The Moon Around Sarah (8 page)

He caught her expression and said, ‘Start looking. I’ll take the other side of the street.’

They moved off along the avenue, searching for their lost daughter with a single purpose, separated by the roar and hiss of the passing traffic and by the neglectful years between them.

Don March trudged back along the narrow street toward the pier. Passing cars threw up dirty mist, spattering his clothes. He had set out on his walk in heated anger, but within a few blocks he had calmed down; he was not a man to harbor anger long. Sarah’s brothers had infuriated him,
but in the end they meant nothing at all to him. Let them suffer their own banality and its penalties alone. He wanted only to find Sarah; nothing else was important.

As he calmed down, he noticed with surprise that he carried his Nikon camera around his neck; snatched up from the table out of sheer habit.

Don’s thoughts were still tangled. He wanted to help Sarah. One of his flaws, a friend had said once, was to believe he could save the world: maybe he should have been a priest. But even a priest with his vows of poverty had more resources than Don March did just then. What possible help could he be to anyone? His own eviction notice was just around the corner of the calendar.

It was a lonely, cold and windy day, quite spectacular in its way with the play of sunlight on the shifting water, the foothills still in cool shadow, the remnant clouds gilt-edged. Recognizing this on one level, the photographer felt no inspiration to try capturing fresh images with his camera. Maybe it was time to accept the inevitable: his time here was finished – artistically and financially. He had done all he could in both areas and managed to fail quite
dramatically
in each.

Yes, he thought, I would make a great savior for another unhappy person.

Of course Sarah was
not
unhappy; it seemed not, anyway. Maybe her brother was right – she might be just as happy in an institution as anywhere else.

Living there for the next forty or fifty years….

He walked onto the pier, nodding to one older woman he
knew from the bakery in town. And then he saw Sarah halfway down the pier, the breeze buffeting her slender body, twisting her hair. She still tightly gripped her huge hat with the pink ribbon.

She seemed to sense his coming and she turned her head to look at him, her smile welcoming and uncertain at once, her body unconsciously graceful in its casual stance. Donald reached instinctively for his camera.

The wind shifted her dark hair across her huge, wistful eyes. Her expression was pleased, wondering, and for only one split-instant fearful and lost in the deep
apprehensiveness
of loneliness.

Donald took ten rapid shots until the 35mm camera stuttered and beeped once to notify him that he was out of film.

He walked on toward her, the gusting sea breeze lifting his pale hair. He leaned beside her on the pier, looking downward as she had been before he had approached, seeing the blue reef where crabs scuttled.

She looked to him enquiringly, her eyes falling to the camera around his neck.

‘Yes, I took a few pictures of you. I hope you don’t mind. You are rather exquisite, you know. At certain times….’ He paused for a long while as the surf, still heavy from the storm, battered the pilings and threatened the activities of the crabs. ‘You seem to know things … and I don’t know exactly what they are. You are an enigma, is what I mean. I don’t know if that photographs well.’ He looked now at the long sea and not at her, ‘There are dreams all around you, Sarah. I wish I could enter them and understand you better.’

Sarah understood all of his words, of course, but his meaning wasn’t exactly clear to her. She knew that the young man did like her. He had taken her picture. Maybe he liked her well enough that one day he would pin her picture up on his wall as he had done with the naked girl looking out the window. He would have captured the essence of the moment, perhaps: a wind which no longer blew sweeping her hair across her eyes, a breaker caught in foaming half-curl; a surge of expectancy never completed.

Why was he so desperate to catch passing life and hold each moment forever? He was a very sad young man, she thought, but very kind.

For a long time they stood silently beside each other on the dark pier, watching the crabs. Once he put his arm around her shoulders and once she placed her small hand on top of his as it rested on the rail.

A huge surge of incoming surf washed the crabs from the shallow reef and Don withdrew his hand.

‘Come on, he said. ‘We’ve got to get you back to your family. They’re all out looking for you.’

Family, he was thinking, was a hell of a word to use for that pack. A woman like Sarah – could she possibly be unloved? They showed no such emotion. Maybe they were just all too self-involved and greedy to take the time for unnecessary displays. It was incredible he thought, glancing at the pretty, smiling young woman. Now, to avoid responsibility they were willing to institutionalize her. He clenched his jaw and turned her, leading Sarah back toward
his studio, the grumbling of the assertive sea covering the sound of his muttered curses.

‘We’re almost there, Sarah,’ Don said with false
heartiness
. Her eyebrows raised just a little questioningly, and her smile seemed to falter. ‘I couldn’t find your mother,’ he went on, ‘but your two brothers are there. Edward?’ He didn’t think the other brother’s name had been mentioned, or if so his rush of anger at their scuffle had kept him from noting it. ‘Almost there, and then you can go home. Christ! You’re probably starving by now, aren’t you? I’m sorry, I didn’t think of that. Well, they’ll give you a big lunch at home.’

