Dark Mondays

THE TWO OLD WOMEN

The gulls rose from the evening water, glided out serene and pointed, each little pilot craning its neck to judge its way on sharp-curved wings. So high the sea the bright foam was driven on the wind, and cloudy air rolled in low above the little town. Backlit by the low sun, the long combers threw back manes of white salt mist, thundering up the sand. Boats rocked at anchor, battened down against autumn gales, and she could hear their blocks and tackle clinking even up where she sat.

The old woman gazed down at the harbor.

She wore black, being a widow, a little stumpy lady like a wooden post. When she had been a young wife, sitting in this same place, watching this same harbor, there had still been ships moored in the green water, and the horizon was all masts and spars. Gradually the masts had given way to steam, or diesel. Now only the sailboats bore canvas. Bright summer days they skimmed out there beyond the island, or tacked to and fro in the harbor. Not tonight.

Nobody ventured out tonight, except grandmothers in black. They went to St. Anthony’s for evening mass, praying for their dead on All Soul’s Night. The old woman, though, remained in her chair. She was not a grandmother.

She sat there still as the sun sank, as the pink twilight fell. When the change in the wind came she felt it first, because her house sat high on the last street. She turned, peering. It was a hot wind, coming over the fields, and it smelled of mown hay and creek water. It flowed over her. It rolled down on the harbor. The mist fled before it, retreated out to sea, and the sea grew glassy and calm.

Her breath quickened, though her expression of stolid patience did not change. She rose, creaking, and went slowly into her house.

Inside, her house was spartan and shabby, but scrupulously clean. One bare table with two chairs; one rug with a half-century’s path worn across it, sun-faded. Only in one corner was there color, all around the tall shelf where the candles burned in their ruby glass cups before the image of the Blessed Mother. Here the old woman had set a vase of flowers, dark red roses from the schoolground fence, yellow chrysanthemums from her garden.

And here she had hung the pictures: the tinted photographs of a distant wedding day, a smiling bride and groom, a formal portrait of a handsome young man in his best suit.

She took off her shawl, tied on an apron. For the next four hours she worked very hard, pounding spices in a mortar, chopping greens, simmering broth. She roasted a formidable loin of pork with garlic, baked linguica with peppers, and crumbled crisp bacon into the Caldo Verde; but she prepared nothing with seafood of any kind. And in no dish did she use salt.

When things could be left over low heat, she went into the front room and laid the cloth carefully, set out the candlesticks. One place set, one bottle of black-red wine from a cupboard, a single fine glass. Half an hour before midnight, she set out the tureen, the platters of meat, the pan of cornbread. She poured a single glass of wine. She lit the tapers. She took another candle, a blue one, and set it in the window, carefully tying the curtains back.

Then she took off her apron, drew her shawl around her shoulders, and walked down to the harbor.

The wind had not changed. The air was clear, the darkness full of little flickering lights. It took her longer than it had used to, to get down to the mole, but she arrived before midnight. She waited, staring out into the night ocean.

At midnight she saw the white sail gliding in, as she had known it would. The black water was smooth as glass, the little fishing boat moved over it without a sound. She could see it clearly now. The timbers were rotted and festooned with rank weed, the paint bubbled and chipped away, and all the ironwork risen like biscuit with rust. But the sail was white and whole, belled out with phantom wind, bright with phantom sunlight. His face was bright, too, where he sat at the tiller.

He was still young.

He brought his craft up to the mole easily, tossed a loop of seaweed around a bollard and moored; stepped lightly out, with his duffel over his shoulder. He leaned down to kiss her. His lips moved as though he were speaking to her, gleeful and excited, but he wasn’t making a sound.

He chattered away in perfect silence, all the way back through the town. He outpaced her easily, on his young, long legs, and more than once had to stop and wait for her at a turn in the street. He looked a little puzzled at her slowness.

But they got to the top of the hill at last. He bounded up the steps of their house, opened the door for her, slung down his duffel and stood rubbing his hands together, eyeing the food greedily. As she closed the door, he was already pulling off his jacket and knitted cap. Where he dropped them they became a soaked mass of rotten wool, and the duffel was black and sodden too.

He hitched his suspenders, sat down at the table, rolled up his long sleeves. Grinning, he helped himself to the food. Knife in one fist, fork in the other, he ate heartily, steadily, and set the fork down only to gulp the red wine. She sat across from him and watched. He smeared melting butter on the corn bread. He savored the pork crackling. Once or twice he looked around on the table, hunting for the salt; but as it wasn’t there, he shrugged and went on eating.

