A Brief Lunacy (2 page)

“There's mushrooms all over the place,” Carl says.

“I'm going to get the fox skull,” I say. “It'll only take a minute.”

The only sound I hear behind me is Carl setting up the easels. I've forgotten exactly where I left the skull, but I follow the narrow game trail through the alders, watching on the left for a stump with bones on top. I gather bones of dead animals. Isn't that crazy? The fox skull is the most exciting. Why? I don't know. Perhaps because I can hold it
easily in my hand and imagine where the tongue was and what the teeth chewed on. I load the skull, plus the fragments of legs and ribs and wings I've gathered, into the front of my jacket. Near the stump are some pinecones and clumps of chartreuse moss that I pile onto the bones until there's no more room.

It reminds me of when I was pregnant with Sylvie and thought I couldn't get any bigger without bursting, and I balanced a mug on my belly at breakfast. Carl thought it was a riot but always checked to make sure the tea wasn't hot enough to burn me. I wanted to name her after his mother, Chantal, but he didn't want to. He said he had no family. Carl chose
Sylvie.
He'd always liked the name, he'd said. I wonder how it would have been with her if we'd named her Chantal.
Sylvie,
like
sylvan,
the woods, the moss, natural like the deer and the coyote. Sylvie was like the woods when she was small. She picked up sticks and leaves and small bones and tucked them into her pockets. Her whole village was made from debris she found in the woods and on the shore. Whatever happened to it?

The alders blur ahead of me and I'm not sure of my way. My load shifts and some of the cones spill onto the ground. Ahead through the trees I hear Carl rustling around getting ready for the morning. I hear him pouring tea from the thermos. Has it come to this? Nothing important to do? Painting bones and moss and mushrooms on big sheets of bleached paper that will be thrown out when we die by children who thought we were just keeping busy?

“Carl, I've got a load here.”

“My darling, let me help.”

Everything is set up: the portable stools that we bought at the flea market and the easels from Charlie and the canvas bag that we spread out and cover with tubes of paint organized by color.

“Be careful, my pet, not to kick the water over.”

I tiptoe around the paints and canvas to my spot. I thought I might paint the tree today but it's really Carl's subject. The closest branch hangs lower than usual because of the break. The last storm, I think. It won't last long. I wonder if we should get some new wire and tie it up. Sylvie will be distraught if the limb breaks. But I say nothing. Perhaps after we are finished painting. Or perhaps tomorrow. Or in the spring.

I set up my still life beside a rotting bolete, lean the cracked wing bone against the black side of the mushroom, tear off a small section of the chartreuse moss, place it in front of the bone.

“Too much balance,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“Here.”

He pulls the piece of moss away from the bone and places it closer to the mushroom, and it is better, unbalanced, uneasy, more exciting. I don't think I'm very exciting. I sit down on the stool and dip my brush into the water and start to paint.

J
UST AS
I
BEGIN
my second still life, I sense something new in the woods, a sound or a presence or perhaps a change of weather. Carl glances my way to see why I've stopped painting. “It's nothing,” I tell him. “Just thinking about the mushroom.” I move the stool so that I can view my still life from another direction and tear off the sheet to expose a blank one.

“I think it's too difficult to have Sylvie home for Thanksgiving, don't you?”

“Then let's go down the day before and visit,” he says. “I'll bring her a painting of the pine tree. Remember how she loved to climb way up? And the tree house that we built? There. Look. A board's still hanging from that high branch.”

I don't respond about the tree. And what's the point in giving her the painting? “Sam's bringing his new girlfriend. Did I tell you?”

“Yes, you did. A medical student, isn't she?” He holds up a dark green painting. “How do you like this one?”

“Very nice. They won't be here until early Thanksgiving morning. Renting a car in Boston and spending the night on the road. That will give us time to get back from seeing Sylvie. Do you think it's wrong to not want her here? It will just be too much with the new girlfriend and everything else.”

“What's that you said?”

“Just mumbling to myself.”

