Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger (34 page)

Sheila looks at my chart and then back at me, her eyes wide. “It doesn’t say,” she begins.

“Dr. Culbertson said it would be perfectly all right,” I assure her. I pull a twenty-dollar bill from my purse, which I keep right beside me in bed, and hand it to her. “I know it’s a lot of trouble, but it’s very important,” I say. “I think I’ll just slip on the red sweater and the black wraparound skirt — that’s so easy to get on. They’re both in the drawer, dear.”

“Okay, honey,” Sheila says, and she gets me dressed and sets me in my chair. I put on lipstick and have Sheila fluff up my hair in the back, where it’s gotten so flat from lying in bed. Sheila hands me my purse and my notebook and then I’m off, waving at the girls at the nurses’ station as I purr past them. They wave back. I feel fine now. I take the elevator down to the first floor and then motor through the lobby, speaking to acquaintances. I pass the gift shop, the newspaper stand, and all the waiting rooms.

It’s chilly outside. I head up the walkway past the par 3 golf
course, where I spy Parker Howard, ludicrous in those bright green pants they sell to old men, putting on the third hole. “Hi, Parker!” I cry.

“Hello, Alice,” he calls. “Nice to see you out!” He sinks the putt.

I enter the multipurpose building and head for the library, where the writers’ group is already in progress. It has taken me longer to drive over from the Health Center than I’d supposed.

Miss Elena is reading, but she stops and looks up when I come in, her mouth a perfect
O
. Everybody looks at Martha Louise.

“Why, Alice,” Martha Louise says. She raises her eyebrows. “We didn’t expect that you would be joining us today. We heard that you were in the Health Center.”

“I was,” I say. “But I’m out now.”

“Evidently,” Martha Louise says.

I ride up to the circular table, set my brake, get out my notebook, and ask Miss Elena for a copy of whatever she’s reading. Wordlessly, she slides one over. But still she does not resume. They’re all looking at me.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Well, Alice, last week when you were absent, we laid out some ground rules for this writing group.” Martha Louise gains composure as she goes along. “We are all in agreement here, Alice, that if this is to be a pleasant and meaningful club for all of us, we need to restrict our subject matter to what everyone enjoys.”

“So?” I don’t get it.

“We’ve also adopted an official name for the group.” Now Martha Louise is cheerful as a robin.

“What is it?”

“It’s the Happy Memories Club,” she announces, and they all nod.

I am beginning to get it.

“You mean to tell me — “ I start.

“I mean to tell you that if you wish to be a part of this group, Alice Scully, you will have to calm yourself down and keep your subject matter in check. We don’t come here to be upset,” Martha Louise says serenely.

They are all watching me closely now, Vern Hofstetter in particular. I think they expect an outburst.

But I won’t give them the satisfaction.

“Fine,” I say. This is a lie. “That sounds just fine to me. Good idea!” I smile at everybody.

There is a perceptible relaxation then, an audible settling back into chairs, as Miss Elena resumes her reading. It’s a travelogue piece entitled, “Shakespeare and His Haunts,” about a tour she made in England several years ago. But I find myself unable to listen. I simply can’t hear Elena, or Joy, who reads next, or even Vern.

“Well, is that it for today? Anybody else?” Martha Louise raps her knuckles against the table.

“I brought something,” I say, “but I don’t have copies.”

I look at Vern, who shrugs and smiles and says I should go ahead anyway. Everybody else looks at Martha Louise.

“Well, go on then,” she directs tartly, and I begin.

After Rose’s disappearance, my mother took to her bed and turned her face to the wall, leaving me in charge of everything. Oh, how I worked! I worked like a dog, long hours, a cruelly unnatural life for a spirited young woman. Yet I persevered. People in the town, including our minister, complimented me; I was discussed and admired. Our boardinghouse stayed full, and somehow I managed, with Ocie’s help, to get the meals on the table. I
smiled and chattered at mealtime. Yet inside I was starving, starving for love and life.

Thus it is not surprising, I suppose, that I should fall for the first man who showed any interest in me. He was a schoolteacher who had been educated at the University in Charlottesville, a thin, dreamy young man from one of the finest families in Virginia. His grandfather had been the governor. He used to sit out by the sound every day after supper, reading, and one day I joined him there. It was a lovely June evening; the sound was full of sailboats, and the sky above us was as round and blue as a bowl.

