Reprisal

by Mitchell Smith

  She could do as she pleased--and had to please no one, wonder about no one, worry about no one. Now she was alone in the castle of herself, free to wander from room to room, view to view ... and had to let no one in, admit no guest, no intruder, and no messenger, since there would be no news to receive that might concern her ... until at last, after many years, a doctor at the drawbridge confirmed her sentence of death.

  A "sentence" of death ... as if there were some written phrase--with subject, adverb, verb, and object--that was death. Death described so perfectly, so completely, that the description became the thing itself, a phrase that if spoken, killed all who heard it.

  She, a poet, might have made that perfect sentence, a sentence of death. She might have written it in rough draft, or spoken it by chance --not realizing its accidental perfection. But those nearest, closest to her, had heard or read, and died.

  These losses seemed part of a pattern past rational cause or interruption.

  She'd tried action to break open and reveal its secret machinery--tried that, and exposed only the fishermen's desperation.

  Small wheels squeaked in the hall. Some patient being borne past, to hope or hopelessness.

  ... The fishermen, rough innocents. Of course the Russians, or whoever, must be taking advantage of the Asconsett people in the trade--as the dealers and thugs of Providence and Boston were certainly taking advantage of them. Even as criminals, the captains--clumsy and old-fashioned in their seaboots and sou'westers, their heavy hands net-scarred and scored by salty weather--even as criminals they would eventually lose their boats, as their time was already lost to them.

  In Manning's, she had accomplished only an adventure, an incompetent bandage for her injury. Poor protection against savage ill chance, ill chance again, and inconsolable regret.-And proved so swiftly, in only the time it took a young girl to fall three stories onto stone.

  ... Now, there was only dinner to look forward to. This evening's dinner, supposed to be chicken, peas, orange sherbet and a roll. A solitary animal had dinner to look forward to, and sleep.

  There was that dinner, the chicken dinner, yesterday evening.

  And today, breakfast, sunshine at the window, and another visitor. Francie, up from New York and doing more than an agent's duty to a fiscally very minor author.

  Francie Pincus didn't look New York publishing at all. She was large, easy, flushed, and freckled, with soft brown curls--an Iowa farm woman out of place.

  Francie's calm and good nature ran all through her, so bad news seemed to bruise only for a day or two, then vanish.

  This news, Joanna's news, had overpowered those defenses, so it was a pale, large, damp-eyed agent who wandered into the hospital room as if it must be the wrong one, and Joanna not her published poet after all.

  "Oh, Jesus ... Jesus, Joanna." And this heavy woman, in a badly fitting blue suit, sagged onto the bedside and put out a strong, plump hand to pat Joanna's. Francie scented with strong florals. It was lavender today; she smelled like a linen closet.

  "It's all over," Joanna said, and couldn't think why she'd said it. Perhaps she'd meant she had no one else to lose.

  "Rebecca," Francie said, china-blue eyes slightly popped and glaring with a rage of loss. Childless, she'd loved Rebecca--been happy to offer her apartment for overnights, happy to escort first the child ... then the young woman to museums and Broadway musicals on her infrequent visits to the city.

  Joanna wanted to join her in anger, and speak Rebecca's name--but that seemed impossible to say aloud, so she only nodded and gripped Francie's strong freckled hand.

  Francie sat and said no more for a long time--time enough for the sun to shift the room's shadows slightly. Then she said, "What a fucking shame," and bent over Joanna, her bulk breezing lavender, to kiss her loudly on the cheek, an almost comic smacking kiss.

  After that, she sat silent another while--her weight affecting the shape of the mattress. She sat for those slow minutes more, a soft blue monument ...

  then suddenly got to her feet with a large animal's swift heave, squeezed Joanna's hand, let it go, and walked to the door and out.

  Then she ducked back in, only her large head showing, said, "No business to speak of--nothing important. Oh, Christ. ..." And was gone.

  Joanna lay in her white bed in her white room, and feared more visitors, but no other visitors came. She lay and waited for lunch ... found herself smiling once. The weight of tragedy, grown too great, might tilt the balance to comedy. She had lost too much-almost a pratfall, a blow with a bladder, a shove over the back of a surprise clown. She felt she was drifting away into only observation, and might see humor in the Auschwitz ovens.

