A Brief Lunacy (24 page)

“You see? He did fall in the well.”

“You were right, my pet.”

“His mother. She was lovely. And look. How she adores him. Do you see?” She tucks the article back, places the photo over it, lays the wallet on the arm of the couch. “Carl?”

“I know. Don't look at him.”

“Carl, eagles don't mate in the air. Did you know that?”

She moves toward the telephone, raises the receiver to her ear, presses buttons, and waits.

“This is Jessie Jensen. Something has happened. I need the police.”

She gives our address but doesn't wait for a response. With the corner of her sweater, she wipes a speck of blood from the back of the receiver before she drops it into the cradle of the telephone. She slumps to the kitchen window, peers out to see if her gulls have returned. It is dark. No moon or stars tonight. She sits in her chair at the end of the table, pushes Jonah's plate over the bullet hole, spreads her book filled with pale green paper in front of her, slides her old hand over the smooth leaves.

There are things to do. I count them on my fingers, just to make sure I don't miss something. We'll have to find Sylvie. And Marte. I'll have to tell them. And the mess. The mess. I walk unsteadily toward the kitchen sink, pour myself a glass of water from the faucet, sit down in the rocking chair. When I close my eyes, I see Sylvie and Jessie dancing, skipping, holding their hands together, back and forth in front of the old pine tree, its branch strong, intact. Jessie's braid is flying behind her, and Sylvie, her Gypsy hair, black as this night, dances like Nonni on the floor of the truck. Dances with everything she has.

“Jessie,” I say. “Thank you.”

“What's that, Carl?”

“Nothing, my pet. Would you like a glass of water?”

“No. Tea. Some black tea.”

“We'll have to—”

“Black tea. Please, Carl. Not now. Some tea.”

I fill the kettle and place it on the burner. Water sloshes onto the top of the stove. I mop it up with a sponge before I light the gas. Jessie writes on the paper with black pen and waits for her tea. She looks up from her book and smiles at me. She's scared. I can see it in her face. But she smiles anyway. I lean on the counter and watch the flame of the gas lick the bottom of the kettle.

“I think I'd like to turn the heel. Could you pass me the sock?”

“It's a splendid sock. Do you want the red yarn?”

“For the toe. Yes. For the toe.”

I close my eyes briefly and hear my mother singing the song about the bluebird.
Fly, my pretty bird, fly from the cage, fly to the woods and the sea and the mountains. Then, Veshi, run, run like the wind away from this place. Don't lose your violin. Don't turn around. Don't look back.

After I bring Jessie her tea, after I touch the blue vein on the back of her hand, I look out into the darkness, wonder if there are any gulls back on the rock. The rain drums steadily on the windowsill and I think I will cover Hans with a tarp. On the way out, my foot touches the violin poking out from under a chair. I pick it up and hold it under my chin. One of the pegs is cracked but the body is intact. I bring its neck close to my mouth and run my lips over the tailpiece, place my too-large fingers over the sound holes. She touched these places before she died. My mother's hands held the neck, the fingerboard. It doesn't matter about the writing on the back. And yes, I could
sand the paint off. After all, it was stolen from me. The bow lies close to my foot. I bend to the floor and take it in my hand. I pluck one of the strings. Then I place the instrument in the closet and go out the front door to find a tarp.

I
HAVE AN HOUR
or so to write before the others return from their predawn Thanksgiving hike up Schoodic Head. My hands smooth the pale green leaves of my notebook, which stands out strong against the blue of our pine table. When the table was yellow, the book seemed a complementary part of it. Now it appears alien, foreign to the shiny blue, but not everything has to be part of everything else.

The young gulls outside the window fight over some scavenged fish while the others wait for the sun to rise. I cling to my thoughts these days. I write with a new fountain pen filled with black ink that Carl bought me. It was a surprise.

A pair of eagles ascend together from the mist and fly toward our boulder. One settles in the dead spruce near the shore while the other veers off. Why didn't I challenge him
about eagles mating in the air? I knew then who he was, didn't I?

I write the date at the top of the page. The teakettle sings on the stove and I pour the steaming water over Earl Grey tea bags. There is just enough to fill the pot. While I wait for the tea to steep, a few large flakes of snow drift past the window. Snow sticks on the boulder, litters the picnic table. It's early for snow,
n'est-ce pas?

The first word I write is “Sylvie,” because that's what I think about these days. I also think about what has changed: We have lost a friend—Hans. We have gained a friend—Marte. We have no dog. We have no liquor in our cabinet.

I write my thoughts about love and life and the human condition. Sometimes I feel as if I know everything there is to know about how and why we behave as we do. Then I wonder if I have a clue why I can't seem to forget that I no longer smoke or that our dog has died or that there is nothing more I can do for my daughter.

I have managed to wash the blood from my fingers. I have thrown away the soiled clothes and the exploded couch. We replaced the kitchen window and filled in the hole in the center of our dining table and painted it blue. We rented a floor sander but now have a depression in the maple floor because we held the sander there too long. We do what we can.

