Authors: Susan Minot
Through the French doors he saw the figure of his wife hurrying toward him, waving at him to come inside. She was without the children, here to pick him up. He let go of the thought of his mother, it was too hard to hold onto. He did not have the strength. Then it occurred to him how unusual it was to see his wife without the children. Since the twins were born his wife had changed. She was so taken up with them he hardly recognized her as the woman he had married.
A choice was before her. Either she could never move off the floor and stay forever among the folds of her green dress or get up quickly now and stand and do something. She thought, If I don’t move now I never will and unthinking her hand reached for the bed and she pulled herself up. She was a little wobbly. She stepped and slipped on a little rag rug and the room lurched and the jolt shot her back into herself and her balance came instinctively back to her. She stood tingling in the middle of the room.
He had made his decision. Later in life Ann would learn that when certain men made decisions no matter how much it might torture them afterwards they would stick with their decision. Men, she learned, would rather suffer than change their minds or their habits. They could develop elaborate systems for containing pain, sometimes so successful they would remain completely unaware of the vastness of the pain they possessed.
She had to get out, she could not stay there.
But it was so tiring, one foot in front of the other. It was a long
way back to the bed. She paused at the window and saw the edge of a stone bench and the white hydrangea Oscar liked glowing in the dusk and the shadows gathering beneath the bushes.
Oh god
a sharp pain in her side nearly split her in half
god that was a bad one
. She pressed all her weight onto the sill. The nausea passed and her vision cleared and she looked down to the dark ground and beneath her saw sprawled the coat he’d spread and the two of them lying on it. If every life had high points and low points there would have to be one point higher than the rest, the highest point in one’s life. So, she learned, that had been hers.
A new thing had come to her after all.
A shadow moved beneath her. It was a person. She turned back toward the bed and saw a shadow under the door not moving. They were all around her, shadows moving and shadows not moving. No one knew who was watching whom.
She inched back to the bed and lay herself brittlely down. Across the ceiling his eyes appeared huge as parasols. Then he was sitting on the cedar chest at the foot of the bed, his shoulders and face turned away. She said his name. He dropped his chin in her direction showing that he heard her and tipped his ear toward her listening. Ann Lord did not get up again.
Lizzie Tull stepped over the raised threshold out of the throbbing room into the wind and the predawn light which was slashed by a yellow band along the horizon. She stood at the railing and dangled her hands in front of her with the water behind and stared past to the wake and waves without seeing any of it.
When the ferry docked in Rockland Harris Arden didn’t wait for the ramp to lower before stepping on and hurrying over to Lizzie who came out of the violet shadows with her arms crossed, shaking her head. We lost him halfway over, she said.
Harris Arden opened the heavy black door of the passenger area for her as Vernon Tobin stepped out. Vernon had an unusual stare and after one step tipped forward with his feet rooted to the floor. Harris Arden caught him and eased him back inside.
It’s O.K., he’s just fainted, said Harris Arden, as he and Lizzie Tull slumped Vernon Tobin onto the nearest seat.
The Wittenborns and the doctor down at the other end of the passenger cabin beside the body on the cot all looked to see another body being carried in the door. They looked without surprise, watching the way animals register the approach of a human in the distance, waiting to measure the danger before deciding there’s no need to run. Their faces looked as if they would never register surprise again.
Mrs. Wittenborns arm was curved around the head of her son.
She took off her dress. The dress belonged to the night and to him and she would never wear it again. She stepped out of it and put on pants and a shirt and tennis shoes and left the room.
There were no people in sight when she came out of the cottage and walked up the wet grass. It was growing lighter and instead of feeling hope with the lifting of the darkness she felt the beginning of all the battles she would have to wage for the rest of her life. She followed the dark footprints up the hill and where they turned toward the house she left them and took the path down to the shore. She would see him again, but it would not be the same. She felt the tug of fatigue inside her but also felt strangely airy. They were all asleep by now she thought and she wondered if Harris was sleeping too or if he’d gone first to the other woman. She wondered if he’d kissed her yet.
