The Body in the Kelp

can lie down here.'

“Oh, I'm sure I'll be all right. These pills are magic, though I do hate taking them. They make me so dopey.”

Pix was loath to take even an aspirin and was driven to any form of medication only if in dire pain. Faith had found this to be characteristic of New Englanders. They seemed to revel in the antique remedies enjoyed by their foremothers and -fathers, righteously avoiding the relief provided by modern medicine. 'Let Nature take its course,' one parishioner was fond of saying whenever she heard of an illness in the congregation. Faith reflected if we had let Nature take its course unhindered all these years, most of us would be dead.

“Call me if you need me,' she shouted after Pix. 'Otherwise, I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

After they left, she felt a certain relief. The children were asleep and it was nice to be alone. It would have been nicer if Tom was there—he had called early in the morning to make sure she was still alive and kicking, or so she had accused him. She was extremely happy to hear his voice, though, and they agreed he would call at the same time for the next few days.

Now, after the intensity of the last twenty-four hours, she was content to go into the kitchen and poach some fish for the mousse. She decided to bake some bread too. The real comfort food. The real comfort smell.

She couldn't keep her thoughts away from the scene in Bird and Andy's shack. She plunged her hands into the dough, trying to knead away the memory of all that redness, all that blood. As she built up the rhythm and felt the dough smooth into an elastic texture under her hands, she wondered how Bill Fox was. The Fraziers hadn't called. His silent grief had a self-destructive quality, or perhaps it was self-preservation—if he gave way to what he was feeling, it would be impossible to be whole again. Either way it was terrible. She tried to think about Bird. Who was she? Was it simply her startling beauty that had enthralled Bill and Roger, or had it been more than that? Faith had categorized her immediately as the flower child of parents poised in the sixties forever, picturing Bird's mother in black tights, ballerina flats, sack dress, and Student Peace Union button, teaching little Bird to weave, silk screen, or whatever. Or maybe Bird was as romantic in her way as Bill, yearning for what she imagined the sixties to have been like and re-creating them in her person. Whatever she had been, she had a kind of consistency Faith admired—from afar. Bird had decided to live a certain way and had not merely adopted a few surface trappings—the beads, the hair, and inevitable water-buffalo sandals.

Faith put the bread to rise again and went upstairs. Zoe was lying in the cradle awake and talking softly to herself. Faith leaned down to pick her up and thought how much simpler it would be to adopt Zoe than go through the whole tedious business of pregnancy again. Maybe it wasn't such a crazy idea. It could be that Bird didn't have any family, or perhaps if she did, they wouldn't want the child or be able to take her. And Andy had told the police he wanted nothing to do with Zoe, that she was all Bird's idea.

Ben was up too, and they all went outside again. He taught Zoe by example how to roll down the little hill behind the cottage and soon they were shrieking with delight.

It was late in the afternoon and Faith was gathering her small charges for mousse when the phone rang. She grabbed them to hurry inside before it stopped—something that happened with irritating frequency.

It was Pix, or some approximation of Pix. Her nose was so stuffed up, she sounded like a caricature of herself.

“Faith, cud you ruddy tage de gurls to de danse?”

Faith hastened to interrupt her. It was a horrible sound.

“Don't say another word. Please. Of course I can take them. Why don't you plan to spend the night here, both of you? Then you can get settled in bed when the kids go to sleep. You know there's plenty of room.”

In between major trumpeting into possibly an entire box of tissues, they established that Pix would come over after dinner and spend the night. Samantha was going home with Arlene, and Faith could drop them there no later than eleven o'clock, which Pix and Arlene's mother had established as a reasonable curfew.

Faith hung up the phone and turned her thoughts to what to wear. It wasn't going to be Capote's Black and White Ball, but she didn't think she should turn up in jeans. Pix had told her that there would probably be a few square dances sandwiched between the band's renditions of Pink Floyd and Lawrence Welk favorites. The Saturday-night dances attracted a wide age range. Faith lacked the requisite circle skirt and petticoats for do-si- doing, but she thought she would dress for the spirit of that part of the soiree and decided on a pale-blue Eileen West sundress with a wide skirt. At the last moment she tied a black ribbon around her neck and promptly took it off in the car. It had been a close call.

