So concentrated were we on Double that Rob had to remind me of Christian’s arrival on the train at eleven. I think it may have been sheer dread that made me put his arrival out of my mind entirely. I thought of the look of joy that always came on his face when he was with her, and I really didn’t think I had the nerve to stand there and tell him.
When I was very small, I remember that my father once took me to the train depot to meet a relative who was coming to visit. I felt beneath my feet a faint tremor that filled me with dread, a tremor that became ever stronger until the great iron monster was upon us, squealing its braking wheels on the metal tracks and hissing clouds of steam, the roar of its passing terrifying me so that to my embarrassment and shame I wet myself and was later scolded thoroughly by my mother. Today as I waited and felt that familiar tremor I was already overtaken by dread and heartily wished that Christian had missed the train or that I were elsewhere. Rob gripped my shoulder comfortingly. We had left Esperanza sitting with Double and the children playing out in the garden. Double had wakened, but she refused to speak and instead lay on her side staring silently at the wall.
He hadn’t missed the train, of course, and he swung off easily, holding the metal bar on the side of the car with one hand. I hadn’t seen him since David and I had come to San Diego, and he looked much older than I remembered. In those last four years his hair had gone completely silver, and the fatigue of the long trip down from San Francisco, changing at Los Angeles, and then the stop-and-start frustrations of a local that had departed at five in the morning had etched every line in his face and smudged the fine skin around his eyes. I remembered with surprise that he was, after all, around sixty-five years old, which only made what I was going to have to tell him harder.
There must have been something immediately daunting about my standing with a perfectly strange man, both of us looking nervous and worried. He confessed to me later with a weary smile that the first thought that came to his mind was that I was going to announce I was running off with the stranger. My answering smile was, I’m afraid, a weak one. At any rate, as he saw us, his welcoming grin faded rapidly.
After he had embraced me, he stood looking with a questioning expression at Rob.
I swallowed dryly. “This is Dr. Connors, Christian,” I said reluctantly. “He is our family doctor.”
Christian paled. “Is — is something wrong with one of the children?”
I shook my head, tears now standing in my eyes though I had determined beforehand that the least I could do was to remain calm. “It’s Double. I don’t know how to tell you this, I really don’t. She, ah, tried to kill herself yesterday.”
He stared at us, an expression of shock and dismay on his face. “She couldn’t have!” he blurted. “Not Double. She seemed so much happier lately. Her letters were cheerful —” He broke off.
“I realize what a shock this must be, Mr. Hand,” Rob said then. “Believe me, if there had been anything we could have done to prevent it, any way of foreseeing it …”
“Dr. Connors had her under his care,” I added. “No one could have done more for her. Like you, we thought she was almost out of the woods.”
We had been walking toward the carriage, a porter behind us with Christian’s luggage. Christian looked utterly drained. Coming as it did when he was already exhausted, the news about Double must have been a cruel blow indeed. We were using Rob’s buggy, which was roomier than Sheldon’s old one, and I found myself fixing my unseeing gaze on the shining red roan rump of Hippocrates.
Rob broke the silence. “Mr. Hand, there is something else you should know.” He was speaking rapidly, as if trying to get it all over and done with at once. “When Mrs. Nye came here, she was taking daily a tonic containing a significant amount of opium. Before any treatment could be started, it was necessary to get her off it. I chose to do that gradually rather than subject her to further shock. Perhaps I was wrong. As of yesterday she was down to the minutest of doses, and ready physically at least to do without it entirely. What I miscalculated was the emotional effect the idea of complete abstinence would have. You see, she had convinced herself that without a crutch of some sort, she could not stand her bereavement. In actuality the tiny dose she was still taking made no physical difference at all. Are you following me, sir?”
