B0042JSO2G EBOK

by Minot, Susan

  Later Lizzie said that Gigi wasn’t drunk really, but just the way she got, loose and running at a high pitch and maybe more intense with this being Lila’s wedding night, but a way they’d seen before with an air of disaster about her as if she didn’t care if she threw herself away. Ollie Granger was encouraging her mood. Buddy faced the other way, determined to ignore her, swigging his beer.

  Gigi slipped off her dress. She was wearing a sort of corset underneath which showed up light against her dark arms. Gail pulled her shirt over her head and stepped out of her pants. Everyone watched them in their underwear looking down. The water swished below. At the same time they removed what they had left on.

  There’s a rock down there, Buddy said gruffly.

  I know. I know where it is. Gigi’s voice rose with excitement.

  Let’s go, Gail said. She took Gigi’s hand and they screamed and leapt and disappeared. There was a hollow splash. Everyone stood up, some more steadily than others, and peered over the edge. Splashing and gasping rose from the dull black water below.

  How is it? Freezing! It’s great!

  Ollie was already out of his jacket and loosening his tie. Naked he jumped blindly into the air. Here I come! He smacked the water like a fist.

  O.K. Ralph Eastman said, O.K. and taking off everything but his boxers pinched his nose and flew into the night.

  Monty heard a small tree snap behind him and turned to see Buddy thrashing through the bushes off the bluff. He pointed him out to Lizzie. He’s just going to get sick, she said.

  The dark figures came up over the crest dripping and grabbed their clothes. Gail looked around holding her shirt to her chest. Where’s Buddy? Her voice was fresh and expectant.

  He’s doing a Buddy, Lizzie said.

  He left?

  When they got back to the truck there was no Buddy. They began calling, lone cries in the orchard. Gigi stood on the truck. Buddy! She laughed, Answer me right now! They knew he might have started to walk home or gone down to the beach to wait and watch the sun rise. One night he had slept under a tarpaulin at WhyKnot boatyard and walked into the kitchen while everyone was having breakfast. So the cries were not insistent.

  They loitered in the field for a while and began to show signs of fatigue. It was time to go. Vernon thought they should go and so did Ollie Granger. Only Gail Slater pacing at a distance from the truck, peering into the woods, was not ready to leave.

  Teddy came into the living room after being up with her. His arms were folded decisively across his chest. I think she should go to the hospital.

  Constance was picking shriveled petals out of a bouquet of freesia. She hated it at the hospital.

  Teddy sat on an armrest. No one sat in normal places anymore. She is not in good shape, he said.

  No, Constance said. She’s got cancer. Constance who usually took care with her clothes was wearing the same pants and shirt she’d had on for three days.

  Margie lay sprawled on the floor, her head leaning back against a Turkish hassock, her expression uncertain. An air of uncertainty had pretty much taken over the house.

  She’s just so bad … said Teddy. His arms dropped to his sides.

  That breathing, Margie said.

  You mean the rattling, Constance said.

  So awful.

  What do you think exactly hurts her? Nina said, coming in. She carried a large bottle of Evian which she drank from in deep swigs.

  Everything, Teddy said.

  But is it, I don’t know, a stabbing pain or nausea or like a migraine?

  Jesus, Nina, Constance said.

  Probably all of that alternating, Margie said. Plus more.

  Weird we don’t dare ask her, Nina said. It’s not as if she’s not thinking about it.

  She probably tries not to think about it. Constance piled the brown petals in one palm.

  Nausea is the worst, Nina said.

  They’re all pretty bad. Teddy stared at the floor. It’s hard to watch.

  Imagine how it is for her, Nina said.

  That’s what I mean.

  Constance crushed her handful of brown petals and left the room to throw them away. Margie glanced up and saw Teddy’s shoulders shaking in little downward shrugs and watched Nina walk over to him and put her hand on his back. It’s O.K., she said. Behind them the afternoon light lit up the ivy. It’s O.K.

  Teddy turned his face to her, his eyes brimming. Is it? he said sharply. I don’t think so, I don’t think it’s O.K. at all.

