Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger (42 page)

“This will take some thought,” Mark said, pulling at his beard.

Slowly and daintily, Mrs. Darcy made her way past the whole group of them and stood at the edge of the ocean to adjust her red rubber bathing cap. Her skin was so white that she looked startling among the sun-browned children in the surf. She turned once, waved, before she walked straight out into the waves until they were hip high. Then she raised her hands and dove.

“You know I don’t believe I’ve ever seen your mother swim before,” Mark said to Maria.

Maria stood open-mouthed. “She doesn’t,” she finally said. In years past, her mother’s beach routine had never varied: up around nine, a walk perhaps, some shopping, drinks with friends, but never — never — had she actually gone for a swim. Maria burst into tears. “She needs help,” Maria said.

“Oh, come on,” Ginny said. “We all do. Look, I’ll drive all the kids up to the trampoline for a while, okay?”

Before them, just beyond the breakers, Mrs. Darcy’s red bathing cap bobbed like a cork in the rise and fall of the waves.

T
HREE DAYS PASSED, ALL
of them sunny and blue, calm and idyllic. Caswell arrived. The Lollipop settled into the old routine of summers past. Plans were made and carried out, menus
planned, groceries were bought and cooked. Caswell and Mark chartered a boat out of Murrell’s Inlet and took Bill fishing. Maria was always amazed at how well Caswell and Mark got along; she couldn’t imagine what they had to say to each other. Trixie’s girls found some nice boys from Charleston to date. Old friends came and went. Margaret took Mrs. Darcy to lunch at Litchfield Plantation. Pop was mentioned often, casually and affectionately, and Mrs. Darcy seemed not to mind. She did not mention the “presence” or the blue-eyed stranger again. She continued to pad about the house in her flip-flops and housecoat, but she showed some interest in the cooking and she played checkers with Christy and Andrew.

By Thursday morning, Trixie had begun to relax. She thought it was time to interest her mother in Shrink Art. Trixie had brought all the materials with her, and now she unpacked them and brought them into the kitchen and spread them out. The others had gone crabbing up at Huntington Beach State Park. “Now Mother,” Trixie said, “let’s do a little bit of this. It’s really fun, really easy, and you’ll just be amazed at what you can make.”

“Maybe a little later, dear,” Mrs. Darcy said. Mrs. Darcy sat in a wicker armchair, looking out at the beach.

“No,” Trixie said firmly. “Now is the time. They’ll be back before long, then we’ll have to make sandwiches. Now look, Mother, all you do is trace designs onto this clear plastic, using these permanent markers. Or you can make your own designs, of course. Then you cut them out and bake them for three minutes and — “

“
Bake
them?” Mrs. Darcy echoed faintly.

“Sure!” Trixie said. “Then they turn into something exactly like stained glass. They’re really lovely. You can make jewelry,
Christmas ornaments, whatever. They make lovely Christmas ornaments.”

“But how would you hang them up?” Mrs. Darcy came to stand beside her daughter at the table.

“Oh, you punch a little hole before you put them in the oven,” she said. “I’ve got the hole puncher right here.”

Trixie spread out the plastic sheets, the designs, the permanent pens. She turned the oven on to three hundred degrees. “Okay,” she said. “All set. Which one do you want to try?”

“Maybe this,” Mrs. Darcy said. She placed a sheet of the clear plastic over a design involving a bunch of tulips stuck into a wooden shoe. Trixie was mildly surprised by the choice, more surprised by her mother’s easy acquiescence. Everything seemed so much better since the weather had cleared. Perhaps things were not so complicated, so serious as they had thought. Still, it was reassuring that Mark and Maria had arranged treatment for Mother, back in Raleigh. A most competent doctor by all accounts, highly recommended. Trixie felt sure that Mother would agree to see him. The teakettle began to whistle. Trixie got up to make the iced tea. This pitcher, old heavy brown pottery, had been at the beach house ever since she could remember. Out of the corner of her eye, Trixie watched Mother biting her tongue a bit and gripping her marker tightly, like a small, pudgy, dutiful child. Trixie added lemon and sugar to the tea.

“There now,” Mrs. Darcy said, sitting back in the chair, her round wrinkled face rather flushed. She looked at Trixie hopefully. “Now what?”

“Now you cut it out,” Trixie said, “and punch a hole, and we put it in the oven for three minutes.”

Mrs. Darcy cut the design out carefully, using some old roundtipped
scissors that Trixie had found way back in a kitchen drawer. Trixie took the design from her, somewhat distressed to find that Mother had colored the tulips blue. Still, it would not do to appear disparaging. “This is so pretty, Mother,” Trixie said. “Now you can watch it shrink if you want to.” Mrs. Darcy turned her chair, so that she could peer through the oven’s glass door.

The kitchen door burst open at that moment and there they were suddenly, all of the rest of them, with two coolers full of scrambling crabs and the children all talking at once.

“Just leave those on the porch,” Trixie directed. “Go on, take them right back out this instant. Right now. Go on. Bill, what do you mean tracking in here this way? Go take off those shoes on the porch.”

“Bill fell in, Bill fell in!” Andrew danced up and down, still holding his piece of twine with the rock and the chicken neck tied to the end.

“You’re so excited, darling,” Maria said.

“Well, I’m starving.” Still wearing her black bikini, Ginny came barefooted into the kitchen, so that she was the closest one to her mother, the only one who actually saw Mrs. Darcy’s face as she watched her tulips shrink, and shrink, and shrink before her eyes. Ginny stopped, caught in the oddest sensation: it might have been her own face before her, it might have been her own voice that began to scream.