Looking like death, Christian nodded. I could smell the pleasant acrid odor of the horse’s sweat as we turned into Compton Street, which eventually petered out into the country lane where the house was. I knew that the story of Double’s addiction must have been a special kind of shock, first of all that he and Kate had not recognized what she was doing and protected her from it, and second that this child of whom he was so fond had experienced suffering so unbearable as to be forced to take drugs. I was sure that he, with much more reason than I, would also think of his own mother, and like me have to wonder about tainted blood.
“What I should have remembered,” Rob went on, “is that often the most dangerous time for victims of depression comes not when they are in the deepest part of their misery, but rather when they seem at last to be getting over it.”
“Did you specialize in illnesses of the mind, doctor? You sound as if you did,” Christian commented.
Rob laughed without humor. “There isn’t a general practitioner alive who couldn’t have made the same observations I did. We hardly specialize in illnesses of the mind, but we are required to treat them all the same. I’ve had three actual suicides and one near miss. I’ve had a child molester who wanted surgery to quiet his sex drive, a man who nearly beat his own child to death while the mother stood by and watched, a young lady who accused me of raping her in the office …” He shrugged. “I could go on, but I think you take my point.”
Hippocrates automatically turned up the short drive to the house. I wondered if Christian noticed, for I suddenly became aware that Rob’s and my relationship might not seem so innocent to an outsider. If he did notice, he said nothing.
When we had entered the front door, I said nervously, “I’ll take you up to your room and you can freshen up before you see Double. Would you like to eat or rest first?”
Christian smiled wanly. “Do I look that bad? Thank you, but I’m not hungry and I couldn’t sleep now, though I must confess I’m tired. No, I think we’d best get it over with, and then we’ll know a little better where we stand.”
I had borrowed an extra bed from Rob, which we put in Double’s room, and given Christian my room. We would have had to do something like that anyway, for Double couldn’t be left alone. She was as we had left her, curled up on her side with her face to the wall.
I thought of that terrible endless time the day before when Rob and I and even Esperanza had marched her up and down the hall while trying to get coffee down her. For a while it looked as if she wasn’t going to make it, but at last she appeared to rally physically, though she didn’t seem to know any of us. It was Rob who really brought her around. Long after Esperanza and I would have given up, by sheer force of will he kept her going and coaxed the warm liquid down her until her feet and legs began to respond of themselves. He dragged her back from the threshold of death, scolding, cajoling, commanding her into life once again. Now he came and stood beside me looking at the still figure on the bed, and squeezed my shoulder reassuringly.
“I hope that having her father here will help,” he said. “According to you they have always been especially fond of each other.”
I shrugged unhappily. “I wonder if we can even make her aware that he’s here.”
“She may be more aware of what’s going on than we think.”
Christian pushed past us then and sat down on the bed. He reached out and gently turned her over to face him. Her eyes opened, but she stared at him seemingly without recognition.
“Can you hear me, Double?” he said in a low voice that was nevertheless clearly a command. It was the voice that had launched a fleet of ships across the stormy Atlantic, and a flicker occurred in Double’s e
yes. To my intense surprise, she silently gave a small nod of her head.
“Papa,” she whispered then.
Rob took my hand and squeezed it jubilantly.
“Yes, it’s your papa,” Christian answered with love in his voice as he took her hand in both of his. “I used to be able to comfort you when you fell down as a child,” he went on. “I hope I can do it now. I wish I’d thought to talk to you sooner, but you didn’t seem to want it. Your mother and I love you, Double, and we want to help you.”
“Papa,” she whispered again, still staring at him disconcertingly.
“You wouldn’t believe it,” he began almost conversationally, “but I’ve been where you are. I never tried opium, but I tried liquor and women. And then I tried marriage. This was before I ever met your mother. I was a hard man then. It was all my fault that my first wife and our children were on that little sailing packet that was run down by a great monster of a paddlewheeler. She and both children were drowned, lost at sea and never found, and there would never be any way I could ever make amends for what I had done to them.