The girls sat together in the backseat, which made her feel only slightly ancient, and they spent the whole trip talking about what they should have worn and each reassuring the other that what she had on was perfect. Faith wondered how many permutations a wardrobe that seemed to consist chiefly of oversized khaki pants, form- fitting Guess? jeans, and extra-large T-shirts could allow, but evidently enough to cause concern. Arlene had a black barrette with rhinestones in the shape of a star on it that was destined to appear and disappear from her hair all night as clouds of doubt rolled by.

Faith pulled into the parking lot in front of the Legion Hall, a large, barnlike structure that had been used for everything from dances and band concerts to basketball games and graduations in various incarnations. She parked next to a Corvair. You could spot cars of virtually every era on the island, and although pickups were the vehicle of preference, she had seen everything from a Model T to a Mercedes traveling along Route 17.

They walked in, bought their tickets, and were enjoined to guard their stubs for the raffle. Arlene and Samantha were trying to enter as nonchalantly as possible, walking behind Faith and using the abundant fabric of her skirt as a shield.

“There's Becky!' Arlene cried, and they scurried over to a group of girls who were leaning against the wall, pretending to look bored.

Faith looked after them. She wouldn't return to adolescence for a second. Well, maybe a second out of curiosity, no longer. It wasn't as if your own trials and tribulations were enough; everybody else was your age and having them too. And the boys' palms were always sweaty. She sighed. Even a boy with sweaty palms might have been welcome. What was she going to do for three and a half hours?

She sat down on one of the folding chairs set against the wall and spread her skirt out in an attractive manner. She loved to dance, and she hoped someone would have the courage to ask her. She smiled encouragingly, then decided she looked like a lunatic sitting there grinning and fell to studying her surroundings instead.

It was not dark inside, but it was quite dim. In the center of the room a huge ball covered with tiny mirrors slowly turned and sprinkled the dancers with irregular patches of light. Up on the stage the band had blue spots trained unsteadily on them, and the air was thick with cigarette smoke. It didn't look much like the island. More like The Blue Angel. Marlene Dietrich's role had been usurped here by a young woman, with short platinum-blond hair, dressed in leather. She was wailing some lyrics into the microphone, but there was too much noise for Faith to decipher them. The band had energy and was good and loud. She squinted through the smoke and saw from the name on the drum that they were The Melodic Mariners. Two of them looked to be in their forties, the rest somewhere between fourteen and twenty-one. They were all having a hell of a time, to judge from their expressions.

The music stopped, and with barely time for 'A one and a two and a three' they launched into the slow cadences of 'The Blue Danube.' Nobody seemed to find the change disconcerting. A few stood up to dance, a few left the floor, but mostly they stayed, stopped boogying, and waltzed.

Faith turned her attention to the crowd to see if she recognized anyone. Pix had been right. It was all ages. Small children were dancing on their fathers' and grandfathers' shoes. Middle aged women were dancing sedately together in perfect step. The teenagers were using the music as an excuse to make out on the dance floor, rocking slowly from side to side when they remembered they were supposed to be dancing.

Faith spotted Sonny and Margery Prescott on the floor. They weren't Ginger and Fred, but they weren't half bad. They danced in that practiced, semiprofessional way people who like to dance and have been married for a long time do. She also saw Nan and Freeman Hamilton sitting next to an enormous fat woman dressed in trousers with a skinny man perched comfortably on her knee. She'd have to ask Pix who that was. Paul Edson and his wife, Edith, were on the other side of the Hamiltons. They were staring at the crowd. Paul probably liked to keep close tabs on everyone's physical and financial well-being. He seemed to be studying one couple in particular. Looking to see if she was still wearing all her jewelry or if hard times were setting in? Maybe they'd like to get rid of their small camp down by the shore that they never used? Faith imagined this was what was going through his mind and wondered why Nan and Freeman hadn't moved away from them. Then she remembered