When he had done, when the white candles had burned down a quarter of their length, he pushed his empty plate back and said something to her. He winked broadly. She rose and went into the bedroom, and he followed her.

There her young heart went out of her body, and the old woman sat weeping in a chair watching the young woman undress, and slip into bed. He shucked off his boots, his clothes—they fell to pieces on the floor, and water spread there in a dark stain on the rag rug. He climbed into bed with the phantom girl, and she lay in his arms.

Far into the night, as the young husband and wife slept, the old woman rose from her chair. She was moving more stiffly now, and her eyes were swollen from so much weeping, so she felt her way as though she were blind. She gathered up the ruined garments in her apron, carried them out to the garden, and lay them at the base of a tree. She collected the food from the table and carried it out there too. She got a shovel. Gasping, her old heart laboring, she dug a hole under the tree and buried the rags, the remains of the feast.

Then she went back into the house. She took a box from a cupboard and carried it outside again. Walking the perimeter of the garden fence, she laid down a line of white powder, very carefully. When she had drawn an unbroken circle around her home, she went back indoors.

The sky was just getting light in the east. She blew out the candles. The smoke rose, coiled.

The other old woman, in her house down the hill, woke a little while later. She dressed herself and, kneeling at her corner shrine, said a rosary. Sometimes her gaze was on the Blessed Mother’s kind, inscrutable face; sometimes on the framed photograph of the old man, sitting in after-dinner ease with a grandchild on either knee, and the ash falling from his cigar caught by the camera in midair forever.

But as she told her beads, the other old woman became aware of a sound. It could be heard above the diesel motors rumbling to life in the harbor, the raucous screaming of gulls following the trawlers out. After a moment she identified it as someone hammering, irregularly.

It continued as she rose and went to the kitchen. It counterpointed the rocking of the wooden bowl as she kneaded dough. It was still going, three taps and a pause, three taps and a pause, as she sliced potatoes and set them to fry in bacon grease.

At last she turned from the stove and went to the window above the sink. Parting the checked curtain, she squinted in the direction of the sunrise. There was her sister’s house, on its high ridge. She peered, rubbed her eyes, retrieved a pair of spectacles from her apron pocket and slipped them on. She saw a man on a ladder, putting new shingles on her sister’s roof. The sun, just now reaching him, lit him up in gold.

The other old woman nodded in approval, and went back to the stove.

After a moment, though, she frowned. She looked out the window again, wiping her hands on her apron. At last she turned down the heat and left the kitchen, walking through the house.

Marco’s bed was empty, neatly made, because he was away at boot camp. Danny was still asleep on his side of the room, snoring. The other old woman shook her head at the sport jacket lying where it had been thrown, the cigarette butts on the floor, the guitar. She picked up his discarded socks and went on.

Margaret Mary was in her room, sound asleep under the sultry gaze of Elvis on her tacked-up posters, and the other old woman spared her no more than a glance in before moving on. She looked in on the twins by habit, and caught them awake and clandestinely eating Halloween candy. One basilisk stare was all it took and they scrambled back into bed, huddling there as she retrieved tiny underwear and socks from their hamper.

Celia woke when she opened the door, though John slept through it. The other old woman left without a word, and had the first laundry load going when Celia shuffled into the kitchen in her bathrobe.

The hammering was still going on. Tap tap tap, pause.

“The wind’s changed. It’s coming from inshore, can you feel it? Going to be hot today,” said Celia.

“Mm,” said her mother.

“Mama,” said Celia, clearing her throat, “you don’t have to fry up so much linguica in the morning. The kids want Corn Pops.”

“Danny likes it,” said her mother. “Did you tell Rosalie to get Jerry to fix Tia Adela’s roof?”

“No, Mama.” Celia yawned, and got a can of coffee down from the cupboard. “I told you, Danny’s going to do it. He promised me.”

“Well, somebody’s up there now,” said her mother, parting the curtain once again. Celia blinked, came and stared.

“Who’s that?”

“Not Danny,” said her mother.

“Huh,” said Celia, troubled. But she went to the breadbox, methodically laid out sandwiches for the school lunches: Peanut butter for the twins, tuna salad for Margaret Mary. Three brown paper bags, three oranges, three dimes for milk. Rituals for the living.

