Jacob Have I Loved

br /> “Oh, my blessed,” he said. “It’s not like that. I’d never let her give up her chance to sing. She’ll go ahead with all her plans. I wouldn’t ever hold her back. Surely you know that, Wheeze.” He was asking me humbly to understand. “I can help her. I can—”

“Give her a safe harbor,” the Captain offered quietly.

“Caroline?” I snorted.

“She’s alone in that world, Wheeze. She needs me.”

You? I was thinking. You, Call? I said nothing, but he heard me anyhow.

“I guess,” he was saying softly, “I guess it’s hard for you to think someone like Caroline might favor me.” He gave a short laugh. “You never did think I was much to brag about, now did you?”

Oh, God. If I had believed in God I could have cursed him and died. As it was, I extricated myself as quickly as I could from them and made my way, not home, but back to the crab house where I proceeded to ruin my only decent dress fishing the floats.

17

Call was not discharged as soon as he had hoped, so it was the next year, the day before Christmas 1946, that he and Caroline were married. My parents went up for the ceremony in the Juilliard chapel, which, I gathered, was stark in word and dress, but rich in Bach and Mozart, thanks to Caroline’s school friends.

I stayed home with Grandma. It was my choice. My parents spoke of getting a neighbor to stay with her, and each offered to remain and let me go instead. But I felt they were greatly relieved by my insistence. The way Grandma was or could be, we dreaded the thought of asking someone outside the family to endure even a few days alone with her. Besides, as they said later, it was the first trip of any length that the two of them had ever taken together. They left, with apologies to me, on the twenty-second. Perhaps my soul, now as calloused as my hands, could have borne such a wedding. I don’t know. I was glad not to be put to the test.

Grandma was like a child whose parents have gone off and left her without making plain where they have gone or when they could be expected to return. “Where’s Truitt?”

“He’s gone to New York for Caroline’s wedding, Grandma.”

She looked blank, as though she were not quite sure who Caroline was but felt she shouldn’t ask. She rocked quietly for a few minutes, picking a thread on her knitted shawl. “Where’s Susan?”

“She went with Daddy to New York.”

“New York?”

“For Caroline’s wedding.”

“I know,” she snapped. “Why did they leave me?”

“Because you hate to ride the ferry, Grandma, especially in the wintertime.”

“I hate the water.” She dully observed the wornout ritual. Suddenly she stopped rocking and cocked her head at me. “Why are you here?”

“You hate to be alone, Grandma.”

“Humph.” She sniffed and pulled the shawl tight about her shoulders. “I don’t need to be watched like one of your old peelers.”

The image of Grandma as an old sook caught in my mind. Get it? I wanted to say to somebody.

“What you cutting on?”

“Oh, just whittling.” It was in fact a branch of almost straight driftwood, which I had decided would make a good cane for Grandma. I had spread out part of the Sunday Sun and was trimming the wood down before sanding it.

“I ain’t seen that old heathen about,” she said. “I guess he’s dead like everybody else.”

“No. Captain Wallace is just fine.”

“He don’t ever come around here.” She sighed. “Too snobby to pay attention to the likes of me, I reckon.”

I stopped whittling. “I thought you didn’t like him, Grandma.”

“No, I don’t favor him. He thinks he’s the cat’s pajamas. Too good for the daughter of a man who don’t even own his own boat.”

“What are you talking about, Grandma?”