B0042JSO2G EBOK (28 page)

Rather a ladies’ man.

Nina looked thoughtful. She’s been saying his name.

Oliver looked over Nina’s head. You know your mother might be thinking of him—Oliver congratulated himself on making the subtle connection—because he was a doctor. He tried to save someone’s life. Your mother must have told you what happened at the Cutlers’ wedding.

Sort of, Nina said. But what was it again.

She sat on the step below and Oliver Granger told her the story everyone knew, not mentioning anything about a rock garden or a sail closet or the ground by the Lorings’ dock, not knowing any of that, having Nina Lord’s attention for longer than he’d had it all told in their lifetimes, ending his account with his putting Harris Arlen on the
Happenstance
, a boat known to Nina Lord—she’d kissed Lila’s son Buddy Cutler in it when she was thirteen—but not adding that after the boat had motored off Gail Slater had collapsed in his arms in tears. That was a detail he had forgotten.

Nina listened with a beady stare. So where was Harris?

Oliver Granger thought a moment. He had a fiancée there, I suppose with her. No … it was … you know, I can’t remember.

Nina looked penetratingly at Mr. Granger. Could he have saved Buddy Wittenborn?

Oliver Granger slapped his thighs and stood up. Something we’ll never know, he said.

When she came up from the shore she saw lights on in the big house and in the driveway Ollie Granger’s car back again and thought they’d certainly had a long night without her. She looked down to the end of the house to the room Harris Arden was sharing with Ralph Eastman. Its window was dark.

A car was coming toward her down the driveway. Ann Grant was surprised to see Mr. and Mrs. Tobin. It couldn’t have been much after six o’clock, a little early for breakfast. She had spoken very little to Vernon’s parents over the weekend and they were the last people she would’ve chosen to run into. It occurred to her they might have been up to see Lila and Carl off at the inn. The car slowed down and Mr. Tobin rolled down his window.

Are they back yet? He was frowning and his usually jaunty voice was flat.

No, she said, thinking he meant Lila and Carl. They weren’t coming back.

They weren’t? Mr. Tobin looked with alarm at his wife.

Mrs. Tobin leaned forward to see Ann’s face. They’re going straight down to Boston then? She had an odd expression.

I think so, yes.

Mrs. Tobin sat back. They must be bringing him down, she muttered, and clutched Mr. Tobin’s arm. Ann thought their behavior most strange.

Mr. Tobin glanced toward the house. Who’s up? he said.

Ann said she didn’t know.

What? Mrs. Tobin’s face was hard. She’d never liked Ann.

I was swimming, Ann said.

The Tobins looked at her with disbelief. Mrs. Tobin said, Were you there?

Suddenly Ann Grant realized something else was going on and that that something else was terribly wrong. Where? she said.

The Tobins exchanged glances.

Then Mrs. Tobin told her what happened and as Ann listened the surreal feeling of the night increased. It flipped into another world. Ann noticed with horror that Mrs. Tobin seemed excited to tell it.

Though it was clear she had not known, the Tobins never forgot their first impression of running into Ann Grant that morning and of how oddly she’d behaved, confirming what Mrs. Tobin had always thought, that Ann Grant was a cold girl.

They were milling around in a sort of basement, waiting for the music to begin. Everyone was there, Ted glancing indifferently over his shoulder, Oscar straightening the brim of his white hat. Paul had been crying and was trying to hide it then he disappeared in the crowd. They began to form a conga line. Everyone started to dance. She saw Kingie go by with a bandage taped to her throat and Buddy Wittenborn with his face unchanged but his body aged and his waist thick. They followed one another, throwing out a leg, holding onto the hips in front of them. Dick and Linda Wittenborn were all in white and Ann’s mother wore an orange dress which she never would have chosen with a Balinese headdress and her mouth twisted to the side. Her father was wearing purple lipstick. She saw Don Shepley’s brother in a lamb’s-wool hat and Phil thin as a rail with brown teeth. Mrs. Futter from Gray Gable Road was in her apron, but it was upside-down and Mr. Tobin had no arms. Aunt Joy’s hair was red and fluffy and Elsie Roland’s father whom she’d met once handed her an electric baton. Abbott was in her uniform with the blue velvet hat she wore to church and wearing her hospital gown was the bald woman named Gwenivere who’d been in the hospital room beside her. They all cha-chaed by.

The line is a churning twister … Stand up, Stand up … alone!

LAST WORDS OF A.U.