“I never told you about my first family, did I? I wonder if that was a mistake, your growing up without knowing that nothing is the end of the world. I didn’t take poison, but I went to war hoping I would be killed. I saw men die all around me who wanted to live, who had everything to live for, but I couldn’t die. When I fell in love with your mother and then had you and David, I knew why I hadn’t been allowed to die, and I thanked God. If I had deliberately stepped in the way of a bullet, you and David would never have been born, think of that. And I would have missed a greater happiness than I ever knew existed.”
She had been watching him all this time as if mesmerized, her eyes never leaving his face. Now he took the hand he had been holding and pressed it to his lips. “Your life isn’t yours to give away like that, Double. If you were to die now, you would be cheating not only yourself, but also someone you’ve likely never yet met, of happiness and fulfillment. I’m not saying you’ll love anyone the same as you’ve loved Stephen, for you won’t, but you’ll love differently and possibly every bit as much or more. You’re lucky — you have a great capacity for love. You and Stephen never had a chance to come out on the other side of the intensely romantic stage, you never saw enough of each other for that. Ask Janice here, she knows that when the honeymoon is over it’s how much you like your husband, not how much you love him, that matters.”
I’m afraid I cringed and would have fled if Rob hadn’t kept tight hold of my hand. Who was I to tell her anything? Fortunately she never took her eyes off her father.
“I never told you whom you were named after, either. Ah, Double, there were so many things I should have talked to you about that I took for granted. You weren’t named after Arabella Fine, with whom I was once in love. You were named after a lady called Arabella Worthington. If she hadn’t been some forty years older than I, I’d have married her in a minute. She had lost her husband and both children in a carriage accident, and in her case she never remarried, though she didn’t feel sorry for herself, either. She told me once, ‘You get used to it. You think you never will, but you do, and you continue to carry on with whatever grace you can muster. Remember that, Christian,’ she said to me all those years ago. ‘You will know suffering, as we all do one way or another, but don’t allow it to spoil you as a human being.’”
He pushed the hair gently back from Double’s forehead. “That’s how you got your nickname. When you were a baby, your mother and I used to call you Arabella W., which got shortened to Double. You were named after a lady of grace and courage, my dear, and now it’s time for you to live up to it.”
Double said nothing, but there were tracks of tears on her face.
“Can I trust you now?” he asked her. “Can Stephen trust you now? It’s time you let him rest quiet, you know.”
Double nodded, and for a moment a faint smile seemed to flicker briefly on her lips.
It was only then I realized that I had been holding my breath for a long time and that Rob was still gripping my hand.
Christian patted Double on the shoulder and stood up. “I think I’ll have that nap after all,” he said and walked out the door. How little, I thought, do we ever really know the people we have been with all our lives.
APRIL 8, 1900
It is Sunday and I don’t have to go to Melanie. I’m afraid that when I told her Double was ill she looked quite thoroughly pleased, and I felt like slapping her. But what could she know, poor spoiled thing? She will always be so self-centered that the ills and tragedies of others will never touch her. She confided to me, I don’t know why, that she and Alex have resumed their marital relations recently. Perhaps she thought it might make me jealous, or at least envious, since my husband has been away so long. I think she failed to realize that the complete lack of joy in her voice when she imparted this confidence would hardly lead anyone to be envious. I find it impossible in any event to imagine Alex ever engaging in the undignified actions that physical relations entail, but I suppose that like most men he must have been engaging in them all his adult life.
Christian leaves tomorrow. He has spent these days almost constantly with Double, and I can see them now sitting in the sun watching the children romp about Esperanza’s vegetable garden. The children through all of this have been complete angels, which has surprised me. I would have thought that the lack of attention would have the opposite effect, but they seemed to sense the seriousness of what was happening even if they couldn’t understand it.
