The Ten-Year Nap (31 page)

Amy climbed up onto the porch and knocked. Soon Gabrielle Ramsey came to the door. She was a beautiful fifteen-year-old girl, tiny like her mother, but with her father’s wide mouth. A minuscule piece of silver pierced the flesh of her nose.

“Hi, Mrs. Buckner,” she said. “My parents are both lying down.”

“Oh.”

Amy imagined a large bed, identical to hers and Leo’s, draped with netting, on which a husband and wife lay together in the heat under a single cold white sheet. “Tell your mom I stopped by,” she said, and she left the family to themselves.

Leo was waiting for Amy in their own bungalow. “I have to say that I’m a little hurt,” he said when she had told him everything, “that you kept this to yourself.”

“Would you have really wanted to hear about it?” Amy asked him.

She walked into the bedroom and he followed her there. She sat down heavily on the bed, parting the netting and lying back. Above her, the fan spun slowly, and she lay looking at it, not moving her head at all, imagining what it would be like to be permanently fixed in position like this.

“You always used to tell me things,” Leo said, as though it were proof, somehow, that he had been wronged. Amy rolled her eyes toward him, but could only see the edges of his face. She sat up.

“I know,” Amy said. “So did you.”

“I tell you things,” he insisted.

Their arguments were never protracted. Instead, in short bursts they usually stated their case like lawyers who had been told by a judge to wrap it up. Not
like
lawyers; they
were
lawyers. She still had her degree and her license from the New York State Bar buried somewhere in a drawer with all the other reminders of the past that she had held on to. So the small argument began and then mostly ended as the sun lowered over the Virgin Islands, and later on they heard the stuttering of the helicopter landing, but neither of them remarked on it. Amy knew that Leo was a little upset and even baffled, but that he would get over these feelings by morning. They were left with two more days here with the Ramseys, during which, in public, they apparently could not discuss Ian Janeway in any other way except as “the guy who had been in the paragliding accident.”

Even Penny would barely discuss the subject that night before dinner, when Amy approached her alone on the steps leading to the outdoor dining room. Amy whispered, “I went to see him.”

“Thank you.” Penny looked around to make sure no one was listening and continued to walk up the steps with Amy beside her.

“He was in a lot of pain, but they gave him something. He was going to have an MRI and maybe surgery in San Juan. I came by your bungalow to tell you, but you were sleeping.”

“I’m glad you saw him.”

“A few minutes ago,” Amy went on, “I asked at the infirmary if they could put through a call to the hospital. You know, find out his status? They said they would, but there’s nothing yet.”

“I appreciate it.” Then Penny added, “But I can’t talk about it anymore. Obviously.”

“I know. I won’t say anything else here. We can take a walk on the beach later.”

“No. I mean I just can’t. Not anymore.”

“Ever?” Amy laughed, because it seemed comical in that moment. What would they do, forever keep silent about it? Maybe, she thought, the theme of “Ian and Penny” would shift to become “Injured Ian and Penny”; the two women would adapt their conversations accordingly. Except Penny was saying no even to this.

Penny shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“How can we never discuss it?” Amy asked. “This thing happened, and he’s alone in some hospital, and he might be paralyzed. I know it’s an awful situation,” Amy went on. “But shouldn’t you see him again or call the hospital and have them tell him you called or
something
?”

“I have to figure it out. I’m in a fishbowl here. I’m very confused.”

Another waiter approached them now to take their drink orders. Penny tilted her head up toward him with relief, and in a small voice she described the way she would like her margarita prepared.

At dinner a little later in the torchlight, Greg Ramsey brought up the subject of the accident they’d witnessed, while beside him Penny sat and ate a piece of some kind of broiled white fish. Amy could almost not bear sitting there like this, yet they would have to endure several more meals until the vacation was over. She’d inquired at the hotel desk whether it was possible to leave early—she would have made some excuse and just gotten them out of there—but she was told that all the flights out of St. Doe’s were booked. So here they were. “I never thought of paragliding as dangerous,” Greg said easily. “I tried it last spring when we were on Turks and Caicos, and it seemed pretty straightforward to me. You can get in trouble with the thermals and with wind shear, but you’re supposed to have a hook knife ready. I don’t think that guy knew what he was doing at all.”

