Spirit of the Place (9781101617021)

by Shem, Samuel

  “I have terrible news, Pam,” he said. “Your daughter is in the hospital.”

  “Oh my God! Is she all right?”

  “I’m afraid not, dear. Please come right away.” He heard her cries and hung up.

  Yes, he thought, it’s true what Bill says, that as a doctor to the Columbians you get to lift up the lid and see all the secrets. Okay, and just how is that good for the world?

  As he waited for Seraphina’s mom to come in, he tried to get ready for the rest of Saturday. Having gotten coverage, he was spending the day with Miranda, Cray, and Amy. He was feeling apprehensive. Ever since the close call on the trestle, Miranda had seemed mopey and, as he had gotten more swamped with work, moody. On the surface everything seemed pretty okay, and when he tried to ask her about it she’d always said she was fine, just a little tired. But he felt a slight distance opening between them—even when they were making love—as if a part of each of them was not really there. He was worried about it, wanting to get back to the seamless “we” that they’d had, that energized them both. But he didn’t know how to do it, and he didn’t have much energy to try.

  He finally left the hospital at noon, feeling only half-alive. But in the parking lot he blinked in the hazy warm sun, and, being back in contact with the ongoing natural world, he felt a touch better. He lifted his face to a spring drizzle, soft and promising. The time of year when the river is flowing freely and an evening surprises you with its lingering light.

  When Amy saw him she said, “Your eyes are bright red. You look terrible!”

  “Terrible, right now, would be good.”

  On the drive out to Miranda’s house, over and over the white lines started to wobble, and he had to stop for more coffee, figuring he’d find a way to catch some sleep during the day. Seeing him, Miranda, too, looked startled. Cray asked how he was.

  “Happy as a dog’s nose in spring!” he said. What the hell was he supposed to do, start the day off by telling them he felt like shit?

  They drove a long way out to the edge of the county, a historical site in Lebanon, the grave of Samuel Tilden. Tilden, Miranda told them, was the ill-fated Columbian elected president of the United States in 1876 by a majority of the popular vote, but who had suffered a breakage in American history: the presidency was taken away by the corrupt electoral college, which overturned the people’s choice. On his rowboat-sized granite memorial was carved a final nostalgia: I STILL TRUST THE PEOPLE.

  From there they went to lunch at the diner—four “Whaleburgers and French fries”—and then to the new film at the Half Moon Theater, A Passage to India—featuring great scenes of festive elephants. Cray glommed on to Orville the whole day, which was fine with him, given Miranda’s gray mood, but Cray was nasty to Miranda and even to Amy. At one point, refusing to walk down the street next to Amy, he announced that “girls are radioactive—you can’t get too close!” Amy was hurt by the rejection but took it with her usual resiliency and high spirits, saying, “Hey, a lot of boys I know feel that way, but it’s their loss, not us girls’.”

  Cray even turned on him once, during Animal Guessing Game. Orville’s first guess was “a Himalayan snow leopard,” and Cray, mimicking what he had done to him, taunted Orville, then pretended to think it over, and said, finally, “I was thinking of a Himalayan snow leopard!” Miranda gave both Cray and Orville a look. Things got tense.

  Orville stopped off at home to change and pick up the mail before going back out to Miranda’s for the night. Big mistake. There was another letter from Selma.

  Hi, flier!

  I’m in a good mood—I’m always in a good mood coming home from someone else’s funeral. Today’s was Sam Schenckberg, Faith’s father. (Jewish, but horrid.) We all sat there at the service and no one would speak, no one could think of anything nice to say. Even Rabbi Werlin—he’s such a pro at funerals—zilch. Finally somebody in the back stands up—I think one of the Athens Rosenblatts—and he jabs his finger up at God and shouts: “His brudder vas vorse!”

  I can’t wait to hear what they say about me. (Make that said.)

  For some reason I’m remembering your hands: those long fingers, those soft palms. You always disappointed me in your choice of medical specialty. A GP? Bill is a GP! With hands like that, you could have been a gynecologist.

