Last Call

by Laura Pedersen

  Diana’s too exhausted to argue and stumbles upstairs to change. On the landing she passes Hank, who is preparing to drive the vacationers to the airport.

  “Will you please make sure you get a number for a doctor down there?” Diana calls to Hayden from the top of the stairs. “You look jaundiced. I wish you’d see a specialist.”

  “It’s just a suntan.” Hayden pulls his red golf visor down to thwart any further examination.

  Diana returns to the kitchen where Joey is busy impressing Rosamond by “fixing” the sink. She hands Rosamond a pink-and-white-striped Victoria’s Secret bag.

  “What’s this?” Rosamond assumes Diana has packed some sandwiches for the plane ride, since she’d been worrying that they wouldn’t be fed properly.

  Diana looks through the archway to make sure that Hayden and Hank aren’t nearby. “Just put it in your suitcase. Men are like crows. They’re attracted to shiny objects.”

  “Let’s go!” Hayden shouts from out in the driveway.

  Rosamond tucks the bag Diana has given her into a carry-on case and Joey comes out from under the sink announcing that it was just a loose pipe and is now repaired. Diana tests the faucet and it seems to work perfectly. She pats her son on the shoulder to show that she’s truly impressed. Now that Joey’s almost as tall as she, it’s no longer as easy to reach the top of his head unless he’s sitting down.

  They all squeeze into the station wagon for the trip to the airport. The expressway is packed with people heading east to enjoy the beaches in the Hamptons, Fire Island, the North Fork, and Montauk. Others are off to summer concerts at Jones Beach and to catch the ferry to Shelter Island. Hank drives and Hayden busies himself keeping everyone amused. “Hey, Joey, what goes clump clump, bang bang, clump clump?”

  “An Amish drive-by!” Joey shouts before Hayden can even turn to look at him in the backseat.

  “Dad!” scolds Diana. “Don’t be sacrilegious.”

  “I think it’d be an excellent idea to sack religion,” says Hayden.

  Hank stifles a laugh. Rosamond doesn’t appear to hear any of what’s being said as she stares out the window, nervously fingering the charm bracelet on her wrist as if it’s a rosary.

  “Why can’t the Amish go to jail?” asks Joey.

  “Because no one would ever know,” Hayden shoots back. “None of their relatives have phones!”

  As they say good-bye, Rosamond suppresses the urge to shout that it’s all been a terrible mistake. Somehow removing the bags from the car at the airport has a feeling of finality about it, as if they’re being shipped off to an internment camp rather than embarking upon a tropical vacation. Having been on an airplane only once, she tries to convince herself that she’s experiencing anxiety about flying.

  By the time they reach the airline counter Hayden is in full salesman’s mode, endearing but insistent, his brogue at an all-time thickness, and a smile that assures anyone who cares to look that laughter resides at his doorstep. “Yes, we’re both dyin’,” he informs the agent. “She doesn’t look like it right now, I know.” He nods toward Rosamond. “But trust me, we’re goners.” He pulls out the X-ray he’d stolen from his file and shows it to the woman as proof. “So if you can give us two seats together, with hers next to the window, I’d be eternally grateful.” Hayden emphasizes eternal and accompanies it with a friendly wink.

  “Your accent sounds familiar,” the agent says, by now completely charmed.

  “Well, do’an’ go saying anythin’ but one of my poorer relations is a famous movie actor.”

  “Oh!” The woman’s eyes widen and then she smiles and nods to indicate that his secret is safe with her.

  chapter fifty-five

  Rosamond is relieved that she and Hayden have two separate rooms, though they’re adjacent to each other. Small vases containing fresh flowers placed on the table and next to the sink in the bathroom make the dazzling white towels and linens appear lovely and fresh. A woven straw carpet gives the room a feeling of casual elegance. The walls are decorated with tranquil beach scenes and delicate watercolors of local flora that appear to have been rendered by an artful botanist. A great silver bowl overflowing with brightly colored exotic fruits sits on the table looking like one of the still-life paintings they’d admired at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rosamond has never seen such an exquisite place in all her life, and after the initial thrill of it, she thinks of her tiny barren cell back at the convent and then all the world’s poor who don’t have so much as a clean mat to lie upon.