  Only the pain kept her human--the bright hook of agony was in her mouth, it had driven through her gum and jaw, so there was no point beside that point.

  The shoals of silver fish taken off Asconsett and dead, now were revenged by their absence. But she still lived.

  Lunch was ham salad, succotash, and a roll. Dessert was a little square white cake with brittle frosting.

  She dozed through the afternoon, with half-dreams bright and patchworked as a child's in its midday nap. Graham-cracker dreams, cup-of-milk dreams in which there was not enough knowledge to spoil the colors.

  They woke her for dinner, and it was Swiss steak, mashed sweet potato, string beans, and lemon sherbet.

  After dinner, when they took the tray, said something, then left her alone, Joanna took deep breaths to be ready for the night--she stretched and eased her muscles in the bed, and did a little shifting dance beneath the white covers, as Greek warriors had stretched and danced their rhythmic steps in slow circles with spear and shield, the sun gleaming on bronze armor, brightening their helmets' nodding crimsoned horsehair.

  Joanna prepared for the night as if for battle, or some dangerous cave. She armed herself, stretched her muscles, and prepared to stay awake to avoid the realities of deep dreaming, in which anything or anyone might come to her.

  Exhausted when morning came, though successful against the night, she welcomed a last breakfast-Cheerios, grapefruit juice, a miniature apricot Danish.

  A little while after breakfast, a farewell visit by Dr. Chao, very breezy, jovial.-And then, in a flurry of attention, Joanna was up and dressed in khakis, a white shirt, and a natural cotton sweater she recognized--all brought over from the island for her, she supposed, by Marilyn Early. And must remember to thank her for those and her purse and robe and toothbrush and makeup, though they hadn't given her time to put her makeup on.

  They placed her in the departure wheelchair, all extra items bundled in a small white plastic sack in her lap, with her purse.

  She was in the chair and ready to go, when she turned to look up at Mrs.

  Laval, the morning-shift RN. Laval was standing at the wheelchair's handles.

  "Where am I going? I mean, I don't think there's anyone to meet me. ..." She meant that it was too soon for her to leave, that she would be left alone in front of the hospital, with no way to get to the ferry, no one to be with her, help her. How was she to do all that? ... And what was she to do when she reached the island? And when she got to the cottage alone--what then?

  "There's someone to meet you, dear."

  "Who ...?"

  But they were rolling out of the room and down the corridor, and Laval was talking about towels with Connor, the aide. Connor was late, collecting the towels.

  Someone, an elderly woman at the front desk, smiled and said good-bye when she gave Joanna two pages of health insurance forms and receipts, but Joanna didn't remember her --and was wheeled away before she could say thank you.

  Laval pushed the chair out through heavy automatic glass doors, and down a sunny curving ramp to the sidewalk. There was no one waiting there except a girl, a young woman standing beside an old VW convertible. ... Then the girl smiled and came to her, and it was Charis.

  "I was worried you wouldn't want to see me when you were better. I was afraid I'd just re
mind you of everything." Charis reached down and took Joanna's hand. "--Is it okay that I came to get you?"

  "Yes," Joanna said. "It's okay." She began to cry, but only a little, because she was tired.

  Laval started to assist her out of the chair, but Charis helped her instead, and said, "I'll take care of her."

  ... On the long trip out through the islands, Joanna didn't want to talk, and Charis was silent, too. They sat side by side on a deck bench in the sun, and watched the colors of the sea, watched seabirds swing past the ship in ellipses that brought them by again, after a while.

  The ferry's ponderous slow dancing motion eased Joanna slightly. Sitting silent, silent and swaying to that minor rise and fall, made her feel better

  ... as silence and swaying might quiet the agony of a wound.

  Charis sat beside her, a golden girl in jeans and a tan safari jacket--tall, slender, and beautiful, beautiful as Rebecca had never been. Charis's face was made of elegant angles, almost too extreme, and tilted hazel eyes. It was an oddly familiar handsomeness, like some young actress's face seen in a film before, and remembered. ... Sitting by her side, their arms lightly touching, Joanna could smell the scent of the girl's youth, mingled in the sea's warm fluttering breeze, the ferry's faint diesel-could smell the perfume of young womanhood, delicate as the odor of a risen cake drifting down the hall from a kitchen.