  Which brings me to the question of your being normal. In a lot of ways you seem to be. Fine. But all in all I vote no. Your sister and your father and even your niece lately—and of course Milt—have voted no. There is one big way in which you are abnormal: your total selfishness. (Penny, who’s had oodles of therapy, asked her psychiatrist about you once and he said that you fit the diagnosis of a “narcissist.”) Oh sure, you’re saying, who isn’t selfish? Why, no one isn’t, no one isn’t at all. Even I have my moments. My dream was always to have my photo, with me smiling, on the front page of The New York Times. So instead of the Mayflower, we came over on the Jewflower? So I should settle for The Forvitz?

  But listen: I’m talking about how you were always so focused on yourself that you were never focused on me.

  Not even after my operation. I was normal, some said beautiful in fact. I was the star of those Junior League fashion shows at the Worth you don’t remember, and then I was butchered by that goyishe neurosurgeon up in Albany your father met on the golf course. I came home dead from the face up, and did you take care of me, even once stay with me?

  Nope.

  Do you know what it’s like to cry out of only one eye? Hear out of only one ear? Smile out of only one side of your face? To have to scrunch up your shoulder to blink your eyelid?

  I’ll bet that whatever girl you’ve chosen here it’s going badly. You’re about to fail again. You may ask yourself: “How do I know this?” Oh, I know. I know because I know you. Like you failed with me!

  Be well, from your

  High Flier

  How does she know? It’s uncanny. Could she still be alive? Hiding out? Wandering around town in disguise like in a witness protection program? Up on Cemetery Hill with binoculars watching all this? Could she somehow have faked her death? He made a mental note to ask Penny if she in fact had ever actually seen Selma’s dead body and to check on Selma’s death certificate. But Selma had faked his birth certificate, couldn’t she have faked her death certificate too?

  With the perverse thought that the letter might serve as an “exhibit” someday somewhere, he folded it as carefully as a love letter and slipped it into its envelope. Feeling heavy and light both, he drove out through the strangely portending May Day dusk to Cray and Miranda.

  Lightning flashed and sudden thunder rolled from Rip Van Winkle land across the river onto the roof of the old house. It was Cray’s bedtime and he was putting up a fight, wanting to play yet another game of Clue with Orville.

  “Come on, Cray,” Miranda said, “bed.”

  “No!”

  “Come on. This is a fuss-free zone. Brush teeth, change into sleepy clothes, and get into bed.”

  Another flash of lightning. Thunder blasted down sooner and harder.

  “Only if Orvy reads to me alone.”

  “Hey, Crayboy,” said Orville, “we both read to you, you know that.”

  “But the thunder scares me so much I should get what I want.”

  “Don’t give me that scared stuff, kiddo.”

  “It’s okay,” Miranda said, sighing, giving in. “Just for tonight.”

  “Yay!” Cray ran upstairs to the bathroom.

  Miranda went into her bedroom to change. Orville followed Cray. There was a terrific crack of thunder. The lights flickered and, enfeebled, went out. They all shouted to each other and tapped their way along walls and downstairs to cabinets and found candles and a tiny flashlight and went upstairs again.

  With the flashlight, Orville read Cray Kipling’s How the Elephant Got Its Trunk. Cray asleep, Orville extracted h
is arm and headed into Miranda’s bedroom, which was pitch-dark. Turning off the flashlight, he felt his way into bed with her. Thunder crashed hard just above their heads, like a fist coming down on the roof, shaking rafters and joists, traveling down the backbone of the house so that they could hear the tinkle of plates and cups in the kitchen.

  In the dark they devoured each other with touches and kisses. They were hungry, as if their passion could fly in the face of their recent clashes at the edges of love, could lift their moods back to good. Mouths open, noisily, kicking covers off, they let go.

  Settling into each other’s arms and down into sleep, they heard the fists of thunder open to long fingers of rain, and caught the clean scent of sulfur whooshing up from the lowering layers of the downpour and in through the slit of a west window left open, a cooling echo of the storm.

