Strawberries in the Sea Read Online Free PDF Page A

Of course it had to be linen, fresh, and folded in crisply ironed creases. “You make me feel like a slob,” she said indignantly.
    She blew her nose, put the guitar on the table, and went over to the sink. She ran cold water into the basin and plunged her face into it, opening her eyes under the surface to flush and cool them. When she felt for a towel, it was put into her hands.
    When she had finished drying, Edwin was smoking a cigarette at the back door. The harbor was invisible in the dusk. A scent of lilacs and grass came through the screen, and a faint, damp, easterly breath that could mean fog.
    She stamped her foot to get Edwin’s attention, then picked up the guitar and sat down in the rocker. He walked around, looking down at her from several angles and then sitting on his heels to gaze up at her. She was used to it and concentrated on tuning the guitar, reacting with a slight but genuine pleasure to familiar motions and sounds. Presently she began to play and sing softly to herself.
    Literature studied in her high-school English classes had meant nothing to her as literature. She had simply realized that some things made good songs, and thus they had become her own, some of them more private than others. So tonight she sang scraps of Shelley—“ Many a green isle needs must be In the deep wide sea of misery ,” and the descriptive passages of The Forsaken Merman —“ Now the wild white horses play, Champ and chafe and toss in the spray .”
    Once a young teacher in love with the language used to chalk daily messages on the blackboard in the hope of seducing his students into the same passion. A passage from Meredith had accomplished it with Rosa, though the teacher had never discovered what lay behind the calm, stolid face. And no one else ever heard her tune, because it was not the sort called for at sing-alongs.
    Now, safely unheard by Edwin, she sang it for herself.

    As she sang it Bennett’s Island rose on the horizon like an island in a myth, and her consciousness flew toward it like the gull she had wished this morning to become.
    At the end of the song she found herself back in the kitchen, suddenly aware of the incredible events of her life, remembering that this morning the divorce had begun. Her heart was beating hard. She ached to do something wild and terrible in screaming defiance of everybody.
    Edwin sat at the table, drinking more coffee and eating more pie. He was always neat and composed in his motions, he looked thoughtful in a particularly tidy way, as if his thoughts would never get away from him into jungle territory. The sight of him there shedding tranquility like light returned her to herself. She put the guitar down, stood up and stretched, poured coffee, and reached for the sketchbook.
    He had her in a few merciless lines, the extra flesh piled on by weeks of compulsive eating, but also the apartness of the singer lost in the song.
    â€œGone away,” he had written under the sketch. She realized she couldn’t even remember when he had finally begun to draw. He was watching her, both wary and quizzical, and she half-smiled and pushed the sketchbook back at him.
    When he was ready to go she gave him the spare set of keys to the place, and a carton of frozen food from the refrigerator.
    â€œThe eider ducklings will be out now,” he wrote. Then he added, “We had a path behind the house to the cove.”
    He hadn’t been there since he was eleven years old. She looked into his eyes as she said, “I’ll look for it,” wondering what he was trying to tell her; if he felt homesickness or indifference. She walked out to the car with him. The fog was coming in, still only in pale smoke like shreds. Edwin put his arm around her and hugged her, and kissed her cheek. She knew by the tightness of the embrace that he was concerned for her and wished her well.
    When he had gone she lingered outside, absentmindedly drawing down a