Not another word was said on the subject of Tia Adela’s roof, as the household was fed, as the children were sent to school, as John went to work at the boatyard, as Danny was coaxed out of bed, bullied into eating linguica and onions despite his hangover and sent on his way to the new job at the fish market, as the clean, wet clothes went out on the line to dry.

But when the house was quiet and well-ordered again, the other old woman looked meaningfully at her daughter and pulled on her shawl. Celia followed her out the door, fanning herself with a piece of newspaper.

“Mama, it’s hot,” she complained. “You don’t have to wear that thing.” But her mother ignored her, and they were silent the rest of the way up the hill to Tia Adela’s house.

The hammering was still going on. They could see the edge of the ladder poking up over the roofline, but they could not see the workman until they walked out to the edge of the street and turned.

The other old woman said nothing, but she made the sign of the cross involuntarily. Celia shaded her eyes against the sun with her newspaper. “I’m sweating to death, Mama,” she muttered, studying the workman. Nobody she knew, though he was certainly good-looking: long lean back bronzed by the sun, a mermaid tattooed on his right arm. His hair was a little long; his wool trousers were a little tight.

“Hello?” she called. “Mister?”

He did not reply. He did not even turn his head; just reached over and took the last tarpaper shingle from its box, and tacked it in place.

“Hey!” Celia called, when he paused to wipe his forehead. He did not appear to notice her. His lips were moving as though he were singing to himself, though he was not making a sound. He dropped his hammer, climbed briskly down the ladder and walked out of sight behind the house.

“I wonder if he’s deaf?” said Celia. “I’ll bet that’s what it is, Mama. She’s hired one of those handicapped guys from St. Vincent de Paul’s, huh? Danny would have gotten around to it,” she added plaintively. “Gee, now I feel bad.”

Her mother did not reply.

“Mama, maybe we should knock on the door, see if Tia Adela’s okay,” said Celia. “Some of those guys are a little crazy, you know?”

“No,” said her mother. “We’re going home.”

She said it in such a way Celia knew there was no point arguing. They walked back down the hill.

Once or twice, at night, the hot wind brought the lowing of cattle from the big ranch far up the canyon. By day, the twins and Margaret Mary sweated in their blue woolen school uniforms. Rosalie, miserable in the heat, fled her tiny apartment and walked up the street to sit on the porch swing with her mother. The radio blared from the house behind them.

“Did you throw up every damn morning like this?” she asked querulously, raising her voice to be heard over Perry Como.

“Only with you and Marco,” Celia replied. “All I could eat for a month was green grapes and crackers. It’ll get better, sweetie.”

“I sure hope so,” sighed Rosalie. “Were you bothered by smells too? I opened a can of sardines, and I swear I nearly died.”

“Good thing Jerry’s not in port right now, then,” joked her mother, but Rosalie did not smile.

“I miss him already,” she said, staring out at the sea in resentment. “I had bad dreams last night. It’s too late in the year to go out so far, don’t you think?”

“It’s still summer,” said Celia, waving at the electric fan. “Summer in November, for God’s sake. And they have to make money while they can, you know.”

“It’s not fair,” said Rosalie. Her mother looked at her sidelong.

“You married him,” she said. “I told you, didn’t I? Marry a Souza, an Avila or a Machado, and half the year he’ll be out there on a trawler. And the other half of the year your house will stink like fish.”

“Maybe he can get a job at the boatyard with Daddy,” said Rosalie. Celia made a noncommittal noise. Rosalie lifted her head to watch a leaf floating down the wind. Her gaze fell on the house against the skyline.

“Don’t tell me you got Danny to paint Tia Adela’s house!” she said.

Celia looked unhappy.

“No. She has some boy from St. Vincent de Paul’s up there, or maybe the Salvation Army.”

“It’s looking really nice,” Rosalie observed, standing to see better. “See, all those hedges have been cut back. Somebody took down that big dead tree! Jerry was going to do that for her, when he got around to it,” she added, a little uncomfortably.

Celia shrugged. Rosalie’s face brightened.

“Gee, do you think she’s getting it fixed up to sell? Like, maybe she’s going to move into a home? Maybe you could talk to her about giving it to Jerry and me instead. We really need the room.”

“I don’t talk much to Tia Adela,” said Celia. “Anyway, sweetie, it’s her house.”

