Illumination Night

by Alice Hoffman

  Vonny makes a left turn onto the less traveled Moshup’s Trail, a road that leads along the ocean. She begins to feel something in the pit of her stomach. A wire being pulled tight. The Indians named this road after a legendary giant who wanted to go beyond Gay Head to a place called Noman’s Island. At low tide he dropped huge boulders into the ocean, but then, they say, he grew tired. He could not bring himself to leave his island. The end of the earth, Vonny thinks. The last rock before an ocean with no floor. When the panic rises again, this time into her throat, she pulls over to the side of the road, just as she’s read she’s supposed to do, waiting for her panic to subside before she tries again instead of simply giving up.

  Andre’s watching her, but he doesn’t say anything. He reaches down for the paper bag with their supper, takes out a sandwich and begins to unwrap it.

  “Do you have to do that?” Vonny says.

  “If I want to eat I do,” Andre says.

  Vonny switches off the radio and listens instead to the wind and the crackling sound of plastic wrap. The sky has grown dark. She is thirty-four years old. She is afraid of an empty road.

  “Get out,” Vonny says suddenly.

  Andre stops unwrapping the sandwich.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” Andre says. “But aren’t you the one who double-wrapped the goddamned sandwiches?”

  “Get out,” Vonny says.

  “Don’t be so nervous,” Andre tells her. “I’m not letting you drive if you’re nervous.”

  Vonny laughs meanly. “It’s not up to you to let me do anything.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” Andre says.

  “Okay,” Vonny says, sounding very calm. “You can drive.”

  Andre tosses his sandwich into the bag, gets out, slams the door tightly, then walks behind the truck. Vonny can feel the wave building inside her. It is more like fury than terror. She will not live this way. She will not count seconds, miles, steps. If the force field kills her, let it. Let Andre raise Simon, let him marry again, someone younger, someone who is not afraid of the dark. A stewardess. A race-car driver. A circus acrobat.

  Vonny can see Andre in the rearview mirror as he walks around the truck. He is a streak of black, the shadow who covers her shadow. Her leg, which is so weak, now does the most amazing thing. It moves, and slams down hard on the gas. Before Andre can reach for the door handle, Vonny throws the truck in gear and takes off. She heads toward the horizon. The panic rises higher, into her brain. She looks briefly in her rearview mirror and sees Andre standing there. The bag holding their dinner lurches and everything spills on the floor. Cigarettes fly off the dashboard like shrapnel. When she checks the speedometer and sees she’s doing sixty-five she feels a rush of excitement, or terror—she can no longer distinguish the symptoms. Her heart is pounding and her hands are sweating, but she feels deliciously light-headed. She knows that this is how it can be. Somewhere in her throat Vonny makes guttural noises, as though she were moving the car by sheer will. She is alone in the world and she loves it. She has no fear of getting lost because there is nothing to get lost from. When she hits the force field, Vonny slams on her brakes. As her panic starts to take over she tells herself there is nothing to be afraid of. She has driven a quarter of a mile on a winter evening and left her husband behind. She makes a U-turn.

  When she pulls up beside him, Andre throws open the door, reaches in, and takes the keys out of the ignition. Vonny’s eyes are shining. She won’t let go of the wheel.

  “Are you crazy?” Andre shouts. He pulls her out of the truck. He walks away, then turns back to her. “Don’t ever do that to me again,” he says. His voice sounds thick. “Are you listening to me?” he asks.

  Vonny puts her head back and strains to see the sky. Tomorrow she will begin slowly, getting into the truck and just sitting there, then backing down the driveway. She has been advised to set small goals and she understands now that it may be weeks before she can make the turn out of her own driveway. She will keep rolls of Life Savers in her coat pockets; she’ll make certain to have a map and a full tank of gas. The next time she comes to this stretch of road it will be early in the morning, and she’ll be ready.

  Chapter Seven

  SPEAKING TO STRANGERS

  ALL spring Elizabeth Renny watches her neighbor drive up and down in her driveway. The spinning of tires in the mud and gravel creates a comforting hum as Elizabeth Renny hangs out sheets on the clothesline, fills the bird feeders with seed, attacks the unruly lilacs, already turning blue, with a hedge clipper. Occasionally, Elizabeth Renny waves, but mostly she ignores her neighbor. There is no polite way to ask Vonny what on earth she’s doing other than making deep ruts in the driveway and wasting a lot of gas.

