B0042JSO2G EBOK (16 page)

She finished, there was applause. The odd thing about applause was how sometimes it was hollow and at other times seemed to overflow. This was not hollow. Ann Grant came back to the table keeping her mouth pressed together and Lila squeezed her hand and the band launched into a lively beat. The summer residents of Three O’Clock Island were not quick to dance, they preferred to drink. A couple from Carl’s side of the family not knowing any better moved into the small area cleared in front of the hopeful band and hitched their feet together in little shuffling motions. Ann thought it looked like fun but group habits are not fickle and no one joined the dancers.

He sat with her in the early evening while the nurses were changing shifts and conferring in the next room. He sat with his book shut on his knee and looked at her sleeping. Her face was altogether changed from even a few months before and he stared at it.
He had never looked for such a long time at her face and probably hadn’t seen her sleeping since he was a boy standing uncertain by her bed not daring to wake her. He wondered if this would be the image which would stay with him of her mouth stretched over her teeth slightly parted and her skin smooth as china. The bones were prominent in her cheeks and the skeleton apparent beneath had the mute wisdom of a mountain range. The face had taken on something beyond the personality of his mother and the new face beneath seemed to say, This is what it comes to in the end, this is what we all are, this will come even to you.

He was not what she thought after all. Turned out Harris Arden was a superficial person who only appeared substantial. He had hardly spoken to her all night. Only when it was time to leave did he come up to her and ask her if she wanted to walk back with him. So he would see her only if they were alone? Well. O.K. she’d walk back with him, but the scales had been lifted from her eyes. He had talked with nearly everyone but her. Now what was he doing? He took the presents and tissue paper out of her hand and put them in his pocket.

In the fog the streetlights were fuzzed. The air was padded and as they walked their voices sounded strange and clear and isolated. Ann Grant walked a few feet from him with her arms folded across her chest.

That was beautiful when you sang, he said. You really should keep singing.

I would if I were good enough. I’m not.

I think you are.

You’re being nice.

No I’m not. I really think so.

You’re nice, she said stiffly. You’re always nice.

Not always, he said. She could tell he was not thinking of her. They walked in silence.

Is something the matter? he said.

Not at all.

You seem angry about something.

She shrugged. A foghorn blew.

Then she told him in a tone which showed she didn’t particularly care that she did think he’d not been very friendly tonight. When she turned to see how he’d take this he was smiling. He reached for her hand.

I was worried about seeming too friendly, he said.

Her hand remained limp.

Ann? His voice caught deep like a hook. She’s coming tomorrow. I don’t want it to be too awkward.

His hand was warm but she didn’t hold it back.

I want her to know as soon as possible. But not here.

His warm hand was lovely.

It would be too hard. I have to wait till we get back to Chicago.

She took small steps in her heels and walked nearer to him. He was right, but she didn’t have to like it. He lifted her hand to his chest. They were on a strip of road with no houses.

Ann.

I’m always in the dark with you, she said.

Will you come see me in Chicago?

I don’t know.

You won’t?

I don’t know.

The road turned and up ahead were blurred lights with spaces between them. It was like walking on air.

You must.

She stopped and looked at him. I don’t know, she said in a different way, and leaned against him. He lifted her face and turned it toward the fuzzy light coming off a porch.

God, he said looking.

He kissed her and she kissed him back.

How did this happen? he said and they kissed again.

They walked slowly and he kept his arm tight around her. They crossed the bridge at Bishops Harbor and her footsteps in heels
made the hollow sound of crossing an empty stage. She felt as if they were made out of fog.

Come here, he said suddenly. I want to show you something. He took her arm and led her off the road onto the gravel edge then over the wet grass. She hoped he wouldn’t let go his grip. He brought her under a tree where the fog had not gotten to and the night was darker and stood her against the bark. Here, he said and pressed against her. I want to crush you.

She was pulling a rope out of the water and knew it was coming to the end when the barnacles started to appear and they became more thick and clustered. Then it was strangely peaceful and the sound was turned off. She stood at the bow of a ship. If only she could have stood this way above the water and really breathed and let the waves go by like pages being turned and watched everything more closely and chosen things more carefully then she might have been able to read the spirit within herself and would not have spent her life as if she were only halfway in it.

For a moment she felt an astonishing brilliance and heat and light and all of herself flared up and the vibration after sixty-five years was not weakened by time but more dense then suddenly it was as if the flame had caught the flimsiest piece of paper for it flickered up and flew into the air then quickly sank down withered into a thin cinder of ash which blew off, inconsequential. Her life had not been long enough for her to know the whole of herself, it had not been long enough or wide.

The lights were out in the big house. Everyone had gone to bed, everyone else had disappeared. They creaked along a hall which smelled of paint and knocked the table in the dining room jostling the glass on the candelabra. She held his hand as he led her along, they came out on the long porch with the black fog just past the steps and the cushions showing striped on the chairs. He pulled
her onto a wicker couch. Come closer, he said. Come closer and he pulled her against him.

After swimming they would hang the towels over the railing here to dry. They brought out drinks and watched the sunset, they sat below the moon.