“But we’re young,” Rosalie groaned. “What does she need with a whole house?”

That night the wind changed again.

The temperature dropped. A long swell rolled in from the sea, and by midnight the surf was booming on the mole. Mist rolled in, too, white under the stars. It brought the smell of salt, of sea wrack and low tide.

Tia Adela, dozing in her chair, started awake. The young man was sitting up in bed, staring at the window. Without even looking back at the girl, he slipped out of bed and drew on the clothes she had laid out for him, the wool and linen that was yellowed but none the worse for having spent a half-century packed in a trunk. He opened the window and drew in a deep breath of sea air.

Turning, he walked out of the bedroom. Tia Adela followed him as far as the front door. He gave her an apologetic grin as he slipped out, ran lightly down the steps. A pink quarter-moon hung low in the west, sending a faint track across the water. He paced down the walk as far as her front gate. But, extending his hand to open it, he faltered; drew back. Two or three tries he made, and couldn’t seem to reach it.

He looked down at the trail of white stuff that crossed his path. He began to walk along it, seeking a way through, and followed its unbroken line all around the house, dodging through her garden, stumbling around behind the woodshed and the blackberry hedge, before he arrived at the front walk again.

He turned to look up, pleading silently with Tia Adela. She shook her head. Shoulders sagging, he came back up the walk and climbed the steps. He collapsed into a chair. She brought the wine and poured out a glass for him. He drank it down. It seemed to make him feel better.

In the morning he went out and spaded up her vegetable garden, whistling to himself in silence. She watched him from the window. Now and again she raised her head to look at the sky, where far to the north a thin silver wall of cloud was advancing. The sea was growing rough; it had turned a milky and ominous green, mottled here and there with purple weed.

“The glass is falling,” stated the other old woman. Nobody paid any attention to her except Margaret Mary, who came to look at the barometer. Margaret Mary wore glasses, braces, had frizzy hair and freckles. She was the sort of girl who would be genuinely interested in barometer readings.

“Somebody ought to go,” Rosalie was insisting. “She could be lying dead up there, for all anybody knows. Maybe she’s had a stroke or something, and the man is some hobo who’s just moved in. Maybe he’s stealing from her.”

“I guess we ought to be sure she’s okay,” Celia said, glancing uneasily at her own mother.

“Don’t you think somebody needs to check on her, Nana Amelia?” Rosalie demanded. “And if she’s okay, well, that gives you an opportunity to talk about leaving the house to Jerry and me.”

Nana Amelia gave her a dark look. “It’s not a lucky house,” she said.

“Why don’t we all go?” suggested Celia. “That way, if he’s trouble, we can send Margaret Mary for the cops.”

“Okay!” said Margaret Mary.

Nana Amelia sighed, but she drew on her shawl.

They set off up the street. The three women walked in close formation, arms crossed tightly under their breasts. Margaret Mary followed behind, hands thrust into the pockets of her school sweater, staring up at the clouds and therefore stumbling occasionally.

“Those are cumulonimbuses,” she said. “And, uh, stratocumuluses. I think we’re going to get a heck of a storm.”

Nana Amelia nodded grimly.

They came to the front gate and looked up. The house was tidy, trim as a ship, with its new coat of paint. The doorknob and the brass lamp had been polished until they gleamed. The weeds had been cleared from either side of the walkway and the chrysanthemums staked up, watered, all swelling buds and yellow stars.

The women stared. As they stood there, Tia Adela came around the side of the house, carrying a basketful of apples. She halted when she saw them; but the young man who followed her did not seem to see. He simply stepped around her, and proceeded up the steps. He was carrying a dusty box full of mason jars and lids. He went into the house.

“What do you want?” said Tia Adela.

“We came up to see if you were all right,” said Celia reproachfully. “Tia Adela, who’s that boy?”

Tia Adela looked at her sister.

“You really shouldn’t have strangers up here, Tia Adela,” said Rosalie. “We were thinking, maybe you shouldn’t live all alone nowadays, you know what I mean?”

“Yes,” said Tia Adela. “I thought so too.”

“And I was looking in the phone book, and there’s this nice place called Wyndham Manor in San Luis, where they’d take—”

“You have offended God!” shouted Nana Amelia hoarsely. She was trembling.

Celia and Rosalie turned to gape at her.