  Elizabeth Renny has recently done something awful. She has changed her will and left everything to Jody. Of course everything is not all that much: a small savings account, her personal effects, and whatever the sale of her house may bring. Her lawyer arrived at the appointed time but before he allowed her to sign the papers he asked, “Are you certain you want to do this?” three times. Laura had been the beneficiary, with the understanding that upon her death the three grandchildren would share whatever might be left. Elizabeth Renny agrees with her lawyer, there is nothing fair about this new will. She has decided that she has the right to do the wrong thing. It is, after all, her money, her house, her death.

  She has not mentioned any of this to her daughter or to Jody and she plans to keep it this way. Revising her will has changed something inside her. She no longer believes she can cheat death by deciding the hour and manner herself. She wants to see how Jody turns out, and now, when it is almost too late, Elizabeth Renny wants to wake up in the mornings. She is an old woman who may soon be completely blind. And she wants her life. She can feel everything inside her slowing down. It’s an odd feeling, as if time had shifted. She knows she is dying, and it seems a ridiculous death, caused not by accident or disease but by this slowing down. She has the childish fear that when she no longer exists nothing around her will either. Birds, trees, sky, all of it will evaporate at the hour of her death. She has never thought much of herself and now here she is, convinced the world is contained within her.

  She decides to get her house in order. She hires a junk man to clear out her cellar and throws out old beads and chipped saucers. For a week Jody spends every day raking the yard, and Elizabeth Renny still is not satisfied. Although a woodpecker is living in the pine, she wants the half-dead tree cut down before it falls on her house. She wants this place to be worth something when it’s sold. She walks over to the idling truck and surprises Vonny, who quickly shifts into neutral and grabs the emergency brake.

  “I didn’t even hear you,” Vonny says.

  “I guess you know every inch of this driveway by now,” Elizabeth Renny says, giving her neighbor the opportunity to explain what she’s been doing all these weeks.

  Vonny laughs, explains nothing, and takes a cigarette from the pack on the dashboard.

  “I’d like to have the pine tree cut down this year,” Elizabeth Renny says. “Unless you’re opposed.”

  “Not at all,” Vonny says.

  “Good,” Elizabeth Renny says, and then, purely out of politeness she adds, “Come and have tea with me sometime.”

  “I couldn’t,” Vonny says quickly, feeling her panic level rise. She has not yet been in anyone else’s house without her safe person.

  “Well, of course,” Mrs. Renny says. “You’re busy.”

  As Mrs. Renny slowly walks back across the lawn, Vonny has the urge to run after her. She desperately wants to be able to go to her neighbor’s house for a cup of tea. Why is she so terrified that she will have an attack in front of the old lady? How can she be so certain that the force field will rise up like an iron gate if she makes one move to follow her neighbor? She feels like a child, unable to take care of herself. Though she takes care of Simon she is only pretending to be an adult. She is the one who needs someone to
hold her hand. She knows the fury children feel when they need a parent desperately, and it’s a bitter taste in her mouth.

  At night Vonny dreams she is a child again. She is in her own backyard, searching for treasure. Though the sky is dark, a black metal lantern beside her casts its yellow light. She digs effortlessly in the dirt, then gets down on her hands and knees. When she looks into the hole she sees her grandmother’s ruby ring. It does not surprise her in the least to discover that the ring is worn on a hand rising up through the earth. The hand is white. It wants her.

  Vonny is sweating when she wakes up. Her T-shirt and underpants stick to her body. When Andre wakes, an hour later, Vonny is at the window, studying the distance between their house and the house next door.

  “You okay?” Andre says.

  Vonny nods. The last time she looked at the lilacs there were only buds. Suddenly, there are leaves.

  “Sure,” Vonny says.