Sarah was hungry, but not intolerably so. Poppsy would be hungry, though. Mother and Aunt Trish said the dog was old and didn’t need much food, and so they only fed her once a day, but Sarah always slipped her food later on. Poppsy would be hungry and her dog eyes would be sad because she wouldn’t know where everyone had gone.

They trudged up the wooden outside steps to the door of Don’s studio and he swung the door open for Sarah and then, stepping inside, he smothered a curse of disgust. Her brothers had gone! They had left no note – Don searched the table, his cork board where the photographs were pinned haphazardly. No note. Nothing. They had just gone –
abandoning
Sarah again.

Sarah walked to the wall where Don stood and began looking again at the photographs pinned to the sheet of cork. March walked away, feeling the tension in his every muscle. He sat in the white-painted chair and slammed the
palm of his hand down very hard. The cameras on it shook; the Pentax fell forward on its face. Don didn’t even notice.

At the sound, Sarah glanced at him over her shoulder and he grinned meaninglessly. She turned to face the
photographs
again.

‘Sarah, Sarah,’ he said to her back, ‘now what should I do with you, girl? Exactly what
is
there to do with someone so innocent and so doomed?’

‘J
AKE
!’ D
ON
M
ARCH
called out, as he walked into the oily garage fronting the broken concrete alley. A bearded man of forty, flannel-shirt cuffs rolled up to show dirty, long, underwear-sleeves beneath, turned to him. He had a huge deep-sea fishing reel with a hundred yards of steel line partly disassembled in his hands.

The fisherman grinned, ‘Hello. Don. What’s happening?’

‘I’d like to borrow your station wagon if you don’t mind,’ the photographer replied.

‘I told you, you could use it any time,’ Jake said. He put the fishing reel down, wiped his hands on a slop-cloth and reached into his pants’ pocket, ‘Besides, you’re about the only one who knows how to drive it.’

The station wagon was a yellow and white 1956 Chevrolet with a three-speed column gearshift. It had its quirks, the major and most annoying of these being its insistence on wanting to go into reverse when the driver was trying for second gear. Don had used it on several
occasions
to haul his equipment on a photographic shoot and had become accustomed to the old rust-bucket’s ways.

‘Here you go, buddy,’ Jake said, dropping two keys on a ring into Don’s hand. ‘What is it? Got a hot date?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Yeah, hey, I saw that girl you were with this morning,’ Jake said, ‘good-looking woman.’

‘Yeah. Well, thanks, Jake.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ the fisherman said, and he
immediately
got back to work on his equipment.

Not long after Don and Sarah had returned to the studio, he had noticed the white business card on the floor under his table. Bending to pick it up, he wondered if maybe he hadn’t been too quick to curse Edward Tucker. Maybe he
had
left this for him and it had blown off the table. However, there was the mark of a paper clip indented on the face; it seemed more likely that it had simply been knocked free of an attached letter as the brothers hurriedly shuffled their contracts.

It was not Edward’s business card. There was no note scribbled on the back either. The card read: ‘Northshore Medical and Convalescent Center’, gave an address on Braxton Road off the Coast Highway, and, in smaller letters in the right-hand corner, had imprinted: ‘Dr Alan Gerard, Chief of Psychiatry’.

Don vaguely remembered having seen the place. A grouping of low pinkish buildings arranged in a rectangle, a few scraggly star-pine trees growing uncertainly around it, the stark hills rising behind it.

‘I wonder if I was supposed to find this?’ Don mused.

Sarah looked at him, turned and wandered to where he sat, card in hand.

‘Is that where they intend to put you?’

Maybe Edward had left it purposely; a place for Don to take Sarah if he found her. The wind gusting through the open door could easily have blown the card to the floor. Perhaps that was where the brothers had now gone and this was their way of letting Don know? Maybe not.

‘Anyway,’ Don said, more to himself than to Sarah, ‘I’d like to have a closer look at that place. It’s only a mile or so up the highway.’

And, he thought, he would like to talk to Dr Alan Gerard. There was so little he understood about Sarah. Perhaps the doctor could explain a few things to him? He wanted to get a few matters clearer in his mind before he volunteered to deliver the woman to this sterile-appearing place, not knowing what they intended for her.

‘Wait here, Sarah,’ he said, slipping into his green jacket again, ‘and this time,’ he added, putting a hint of command in his voice, ‘I mean it. I’ll only be a few minutes. I promise you.’

Then he had gone downstairs to find Jake and borrow the old station wagon.

Returning, he had found Sarah sitting obediently in the middle of the room on the white-painted chair. He smiled despite himself, feeling that his mild admonition had been too harsh.

