SON WENT immediately from the living room piano to the kitchen and, finding it empty, walked down to the lower kitchen which was empty also. He retraced his steps and noticed a door on the landing to the short flight of stairs separating the kitchens. He rapped shortly and a voice said, “Yes?” He opened the door.
“Mrs. Childs?”
Ondine was soaking her feet in a basin. At first she thought it was Yardman. He alone on the island called her that. Even the Filipinos over at the nearest house called her Ondine. But the clean-shaven man in the doorway was not Yardman.
“Jadine said it was all right if I came to see you,” he said.
“What you want?”
“To apologize. I didn’t mean to scare everybody.” Son did not allow himself a smile.
“Well, I’d hate to think what would be the case if you had meant to.”
“I was a little off. From not eating. Drove me a little nuts, ma’am.”
“You could have asked,” Ondine said. “You could have come to the door decent-like and asked.”
“Yes, ma’am, but I’m, like, an outlaw. I jumped ship. I couldn’t take a chance and I stayed too hungry to think. I was in a little trouble back in the States too. I’m, you know, just out here trying to hang in.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Car trouble. Wrecked a car, and couldn’t pay for it. No insurance, no money. You know.”
Ondine was watching him closely. Sitting in a chintz rocker, rubbing one foot against the other in an Epsom salt solution. The difference between this room and the rest of the house was marked. Here were second-hand furniture, table scarves, tiny pillows, scatter rugs and the smell of human beings. It had a tacky permanence to it, but closed. Closed to outsiders. No visitors ever came in here. There were no extra chairs; no display of tea-set. Just the things they used, Sydney and Ondine, and used well. A stack of Philadelphia
Ondine sensed his absorption of her apartment.
“Not as grand, I suppose, as where you sleep.”
Now he did smile. “Too grand,” he said. “Much too grand for me. I feel out of place there.”
“I shouldn’t wonder.”
“I want to apologize to your husband too. Is he here?”
“He’ll be back in a minute.”
Son thought she sounded like the single woman who answers the door and wants the caller to think there is a huge, tough male in the next room.
“I’ll be gone soon. Mr. Street said he would help me get papers. He has friends in town, he says.”
She looked skeptical.
“But even if he doesn’t, I’ve got to make tracks. I just don’t want you upset or worried. I didn’t come here for no harm.”
“Well, I’m more inclined to believe you now that you had a bath. You was one ugly something.”
“I know. Don’t think I don’t know it.”
“You went off with Yardman yesterday?”
It bothered him that everybody called Gideon Yardman, as though he had not been mothered. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Mr. Street told me to. I spent the night there. I started to just stay on there, since that’s where I was heading for in the first place. But I didn’t want to leave without making peace with you all. My own mama wouldn’t forgive me for that.”
“Where is your own mama?”
“Dead now. We live in Florida. Just my father, my sister and me. But I don’t know if he’s alive still.”
Ondine saw the orphan in him and rubbed her feet together. “What line of work you in?”
“I’ve been at sea off and on for eight years. All over. Dry cargo mostly. Wrecks.”
“Married?”
“Yes, ma’am, but she’s dead, too. It was when she died that I got in that car trouble and had to leave Florida, before they threw me in jail. That’s when I started fooling around on docks.”
“Huh.”
“What’s the matter with your feet, Mrs. Childs?”
“Tired. Stand on any feet for thirty years and they might talk back.”
“You should put banana leaves in your shoes. Better’n Dr. Scholl’s.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah. Want me to get you some?”