G
od why won’t it stop it has been barking all night

It was dawn and her room was suddenly full of people sitting at tables smoking cigarettes wearing tweeds and giving orders for breakfast.

Her throat was dry, no air was going down. Help me, she thought, help me. She tried to speak but could only wheeze. Something was making the bed vibrate then it turned close, and became her moaning.
Help me
. Pillows were propped against the headboard and on either side of her was a row of people wired up to one another like a telephone switchboard. They passed along a small white cup. When the cup reached her she was careful not to spill it, the goal being to move your body as little as possible.

Then it was all wrong and she was sleeping in screens, the sheets had turned into screens. The mesh was raw on her skin. The ceiling was frowning. It said no one knows what life is for, no one
knows what anything means, the plaster soft and uneven, the lines as thin as the cracks in one’s palm, it said silence wipes everything out.

They didn’t bring Buddy back. Mrs. Wittenborn wanted to stay with the body—it was being flown back to Boston—but her husband wouldn’t allow it. You ought to stay with Gigi, he said, and when Gigi offered to stay he said, no your mother needs you. Whereas it was he who needed the two of them, too frightened to be alone. He had loved his son from his distant column and did not dare think how it felt to lose him and having women weeping around him made him think he was feeling this thing he dared not approach with feeling. He was a man who had married a younger woman because she was so far from what he was and the thing he most wished was to be not bothered.

When the Wittenborns came back and Ann saw their faces what had happened became real. The air in the house overlooking the bay was full of phones ringing and visitors and tossed-off loose laughter and tears and a sense not proud but automatic of importance. People stood close to one another, they lay on the floor. They ate sandwiches as they walked across the lawn. They told the story of the night before again and again, and Ann Grant listened again and again to all the versions and there were small new things each time but no new meaning.

More stories came later. Foy Hopkins sister Audrey had been driving to work in town where she ran the shortwave radio for the lobster boats when she saw a figure walking near the turn-off to the Promontory. Finding it unusual to see emerging from the morning haze a young man in a dress suit she stopped and asked him if he wanted a ride. He came to the window and she saw it was Buddy Wittenborn. She knew Buddy Wittenborn, she used to baby-sit for him. She asked him how the wedding was—everyone on the island knew about the Wittenborn wedding, her niece had served at the reception and Foy’s brother-in-law had dug the clams they ate at
the Yacht Club—and Buddy said it had been a pretty good wedding. He said he felt like walking but thanks anyway for the ride. Everyone said it must have been Ralph Eastman but no one could explain the detail Audrey had mentioned on the radio to the Julep brothers before she’d heard about the accident, that she’d seen Buddy Wittenborn that morning, and it must have been a wild wedding because the glasses he had on his face were broken in two.

And he came back too, Harris came back. He was there among the people hurrying down halls and carrying suitcases and moving cars in the driveway. The woman Maria sat patiently at the end of the veranda holding a cup of tea and saucer, pale and composed, looking up when Harris went past with a gaze for only him.

Ann was coming out of the pantry with a can of coffee and Eve Wittenborn went by carrying a platter of deviled ham sandwiches into the dining room as Harris came in. For a moment he and she were alone in the kitchen. They were changed from how they’d been a few hours before. They did not speak of themselves, they did not speak. Ann could feel Harris looking at her as she opened the tin of coffee. Finally she said, I keep expecting him to walk in the door, and they looked at one another and Ann thought she saw a glint of fear in his eye. Then Lizzie Tull burst in looking for napkins and Mrs. Slater entered from the back door with a pitcher of Bloody Marys which she said she thought everyone could use and Ann realized that that must have been the last thing she’d ever said to Harris Arden.
I keep expecting him to walk in the door
.

There was no other good-bye though she did see him leave. Upstairs in Gigi’s room helping her pack Ann heard another car start and looked down to the driveway and saw the top of a hatbox next to Maria’s head. Harris followed carrying bags. Mrs. Tobin was sitting in the front seat. Mr. Tobin and Harris loaded the trunk then snapped it down. Ralph Eastman came out from under the porch and shook Harris’ hand and Harris embraced him. Ann saw Harris wave to someone under the porch roof out of sight. Maria ducked into the car then Harris got in, his shoulders crowding the
space. She saw his legs in light-colored pants facing forward. He pulled shut the door. The glass on the car window was a maze of reflections of light and shadows and leaves and sky, moving when the car drove away, and the reflection blocked her from seeing the person inside.

Later she stood on the lawn among the last to leave.