‘OK, I’m back. Now we’re going to take a short ride.’

Sarah wore Don’s old red-and-black checked hunting jacket over her thin cotton dress as he steered the bulky, salt-rusted station wagon northward along the coast road.
Her eyes were bright and eager as she looked out of the window, her hair drifting in the wind. Each bend in the road offered a changing vista, and for Sarah it seemed each was excitingly new, filled with the thrill of discovery.

Watching her, Don was sure that she missed not a single fold in the far hills; no rocky outcropping with its network of weather cracks; no single tree escaped her observation or careful scrutiny. Her expression was one of total absorption and endless fascination. It was the same expression she had worn when studying the photographs on the wall or the crabs beneath the pier. He wondered what sort of eye
she
would have for photography. It would be interesting to find out. Watching her, he was reminded of a line from some forgotten poem, ‘A child … accosting wonder in the smallest places.’

Swinging off the highway near Braxton, he began looking for a place to stop and eat; neither of them had had a bite all day. Driving east now, the foothills rose before them, dark, convoluted, nearly purple in the light the sun cast through the high broken clouds at this hour.

Spotting a modern-looking, blue-roofed coffee shop, Don pulled into the parking lot where several cars with out-of-state license plates were parked. Three big rigs of different colors sat side by side in their own parking area to the south, half hidden by a row of dusty cypress trees.

He parked in front of the building. Behind the large tinted windows, they could see people eating in comfortable booths and a waitress in a green dress walking hurriedly by, carrying an overloaded tray. Don turned off the engine.

‘OK, let’s get you something to eat, Sarah.’

She started to get out and Don touched her arm, ‘Leave the jacket in the car, Sarah. It’s not exactly pretty, and you won’t need it inside.’

Obediently, she took off the checked hunting jacket and folded it carefully on the seat as Don watched her. Then they went into the restaurant which smelled of hotcakes and eggs, coffee and bacon. A woman in a black dress wearing a fixed smile approached them with mock pertness and led them to a back table.

Sarah slid into the leather-covered booth and sat with her hands clasped, watching Don expectantly. The hostess handed them each a plastic covered menu and bustled away, her smile vanishing.

Don studied the menu, knowing he had $22 in his pocket and could not return Jake’s station wagon with an empty gas tank. He frowned at the prices, glanced at Sarah who was tracing the large red letters of the restaurant’s name on the top of her menu with her finger, her lips moving silently.

‘What’ll it be, Sarah? A late breakfast or an early dinner? They’re serving both.’

A middle-aged waitress with bleached hair and order pad in hand, arrived introducing herself. She offered Sarah a practiced smile.

‘Ready to order yet?’ she asked.

Don said, ‘Two cheeseburgers, two orders of fries.’ He handed back his menu and slipped Sarah’s from under her hand.

‘Yes, sir. Anything to drink?’

She was still smiling, looking at Sarah. Sarah smiled back.

‘Two cokes,’ Don said.

‘Yes, sir.’ The waitress watched Sarah a moment longer, before drawing back slightly. Scribbling on her pad, she placed the menus under her arm and walked away on
thick-soled
shoes.

‘It’ll only be a minute, Sarah.’

It was a little longer than that, but not much. The
cheeseburgers
were greasy, the french fries very dry, but Sarah ate with such complete relish that Don forgave the restaurant for its lapses and left a decent tip on the table before they went out.

They were onto the curb and pulling from the parking lot onto the boulevard before Don noticed that Sarah had half of her cheeseburger and some french fries wrapped in a napkin on her lap.

‘You weren’t that hungry after all, huh?’

Yes, she had been hungry, very hungry. This was for Poppsy. Poppsy would be hungry, too, and no one would take Poppsy out to a restaurant. Well, maybe the young man would if he knew Poppsy. Maybe. He was a very nice young man.

Dr Walter Manzel was still a young man, but his manner was lugubrious, as if he had been jilted by life. He had a round face and very pale blue eyes that blinked excessively. His pale hair was so thin that his scalp glowed through it,
tinting it pink. It was to his office at the Northshore Medical and Convalescent Center that they were escorted, having been warned at the front desk where Don – to Sarah’s obvious surprise – had introduced himself as Edward Tucker, that today was Dr Gerard’s day off.

Dr Walter Manzel half-rose from behind his desk where every paper was neatly stacked and squared; Don had the feeling that the man had been doing nothing more than looking out the window that faced the low hills beyond the convalescent center. He shook Don’s hand weakly, seated himself again and gestured toward two padded red chairs. He made a shaky attempt at a smile and flipped open the folder before him.

‘So … and this is Sarah.’ He offered her one of his faltering smiles as well, ‘We didn’t expect her for a few days, Mr Tucker.’

Sarah looked at Don, wondering why in the world he was using Edward’s name.

