The Hermit and Other Stories: Studio Arago Review

By Diana Young and Robert Young

These six stories by Robert Young are set in places from New Orleans to the Mediterranean coast of France and explore dilemmas of identity and life's unlikely complications involving both family and strangers. Diana Young's watercolor and ink sketches are taken from a recent sketchbook with references to daily life and the life of the imagination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Studio Arago
• Release date: Jan 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215817346

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Studio Arago

The Hermit and Other Stories

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Six stories by Robert Young.

The Hermit

After dinner, Ellen left the others standing in front of Tony’s Place and limped out onto the fishing pier and into the squally night. She needed to be alone, even if only for a minute. After a few steps, she stopped to scan the sky along the horizon, hoping to glimpse the full moon. She saw nothing, nothing but those dirty low clouds scudding in from the southwest the way they had been all day. Shaken by a near-gale burst, she grasped the railing for balance the way Lyle had taught her. She glanced back at the others, stripped the scarf off her head, and let her hair billow up. Her arms tingled and for a second she was a child again. Lyle would get mad and there would be consequences, but she didn’t care.

The evening was already a disaster, but not because of the food or conversation. The kitchen at Tony’s Place had been no worse than usual and the table talk had been a checklist of commonplaces. What irked her was the purpose of the evening. For the sake of Lyle and his friends from college days, Bob and Linda Croy, Ellen had suffered another of those cordial masquerades that a small-town banker’s wife endures. Nobody spoke of it, but Bob had just lost his job in New Orleans and needed a fresh start. Lyle’s backing on the Coast would go a long way toward saving the Croys.

Bracing against the incoming wind, Ellen asked herself, Was I born to waste time creating illusions of generosity? She instantly felt gray and weary. Would the full moon ever break through? Dark, ambiguous cloud shapes over Salt Island showed no light, not even the skyline.

She faced squarely into the warm and heavy wind from the distant open Gulf and felt exhilarated for the first time all day. Gusts slapped her cheeks, opened her lips, swirled her hair in wild circles. Craving more, she imagined having an hour alone right now. Her thoughts, like the wind, had places to go. But if she asked, Lyle would call her selfish and irresponsible.

Lyle was still at the restaurant, watching her pace the pier, gripping the railing, shaking her hair in the wind. He hated it when she let down her hair, not because of the tangle or the moment of uninhibited madness, but because any unruly act in a public place violated his sense of the propriety for a bank president’s wife. What riled him the most, though, was her taking chances with her weak leg.

When they had been dating twenty years before, he had demanded she take scissors to her long hair and adopt a cut more appropriate for a civic leader’s wife. She had refused—her hair was hers—and he had never forgiven her defiance. But she complied with his warnings about her leg, most of the time. For instance, she drew the line when he demanded that she get a walking cane. One day, she told him, but not yet.

Lyle’s concern for her, all twenty years of it, had not made her bitter, but his constant solicitude ate at her patience. She imagined forcing his hand. It might just do him some good. Do it! Take a risk and suffer his anger with a smile!

She knew she wouldn’t, and that saddened her.

The wind died to a soft whisper. Behind Ellen on the wharf, Lyle, Bob, and Linda stood in the lee of the restaurant doorway, shaking hands with Tony Santangelo, the owner, who had just that week negotiated a huge loan with Lyle’s bank to pay for expanding the dining room and remodeling the kitchen. She heard snatches of talk.

No—fine, Lyle called into the wind.

My—bring your car—back now, Santangelo bellowed.

Really, no thanks.

You all—welcome any time.

Wind slapped again. Ellen faced into it, erased the voices, scanned again for the moon. Squally weather this time of year unnerved her and turned her moods, even her sense of reason, upside down. First the unusual darkness all day, dense clouds racing from south to north, followed by this night of no stars, no moon, salty gusts slapping at her face, tossing her hair. Almost an un-naturalness to it, but that made little sense. Nature is never un-natural. A Coast native, she knew every kind of weather. No, her trouble was not the changeable weather, it was a peevish resistance to the drift of her life.

She grit her teeth. No, it’s this weather. The air sultry and damp instead of cool and dry, winds erratic and extreme, twisting the trees until they snap. Bizarre weather brings disturbed thoughts. It had to.

She had said this to Lyle once years ago, the first time she sensed the weather might cause these unpredictable upsurges of mental disquiet, but Lyle, practical Lyle, had dismissed her concerns. He called it fatigue-related. Rest, he had advised. Rest is all you really need. Ever since the accident that had crushed her left ankle, this had been Lyle’s counsel whenever she complained about her moods. Just you take you some rest, now honey. Fatigue.

Ellen! Lyle bellowed from the parking lot.

Ellen turned away, as if distracted. For as long as she could, she was determined to ignore Lyle and his friends. She thought up a fantasy of her asking Lyle a favor and him agreeing to leave her at Tony’s Place to make her way home alone while he drove Bob and Linda back to the Broadwater. She could take her time enjoying the walk up Beach Road while Lyle would pick up Lyle Junior at the babysitter’s, then meet her at home. The walk was not a long one, just a tad less than half a mile. Easy, she smiled to herself, even for a cripple on a breezy night.

Lyle would never stand for it and, if she insisted, he would grab her up and bodily throw her into the car. He wouldn’t mind doing it in front of his friends, either. He would say, as he lifted her up, You may not care about your health, but I certainly do! Doctor’s orders! He would laugh and Bob and Linda would laugh and she would have to muster an exasperated, Oh, Lyle, what would I do without you?

Ellen hugged her arms tighter and thanked the wind for extending to her this moment alone. Then she recalled a memory of lying in the sun—this was before Lyle—her body brown, her ankle uninjured, her face exposed to the swirling heat, blown all the way from Mexico across the wide Gulf. It was paradise to be warm, sun-browned, and inhaling Mexico.

Ellen! Elllll-en!

Lyle’s impatient cries and general grumpiness amused her. When dating, it had been easy when he was bossy to shrug and roll her eyes and tease. Over the years, she kept that humor. Even when he bullied her, she forced a smile. Lyle the Irritable!

Ell-en! Ell-en! Lyle chanted, then here he came, heels pounding on the boardwalk like angry fists. She knew Lyle’s face was stern and composed, masking his