Spirit Lost (26 page)

She was certain that as she entered, a wail as loud as a plane screaming above the earth broke out around her, but later she discovered that no one else heard such a noise that night. Still, it seemed to her that she had to move through sound in order to reach her coat and that that sound was a piercing, shattering shriek of grief. She drove herself through the sound like a swimmer diving through dark waters. She tore her coat from the walnut coatrack and stumbled gracelessly from the front door. Terrified, she felt in the coat pockets: The familiar cold metal shape of the keys made her laugh out loud with relief.

The rest was easy. Or later she would remember it as being easy. She managed to drag her husband to the Jeep, to shove and force and bend his body into the vehicle. She climbed into the driver’s seat and with shaking hands got the key into the ignition. After a heart-stopping moment, the cold battery roared to life, and miracle of miracles, the lights came on, great, powerful silver beams that caught the snowflakes in their dance.

She knew the way to the hospital. It was difficult on the snow-covered roads, but it was not long. She was sure the ghost was no longer with her, and so she was not so afraid. But she would not leave John alone while she went into the emergency room to get help; she parked the Jeep and dragged him in her arms to the door of the building. A nurse on duty inside saw her and hastened to let them in. The hospital blazed with lights and warmth created by the emergency generator. Willy smiled at the nurse before she passed out at the nurse’s feet.

Chapter Ten

They kept John in the hospital. For three weeks. Because the diagnosis was severe malnutrition and nervous prostration, he was kept in a dark room, his body fed with a series of IVs. The first week he was comatose.

They kept Willy only overnight. She had so many scrapes on her arms and bumps and bruises on her head and body that they watched her for a brain concussion, and she had to be brought out of the state of shock she was in. But by the next morning she was in good enough condition for the doctors to let her leave the hospital.

Because she had to tell them something, these kind doctors and nurses who had their forms to fill out, she told them that John was an artist. That she had been away for three weeks and she had returned to find that he had been working so hard that he had forgotten to eat sufficiently. That she found him in the attic in such a weakened state that it was necessary for her to drag him down the stairs herself and that the weakened balustrade had given way so that she had fallen from the second floor. And that was true, that was all true. It was also true that she had tried to call an ambulance and found the phone dead because of the storm. There was nothing for them to doubt in her story.

When the cheerful nurse entered her room in the morning, whisked away the hospital tray that held Willy’s breakfast and said happily, “Doctor says you can go home now!” Willy had felt something recoil inside her.
Home
. She did not want to go “home,” not back to that house on Orange Street. She was afraid to go back.

But looking out the window, she saw that the day was sparkling with the aftermath of the storm. The snow-covered landscape seemed sprinkled with glitter, and the sky was a sunny, innocent blue. What bad could happen on a day like today? She would be fine.

Besides, she had to see about the cat. Poor Aimee; it was not much of a home Willy had brought her to. Willy wondered if the front door was still wide open.

So she signed the necessary forms, and after a brief glance at John’s sleeping figure, she pulled on her coat and left the hospital.

She found the house filled with a crisp, gleaming, refreshing winter’s light. Someone—no doubt some kind stranger passing by while walking to Main Street—had
closed the front door. Willy stood just inside it, hand on the doorknob, ready for a quick escape. She could hear the furnace working away steadily in the basement; she could even feel the refrigerator thrumming in the kitchen. The life of the house seemed intact and pure.

But the splintered, cracked, and broken sticks of wood that had once been balusters lay scattered across the first floor, reminders of Willy’s fall the night before. Willy looked up the staircase, where shards of wood still hung from the top railing. For one long moment she did not know if she would ever have the courage to climb those stairs again.

“Aimee?” she called, partly for the cat’s sake, partly just to hear her own voice. “Aimee?” She was so worried that something had happened to the cat.

But Aimee came to the top of the stairs and looked down at Willy. She opened her mouth to mew, stretched as she did, and her mew came out in a comical yawn.

“Thank God!” Willy said.

Still she knew she could not spend another night in this house, especially alone. She summoned enough courage to get herself up to the second floor, where she hastily packed a bag. Then, without a backward glance at anything, she grabbed up Aimee and left the house.

For the three weeks that John was in the hospital, Willy stayed in a guest house with the cat. On the first day, she called a real estate agent and put the Orange Street house up for sale. The agent told her not to expect a quick sale—it was the wrong time of year—but that when the warm weather came, she would easily find a buyer. Willy kept putting off a date to take the agent through the house.

