Pucket’s was a little red clapboard store with a gravel lot. At the sound of the bell attached to the door, Mrs. Pucket looked up from a magazine and said, “Howdy, young feller.”
The sight of the grandmotherly woman jolted Nick with a pang of conscience, and he shuffled across the unpainted floorboards deeper into the dim light, where dust floated in shafts of sun angling from the dirty windows to the racks of candy. Silently he surveyed the array. He glanced at Mrs. Pucket, who was absorbed in the magazine. He pulled his hand from his pocket, counted the hot, damp change, then chose his favorite, two long thin straps of taffy in wrappers with pictures from the
Archie
comic strips, and carried them to the counter, which was taller than him.
Mrs. Pucket’s head appeared over the edge. “You’ins mighty quiet today. Cat got your tongue?”
Nick had never understood that expression. He said, “No, ma’am.”
Mrs. Pucket laughed. “You shore are cute. Look at ’em big brown eyes. Where’d you get those big eyes?”
“The zoo.” Nick wasn’t sure why he said that.
Mrs. Pucket’s laugh sounded much like a cough. “That’ll be twenty cents.”
Nick was glad that he had a quarter left over to put back in the purse. Maybe he wouldn’t be caught after all. He thanked her and left. Outside, Lyman and Otto Jospin, two skinny boys in dirty clothes, were throwing rocks at a trash can. Their father was a gravedigger and they lived in a trailer in the cemetery behind Pucket’s. Pausing, Lyman and Otto stared at Nick, who smiled and hurried past. Walking along Forest Avenue, he ate one of the pieces of taffy, then zipped the other in a pocket of his camping shorts.
A station wagon pulled up. Jimbo Eppers leaned out the passenger window and said, “Hey, Nick. Been to Pucket’s?”
Nick stopped and put his hands in his pockets. “Yeah.”
“Whadya get?”
“Nothing.”
Jimbo’s mother leaned across the seat. “Nick, dahlin’, does your mother know you’re down here by yourself?”
“Maybe. It’s okay.”
“Get in, honey. I’ll give you a ride.”
“No thank you.”
“Get in the car this minute, young man.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He had to use both hands to pull the door open.
The drive home was very short. Mrs. Eppers parked the white station wagon behind his mother’s brown one, which was nearly identical, both with wood decal siding and long silver roof racks.
“I think I’ll see how Margaret’s holding up,” Mrs. Eppers said, dashing Nick’s hopes that she would drop him off and drive away. She quickly stepped out of the car and walked in the house through the sitting room door without knocking, calling out, “Mars!”
“You’re going to get licked,” Jimbo said.
Nick jumped out of the car and ran through the garage and opened the kitchen door. He looked both ways quickly. The kitchen was empty. He was up on the counter, on his knees, placing the little wallet back on the sill when the women walked in. For a moment, glancing over his shoulder, it was hard to tell them apart. Their short dark hair was held back by bands, and they wore tapered slacks that came to their ankles and sleeveless cotton shirts. Mrs. Eppers was trying not to smile and his mother’s face was red with anger. Nick lowered himself down to the linoleum floor.
“Nicholas Rutledge, where have you been?”
Nick muttered, “Around.”
“Did you go to Pucket’s?”
Nick was silent.
“Nick, tell me the truth.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Nick squeezed his lips into a curvy line.
“I’ve got to get home and make dinner,” Mrs. Eppers said, backing out of the room.
“Thanks, Nancy.” His mother crossed the floor and knelt by him.
“Nick, what were you thinking?” Her voice was gentle. She put her hand on his shoulder.
Nick was silent. He looked at his feet, shrugged.
“Nick, you know you’re not supposed to walk to Pucket’s on your own, a little boy like you. Some bad people might get you.”
“Who?”
“Strangers. There are bad people in the world.”
Nick glanced up at her face, back at his feet.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He looked in her eyes and saw that she wasn’t angry but worried. “I won’t go again by myself.”
