him into the living room.

  Henrietta, watching her go, gave Karen a rueful smile at the same moment Adam and Karen burst out laughing, obvious conspirators in a private joke.

  “Excuse me, Hen,” Karen said. “What can I get for you?”

  “A place to sit down,” Henrietta confessed. “I’m no good at standing.”

  All the chairs in the living room, except Miss James’ own, had been taken. Henrietta hesitated for only a moment before she moved to it and sat down, thinking herself as likely a candidate as any. How substantial and nearly sacred or obscene furniture became when those who had claimed it were dead. This odd game they were playing should be called musical people, for at each gathering one more was gone while the chairs stayed on. A baby’s cry from the bedroom reminded Henrietta that there were also those newly born to insure the furniture had its uses, but she had lost too many of her own to take the comfort there should be in each new life.

  It was that dwindling interest the young found so hard to forgive. Red couldn’t understand why Miss James hadn’t at least waited to see the baby, had strained all her will instead against that eventuality. Miss James would have been pleased at the neatness of it, dying the day the baby was born, the one passage actually involved in bringing on the other.

  Miss James would have preferred Red to be in charge of the house and the party, but she might have understood Red’s need to act in her own way, to take her time. And it was important for Karen, who had been a favorite with Miss James, too, to take just such a place as this in the community.

  “It’s hard to believe you’ve been here only just over a year,” Henrietta said to Karen, accepting the glass of wine she offered.

  “I’m on my way the end of the month,” Karen confided.

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve decided to go to Japan,” Karen said. “I’ve never been.”

  “Well,” Henrietta said reluctantly, “perhaps the time for you young people to go is when people begin to take you for granted.
We’ll miss you.”

  “Thank you,” Karen said and turned away quickly as if the comment had been embarrassing in some way.

  Henrietta wasn’t used to being lacking in tact. You could only be tactful in a world you paid attention to and understood. She wondered if she’d ever have enough energy or interest to relearn that skill.

  Red came over and squatted down by Henrietta.

  “I like to see you sitting there,” Red said. “It helps.”

  “Karen says she’s leaving us.”

  “She just decided,” Red said. “She was afraid no one would come.”

  “Why?” Henrietta asked in surprise. “People always do.”

  “For births and deaths,” Red remarked.

  “And fires,” Henrietta added.

  “And fires,” Red agreed.

  “Has Karen had a hard time living here?” Henrietta asked.

  “She tried to make friends with me,” Red said.

  “And someone has to be pretty hard up to try a thing like that? Oh, Red!”

  “I’m not ready to be a friend,” Red said. “And maybe I never will be.”

  “Having a baby is a pretty big responsibility. Friends can help,” Henrietta said.

  “They don’t,” Red said. “They get in the way.”

  “Oh, I know they can,” Henrietta said, a sudden memory of herself frantically trying to protect her first living baby from the hordes of gift-bearing visitors, and she was naturally sociable, not a cautious hermit like Red.

  Homer and Jane had arrived, and Red rose to greet them, a gesture which suggested she might be reluctantly practicing for the time she would be mistress of this house. Henrietta couldn’t imagine another gathering such as this at Red’s instigation. But Blue had already changed Red’s relationship to the community, and, as the human traffic died down, she would suspect and resent it less and only gradually know she’d been a little changed by it, more open to human connection than she could now imagine.

  In the absence of Sadie, the young men were paying some court to Milly who looked remarkably well, her face no longer such a careful mask of makeup, her body taking its fuller, more natural shape. She was making them laugh.