  ... The cottage appeared to Joanna a garden of ease and restfulness. The short drive up from the dock had seemed as tiring as walking would have been, and she had yawned and yawned like a sleepy child.

  Charis, very quiet, hardly speaking at all, had gone upstairs with her and helped her undress ... then had found the blue nightgown and put her to bed.

  It was only afternoon; the sunlight through the window shades seemed too bright for sleeping. But Joanna slept, and had no dreams after all.

  She woke in darkness, confused, and thought for a moment she was still at the hospital, but Charis heard and came upstairs, turned on the bedside lamp, and asked if she wanted to go down to dinner or have it on a tray in bed.

  "I'll go down," Joanna said. But she didn't get up. She lay with the covers pulled up to her chin, looking at Charis as if waiting for another, more important question.

  Charis smiled and said, "Do you want to get up?"

  Joanna had the feeling--foolish, she knew --that bad news would be waiting downstairs. "No."

  "Well, you don't have to. I was afraid your chicken stew, in the big pot, might have spoiled --and something in a jar, too. So I'm making beef-barley soup--warming it, anyway--and toast. A glass of milk?"

  "Yes."

  Charis smiled again, and left the room. She had a quick light step; Joanna could barely hear her going down the stairs.

  Joanna had time to lie still, and think of very little ... notice the stillness of the room, its odors washed faint by sea breezes. She was reminded of her grandmother's house in Boston, which had smelled strongly of age, its high-ceilinged rooms darkly furnished and completed in sepia wallpapers of dim roses and faded vines. Rooms seeming to belong to oddly dressed men and women who might come into them at any moment, alive again, smelling of tobacco or perfume, and casually loud as they called ... looking for a missing collar button or one of a pair of French silk stockings.

  But her room, this room--furnished with common painted pieces--though dark now, was bright in daytime. Then, the flooding summer sunlight seemed to lift it free of the house, so it floated slightly, out over the front yard.

  Joanna, her eyes closed, was lying imagining it was daytime, when Charis came back upstairs with a tray.

  "No milk," she said. "I'll get some, tomorrow."

  She bent to prop Joanna up, fluff her pillows, then settle the tray on her lap. Tea, a bowl of beef-barley soup, a piece of whole-wheat toast, a spoon and two paper napkins. "Butter on the toast," Charis said. "Would you like some jam?"

  "No. Thank you very much."

  When the girl had gone downstairs again, Joanna sipped the soup slowly. She felt that she had been sliced in two, and it had been done swiftly and properly, with no ragged edges. There was Joanna, who'd had bad news--and there was this body, which was not interested. The body, intelligent in its own way, was where she'd stayed for the last two days. Now it sipped and swallowed; it ate a bite of toast and had some tea. It didn't care who was dead.

  ... When she was ready to lie down, tired of the tray, Joanna called Charis.

  Called her once--but that business of calling out disturbed her. Calling out a name, calling for a person who would answer.

  Charis came upstairs, took the tray in silence, and went away. Afterward, there was soft singing from downstairs, of no particular song. The girl's voice was slender as she was slender, and wavered in pitch--the sound a cracked bell's, beautiful and imperfect.

  Joanna got out of bed, went into the bathroom, and took off her pajamas. She had slept so much the last few days that she staggered a little, stepping into the shower, as if wakefulness required better balance. She ran the meager water very hot --steamed herself, soaped herself, and rinsed. Then she stepped out to dry ... and felt dizzy, sick to her stomach, and had to sit naked on the bathroom's little white stool. She sat, her head bowed, taking deep breaths to keep from vomiting.

  Something touched her shoulder, and she looked up to see Charis standing beside her, a handmaid with a towel.