“I don’t care,” said Tia Adela. “And He has said nothing. But she’s angry, oh, yes.” And she nodded out at the sea, wild and sullen under slaty cloud.

“Mama, what’s going on?” said Celia.

Nana Amelia pointed up at the window. The young man was standing behind it, gazing out at the dark sea with an expression of heartbreaking longing.

“That is her husband,” she said.

There was a moment’s stunned silence, and then Celia said, very gently: “Mama, Tio Benedito has been dead since before I was born. Remember? I think we’d better go home now, okay?”

Her mother gave her such a look of outrage that she drew back involuntarily.

“Don’t be stupid,” said Nana Amelia. She stormed forward and up the steps, and Celia and Rosalie ran after her, protesting. Tia Adela shrugged and followed slowly. Margaret Mary came with her.

The young man at the window didn’t seem to notice the women bursting into the room. Nana Amelia went straight to the wedding photograph on the wall, grabbed it down and thrust it in Celia’s face.

“There! Her Bento. See? Dead as a stone. He went out past Cortes Shoals after rockfish, too late in the year. A lot of fools went out. The Adelita, the Meiga, the Luisa all went down in the gale, even the big Dunbarton! So many dead washed up on the beach, they loaded them on a mule wagon. Bento, they didn’t find. The sea kept him. And she never forgave God!” Nana Amelia turned in wrath to her sister, who had come in now and set her basket of apples on the table.

Celia, who had taken up the photograph, looked from it to the young man by the window. Rosalie peered over her shoulder.

“Mama, this is crazy,” said Celia. “Things like this don’t happen.”

“So… he’s a ghost?” said Margaret Mary, peering at Bento. “And he’s come back to her? Just like he was? Wow! Only…” She looked sadly at her great-aunt. “Only, you’re old, Tia Adela.”

Tia Adela folded her arms defiantly. “I know,” she said. “But I have him back. She can call him, she can beat herself white on the rocks, but she can’t climb up here. He and I will stay safe in my house, let her gale blow hard as it will.”

“Who is this other lady she’s talking about?” Rosalie murmured to her mother.

“Adela, don’t be stupid!” said Nana Amelia. “You know what will happen.”

“This Wyndham Manor you called, how much does it cost?” Celia inquired of her daughter sotto voce.

“Look, whoever you are, you’d better go now,” Rosalie said, turning to Bento. “Do you hear me? Go back to St. Vincent’s or wherever she hired you from.”

He made no reply. She strode across the room to him. “Hey! Can you hear me?”

She grabbed him by the arm and then she screamed, and staggered back. Celia was beside her at once, catching her before she fell. Bento had not moved, had not even turned his head.

“Honey, sweetie, what is it?” Celia cried.

Rosalie was gulping for breath, her eyes wide with horror. She was holding her hand out stiffly. Her mother closed her own hand around it and recoiled; for Rosalie’s hand was as cold as though she’d been holding a block of ice, and as wet, and gritty with sand.

“Should I go get Father Halloway?” asked Margaret Mary.

“No,” said the women in unison.

“I don’t see why you’re all so mad, anyhow,” said Margaret Mary. “I think it’s neat. If we can really bring the dead back, so we won’t be lonely—well—wouldn’t that be great? You could still have Grandpa to talk to, Nana! How’d you do it, Tia Adela?”

Tia Adela said nothing, watching Bento. He was pacing back and forth before the window.

“She made a Soul Feast,” said Nana Amelia. “Didn’t you, Adela?”

“You mean she just cooked some food?” Margaret Mary cried. “Is that all it takes? Can anybody do that?”

“Not everybody,” said Tia Adela, curling her lip. “And food is not enough. There must be love that is stronger than death.”

“Oh,” said Margaret Mary.

“It’s wrong, child,” said Nana Amelia. “The dead don’t belong to us! And they want their rest. Look at him, Adela, does he look happy? You have to let him go.”

“How are you keeping him here?” asked Rosalie in a little voice, the first time she had spoken since she’d learned the truth. Celia, sitting with her arm around her, shook her head.

“Sweetie, don’t ask—”

“Borax,” said Tia Adela.

“What?”

“Borax,” Tia Adela repeated, with a certain satisfaction. “I poured a line of it all along the fence, and he can’t cross it.”

“Jesus Christ, Tia Adela, you put down borax powder for ants, not ghosts!” yelled Celia.