  Hayden, on the other hand, barely notices his surroundings. And the minute they finish unpacking he rushes them off to the world-famous golf course overlooking the clear blue Caribbean Sea. Along the winding palm-lined road stand rows of tin-roofed houses in faded yellow, pink, and ocher, resplendent with vivid blazes of magenta bougainvillea and red hibiscus out front. By the hillside tall cactuses emerge from the brush every few yards, a half dozen or so topped with flamboyant orangish-pink globes, blooms that are said to appear only once every hundred years.

  “I wish I’d brought my wimple and veil to protect me from the sun,” Rosamond says while Hayden demonstrates how to swing a golf club.

  He gallantly hands her his visor. “Try this. It’s what nine out o’ ten golfers prefer over a wimple and veil.” Rosamond hits her ball only a few feet from the hole. Hayden slices and lands his in the nearby sand. “Oh Christ, I’m my own handicap.”

  “Hayden!” She blanches at the Lord’s name taken in vain.

  “Beg pardon,” he says contritely and loudly exhales. Hayden occasionally winces or takes a deep breath for no apparent reason, in the manner of a person who carries a pain around inside.

  “What’s the white flag for?” asks Rosamond.

  “For you it marks the hole where you’re trying to get the ball,” he says. “For me it’s saying that I should surrender.”

  By the time they exit the clubhouse Hayden is enjoying the cheerful and outstanding service afforded an affable local mayor, having befriended everyone from the caddies to the golf pro, the manager of the restaurant, and a group of businessmen from Minneapolis. As usual, his high spirits color the day and easily spread to perfect strangers so that they carry this joy away with them and pass it along to others.

  After returning to the resort for a nap in their respective rooms, they stroll on the white sand beach as the wind ruffles the nearby water with waves and breathe in the peacefulness. Overhead the gulls soar and dip, their wings flashing silver in the sunlight. The refreshing tranquillity reminds Rosamond of the Liturgy of the Hours, the seven times a day the nuns went to chapel for prayer. Now her sisters would be gathering for Nones, the ninth hour call for more perseverance and strength to continue as one exceeds her prime and must keep going. By acknowledging this midafternoon hour of Christ’s death, one was supposedly able to touch finitude.

  While carefully making their way around the blankets and lounge chairs of sprawled pink flesh, the two eventually walk close to a couple lying together and kissing. Rosamond watches unabashedly for a moment. The man notices her and smiles. She smiles back before looking away. The warm sea air and flood of clean sunshine have lent a certain happiness to her face, brushing out the fine wrinkles around her eyes, which are the color of forget-me-nots against the pale blue sky. A few freckles have appeared across her nose and cheeks and shoulders, as if she’s been splattered with gold paint. And her shorn hair has grown into a tousled array of pale blond curls that flutter against her cheekbones in the gentle ocean breeze.

  Rosamond is overwhelmed by the natural beauty surrounding her. “It is just like a dream!”

  “Yes, if you ever do run into God, please tell him that I’m a huge fan of His work.”

  “Oh, Hayden!” Rosamond stretches her arms out toward the sea and sky. “So, is this the alkahest?”

  Hayden laughs. “Good heavens no. When I was a boy that’s what Dad said when he nipped out to the barn after dinner for his whiskey. Me mum
was a Presbyterian and wouldn’t allow it in the house. So when I used to meet up with the Idleonians for a round o’ drink I’d joke with Mary that we were going to search for the alkahest. And then I started sayin’ it to Joey when we’d go for ice cream too close to suppertime. Only one day he looked it up and thought I was seeking a cure for The Cancer. Of course I’ve told him there isn’t one, that I’m just tryin’ to die with as little mess as possible, but he keeps reading books about wizards and finding alchemists on the Internet and is convinced there’s a magical remedy out there someplace. You know how kids are. He believes the alkahest stops cancer the way kryptonite stops Superman.”

  “I see,” says Rosamond. “Sounds as if he’s revived an old religion.”

  “Well, I hope it’s a tax-free one,” says Hayden. After a recent visit to the accountant he’d been appalled by how much estate tax Diana and Linda were going to have to pay when they inherited his savings—money that he’d already paid taxes on.

