Compass Rose Read online

  ALSO BY JOHN CASEY

  The Half-life of Happiness

  Supper at the Black Pearl

  Spartina

  Testimony and Demeanor

  An American Romance

  This Is a Borzoi Book

  Published by Alfred A. Knopf

  Copyright © 2010 by John Casey

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Casey, John, [date]

  Compass rose : a novel / by John Casey.—1st North American ed.

  p. cm.

  “This is a Borzoi book”—T.p. verso.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-59430-3

  1. Fishers—Rhode Island—Fiction. 2. Rhode Island—Fiction.

  3. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

  PS3553.A79334C66 2010

  813′.54—dc22 2010010520

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Part Two

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Part Three

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-One

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  Chapter Ninety

  Acknowledgments

  A Note About the Author

  Part One

  chapter one

  May sat on the first row of the bleachers, watching the boys warm up. Tom was the second-string catcher, might get in if their team got ahead by a lot. He was good behind the plate—all that practice catching for Charlie in the backyard—but he couldn’t hit as well as the first-string catcher. At least Charlie and Tom got to play on a team this year. Before Dick got his boat built he’d kept them busy during the summer doing chores. No games. And while Eddie Wormsley was fixing the house, they’d helped with that. Now there was some pleasure in their lives. Dick still expected them to work at something that brought in some money, but since he was at sea more than half the time, Charlie set his own schedule. He used the work skiff the same way Dick used to—had his tongs, pots, hand lines. Tom at fourteen was an off-the-books boy at the boatyard, but they didn’t keep him half as busy as Dick used to. No question about it, the boys were better off. If you just counted material things, so was she. She took some comfort from the boys.

  Across the bright green grass she saw Miss Perry walking with her cane. The woman beside her was holding a parasol over Miss Perry’s head. May didn’t recognize Elsie Buttrick at first because she was wearing a white dress and looked a little plump. May’s memory of Elsie was of her in a tailored green uniform or in a swimsuit.

  Miss Perry and Elsie moved very slowly. Part of May’s mind was piecing together how and why they were here. A more powerful feeling rose through her, making her back and arms rigid. The feeling was nonsense but so strong that she couldn’t stop it—she felt that she was the one who’d done something wrong. And everyone was about to see it.

  Miss Perry stopped to switch her cane to her other side. Elsie switched the parasol from one hand to the other and moved around Miss Perry. Elsie saw May and opened her free hand—perhaps to show she couldn’t help being there. Then she looked down. May was released from her upside-down feeling. She looked to see if Charlie or Tom had noticed Miss Perry. No. She was alone for more of Miss Perry’s and Elsie’s slow progress. She herself was throwing off thoughts faster than she could gather them back in. She was trying to gather them so that she would leave no part of herself outside her. But there was another: a white dress. Had that woman worn that white dress when she was with Dick? Or was it to pretend she was Miss Perry’s nurse?

  May’s thoughts were like a dog’s bristling and barking at something coming toward the front yard where it was chained up short.

  She’d caught a glimpse of Elsie Buttrick one summer at a clambake on Sawtooth Island, the local gentry walking around in next to nothing while Dick and the boys were fixing the clambake. May didn’t stay. Something she hadn’t remembered till now: Dick had said afterward that he thought Charlie had a crush on Elsie Buttrick. That was an idea that was so barbed and tangled that she pulled it inside her and covered it. And sat still.

  Miss Perry and Elsie arrived. May got up, shook hands with Miss Perry, nodded toward Elsie. Miss Perry said, “I told Charlie that I doubted that I would be able to go fishing this year, but that I hoped he and Tom would come for lunch. He then very nicely asked me to the baseball game.” May concentrated on the slow rise and fall of Miss Perry’s voice. M
iss Perry’s eyes widened as if with surprise behind her eyeglasses. She said, “And here I am.” Miss Perry put both hands on the crook of her cane and added, “I’m afraid I dragooned Elsie into driving me.” She put the tip of her cane behind the bench and began to sit down. Elsie got behind her, turned her, and lowered her by her elbows.

  May felt calmed by Miss Perry’s stately sentences and by the way her presence lessened the Buttrick girl, maybe even contained her. Then May blamed herself for not thinking of Miss Perry’s effort in coming out to the game, for not being concerned about how Miss Perry had aged in the last year. May said, “The boys’ll be glad you’re here. Charlie’s going to pitch. We might get to see Tom a little later. Baseball’s the first thing they’ve done on their own, if you see what I mean.”

  Miss Perry turned to her. “I do indeed. Dick is admirably industrious, but I imagine he may have been demanding in his single-mindedness. Now that he’s achieved his own boat, however, one might hope that he will become a bit more like Captain Teixeira. Perhaps not immediately, of course.” Miss Perry gave a little cough, perhaps a laugh.

  Elsie looked straight ahead during Miss Perry’s speech.

  Miss Perry said, “I don’t intend that remark as a criticism of Dick but simply as a looking forward to spring after a hard winter.”

  The game began. May hadn’t seen a ball game for years—the last one probably a Red Sox game on someone’s TV. She was surprised by a terrible tenderness for these teenagers assuming the gestures of grown men: the batter knocking the bat against his spikes and then tapping it on home plate. The infielders crouching, pounding their fists in their mitts. And Charlie on the mound staring intently at the catcher, shaking off a sign with a single shake of his head—the most grown-up gesture she’d ever seen him make.

