Norine was waiting at the dormitory building, waving to us.
“Polly,” she said, “I have a phone message for you.”
My heart thumped. “For me?”
“Yes. While you were swimming, some young man called. Zachary Gray. You know him?”
I hadn’t told Norine who the flowers were from. “Yes.”
“He wanted to make sure you’d arrived safely. He said to give you his love, and he’ll call again.”
“Oh—thanks.” I could not help being pleased, and showing it. Then I said good night to Vee and Omio, thanked Norine again, and we all went to our rooms. I took a lukewarm bath and lay back in the tub, dazzled by Zachary’s flowers, by his call.
The bedroom was hot. I lit the mosquito coil and opened the shutters and lay down on the bed to read for a while. At home there are screens everywhere, and windows open to catch the breeze. Max had told me that when she and M.A. were growing up at Beau Allaire, not many people had screens, and they slept under white gauze mosquito nets. A mosquito net would not be a bad idea at Osia Theola.
The coil went out without my realizing it, and instantly I was attacked by invisible, soundless insects. I slapped at them, struck a match, and relit the coil. Realized I was going to have to close the shutters. I was bitten on the legs, the arms, the face.
I slammed the shutters closed. Scratched my legs. Rubbed my eye. Could feel it hot and itchy. I remembered Renny telling me that the vector, the biting insect which put Trypanozomas into the bloodstream and ultimately the heart, frequently enters the body with its lethal poison by biting the corner of the eyelid. I had a moment of utter panic.
Nonsense, Polly. You come from a family of scientists. Use your mind. Chagas’ and Netson’s diseases are endemic in South America, not in Cyprus. They don’t exist in Cyprus.
I rubbed my eyelid again. Looked in the mirror. The lid was red and puffy. Absurd. But I felt infected.
Idiot. Renny would have warned me if there was any Netson’s in Greece or Cyprus. Max would never have arranged the trip. Ursula would not have allowed it. Daddy wouldn’t even have considered it. There are plenty of biting bugs at home, nasty red bugs, shrilling mosquitoes, no-see-um bugs which bite and the bites puff up like the one on my eyelid and get red and feverish but are unimportant. That’s the kind of insect these Cyprus bugs were, just like the Benne Seed no-see-ums, itchy and horrid but not dangerous. Nobody would have a conference center where insects were a threat to life.
My heart began to beat less fearfully.
But it was hot. My sheet was wet. The fan was blowing a warm draft over me, doing no more than recirculating hot air. I put down my book and turned out the light; even the filament of the light bulb added to the heat of the room.
The coil burned slowly, its end barely glowing, so that I knew it was still lit. I was not being bitten anymore. I turned on my stomach, spread-eagled. The cool waters of the Mediterranean seemed eons ago; I was bathed in perspiration.
And I wanted Renny to sit by me on the bed and reassure me, tell me I needn’t worry about the bite on my eyelid.
How do you feel when you know that an insect bite on the corner of your eyelid means death to your heart? What a funny little muscle to hold life and death in its pumping.
But this wasn’t that kind of insect, that kind of bite.
I wanted to run to Renny, the way I had run when I fled Beau Allaire.
I called the hospital. ‘I’d like to speak to Dr. Queron Renier, please. It’s an emergency.’
‘Who is calling, please?’ The operator had my most unfavorite kind of Southern accent, nasal and whiny.
‘Well–could you just say it’s Polly?’
‘Just a minute, hon. I don’t know if he’s in.’
Of course he was in. He’d be in his quarters or on the floor. I waited. The nasal voice came again. ‘He’s not answering. May I leave him a message?’
I looked at the number of the phone in the booth, gave it to the voice on the other end of the line. ‘Please … please try to find him. Please, it’s urgent,’ I said. I could not control the trembling of my voice.
I would have to wait for Renny to call.
Suppose, for some reason, he wasn’t at the hospital? How long should I wait? And what then? I leaned against the wall of the phone booth and I wasn’t sure how long I could stand up.
The part of LeNoir Street where Straw had left me was mostly shops. A few dusty palmetto trees drooped in the morning sun. My breath fogged the glass of the phone booth, and I opened the door. A few people walked by. A few stores opened. I waited. Waited.