  As they stroll back toward their rooms a black cat leaps onto their path from out of a nearby jacaranda tree and then disappears into the dense shrubbery. Rosamond is startled by the sudden streak of movement, jumps aside, and then pauses to catch her breath. But Hayden just chuckles. “Now I bet you’re going to tell me that a black cat means bad luck.”

  “Of course not. That’s just superstition.” She relaxes and smiles. “It startled me, that’s all.”

  “Isn’t it funny the way we refer to other people’s beliefs as superstition but our own we call religion,” he says slyly.

  “Oh, Hayden, next you’ll be trying to find a voodoo priestess to argue with.”

  Between the doors to their two rooms is a bush of fragrant white oleander with swirling green leaves, gorgeous to look at, but as the bellhop was careful to warn them, poisonous to eat. Rosamond goes inside and closes the door so that she can change for evening.

  The open-air restaurant overlooks the sea and when Rosamond stares out at the wide expanse of sky it brings to mind the blue of the Madonna’s robes. As the sun falls to the horizon on one side of them a pale outline of a moon can be seen emerging on the other, as if waiting in the wings. Rosamond is reminded of the words of Saint John of the Cross in his Spiritual Canticle, “The union between the soul and God is like starlight united with the light of the sun.”

  The table is beautifully laid with elegant china, crystal water glasses, and a single flower, the reddest of roses, in the center of a smooth pink linen cloth. In the background can be heard the low popping of corks and gentle clinking of glasses.

  When a tuxedoed waiter arrives with their dinners he lifts up the sterling silver covers as if performing a magic trick. The food is prettily garnished with tiny pink and red petals shaped to form a starburst.

  “It’s so exquisite that I almost feel as if we should say grace,” says Rosamond.

  “One grace coming up,” says Hayden, much to her surprise. Rosamond assumed that she’d be the one giving thanks while Hayden impatiently drummed his fingers and tapped his feet.

  Instead, he folds his hands, bows his head, and solemnly begins, “Some hae meat, and cannot eat, And some would eat that want it; But we hae meat, and we can eat—And sae the Lord be thankit.”

  Rosamond says “amen” and then looks up approvingly and yet slightly puzzled.

  “ ‘The Selkirk Grace,’ ” explains Hayden as he cuts into his filet of sole. “Robbie Burns, o’ course.”

  “Of course,” she says. Hayden never ceases to surprise and amuse her.

  Over dessert he produces another surprise, only this one is not nearly as amusing. Hayden quietly yet passionately unveils his plan to overdose. “I do’an’ want a death vigil—the darkened room, whispered voices, bringing everyone else’s life to a standstill, Ted droning about privatizing social security, seeing my reflection in his teeth, no, no. And then these patients who fiddle around with the morphine, they’re so weak or doped up that they can’t commit suicide even if they have a half a mind left to. . . .”

  But Rosamond can’t bear to listen to such talk. Out on the dance floor several couples hold each other close and sway to a Calypso band playing “Jamaica Farewell.” The metal drums plink out the melody while an ocean breeze causes the hanging plastic lanterns to flicker and sway. Wild purple orchids cling to the nearby trees and a gentle breeze carries their pleasant aroma out toward the sea.

  “Hayden, what’s it like?” Rosamond asks dreamily and gazes out to where the horizon is stained orange by the last rays of the sun.

  “Same as falling asleep, only faster, like when they put you out before an operation.”

  “No, not that,” she says softly. “I meant making love.”

  Hayden is momentarily startled. He carefully wipes his mouth with the starched linen napkin. “Oh, you’ve never, no, well, I guess, of course not. Yes, well, it’s like, it’s like . . . come on . . .” he rises from the table, “I’ll show you—”

  Rosamond accidentally knocks over the water glass in front of her. Her chest tightens as she envisions a repeat of the scene in the backyard with the ice cream soda.

  “No, no,” Hayden says and places their napkins over the expanding pool as he softly chuckles. “I didn’t mean that.” He takes her hand and leads her to the dance floor where the soothing Caribbean music drifts through the balmy air and a handsome man with lustrous coffee-colored skin and swinging dreadlocks croons: “I’m sad to say I’m going away, had to leave a little girl in Kingston town.”