When I turn the page again, the card from Sylvie covers the next page. Not everything is negative. The card is black
with primitive white letters: “Barn's burnt down . . . now I can see the moon.”

“Sylvie,” I write again.

After it was over, after the police found her wandering early the next morning along the road to our house, we walked through the woods to the pine tree, our steps together, our stride identical. I looped my arm through hers and we both wept in our own quiet ways. The broken limb had fallen to the forest floor, spilling Sylvie's hidden village. Scattered around the limb were remnants of her precious family: bits of shell and bark glued together, felt clothing rotted in places, twigs wired to stones, all carefully stored in the crotch of the old pine tree for years.

I know it would be her undoing. “Mom? My family. You killed my family. You bitch.”

When she threw the decaying bits of moss and sticks and bones that had been her “beloved family,” I held her as tight as I dared.

“Sylvie, oh, Sylvie, I love you.”

“I hate you, Mom. You killed the father of my baby.”

“But there never was a baby, my darling.”

We found her a new place close by, run by a young family and a good staff. Carl brought her down. She wouldn't get in the car if I was going, too. She says she's never coming home again. I don't believe that. I believe she will come home again and she will throw things at me and curse and that she will lay her face against mine and kiss my eyelids. But for now, I am the destroyer of her family.

There is always a price to pay for every act we perform. The boys say all the right things, but I feel in their embraces and kind words a hesitancy, a fear of having a mother who could do such a thing.

But when Carl wraps his legs around me in the night, I feel he needs me. Last night he whispered, “Jess, I thought I didn't tell you about my life because I thought it would be a burden to you. Now I know that it would be a burden to me, too. It was a selfish thing.” And I felt his poor back through his pajamas and wondered how he could have hung on to the underside of that brown truck for so long.

Who am I to think that I will figure it all out by writing in my notebook?

I realize that I have no idea why we act the way we do. I just know that I did what I had to do for my own sanity. I know that it happened so fast that he felt nothing. I write that down but then realize that, like Carl, I am building a case for myself.

I close the book, stare at the back cover, place the cap over the gold nib of my new pen. The place in the center of the table where the bullet went through is smooth. I can't find the wound with my hand even when I close my eyes and trust my fingers. Then I feel the small hole in his back where the bullet entered. It's my burden to feel that hole forever.

The turkey needs basting. I chill the white wine before I begin to peel the potatoes. Through the kitchen window, I see them returning. They stop at the boulder, lean against
it as they talk. The wet flakes of snow build up on their shoulders and hair. Marte's hat is covered. I'm grateful she agreed to come for dinner.

Charlie hangs his arm around Madeline, kisses her forehead. Sam's new girlfriend's name is Veronica. Isn't that funny? It reminds me of that old cartoon. She's studying oncology. Carl likes her. They talk about hospitals and illness and surgery. Carl laughs. I can hear him even through the falling snow and the windowpane. I haven't heard him laugh much. Is that Sylvie's moon? The laughter? I wave with my free hand.

Yes, this Thanksgiving will be different. I have a new family, Carl's family, although I will never meet them. They are all dead. Or perhaps they aren't. What about Charles, the cousin who rode into the Camargue marsh?

I have a new husband with weaknesses and sadness and guilt, whom I will learn to love all over again in a different way. Not the Carl who fixes everything, picks me up, fixes my cuts, but a Carl who is real and who needs me now. And his violin. Last week he turned over the corner of a page in the phone book, highlighted “Violins and Cellos Refurbished and Repaired.”

And Sylvie. Yes. She's in the dark place now. Her family is destroyed. Her barn is burned down. But she will see the moon. I will help her. We will talk about her father in the camp, and Ralph, and perhaps she will emerge from the fairy darkness dancing.

Carl opens the door. Behind him are my boys with
Madeline and Veronica and Marte. Carl has lost weight in the last few weeks. He walks as if it is difficult to pull his shoes from the floor. But he spreads his arms toward me. Yes. He loves me. I go to him.

“Carl? Why do the gulls face the rising sun?”

“Because they know it's going to be a day full of fish, my pet.”

Many thanks, first and foremost, to members of my stellar writing group: Annaliese Jakimides, Christopher Barstow, Paul Markosian, Kristin Britain, David Fickett, Thelma White, and Bettina Dudley, who listened, agreed, disagreed, suggested, and supported, and without whom this book would not exist.

To my supportive husband, Bill, first reader after my writing group and staunch advocate of “a room of my own.”

To my friend Linda Kimmelman, for help in interpretation of Biblical passages.

To my fabulous agent, Sandy Choron, for her faith in my work and her enduring friendship.

To my editor, Andra Olenik, for her astute editing suggestions, and her ability to hear what's exactly right.

Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of
Workman Publishing
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014

© 2005 by Cynthia Thayer. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.

This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions
and insights are based on experience, all names, characters,
places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination
or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person is intended or
should be inferred.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for a previous edition of this work.

E-book ISBN 978-1-61620-232-3

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CYNTHIA THAYER

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