Half an hour.
I couldn’t stay in the phone booth all day.
I would have to go somewhere, do something. The night before, I had wanted to go home. Not now. I couldn’t go home.
I crouched over, as though I had cramps, and heard a funny noise, like an animal’s, and looked around to see what was making the noise, and it was coming from me. I pushed my hand against my mouth and it stopped.
Oh, Renny. Renny, help.
The phone was silent. I had been there for an hour. The street was waking up.
I had to go somewhere and there was nowhere to go. My foot throbbed, and blood continued to seep through the bandage. Numbly, not even thinking, I started away from the phone. I was a few yards down the street when it rang.
I rushed back.
Grabbed the phone off the hook. ‘Hello?’
‘Polly?’
‘Oh, Renny, Renny—’
‘Where are you? What’s wrong?’
I heard myself wailing. ‘My foot’s cut, and I’m bleeding all over the phone-booth floor—’
Renny’s voice was sharp. ‘Polly. Calm down. Tell me where you are, and what’s wrong.’
‘I’m in a phone booth on LeNoir Street near the post office. Can you come for me, oh, please, Renny, please—’
‘Where on LeNoir Street? Polly, don’t get hysterical, this isn’t like you.’
I looked around. ‘Two blocks south of the post office. I’m right by a hearing-aid place. I’m bleeding—’
‘All right,’ Renny said. ‘I’ve just finished making early rounds. I’ll be there in ten minutes.’
I gave a sob, but there were no tears with it; it was so dry it hurt my throat. ‘Hurry—please—’
The ten minutes I waited for Renny seemed longer than the hour before the phone rang. He drove up in his old green car, and I stumbled out of the booth. He hurried around to open the car door for me, and I almost fell in.
‘Let me see that foot.’
I leaned back against the shabby seat. Stuck my foot out at him.
‘Who bandaged it for you?’
‘Ursula Heschel.’
‘Polly, what happened?’
‘I cut it on a shell.’
His fingers worked the bandage free. ‘That’s a nasty cut. How did you get here?’
‘I walked partway, then I got a hitch.’
‘A hitch?’
‘Renny.’ My voice was heavy. ‘Hitching’s a federal offense in my family. But I couldn’t walk.’
‘No, Polly, you couldn’t.’ He opened the glove compartment and rummaged among maps and dark glasses and a can opener and pulled out an Ace bandage. ‘This will do until I can get you to the hospital and dress your foot. Then I’ll take you home.’
Now the tears came, spurting out, as sudden as a summer storm. ‘No, no, Renny, no, I don’t want to go home, I can’t go home, no—’ I was being incoherent and hysterical and I have never in my life been incoherent or hysterical.
Renny shut the glove compartment, took my foot and wrapped it in the Ace bandage, then shut the door and went around to the driver’s seat. He got in and sat down, waiting for me to get under control. ‘Polly, what happened?’
I shook my head, and again that awful animal noise came out of me, but this time it flowed out with tears, and it was easier to stop.
Renny started the car.
�
�Renny, I don’t want anybody to see me. Some of the doctors know Daddy—’
‘I have no place to take you except the hospital,’ Renny said. ‘We’ll go in through Emergency.’ He drove in silence along LeNoir Street. The shops gave way to houses, at first close together, then set back from the street, larger and farther apart. The street curved around to the hospital driveway. He drove to the back. Opened the door for me. ‘Try not to put too much weight on that foot.’
We went in through the Emergency entrance. There were only a few people in the waiting room, and the nurse at the desk was sipping from a Styrofoam cup. Renny greeted her, saying that he was taking a patient to have her foot bandaged. I don’t think she even looked up from her magazine.
‘It was a heavy night in Emergency.’ Renny led me into one of the examining cubicles. ‘It’s all quiet now.’
‘Are you on Emergency rotation?’
‘No. Urology. Word gets round in a small hospital. How did you cut your foot?’
‘I told you. On a broken shell.’
‘Where?’
‘Max’s driveway.’
‘When?’
‘Last night.’