  All the lights snapped on. There they were naked. On the coverless bed in the glare of the cheap overhead bedroom fixture that Miranda had vowed for years to replace.

  It was, remarkably, the first time they were seeing each other naked in bright light. Miranda had always insisted that they make love in the dark or by candlelight, and under covers. Orville found himself staring at her shriveled leg.

  The muscle mass was scarcely enough to fill out the form of a leg, with the warped bone prominent. At the knee were the scars of its many reconstructions. At the ankle the tissue was scarred in a different way, perhaps from her orthopedic shoe or even from, in the past, her steel brace. Orville flashed on anatomy, the dissection room, the sudden cadaver. His medical training had leached out the shock from the bodies he saw. He had learned to put a lot of bleached white—white coat, white bandage, white pages of doctor logic—between his heart and his job. But this was different. He was naked too—no white coat, no job to do. Stunned by the sight, he was more stunned by being stunned, shocked at being shocked. He saw far worse, day in, day out.

  In the moment before his medical mask came down, Miranda saw his shock, even a flicker of revulsion. Exposed, humiliated, by reflex she did something that may have been brave. She touched his cheek to turn his head toward hers, away from her leg so that he was looking into her eyes as she questioned what she was seeing in his. He fought her questioning. She sensed his fight. He sensed her sensing. She too.

  It might have been a moment of profound connection. It had that chance. But they couldn’t hold it. They looked away.

  “You all right?” Miranda asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Turn the light off.”

  “No, no, it’s okay,” he said. “Let’s face it.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “I do.”

  “No, you don’t,” she said. “Turn it off.”

  “You don’t know what I want.”

  “A little discipline,” she said firmly, “is required. Please, turn it off.”

  He did so, and lay down again beside her. She spread the light blanket over them.

  They lay there in the dark. The lightning was over. The thunder was over. Only the snare drums of rain persisted.

  The silence seemed, to Orville, to go on a long time. For Miranda, the silence was moving terribly fast—in a second a chance would be lost.

  “We have to talk,” she said, “about your leaving.”

  He stiffened. “Fine.”

  After he said nothing more, she asked, “You can leave in fifteen weeks. Are you going to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When will you know?”

  “I can’t tell you. I wish I could but I can’t.”

  “At this point—now—what’s your best guess?”

  “I’m sorry, but I really have no idea. I wish I did, wish I could decide now. I want to stay, want desperately to stay—I’m totally crazy about you and Cray—but I’m not sure I can stand it here, stay alive here. Not just the town, the ghosts. Selma. You don’t know how much it hurts.”

  “I’d like to know.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, but I guess we’ve both just got to live with it a while longer, until closer to August. Maybe we just try to live with the faith that it’ll all work out for us, for all of us.” He paused. “There are all kinds of options. Maybe you and Cray could come with me?”

  “You have options, I don’t.”

  “Maybe you do.”

  “Easy to say, but no. If I were alone, fine.” She couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her voice as she said, “You may have noticed that I’m not.”

  Orville felt jolted by this, like when you step off one step expecting there to be another and there’s not. “Are you saying that because he’s not mine?”

  “‘Mine’?”

  “Biologically.”

  She stared at him in disbelief. “I’m going on the assumption that on August 27th you’re gone.”

  “So he’d be mine if I stayed?”

  “Careful, Orvy,” she said, trying desperately to be careful herself. “We’ve got a lot at stake here, and history’s not on either of our sides. Take care.”

  He tried to take care, but it was like trying to take care with a current pushing you further out and at an angle so you knew that if you didn’t strike out for shore right away and with strong strokes and taking into account the angle, you’d never get back.

  “Look,” he said finally, “I know you’re afraid of what’s happening. I am, too. But the way you’ve been lately, kind of mopey, and really tense with me and Cray? Maybe it’s because Cray is so much into me lately. Maybe that’s what’s bothering you?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not.”

  “Yeah, well maybe your fear about what might happen is bringing about what you’re afraid of. Maybe your fear’s provoking what you fear.”