That first week, Willy spent much of her time sitting by John’s hospital bed, waiting for his return to consciousness. She had a great deal of time to think, although her thoughts seemed to go in circles, leading to no sensible conclusion. When she wasn’t with John, she was taking her meals in the guest-house dining room or sleeping. She was very tired. She realized that she had a lot to recover from, physically and emotionally, and so she let herself rest. She lay curled late in the morning or early in the evening on
the large antique four-poster bed in the guest house, Aimee snuggled next to her. She listened to the sounds of the house around her, the other guests coming and going up and down the stairs, the newlyweds laughing and nudging each other, the owner of the guest house walking through the large formal front parlors, arranging flowers, setting out fresh ashtrays. These sounds soothed her soul, and she lay immersed in them, as if in a certain safety.

For that first week she did not call Mark and Anne. Rather, she nursed a grudge within her and let that grudge grow. She hated them for not believing her, for deserting her, for letting her fight this fight alone. Mark had scoffed at her when she had called him for help. Anne had been too busy with her baby to even come to the phone. Willy thought she would never call them again.

By the end of the first week, John had regained consciousness. Still, he was weak. He opened his eyes, he spoke sensible words to Willy—simple words that he would have said to anyone: “Hello,” “Thank you,” “I feel better,” “Okay.” He did not ask Willy how he had gotten to the hospital. He did not reach out for her hand or tell her that he loved her. But at least he did not call out Jesse Orsa’s name.

One week after her fall, Willy sat watching John, who lay staring out the window. It had gotten dark; there was nothing there for him to see. Still he stared, his face aged and sad, and he did not seem to realize, or to care, that Willy was in the room. Willy began to cry softly. She turned her head so John would not see. When she looked back, his eyes were closed, and he was asleep.

That night she called Mark and Anne when she got back to the guest house. She needed to hear the voices of friends. She determined not to tell them anything, not to let need show in her voice; she would only ask them how they were, if they were over the flu, how the baby was.

“Willy!” Mark shouted when he answered the phone. “My God, where have you been? We’ve been out of our minds worrying about you! We’ve called your house a dozen times and no one’s answered. What’s going on? Are you okay? How’s John?”

The concern, the friendship, the love in Mark’s voice, made Willy’s throat swell up, and she could not speak for a moment. When she finally did manage to talk, she heard herself, through tears, begging Mark to come to Nantucket. Mark said he would come.

It was early evening. Willy had just left the hospital. John lay still in his white bed, his thoughts filled with shadows. He was not satisfied. A faint, tantalizing, thrilling music flickered just at the edge of his consciousness; he knew it was Jesse Orsa calling his name.

It was easier than he had thought it would be to remove the tubes stuck into his arms. He knew his clothes were in the closet; he pulled his trousers on, tucking the hospital gown inside. He dragged his sweater on over his head, pulled on his socks and shoes.

No one saw him leave the hospital. He walked out of his room, down the hall, down the stairs and out the door without anyone stopping him, without anyone calling out or questioning. It was as easy as falling through air.

The evening was mild. There was no wind. John walked fast and did not feel the cold. In a matter of minutes he was on Pleasant Street, and then on the narrow one-way street that led between houses and gardens to wide Orange Street, where his house stood.

He knew the front door would be unlocked, and it was. Inside, the house was warm and quiet. He could tell immediately that Willy was not here. He could hear Jesse Orsa singing and laughing, teasingly calling his name. He climbed the stairs with ease.

The attic was illuminated by the street lamps; he did not need any other light. He saw the candlestick and candle lying on the floor by the bed and thought nothing of them. He saw his paintings leaning against the attic walls; those he thought of, for a moment, with regret.

He thought of Jesse Orsa, of her perfect body, her luxurious, seductive, greedy love. He did not let himself think of Willy.

Jesse Orsa was calling him. Her voice was like a song, the sweetest song. He had to strain his ears to hear. She was what did not exist on earth; she was a mirage, a reflection on water, a trick of light. She was all that was not real, and yet she would be real to him. If he reached out, he could be the person who held light in his hands, who could see music before his eyes. With her he could do all this; he had done it with her before.

So he climbed the slanted wooden steps to the widow’s walk. Carefully he unlatched the hook the carpenter had attached and lifted the glass door upward and back. The cold night air flowed in around him.

John climbed out onto the widow’s walk. He stood for just a moment, looking out
over the rooftops of Nantucket. He saw far below him the glistening waters of the harbor and the gleaming church spires. Dimly he heard the gentle buzz of noise of this little village. He heard Jesse Orsa call his name.

With ease, with grace, with one swift, simple, exhilarating movement, he flung himself from the widow’s walk into the welcoming spacious air.

John lay safely in his hospital bed, and his mind ranged free. Perhaps it was simply that his body, in its fierce, independent acceptance of the nourishment flowing from the IV and of the true rest he was receiving now, was, in its one-tracked, unimaginative, unimpeded, completely physical way, rejoicing at his return to health. And so he was on a physical high that was causing the vividness of his vision. Perhaps that was so.