‘Where were you going?’ He was bathing my foot, holding it in a bowl of water, pink from my blood.
‘I was running.’
‘Where?’ He swabbed the cut with disinfectant and I cried out. ‘Where, Polly?’
‘Away.’
His strong fingers held my foot, holding the cut so that the bleeding stopped. ‘This was last night?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you go home?’
‘No. No. I couldn’t. Then I got up early to—to come to you.’
Renny pressed a gauze pad against the cut, then taped it. ‘You’ll have to stay off that foot today.’
‘All right.’
He was perched on a small white stool, keeping his hand around my foot. ‘I do have to take you home, you know.’
‘No. No!’ My voice rose.
‘Shhh,’ he said. ‘Unless you can give me a good reason, a real reason not to, I’ll have to take you home or call your parents to come get you.’
‘No.’ This time I kept my voice low. ‘I can’t. I can’t talk to them.’
He stood up, put his hands on my shoulders, looked into my eyes. ‘You’d better tell me whatever it was that happened.’
‘I can’t.’ I leaned toward him so that I could press my face against his white coat. Renny had been to our house once when Max and Ursula were there for dinner. He knew Max that way, and as an outpatient. I could not tell him.
‘You were with Max and Ursula?’
‘With Max, so she wouldn’t be alone while Urs was in Charleston.’
‘Oh, Polly—’ He sighed. ‘When did Ursula come in on this?’
‘While I was running away from—she was driving home from Charleston. Oh, Renny, Max was drunk. She was in terrible pain and she was drunk. I’ve never seen anybody drunk that way. She didn’t really know what she was—’
His arms came tightly around me. I didn’t have to tell him any more. And then he asked me who’d picked me up to drive me to Cowpertown, and I told him about Straw and his ugly insinuations.
‘The creep,’ Renny murmured, ‘the crude creep.’ His arms were protecting, reassuring. ‘The first thing you need is some sleep. I’m going to call a friend of mine, one of the nurses here. She’s on duty now, but I’ll get her key. Wait.’
‘Don’t tell her.’
‘Shhh. I won’t tell her anything.’
‘Don’t tell anybody—not Mother or Daddy—’
‘I won’t tell anybody.’ He shut the door of the examing cubicle behind him.
While he was gone I lay back on the black examining table, which was too short for me. It was covered with white paper that crinkled if I moved, so I lay still. I was half asleep when Renny came back.
‘All right, Polly, let’s go.’
He led me along a back corridor, down some stairs, and out a side door. We got back in the car and drove to one of the streets around the hospital which had once been a street of rich people in big houses and was now funeral parlors and rooming houses. He pulled up in front of a Greek revival house with heavy white columns and none of the airy grace of Beau Allaire. We went up the steps to a side verandah, and Renny opened the screen door, then took a key and opened the inner door. He led me through a small living room and out onto a screened porch where there was a double bed, a green wicker chair and stool, a cherry chest, completely out of place with the rest of the porch furniture, with a few drawers pulled half open.
‘Nell wasn’t exactly expecting company.’ Renny pulled down the white Marseilles bedspread.
A small, cold part of my mind was wondering who Nell was, and why Renny was so familiar with her. He was rummaging through one of the open drawers.
I sat down.
He turned to me, holding out a shorty nightgown. ‘Get undressed and put this on.’ He flicked a switch, and the ceiling fan started to turn. In the hospital it had been cool. ‘Some of the apartments have air-conditioning,’ he said, ‘but Nell sleeps out here half the year. I’ll be back in five minutes.’
I undressed, put on Nell’s nightgown, and got into bed. The floor of the sleeping porch was painted green, the wooden ceiling was green, and the green of a huge magnolia tree pressed against the screen. With the fan moving the air, it gave the effect of coolness.
Renny came in with a mug. ‘Chicken broth,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to give you any caffeine or anything cold.’
I put my hands around the mug. It must have been well in the nineties outdoors, but my hands were cold, and the warmth of the mug felt good.
‘I have to get back to the hospital.’ He sounded reluctant. ‘Polly, I don’t know what to do. You’ve had a bad shock. I think I should call your parents.’