But no one had been asleep.
Lila and Carl were awake at the inn getting ready to catch their plane. Later when they called from the airport in Boston to say good-bye they were unable to get through. The phones on Three O’Clock Island, all three numbers, were busy.
Lila would never forgive her mother for not letting them know, for keeping her from knowing what any stranger who picked up the Boston papers Monday morning knew when they read about the accident on page three or what anyone stepping up the soft steps of the general store on Three O’Clock Island would overhear
about the Wittenborn wedding. Gigi tried to persuade her mother to call them, but Linda Wittenborn found this was one thing she could still control. She could at least allow her daughter to have the one honeymoon she would ever have. Lila never wanted to think of that honeymoon again.
She thought instead of what she’d missed—their house on Brattle Street full of people mourning Buddy and how she’d never know the long nights of sandwiches put out at midnight and the card games and the radio playing the ball game behind the discussion of funeral arrangements and drinks being made morning noon and night and the flowers coming in and the letters piling up. Lila could read the letters kept in the ribboned boxes but she never saw the coffin in the church aisle or watched it being lowered into the ground at Mt. Auburn Cemetery or heard Gigi reading Edward Thomas’ “Rain” or seen Spring Tobin sprinkling dirt trance-like into the grave.
When Lila and Carl returned from their honeymoon they were met at the airport by all the Wittenborns standing there with terrible smiles. Lila knew right away something was wrong. Back at the Brattle Street house she went immediately up to Buddy’s room and stood in it feeling she was at the top of a mountain in thin air. She felt she’d turned into a block of wood except for the flame of fury inside at her mother. Buddy’s clothes were still folded in his drawers and his jackets were still hanging on their hangers. His shoes had the laces tied because he kicked off his shoes and she thought how his fingers had tied those knots. On his bedside table were some paperbacks, the top one was Raymond Chandler. A glass ashtray had a penny and some golf tees in it. Lila picked up a yellow tee and felt Buddy’s tooth marks on the stem.
Margie and Constance were reading the cards.
Ralph and Kit Eastman. These are pretty. This gardenia’s from Mr. Shepley.
That’s nice.
Margie picked a small envelope off a plastic prong stuck into orange and yellow lilies. This is from … Geoffrey.
Who’s that?
He does her hair.
Who’s this? It came yesterday. Constance took a card out of the bowl. Maria Arden.
I don’t know. I asked Mother but… Margie shrugged.
What’d she say?
She said No.
Ann Grant walked down to the shore sensing none of the tumult going on behind the trees back at the house. She was absorbed by her own tumult. Later when she compared the losses she judged herself selfish and wanted to disassociate herself from all that had mattered to her that night. The thought that she might have prevented Harris from helping was too much to face.
The tide had turned and was going out but the beach was still narrow with yellow and black seaweed flopped on the wet rocks. A long yellow cloud hovered at the horizon. Ann Grant left her clothes in a pile. She shivered though the air was mild, it would be another hot day. The water was smooth with a molten surface and she waded in, cutting off her thighs, and waded in further, cutting off her waist, then dove forward into the yellow sheen. With her eyes closed she saw Harris Arden’s face and the way he’d been came back to her and she felt how changed she was after him and how she could never feel the same from now on and at least could take that with her. She thought of how much people changed you. It was the opposite of what you always heard, that no one could change a person. It wasn’t true. It was only through other people that one ever did change.
The water was cold. She swam through it feeling strong in her legs and shoulders and it seemed that the strength came from him and as long as she felt that strength he would not leave her completely. Her changed self had his mark on it.