A
FINE DRIZZLE FELL
all day Sunday, jeweling the surface of things. They left for hours, it seemed, and their leave-taking took up most of the day. Lolly knew that they had been up far into the night, deciding what to do about her. She realized that she had created a problem by her refusal to leave. But she did not
want
to
leave yet, and she had never created a problem before — not ever, for anyone. So. She remained stubborn and went to bed early, leaving them to deal with her as best they could.

As they told themselves over and over, the others had to go. There was no question. Caswell had to fly straight up to Washington for a conference. The children’s schools were beginning again, and Trixie had to buy school clothes for the girls. Maria and Mark had faculty meetings, workshops, classes. It was hard to believe that Christy would be in the first grade.

“Look,” Ginny had surprised them all by saying. “Look, I’ll stick around for a week or so. Okay? You all go on. I’ll bring her back to Raleigh before long.” It was so unlike Ginny to be responsible that Maria had stared at her with considerable interest.

“I’d like to know why you’re doing this,” Maria said.

“Why not?” Ginny had answered.

And they had left, Trixie and Caswell and their large children in the long sleek car, Maria and Mark in their van. Christy and Andrew waved madly from the rear window as long as they stayed in sight. Lolly stood on the rainswept back porch, looking across the road to see the rising mist over the marsh. She traced designs in the drops of water that clung to the sides of the water heater. Each little drop seemed singular and profound, seemed to hold some iridescence of its own, or perhaps it was just the reflection from passing cars.

“Mama,” Ginny said for the third time. Ginny stood in the kitchen door wearing white slacks, a windbreaker. She looked Lolly in the eye. “Listen, Mama, I’m driving up to Long Beach to have dinner with a friend, okay? The number is by the telephone. I might be back tonight, or I might be back tomorrow. There’s a pizza in the freezer. Okay?”

“Okay.” Lolly smiled at Ginny and watched her leave too, running lightly down the steps, slamming into her little car.

Lolly went back in the house. The silence wrapped her up like soft cotton. She got a Coke from the refrigerator, poured it, and sucked off the foam. She smiled to herself, turned on some lights. After a while she went to the telephone and called Margaret and in a little while Margaret came, bringing the friend she’d told Lolly about.

This friend was a wealthy widow of their own age, from Norfolk. “The doctor can’t seem to find any explanation for it,” she said. “Some sort of damaged nerve. It’s just this intense pain, right here.” She lifted her forearm so that the heavy bracelets jangled like wind chimes. “Sometimes the pain is so intense I just can’t seem to go out at all. I can’t even get out of bed.”

“I know,” said Lolly. Her pale eyes darkened and focused; she smiled. “Lie down,” Lolly said, indicating the daybed, and she took the stringy manicured hand of Margaret’s friend in her own soft white ringless fingers.

“That’s right, dear,” Margaret rasped from the wicker armchair. “Don’t be nervous, dear. This is exactly the way she fixed my shoulder. I was lying just like that on my own chaise longue. The green one. Remarkable. Now just do exactly what Lolly says. Close your eyes, dear. Relax. That’s right. Relax.”

Later, healed and radiant, Margaret’s friend wanted to pay Lolly, to make some contribution at least to the charity of her choice. Lolly declined, and they all had a glass of sherry.

“Really, how do you do it?” Margaret’s friend asked. “Really, if you only knew how much money I’ve spent on doctors. Why, I even tried a chiropractor at Virginia Beach.”

“It’s nothing,” Lolly said.

“Listen to that!” Margaret hooted. “Ha!” Margaret blew out a great puff of smoke that hung blue in the comfortable glow of the lamps.

“It’s not me at all,” Lolly told them. “I’m just an agent, you might say. An intermediary.”

“Do you do much work with arthritis?” Margaret’s friend asked. “I have a friend who’s in the most terrible pain.”

“I could give it a try,” Lolly said.

When they had gone, she heated up the pizza and drank a glass of milk, leaving all her dishes in the sink. She took a bath. She put on a faded terry housecoat. Opening the doors to the ocean, Lolly went out on the deck. Out here everything was cold and clean-smelling and a sharpness bit through the air, signaling summer’s end. There were few lights along the beach; most of the summer people and renters had gone. Beyond Lolly, out in the darkness, waves crashed onto the sand. She could taste their salt on her lips. Lolly was not even cold. She seated herself in a damp deck chair, and leaned back. “Now,” she said into the night.

Acknowledgments

V
ERY SPECIAL THANKS TO
these good friends: my wonderful editor, Shannon Ravenel; my invaluable agent, Liz Darhansoff; Louis D. Rubin, Jr., beloved teacher back when all the stories started; my publisher, Elisabeth Scharlatt; Craig Popelars, Michael Taeckens, Courtney Wilson, Christina Gates, and all the terrific people at Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill who have made this book possible; Mona Sinquefield, for her help in preparing this manuscript; and to the memory of Faith Sale, great spirit. I am indebted to Mike Troy and Annie Dillard for the jokes in “Toastmaster,” and to Cy Hogue for his legal expertise on embezzlement in “Big Girl.” Maggie Powell is still my best reader ever. Most thanks of all go to our children, Page Seay and Amity Crowther, who have put up with such a scribbling mother all these years.

Lee Smith is the author of fifteen previous books of fiction— three collections of short stories and a dozen novels, including the bestsellers
Fair and Tender Ladies
and
The Last Girls,
winner of the Southern Book Award for fiction. The recipient of a 1999 Academy Award for literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina.