Maybe Reg could hear us, too, wherever he was. Maybe he peered out the window of a building or vehicle and caught sight of some of the tags, repeated in their sundry, modest fashion, and felt the buoy of our call. Such that he thought about us as we had been compelled by events to think about him, as our being just one, as beset with joy and pain as any single person. Maybe that inspired him to keep on, to endure.
And in the unknowably connected way of things, this somehow bolstered, too, our dauntless Fan. For within an hour of when we left her last, she realized that poor Five could now no longer make a sound and in fact was barely sustaining herself with her breaths; the rises of her chest stalled halfway and then could not get shallow enough. Four appeared to be approaching the same condition. Fan had already banged on the door to Miss Cathy’s suite but there was no answer. She even swung a night table at it to smash the panes but they were thumb-thick unbreakable plastic and the flimsy piece of furniture instantly broke apart at its leg joint. In the small kitchen she searched for something she could use as a lever but all the knives were short, thin-bladed parers. She was wielding one anyway and ready to try when the half-opened hatch of the dumbwaiter caught her eye. No, even our Fan was too big to fit inside. But she had an instant vision: she tore up a cereal box and piled the pieces in a soup bowl, nesting some toilet paper on top for good measure. She found matches—the Girls loved scented candles—and when the flames leaped up, she sent it down, knowing that when it reached bottom it would sound a bell in the main kitchen. She pressed her ear to the metal door and heard the faint ping.
But nothing. Just smoke, sharper now, and noxious enough that she had to lean back.
Then a shouting from the other end of the well: Mala frantically calling for Tico. Was the woman on fire? Fan hollered down the well. But less than a minute later the door of the room opened and it was Mala, wholly fine. Once she saw the girls, however, her expression grew stern, now resolved in what she needed to do. She asked Fan to prepare a bag of things for the girls; she herself would go downstairs and call for an ambulance. She wasn’t going to ask Miss Cathy’s permission.
This is your chance, too, little one, she said. Pack a bag as well. This is not the place for you. I’m so sorry. So sorry for everything.
Fan said, You don’t need to apologize to me.
Yes, I do! Mala held her by the shoulders. You most of all! I could see you were different, but what did I do?
It doesn’t matter anymore.
Yes, you’re right, Mala said. You should just go, right away. Take any bus heading out the gate! Here’s my fare card. There’s enough on it to take you quite far. So go as far as you can!
Fan could easily see this was her best chance, too. It was a matter of simply walking out, though of course there were awful possibilities that she would be leaving behind. And yet there was not a mote of her that could have abandoned these girls now. If she didn’t love them as Mala did, or even Miss Cathy, whose feeling for them, if unnaturally skewed, was arguably the most intense of all, Fan at least loved them as if they were of her household, these dear cousins whom she ought to always nurture and safeguard.
I can’t leave yet, Fan said.
No one would blame you! Not even the Girls!
That’s exactly why I can’t, Fan said. Mala clasped her cheek and then ambled away, though not before propping the Girls’ door ajar with the broken night table leg, and Miss Cathy’s suite door with a chair—in case, Mala said, Fan changed her mind.
Of which there was very little possibility now, as Fan made her way to Miss Cathy’s immense, many-chambered bathroom. She did not know what she would do or say to the woman, holding out zero hope of convincing her of anything. But she must have been caught up by a fury, for we can see how there was a new propulsion to Fan’s step, not a speeding up but rather a feeling that she could pass right through a solid if she wanted, that she would not be halted. And that’s one of the funny things about Fan, as we think about her now, which is that when it mattered most she was an essentially physical being, rather than some ornate bundle of notions, wishes, dreams. Perhaps that other sort is more often seen to be heroic these days but we B-Mors—and maybe now you, too—respond more deeply than the rest to someone’s determined gaze, or the way they move across a room, or simply stand there, as Fan did that day at young Joseph’s wake, with such solidity that you might think the world and everything in it was, for a flash, turning around them.
