Spirit Lost (27 page)

But this vision was as real as anything else in his life.

John saw himself stepping off the widow’s walk into the dark void and knew that this act held the same kind of bravery and curiosity as those actions of the educated sailors and their illiterate crew who sailed their ships away from the safety of land into the vast, terrible seas.

He thought of the men who lived on whaling ships for years, touching no women, hearing no civilized songs, feeling the ever-changing turbulence of the ocean as it sucked and slammed against the ship instead of the steadiness of land. Seeing the blackest nights and brightest days men could see. Feeling extremes of heat and cold and hunger and thirst and fear and triumph and awe. Those men had committed sacred acts, as did any mere human who ventured forth into the unknown.

John saw himself stepping off the roof of the house on Orange Street, and it was as if he were setting forth on a voyage. He felt himself fall, the dark air surging upward past him, like waves sweeping past the keel of a ship, chilling him, purifying him, transforming him. He saw his body land hard and break and felt his spirit immediately rise—a miracle, it was like flames shooting upward from the heart of the sea. And he knew that who and what a person was was always a fiery thing, no matter the vessel that contained it.

He saw Jesse Orsa waiting for him in the darkness. He felt the flames of his spirit
spiral around a center, and looking down, he saw that he possessed his body once again; he saw his hands, his feet, his arms, shimmering into shape. Why did people think that ghosts were cold?

He saw Jesse Orsa smile and hold out her hand. She was very lovely, as lovely as he had ever seen her, the sweet pink skin of her body showing through the lace and satin gown she wore. Her dark hair was piled in an elaborate fashion, adorned with jewels. He knew that she was dressed in celebration of his arrival.

The known world had vanished. John knew only darkness and the presence of Jesse Orsa and the fire that both consumed and provided him. A sound like kettle drums or deep thunder throbbed around him.

Slowly, John realized two things: that if he went with Jesse Orsa, he would never be with Willy again.

And he would never be an artist of any kind.

What was Willy to him?

She was his wife. She was the pattern of his days, the rhythm of his years, the orange-and-brown leaves of autumn that dipped in the breeze, the heat of summer, the food and hearth that warmed against the winter’s chill. She was the woman who had chosen him long ago and stayed with him through eight years of changes and angers and compromises and perplexities. She was his friend. Her love was a lover’s love, and more, because she saw him truly, not as an illusion, but as he was. So her love was the love of an equal, and she needed him and required of him all the things she gave.

In some way she was part of him even now; she was there, flame in flame that burned in him, inseparable.

She needed him, she wanted him, she called him back. Even though Willy was not present in the hospital, seated next to him, calling his name, still John heard her call him, through the flames, for Willy and John were husband and wife, and her needs burned through him—her voice, her incandescence as smooth and brilliant as a mirror, reflecting his own gleaming heat.

This was their marriage. It was not every marriage. Jesse Orsa had not had that with Captain John Wright.

John saw Jesse Orsa waiting for him. He knew she saw him in his body, handsome and young and willing. He sensed how she saw him, how in spite of her own ghostliness she could not see the fire burning in him.

He saw that because Jesse Orsa was a spirit lost in longing, she wanted of him not who he was in all his depths and complexities but who he was simply, superficially: his body, as it was now, because it resembled her husband’s.

But Willy wanted all of him, greedy spirit and cantankerous mind along with body, the real body, that was now young and handsome but that would eventually age. Willy would love him as he grew old; as he would love her. It was Willy who wanted him, and so he wanted Willy, who loved and accepted him, surface and depths.

In his vision, he chose Willy.

And with Willy came the knowledge that he could try to be an artist. Perhaps only that, only
try
. If he left the living world now,
he
would know secrets. But he could never pass them on. If he lived, he could try to explain what he had learned. He could try to portray light held in the hands, music seen with the eyes. There were no guarantees that he would succeed.

But for him, the voyage, the curiosity, the attempt, the bravery, lay on earth, not here in death.

The challenge of his life would be to paint, to paint what he had learned here.

Jesse Orsa held out her hands, and there was a question in her eyes: Why was he delaying?

John shook his head.

“I am so sorry,” he said. “I cannot come with you.”

“But you
can
!” she called.

“I won’t,” he replied. “I want to live.”

Her eyes blazed with anger. It seemed her body shimmered and sparked. He felt her flare with rage and indignation. Even so, she was very beautiful. John knew that somewhere along the years she would find a man who pleased her who would not be able to resist her many lures.

In spite of her brilliant anger, John saw Jesse Orsa fade. Or perhaps it was he who was fading. The darkness they were in was being invaded by light, and the fire within him steadied so that the outline of his hands and arms became clearer. He was returning to his hospital bed. He was returning to what he had chosen: life, and Willy.

He fell into a deep and healing sleep.

The four friends sat in the Hunters’ living room in Cambridge; they were laughing and drinking champagne. Aimee lay curled on a sofa cushion next to Willy. Baby Peter lay on a blanket on the floor in the middle of the room, staring enraptured at the light bouncing off the silver champagne bucket. From time to time he cooed at it and reached out to touch it; feeling the cold, he shrieked. Anne had out her address book; she was writing names, addresses, and telephone numbers down for John and Willy. “I don’t care about everyone else, but you’ve got to call the Martins,” she said. “They’re more fun than anyone in the world.”

“We may not have time to see anyone,” Willy said, “if John gets involved with his painting.”