  “Thanks a lot,” she said, really hurt. “Like your contempt does?”

  “What? You’re saying I’m contemptu—”

  “Damnit! I’m saying stay or go—but don’t poison everything!”

  · 22 ·

  One Wednesday morning about five weeks later, when the fleeting Columbian spring had already given way to Mosquito Heaven in the surrounding swamps and citizens were already sweating and slapping and scratching and cursing the pestilential Columbian summer, Orville sat in his office staring at Bill’s latest postcard, thinking how thrilled Cray would be to see it. It was from southern India and showed elephants carved into cliffs, “Elephant Cliffs, Bay of Bengal.”

  Howdy, doc!

  Having great time but boy the grub is hot. Riding elephant all day a mixed bag. Babs got sick but is OK. Hot as hell. Starbusol running low. Wolfy and Kenni a pain. Their son Glenn joined them today. Divorced, out of work, nose hair.

  Yr frnd, Bill

  A call came from the hospital. In broad daylight just outside the CCC (Colored Citizens Club) on Diamond Street, a kid had shot another kid for a leather jacket.

  Orville had just finished saving the kid and was signing out to his coverage for the rest of the day when the nurse rushed in with a telegram.

  WOLFY AND KENNI AND GLENN GONE AND SO IS ALL OUR CASH AND BABS DIAMONDS STOP PLEASE WIRE FIVE GRAND TO ADDRESS BELOW STOP OTHERWISE OK STOP LOVE BILL STOP

  Dismayed, Orville recalled how Bill, distrustful of checks and credit cards, always carried a big wad of cash around town with him. But had he been carrying big wads of cash around the world with him, too? Never trust a young guy with nose hair. He tried to wire money through the Columbia post office. Despite the clerk’s shock at attempting a new task, it seemed it might just work. But then there was a breakage.

  Orville had promised Miranda he’d pick her up at ten thirty to help her set up for the gala benefit luncheon for the Worth. It was to be held at noon at the Joab Center house, a historic Nantucket whaler’s house shaped like a ship, moored out on Harry Howard Avenue just beyond Penny and Milt
’s ranch. He’d arranged coverage and had been all set up to get there on time until Bill’s telegram. Knowing he would be late, he picked up the phone to call her, surprised to find that he was fearing her reaction.

  Miranda, rushing to get ready for the benefit luncheon, felt sick to her stomach, headachy and light-headed. All her senses seemed hyperacute. Cray had a summer cold with some of the same intestinal symptoms, so she figured she’d caught it from him. Orville had said that there was something going around, but he always said that there was something going around. Her period was three weeks late. She half-thought pregnancy but given what he’d told her about his medical condition, dismissed it.

  As she packed up the brie and Jarlsberg and English water crackers and cups and plates for the benefit, she felt on edge. Mrs. Tarr and she were supposed to have done the event together, but Mrs. Tarr’s beloved cat Randolph had died and she was paralyzed with grief, listening to old Mabel Mercer records at home. Cray, too, had loved Randolph. He and Miranda had helped her bury the cat in her backyard the day before. Miranda was left to run the benefit herself.

  As she worked, she tried to keep her mind off what had been going on with Orville and her, and with each of them and Cray. She realized that the two of them had been kind of limping along and that Cray was feeling it. With just a couple more weeks to go in school, her son seemed to have drawn back from her even more, and even from his god, Dr. Rose. The other morning when Orville had gone to wake him up, Cray, half-asleep, had shouted at him.

  “You can’t just dive right in! You have to do it gentle-gentle, like Mom!”

  Miranda sensed that Randolph’s death was stirring up Cray’s feelings about his father’s death. She felt a secret sadness in her son and wished Cray would just bring it out into the open. She felt it, too, late every spring, when the Columbian weather started to remind her of the sultry heat of the Gulf of Mexico. She wished they could grieve together. Not only she and Cray, but she and Orville, too. To her, Orville’s grief over his mother’s death seemed to be coming out as impatience. Lately, Miranda had noticed that her sadness irritated him. A big worry—his loss of patience at sadness.