Though naturally not everyone can appreciate this. Miss Cathy, for instance, was surely thinking of the impudence of our Fan as she appeared in the doorway of the bathroom, rather than of her remarkable presence.
What are you doing here? Miss Cathy said, no doubt startled by the fact that Fan had somehow gotten out of the other room. The Girls were attending to one another with various implements and tonics and polishes, with Miss Cathy herself, hair turbaned in a towel, in the midst of curling Seven’s hair. It could have been a scene from one of the ancient oil paintings in Mister Leo’s gallery, an array of fleshy, radiant maidens in an opulent marbled bath, though of course in this tableau the maidens were petite and angular and variously aged and orbiting about this much larger, paler, older figure, this cold sun of a woman who seemed to pull every mote of warmth and color from the stone-tiled room.
I want to join, too, Fan said. May I?
Miss Cathy hardly seemed to have heard her words, gazing absently at the brush in her hand and then rolling the brush under to give the girl’s hair an inward lilt. But she said, Come in then. The others lightly murmured. They were beaming kind smiles but they were clearly uncertain as to why Fan would now leave their sisters, who were stricken in the other room. They must be doing better, was what they silently concurred with one another, though none of them dared ask her for confirmation.
Had they been different souls, Fan might have tried to rally them with some sign, had them ring their keeper and bind her up with the belts of their terry robes, ensuring that whatever Mala could arrange would go unimpeded. Perhaps someday they would thus act, but for now Fan could see that there was no chance for such an uprising. And so she did what she must have thought was best, which was to sit herself down among them and select a bottle of polish from one of the baskets and ask Two if she liked the color she’d chosen, a milky, opalescent silver, to which Two nodded, giddily flapping her extended feet.
Fan remained patient, despite the fact that with each breath of her own she surely felt the straining of Five’s chest in the other room. Yet what was she intending? What was she waiting for? If her aim was to ensure that Four and Five could be transported back to the medical center, she might have tried somehow to trap Miss Cathy inside, maybe dammed the bathroom threshold with the massive bed or stuffed armchairs while the others spirited them away. But no, she did this instead, placing herself into the heart of the group, the strong solvents sweetening the air enough to lodge them all in a heady register.
After Fan painted Two’s toes, Two naturally wanted to paint Fan’s. But to everyone’s surprise, Miss Cathy said she would do it, handing the hairbrush to Two. She would often brush hair and sometimes paint fingernails, but it was very rare that she would do one of the girls’ toes. In fact, it had been many years since she had. Yet now Miss Cathy had Fan soak her feet in a small tub of hot foamed water. Then she filed away the softened skin of her soles, afterward buffing the toes and the spaces in between with a soft brush and wiping the nails and cuticles clean with rubbing alcohol. She dabbed each one with a cotton puff like they were tender little wildflowers. All the while Fan was surely wondering why Mala had not yet returned with help; yet there was little else for her to do. Another sort of heroine might have summoned the darkest parts of herself, resolving, by either bestial fury or righteous mantle, to wield the scissors sparkling right there in the open drawer of the vanity, or else raise her wooden footstool high above this woman’s bent head, and transgress all.
&
nbsp; Of course, she did not. We have to view Fan as recognizing, at that moment, not just Miss Cathy’s mania but how much the Girls meant to the woman. This might seem exactly wrong, given how apparently willing she was to leave poor Four and Five to the full run of their fates. For it was ultimately not a particular girl or girls who were most important but their totality, the way they could web her and cocoon her and settle her down each night and day so that there was no untoward pinch or ache or wrinkle, the temperature of their corpus always regulating and kind. It was all about her, yes, it was solely her storm or fine clime they were subject to, and in this regard the greatest potential disturbance was not their complement being diminished but the specter of sudden change. What the woman needed now was to put a scrim up against the sky.
And soon enough, the feeling was right; it seemed Fan had found the necessary position. They all chattered back and forth about how they would color a panel of their wall with this activity, about what they might eat. Seven kept talking about craving oden, Miss Cathy finally asking what that was. It was as if nothing were awry, which was obviously what Miss Cathy and by extension the Girls wanted most, especially in this uncertain moment, and surely in every other moment, too, the primary dream of keeping being the dream of consolation, of feeling at last solved and right, for kept and keeper both. And doesn’t that dream, in truth, endure for the rest of us, too? Perhaps in this regard we B-Mors—and perhaps your people, too—are merely the Girls writ large, our leagues, clustered for best use and sanctuary, at last achieving a modest state of grace that for too long has been our lone, secret pride.
After Miss Cathy had painted the last of Fan’s toes, she rose and sat before the basins and the mirrored wall in the swiveling salon-style chair, one of the girls automatically ready to brush her hair. The rest of the girls as well as Fan gathered about her, and the picture of them grouped thus was something one might imagine in a catalog for the strangest kind of institution, this most bizarre and intramural of schools. But their number did seem off. Something flashed then in Miss Cathy’s face, as though she had just finally reached an ancient mountaintop ruin that she had half feared was a fantasy, the shadows breaking over its tumbled ramparts, darkening all. She now asked the girls to go check on Four and Five, which was cause for gleeful sighs all around, everyone immediately curtailing whatever she was doing and stowing the mani-pedi paraphernalia. It was as if the whole time they had been awaiting such word, whereas Fan was just beginning to think how mistaken her strategy had been, that she should have taken harder, more extreme measures right from the start. But as they made their way back out, Miss Cathy asked Fan to stay. She had Fan sit in the salon chair, standing behind her and regarding her as a stylist might, even weighing the ends of her hair in her palms. She took up a brush and worked it through the straight, thick tresses. The tines sometimes grazed Fan’s neck and she tensed for the strokes to become harder, harsher, but they stayed steady and full, the sound like heavy threshing.
Finally Miss Cathy said: When I was a girl, my mother brushed my hair every night. Yours must have, too.
Fan shook her head; sometimes she and a cousin might sit up with each other, but more for play than in some familial bonding.
But it’s wonderful to brush hair like yours, Miss Cathy said to the mirror. My mother would have admired it. She would have said yours was a pony’s mane, sturdy but still tender and lustrous. She would complain that my hair was too fine and broke and tangled too easily, which is why I had to go to her each night before bed. I think she hoped to train it to grow thicker and straighter, but naturally it never did.
Fan said it must have been a good feeling, to have such a ritual.
Miss Cathy smiled weakly. She unfurled the towel from her head, her hair damply clumped in fraying ropes. Fan moved to hop down from the chair but Miss Cathy placed her hand on both of her shoulders, bending so that their faces were side by side.
I know you can’t see it, so you don’t have to agree, the woman said, her eyes wide and focused. But I see a lot of me in you. Not me now. You’re so fresh and alive, and I have nothing more of those things. But when I was younger, even younger than you, you would be surprised by the girl I was. I used to walk to the edge of the village and wait for the gatehouse guard to take a bite of his lunch and then slip out between the bars. I was that skinny! And you know what I did?
Fan shook her head.
I would run.
Fan said, Where to.
Away! Miss Cathy cried, her face, in fact, suddenly alive. I would just run, at first as fast as I could so the guard wouldn’t see me, but when the road started getting rough, I would slow down and try to stay out of sight. I’d keep going the whole day. Sometimes I saw cars and people but then I hid. It’s amazing that I didn’t get hurt or lost.
Fan asked if her parents got frightened or angry.
They never knew, Miss Cathy said. My father only came home after supper, and my mother was busy all day with her projects in the garden and with her friends. Our helper was terrified for me, but I made her promise not to tell.
You must have traveled far.
I don’t know exactly. You should tell me. How far can a little girl really go? Miss Cathy paused at this notion. One time I was caught in a thunderstorm and I wasn’t sure anymore where I was. I had to hope the sun would break through so the rainbow from the village’s sky screen might reappear, which it must have. Otherwise I might not be here now. I’d be someplace else.
Fan, no doubt sensing the woman’s yearning, said: Where do you think?
Not a Charter, probably. Though I’m not sure I would have lasted out in the counties.
