The Summer Guest (23 page)

Marcel’s wife, Abby, was in the low-ceilinged kitchen, stirring the contents of a gigantic blackened pot. The room was like something from a fairy tale, a cottage in the woods that a lost little boy might stumble upon. A great stone hearth occupied one wall, and bundles of some kind of fragrant herb hung from the ceiling. Rich waves of heat issued from the fireplace, so intense after hours in the frigid Jeep that I could scarcely breathe.

“Abby, this is Joe Crosby’s boy.”

She stepped toward me; I offered her my hand, and she took it in both of hers. She was, like her husband, a woman of compact dimensions, with eyes the color of moss and dry gray hair that flowed away from her face as if lifted by an unseen wind. She was wearing an apron, and a long denim skirt; her nose, I saw, was rather small. All the words I might have spoken seemed to flit up and away from my mind like a flock of birds. I stood dumbly, fixed in place. Her hands felt warm as a muffler heated on the stove.

“I know your father, Joey,” she said gently.

And I began, at last-as if I’d been waiting all my life for this moment to come and take me in its grip-to weep.

I didn’t return to the camp for three years, after that night on the porch when Joe appeared. It wasn’t jealousy that kept me away. What happened to me when Lucy stepped from the darkness and into Joe’s arms-the arms she truly belonged in; anyone could have seen that-was the end of an illusion I had taken shelter in, precisely because it was an illusion: this idea of some current that flowed between the two of us, perfect in its way because it was never meant to be expressed. Lucy, the camp, my feelings of escape: none of it was my actual life. To learn this was bearable, but I also knew that if I returned, even for a day, the comfort of its memory would be taken from me too. I packed up early the next morning, offered some vague excuse to Joe Sr. about an emergency at home, and drove down the long drive. As I neared the main road, a car approached from the opposite direction: Ken and Leonie in a big fat Cadillac, returning from an errand in town-aspirin, I figured, or more booze. We slowed to pass one another, splashing through the potholes; Leonie waved gaily from the passenger seat, and I returned the wave, even gave my horn a little toot. A laugh escaped my lips, though it was a bitter sound. I thought of Lucy, speaking Joe’s name out of the gloom; and then the moment when the two of them had disappeared, leaving me alone. Well, I thought, you’re a little old to be so glum about a crush, Harry Wainwright. You got your wake-up call for sure. Live and learn, and get yourself home.

A year passed and then another, and the camp faded from my mind. I thought about Lucy from time to time, wondered what had become of her, but my curiosity was mild, for it had no purpose: I might have been wondering about any other friend who had disappeared into the world’s hurrying crowds. Each summer, and then in the week after New Year’s, I went with Hal someplace new, just the two of us: river rafting in the Grand Canyon, deep-sea fishing in the Sea of Cortez, on safari to the great game reserves of east Africa-his high school graduation present-where under the snowcapped shadow of Mount Kenya we watched elephants bathing in the Pangani River by the dewy light of an equatorial dawn. He had grown into a fine young man, strong and thoughtful, organized in his affairs, perhaps a little melancholy, though that was understandable: his mother was dying, his father seemed only to have just found him, like a book left carelessly on the patio, or a ring of keys he’d mislaid.

Hal left for Williams in the fall of ’71; by then Meredith was confined wholly to her bed. She had only the vaguest sensation in her hands and feet; the cysts had done their work. There was the surprising cruelty of pain, pain without nameable source, pain in places that otherwise could feel nothing at all. Even breathing was an effort. There was no place left for the disease to go.

When I remember that year, marked by Hal’s departure at one end and Meredith’s death at the other, I feel as if I am watching a movie, but a movie without sound. It was as if someone were turning a dial, and with each passing week the signals of ordinary life became less distinct, finally vanishing altogether and leaving the two of us alone. She might have spent her last months in the hospital, but she didn’t want this, and neither did I, though I don’t remember the two of us ever discussing it. What I do remember is the gathering quiet of the autumn months, then the brief burst of activity when Hal came home from Williamstown for Christmas-we opened our presents in the library, which we had turned into a bedroom for Meredith, all of us putting on the bravest possible show-and then, when he was gone again, sensing in his wake a deeper, final stillness, like a slowing of the blood. It was a cold winter but without snow, a kind of permanent, frozen autumn, as if the calendar had stopped when the wind had torn the last of the leaves away. I rarely set foot from the house; I left my affairs to others, my trusted lieutenants and their trusted lieutenants, an interlocking system of delegated duties I had created to prepare for this very day. Think of a children’s game in which sticks are piled high: the object is to build your tower well, to disperse its structural energies in such a manner that you may, at the crucial moment, snatch a single stick from the bottom and leave the whole thing standing. I had played such a game when I was small, and then later with Hal, when he was just a boy, the two of us sitting on the living room carpet or at the kitchen table. A clever trick, a bit of fun to pass the time, but like all such diversions, embedded within it one finds a meaning: do not build a life you cannot step out of.

April came, and with it, a blast of sudden, heavy warmth. Hal had spent the midsemester holiday in Florida, training with the lacrosse team, and in those early days of spring I drove north to watch him play his first real game with the varsity, leaving Meredith at home with Elizabeth, her nurse. We had dinner together at the Williamstown Inn to celebrate: though he had played just a few minutes, he had done well, getting a pair of shots on goal and making one assist in the final minute, a shot that had sailed past the goalie like a rifle bullet to put the Ephmen over the top. Though I knew almost nothing about the sport, I could see that Hal was an astute and skillful player, aggressive when he needed to be but also smart about when to carry the ball and when to give it away.

“The coach wants me to train to tend goal,” he explained. He was eating an enormous steak; his hair was still wet from the shower. “We’ve got a lot of attackmen coming up, but nobody really to take over in the net next year.”

“Goalie.” I frowned, thinking of that final shot; it was a job for a sitting duck. “I don’t know, Hal. Is that what you want?”

He laughed easily. “At least you can see it coming. On attack, half the time you never know what hit you. Like in the movies, one minute you’re fine, next thing you know, little birds are chirping around your head.” He made a little circular motion with his finger. “I’m quick enough. It’s the most important position, really.”

“We better not tell your mother.”

“Oh, trust me, I won’t.”

“I’m sorry she couldn’t come up. I know she would have liked seeing you.”

Hal said nothing. Over the years, the two of us had often spoken this way, as if Meredith’s illness were something less than what it was-not a permanent affliction but a temporary circumstance that would soon be set to rights. It was an old habit, well-intentioned but more suited to a boy than the grown man who now sat across the table from me, and I was afraid I’d angered him with this pretense. But then with great deliberateness he put down his knife and fork and looked at me, his face containing a terrible sadness but somehow smiling too. It was, I thought, the very face of bravery. I had never felt so close to him, so enriched by his presence.

“I know,” he said. “Tell her all about it, okay? Tell her I wish she’d been here.”

“I will. You bet I will.”

I left him at his dormitory, slept the night at the inn, and headed home to Westchester the next morning. It was late afternoon when I returned. As I pulled into the driveway I saw Elizabeth putting a small overnight bag in the trunk of her car.

“Is everything all right?”

She was wrapping her hair in a scarf printed with daisies. The late afternoon sun was strong and warm, and we were both squinting. “Mrs. Wainwright gave me the weekend off. She told me to wait until you came, and then I could go. I wanted to visit my sister up in New Haven. I hope that’s all right.”

“I don’t know why it wouldn’t be. Is someone else coming?”

A curious look passed over her face. “Well, I… I don’t know. I assume someone phoned the service. But no one’s here yet. She said I could leave when you got home. Do you want me to call?”

I thought a moment and shook my head. “No, that’s all right.” Elizabeth had been with us two years; I never knew exactly how old she was, but I assumed she was at least sixty. She had no children of her own, but what seemed like a dozen sisters spread from Philadelphia to Boston, whom she was always visiting. I didn’t know her all that well, really, but her duties placed her in a relationship of such intimacy with Meredith that the two of them had become the closest of confidantes. I would sometimes enter the library to find her sitting beside Meredith’s bed and know that at just that moment the two of them had stopped talking.

“You can go if you want,” I said. “I’ll take care of things here.”

Yet as I made my way up the front walk, I felt her eyes following me. I turned and there she was, standing exactly where she had been, holding her small suitcase by the open door of her little car.

“Lizzy? Is there something else?”

She seemed about to speak, but then she shrugged and gave me a wan smile. “It’s nothing. How was the game?”

“A squeaker, but they won. Hal got an assist, too.”

Her face was pleased, but something more: she looked almost relieved. “That’s good. I’m sure Mrs. Wainwright will be glad to hear it.”