  And the chatter. Their voices had all changed but were still not men’s voices. Still thin and sometimes sweet tenors even though they were trying to be menacing or scornful. “No hitter, no hitter, easy out, easy out.” “Whaddya say, whaddya say, Charlie boy, right by him, right down the old alley.”

  High-school boys on a Saturday morning yearning to be men. In their green hearts, wanting to be like Dick—strong, secretive, hard. She’d seen moving pictures of a crew at sea sorting fish dumped on the deck out of the cod end, using their gloved hands or gaffs to throw the good fish into the hold, using their boots to kick the trash fish off the stern.

  These boys, the green field, the summer clouds in the blue sky, poured into her eyes too brightly.

  She tried to think of something sensible to say to Miss Perry. Miss Perry was staring intently at Charlie on the pitcher’s mound, and May felt a little better.

  chapter two

  Miss Perry had felt Elsie’s restlessness as they drove to the ball field—at first Miss Perry thought it was Elsie’s thinking about other things she ought to be doing. Miss Perry had a regular driver on weekdays and hadn’t asked a favor of Elsie for months, and Elsie had seemed pleasantly agreeable when Miss Perry asked in a general way if Elsie could spare a few hours of her Saturday morning. But as they walked toward the seats Miss Perry felt Elsie’s nerves harden quite suddenly. And then May seemed withdrawn, too, and Miss Perry wondered, could Elsie in the course of her duties as warden have caught Dick when he was up to something with that friend of his, Mr. Wormsley? Or could May resent the way Elsie’s brother-in-law had taken over Sawtooth Point and was making into an offensively private domain what had once been perfectly nice fields belonging to Dick’s great-uncle Arthur? Which would have been Dick’s, had Arthur Pierce not had a run of bad luck … But surely May would know—Dick certainly did—that of all that family, Elsie was the one who’d come to care wholeheartedly for the place and the people.

  Perhaps this not knowing was simply another effect of age. Miss Perry had once known everything—almost everything—that went on in South County. Of course, she used to see Captain Teixeira more frequently when Everett Hazard was still alive. Among the three of them, they could register incidents from Wickford to Westerly. Now there were a great many details that escaped her. It wasn’t just that Everett Hazard was dead; her own attention floated outward—she could think of no other way of putting it—floated outward beyond the things she once knew. It was not an altogether unpleasant sensation. She found herself staring at things, simultaneously puzzled by how particular a leaf was and how unbordered and vague she herself was becoming. On a good day, that is. She had felt that today was to be a good day. She had been very pleased by Charlie’s telephone call. He was shy at first but soon warmed. And most pleasant of all, he seemed sure of her affection for him. That was the point of arranging to be here. She had breakfasted well and cleaned her eyeglasses, and there Charlie was in the middle of the baseball field, looking quite splendid.

  Baseball was as familiar to her as a shadow play. She knew there were long periods of apparently unproductive pitching and catching and then suddenly a single player might hit the ball and confront another single player of the array of players spread out on the field in an abruptly terrifying instant. She thought this game gave a nervous edge to the otherwise tranquil and consoling line “They also serve who only stand and wait.”

  She was glad that Charlie had a repetitively active part. For a while she enjoyed watching him throw the baseball again and again, starting with a single elaborately slow step and then a quick whirl. Her mind wandered. The bakery had delivered the cake for Charlie and Tom, but had she put it in the refrigerator? Ought she have done so? She adjusted her eyeglasses and found herself admiring the catcher bravely crouched close behind the bat. She remembered a poem by Marianne Moore that mentioned the attractive curve of a catcher’s haunches. Indeed. And somehow this was made more noticeable by the mask that covered his face, reminding her of a gladiator.

  The batter swung and the catcher threw off his mask and ran directly toward her, his face tilted up. When he was almost at arm’s length from her he reached up with both hands. She heard a distinct thwock, but she couldn’t see anything but Elsie’s white dress. Then she saw Elsie and the catcher tipping sideways until they were on the ground at her feet. The catcher raised his glove with the ball in it, apparently to show the umpire, although the gesture also elicited applause from the audience and cheers from his teammates. The catcher got to his feet, asked Elsie if she was all right, then hauled her to her feet with one hand. Elsie smiled at the boy. Miss Perry was reminded of Elsie’s smile as a girl. Never what anyone would call a sweet child, she would sometimes be surprised into a brief energetic smile. A charming paradox—Elsie’s eyes would almost shut, but her face opened. As it did now. How very nice, how very much like pleasure.

  May didn’t see the ball, but when the catcher got close to them the tilt of his body began to scare her. He shuffled nearer and nearer, then turned his back. May felt the bench jounce as Elsie got up. Elsie stood in front of Miss Perry with one hand in the air and the other on the catcher’s back. As he caught the ball he began to fall. May felt the bench move again as Elsie braced a foot on it and pushed against the boy. Elsie and he sank sideways and then lay together on the ground. For an instant May saw Elsie as shameless—clutching him, pressing her hips and breasts against him. Then May was ashamed.

  She saw Charlie standing just beyond Elsie and the catcher. He closed his mouth and his face settled. Elsie was on her feet, smoothing her dress.

  The catcher jogged toward the umpire, who was listening stolidly to the coach of the other team. Charlie took a step closer to Elsie. Elsie waved one hand and said, “Fine. We’re all fine.”