Compass Rose Read Free Page B

spartina tall and thick across the marshes, blue crabs swimming up the salt creeks. By noon the inland air would be hot enough to rise, drawing in a sea breeze. At night the salt ponds flickered with the phosphorescent wakes of fish, the sky with the Perseids. All that was the sort of thing she’d stored up when she was an adolescent tomboy, calming herself by observing the decent progressions of nature. Since then twenty seasons of marsh grasses had grown, withered, and decomposed; twenty years of crab carapaces were now mineral matter in the black mud feeding the field of green.
    She felt the comfort of that order, and even in her insulated state, she felt the righteousness of being one of those who knew thatorder. Dick did, too; this was the innermost justifying of her love. No one knew how mentally alike she and Dick were. Jack had barely kept himself from saying, “You went slumming and we’ll make the best of it.” Sally’s way of putting a bright face on Rose being her niece, her child’s cousin, was graver than any big-sister tut-tutting.
    And what would Miss Perry think?
    Until just now, Elsie had thought it comic that Miss Perry inspired awe. Twenty years ago Elsie had been her pet when Miss Perry taught Latin at the Perryville School. Elsie was aware of the way the other teachers deferred to Miss Perry, but learned only later that she was one of the founders of the school, that she was a venerable relic of the Hazards and Perrys, and that grown men and women still sought her favor as if they were living in a Henry James novel. Elsie had been no more aware than Miss Perry herself that Miss Perry’s aegis saved her from a number of punishments. Elsie had thought at first that Miss Perry had singled her out because Miss Perry felt sorry for the hoydenish little sister of the beautiful and virtuous Sally. Then Elsie got A’s in Latin and that seemed the reason that Miss Perry urged books on her and took her for long walks in the woods, botanizing and birding. And there’d been Miss Perry pointing to a foxhole and asking her to smell it. “You should know animals and plants by their odor as well as by sight. Do you smell it? My sense of smell is less keen than it used to be. I remember fox musk as somewhat stirring.” Elsie looked up. Miss Perry flicked her hand at the hole, urging Elsie to get on with it.
    Now, dazed and stationary while nursing Rose, Elsie wondered if she would have loved Miss Perry if she hadn’t been Miss Perry’s pet, if they’d met when Elsie was older, if she might have thought Miss Perry affected rather than eccentric, patronizing rather than wholehearted in her friendship with Dick, snobbishly dismissive in her treatment of Eddie Wormsley. “What you do on public land, Mr. Wormsley, I cannot control. On my land I do not permit the sort of slaughter you seem to enjoy.”
    Eddie remembered every word, reproduced Miss Perry’s rhythm and tone when he’d told Elsie. He wasn’t making fun of Miss Perry, he just couldn’t get her out of his head.
    Rose sucked, burped, switched sides, sucked, burped, and dozedoff. Was there a calming chemical brought on by nursing? After the first tingle of Rose’s mouth fastening on with surprising force—it felt like the old practical-joke joy buzzer—there was a deep satisfying tug inside her. Elsie was annoyed by how soft she’d become but was pleased by the flow of milk, at the unurgent pleasure. But, but, but. Maybe when she and Rose began to sleep through the night she’d get her brain back. These days she was lucky if she got three hours in a row. Then a little doze if Rose went right back to sleep. Then the long, bright wasted morning. The blessed relief of Mary Scanlon taking Rose. How could she have even thought a complaint about Mary’s singing?
    But this time Rose slept for six hours. Suddenly it was dawn. Elsie got out of bed with a livelier body and clearer head. She nursed Rose. She thought Rose looked more alert, too, as if