Haven Point

by Virginia Hume

  “They are prepping Charlie for surgery,” he said.

  “Surgery?” Maren went slack.

  “The nurse didn’t tell me much, but she’s taking me back to talk to the doctor. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  Annie had finally taken notice of her and Oliver, so Maren managed a small smile, patted Oliver’s arm, and returned to their corner.

  “What’s going on?” Annie asked.

  “They’re having a look, I guess. Dad’s going back to see. We’ll hear something soon, I’m sure.” Annie looked at Maren searchingly—on the hunt for clues, as always. Maren did her best to keep her expression neutral. Annie did not seem convinced, but, too tired to probe, she leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes.

  Maren’s effort to keep a calm exterior left her no outlet, and her anxiety intensified. Other than bleeding in his brain, she could conceive of no reason for Charlie to be in surgery.

  When Oliver finally emerged, he looked defeated and aged, as if the doors to the waiting room had been a time portal. Annie noticed, too. She sat up straight as he approached.

  “I am afraid I have some bad news.”

  “Oh God. What is it, Dad?”

  “Charlie was able to answer some questions when he arrived here, but after they moved him to a room, his speech was garbled, and he became unresponsive. As Dr. Griffin feared, it appears blood is putting pressure on critical areas of his brain.”

  Annie’s eyes filled with tears and her lip trembled. “What does that mean? What are they doing?” She made fists with her hands and held them together.

  “The neurosurgical resident has him in surgery. Fortunately, they caught it quickly. If they can stop the bleeding, it’s not likely to damage the brain tissue. There shouldn’t be lasting effects.”

  Annie’s eyes darted between them, her expression imploring. She wanted someone to promise things would be okay. Maren wished she could provide such reassurance, but that was not possible unless her own confidence in a good outcome was replenished. The most likely source would have been Oliver, but he looked just as uncertain. He sat on his little chair across from them, holding their hands. His posture was rigid, and Maren knew he was doing all in his power to mask his worry.

  “How long will it take?” Maren asked.

  “It could be a while. They have to find the source of the bleeding.”

  Maren thought nothing could be worse than the gnawing anxiety as they waited. But it was not long before she discovered she had lacked imagination. There was indeed something worse: the sight, far too soon, of a young surgeon’s grim face through the window of the swinging door that led from the waiting room.

  Only Oliver had met the surgeon, so Maren’s last faint hope was that the face she saw belonged to some other tired resident.

  She squeezed Oliver’s hand, and his eyes followed hers to the doorway. His brow creased and she saw a flash of something in his eyes. Fear. He released Maren’s hand and walked to the door. Annie noticed the doctor and saw her father rise to meet him, but she had not done the terrible math. She did not understand it should have been hours before they saw the surgeon. Any anxiety in her expression was still mingled with exhaustion and that little bit of hope.

  Maren wished she could freeze this moment, before she herself knew utterly what was all but certain, before the words were said—before Annie had to know, everyone had to know.

  But she could not.

  The next hour of her life she would only ever remember as a series of hideous flashes. That first moment, looking through the window in the swinging door, as if she were watching a scene on a muted television set. The young doctor in his scrubs, touching Oliver’s upper arm, Oliver slumped against the wall. She remembered feeling she should rise. Go to him, hear what he is hearing, but she could not get up. Oliver would have to come to her, come to them.

  A terrible darkness took hold of her, a sensation unlike anything she had ever experienced. She felt it acutely in her chest, her heart, in the deepest place.

  An odd thought struck her. Until this moment, she considered tragedies like this, especially the death of a child, something that happened to other people. It was not conscious, but it had been there, underscoring everything, making her feel safe. And she knew why she had unconsciously clung to that myth of exemption—why everyone does, to some extent. The alternative was this, a feeling of such irredeemable misery, the knowledge that life was forever changed. Only the presence of Annie kept her from screaming or vomiting.

  Annie gripped Maren’s hand tightly as Oliver moved somewhat unsteadily in their direction.

  He delivered the news as gently as he could. They had done all they could.… The bleeding had damaged the brain stem.… Even if they had taken him straight here, nothing could have been done.… He knew no fear.

  Annie made a terrible, primal keening sound. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she cried as she collapsed onto Maren, her eyes filled with sick confusion and lost innocence, robbed at seventeen of her sense of well-being, far too young to know she was not exempt. With one child gone and another rent by the news, Maren was swept deeper into the darkness.

  They formed a triangle, Oliver to her left, but close enough to touch Annie, his face a picture of hopelessness and anguish, Annie on the other side, clinging as if her own life depended on it. Maren seized on Oliver’s words, he knew no fear, and tucked them away for later, looking for some glimmer, some infinitesimal source of future relief.

  How can we move? How can we do anything? She tried to pull her mind from the black fog. Mustn’t they rise to do what must be done, and then leave this horrible place? But she could neither move nor talk. Oliver seemed as powerless. She began to weep, her shoulders shaking like a child’s.

  We cannot move. How can we even move?

  And then an angel arrived. It was Cappy, standing at the entrance of the emergency room, water dripping from his yellow sailing slicker. Georgie had sent him when Maren had called from the hospital in Bath. He took in the sight of the three of them, and his mouth fell open.