“I was reading a poem about a girl with beautiful yellow hair,” he said, “and then I look up and what do I see? A real girl with beautiful yellow hair.”

For some reason I started to cry, not even caring what my other boarders thought as they sat up on the porch looking out over this landscape in which we figured.

“Come here,” he said, and he took my hand and led me behind the old rose-covered boathouse, where he pulled me to him and kissed me curiously, as if it were an experiment.

His name was Carl Redding Armistead. He had the reedy look of the poet, but all the assurance of the privileged class. I was older than he, but he was more experienced. He was well educated and had been to Europe several times.

“You pretty thing,” he said, and kissed me again. The scent of the roses was everywhere.

I went that night to his room, and before the summer was out, we had lain together in nearly every room at the boardinghouse. We were crazy for each other by then, and I didn’t care what might happen, or who knew. On Saturday evenings I’d leave a cold supper for the rest, and Carl and I would take the skiff and
row out to Sand Island, where the wild ponies were, and take off all our clothes and make love. Sometimes my back would be red and bleeding from the rough black sand and the broken shells on the beach.

“Just a minute! Just a minute here!” Martha Louise is pounding on the table, and Frances Weinberg is crying as usual. Vern Hofstetter is staring at me in a manner that indicates he has heard every word I’ve said.

“Well, I think that’s terrific!” Shirley Lassiter giggles and bats her painted blue eyelids at us all.

Of course our romance did not last. Nothing that intense can be sustained, although the loss of such intensity can scarcely be borne. Quite simply, Carl and I foundered upon the prospect of the future. He had to go on to that world that awaited him; I could not leave Mama. Our final parting was bitter — we were spent, exhausted by the force of what had passed between us. He did not even look back as he sped away in his red sports car, nor did I cry.

Nor did I ever tell him about the existence of Carl, my son, whom I bore defiantly out of wedlock eight months later, telling no one who the father was. Oh, those were hard, black days! I was ostracized by the very people who had formerly praised me, and ogled by the men in the boardinghouse, who now considered me a fallen woman. I wore myself down to a frazzle taking care of Mama and the baby at the same time.

One night, I was so tired I felt that I would actually die, yet little Carl would not stop crying. Nothing would quiet him — not rocking, not the breast, not walking the room. He had an unpleasant cry, like a cat mewing. I remember looking out my window at the quiet town, where everyone slept — everyone on this earth, I
felt, except for me. I held Carl out at arm’s length and looked at him good in the streetlight, at his red, twisted little face. I had an awful urge to throw him out the window —

“That’s enough!” several of them say at once. Martha Louise was standing.

But it is Miss Elena who speaks, “I cannot believe,” she says severely, “that out of your entire life, Alice Scully, this is all you can find to write about. What of your long marriage to Mr. Scully? Your seven grandchildren? Those of us who have not been blessed with grandchildren would give — “

Of course I loved Norman Scully. Of course I love my grandchildren. I love Solomon too. I love them all. Miss Elena is like my sons, too terrified to admit to herself how many people we can love, how various we are. She does not want to hear it, any more than they do, any more than you do. You all want us to
never change, never change.

I did not throw my baby out the window, after all, and my mother finally died, and I sold the boardinghouse then and was able, at last, to go to school.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Dr. Culbertson appear at the library door, accompanied by a man I do not know. Martha Louise says, “I simply cannot believe that a former
English teacher
— “

This strikes me as very funny. My mind is filled with enormous sentences as I back up my chair and then start forward, out the other door and down the hall and outside into the sweet spring day, where the sunshine falls on my face as it did in those days on the beach, my whole body hot and aching and sticky with sweat and salt and blood, the wild ponies paying us no mind as they ate the tall grass that grew at the edge of the dunes. Sometimes the ponies
came so close that we could reach out and touch them. Their coats were shaggy and rough and full of burrs, I remember.

