Spirit Lost (23 page)

“I never meant to hurt you, Willy,” John said, sounding helpless, lost. “I don’t understand it. I don’t know how it happened. I didn’t
mean
for it to happen. It all seems—somehow beyond my control.”

“But it’s
not
beyond your control!” Willy declared, hope exploding within her at his apology.

“Willy—” John began.

“No, listen,” Willy said, and wiped tears from her face with the front and back of her hands, “listen, John. It is in your control, I’m sure of it.
All you have to do is leave this house
.” She waited a moment, studying John’s face, then pushed on: “Well? Am I right? Don’t you think I’m right? All you have to do, John, is walk down the stairs and out of this house. I feel certain of that. She didn’t bother us in Boston—I don’t think she
can
go anywhere else. She has to have you here. That’s why you’re always in the attic—John, it
is
in your control! Just leave now. Just walk out of the house. Now. I’ll go with you!”

Willy sat nearly panting, waiting for John’s reaction.

He looked away from her. He said, so softly she could scarcely hear him, “I can’t.”

“You mean you don’t want to,” Willy snapped.

John was quiet for a long time. Then he lifted his head and looked at Willy defiantly. “That’s right,” he agreed. “I don’t want to. Willy, I didn’t mean for it to happen—I don’t know how it happened—but I can’t give her up. I’d rather give up my life.”

“My God,” Willy said, and the tears started up again.

They sat there awhile, husband and wife, wreathed and pierced with misery, and the coffee and food grew cold on the table between them. Willy cried. John leaned back against the chair, exhausted, and closed his eyes. His body went limp against the support of the chair. He was nearly asleep again when Willy spoke.

“Well, what are we going to do?” she asked.

“Do?” John echoed.

Willy broke out in a bitter, brief laugh. “I mean, do you want a divorce? I mean, shall I divorce you? I’ll bet the courts don’t have grounds for this sort of thing.” When John didn’t answer, she almost shouted, “Seriously, John, what are we going to do? Do you want me to move out? Are you going to spend the rest of your life up here in this goddamned attic? How are you going to carry on your … relationship … with this ghost of yours?”

John shook his head wearily, as if Willy had been browbeating him for hours and he could bear no more. He lifted his hand with great effort and brushed her suggestions aside. “I don’t know, Willy,” he said. “I don’t know. You can go or stay, I guess. I—I really don’t want much, I can’t see too far ahead. There are some paintings I want to finish, and I want a few more days and nights in the attic, that’s all.”

“A few more days and nights in the attic—” Willy prompted, curious now, alerted by his words and the lethargy with which he spoke. “All right, and then what?”

“I don’t know,” John answered, irritated by her probing. “Willy, I said I don’t know much. Can’t you just leave me alone? Just for a few more days and nights? That’s
all I ask.”

Willy was calm now, and instincts other than jealousy were rising within her. She looked away from John and kept her voice level. “I’ll make a deal with you,” she said. “I’ll keep away from you and the attic for
a few more days and nights
—for a week—if you’ll agree to see a doctor today.”

“I don’t want to go out,” John said.

“I’ll get a doctor to come here,” Willy said.

“I don’t need a doctor!” John said.

“I think you do,” Willy responded.

“I’m not crazy,” John told her.

“I didn’t say you were,” Willy replied calmly. “I don’t think you are. I think you’re exhausted and weak and overworked and underweight, and maybe you’ve got a flu—it wouldn’t hurt to have a doctor at least look at you.”

“No,” John said.

“You’re afraid to have a doctor look at you!” Willy cried.

“Willy, I’m tired,” John said. “That’s all. I don’t want to see a doctor. Forget it.”

“Then I’m not leaving you alone,” Willy said. “You can have your days and nights in the attic but not without me.”

John raised his head and gave his wife a look of pure hatred.

“Why can’t you just leave me alone?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Willy replied honestly. “I don’t know. But I can’t. And I won’t.”

“Christ!” John muttered under his breath. He would have risen and stalked around the attic, but he was too weak; instead, he sat in his chair, his legs and arms shaking with anger and resentment.

While Aimee prowled into the corners of the attic, John and Willy sat across from each other, locked in fierce combat now, not speaking, each thinking his or her own thoughts.

Outside, it had begun to snow. The sky was as white as a sheet, and great fluffy snowflakes fell gracefully, slowly, like icy feathers falling from an angel’s ethereal wing.

Once again John was nearly asleep in his chair when Willy spoke. “Actually, John,” she said, “I am going to leave you alone. For a while. I think daytime is a good time to leave you alone—can she come in the daytime? I don’t think so. It seems to me that before she’s only come at night. I’m going to go to the grocery store and stock up on
some things.” She rose. “I’ll be back,” she said.

At the top of the stairs, she turned. “John, I love you,” she said.

But John was now asleep in his chair.

Pushing her rattling green metal cart down the aisle of the A&P, Willy smiled idiotically. All this was so
normal
—these cans of instant coffee and baked beans, these plastic-sheathed loaves of bread. And the lucky, carefree people who shared the aisles with her, discussing the weather or last night’s selectmen’s meeting—the sanity of it all was as exotic and tantalizing to her as a drug. She kept stopping her cart next to talking shoppers, pretending she was studying the labels of tuna fish, really eavesdropping on their conversations about weather and children and politics.