“It’s alkali, isn’t it?” said Tia Adela. “The opposite of salt. So it breaks the spell of the sea.”

“Urn… but alkali isn’t the opposite of salt, Tia Adela,” said Margaret Mary, wringing her hands. “It’s the opposite of acid. We learned that in Chemistry class.”

Tia Adela shrugged. “It still works, doesn’t it?”

A gust of wind hit the windows, whirling brown leaves. A gull swept in close, hung for a moment motionless at eye level before gliding away downwind. Rosalie shivered.

“No, I’m not letting him go,” Tia Adela went on, in a harder voice. “Fifty years I’ve sat up here, and I got old, yes, and she’s still beautiful. Is that fair?”

“There will be a price to pay,” said Nana Amelia.

Tia Adela did not reply. Bento sighed, making no sound, but far out and high up a gull mourned.

“Go away now,” said Tia Adela. “I’ve got his dinner to fix.”

Rain advanced like a white curtain. The leaden sea turned silver before it vanished in the squall. One by one the trawlers came in, fleeing for their lives, ramming the pier in their haste to moor. The crews scrambled ashore dripping, dodging the waves that were breaking over the pier. A police cruiser pulled up to the mole with its red light flashing, and cops in black slickers set sawhorses across the walkway.

Nobody was fool enough to go out there, though. The harbormaster sighed, looking at the moored sailboats; half of them would be on the beach, or matchwood, by morning.

The cars were pulling up now to the foot of the pier, and women and old men were getting out, squinting into the flying rain, leaning over as they walked into the wind. Soaked before they reached the harbormaster’s office, they came one after another and asked: Was there news of the Medford? Was there news of the Virginia Marie?

They came away with faces like stone, and went back to their cars and sat, steaming up the windows, except for a couple of the old men, who splashed away through puddles to the Mahogany Bar and could be glimpsed thereafter at the window, looking like fish in a lit aquarium, drinking steadily as they waited.

Night closed down. One by one the headlights came on, pointed out to sea. When the waves began to break over the edge of the parking lot, the cops came and made the cars move back; but they did not leave, and they did not turn out the headlights.

Then there was a confusion of shouting, of horns and red lights, and Margaret Mary started awake as the car doors were flung open. She had to wipe her steamed glasses clear before she could see her mother and father hurrying through the rain, splashing through the long beams of light, calling after Rosalie who was sprinting ahead as fast as she had ever gone in her life.

And beyond her—Margaret Mary took her glasses off, wiped them again and stared openmouthed. Impossibly huge, bizarrely out of context with her prow almost on the asphalt, the Virginia Marie lay beached and rolling. Men clung to her, shouting, staring at the solid world of automobiles and houses and warmth, just within reach and terrible yards away, as the black water, the white water kept breaking over them, and the rain glittered and ran.

Sirens howled; a big ambulance pulled up, and another police car. People were crowding too close for Margaret Mary to see much, until the ropes were rigged and the rescued began to arrive on shore, huddled at once in blankets.

The crowd parted. Mary Margaret saw a blanketed man with his wet hair plastered down, and he was talking earnestly to Rosalie. She put her hands to her face and screamed. She just kept screaming, until at last John lifted her in his arms and dragged her back to the car, with Celia running after, weeping. Margaret Mary wept too, withdrawing into her seat. Through her tears she mumbled the Our Father; though a cold, adult voice in her head told her it was a little late for that.

“Daddy, what happened?” she begged, as he thrust Rosalie into the back seat beside her and slammed the door. For all anybody noticed her or answered, she might have been a ghost. Celia reached into the back and gripped Rosalie’s hands, and held on to them all the way up the hill to the house.

It was an hour later before she heard the story from her father, as he sat in the kitchen in his bathrobe, over strong coffee with whiskey in it: how the Virginia Marie’s radio mast had gone by the board, how she had been making her way back, how they had come upon the Medford taking on water and listing, how they had managed to take her crew off; and how Jerry had just gotten the last man aboard and was pulling in the lifeline when he had fallen, and dropped between the two hulls like a stone.

There had been no sign of him, in the rain and the night, and he might have answered their calls—one crewman swore he had heard him answer, and thrown out a life preserver in that direction—but the wind was so loud they couldn’t be certain. Then suddenly the Virginia Marie had her own problems, and no man aboard had thought to come home again. Yet—

“Only Jerry was lost,” said her father, and had a gulp of his coffee. “Can you beat that?”