Oh I remember everything as I cruise forward on the sidewalk that neatly separates the rock garden from the golf course. I turn right at the corner, instead of left toward the Health Center. “Fore!” shouts Parker Howard, waving at me.
A former English teacher,
Martha Louise said. These sidewalks are like diagrams, parallel lines and dividers: oh, I could diagram anything. The semicolon, I used to say, is like a scale; it must separate items of equal rank, I’d warn them. Do not use a semicolon between a clause and a phrase or between a main clause and a subordinate clause. Do not write,
I loved Carl Redding Armistead; a rich man’s son
. Do not write,
If I had really loved Carl Armistead; I would have left with him despite all obstacles
. Do not write,
I still feel his touch; which has thrilled me throughout my life.

I turn at the top of the hill and motor along the sidewalk toward the Residence Center, hoping to see Solomon. The sun is in my eyes. Do not carelessly link two sentences with only a comma. Do not write,
I want to see Solomon again, he has meant so much to me.
To correct this problem, subordinate one of the parts.
I want to see Solomon, because he has meant so much to me
. Because he has meant. So much. To me. Fragments. Fragments all. I push the button to open the door into the Residence Center, and sure enough, they’ve brought him out. They’ve dressed him in his madras plaid shirt and wheeled him in front of the television, which he hates. I cruise right over.

“Solomon,” I say, but at first he doesn’t respond when he looks at me. I come even closer. “Solomon!” I say sharply, bumping his wheelchair. He notices me then, and a little light comes into his eyes.

I cup my hands. “Solomon,” I say. “I’ll give you a kiss if you can guess what I’ve got in my hands.”

He looks at me for a while longer.

“Now Mrs. Scully,” his nurse starts.

“Come on,” I say. “What have I got in here?”

“An elephant,” Solomon finally says.

“Close enough!” I cry, and lean right over to kiss his sweet old cheek, being unable to reach his mouth.

“Mrs. Scully,” his nurse starts again, but I’m gone, I’m history, I’m out the front door and around the parking circle and up the long entrance drive to the highway. It all connects. Everything connects. The sun is bright, the dogwoods are blooming, the state flower of Virginia is the dogwood, I can still see the sun on the Chickahominy River and my own little sons as they sail their own little boats in a tidal pool by the Chesapeake Bay, they were all blond boys once, though their hair would darken later, Annapolis is the capital of Maryland, the first historic words ever transmitted by telegraph came to Maryland: “What hath God wrought?” The sun is still shining. It glares off the snow on Pikes Peak, it gleams through the milky blue glass of the old apothecary jar in the window of Norman Scully’s shop, it warms the asphalt on that road where Rose and I lie waiting, waiting, waiting.

Stevie and Mama

R
oxy pushes the buttons that roll all the windows down as she drives across the long bridge to Amelia Island. It’s dead low tide. On either side of the bridge, mud flats stretch out for miles, broken up by glistening streams of water winding through patches of tall green grass. Roxy pulls the rubber band off her ponytail and lets her hair blow back in the rush of funky, fishy air. She puts her cigarette out and breathes in deeply. No other air, anyplace else in the world, smells anything like this. March — it’s already the first of March. It’s been way, way too long. Roxy follows A1A through Yulee past the tourist places selling pecans and gator heads and Indian River oranges, noticing the fancy new sign at the right turn down to the southern point where the Ritz-Carlton is. That is not their end of the island, hers and Willie’s.

Roxy turns left toward Fernandina Beach, which still looks mostly like it did back when they bought the beach house years ago with that little windfall they got when his mother died. Miss Rowena!
Lord.
First Roxy thought Miss Rowena would never die. Then she thought she would never get over it. They bought the house for thirty thousand dollars cash, can you believe that? Now the land alone is probably worth five times this much. Roxy drives
past the old amusement park, now closed. Not only closed but condemned, she hates this. She and Willie used to neck on the Ferris wheel, way up high. From the top, you could see all the way across the island. But now teardowns are starting, even on their own sandy street. That little yellow house on the corner where the Cardinales used to live is totally gone, as if it had never existed. A brand-new house is already framed up, under construction in its place. Roxy remembers back when Lou Cardinale built that tiki bar out back, he used to be so proud of his mai tais, but they were way too sweet. Soon, Fernandina Beach won’t even exist anymore, not
this
Fernandina Beach, not theirs. The kids have been calling it a time warp for years.