The Watery Part of the World - Michael Parker [57]
“But you saved his life,” she said.
“And I stopped doing evil and he hated me for it. He could tolerate watching me turn myself into the village hermit, but returning to my family, going back to the life I’d left—he could not allow that.”
“You give the man a great deal of credit,” said Theo, “by assuming that your reformation would make him feel guilty about his own immorality.”
“That’s a generous way to look on it,” said Whaley. “I suppose it’s not that complicated. He’s superstitious, what it is. All I know is, only way he could cut me loose was to turn me into a island eccentric, tell his people to steer clear of me, let me alone, ignore me. That way he could keep on controlling me but give me the illusion of freedom.”
“Well, you’re free of him now,” she said.
“I’ll never be free of him.”
Whaley rose from the corner of the room, struggled up out of his dejected slump, as if telling his story had made him feel only worse. She wanted him beside her and she said so, but he left the room without any sign he’d heard her.
They lived together as man and woman sharing shelter and some meals, going their separate ways each morning and keeping separate counsel, revealing only those parts of themselves that pertained to the business of survival: firewood, seed for the garden, could he maybe find her some tallow for new candles? In their stolid exchanges, Theo imagined at least the beginnings of an intimacy between them, something shared, the two of them against the wind and tide, inviolable elements that made life on this island a daily and vigilant calculation. She wished for more. Joseph was a blur to her now. Since they had arrived here on Yaupon, that life was even more murky. Even her son, Aaron, whose death had seemed so insurmountable, was only a vestige of grief. She could not even remember his voice. Even, finally, her father. There was no washed-ashore bottle stuffed with parchment lined with his loopy scrawl arranging a rescue. Should some party arrive to retrieve her, her scars would have rendered her unrecognizable. If not the scars, her limp, the blotchy complexion of her neck where the widow Royall had sewn the skin back crudely. Her once regal posture, weakened by years now of constant wind. Like the tree the island was named for, she bent to survive.
At least she no longer resembled the woman in the portrait. Not that she ever looked above the hearth, though her little cottage, built for the two of them, grew as grand to her as Richmond Hill, as adored. She did not like to stray far from it. One day after supper she was down island cutting palmetto fronds for a new broom. Climbing a dune she came upon Whaley washing himself in the surf. She’d not seen him since breakfast. His back was lit by the last brilliant glow of the sun. What compelled her to stop and stare was not governed by thought. All those years in her youth spent in assiduous study, her father training her to be the smartest woman in America. No Latin came into her head to guide her, no quotes from posthumous philosophers. Sturdy Whaley in the sun-glistening surf; he was her husband and she was his wife.
That night she lay awake in the bedroom, restless under a thin nightgown, muscles taut, skin nearly feverish. Every drop of blood in her body pooling below her waist. She closed her eyes, she opened her eyes, same image preventing her from sleep: Whaley’s sunlit back, surf breaking over his shoulders. Every time she decided to throw back the blanket and go to him, the thought that he might be repulsed by her scarred body kept her imprisoned in the bed. In time she heard his sleep-breathing, light snores, the pallet rustling as he shifted. She would just sit by him and watch him sleep. The fire was down to ember. Maybe she would just lie alongside him for a minute. He smelled of woodsmoke and faintly of saltwater. One minute she was watching light from the dying fire tint his skin and the next she was kissing his neck and saying how sorry she was to have taken advantage of