Leaving Lucy Pear(72)

“Lucy!” The littlest boy ran to her, and hugged her by the leg. “It’s Mr. Cohn! The husband of the lady who wrecked the ship!”

“What were you doing in there, Lucy Pear?” In the doorway, Mr. Murphy folded his arms. His voice singsonged, as if teasing, but he squinted like a bully. “Building a nest?”

She didn’t answer. She was looking at Albert. She was Bea in miniature, he saw, the resemblance so plain he barely registered his shock—he thought of the bosomy nurse, at his office door, telling him how she and Ira had found Bea asleep among the pear trees. But the pears, Bea kept saying, but the pears . . . Even if he hadn’t heard the girl’s middle name Albert would have known this was Bea’s daughter. Her question, as she stared at him, was clear. Was he her father?

He was sorry not to be. He was sorry he couldn’t take her away, right then, and tell her the story, what he knew of it. Lucy Pear! But she was not his to take. His question, as he stared back at her, was how quickly he could get back to Bea and assure her she wasn’t crazy. The money in his vest was immaterial now. The point was to apologize, bid them adieu, jump in the car, ta-ta! The point was his rising heart.





Thirty




It had rained only once in August and the track to the cove was dry, without grass to cover the middle berm where the children usually walked. They carried sticks and fishing line and worms dug up from Emma’s scrap heap. They walked fast, wanting to secure their favorite spot on the seawall, but Lucy’s feet had grown soft from wearing shoes at the quarry and she fell behind, picking on her toes across the gravel. She moved slowly enough to notice colors in the crushed stone, to see lizards poke themselves onto the path, then dart back into the brush. She stopped to inspect the painful bottoms of her feet. Not so long ago, Lucy had had a child’s sense of her body, which is to say she was unaware of it as such. She moved, it moved, she was, it was. Lately, though, she found herself watching it, noting a hardness beneath her nipples as if pennies had been sewn in there, noting hair in places it had not grown before. She was divided from herself, a spectator. And she was divided further from the family, too, for Janie did not seem to be undergoing any of these changes yet and Lucy knew the reason: Janie’s mother was like a ruler, while Lucy’s was not. Seeing her mother had confirmed Lucy’s sense that she was alone. And it fed a fantasy that maybe she didn’t have to be.

She sat on the track so she could rub both feet at once. The pale skin under her toes was red, the pads of her feet howled. How had she gone so soft in only a couple months? Still, her feet weren’t as bad as the welt on her right hip—if she concentrated, she could feel it there, the blister chafing against her skirt. Last week, after Mr. Stanton brought her back from the quarry, after Emma had heard Lucy’s story and promised her nothing in return, Roland had called her to where he sat, in his chair. Lucy went bravely—everyone was watching. Maybe all he wanted was an apology. Even when he pulled her onto his lap, she remained hopeful. She was helpless not to hope: maybe he would only tickle her, rub his knuckles against her head a little too hard, then let her go. Maybe she had imagined the times before. She worked to keep her balance on his one leg. She started to say, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone . . .” but Roland put his hot, moist palm over her mouth. “So you made a mistake,” he said. “We all make mistakes, Lucy Pear.” His voice was reasonable—she believed he meant to be kind. Even his hand over her mouth she forgave, for his smell was familiar, comforting. Meanwhile with his right forefinger and thumb he began squeezing at the back of her leg, near her buttock, his hand under her and well hidden, squeezing first and then twisting, twisting her skin until she blinked back tears. Meanwhile she sensed Roland stirring under her, a man’s stirring. This was new. This was terrifying. Still, she withstood it—her tears were easily interpreted by her audience as remorse—until Joshua, blessed Joshua, whined for his bath. Roland released her. Only as she scrubbed Joshua’s back did Lucy peek behind her and inside her skirt and see that her blood vessels had burst, that Roland had twisted a circle of skin the size of a pencil clear off.

Lucy picked up her fishing stick and began to walk. She was so focused on shaking off the memory, and on watching where she set her feet, that she barely registered the woman in a long, dark dress, sitting on a boulder at the side of the track.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Lucy stared.

“I would have come to the house . . . I went to the bottom of the street. My husband drove . . . Somehow I knew you would go swimming today.”

Beatrice Cohn was visibly shaking. I knew. Emma would call that a boast, but Lucy liked that her mother had known (even if she did have the sport wrong). She wondered at the woman’s boniness, wondered, if she were to go closer, if she were to reach out to touch her, would her hand go straight through? Had the others not seen her, in her weird dress? Was Lucy dreaming? She felt as if her blood had been replaced by boiling water. “You’re here,” she said tentatively.

“My husband saw you. I saw you, at my house. But no one would believe me.”

Lucy blinked slowly. The woman had not disappeared. There were Lucy’s thick eyebrows.

“You’re very brave.”

This is my mother, Lucy told herself. This is your mother. This was her mother, praising her. Surely she was meant to feel grateful. Perhaps she should move closer. But her limbs might have been rubber. Her feet held to the berm. The longer she looked at Beatrice Cohn’s face, its familiarities seemed to recede and the fact of her utter strangeness came forward. Lucy knew nothing apart from what the paper said. She didn’t know what this woman liked to eat, or what her laugh sounded like—did she laugh?—or whether she drank tea. And the woman had kept it that way. She had not come looking for Lucy. Lucy had been the one to look—she had stowed herself in a whiskey truck to find this woman who sat so stiffly now, with her stiff face and her stiff hair in its bun and her hands in her lap like she was waiting for Lucy to tell her what to do. What did she want, for Lucy to say, Thank you, you’re brave, too? Emma taught the children to always repay a compliment but Lucy couldn’t make herself do that now because it just wasn’t true and the longer she looked at the woman’s face, the less true it seemed. Lucy felt an excruciating loneliness. Why hadn’t Janie and the others come back for her? Did they think she had gone back to the house? Did they think she had run off again to the quarry? She heard herself say, with a firmness that belied her confusion, shored her up against tears: “I’m ten now.”