She was moving against him, enclosing him, wrapping her arms and legs around him, as if her body had at last found the center of itself outside itself. But he stopped her or rather took her face in his hands and looked she thought at her, the firelight making his eye sockets deeper and darker than they were.
“There is something I must tell you.”
“Yes, but—” she said.
“Yes, but what?”
Yes, but not now. Yes, but why did you stop? Keep on.
“What?” he asked her.
“I said why did you stop. I mean I meant to say ‘it.’ Why did you stop? I think this is ‘it.’”
“I have to leave,” he said.
“When?”
“Now.”
“Is the leaving—”
“I’ll be back.”
“When?”
“Soon. There are some things I must do.”
“What about this? It? That is, us.”
“What about us?”
“Is there anything entailed?”
“Is anything entailed between us?”
“Yes.”
“What is the entailment?”
He lay back, his hand behind his head. The wind shifted to the south. The sleet turned to rain. Some of the drops on the glass beyond his head didn’t run. In the big drops the open firebox was reflected in a bright curved stripe like a cat’s eye. With his hand behind his head, his shoulders and chest bare, the firelight showing the line of his cheek and the notch of his eye, with my hair falling across my arm and touching his arm, we are like lovers in the movies. Men never wear pajamas in the movies. So Sarge didn’t wear pajamas. My father always wore pajamas.
“There is something you need to know,” he said.
Yeah, she thought, there is something I needed to know and I think I know. What I need to know and think I know is, is loving you the secret, the be-all not end-all but starting point of my very life, or is it just one of the things creatures do like eating and drinking and therefore nothing special and therefore nothing to dream about? Is loving a filling of the four o’clock gap or is it more? Either way would be okay but I need to know and think I know. It might be the secret because a minute ago when you held me and I came against you, there were signs of coming close, to it, for the first time, like the signs you recognize when you are getting near the ocean for the first time. Even though you’ve never seen the ocean before, you recognize it, the sense of an opening out ahead and a putting behind of the old rickrack bird-chirp town and countryside, something tasting new in the air, the dirt getting sandier, even the shacks and weeds looking different, and something else, a quality of sound, a penultimate hush marking the beginning of the end of land and the beginning of the old uproar and the going away of the endless sea.
Then why had he stopped and would she ever know the secret or if there was a secret?
“This is like running around at the Dunes Exxon a mile from the beach and going back to town,” she said.
“What’s that?” he asked quickly. He looked at her. “You mean the ocean, getting near the ocean.”
“How did you know that?”
“Perhaps that is what I want,” he said absently.
“The ocean?”
“Something like that. Now may I tell you something?”
“Okay.”
He turned to face her. Her cheek was on his arm.
“How are you?” he asked her.
“I’m all right now.”
“But not before?”
“I’m all right because you are doing the instigating and you seem to know what you are doing. I was a good dancer.”
“So if I do the instigating you’ll do the cooperating?” he asked.
“Ha ha. Very funny.”
“Very well. I am going to tell you what has happened concerning you because you are entitled to know. I’m also going to tell you what I have learned because, for one reason, you may be the only person who would understand it.”
“All right.”
“First, your mother and I are old friends. That is, I used to know her a long time ago.”
“You and my mother?”
“Yes.”
“How about that?” she said in her mother’s voice, using an expression her mother liked to use. “Did you and she—?”
“Hardly.”
“Does hardly mean yes or no?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Could you be my father?”
“Hardly.”
“Remind me to look up hardly.”
“Okay.”
“How do you know you’re not my father?”
“If I were, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Then why is it I seem to have known you before I knew you. We are different but also the same.”
“I know. I don’t know.”
“Then why does it seem I am not only I but also you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could I have known you in another life? Kelso believes in that.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then why is it that I live this life as if it were a dream and as if any minute I might wake up and find myself in my real life?”
“I don’t know.”
“Doesn’t that mean that I had a real life once and that I might have again?”
“I don’t know. Could I tell you what I want to tell you?”
“All right.” He thought: She says all right the same odd non-signifying way as Jane Ace in Easy Aces.
“Because your mother and I are old friends, among other reasons, she has asked me if I will be your legal guardian — God, I hate this beard, I meant to ask you to buy me a razor.”
“I bought one.”
“You did? Why?”
“It pleases me to please you. It is also joyful.”
“I see. Your mother does not know that you are here and she doesn’t know that I know you.”
“Legal guardian. What is there to guard?”
“Your real and personal property.”
“My property. I own fifty-eight dollars and fifty-three cents.”
“Your real estate. This property and the island you inherited. They are quite valuable. Your parents believe it is in your interest to be declared legally incompetent and for me to be appointed your guardian since the court will not appoint them.”
“What do you believe?”
“In my opinion you are not incompetent in the legal sense or the medical sense. I think you are quite capable of taking care of your own affairs.”
“Aren’t you a lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“What is your preference in this matter?”
“I’d as soon not be your guardian, though I’d be glad to help you any way I can. However, if your parents can get your doctor to go along they can probably succeed in having the court declare you legally incompetent. In that case, you might be better off having me as your guardian than, say, your aunt.”
“Oh my stars yes,” she said, using Aunt Grace’s expression. “Tell me this please.”
“All right.”
“Are my parents out to screw me?”
“What an expression.”
“That’s Kelso’s.” I can talk like anybody but me, she thought. “Her parents never came to see her. Mine came twice — until Miss Sally died. Kelso said my parents are out to screw me.”
“Well, I wouldn’t put it that way.”
“How would you put it?”
“That your parents are not out to screw you. Perhaps they are trying to help you. They have a right to be concerned. And they can be a big help to you. Anyhow, you think about it and tell me later.”
“All right.”
“There is something else I want to tell you. About me.”
“All right.”
“It’s what I learned in the cave and what I am going to do.”
But he fell silent and turned away to watch the raindrops.