B0042JSO2G EBOK (24 page)

After a while a woman’s voice answered. What number please.

Is that Shirley? Vernon said.

No Shirley’s off tonight. The operator spoke slowly and normally and the normality of it nearly made Vernon weep. This is Ruthie.

Hi, he burst out. This is Vernon Tobin. There’s been a—it’s an emergency.

Tell me the emergency, Vernon, said Ruthie in a calm voice.

Vernon told her. Telling it made him feel faint. He took a deep breath.

Where are you calling from? Ruthie said.

I had to break into the Thornes’ because they’re not here, but everyone’s still down on the Promontory, you know in the field where you park …

I do. Now Vernon. I’m going to call Foy Hopkins and tell him and he’ll be right down.

And a doctor, Vernon said. He needs a doctor.

I’ll tell Foy. You wait at Thornes’ and I’ll call you back. Alright?

Vernon nodded and hung up the phone.

Each year there was a different doctor who came and lived in the doctor’s house. There’d been the young doctor with the wife and children, and a chubby one who halfway through August had a heart attack. There was the one who drank a lot who diagnosed Mrs. Ellis as having a spider bite when she really had shingles. The summer doctor was not the most reliable. Then Vernon thought of Harris Arden. He had not liked Harris Arden when he watched him dance with Ann Grant but now he felt Harris Arden was a friend and wished that he were there.

The clock was at nearly three-twenty. He saw his reflection in the glass panes of the cabinet with the plates and cups behind and wished he were still with everyone else down at the field. He felt both hollow and jazzed up. Buddy would be O.K. he told himself.
He had to be. He recalled the strange twist of his head in the tufted grass and when he thought of that it was hard to keep believing he would be O.K. Vernon’s chest ached.

He’d been in this kitchen before at the Thornes’. Andy Thorne was someone he used to play with a long time ago, they used to play war games when they were young. The best part was capturing Andy’s sister Carol. But Andy Thorne had been in and out of institutions the last ten years and the last time Vernon had seen him was on the ferry a few summers ago. Andy had put on a lot of weight though his voice was still the same. Who knew where Andy Thorne was now. Vernon knocked against the enamel stove and it shook.
Royal Rose
it said on the back. He kept thinking of the sliver he could see of Buddy’s eye and the way his head was pressed too close to his shoulder. It didn’t look like Buddy. He walked quickly into the front hall and looked down the road which was silent and dark. Glass crunched under his feet but he wasn’t going to pick the glass up. His heart was going fast and light. The phone rang. He ran back to it.

Vernon, Ruthie. Foy Hopkins is on his way. He’ll be there at Thornes’ to pick you up and you can take him down to Buddy Wittenborn.

O.K.

You O.K. then, said Ruthie very calm.

A shaky voice responded that he was. He thanked her.

You’re welcome, Ruthie said. Now. Should you let Buddy’s mother and father know?

Oh. I guess so. I guess I should.

That might be a good idea, Ruthie said. I’ll connect you. Now I have three numbers here for Wittenborn.

Four-seven-three-oh is the main house.

One minute.

The phone started to ring. It rang many times. In the middle of a ring a voice surprised Vernon. You sure they’re home? Ruthie said on the line.

Yes.

The ringing stopped. Hello?

Who’s this? Vernon said.

Who’s this?

Aunt Linda, it’s Vernon.

Christ Vernon. What are you kids doing?

He told her what had happened.

Dick! she screamed into the phone. Then, Where are they? Dick! Where are you?

Vernon told her and told her Foy Hopkins was on his way.

Dick! she screamed into the receiver. It’s the kids! Now wait tell me what happened.

Vernon told her again and realized with dread that this was not the last time he would have to tell this story, he would probably be telling this story all his life. Dick! she kept shouting. Dick!

Then Vernon heard footsteps in the background and a voice and his Aunt Linda saying, Buddy has run over someone at the Promontory.

No, Vernon said. Buddy’s the one hurt.

I don’t think she heard that, came Ruthie’s voice still on the line.

I’m trying to—Aunt Linda was speaking away from the receiver. Stop talking to me and I’ll find out.

Then Dick Wittenborn’s voice was on the phone, stern and deep. Vernon, he said, now what is all this about?

S
he was underwater and had to walk carefully to stay on the bottom. The walls of the pool were robin’s-egg blue and she held a white lily. A man laughed and bubbles came out. He had once been her lover. When they hauled him out upside down his white shirt was plastered to his skin.

In the palm of her hand was the tiniest bird she’d ever seen.