  “I only meant that makin’ love is like dancing,” Hayden whispers as they come together and float across the floor in the orange glow of tiki torches against a purple-black sky. “Holding each other, moving together to the music, whispering in each other’s ear, feeling your heart beat against mine, it’s an elaborate ritual that’s at once both improvised and rehearsed. Like dancing.”

  “Yes,” says Rosamond uncertainly as they sway to the plink plink of the drums under the large and indifferent stare of a pale yellow August moon, like a sun grown old. The sky above is strung with thousands of tiny lights, and she fights an overwhelming urge to break her orbit and fling herself out among the stars.

  “Rosie,” Hayden asks after a few moments, “how come whenever I pull you close you pull away?”

  She giggles bashfully. “Sister Annunciata at the Academy of the Sacred Heart said that when dancing with a boy one must always leave sufficient room for the Holy Spirit.”

  “Well, if angels can comfortably dance on the head of a pin then I’m sure the Holy Spirit doesn’t need a bloody wind tunnel.” Hayden gently pulls her to him and this time she doesn’t withdraw.

  In fact, Rosamond tightens her grip on Hayden’s shoulder as she feels released from the small but comfortable world of her life so far and suddenly catapulted into a universe that lacks the reassurance of limits. Love had arisen unexpectedly, like hundreds of flowers simultaneously blooming on a cherry tree one day in springtime.

  They move against and around the rich smooth beat of the music. For Rosamond, dancing with Hayden feels like coming in with the tide. As the song drifts to a close and they unlock their embrace Rosamond looks apprehensive. “Oh Hayden, what’s happening?”

  He holds her hand as the next song begins, the carefree “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” of Bobby McFerrin. In the distance, summer lightning quivers in the moist air and the spicy, thick scent of marijuana drifts down from the bandstand. When Hayden glances up the moon appears shiny and hopeful, like a drunk’s last silver dollar. “In your dreams you were alone. But now we’re in love and so you’re no longer alone.”

  “But what about God?” she asks with deep concern.

  “What about God, Rosamond? He, She, It, wants us to love one another.”

  “I’ll bet you say that to all the nuns.” It’s impossible to deny that Hayden’s sense of humor is infectious. And Rosamond loves being rewarded with that warm magical chortle of his that can almost assure a person that everything is going to be
made right in the end.

  Indeed, Hayden does burst out laughing. “That is the funniest thing you’ve ever said to me!” He touches his lips to hers for a second, and then gazes into her intense blue eyes before kissing her again, long and languorously this time, and they hold each other close and continue to dance. Her blond hair glows with starlight and every once in a while he touches the delicate strands to make sure she’s real.

  Only Rosamond can’t help but fret and wonder, is this earth-bound man with his arms around her body, sharing the very breath she draws, her great misfortune or her great redemption?

  chapter fifty-six

  Slightly after midnight they stroll together, hand in hand, down the path back to Hayden’s room. The sea and the sky have turned the same shade of deep blue, as if they dissolved into each other. White lanterns glow from within the trees every few feet and the air is filled with the sweet perfume of flowers and fruit borne on the breeze. The staccato of drums fades into the background, replaced by the slap of banana leaves against the trees and the plaintive chirping of crickets. A curtain of night moths softly beat their velvety brown wings against Hayden’s screen door beneath the outside light.

  Inside the room the bed has been expertly turned down in his absence and the radio softly plays in the background. Hayden’s attempts to find a jazz station with some Miles Davis and John Coltrane have turned up only All Reggae—All the Time. But after awhile the plaintive strains become almost hypnotic, molasses smooth voices against a strongly accentuated offbeat.

  Hayden lights candles that cast crisscross shadows of bamboo furniture onto the walls. He pushes back the curtain and opens the sliding glass door so they can see the moonglow atop the ocean and hear the surf crash onto the beach only a few yards away. After locating the key to the mini bar he offers Rosamond a drink. When she declines he pours a scotch for himself, takes a swallow, and walks back to where she’s seated on the edge of the bed.