  Nina’s hand sprang back as if she’d touched a hot iron. His expression suddenly changed—he didn’t mean it. He tried to take back her hand but she’d turned and moved away out of his reach.

  They began to climb back into the truck. Ralph Eastman slipped unquestioned into the driver’s seat and everyone else took the same places like children at assigned desks.

  Gail was the last to step up on the running board. So we’re just going to leave him? she said, and she pulled shut the door.

  Ralph started the engine and flicked on the lights and waited for everyone to settle down in the back, frowning through the cab window. He wasn’t going to drive with anyone standing up. He pressed the brakes, lighting up the grass behind them red, and started to back up. The field was full of lumps and the truck tilted and there were squeals as everyone was thrown more against each other. Ralph cranked the wheel and drove forward a little then backed up again this time over a steeper bump making them all laugh. Gigi swung up to the driver’s window with Ollie holding her waist to tease Ralph and after passing over one mound the truck suddenly gunned back jolting everyone and the front wheels humped up and Gigi was laughing, banging on the side door and Ralph, irritated, kept looking back over his shoulder to steer.

  Gail screamed.

  It was not a playful scream and everyone in the back went silent. Gail’s arm came chopping down onto Ralph and the truck jerked to a stop and her door flew open and she ran forward stumbling over the grass lit up behind by the headlights.

  It’s Buddy, she cried.

  No one understood. They sat up in the back and saw Gail pounce onto the ground. Then they saw the white shirt of the figure in the grass. Her face turned back furious at the blinding headlights. She screamed back to the truck. If she’d had time to think Gail Slater would not have said what she did. Gail Slater was a quiet person, the sort of person who did the dishes without being asked and took the seat no one else wanted, who did not judge others, a person who would not have deliberately given Ralph Eastman less reasons for happiness in his life, and therefore would not have said what she could not afterwards take back, a cry in a moment of shock. Ralph opened the door to come help and Gail Slater screamed at him, Look what you did!

  Panic swept through the back of the truck and everyone scrambled up and ran toward Gail and the unmoving figure on the ground. Buddy lay on his back with his head bent unnaturally to the side and his glasses crumpled near his ear. Lizzie said she noticed one eye partly open and Vernon said he saw it too, an eye picking up the headlight’s beam.

  Don’t move him, Oliver Granger said. He might have broken his back.

  Gigi lowered herself as if drawn to the ground by a magnet. Buddy, she said. Bud. Her wet hair fell on his shoulder.

  What are we going to do? Lizzie said impatiently.

  Gail lifted her hand into the light and they saw dark blood on it.

  Move back.

  It’s his head. His ear’s bleeding.

  We should get a doctor before we move him.

  Harris. Someone should get Harris.

  Ralph took off his jacket and he and Gail lay the jacket over Buddy’s chest.

  The Thornes’, Gail said.

  I don’t think they’re here.

  They’ve got a phone.

  Buddy, Gigi whispered. Buddy. She started to cry.

  Come on, Gail said.

  This is bad, Lizzie said. This is really bad.

  We should not move him, Oliver said.

 
; I’m going to the Thornes’, Vernon said. He touched Kingie’s shoulder. I’ll be right back. He ran up the road and disappeared in the dark.

  Gail was crouched by his head. He’s still breathing.

  Of course he’s still breathing, snapped Gigi.

  He was under the car, Ralph said softly. How could we not’ve seen him?

  It can’t be good for him in this wet grass.

  He shouldn’t be moved.

  Lizzie turned to Oliver. Would you like to say that a fifth time?

  Do you think his neck is broken?

  God.

  How far is the Thornes’?

  I think the wheel ran over his head, Gail said.

  Buddy, can you hear me? Gigi said. Buddy. She put her ear to his mouth and waited. Then she looked up at everyone around her lit with shadows and found no help there and went back close to him, weeping. You’re going to be alright, she said. Buddy. We’re all here and you’re going to be alright.