‘We just came by so that Sarah could look the place over. It might make for an easier transition. Of course,’ Don said, crossing his legs, ‘I did want to talk to Dr Gerard further concerning prognosis. We
do
want Sarah to get well.’

‘Of course. Dr Gerard is much more familiar with
voluntary
mutism than I am. As far as prognosis … yes, you would have to talk to him personally. I’m sorry he is not here today. Without an appointment….’

‘I understand. I’m sorry. My schedule….’

‘Yes, yes.’ Manzel turned over a few pages in Sarah’s file and said, ‘I’m afraid … this is not Dr Gerard’s day in. He
goes sailing, you know…’ he added irrelevantly, ‘I have his notes, of course … but,’ he paused, ‘it might be better to discuss this outside of your sister’s hearing, Mr Tucker. You indicated she wished to be shown around? I can have one of the nurses do that while we talk?’ Each sentence seemed to end with a question mark.

‘Fine,’ Don said after a moment’s thought, ‘maybe that would be better.’ He told Sarah, ‘They want to show you what their hospital looks like, all right? Go ahead, doctor, call your nurse.’

Dr Manzel spoke briefly into his intercom, and shortly a bulky Italian woman with a benign smile entered and
introduced
herself as Mrs Stanzione. Without hesitation, Sarah rose and went out with the nurse at her invitation.

‘Is she always like that? Always does what she’s told to do?’ Manzel asked.

‘Always,’ Don answered.

‘She’ll do very well here then. It’s almost a shame.…’

‘That what?’

‘Well … that she’ll have to be in the psychiatric wing. We are a dual-use facility, surely Dr Gerard explained that?’

‘He has spoken mostly to my mother. I live out of the area.’

‘Yes,’ Manzel’s eyes drifted away toward the window, perhaps enviously imagining Dr Gerard sailing across the bay, white shorts, captain’s cap. His sad gaze returned. ‘We are a hospital and convalescent center combined. We have quite a number of the elderly, people recovering from major surgery: amputations, organ transplants.… Then we have
our rather renowned psychiatric rehabilitation facility. Of which, of course, Dr Gerard and I are staff chiefs.’

‘But you were saying, as to Sarah?’ Don tried to hurry the man toward clarification of what she would be facing.

‘Well, Sarah has obvious psychiatric problems, the mutism being the most evident symptom. The two sections of this institution are kept totally separate and distinct. The state mandates this, for rather obvious reasons.’

‘I understand. And in the psychiatric wing?’

‘What do you mean … oh, what sorts of patients do we have there?’ Dr Manzel’s eyes swiveled as if he wished he could look out the window behind him while explaining. He turned a palm up and said, ‘Paranoid-schizophrenics. Some psychotic cases. A few catatonics…. I want you to
understand
, Mr Tucker, that we have a remarkable success rate here in stabilizing some of these people with medication. They are then transferred to our outpatient programs. We look at no individual as being irretrievable. That is one of the cornerstones of our philosophy.’

‘The outpatient programs – Sarah would not be a
candidate
?’

‘I understood that the family … I’m sorry,’ he looked briefly at her folder again. ‘It has been our understanding that no one in the family felt capable of taking care of her at home.’

‘The question was hypothetical,’ Don said dryly. A bad taste was building in the back of his mouth. It was bitter, tasting of mercury and bile. He recognized it as rising anger.

‘Well, hypothetically…’, the psychiatrist spread his hands, ‘surely Dr Gerard has been through all of this with the family.’

‘I’ve told you….’

‘Yes, I’d forgotten. Your mother has chiefly consulted him.’

‘That’s right.’

A hint of suspicion had developed in the psychiatrist’s eyes, but Manzel seemed to mentally shrug it off, and he continued.

‘I assume you mean that if she were able to regain her power of speech suddenly and was able to enter standard therapy, allowing us to assess her actual psychiatric
wellness
….’

‘That’s exactly what I mean, yes.’

Dr Manzel appeared puzzled, then apparently decided he was simply talking to someone without any understanding of psychiatry and went on, further secularizing his
vocabulary
, ‘If she were to recover her speech, sir, no one – not even her family – could continue to cause her to remain in this facility unless some other problem manifested itself. There would be an evaluation preceding her release, of course, but I must say, having only briefly seen the girl myself and having studied her file, there have never been any other problems. So long as it was felt she could function in society on her own or with a minimum amount of supervised help, she would be transferred to a more flexible program. There is absolutely no violence in her background,’ the doctor said, again studying the file, ‘no bizarre behavior of any kind.’ He
tilted back in his chair, hands behind his head, ‘She is of legal age, and if one day she should walk up to me and say, “I would like to be released” I would be compelled to honor her wishes – after a period of reassessment, as I have
indicated
.’