Instead, she went to the place where Arthur had once given her the sketchbook and the bucket: the small promontory just south of her father’s cannery, just east of the train tracks, the spot from which she could see not only the terminus of the Row, but the marine station on its outskirts. There were no scientists on the beach this evening, but there were lights on in the stattion building, and the lights were something she envied.
And this was the real crux of the matter. Envy. Earlier that afternoon, when Steinbeck had finally left her alone, she had succumbed to it. She had shuffled through Ricketts’s desk drawers, looking for a draft of something she hadn’t read yet, something Wormy had typed. Another essay or perhaps a poem: anything strange and dense enough to bang her head against. But the only thing she found was the carbon copy of a letter that had been penned years before her arrival and that seemed like a remnant from a different lifetime. All quiet, he had written, until the glass case gets broken either from the outside or inside. And then maybe it’s sleeping or comatose instead of just an exhibit. I mean the dream.
And, God, how she hated her tallness. Sometimes, it was a longing even more painful than her longing for Ricketts: the wish for a complete bodily distillation, a retraction into a more adorably compact form. Her father had always told her to take pride in her vertical inheritance. He had taught her to let it speak for her, to give her authority by proxy. But lately she had become convinced of a more evolved way of being. She imagined Ricketts and Wormy in bed together, their small bodies a perfect match, their union muscular and efficient and happily confined to a cell of its own devising, a cell in which she couldn’t possibly fit. If anything, she was more like Steinbeck than Wormy. She was big and sour and needy, and what if Steinbeck’s fears were true? If he were no longer the lab’s sole patron, would he be cast aside and forgotten? Would someone else come in to take his place? Could that someone else be her? And that’s when the realization dawned: an answer that caused her to turn away from the ocean and sprint up the hill.
Back at the house, she paused briefly in the sitting room. With the exception of the sofa and the good china and their personal belongings, most of which were still in trunks, there was nothing material that spoke to their presence here, nothing that could have told a curious observer who they were or what they prized. Similarly, there could have been nothing extrapolated by examining their neighbors, all of whom differed from Anders and Margot in every possible way. And perhaps this was why she had been so resistant thus far to Ricketts’s categorization of the world. She didn’t glorify the distinction between those who lived here and those who lived elsewhere—the distinction between the locals and the tourists, the distinction between those who watched the party and those who joined it—because to do so would be tantamount to denying the boundaries of her own existence.
“Margot?”
When she entered the kitchen, she was alarmed at how bright it was.
“Did you get a new lamp?” she asked.
“No. I brought in the one from the bedroom.”
The can of grease was still on the windowsill, as it had been for more than a month now. Normally, she wouldn’t have even noticed it. Tonight, however, it had company: first, a vial of shark liver oil similar to those Ricketts was always trying to convince people to drink; second, a Chinese joss stick jammed into the flesh of an unripe peach, the burned end releasing an irregular curl of musky smoke, its presence somehow both placating and aggressive, like the warning shot that comes before deadly fire, like the line in the proverbial sand.
“I heard you lurking,” he resumed. “I don’t like it when people lurk. It means they want something but are too cowardly to ask for it.”
Heroes advance when it makes sense to retreat, she quoted to herself. And cowards retreat regardless of what makes sense.
“I’d like to ask your permission to visit the Agnellis.”
He put down his pencil and arranged his documents into a pile, the resulting déjà vu making her head swim. A newspaper sat on the far edge of the table. A headline read, FISKE CANNERY TO CEASE OPERATIONS: UNIONS TO SUPPORT.
“You didn’t seem particularly fond the other day,” he replied. “I’m surprised you’re so keen to socialize.”
“Oh, my interests aren’t social.”
“You’ve a new plan in place. Good girl.”
She adjusted the strap of the satchel.
“Would you care to discuss it?” he asked.
“No. I think I’ve become a little superstitious, too.”
He smiled, but not gladly.
“I’m joining them for Mass again on Sunday,” he said. “You can accompany me.”
She nodded at the newspaper. “Soon we’ll both have reason to celebrate.”
“Yes.” He leaned back in his chair. “I think you’re right.”
13
1998