  Andre gets out of bed, pulls on a pair of jeans, then goes to stand behind her. In the past month Andre has felt closer to Vonny. He knows that when he works at the garage in the morning, she is waiting for him. Sometimes when he pulls down the driveway he sees her dart away from the window. Her image is distorted through the glass, ghostly and comforting at the same time. Awful, but this has cured him of Jody. And, he can tell, Jody has been cured as well. Now when she sees him she calls out, “Hey, Andre!” then smiles, as though she’s been foolish.

  Andre and Vonny go back to bed and make love, quickly, in case Simon wakes. Vonny finds herself listening to the sound of a plane somewhere overhead. She is already thinking about the moment when the truck makes the turn out of the driveway. When that moment comes, Vonny is at the back door, waving. Nelson has followed the truck to the road, and when he returns, Vonny lets him inside and wipes his paws with a towel. It is the last week in May and still muddy so Vonny pulls on high boots. She slips a black sweater over her head, then puts on a raincoat and ties the belt. Standing by the door she smokes a cigarette, then she sits down at the table and listens to house noises. A loose shutter slaps against some wooden shingles. Water flows through metal pipes. Nelson clicks across the floor, puts his head on her knee, and softly whines. She strokes his head and tells him he’s a good boy.

  Vonny thinks of her dream, then remembers standing in the backyard with her father while he pointed out Sirius. Her father told her sailors used to chart their course by the red star, but that somehow the star had turned white as any other. It astonished her to learn that a star could change color. She feels a surge of loss, as though she’d just been notified of her father’s death. She reaches in her pockets and makes sure she has everything she needs: a roll of Life Savers, cigarettes, matches, her keys. She snaps on Nelson’s leash and walks to the back door. It smells wet outside. As soon as Vonny pushes open the door Nelson strains at his leash. He has picked up the scent of the tomcat who is lurking in the yard. Using Nelson for protection is no good, Vonny can see that. She takes off his leash and locks him in the house. She stands on the porch and eats two wild-cherry Life Savers. She has the urge to run all the way and get it over with, but she knows she’s supposed to take it slow—stop and wait till she can try again—if she has to.

  THE wood railings of the porch are rickety and need to be replaced. As she walks down the steps her throat tightens. She tells herself she alone has created the force field, she alone can get rid of it. She begins to walk across the yard. Halfway to her neighbor’s house, Vonny’s panic level lurches and begins to rise for no reason at all. Level one is the beginning stage—sweaty hands and a fluttering stomach. Ten is an all-out attack. She is already at a five without knowing why. The stimulus for her attacks can be outrageously trivial. There may have been the caw of a crow. A car somewhere down the road may have sped by a little too fast. Her level rises quickly. She has an overwhelming desire to run. She is a fox who will chew her foot off in order to escape from a trap. She leans against the pine tree and decides to count to fifty. If she still has to run after that, she will. She counts too fast. She can smell the spicy pine. Her raincoat is too warm. She feels in her pockets and counts the keys on her key ring. She still has the key to her mother’s house in Florida. In her mother’s garden there is ginger, sage, and lemon mint. There is an orange tree, and a rock garden filled with succulents.

  She realizes that she has counted to a hundred. The only symptom she has left is a burning in her stomach. Since she is just as close to Mrs. Renny’s house as she is to her own, she slowly walks forward. She will not think about the fact that eventually she will have to walk home. If necessary she will call the police to escort her. She knocks on the door two times. She does not know what she will do if Mrs. Renny is not home. She begins to count again and reaches twenty before Elizabeth Renny comes to the door. Mrs. Renny blinks in the sudden light.

  “I can’t stay,” Vonny says. She tightens the belt of her raincoat.

  “That’s fine,” Elizabeth Renny says. She is extremely confused. She decides they must have made an appointment she has forgotten.

  “I may not be able to stay,” Vonny amends.

  While Mrs. Renny puts up water for tea, Vonny looks out the window to gauge how close her house is. Mrs. Renny asks what sort of tea she wants. Vonny says English breakfast, but winds up with oolong. Mrs. Renny serves pound cake, not homemade, but good all the same.

  “Would you like to take that raincoat off?” Mrs. Renny asks.

  “Oh, no,” Vonny says. She takes a bite of cake. “There’s something wrong with me,” she says, and then quickly shuts up, horrified by her own words.