‘No. I don’t want them to know.’
‘You’re not going to tell them?’
‘No,’ I repeated, ‘I don’t want them to know.’
Renny sat on the edge of the bed beside me. ‘You’re going to have to go home sometime.’
‘They think I’m with Max and Ursula. I was to call Mother when I was ready to go home.’
‘Will you still do that?’
‘I don’t know. Not yet.’
He got up and walked to the door, then turned back. ‘When Max and Ursula find you gone and realize you aren’t coming back, won’t they call your parents?’
I sat up in bed, put my head on my knees. That had not occurred to me. ‘Would they?’
‘Likely.’
‘But what would they say?’
‘They might just want to know if your parents know where you are.’
‘Will you call them?’ I asked. But then they would know that Renny knew. And Max would have to see Renny when she went into Cowpertown for blood tests …
I got out of bed and followed Renny. ‘I’ll call.’
He nodded, pointing toward a desk in the corner of the rather drab room. On it, among a clutter of mugs and a coffeepot and a bowl of lilies, was a phone. Renny asked, ‘Do you want me to go?’
‘No. Stay. Please.’ I dialed.—Don’t let it be Max who answers. Don’t let it be Nettie or Ovid. Let it be Urs.
It was. I said, ‘Ursula, this is Polly. I just want you to know I’m all right. I’m with a friend, not at home, so don’t call home, please. I need to sleep. I’m very tired. Goodbye.’ I spoke quickly, not giving her time to say anything, though in the background, behind my words, I heard, ‘Thank God. Where are you? I need to see you, to talk.’—No, Ursula. You don’t need to see me. There’s nothing to say. Go to Max.
I put the phone down and went back out to the porch.
Renny leaned against the doorframe. ‘I get off at five. I’ll come to you then. I’m sorry, Polly, so sorry—’ He bent down and kissed me on the cheek.
I slept. Woke, with my eye itching. Rubbed it. Felt hot. The sheet was wet. I opened my eyes.
Mostly my right eye. The left was swollen nearly closed.
I was in Cyprus, and I’d been bitten on the eyelid. I turned on the light, got up, and stared in the wavery mirror. It looked as though someone had socked a fist into my eye.
There was no Netson’s in Cyprus. Anyhow, it was only my eyelid that was inflamed. No conjunctivitis.
I got back into bed. My room at home wasn’t even half the size of this one, but it was all mine. After my roommate came, it would be very different. So I got out of bed, opened the shutters, and stepped out onto the balcony. The insects drove me back into the room before I could appreciate the loveliness of the night. I curled up, pulling the sheet just over my toes, and slept.
I woke to someone walking up and down the corridor, ringing a bell. Norine, I guessed, though there was only the staff, Omio, and me, to rouse. There was going to be no oversleeping at this conference.
I met Vee as I came out my door. “Polly, what on earth has happened to you?”
“The no-see-um bugs got me.”
She scratched her arm. “Me, too, though not in as sensitive a place. Did you use the bug coil?”
“Yes, but for a while I tried to keep the shutters open to catch the breeze. Believe me, I shut them fast.”
She leaned over to look at my eye. “I think one got you on a vein, right there at the corner of your lid. Does it hurt?”
“No, it’s just uncomfortable.”
“It is a temporary affliction, if that’s any comfort; it’ll go away in a day or so. The bugs are much worse in this humid heat than they were last week.” She scratched again, bending down to her ankle. “Do you have a can of spray in your room?”
“No, just the coil.”
“I’ll find you some for this evening. It helps if you spray the shutters. Not so many of the little horrors get through the slats.”
We walked the rose-lined path to the dining area of the cloister. The sun was already uncomfortably hot. Norine exclaimed over my eye and said she’d give me some witch-hazel pads to help bring the swelling down.
For breakfast there were packets of instant coffee in a wicker basket, and a big pitcher of hot milk. A platter of eggs was brought in by Tullia. There was a loaf of bread still warm from the oven, a big bowl of jam, and a smallish pat of butter each. I wondered how much refrigeration they had in the kitchen, which was simply the enclosed end of the cloister.
A House Like a Lotus Page 21