I'm scared to have her home. Last Thanksgiving, Sylvie came home the week before because she wanted to help with dinner. We picked up a free-range turkey from a farm down the road, and the day before Thanksgiving, Sylvie and I baked pies and made stuffing. We made pecan pie and deep-dish cranberry pie and a pumpkin pie with Frangelico and a ginger crust. Sylvie chopped nuts and baked the pumpkin. She made a papier-mâché turkey for the centerpiece.

“Mom,” she said. “This is fun. I want to come home. You know, live at home. With you and Pop. Wouldn't that be great?”

Had I ever been so hopeful as I was that day? I'm not sure. I truly believed it would, in fact, be great. But could I have really been thinking it would last? That we would make meals together and knit by the fire in the evenings? Sometimes mothers hope against hope for their children.

On Thanksgiving morning, Charlie arrived with Madeline, his wife of seven years, and her mother, Mrs. Lachaby,
as she insisted on being called, and Harry and his wife. Well, after all, the mother's husband had just died and she had nowhere to go. Sylvie was fine. She and Carl went for a walk along the shore before dinner. They were stunning together, hand in hand, father and daughter. It was almost a dance, the two together, she light as silkweed, he steady as stone. I watched them until they disappeared behind the granite boulders.

When they came back I could see she was edgy. Charlie was basting the bird when it happened. It began as swearing. Just pacing and light swearing about holidays and turkeys and the world in general. I tried to tell Mrs. Lachaby to leave it alone, just ignore it, and I went on chatting about Maine in November and how stark the landscape was. But she didn't get it.

“Do you allow her to behave in that manner?”

“She's an adult,” I said. “I can't allow or disallow.”

“Well, I think it's deplorable conduct. Madeline, were you aware of Sylvie's behavior? Has this happened before?”

“Mother, let it be. Give her some space.”

“Does this kind of thing run in families? Sylvie. Can't you calm yourself, young lady?”

“Well, fuck you, Miss Pig,” Sylvie said. “Mommy? Tell her. Tell her to leave me alone.”

“Sylvie, darling,” Harry said, “let's you and your old uncle Harry go for a walk.”

“Please, Mrs. Lachaby, have some patience. She is ill.”

“Oh, ill, is it?” Sylvie said. “Is that what you call it? I'll show you ill.” I'm glad she chose the cheesecake, because it
was soft and easy to clean up. And I'm glad she threw it at me and not at the mother of our daughter-in-law. After that, Sylvie said she'd take a bath and calm down. She'd be fine after her bath.

Sylvie made a little bonfire in the bathroom with dry pine needles from her pocket and a bunch of drawing pencils from the art drawer. She wanted to keep the people who lived in the bathtub warm. She exploded when we said there were no people living in the bathtub. Carl and Harry brought her to the hospital and made it back in time for dinner. But it was all very distressing. The holidays were never very good times with Sylvie. Something about the time of year.

We paint for the whole morning, and for the entire time, I hear things in the woods. Not squirrels or birds, either. Once, I think of calling out,
Who's there? Is anyone out there?
but Carl's right beside me painting the pine tree over and over again. It's funny. He's the one who paints the tree but I'm the one who loves it. By noontime we each have a stack of watercolors. His are all of the pine tree. Mine are of bones and mosses and cracks in the pine bark. Carl says we could have a two-person show at the library next summer. Yes. We could.

On the way back to the house for lunch, I walk behind him because he's bigger and breaks the way through the bushes. And besides, I love to watch his back as he tromps through the woods. I wouldn't ever tell anyone that I find my husband sexy at our age. But that's the truth of it.

I try to picture him as a young boy, running away fast as
he can on sickly legs, his mother yelling,
“Vite, vite!”
for him to run faster, faster, and his father blocking the bullets behind him. Did he keep running when he heard the shots? When he heard the rest of his family drop to the ground? When he noticed that his mother's voice no longer urged him on? He never told me the details. I only know that little bit because I pried too hard once when we'd had too much champagne. And I've seen the fish on his arm and the scars on his back. There's no mistaking those things. Sometimes I'm satisfied not knowing very much because it's clear it's a life he's set aside, but sometimes I want to prod and snoop. But where do I do that? I don't think he has anything from that time except for the violin.