They love having their grandfather here, as do I. He has brought a kind of cheerful common sense to our lives that we all sorely needed. Already he has taught Francis some sailor’s knots, and they have playfully built up such maritime exchanges as avast, belay there, shiver my timbers, heave to, port and starboard for left and right, bulkheads for walls, steady as you go, and the like. Yesterday afternoon he took Francis out sailing, and he has bought him a complete set of carpenter’s tools even though the boy is only just big enough to raise the hammer. Rob confesses that he himself is a complete dunce when it comes to tools, so I imagine that after Christian leaves they will have to wait until David comes home.
Double seems to be coming out of whatever purgatory she was in miraculously fast. I only hope that she can transfer her dependence on her father to Rob. Christian wanted to take her home with him, and Rob concurred, but Double refused to go.
“I know I can’t stay here with Janice forever, but I’ve made a few friends in the antiwar movement here, people who never so much as met Stephen, and I’d like to find an apartment or a small house for myself in San Diego.”
Christian was shocked. “But you can’t live by yourself!”
Double smiled at him benignly. “And why not, may I ask? After all, I’m a respectable widow woman, am I not?”
I wondered how much of her seeming humor was forced out of desperation, but I really did have to give her marks for courage. Not once since she got out of bed two days ago has she let on by word or expression that anything was ever wrong. From my point of view I should feel easier if she would go at returning to normal a bit more gradually, but perhaps with her it has to be all or nothing. She claims that tomorrow she wants to go to another antiwar meeting, and since Rob will be with her, perhaps it will do her good. One day soon she may even meet someone who will take her mind off Stephen.
I had a curious exchange with Christian this morning. I was in the kitchen washing the dishes, and without so much as a by-your-leave he took up a towel and began drying them.
“You don’t have to do that,” I protested.
“Oh, but I want to. I haven’t had a chance to talk to you at all since I’ve been here, what with one thing and another. Do you think Double will be all right? Dammit, I wish she would come back with me.”
“I think she’s probably doing the right thing. After all, it may have been because she was so protected when she was growing up that she was so litt
le fitted to cope with what happened. She always knew that for you and her mother, you lived happily ever after, and she took it for granted that she and Stephen would, too. Happy people aren’t supposed to die.”
He looked at me carefully. “What about you, Janice? Did you expect to live happily ever after?”
“We all hope to. But expect, no. You see, my father and mother hated — no, that’s not quite fair — they disliked each other. Though they always went through the motions, I got the idea they weren’t all that thrilled with me, either. — Both of them had always wanted a son, and they got a daughter instead. Why do you think I spent so much time at your house? It did something I needed for me to see a father really love and enjoy his daughter the way mine never did. I saw that it didn’t have to be the way it was with me, that a girl could mean as much as a boy, maybe even more. You and your family made me feel like somebody.”
He put the towel down on the sink then. “And David? Does David make you feel like somebody?”
I didn’t know what to say. I finally settled for making a helpless, confused gesture with a wet hand.
He looked not shocked, as I expected, but resigned. “I was afraid of that. Give him another chance, Janice. Now that he’s been away for a while, he may see things differently. Kate and I were still so taken up with each other when we had him that I’m afraid we may have left him out. He was a difficult baby, just like your Francis, but I wonder now if he mightn’t have responded as readily to attention as Francis does if we had only taken the trouble.” He shook his head. “It seems that no matter what you do as a parent, you’re wrong. You pay too little attention or you pay too much, and it seems that somehow your children just have to rely on themselves to struggle through. One thing sure, you can’t go back and do it all over again.”
Impulsively I hugged him. “They should thank God they had you and Kate for parents — I’d trade any time, I’ll tell you that.”
He held me away from him then so that he could look into my face. “David is a fool. I want you to know that as much as I hope you and he can finally make a go of it — I’ll understand if — well, if things turn out differently for you. You’re almost like another daughter to me, Janice, and above all I want to see you happy. Just think well before you do anything that means you can’t go back again. I know you well enough to know that you have always been overburdened with a conscience, and guilt can be a terrible load to carry. I know.” He kissed me on the cheek, and for all the time I was finishing the dishes I could hear his footsteps creaking back and forth across the wooden floor above.
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