  Vonny’s mail-order course suggests that phobics tell those around them what is wrong. No one will slam the door shut in her face, no one will stare at her as though she were insane. And, this is the part that troubles Vonny, if they do they aren’t worth much.

  “Then by all means keep it on,” Elizabeth Renny says, imagining Vonny must have some sort of skin disease.

  “I have panic attacks,” Vonny says in a voice that is certainly her own. “I can’t go anywhere without Andre.”

  Elizabeth Renny, who was raised to believe troubles should be kept to oneself, slices more cake. Vonny cannot seem to stop talking.

  “I can’t believe this has happened to me,” Vonny says. “At my age.”

  Elizabeth Renny, who would give anything to be Vonny’s age, feels more confused than ever.

  “You’re afraid to leave your house?”

  Vonny nods, then gets up and clears the table. Andre will not be home from Vineyard Haven for perhaps another hour. Her house looks a little farther away.

  “But you’re here,” Elizabeth Renny says, puzzled.

  “Well, yes,” Vonny says. The walk over here, which seemed so monumental, now seems an insignificant accomplishment. “I’m supposed to practice and try to go a little farther every day.”

  Elizabeth Renny can tell this is serious. One minute Vonny looks just fine and the next her face seems to crumble. Elizabeth is suddenly reminded that she can walk down that road anytime she wants to. There are better things to be afraid of than a country road bordered with scrub pine and oaks.

  “Walk with me down the road,” Elizabeth Renny says.

  Vonny turns to her. Her back presses up against the sink so that a wet line forms on her raincoat.

  “I’m very slow,” Elizabeth Renny warns Vonny. “I’m definitely not a jogger.”

  “I can’t,” Vonny says.

  Mrs. Renny gets up and takes a thin sweater draped on the back of her chair.

  “Seriously,” Vonny says, “I can’t.”

  Mrs. Renny takes her house key from a dish on the counter.

  “I may not get any farther than my own house,” Vonny says.

  “I don’t know why I bother to lock the door,” Elizabeth Renny says.

  Vonny walks out onto the porch and waits for Mrs. Renny. It takes Elizabeth Renny a long time to fit the key in the lock and she’s afraid Vonny will k
now there’s something wrong with her eyes, but when she turns Vonny is practicing her deep breathing.

  When they set off they walk slowly, their feet sinking into the mud as they cross the lawn. They walk past Vonny’s house and down the driveway.

  “What if I have to run?” Vonny says.

  “What a wonderful thing,” Elizabeth Renny says, “to be able to run.”

  Mrs. Renny has to stop three times, and each time she does Vonny focuses on a small patch of the road, counting ants and stones. She knows concentrating on something outside herself is supposed to keep her in the present and prevent her from imagining, and possibly triggering, a panic attack. If she has an attack she knows the first thing to go will be her legs. Who will carry her home? Who will save her?

  “Can you see the magnolia from here?” Elizabeth Renny asks.

  Vonny realizes that they are almost to the Freeds’. Their house is never opened before Memorial Day, so the Freeds never get to see the tree at its peak. Windows are boarded up with shutters, nailed closed in case of storms. The porch swing has been taken down and stored in the garage.

  “Yes,” Vonny says, “I can see the tree.”

  It’s filled with purple-and-white flowers. Soon, Elizabeth Renny can see a blur of violet and white, like clouds spread out in front of her on the road. She used to wait for her husband right here to come home from work on summer evenings. She used to hold her daughter by the hand. When a car passes by, Vonny guides Mrs. Renny toward the side of the road. Vonny’s raincoat flares out behind her as she helps Mrs. Renny over the ruts. They are up to their ankles in mud, but they have a perfect view of the magnolia here.

  It is a beautiful day and much warmer than anyone expected. Andre has all the windows in the truck rolled down when he reaches the bend in the road just before the Freeds’ property. He thinks he must be dreaming when he sees Vonny and Mrs. Renny standing by the side of the road. How is it possible for Vonny to be so far from home without him? Andre steps on the brakes and lets the truck idle. It takes a while before he realizes that Mrs. Renny has just become another safe person. He takes a deep breath. He knows he should be glad. He watches them, unnoticed, but not so very far away from the saucer-shaped flowers that by Memorial Day will have scattered across the unmowed lawn.