“You took your milk money, didn’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh, Nick, how could you?” She shook her head, put her hand to her brow, and squinted. “We’re not like the Eppers. We don’t have much money. You can’t buy candy whenever you want. You won’t be able to buy milk at school. Do you see?”
“Taffy tastes better.”
She shook him by the shoulders. “Nick. There’s not enough money. We don’t have enough money.” She raised her voice. “I don’t know how we’re going to pay our bills. We might run out of money. God, there’s never enough money. There’s simply not enough. Never enough. Your father doesn’t make enough money. They don’t pay ministers enough.”
Nick had turned his head. His mother was sobbing. She stopped shaking him and held him close. “Oh, Nickfish, I’m so sorry. It’s not your fault. Okay?” She looked at him brightly, smiled through tears, her cheeks wet. “You’re too young to realize the value of money.”
N
antucket is like a newly born place. Part of it is the wind from the ocean, and I’m sure the flowers are so beautiful because of all the moisture, but
every
flower—most of them are flowers I’m familiar with and many of them are flowers we grow in the South—is more lush. Just fresher. The yellow Scotch broom is in bloom. It’s a shrub up here. I’d only seen it in flower arrangements and to see it growing is thrilling. Annuals like nasturtiums are wonderful and the perennials, like hollyhocks, are just spectacular. And then those beach roses, the
Rosa rugosa
, a pink rose that almost grows wild up here. But the best thing of all is the roses growing up on the rooftops. I’ve never
seen
anything like that. I borrow Harper’s bicycle and ride and ride, looking around for the roses covering the rooftops. I do believe Nantucket is one of the most exquisite places in terms of its climate and visual beauty.
The first morning, exploring Siasconset on the bicycle, I saw the town tennis court and I peered through the shrubs. It was like being in a dream. The ladies had on big straw hats and long white linen skirts and their blouses had big leg-o’-mutton sleeves. The men were wearing long white linen pants and elegant white linen shirts. Just enchanted, I watched them playing and thought, Oh my goodness, this is the world of a hundred years ago, and I felt really weepy, thinking, Oh, I don’t want Cage to be in trouble. I want him to make a place for himself up here so I can become a part of this world. Later Beth Slade tells me they were filming the tennis players in period costume for an ad but I didn’t see any people with cameras. Nobody else was watching.
There’s a tragic irony in Cage going to jail in Nantucket two years to the day after Nick died in San Francisco. I was bracing myself for the anniversary of his death, and Cage’s news caught me off guard and brought a double sadness rushing into my heart like a winter wind. The three weeks in England were the first time since his death that I was able to laugh aloud. Nick was the son closest to my heart. Where Cage and Harper resemble their father physically with their blue eyes, Nick had my dark hair and eyes and the shape of my face and my quiet temperament. When he was tiny, I would take him to the Junior League and church committee meetings and give him a little toy and he would entertain himself quietly for an hour, never a nuisance. He was the most loving one, the one I could always count on. A mother may love all her children equally but there is one to whom she feels a special bond. This was the one God took from me and I suppose there is a lesson in that.
Nothing is sadder than parents burying their own child. Nick was cremated and we spread his ashes off the top of Roan Mountain in North Carolina where Franklin had taken the boys hiking from the time they could walk. Like any brothers born so close, Cage and Nick fought often in their adolescence but they loved each other fiercely. Cage wept the whole way walking up the mountain and after Franklin read the committal service and we scattered the ashes, Cage stood on the edge of the cliff for a long time as if he might follow Nick into the abyss.
Now it seems as if he has.
A few minutes after Franklin and I walked in the door back home in Memphis, jet-lagged from the long flights, the phone rang and the operator said it was a collect call from the Bridgewater State Mental Institution. At first I thought it was one of Cage’s jokes. But when they put Cage through, I knew it was real from the desperation in his voice. He tried to sound upbeat, asked about our journey, and when I asked him why on earth he was in a mental hospital, he said, “I don’t know, Mom. I haven’t done anything wrong,” and he started crying. He sounded like a little boy, just pitiful. I asked him what the hospital was like and he replied, “You don’t want to know. You wouldn’t be able to sleep.”
