THE FEMININE VIEWPOINT

RENASCENCE by Emily Jones

by and about women

To the memory of: E.S.M.

Two weeks before, they had all told her, the hurricanes had hurled themselves against the mainland with a fury none of the living could remember having lived through before. The waters had swelled up and drowned life and carried off trees and houses and reminded the erring, they had all said, laughing, of the end of the world. Andrea thought of those things as she sat with her back to the plate glass wall which exposed the Bay of Cape Cod.

"I caught a sail fish, however" the doctor was saying across the room. "Really? In the Gulf?"

"No In the Pacific. Just off Acapulco. Hundred and eight pounds. Of course you can't eat them. They're edible, but one doesn't eat them. Oh, the natives do all right. Drag them off the ships and take them home and fry them up or something." She heard the doctor giggle in the middle of his narrative.

Outside the sea was beating away at the rocks just as it was supposed to; insistently making its commentary about all of them the way it always did in the books. In books, she thought, in books. Sheila Hodd was moving among her guests in tight, black toreadores and bangles and sandals. Her eyemakeup was thick and grotesque and it depressed Andrea to notice that the result was not exotic at allonly foolish. Martin Hodd was wandering around behind his wife in his sagging summer trousers and the unkempt grey hair stood up in thoughtful little wisps all over his head. Andrea smiled a little watching him circling through the crowd in the room, stopping here and there at the fringes of the clusters, listening a bit, passing a remark and sucking on the pipe and moving on. She turned away and listened for the sea.

She watched the water with all its shadows and movement and angry noises. Driving up that week-end she had seen some of the havoc of the hurricanes. Once she would have been sorry to have missed it. Once there would have been something thrilling about the devastation. But watching the sea now and fingering the icy glass in her hand she could feel that she would never be able to love destruction again. Not ever.

17