  Oliver somehow rose and approached him. Cappy put his strong arm on Oliver’s shoulder, and Maren watched as Oliver, silent tears streaming down his face, somehow managed to get the story out. Cappy’s eyes widened and his face contorted in that expression that is uniquely grief, but looks so much like fear. He pulled his lips thin and covered his mouth, as if to prevent something from escaping.

  After a moment he lowered his hand and took a breath. He looked toward Maren and Annie, eyes damp and filled with compassion, and moved toward the desk. Maren could practically see his effort as he sought and found some power the rest of them had lost.

  He would do what needed to be done right then. He would get them through those next moments, and he would deliver them home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The minutes, the hours, the days that followed were a blur, defined mostly by the most inexpressible horror Maren had ever known, would ever know. It was hard to imagine being more miserable than she had been, sitting in that dreary waiting room with its sickly, humming light, but darker times were to come.

  Oliver said almost nothing on the desolate ride home. Annie continued to cling to her in the car, occasionally looking at her parents with an expression of supplication, as if begging them to tell her this had not happened. Maren could do nothing but hold her.

  When they returned to Fourwinds, they said good-bye to Cappy, who promised to return first thing in the morning. They got Annie to her room. She fell onto her bed, fully dressed. Maren and Oliver stayed beside her, Maren silently rubbing her back until somehow, finally, she slept, and they returned to their own room.

  Oliver slumped onto the chaise, covered his face with his hands, and wept. Maren could tell he wanted to speak, so she sat beside him and waited.

  “I did this,” he said finally, voice muffled.

  “What?”

  “I did this.” He looked up. “It’s my fault. If I hadn’t told
her to stay away from him, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  Maren was swimming, nearly drowning, in her own terrible sea, but she had just enough wherewithal remaining to know how vital her response was. She was reminded of the moment on the stairs all those years ago, though that episode seemed quaint and trivial in comparison. But now, as then, she knew if she got this wrong, everything would be wrong.

  She took his face in her hands, and looked at him.

  “You cannot do this, Oliver. Down that road lies hell,” she said ferociously, tears streaming down her own face. “It will be our ruin. We can make it through, somehow. We can survive, but you must acknowledge he died because he fell, that he died in an accident. Please, Oliver, I beg you not to blame yourself. If you do, I think it might kill me.”

  “But…”

  “No, Oliver. I mean it, like I’ve never meant anything,” she said, her tone more forceful. “Charlie died in an accident. No one is to blame. It happened because terrible things happen. You must put that out of your mind. For me, Oliver. You have to do this for me.”

  He looked at her, concentrating, as if trying to do this thing she asked. If it was for her, perhaps he could find a way to choose what to believe, what not to believe. He put his arm around her and squeezed. She leaned into him, as close as she could get.

  If we can do this together, she thought. If we can just do this together …

  They finally made their way to the bed and clung to each other through the sleepless night. Oliver did not mention his feelings of culpability again that night, or ever. Years later, Maren marveled at the vehemence she had called forth, the energy and purpose she found to convince Oliver that Charlie’s death was a terrible, unfortunate accident, and must forever be considered such. She had made him believe, and it had been their salvation.

  If only she had been able to do the same for Annie.

  * * *

  The following morning, she stared out the window as the first hint of orange appeared on the horizon, and her mind turned to the task ahead. They would have to tell people. Billy first. Cappy would have told Georgie and Maude, but there were Maren’s parents and brother; Gideon and Clara. So many people at home.

  At least she would be spared telling everyone on Haven Point. The thought of how quickly the news would spread brought something else to mind. She turned to Oliver. He was staring blankly at the ceiling, arm folded behind his head, his brow knit in sorrow and confusion. She moved into the crook of his arm. Tears stung again. She hated to make him feel worse, but there was something she felt he needed to understand.

  “I think this is going to be too much for people here, Oliver,” she said into his chest. “I think they will turn away. It is too horrible.”

  His only response was to pull her closer to him, and she worried he had not heard. It felt vital to prepare him for the fact that this little community could not possibly reconcile Charlie’s death with its sense of itself as a haven, where children had freedom with safety. There was no place for this in their naïve worldview. They would have to tuck it away on some other shelf, make it something or someone’s fault. Probably mine, she thought, though she didn’t care. Make it my fault.

  Regardless of how, she was certain Haven Point would find a way to protect itself from this tragedy. Not Georgie or Maude, but the rest. Whether they placed blame or merely averted their eyes, she feared the reaction would be too much for Oliver to bear.

  We have to go home soon, she thought. We will have to face this in Washington.

  “I’m not sure about that,” Oliver replied vaguely. She looked up at him sadly, certain he would face another reckoning.

  Within hours, however, she discovered Oliver was right. And that she had been almost perfectly wrong.

  Haven Point did not turn away. Without faltering, without wincing, Haven Point looked them straight in the eye. There was no gossip. There was no blame. In those weeks and in all the years that followed, Maren never detected a single untoward reaction to Charlie’s death.