The trees on shore formed a dark wall tapering off to the left and tapering further into the distance on the other side. The sky grew brighter and she thought how the sky cared nothing for what happened beneath it and she tried to take some of that neutrality into herself. The water came up just under her nose and she swam and thought what had happened was hardly a universal tragedy. A dull pain sat in her as she thought this. Who ever said that one got what one wanted. It was a small thing compared to … well, to a lot of things. She’d gotten over things before
none like this
she’d left things behind
this was more
she couldn’t speak of it
this was the first thing only hers
she would have to forget.
It was too great it was her heart
. She couldn’t explain and to try and to fail would be worse.
It pressed in her.
Life simply went on. He was not the only man.
Her heart did not believe it
. There were other men in the world.
There was only one
. She would try to live a life he would be proud of.
She could not imagine it
. She would always have him with her.
He would go he would disappear he was already disappearing already he was gone
. He had given her a great thing.
He has gone, said her heart
. She would not let this defeat her.
Her heart swam on ahead
. She would keep going, she would never speak of it.
Her heart went on without her
. No one would know. She swam through the cold water and let cold reason take over and the heart which had asked for too much left her behind and when she emerged from the water on the rocky beach she had let go of it and there was a new version in her, a sort of second heart. She went in with one heart and came out with a second heart inside.
From her bed Ann Lord watched the figure swimming through the yellow dawn and saw herself for a moment as someone else might have seen her objectively and felt oddly compassionate and wondered at her thoughts. Had that really been herself? Then she saw a strange thing. A smooth mound of water rose glistening alongside the swimmer and Ann Lord felt it rising in her own chest, a little wave curling alongside staying with her, saying
I am here swimming up from this sea beside you I am here I have always been here your true self I was never gone and though you thought it came from him it was really yourself your whole self entire
swimming underwater all the time there beside you I was always there beside your gliding boats and your flapping boats and your humming grinding boats all along I have been alongside you I have always been here I never left
.
In the morning Ann Lord asked to see a priest.
Nina’s head popped in the door. Oh Mr. Granger, she said. Sorry, I didn’t know anyone was in here.
Oliver Granger pointed to the bed. Sleeping, he mouthed.
Nina tiptoed in. She making any sense? she whispered.
She’s making perfect sense. She says the apostles are calling.
As Nina gazed down at her mother, Oliver Granger stole a glance at her. Over the years he’d stolen many glimpses of Nina Lord wading at the Promontory picnic on the Fourth of July or sucking on a Popsicle at the Labor Day parade. He saw her in cutoffs and big shirts like the other girls and as she got older thrift shop dresses like ones his own mother used to wear but torn at the seams. He and Lily had seen her in
The Crucible
in western Massachusetts—Lily had family in the Berkshires—and Nina had starred in the Three O’Clock Island benefit production of
Carousel
. But Oliver Granger had hardly exchanged a word with Nina Lord.
Ann Lord’s breath grew labored and they left the room together. Nina started down the stairs.
Mr. Granger, do you know a man named Harris? Some friend of Mother’s.
There’s Larry Harris from Newport. I’m not sure if your mother really knew …
We think it’s his first name.
Harris … Harris …
Suddenly for no good reason Oliver Granger remembered the fellow at Carl and Lila’s wedding that terrible weekend. He was that doctor … Arlen was his name, Harris Arlen. There now what would Lily say to that? Always accusing him of forgetting everything, here was something he didn’t forget. Oliver had seen him
again, Harris Arlen, by chance in Chicago … was it Arlen? something like that anyway … must have been ten years after he’d driven him that morning to the Wittenborns’ boat, he didn’t forget that either … he’d seen him outside the museum in Chicago waiting for Lily to buy her postcards … Harris Arlen was with a beautiful woman wearing a man’s suit and no makeup, a woman clearly not his wife, quite remarkable-looking … Oliver remembered the woman almost more than he’d remembered Harris Arlen.
Your Uncle Carl had a friend named Harris, said Oliver. Rather dashing figure.
Nina stopped on the stairs. Who was he?
A doctor from Chicago. He came to their wedding. Played a frightful saxophone I remember.
Dashing?