  "Shhhh. ..." Charis made the soft hushing sound as if to quiet nausea, then stooped and began to dry Joanna gently and with reserve. She hesitated and was delicate along the scar where Joanna's breast had been--then stroked strongly down her back, helped her to stand ... and dried between her buttocks and down the length of each leg, then up again, deftly at her crotch and belly. Did her arms, armpits--Joanna lifting her arms like a child to facilitate--then lightly patted her throat and face.

  Charis seated her on the little stool again, found the hair dryer in the cabinet, and stood behind her, raising banners of long black hair with a rat-tail comb to funnel the warm air.

  Finished, Charis brought a different nightgown, the peach, helped Joanna put it on ... and led her back in the dark bedroom to the bed, as if she might have forgotten where it was. Then tucked her in.

  "If you can't sleep," Charis said, "I'll take you for a drive. We can drive somewhere along the sea."

  "All right," Joanna said, turned on her side, and slept.

  She woke to morning sunlight freshly golden, and smelled oatmeal cooking ...

  and cinnamon.

  Charis came upstairs. She was wearing jeans and a white summer sweater.

  "Breakfast," she said. "You need help?"

  "No, thank you." Joanna supposed Charis would want her to go downstairs.

  "Then get dressed," Charis said, "--and come on down."

  ... Oatmeal. Charis, lacking milk, had served it like a vegetable, with butter, salt and pepper. Oatmeal, cinnamon toast, and tea.

  "I'd like to thank you, Charis--for breakfast ... for everything you've done."

  "You don't have to thank me, Mrs. Reed." Charis finished her tea, stood and began to clear the table.

  "Joanna.--Yes, I do." Joanna hadn't thought she'd be able to finish her toast, but she had.

  Charis stacked the dishes in the sink. "Are you going to be all right?"

  Joanna sat startled as if by a gunshot. ""Be all right?"'"

  Charis began to wash the dishes, her hands' motions economical as a cat's. "I have to go. Summer midterms."

  "... Of course," Joanna said. "Of course you have to go." She used both hands to steady her teacup, put it down on the saucer. "It was good of you to come to the hospital, Charis, and stay with me. I know I was a mess."

  "You weren't a mess, Mrs. Reed."

  "Joanna."

  "--Joanna." Charis came to the table, began cleaning it with the washcloth.

  "Want another piece of toast, or more tea?"

  "No, thank you. ... It was very kind of you."

  "It wasn't kindnes
s," Charis said, and took Joanna's cup and saucer to the sink. "Rebecca was younger, and my roommate--I asked her if she wanted to be my roommate--and we were friends. I didn't pay enough attention to her after she'd lost her dad and grandfather that way." Charis rinsed the cup and saucer. "--I was careless with her."

  "No--"

  "I didn't do what I should have done to try to help her over it. I was too busy for Rebecca." Charis put the cup and saucer in the dish drainer.

  "--Thought I had more important things to do."

  "You weren't responsible. ... I was responsible." Joanna hoped Charis wouldn't say the name again.

  "I could have talked to her, listened to her. I could have helped a little more." Charis folded the washcloth, draped it over the sink faucet.

  "It wasn't your fault, Charis." Joanna got up from the table. She needed to get out of the kitchen, where this talk about it was smothering, crowding the room's air. "--ation your fault." She went out the kitchen door and down the back steps to stand in the yard, free of the talking about it still drifting through the house.

  "I don't know what I am," she said to the bed of flowers she'd fought the weeds for. "But I'm not what I was." It was an exhausting notion, that she would have to learn to know a strange self. She stood in the yard, examined the scattered remnant flowers and ragged border of sea grapes. Over years, the dune hill's sand must have slumped beneath the picket fencing here in back.

  Swallowed it, buried it, swept it slowly away. ... Charis was finishing in the kitchen; the legs of a chair scraped as it was pushed into place.

  A little later, while Joanna was still standing in the yard alongside her morning shadow, and looking out over Asconsett Town, Charis came down the kitchen steps with her black backpack and overnight bag. She walked along the driveway past the parked Volvo, dropped the pack and bag into her little convertible's backseat, then came out into the yard.

  "I shouldn't have said anything about it," she said. "Forgive me."

  "I'm not the only one in the world," Joanna said. "I'm not so important that other people--especially you, who were her friend--that you don't have necessary things to say."