She was high; not happily high but alert, manic. She wanted to interrupt the two housewives with their lightship baskets over their arms, to touch them and say, “I’m going mad, I think. My husband’s having an affair with a ghost, and I think I can do something about it. Don’t you think that’s mad?”

But she pushed her cart on by, automatically stocking up on food she could keep by her in the attic. Vaguely in the back of her mind were thoughts of a siege.

She loaded the car with sacks of groceries, drove to the house on Orange Street, and then, on a whim, drove on past it, down Mulberry to Union Street, and back through town to Brant Point. She parked the car and, tying the hood of her parka tightly around her head, walked through the sand, against the wind, down to the edge of the water. Giant snowflakes fell on her, the air whirled with them; there were so many of them, and yet they fell in such complete silence.

This time the frosty air that bit into her lungs provided comfort. She breathed deeply, as if fortifying herself against the dark, cold claustrophobic air of the attic. Hands pushed down deep in her pockets, she stood on the water’s edge and looked out at the sound.

Today had brought an Amsterdam sky, the kind that had taught Vermeer and Rembrandt about light. Fat blowing clouds, luminescent and pastel, low and laden with snow, their upper edges rimmed with golden light, hung over Nantucket Sound and the
island. From these clouds the gentle snowflakes in their feathering fall whispered past great-masted fishing boats and the huge orange machines that were halted today from their work on the building of the new Steamship Authority building.

Willy turned slowly on the sand, not thinking now, just looking at the small boats rocking in the harbor, at the occasional parting of clouds so that a shaft of sunlight streamed down on the tall church tower while gentle snowflakes fell around it.

Her body was buffeted by icy winds. She let herself be hit and thought of how little she could imagine of life in nineteenth-century Nantucket. She had read
Moby-Dick
and other accounts of whaling adventures, and now she remembered some of what she read: the disasters, the ships sunk in the black of night in the middle of the ocean, the limitless depths of the sea, the men eaten by whales or lost in lifeboats, starving, the women waiting on the lonely island, spending years and years without the touch of a man. Nantucket, Willy thought, is still one place where we can learn that this world is not the safe and tame place we would like to believe it is. So much is wild, so much unknowable—so much unthinkable. The world is as black and terrifying and cold as the ocean on a stormy night, as cold and heartless as her dream of falling helplessly through the icy void of space. There were mysteries and horrors and adventures and braveries that had happened in this world that were past her imaginings. Just thinking of this helped her now, gave her strength.

Flags of storm warning flew at the Coast Guard station; by night this gentle snowstorm would be in full blast, and the sky would be as dark and raging as an ocean. The white snowy clouds, even now, were deepening, garnering layers and strength, turning gray. Only occasionally, as Willy stood watching, did the sun brighten the edge of the snow-heavy clouds. But when it did these clouds became gilt-edged for a moment, and a path of sparkling brilliance fell through the air and across the land, and Willy knew that somehow there must be a love to save them all.

Chilled to the bone but somehow invigorated, Willy climbed back into the Wagoneer and drove back into town. A thought occurred to her, and she stopped at the Atheneum and went in. The librarian, at her request, directed her to the Nantucket section in general and
to the fat old tomes of Nantucket history in specific. Willy sat reading, feeling her fingers and toes tingling as they warmed up inside this graceful room. It was not long before she found the section about “The Widowed Bride,” the same account that John had read. But Willy, although just as fascinated by the story and the pictures, did what John had not thought to do: She turned the page.

And found the rest of Jesse Orsa’s story.

“Ha!” she said aloud, triumphant, bitter. And she returned the book to the librarian; now she was armed, ready to go home.

Chapter Nine

It was just after noon when Willy returned to the house on Orange Street. She dropped one load of groceries in the kitchen, then sprinted up the stairs to the attic to check on John. The sight and sound of the peaceful village and all the normal people who inhabited it, the housewives and checkers at the A&P, the librarian, the gum-chewing young girl who sold her her newspaper at the Hub today, had filled Willy with a sense of normalcy and optimism, and as Willy climbed the stairs, she said aloud to herself, “At least my heart will be in great condition after all this exercise.”

John was asleep. He had moved from the chair to the bed and lay across it, uncovered, sunken in a profound sleep. He did not stir when Willy leaned over to brush his hair off his forehead.

Willy brought the comforter up and tucked it around him. She sat at his side on the bed awhile, looking at him. He truly looked horrible. And he had seemed physically weak today, shaking and debilitated. She could not remember when she had seen him really eat. But why would he be starving himself? It was just that he had seemed to lose all interest in food—and if he were having an affair with a ghost, or thought he was, no wonder he had lost interest in food. Loss of appetite was a common consequence of falling in love. Still, this was extreme, and she was worried. She determined that when he next awakened, she would make him eat if she had to force him at gunpoint. Although, of course, what a foolish thought; she didn’t own a gun, didn’t know how to use one. She would have to do something, though, to make sure he got some nourishment. If he wouldn’t eat solids, she could make a rich, healthy eggnog.

Still he slept. Willy rose and walked around the attic. Aimee was curled up asleep in one of the brocade chairs. Willy ran her hand over the back of the chair; it was so lovely, so elegant, made of such beautiful material. Just now there was nothing in the attic that frightened her or that hinted of ghosts and passions and confusing jealousies. It was just a large, bright unfinished room with a marvelous view. Willy walked to the window and stood looking out. The clouds were darkening now, the snow was falling more thickly, and she understood that night would come early and with it a dangerous storm.