  The people of Haven Point came to them. Quietly, steadfastly, they did for them every single thing that had to be done. With their old reserve, once deplorable but now so welcome, they kept their upper lips stiff and did it all without drama or discussion.

  Maren and Oliver’s job was to survive and to help their children survive, while their neighbors carried them through, seeking nothing but the privilege to serve.

  To ask what they needed was to burden, so no one asked. They divined. Maren’s parents appeared from Minnesota, picked up at the airport by someone, she was never clear who. When James Barrows heard the news from Harriet and Fritz, he walked out of his house on Watch Hill in Rhode Island, went directly to Newport to pick up Billy, and drove him to Maine. As plans came together, friends from Washington were housed all over the point, cared for and made comfortable. Someone tracked down Dorothy in Europe and gave her the news. People were in and out of Fourwinds in a stream that seemed guided by some unseen hand. There was food, so much food, and women in the kitchen preparing it, putting it out, or putting it away, making it all make sense. Maren noticed Harriet helping with flowers, conjuring vases and putting arrangements throughout the house—able, for once, to stay in the background, to be just another part of the whole.

  At first, Maren’s parents were lost amid the strangers, but just when Maren wondered how she could give them comfort when she had so little in reserve, Maude appeared. She was frail, but Georgie got her there, and she spent many hours with Maren’s family. They spoke of Charlie, but also of farming and other familiar things.

  Georgie was perfection. Maren would have expected her dear old friend to be solid, but something deep within Georgie’s grain emerged. She hurt so much, Maren knew, but never showed it. Georgie knew when to sit and be quiet and when to make Maren laugh. One afternoon, Maren sat dazed in the kitchen with Billy, Maude, and Georgie. Georgie removed the foil from a plate to reveal some concoction from the Palmers, who latched onto every health food trend. She plunked the plate of gritty, unappetizing cookies on the kitchen table.

  “Wheat germ molasses cookies, anyone?” she asked. “Or I could go peel some bark off a tree if you’d rather.”

  After that first night, Maren never considered going home to Washington. Charlie would be memorialized on Haven Point and buried in the little cemetery there. Why would they take him home to D.C. where he had merely endured, instead of laying him to rest on Haven Point where he had truly lived?

  The flip side of the relief from day-to-day burdens was the time it left for grief. Attacks, awesome in their power, came at random. Maren would be feeling something close to normal when she would be struck by what she came to call “the nevers”—thoughts of what Charlie would never again do, what he would never become, that she could never hug him again. She would double over, unable to move. Her tears were unpredictable. Sometimes she hid in her room and directed wrenching sobs into her pillow, so her children would not have to hear.

  Billy and Oliver seemed to be walking across hot coals, too, their pain close to the surface, but Maren knew something was terribly off about Annie. She was resistant to attention of any kind and seemed more angry than grief-stricken. She rarely left her room. Maren and Oliver gave up trying to coax her out, but they spent many hours with her. They hoped their presence would bring comfort, but she was so terribly remote. Something inside Annie seemed tied in a knot that they had no idea how to unravel.

  * * *

  As the memorial service grew closer, it became a source of anxiety for Maren. The plans had come together well enough: Above all else, it would be a celebration of Charlie’s life. Billy would deliver the eulogy and had been soliciting stories and impressions from Charlie’s friends. She knew he would do a fine job. The kind local minister who held services at St. Dunstan’s, the little Episcopalian church on Haven Point, would preside. Annie wanted no official role, and they had not pressed. Maren had one special request, an unconventional idea for the music, a
nd there had been no objection.

  The memorial service makes it final, she eventually realized.

  That morning, Maren rose after a sleepless night and put on the black dress someone had found for her that week, since she kept nothing like it on Haven Point. She managed to go through the motions of brushing her hair, putting it in a knot, and seeing to Billy and Annie, but through it all she was racked by anxiety. When the time came to go downstairs, she sat on the edge of her bed, feeling as if she might be sick.

  “I’m not sure I can do this, Oliver.”

  “I’ll help you,” he said. She looked up at him skeptically, doubting he had strength to spare. He seemed diminished, his eyes darker and shadowed. But when he extended his hand, she took it and, somehow, they made their way downstairs together.

  Georgie, Cappy, Maren’s parents, and the children stood waiting in the living room, a gloomy lot, dressed in their black clothing and pained expressions.

  I can’t do this.

  Even as they moved across the lawn toward the road, she had the sense of something tugging her back toward the house. Lacking any alternative, she put one foot in front of the other and willed herself to make this short walk to St. Dunstan’s, the longest walk of her life.

  Then came another miracle. As they passed the hedge, she looked up to see that they would not make this walk alone. At least a hundred people lined the road, almost all of Haven Point, waiting to escort them to the service. As they started toward the church, their friends and neighbors quietly fell in around them. No tears, just the stolid, dependable, chin-up Haven Point expressions that in their minimal sentiment had brought such comfort those days. Her anxiety dissolved, almost in the moment.

  They reached the door just ahead of the great procession. She had no idea where it had come from, whose idea it had been that the Demarests should be escorted to the service. But she had needed to be carried, and she felt as if she had been.