“I’ll make time,” John said. “I promise. I’m not going to let two months in Bermuda go by without some sunshine and good times.”

“I think I’ll get pregnant,” Willy announced, stretching her toes out to warm them by the fire. She laughed all by herself at the others’ expressions. “Why not?” she asked.

John grinned. “I’ll see what I can do for you, lady,” he said.

“Oh, you’re so lucky!” Anne exclaimed. “Two months of sunshine and sex by the sea!”

“You should write ad copy,” John told her.

“You
are
lucky,” Anne said. “You know you are.”

“I know,” Willy agreed, leaning toward John.

“I know,” John said, pulling his wife close to him. “God, do I know.”

The four sat in silence, sipping their champagne, watching the baby kick and gurgle on the floor. They heard the fire crackle and tasted the bite of alcohol against their tongue. They were happy.

When Mark had come to Nantucket a few weeks before, summoned by Willy’s call, he had quickly taken charge. He had escorted the real estate dealer through the house because Willy didn’t have the heart to do it; he had cleaned up her sewing room first. And he had carefully packaged up all of John’s finished canvases, and taken them back to the mainland with him. While John lay recovering in the hospital, unaware, Mark, with Willy’s permission, took the paintings to various galleries in Boston.

No gallery liked the black paintings, but several had expressed interest in the nature studies: the shell and feathers, the few harbor scenes. One of the better galleries had taken some paintings on consignment, and a painting of feathers, shell, and berry had
already sold. It brought only a few hundred dollars, but it had sold.

John was elated. He and Willy had already decided that they needed to go away somewhere for a while, to get far away from Nantucket and winter and all that had happened so recently. The owner of the gallery had advised him to paint more water scenes, more nature scenes; John was good at that, the owner said, he would like to see more. So John and Willy were going to Bermuda for two months, to work and lie in the warming sun, to be together. The cat would live at the Hunters’ while they were gone. When they returned, they would look for a new house in Boston.

John had never been happier in his life. He liked to think that he would have been this happy without having had a painting sold, but that was not true. To have his work validated in this way meant a great deal. Meant he was beginning, could begin. And this was almost everything.

But not quite everything. He was an artist, he knew that now, and because he had had a painting sold, he could do the work he wanted and feel right in his actions.

But he was also a man, one who had had an unusual experience—and now in this glow of health and happiness he knew he could not swear, if he had to, that that experience had not been an imaginary one. The important thing was what he had learned from it.

What he had learned was not easily called forth. Now that he was sensible and sane, on his feet again,
normal
, he knew that he had had a vision, but he could recall it only vaguely. Some days it flared up in him so that he could almost articulate it, almost express it in words. But then it would vanish, leaving him with a powerful desire, like a thirst or a sexual ache—and then he would paint.

Now and then bits and pieces of the vision would float up into his consciousness, emerging like a fish flashing up from the sea or the gleaming, bizarre flipping of some sea creature’s fin, throwing off light, causing an eagerness, a hope. Then it would disappear. Then John would paint.

Someday, he thought, he might catch it, all that he had seen and experienced and learned, someday, if he kept at it, if he dedicated himself and worked hard. Perhaps he might never catch it with words, might never be able to say to other people: This is it, this is what I know. But he might paint it. And that challenge lay before him: the meaning of his life.

The challenge was now the meaning of his life, and Willy was, as she had always
been even when he did not know it, the vital necessity.

Willy was his harbor, his anchor—his safety net.

As he was hers.

It was possible that there would never again be with Willy that searing flash of lust and fear and awe that came with first love. Perhaps that could only come with what was new and strange and unknown—and unknowable. Or perhaps not—there had been times both before and after the ghost when John knew physical love with Willy that was so powerful it frightened him.

But it was probably true that there would never again be that terrifying fall from the luminous, lucid world into the dirty, dangerous, carnal dark. He could have chosen that, but that was not what he wanted.

What he wanted, rather, was life, life with Willy. With Willy he could try to remember it all, the voyage, the stepping into dark air; he could take the voyage, he could step into dark air with his art—and if he failed, fell, Willy’s love would catch him. And if he succeeded, for he would often succeed, Willy’s love was still there, the way that clouds wait beside a plane. The way a marriage waits while the man and wife sleep through the night. The way the sun waits for the earth to turn toward the light.

And there would be times, he knew, when Willy would need his love as a safety net. And he would be there for her.

Perhaps when she started her embroidery work again. Perhaps when she got pregnant. Perhaps even as soon as tonight when they made love.

For sometimes when they made love, Willy would cry out with ecstasy and fear, she would cry, “Oh, John, I’m so high!” And John would hold Willy and soothe her and love her and bring her down safely in his arms.

Afterword

“A street in Nantucket …” is now called Hawthorn Lane, from the jungle of twisted hawthorn trees that line it on both sides, the most gnarled, thorny hawthorn trees that ever defied the approach of man.

“The legend is that they are the reincarnation—if one may use that word—of all the unhappy old maids who lost their loves at sea, or had their lovers taken from them by girls at other ports, or never had any lovers at all, and lived long, thorny, gnarled lives ever after. Once a year, in May, they bloom a virginal white. Once a year, in October, their branches are hung with red berries like drops of blood from a deep wound. And all the year they stretch forth their savage thorns.”

William O. Stevens,
Nantucket: The Far-Away Island

(New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc., 1936)

For Charley

B
Y
N
ANCY
T
HAYER