Pity Him Afterwards

“It is kind of ugly, isn’t it?” She turned and looked back at the house. “Somehow, it looks uglier now than it used to. It looks more like a haunted house, now.”

“It is. Climb in.”

He held her arm as she stepped down carefully into the boat, then handed her the bag with the lunch they’d packed before leaving. She put it down — the bottom was dry — and then sat down on the aft seat. Mel untied the line, dropped it in the boat, and climbed down to sit between the oars. He pushed the boat away from the pier, and Mary Ann, looking past his shoulder toward the house, said, “Bob meant to have the house painted this year. He hoped to make enough money to do it. Now maybe we won’t have a season at all.”

“What about Sondgard and his fingerprint?”

She shook her head. “I think he’s bluffing,” she said. “Don’t you?”

“I hope not. But I did get the same idea, yes.”

“Can you imagine if this just went on and on? All summer long. We couldn’t work, we couldn’t put on any shows, but nobody would be allowed to leave. All summer long, just sitting around in that gloomy house there, with nothing to do and nowhere to go.”

“Yeah, fine. Let’s talk about something else. If you want to talk about the house, how come it’s there at all? This is supposed to be a real ritzy neighborhood.”

“I know.” She smiled again, more girlishly this time. “That was the old Eggstrom place. For years and years it was just an eyesore.”

“It still is.”

“You should have seen it when I was a little girl, before the Eggstroms gave it up. The barn looked worse than the house, then. And they had junk all over the yard, every which way. People kept getting up petitions against them and everything.”

“How come they managed to move in there in the first place?”

“Well, they were there first. When they came here, there wasn’t anything at the lake at all. The town down at the other end, of course, but that’s all. That house is over fifty years old.”

“Doesn’t look a day under two hundred.”

“That was the first house ever built out at this end of the lake. Circle North there used to be a dirt road, and it was called Eggstrom Road, because the only place it went was the Eggstrom farm. Then, when all the estates went up, a lot of people wanted to buy the farm, just to tear down the house and barn, but the Eggstroms wouldn’t sell. Then, when the old man died, his son sold it to Bob, and he started the theater. Now the house isn’t an eyesore any more, it’s just quaint.”

“That’ll be the day. Where am I rowing, anyway?”

“Anywhere you want. This was your idea.”

He looked over his shoulder. “There’s an island out there. Is that private property?”

“No, nobody owns that. Nobody lives there or anything.”

“Why not? These estate people go for privacy, with all the fences and everything, they ought to go nuts over an island.”

“It’s too small, I think, and most of it is pretty marshy. And when we have a storm I don’t think anybody’d want to be out on that island.”

Mel looked up at the sky, but the good weather was still with them, with no sign of a break. The sun was all alone in a pale blue sky.

He didn’t row hard. He was in no particular hurry to get to the island, or anywhere else. His whole purpose was to be alone with this girl, and that purpose had already been gained. At breakfast this morning they had started to talk together for the first time as friends, the ice having been broken by the combination of Mary Ann’s confession to him of her secret desire and their having shared this morning’s discovery together. In the breakfast table conversation the normal interest he already had in her as an attractive female was heightened, and he’d cast around for a suitable excuse to get off in a corner somewhere with her, finally coming up with the idea of their getting a boat and going for a row on the lake. Was there a boat they could use? He’d asked her, and she said as a matter of fact the theater itself had a boat, a little rowboat, which any member of the company could use. And would she like to go for a boat ride, seeing it was such a beautiful day outside, and etc., and they could use a change of pace from the gloom and doom indoors, and she could be his guide to whatever natural wonders the lake had to offer, and so on and so on. She would, she said, be delighted.

Now his only question was — which was paramount in her mind, to be away from the house or with him? The question loomed large in his mind, but he didn’t ask it.

The day really was beautiful, away from the shadow of the house. The pale blue sky above, the darker blue of the lake water all around them, the rich green of the tailored forest surrounding the lake, the darker green of the mountains all around this shallow valley and the darker, fainter tones of the mountains farther away, blending toward a misty purple at the horizon.