They were waiting in a transport, he told her, not sure if they’d make it out alive, they were waiting on the runway for the signal to take off. Shells exploded outside, the hull was full of wounded, packed in elbow to elbow. It was near dawn. The stretcher beside him had a man with half his face blown off so his bottom row of teeth were showing. The men were calling for their mothers, that’s what they did at the end, called for their mothers. It wasn’t the most danger he’d been in, but it was when he was most scared, that time. Somehow the wheels started moving and somehow they rumbled along the runway and lifted up and got out of there.

She watched the wall of fog and felt his heart against her shoulder. The fog got inside. She felt she would accomplish something in her life. She was not sure of the exact nature of what it was, but she was certain that when she came across it she would know it. There was something she was meant to do, something she was put here for. She’d not had the feeling quite like this before and having his arms around her was part of it, but not all. If she had never met him would she have felt this? She watched the curtain rise before her.

Kiss me, she said.

The man cleared his throat.

Kiss me?

Mother, it’s me, it’s Teddy.

Teddy, she said vaguely. Her eyes were dark buttons. Teddy. Where’s Paul?

Paul’s not here. It’s only me.

Only you. Paul … She closed her eyes. If they can make it off the runway they’ll bring him home in a box.

They lay together in the guest cottage.

How did you get to be so soft?

Is it because you’re a doctor you know how to do that? she said.

If you were mine this is how I’d hold you.

That’s nice.

And I wouldn’t let go.

They drifted in and out of sleep.

Sometimes it’s better not to do everything, he said.

It wouldn’t be right I guess.

But this is, he said. This is right. You are.

She dozed on his shoulder.

How will it be when we see each other? he murmured.

Tomorrow? It will be fine.

Will it? His face was terrible.

Harris, she said. Nothing could go too wrong, nothing could ever be too bad now that she knew him. She was sure of that. That was one true thing.

After a while she said, They’re flying in this morning?

He frowned in the blue light. I better be going, he said, and fell back asleep.

She saw him to the door with her nightgown wrapped around her like a sari.

It will be O.K., she said. It was the last time she felt it so absolutely, she’d yet to meet the other woman.

After he had gone she went back to bed where he’d been beside her and the place was now changed without him. She lay looking up.

There were changes in the arms which held her at night and in the profiles she made out in the dark beside her, there were different rooms and other beginnings in other beds and each time it happened there was something the same to be pressed against a new chest, to know the bright flash meeting up with the secret untapped
person who appeared in kissing, who said come with me down this shadowy hall just you and I down this passage let me take you into this universe, just you and me, the face appearing up close surprising to be so near and giving her a jolt of animal fear, there was something dangerous in being so close something unnatural, but she would not run, soothed by the warmth of new hands and the swell of the new arm, not letting on kissing the new mouth which though it had familiar elements of other mouths was more new and different than familiar, would let herself be lulled, then would recognize in the eyes the drugged look of a man who thinks perhaps you are what he has been looking for and she’d think remember this look now because one day it will be gone never to appear again soon it will go and being stirred would be able to return the stare her body taken along her heart maybe a little behind while inside his head what were the mysterious thoughts his hand slipping under her sleeve sliding in and when he turned her it would be like being thrown onto a hill of soft sand her pulse speeding what else could she do now he pulled at her skirt he was removing her shoe saying what pretty feet she had his hands were trying to get in everywhere she was soft she was small she was lovely his hands were hard his breath quick on her neck what else could she do now that it had started his lips and his tongue wet and soft and wet inside it had started like a river and she would have to go the whole length of it now and who knew if it would be long or short or thick afterwards or how pale or how much pain would come it was a dark whirlpool pulling her along sweeping her she saw the secret in him the way he pulled her the way his mouth was impatient her hands were shaking her skin full of needles she felt his teeth the pool blurred around her it was past the time she might have stood apart and taken his measure now she would see him this way now he would be harder to make out she’d been swept to the other side where he came over her where he oh he had a way about him he did she went along she could only keep going could only hope as he hoisted her lifted her placed her there that he would not stop too soon that he would keep going that he
would do this forever and never stop and when he did stop that they would have been carried far enough along with the water still coming beneath them and the water not stopping that it would not stop now that maybe this time there would be enough to keep carrying them enough to carry them along forever enough to make it last

She stood on a bluff above a cove of churning water. Grace Stackpole was beside her. You can’t dive in, it’s full of syringes, she said. Ann Lord looked down and saw they weren’t syringes but martini glasses clinking together.

She heard the shouts of children in the next cove over. A stone skipped out over the flat surface.

The dull thud of stakes being hammered echoed in the still air.

It just hurts so much, she said, and immediately regretted it. Who had heard? Was it Grace or one of the children or Ollie in again? At the end of a warped lens she saw the face of Nora Brown and felt more understood by this figure in white than she had been by people she’d known all her life.

H
er eyes stared ahead with pupils small dots from morphine. Nurse Brown set the tray quietly down without rattling and sat and waited. She spooned some rice and brought it to Ann Lords lips. The lips parted but the mouth didn’t open, the front teeth were set together in concentration. Nurse Brown did not like to give in to them when they refused to eat. She prodded with the spoon. Just a taste, she said. She took back the spoon and held it above her lap.