Ann, she heard. His voice went through her, low, shaking her, and she turned around and he wasn’t there. She opened her eyes and he wasn’t there.

Ann, she thought. Let her go.

And she began to let go, she let go of the soaked grass and the humped hills and the headlights sweeping the driveway and the steep night with the band’s dwindling notes, she released his collar and his sleeve and his hand and dropped the jangling latch of the screen door, she lifted her palm from the oilcloth on the table and let go of the stars which had been too bright and the pale black sky and dropped like a stone the sight of him leaving through the window not having said good-bye, she let go of the flagpole with its sulky flap and left behind the path cut through the tall grass and the steps with the moss and the rocks uneven under her feet and the cold water lapping at her throat. She let go of all of it.

It had left her once and after all this time had come back and the only thing to prevent its coming again was her not being there to receive it and that was something which would happen of its own accord. That was not something she needed to control.

She saw her sunglasses in the train window.

She could see her father’s shadowed head against the colored bottles at the bar.
Here’s my angel of mercy come to fetch me
.

She had been on the train for a long time, for days, there were veils covering her face, outlining her profile, and each time she passed into a different state the wind took one off blowing it out the narrow slot of the train window, a bleached potato sack flying into the wet green gorge of Pennsylvania after a storm with thunder
receding, a linen runner into the violet mist of the hills above Nashville, brown taffeta blew out over the flattened yellow fields where the Mississippi River had withdrawn and white farmhouses sat like sugar cubes in the distance, out went the ivory lace into a pink sky over lumped trees, a gingham kerchief into the beige dust blown up as the train whizzed by the candy cane railroad signals clanging, dry husks filled her mouth and partridges flushed out of the shaking grass, out flew a cotton towel nearly transparent from use as she clattered past lots on the outskirts of towns clogged with skunk cabbage and mustard weed with scraps of newspaper snowing down and plastic bags plastered to chain link fences, rust shavings glinting in heaps near Chicago and guardhouse panes rattling in their frames, a veil thin as mosquito net was whisked over the flooded cranberry bogs and twisted Wisconsin trees, over the lakes in Minnesota, mirrors reflecting nothing, all were sucked out the window flying off her dozing face, the veils which had been put on all her life coming off now one at a time till she got to the final black one which would not come off.

Let’s see our temperature
her brain was boiling, she was supposed to choose between a kitchen and an ocean
stop crying she can hear you
what did they want? She wanted to be left alone but didn’t want them to go away, she didn’t want anyone to go away, a milk bottle with a red pleated top, they didn’t realize what was going on
I’ll be back tomorrow Ann
they were always going, they always went, they didn’t ever stay.

She asked them why but they wouldn’t tell her.

See you soon
today was Friday tomorrow was Tuesday then it was Friday again
I don’t think she can hear you very well
what? a pill pushing her lips
take this then
it muddled her mind she only had her mind left
I don’t think she recognizes me
I don’t think

They sat on a terrace with small coffee cups, he came out from behind a tree in the hot wind after rain a shutter was banging
leave the table alone and come here
the windows had been sited
just right for the sunset, the kitchen should have been on the north side. When they moved in the downstairs was a ghastly green, she repainted right away, Abbott kept the linens neat. She redid the library, the sofa was reupholstered with the zippers inside out, the floor needed a rug, which room was she in?
I’m right here
. The cabinet latches were too high
would anyone like another drink?
She had to get rid of all that junk
I better go
one room kept turning into a closet
I better go
they should have left on the front light
where have you been?
the gardener cut down the lilac bush by mistake, she planted daffodils in clusters, the vases needed to be changed
don’t forget
before closing the house the curtains should be draped over sawhorses
don’t forget
paper put between the sheets, the fireplace ashes saved
easy to put together, hard to take apart
she couldn’t remember which house it was
who would like some more?
there was forsythia on the hall table in the spring, her mother kept the mail in a pile, her father leaned on the railing coming down the steps, she was dancing with him on flagstones his skin began to leak
where’s Nora?
There was nothing she could do about the stairs, they couldn’t be changed, she would have to live with them
where are you?
She heard them going by out in the hall whispering
back tomorrow!
The highboy cracked down the center
Nora
She opened the door to the hall in the middle of the night and was stopped by a sheer rock face
what is she saying? She wants the nurse
waves were washing down the stairs
we’ll be back tomorrow Ann
the twins in corduroy jackets matching
when are you coming back?
their shoulder blades like birds
back tomorrow see you