It was during the war. When I think of it all, I cry. I can't help it. And right now I want to yell at him in English to run fast, but I know I can't do that. There's no reason to worry except for the feeling I have that there's something in our woods that doesn't belong here.

As we approach the house, I half expect Reba to dash off the porch to greet us. It's like when I quit smoking. Every time the phone rang, I'd reach for a cigarette, although there weren't any and I wouldn't have smoked one anyway. Sometimes even today that happens to me, after twenty-two years of not smoking. Reba's only been gone for a month. Do you suppose I'll be watching for her twenty-two years from now?

“What's that, Jessie?”

“I'm just laughing at myself,” I say.

“Shall I slow down?”

“Why would you do that?”

“I don't know.”

“Carl? Do you hear something?”

“Crows. Gulls. Your footsteps. That's the best sound. Your footsteps.” He turns around. “My Jess. What do you hear?”

“I thought I heard someone. A person. A dog. It's nothing.”

He kisses my forehead before he turns back on the trail toward the house, which seems oddly alone on the small hill overlooking the bay. I can see from here that the gulls have gone off for the day, probably to Schoodic Rock or down to the sardine factory to scrounge more fish.

We clatter and bang our way into the house, dragging easels and finished canvases and paints up the back stairs and into the kitchen.

The answering machine blinks by the kitchen phone. Three messages. The first is the library reminding me about the overdue mystery. I delete it. The second is Sylvie.

“Mommy? Are you there? I've left the fucking place. Everyone there's a nutcase.”

“What?” Carl says.

“I'm on the way to the Midwest. Isn't that a riot? Going to North Dakota,” she says. Her voice is sweet, lyrical, like when she was a child. “I have money and I know how to get more. I can dance.”

“Yes, my darling,” I say to the machine. “You can dance.”

“Don't, Jess. She can't help it. There's nothing we can do.”

“And guess what?” There's a long pause, as if she expects us to pick up the phone. “There's a guy here in the loony bin who loves me. How about that?”

“Oh, Sylvie, I love you,” I say.

“Loves me loves me loves me,” she sings. The tune is familiar but I can't place it. “Yes, he loves me, yeah, yeah, yeah.” It's a Beatles tune.

“Sylvie, where are you?” Do I expect her to answer?

“'Bye, Mommy. Dad. He's leaving, too.”

“Who, dear?”

Carl presses the button for the next message. Is Sylvie finished? He hardly gives her time to say good-bye.

“Mrs. Jensen? This is Rita at Douglas House. I'm sorry to worry you but please call as soon as possible. Hello? Are you there?”

There are more “hello's” before Rita from Douglas House finally hangs up.

“What? Sorry to worry us? Worry that Sylvie left? Sorry she is insane? Sorry she's not Sylvie, sylvan of the woods, tree climber?”

“Jess. Compose yourself. We'll find her. She never goes where she says she's going. You know that. She won't go to North Dakota.”

“Carl. She's in the woods.”

“No. Jess, why would she be in the woods? How would she get here? She isn't in the woods.”

“Call the place. You call. You're better at these things.”

We both sit down, as if an outward appearance of calm will translate through the phone lines to the bureaucracy. I pull the sock out of my knitting bag, thankful that I'm not at the turning-the-heel place, thankful that I have several inches to go on the leg before I need to think. Carl leans
back in his chair, pen and paper in his lap. Only my knitting needles move; their clicking is the only sound.

“Rita, please,” he says when someone answers. “Carl Jensen here.”

They know nothing at all. Isn't that why they get paid? To know what happens to their patients? Carl waves me away when I try to ask the questions, Where is she? Why did she leave? Does she have her medication? When was she last seen? He listens intently, writes on the pad little notes in doctor writing that no one else can read. When I peer over to try, he shifts his weight so that I can see, but it's just lines, dots, dashes. I recognize nothing about where or when or why.

I drop a stitch. My fingertips feel numb on the yarn and I have to use a crochet hook to pick up the loop before I continue going around and around on the three needles. The noise of the clicking makes me a bit crazy myself but I'm afraid to sit with nothing. I've never been one to be idle, to clasp my hands in my lap.