She screamed, “Mark!”
The door was ajar. Through it came Lib’s voice, loud and welcome, “Randy, are you shorn? If Helen’s finished, come on out. I’ve got something to show you.”
He released Helen’s wrists. She leaned against the desk, face averted, shoulders quivering, one hand stifling the sounds erupting from her mouth. He said, gently, “Please, Helen-” He touched her arm. She drew away from him. He fled into the living room.
Lib stood at the porch door, her face somber, beckoning. She said quietly, “Up to the roof, where we can talk.”
Randy followed her, knowing that she must have heard and grateful for her interference. It was something he would have had to tell Lib anyway. He would have to tell Dan too. This emotional earthquake could bring down their house. It was a problem for a physician.
Up on the captain’s walk, Randy lowered himself carefully into a deck chair. The canvas would rot before summer’s end. His hands were shaking. “Did you hear it all?” he asked.
“Yes. All. And saw some too. Don’t ever let her know.” “What’s wrong with her?” It was a protest rather than a question.
Lib sat on the edge of his chair and put her hands on his hands and said, “Stop shaking, Randy. I know you’re confused. It was inevitable. I knew it was coming. I’ll diagnose it for you as best I can. It’s a form of fantasy.”
Randy was silent, wondering at her detachment and cool ness.
“It is,” she went on, “the sort of transference you find in dreams-the substitution in dreams of one person for another. Helen allowed herself to slip into a dream. I think she is a completely chaste person. She is, isn’t she?”
“I’m sure of it, or I was.”
“Yet she is a person who requires love and is used to it. For many years a man has been the greater part of her life. So she has this conflict-intense loyalty to her husband and yet need of a man to receive her abundance of love and affection. She tried to resolve the conflict irrationally. You became Mark. It was an hallucination.”
“You’re talking like a professional, Lib.”
“I’m not a professional. I just wanted to be one. I majored in psychology. Remember?”
It was something she had told him but he had forgotten because it seemed incongruous and not in the least important. Lib looked like a girl who had majored in ballet and water-skiing at Miami rather than psychology at Sarah Lawrence. He knew that she worked for a year in a Cleveland clinic and had abandoned the job only because of her mother’s illness. When she spoke of this year, which was seldom, it was with nostalgia, as some girls spoke of a year in Europe or on the stage. He suspected it must have been the most rewarding year of her life, and certainly there must have been a man, or men, in it. Randy said, “Lib, do you think she’s crazy?”
“Helen’s not psychotic. She’s under terrible strain. She let herself go, but only for a moment. She indulged a temporary fantasy. Now it is over. Now she will be ashamed of herself. The best thing you can do is pretend it didn’t happen. One day she’ll mention it to you, perhaps obliquely, and apologize. Eventually she’ll understand why she did it and the sense of guilt will leave her. One day, when we’re better friends, I’ll make her understand it. You know there is a man in the house for Helen-a perfectly fine man. I’m going to make that my special project.”
Randy felt relieved. He looked out over the river, contemplating his ignorance of women and the peace of evening. On the end of the dock Ben Franklin and Peyton were fishing. It was understood that anyone, child or adult, could go fishing before breakfast or after assigned chores were done. Fishing was not only recreation but the necessary daily harvest of a crop providentially swimming at their feet. Presently the brass ship’s bell on the porch sang its sharp, clean, sea note. The bell was a relic of Lieutenant Randolph Rowzee Peyton’s longboats. It was the same bell that Randy’s mother had used to summon Mark and him from the river to wash for dinner. There was peace and continuity in the sound of the bell. The bell announced that there was food on the table and a women in the kitchen. So it was not only a message to the children but to Randy. Helen had pulled herself together. He watched Ben and Peyton, trailed by Graf, thread their way up through the grove. Graf still shared Randy’s couch but all day he shadowed the boy. This was right. A boy needed a dog. A boy also needed a father.
When the children were close to the house Randy yelled down, “What’d you get?”
Ben held up a string of bream and speckled perch. “Sixteen,” he shouted, “on worms and crickets. I got fifteen, she only got one.”
Peyton danced in indignation, a slim shrill-voiced sprite. “Who cares about fish? If I grow up I’m not going to be a fisherman!”
Helen called from the kitchen window. The children disappeared.
Randy said, “Did you ever hear a little girl say `If I grow up’ before?”
“No, I never did. It gives me the creeps.” “Not their fault,” Randy said. “Ours.” “Would you want children, Randy?”
Randy considered the question. He thought of Jim Hickey’s bees, and Peyton’s “if,” and of cow’s milk you would not dare feed a baby in a contaminated zone, even if you had a cow, and of many other things.
Lib waited a long time for an answer and then she leaned across the chair and kissed him and said, “Don’t try to answer now. I’ve got to go down and help with dinner. Don’t come downstairs for a few minutes, Randy. We’ve whipped up a surprise.”
At seven, conscious that he had not heard Dan return, Randy went downstairs. The table was set as if for a feast-a white cloth, two new candles; a salad bowl as well as plate at each place. A laden salad-boat of Haitian mahogany rode on the circular linen lagoon. Garnishing the inevitable platter of broiled fish was a necklace of mushrooms. He tasted the salad. It was delicate, varied, and wonderful. “Who invented this?” he asked. He had not tasted greens in months.
Helen had not met his eyes since he entered the dining room. She said, “Alice Cooksey. Alice found a book listing edible palms, grasses, and herbs. Lib did most of the picking.”
“What all’s in it?”
“Fiddlehead ferns, hearts of palm, bamboo shoots, wild onions, some of the Admiral’s ornamental peppers, and the first tomatoes out of Hannah Henry’s garden.”
Lib said, “Wait’ll you try the mushrooms. That was Helen’s idea. It’s furury, for the last week they’ve been growing all over, right in front of our eyes, and only Helen recognized them as food.”
“No toadstools I hope,” Randy said.
Helen smiled and for the first time looked at him directly. “Oh, no. Alice thought of that too. I’ve been wandering around the hammock with an illustrated book in one hand and a basket in the other.”
Now that she could see he was treating the incident in his office as something that hadn’t happened, she was regaining control of herself. He said, “Helen, you be careful in that hammock. And Lib, you stay out of palm trees. We don’t want any snake bites or broken legs. Dan has troubles enough.” He put down his fork. “Where is Dan?”
Nobody knew. Dan was usually home before six. Occasionally, he was as late as this or later when he encountered an emergency. Still, it was impossible not to worry. It was at times like this that Randy truly missed the telephone. Without communications, the simplest mechanical failure could turn into a nightmare and disaster. He finished the fish, mushrooms, and salad, but without appetite.
Randy fidgeted until eight and then said, “I’m going to see the Admiral. Maybe Dan stopped there for dinner.” He knew this was unlikely, but he tried in any case to visit Sam Hazzard each evening and watch him comb the frequencies. There were other reasons. He stopped at the Wechek and Henry houses like a company commander checking his outposts. He slept uneasily unless he knew all was well around his perimeter. More compelling, Lib usually went with him. It was their opportunity to have a little time alone. It was paradoxical that they lived in the same house, ate almost every meal elbow to elbow or across the bar in his apartment, slept within twenty feet of each other, and yet they could be alone hardly at all.