“But he might have made it,” Margaret Mary protested. “Maybe he caught the life preserver. Maybe they’ll find him tomorrow when it’s light!”

“Yeah,” said John wearily. “Sure, honey.”

Margaret Mary looked out between the curtains, up through the night at the warm light glowing in Tia Adela’s window.

She slept on the couch in her clothes, because they had put Rosalie to sleep in her bed. Just after seven she rose, put on her glasses and stood at the front window, blinking out at the day. The rain had stopped, the wind dropped, though it was still gusting cold fitfully. The Virginia Marie was breaking apart fast, and there was a big crack in the parking lot where her prow had acted like a wedge on the asphalt. More yellow sawhorses blocked it off. Sailboats were lying all along the tideline, and one actually had come to rest on the boardwalk.

Turning, slipping off her glasses to rub her gritty eyes, she heard sudden footsteps from the hall.

Rosalie was up and dressed, pulling on one of her father’s coats. Nana Amelia was right behind her, looking unstoppable. After them Celia came, hopping as she tried to put on her shoes while following.

“Sweetie, you need to stay here and rest—” she entreated, but Rosalie ignored her mother.

“Where are you going?” asked Margaret Mary.

“Where do you think?” said Rosalie, in a furious voice, flinging open the door and marching out, as Nana Amelia pulled on her shawl.

Margaret Mary stuck her feet in her saddle oxfords and clumped hurriedly along after them, running to catch up.

The rain had packed down the line of borax before Tia Adela’s gate, but had not washed it away. Tia Adela and her husband were out in the garden. She had filled another basket with windfall apples, and he was sawing loose a bough that had been broken by the storm. He did not look up as Rosalie threw the gate wide and shrieked:

“Let him go!”

Tia Adela lifted her head, gazed at them. She looked down at the harbor, where the Virginia Marie wallowed broken in the surf.

“This has come of your wickedness, you see?” Nana Amelia told her sternly. “And her child needs a father, Adela.”

“Please, Tia Adela! For the baby’s sake!” Celia implored.

Tia Adela looked hard at Rosalie, who was scuffing through the line of borax with all her might. She grimaced, looking for a long moment as though she’d tasted poison.

“That won’t do it,” she sighed. She went to the shed and got a broom. Casting a long regretful look over her shoulder at Bento, she walked to the front gate.

“Stand back,” she said. They shuffled out of her way and she swept the borax aside, in a white fan like a bird’s wing.

The sun broke through, a long beam brilliant and white, whiter still for the seabirds that rose in a circling cloud through it, crying and calling.

“Look at the rainbow!” cried Margaret Mary, and they all looked up at the great arch that spanned the harbor, in colors so intense they nearly hurt the eye.

When they looked down again, they saw the car pulling up.

It was black, and long, and so, so expensive. The dashboard was inlaid with patterns in mother-of-pearl, all shells and mermaids and scalloped waves; the upholstery was sea-green brocade. The chrome gleamed as though it were wet.

And she who sat at the wheel was exquisitely dressed, tapping with her ivory fingers on the wheel, just a little impatient. Though her face was that of a skull, her very bones were so beautiful, so elegant, as to inspire self-loathing in any woman with a face of flesh (too fat!).

She hit the horn. It sounded like a foghorn.

The mortal women heard the quick footsteps behind them, felt the ice-cold touch as Bento shoved through them in his haste to go. He was smiling wide as he got into the car, didn’t so much as look back once. He closed the door. The car glided away down the hill without making a sound. The women stood there, looking after it.

“Bitch,” they said in unison, and with feeling.

But before noon the Coast Guard had picked up Jerry from the swamped and drifting derelict Medford, which he had been able to scramble aboard somehow, and they brought him home to Rosalie’s waiting arms.

Seven years later, though, in another November, his luck ran out. The Star of Lisbon was lost with all hands. The Old Woman of the Sea is a poor loser, but she is a worse winner.

Rosalie wore black, and once or twice a week climbed the long street to Tia Adela’s house, carrying baby Maria and tugging little Jerry by the hand. Jerry sat in the middle of the faded rug with his toy tractors and trucks, running them to and fro while Maria napped, and Rosalie learned how to make the old dishes: Caldo Verde with bacon, linguica with sweet peppers, garlic pork roast. And she waited for the wind to change.