  A rope dropped out of the sky. She held onto it and was pulled up into the clouds. She arrived at a car dealership. It was deserted with no salesman on the lot. She wandered back to the garage which was like her father’s leather factory and way in the back found the entrance to a cave. She walked into it and in the middle of a long dark passageway came upon a white sliver of sole, a glowing fillet of fish lying on the ground. She bent to touch it and was knocked backwards by a man in black armor wearing the helmet of a beetle. His backhand knocked her to the ground.

  Vernon Tobin arrived at the Thornes’ dark house and tried the doors on the porch, then picked up a stone and rapped on a pane till the glass shattered. He reached past the sharp edges and unlocked the tab on the inside latch and let himself in. He saw the dim shape of a tulip light and pulled the beaded cord and found himself in an unpainted wooden hallway with low ceilings. He went through to the kitchen and tugged the buoy hanging from a string and that light went on and he saw a large clock on the wall with its red second hand gliding. Ten past three. The kitchen was yellow and under a yellow hutch he saw a black phone. He picked up the receiver. Come on, he said out loud, come on.

  After a while a woman’s voice answered. What number please.

  Is that Shirley? Vernon said.

  No Shirley’s off tonight. The operator spoke slowly and normally and the normality of it nearly made Vernon weep. This is Ruthie.

  Hi, he burst out. This is Vernon Tobin. There’s been a—it’s an emergency.

  Tell me the emergency, Vernon, said Ruthie in a calm voice.

  Vernon told her. Telling it made him feel faint. He took a deep breath.

  Where are you calling from? Ruthie said.

  I had to break into the Thornes’ because they’re not here, but everyone’s still down on the Promontory, you know in the field where you park …

  I do. Now Vernon. I’m going to call Foy Hopkins and tell him and he’ll be right down.

  And a doctor, Vernon said. He needs a doctor.

  I’ll tell Foy. You wait at Thornes’ and I’ll call you back. Alright?

  Vernon nodded and hung up the phone.

  Each year there was a different doctor who came and lived in the doctor’s house. There’d been the young doctor with the wife and children, and a chubby one who halfway through August had a heart attack. There was the one who drank a lot who diagnosed Mrs. Ellis as having a spider bite when she really had shingles. The summer doctor was not the most reliable. Then Vernon thought of Harris Arden. He had not liked Harris Arden when he watched him dance with Ann Grant but now he felt Harris Arden was a friend and wished that he were there.

  The clock was at nearly three-twenty. He saw his reflection in the glass panes of the cabinet with the plates and cups behind and wished he were still with everyone else down at the field. He felt both hollow and jazzed up. Buddy would be O.K. he told himself. He had to be. He recalled the strange twist of his head in the tufted grass and when he thought of that it was hard to keep believing he would be O.K. Vernon’s chest ached.

  He’d been in this kitchen before at the Thornes’. Andy Thorne was someone he used to play with a long time ago, they used to play war games when they were young. The best part was capturing Andy’s sister Carol. But Andy Thorne had been in and out of institutions the last ten years and the last time Vernon had seen him was on the ferry a few summers ago. Andy had put on a lot of weight though his voice was still the same. Who knew where Andy Thorne was now. Vernon knocked against the enamel stove and it shook. Royal Rose it said on the back. He kept thinking of the sliver he could see of Buddy’s eye and the way his head was pressed too close to his shoulder. It didn’t look like Buddy. He walked quickly into the front hall and looked down the road which was silent and dark. Glass crunched under his feet but he wasn’t going to pick the glass up. His heart was going fast and light. The phone rang. He ran back to it.

  Vernon, Ruthie. Foy Hopkins is on his way. He’ll be there at Thornes’ to pick you up and you can take him down to Buddy Wittenborn.

  O.K.

  You O.K. then, said Ruthie very calm.

  A shaky voice responded that he was. He thanked her.

  You’re welcome, Ruthie said. Now. Should you let Buddy’s mother and father know?

  Oh. I guess so. I guess I should.

  That might be a good idea, Ruthie said. I’ll connect you. Now I have three numbers here for Wittenborn.

  Four-seven-three-oh is the main house.

  One minute.

  The phone started to ring. It rang many times. In the middle of a ring a voice surprised Vernon. You sure they’re home? Ruthie said on the line.