I think you would have, Fan replied, saying it as if surely believing it.
Miss Cathy seemed to gleam with this notion. She then said: Sometimes I wish I could see myself like I was then, but from above. Out there.
But you can, Fan told her. You can see it.
How?
You can see whatever you want.
And it was then that Fan did a funny thing. Without asking, she clasped Miss Cathy’s hands, which were still resting on her shoulders. Miss Cathy instinctively pulled back—she might touch you, but it was never the other way around—but Fan held them firmly, Miss Cathy looking alarmed in the mirror. And before the woman could say or do anything else, Fan closed her eyes. She asked Miss Cathy to do the same. She could feel her pulling, but Fan could be very strong physically when she needed to be. Miss Cathy shouted for her to let go. But she wouldn’t. Then Miss Cathy was thrashing against her, their hands locked together while they boxed at Fan’s ears, her temple, her jaw. The blows, dense and mean, fell heavily on her, and though she wanted to cry out or groan, she kept as still as she could, as if she were not made of flesh but the oldest stone. And just at the moment that it seemed Fan might yield, when tears began to wet her cheeks, when she felt her clutch finally giving way, the woman relented. She could hear Miss Cathy breathing miserably behind her. And it was then Fan described the scene she wanted Miss Cathy to picture: a counties landscape, mottled sage with dense growth, and run through by gravelly roads, and pocked with the rusted shanty-tops of cottages with the smoke from cooking fires spiraling forth, and there, in the shadows of the underbrush, a wispy, pale-shouldered child with fine strawberry-hay hair stepping sprightly through the thickets, almost dancing, skipping free.
When Fan peered again in the mirror, Miss Cathy’s eyes were still shut, though barely, her face slightly uptilted, as if she were taking in a rare gentle spring sun. She might have stayed that way, and Fan no doubt would have let her, had a commotion outside the bathroom not dispelled the reverie. When they stepped out, the Girls’ door was flung open, as were the double doors of Miss Cathy’s suite. Had all fled?
But inside the room everyone was assembled, the large space suddenly feeling much smaller for all the new and different people; it was not just the other girls who were there
but also Mala, and then Tico, who stood alongside a pair of EMTs almost as hulking as he; and to Fan’s particular surprise, and what must have been a small burst of happiness in her, there was also young Dr. Upendra, too. He had come back. He had not abandoned them. He caught her eye but just as instantly went back to Five. She was in distress. No one was making a sound, not even Miss Cathy, because it was clear there was not enough time to take her back to the medical center. And as we regard the moment and all and sundry gathered, we suppose that they must have figured the doctor would certainly save her, that this whole situation, if deeply fraught and shocking, was one in which a state of normalcy would prevail, or would at least be reverted to. That however stunted and peculiar these girls’ lives were, their days would inexorably string along, if only adding up to a thickening in the torso and the flowing colors of their intricate mural work that no one but they and a few others would ever see.
Five stirred in her bed, her feet finally moving, if in shivers. Then she hiccuped, or spasmed, pivoting onto her side, pushing out a sound that her dear sisters would later hear as something like I can or My Fan. Spent, she rolled onto her back. Tears trickled down her tensed-up cheeks. She was smiling widely and the tears seemed to be only those of joy. But Miss Cathy gasped, hands over her mouth. Upendra dropped onto his knees and listened to her chest. Then he used an air bag, next his own mouth, as well as compressions on her chest. Her pupils stretched wide, space black, the whole of her looking as if every drop of her blood were turning to plainest paint.
There is always something entrancing about an image on a wall. Perhaps it’s because it’s frameless, threatening to break wider, maybe free. From the youngest to the oldest we know its purpose, which is to inspire and incite and celebrate, maybe question and even criticize, and then, of course, simply to record a version of what has happened, or should have happened, were our world a more genial place. And seeing those splashes of color along with others (or the thought of onlooking others) is totally different from seeing the same images alone, the former sensation, when it is right, akin to sharing a long-harbored secret.
On Such a Full Sea: A Novel Page 24