“When I’m twelve I’m going to be allowed to paraglide,” Holden announced to the table.

“Can I do it when I’m twelve?” Mason asked his parents.

“No,” said Amy.

“It scares the women,” Greg said. “Penny’s been keyed up about the accident all day. But I’ve seen much worse. I once saw a terrible water-skiing accident. It was really something.”

A great deal of wine was drunk that night all around the outdoor dining room. The other families and couples from their various scattered points on the globe ordered more alcohol than usual. They had all seen something today that was disturbing to them, and the excitement of it had taken them by surprise too. Someone at another table could be heard talking about freak accidents: how an errant wind could send a vehicle tumbling, a parasail blowing, a body falling.

The next morning, Penny came out onto the beach and positioned herself on the chaise beside Amy. Amy waited, but Penny did not bring up the subject of Ian. She didn’t say anything at all, and so Amy didn’t either. Regardless of what now happened to poor Ian Janeway—whether he recovered, or died of an infection after his surgery, or became a paraplegic—this would be the way it was. The accident was the end, the message sent to Penny about how unstable Ian was: Imagine appearing like that on St. Doe’s when her family was with her! She would let go of him swiftly, and she and Amy would talk of other things.

Maybe then it would finally be Amy’s turn to talk and Penny’s turn to listen.
Leo doesn’t want to have sex with me
, she could have whispered as they lay on the beach. But really, Amy could barely look at Penny now, and they lay side by side quietly for much of the morning. The day was as beautiful as the last, though for most people the vacation was coming to a close, and a slight depression colored their movements. The Frenchwoman who massaged lotion into her bare breasts every morning now did so with slower motions, like a lonely masturbator, her hand seeming to convey sadness at the idea that she would soon have to leave.

That night, a message was slipped beneath the door of Amy and Leo’s bungalow. “Your friend rests in San Juan at Hospital del Maestro,” it read in handwriting that was old-fashioned and beautiful and not American. “Vertebral lumbar fractures,
very
severe, but no spinal-cord damage. Surgical procedure performed. Long recovery period to be expec.” Amy relayed this message to Penny furtively the following morning on the beach, and it was accepted with a quick nod and, astonishingly, no questions about what would happen next: Would Ian be okay? Was there anyone to look after him? Would he ever be able to walk?

On their last day on St. Doe’s, Mason and Holden disappeared for so long that Amy became concerned. “They’re boys,” Leo said. “Leave them.”

But she needed to know where Mason was; it was a reflexive response, in such a moment, to want to gather everyone around you and take a head count. She’d tried to call Jill last night in Holly Hills in order to tell her what had happened here, hoping that Jill would somehow be sympathetic and horrified all at once, and say the right things. But the connection had been weak, and the call kept being dropped. She heard Nadia’s peculiar little voice answer the phone two times, then slip away.

“Nadia! It’s Amy! Is your mom there? Can you get her?” Amy had cried from her bungalow, as though her friend could save her. But then the little voice was gone, and the connection was lost. Amy’s friends seemed to occupy a distant world: Jill with her suburb and her unhappiness; Roberta with her frustrations and her activism and the girl in South Dakota she was trying to help. Those stories, at least from this tropical island, seemed unreal, and yet Amy wanted them to be made real for her once again; more than anything, she wanted them back.

Now she set off in search of the boys, walking quickly along the shore past the place where she and Penny had walked each morning until the accident, going beyond the joggers and snorkelers and resort guests pushing off in their kayaks. She went very far, and the beach curved around so she could no longer see the lodge or the bungalows. The scenery changed, sharply, and even the beach shrubbery turned less beautiful and became thick, thorny, dark. A sign read
ABSOLUTELY NO GUESTS BEYOND THIS POINT
, but Amy Lamb kept walking.

A crop of low buildings appeared, one after the other, like a shantytown, all of them constructed poorly out of big pieces of corrugated, unpainted tin, instead of woven bamboo and rush like almost everything else here. Shack after shack materialized, and black people looked out from the open doors that led into depressing rooms. She saw men sitting on old cots, smoking cigarettes. Briefly, Amy was startled and confused; there was a
slum
on St. Doe’s, hidden away past all the beauty and excess?