The summer streets of Beacon Hill were empty. They arrived at the end of the day. She didn’t remember the flight from the island or the drive from the airport into town. She remembered being in the room upstairs, she remembered it dimly. The house was dim and the halls dark and everything was covered in sheets and there were no signs of life. The Grangers had many spare bedrooms since they had no children and Oscar agreed with Oliver Granger
that Ann should not be left alone. Ollie’s figure filled the doorway with the dark hall behind. Everything alright? he said. She could not feel anything she recognized having felt before. This was a new pain she’d not known and when she didn’t answer he came forward and said, Ann I don’t know what to say and sat on the bed. She had stopped being someone named Ann and was hardly a woman anymore, she was only a mother and also not a mother as she had been and it was too hard to explain anything and easier instead to sink against his arm when his arm came around her. He was solid and his body was warm. She could not speak to say no, she didn’t move away or toward him, she was not thinking no, she was not thinking yes, she was not thinking anything. They were waiting for the body, that’s what they were doing. Oscar had gone down to Virginia after Ollie had flown them back in his plane and she was at the Grangers’ on Beacon Hill waiting. Her blank eyes stared into the back of her head at nothing and his arms in a cotton shirt were around her pressing and easing her back onto the bed. She looked up at the ceiling and noticed a decorative trim of crimson grapes at the top of the walls and thought how Lily must have put it up. It’s alright, he said. It’s good for you to cry. She shielded her eyes with her arm and he might have thought the light was too bright, he reached across her chest and turned out the lamp and the room was so dark she couldn’t see anything. The shades were down and the shutters closed and with no light anywhere it was like being sealed in a crypt. He was big and heavy on her and she could not see him. His mouth found hers wet, her whole face was wet. It was like being underwater at night. She felt him like water. Strange how a thing felt so dimly as those strange arms around her in the middle of disorienting grief should have the consequences it did, while another thing in another time and another darkness which had meant so much to her which had in fact meant everything would never show anything of itself in the world. It might just as well not have happened for all it showed. That greater thing disappeared and never took on a life of its own. While out of this other darkness, this other evening in July some fifteen years later,
another life did come despite the lack of shared sentiment, a life unquestioned by the man whose name she shared, who believed himself the father, a life which was now at that moment a young woman beneath Ann Lord making notes in the margins of her playbook about street kids in Brooklyn, sitting on a chaise in the back garden at the shaded end of the lawn.

They lay on his coat on the moss and she felt the sticks and roots which she had not felt before as he was crashing over her. The grass by her cheek was the same as her cheek and the same as the air and all of it was part of the universe and his hand by her chin and his face curved on her neck was part of it too.

Maybe I will after all.

What?

Have your baby.

He pulled her closer. I’d love that, he said. They could say anything now.

Might not be so simple, she said.

No.

With you married to someone else.

It would be ours, he said. That’s how bad I am, I would like it.

But you would stay with her.

He didn’t answer. She still had the conviction of his hands on her and did not yet feel the misery which she knew was coming. Misery was just outside the circle around them, waiting in the darkness. They held each other and his weight was more real than his going away.

There were things she’d not asked him and things she’d not said and she did not wonder what she knew or what she had learned but merely felt what had happened and felt what it meant. She did not need to explain it, she simply had it. He was asleep in her arms and the stars which had been spilling and spilling had stopped and were motionless and she knew that what they’d had was not enough but believed it would have to be.

Then the white ceiling opened like an eye and she saw what the ceiling might have seen, how she’d never put words to it.

All her life she’d listened to talk, life was full of talk. People said things, true and interesting things and ridiculous things. Her father used to say they talked too much. There was much to say, she had said her share. How else was one to know a thing except by naming it? But words now fell so far from where life was. Words fell on a distant shore. It turned out there were other tracks on which life registered where things weren’t acknowledged with words or given attention to or commented on. It might have been said, These two had a story. One might have said she’d found in him the great thing, that she’d found more than herself which was everything and found more than life. And even saying that she would not bring back what was gone. She did not know if it had been the same for him. She would never know. She only knew for herself. Nowhere did it show. Without being shared, what they knew had faded into a kind of mirage. It became One of Those Things. She could not let what passed between them matter too much afterwards so that when the memory tried to assert itself it had been pushed down by reason and habit and time, eventually becoming no more than a scruffy hidden scar on a scruffy hillside. She had worked to rub it out. That this had been forgotten once and would be forgotten again suddenly seemed worse to her than her own life ending.

The sisters huddled near the door.

Completely out of it, Margie said, shaking her head.

Nina’s eyes narrowed. What’s she saying?

Have you sold the cathedral yet?

They laughed quietly.

Constance studied Margie’s face. What else?

You know, Leave the dishes … oh this one’s good: Wake up Paris.

Paris? Constance said.

No, Nina said. Harris. She’s saying Harris. She was saying his name before.

Harris?

Who’s Harris?

An exchange of glances made it clear no one knew.

Maybe Aunt Grace … Margie said.

They stared at their mother.

Let’s ask
her
, Nina whispered. She nudged Margie and they crept toward the bed.

Mother? Constance said.

The eyes blinked feebly.

Mother.

Present.

The girls smiled.

Who is Harris? Constance leaned closer.

Harris. Ann Lord’s eyes opened a crack. She didn’t see them.

Yes Harris. Who is he?

Their mother began to smile as if hearing the answer to a riddle. She nodded. Harris, she said.

Yes. Harris. Constance got easily exasperated. Who is Harris?

Harris, Ann Lord took a deep breath as if starting to tell a story. Harris was …

The girls stayed very still. Their mother’s low-lidded gaze was directed out the window. He was … she said, and her gaze suddenly turned and regarded her daughters with eyes not drugged in the least. Harris was me.

He slept in her arms and she wondered about bracing herself for how it was going to be without his weight on her but couldn’t imagine it and stopped trying. I
am with him now
.

She did not tell him then or ever how she felt.

Out of the night she heard someone shouting.
Harris! Harris!
It was Gigi wanting to play another game, Gigi with her whims and desires whirling around at this late hour. Harris lay breathing
deeply on her, smooth-eyed, and didn’t hear and Ann Grant was not going to wake him.

Her collarbones shivered as she took a breath. Did anything come after that? she said.

Your life. You had a life after that.

Is that what it was.

Yes. A full life, a family. Apparently a few families. He laughed. And you saw the world….