The house was strangely still. In the little telephone room by the front door I stopped to check for messages and found a long list, written on a yellow legal pad. I glanced over it, but my heart was nowhere in this, and I put the list aside. The hour was just past four; I was stiff from the long day in the car, but felt also a lingering excitement from my visit with Hal. I stood in the telephone room and listened. Not a sound could be heard; it was as if the house itself had stopped breathing. Even with Hal away at school, the house always had people in it: Elizabeth, of course, but also our housekeeper, Mrs. Beryl, or one of the girls she hired to help out. There were always gardeners mowing or weeding somewhere. My phone messages had been taken by my secretary, Nancy, a divorced woman with two young children she often brought with her to the house in the afternoons. It was not unusual for me to find them, a boy and a girl, having milk and cookies in the kitchen or watching a television program in the den. The last message had been taken at three thirty. But even without looking, I knew that Nancy and her children, like the cook and gardener and all the rest, were nowhere to be found.

I looked in on Meredith and found her sleeping. In the kitchen a cold supper was waiting for me, and a note from Mrs. Beryl, taped to the refrigerator: Mrs. Wainwright gave me the night off, hope that’s all right. I took my plate to the library and had my dinner of cold cuts and cheese and pickles off my knees, watching Meredith sleep and breathe, as another man might have read the paper or watched television as he ate. When I was done, I took my dishes to the kitchen, washed and dried them and set them on the draining board, and by the time I returned, Meredith’s eyes were open.

“It’s me,” I said quietly. “I’m home.”

A barely perceptible nod. I took a rag and moistened her lips, then cranked up her bed and held a glass of water with a straw for her to sip. In her throat, the water moved sluggishly, like some enormous pill she was swallowing.

“Do you feel like eating?”

She shook her head slightly, her eyes drifting closed, but only for a moment. The day had ended. Outside, spring twilight fell like a soft cloth across the lawn and over the limbs of the budding trees. I reached to turn on her bedside lamp, but she shook her head again.

“Leave… it,” she said. Long pauses for breath split the spaces between her words. “Was it… a good day?”

I took a chair by the bed. “Hal got an assist. He didn’t play until the last half, but I think he really did well. He’s thinking of trying out for goalie too. His coach says it’s the most important position.”

“Tell me… all about… it.”

I did. I told her everything: the handsome look of the field and players, how there was still a bit of snow in the woods around the town, and Hal in his uniform with the pads bursting beneath it, though one could still see how big he was, how strong; and the bond I could feel among his teammates, like the ball that passed between them as they flew down the field, boys stepping into their lives together; and about our dinner together and the long drive home. Darkness came into the room as I talked, but I did not feel its strangeness or its weight; it was the most natural thing in the world to sit in a dark room and tell my wife the story of my journey.

“What did… he eat?” she said when I was done.

“When? At the inn, you mean?”

“You… forgot… to say.”

“Steak,” I said. I showed her with my fingers. “A great thick porterhouse. With béarnaise. Are you hungry, M?”

“No.” Her voice was thin, almost a whisper. “We’re… alone,” she said.

“Yes.” And then I said it. “You’ve sent them all away.”

From her arm the slightest movement: she was reaching for my tears. I felt this as if she had actually done it, as if her hand were on my cheek.

“Don’t… be sad.”

“Do we have to, M?”

“I can’t…” she said, but stopped. Can’t go on, can’t do this alone, can’t can’t can’t. What would I have wanted, if I were she? And as I thought this, I knew my answer, though I had known it many months, all that year in fact, and my mind seemed to move into a place where what was about to happen already had, a room in which there were only two people, M and I, and this final night forever.

“Harry… help me… do this.”

There were medicines everywhere: on her table, in the bathroom, in drawers and the pockets of coats hanging in the closets. A house of medicine. But I knew which one she wanted. The doctor had given it to us with a warning, a warning I understood was also a promise: more than the prescribed dosage, even a little, and it could compromise her breathing. I was so nervous I could barely crush the pills with the back of the spoon I took from the kitchen drawer. Water would have been easier for her, but I chose milk to cloud the taste. In the blazing light of the kitchen I kept my thoughts trained upon these small, mechanical actions, as an archer holds the target in his sights. I mixed the milk and pills together, rinsed the spoon, placed the glass on a saucer, and, dousing the kitchen light behind me, returned to the library.

“I’ve made you something.”

The faintest smile crossed her lips, as if I’d brought her a present. “That… there.”