She walked past another doorway and looked inside, and there she found herself looking directly at Pierre, the lovely, shy man who had been teaching the boys how to surf. Pierre was wearing white underpants now and no shirt, and he was smoking. Rap music played softly behind him. This wasn’t a slum, she realized, it was merely employee housing, and he was taking a break. Pierre stepped quickly out of sight, and she didn’t know which of them was meant to be the more embarrassed.

U
PON THEIR RETURN
to the city, they found that Antonia Lamb had forgotten to water the Christmas tree as they had asked her to do, and so its needles had poured down upon the wooden floor of the living room and all over the Persian rug. “It’s a fire hazard now,” Mason had said when he saw the parched tree. Lightly he touched one of the ornaments, a golden painted ball he had made in school years ago, and another flood of crisp needles fell. The tree would have to be taken away sooner than they had planned. “I’m so sorry,” Antonia said to them. “I have been really involved with my women’s conference, I guess. Forgive me, kids.”

While they were on St. Doe’s, Amy’s mother had installed herself in the tiny study, as planned: The air mattress had been inflated, and her toothbrush and tube of organic sunflower toothpaste lay coiled on the ledge of the small sink in the guest bathroom. Amy had not seen her mother in six months, and while Antonia looked well, she also looked measurably older. Her hair, always silvered, was now silver. She was a dramatic-looking woman, prone to capes when she went outside; on her book-jacket photo she appeared vaguely Wiccan. Now she was here in the apartment, and the visit would have been fine, even welcome, except for what had happened on St. Doe’s, which Amy did not want to tell her about.

Penny had left a message on Amy’s cell phone the day after their families had flown home separately. “Amy, it’s me. Hope you had a good flight. Well, flights. Whatever. I’m just, you know, checking in. Give me a call, okay?”

Each time Amy thought about calling her back, she recalled Penny running away from Ian and not going back, and then easily lying on the beach the following morning. Amy just couldn’t find the energy to make the call. Finally, after three days in New York, she did call Penny back, and the conversation took place in the new, forced style they had developed after the accident. “So, have you heard any updates about Ian’s condition?” she asked Penny.

“No.”

“But you’ve called the hospital?”

“I will; I just can’t yet. I don’t know what I’m going to do about this. It’s such a mess. It’s really hard for me.” Penny suggested they could meet for coffee later in the week, but really, Amy knew, there was no point. There was no couple now, and so there was no friendship. It didn’t exactly end during the cell-phone call, the way the love affair between Penny Ramsey and Ian Janeway had ended the moment he had come smacking down onto the sand. But the friendship had no subject now, and they were both lost.

A
T DINNER
in the apartment that night, Antonia said, “My darling, why are you so melancholy? I can see it in your eyes. Even when you were a little girl I could see this.”

“Mom was melancholy?” Mason asked, interested. “We had that word in Vocab Ventures. Its synonyms are ‘mournful’ and ‘woebegone.’”

“She wasn’t generally melancholy. But she was very sensitive. All three girls were.”

Antonia had cooked dinner for the family: vegetarian lasagna, which she prepared well. After the Christmas tree negligence, she was proving to be a surprisingly unobtrusive houseguest, though maybe it was only because Amy still felt so peculiar about Penny and Ian that she hardly noticed her mother moving around her in the rooms.

“I’m not melancholy,” she said. “I’m just thinking about things.”

“If you want to talk, I’m here,” said Antonia. “Although not during the day tomorrow, because I’m at NAFITAS.”

“That’s an acronym, right?” asked Mason.

“Oh, my intelligent little grandson, yes it is. It stands for North American Feminists in the Arts and Sciences. Basically, it gives old friends a chance to get together. It used to be that all the women who liked one another had very specific reasons to hang around together. We were always having meetings, first against the terrible war in Vietnam, which is not unlike the terrible war in Iraq. But then, later on, when we had our consciousness-raising group, our cause became ourselves.”