Perhaps I should have waited for Franklin to get over the terrible flu that he picked up crossing the ocean—he started vomiting on the leg from Atlanta to Memphis—but trying to be brave and spare him, I decided to come up here by myself. The afternoon I arrived Harper took me to the house, where the yard was full of funny old boats and paint cans. We worked and worked for days to clean up before the owners arrived. Oh, those people, when they got there, they were so cool to me. This is cruel, I thought. Mrs. Taylor thinks that I’m responsible, that I haven’t been a good mother or he wouldn’t have turned out like this. There’s a lesson there somewhere. Never transfer your anger from one person to another.
I spoke to the lawyer that Harper had hired, a boy just out of law school who was apologetic about the terrible outcome, and I spoke to the psychiatrist who had sent Cage off to Bridgewater, a curt man who had trouble looking me in the eye. He said that he suspected that Cage was manic-depressive. That was shocking news to me and Harper, for we had been certain that Cage dropping out of Vanderbilt so close to finishing and all his wild behavior on Nantucket were a result of his depression over Nick’s death. I asked if a traumatic event could trigger a manic episode and he said quite possibly.
On visiting day I fly to Hyannis and rent a car. You can get a good deal on a day rental. Bridgewater is a big, fearful-looking place. I park and go inside the waiting room. I’m sure I have everything but
First Time
written on my chest. The waiting room is unpleasant and the staff who ask if they can help you are these hardened people. They tell me I’m early and can’t see Cage until midafternoon. A matronly woman who has visited someone inside and is on her way out sees that I’m flustered and comes up and says, “Would you like to go and have lunch somewhere and I will tell you what I know?”
We go to a pizza place in a little shopping center not too far away and she tells me that she’s a schoolteacher and comes
every week
to see the man who was her fiancé, a high school principal and very upstanding citizen, an absolute straight arrow. Every day he visited his parents, who were elderly and didn’t have much money. He was very concerned what would happen to them if something should happen to him and he decided the best thing to do was not let that happen. He went to their apartment and shot both of them. So he’s in the facility for life. The story fills me with a hopeless feeling. I ask his diagnosis and she tells me that he’s bipolar, manic-depressive, which is shocking, for I had no idea that manic-depressives could be so violent. She tells me that once you get in Bridgewater, it’s very hard for the family to get you out. I think, Well, I have to start working on that right away.
I adhere to the hints of the schoolteacher, who told me to get to the waiting room early so I can be at the front of the line and to get in as quickly as possible because the time passes so fast. She told me to tell my son to be polite to the guards, not to talk back, and to keep a low profile, which has always been hard for Cage to do. They lead us into a big room with all these tables and chairs. It’s a shock to see Cage come out dressed like a criminal in blue denim. His hair hasn’t been so long since he was a teenager. When he sees me, his face lights up like a tiny child thrilled to see a parent.
“Hey, Mama.” Hugging me, he smells like he could use a shower. “Welcome to the nuthouse.”
“Oh, son.” I manage to smile and hold back the tears. “Is it as awful as it looks?”
“Wretched beyond words.” He laughs and sits down across a small table. “I stole a butter knife and for six days they had me in Maximum 1, sharing a cell with a double murderer.”
Cage must see the horror on my face because he touches my hand and says, “Don’t worry, Mom, after I met with the shrink in charge, they moved me back to the med wing, Max 2. Where’s Pop?”
“He’ll come next week. He has a terrible flu, can’t keep anything down. The break was so good for him. He’s been stressed-out. The diocese might be torn asunder by extremists on both sides.”
“Fags and bigots,” Cage says.
“That’s not polite.”
“Okay, homos and homophobes.” Cage shakes his head at the absurdity. “Yeah, well, Pop doesn’t need to see his firstborn locked up like an animal. How’s Grandmother?”
“She’s fine. She told me to tell you that she loves you and is praying for you.”
“I’m sorry to do this to y’all. But there’s been a mistake. I don’t belong here.”