  Yes.

  The ringing stopped. Hello?

  Who’s this? Vernon said.

  Who’s this?

  Aunt Linda, it’s Vernon.

  Christ Vernon. What are you kids doing?

  He told her what had happened.

  Dick! she screamed into the phone. Then, Where are they? Dick! Where are you?

  Vernon told her and told her Foy Hopkins was on his way.

  Dick! she screamed into the receiver. It’s the kids! Now wait tell me what happened.

  Vernon told her again and realized with dread that this was not the last time he would have to tell this story, he would probably be telling this story all his life. Dick! she kept shouting. Dick!

  Then Vernon heard footsteps in the background and a voice and his Aunt Linda saying, Buddy has run over someone at the Promontory.

  No, Vernon said. Buddy’s the one hurt.

  I don’t think she heard that, came Ruthie’s voice still on the line.

  I’m trying to—Aunt Linda was speaking away from the receiver. Stop talking to me and I’ll find out.

  Then Dick Wittenborn’s voice was on the phone, stern and deep. Vernon, he said, now what is all this about?

  14. WAKE UP PARIS

  She was underwater and had to walk carefully to stay on the bottom. The walls of the pool were robin’s-egg blue and she held a white lily. A man laughed and bubbles came out. He had once been her lover. When they hauled him out upside down his white shirt was plastered to his skin.

  In the palm of her hand was the tiniest bird she’d ever seen.

  The summer streets of Beacon Hill were empty. They arrived at the end of the day. She didn’t remember the flight from the island or the drive from the airport into town. She remembered being in the room upstairs, she remembered it dimly. The house was dim and the halls dark and everything was covered in sheets and there were no signs of life. The Grangers had many spare bedrooms since they had no children and Oscar agreed with Oliver Granger that Ann should not be left alone. Ollie’s figure filled the doorway with the dark hall behind. Everything alright? he said. She could not feel anything she recognized having felt before. This was a new pain she’d not known and when she didn’t answer he came forward and said, Ann I don’t know what to say and sat on the bed. She had stopped being someone named Ann and was hardly a woman anymore, she was only a mother and al
so not a mother as she had been and it was too hard to explain anything and easier instead to sink against his arm when his arm came around her. He was solid and his body was warm. She could not speak to say no, she didn’t move away or toward him, she was not thinking no, she was not thinking yes, she was not thinking anything. They were waiting for the body, that’s what they were doing. Oscar had gone down to Virginia after Ollie had flown them back in his plane and she was at the Grangers’ on Beacon Hill waiting. Her blank eyes stared into the back of her head at nothing and his arms in a cotton shirt were around her pressing and easing her back onto the bed. She looked up at the ceiling and noticed a decorative trim of crimson grapes at the top of the walls and thought how Lily must have put it up. It’s alright, he said. It’s good for you to cry. She shielded her eyes with her arm and he might have thought the light was too bright, he reached across her chest and turned out the lamp and the room was so dark she couldn’t see anything. The shades were down and the shutters closed and with no light anywhere it was like being sealed in a crypt. He was big and heavy on her and she could not see him. His mouth found hers wet, her whole face was wet. It was like being underwater at night. She felt him like water. Strange how a thing felt so dimly as those strange arms around her in the middle of disorienting grief should have the consequences it did, while another thing in another time and another darkness which had meant so much to her which had in fact meant everything would never show anything of itself in the world. It might just as well not have happened for all it showed. That greater thing disappeared and never took on a life of its own. While out of this other darkness, this other evening in July some fifteen years later, another life did come despite the lack of shared sentiment, a life unquestioned by the man whose name she shared, who believed himself the father, a life which was now at that moment a young woman beneath Ann Lord making notes in the margins of her playbook about street kids in Brooklyn, sitting on a chaise in the back garden at the shaded end of the lawn.

  They lay on his coat on the moss and she felt the sticks and roots which she had not felt before as he was crashing over her. The grass by her cheek was the same as her cheek and the same as the air and all of it was part of the universe and his hand by her chin and his face curved on her neck was part of it too.