A Brief Lunacy (7 page)

Sylvie was two and a half. Was that the first sign of trouble? Jessie's obstetrician said we must wean her right away. “Do it ‘cold turkey,'” he'd said. “Just stop. Tell her no.” Sylvie screamed until a neighbor came over to see if there was a problem. Jessie went to her sister's, over an hour away, and left me with Sylvie for the weekend. When she came back, Sylvie was weaned. When Charlie was finally born, Sylvie ignored him and we thought that was better than being jealous.

Now I knew it was a mistake, sending Jessie away like that, her breasts swollen and sore. We should never have listened to the doctor. It was too hard on her, leaving Sylvie. Jessie did her best with the children, and Charlie and Sam are good men, successful, kind. But I know she aches for Sylvie. Sometimes I think she believes that Sylvie will come out of it, have a husband, children, give us grandchildren.

Rain pings on our metal roof. That's why we went with the metal. We both love the rain and the sound it makes. It blots out most of the noise of the television and the sound of Jonah's utterances.

Jessie presses against me and asks if I am asleep. I tell her that I am, indeed, sound asleep. She turns and slides her arms around me.

“Is it going to be all right?”

“Yes, my pet. It is.”

I
HEAR
C
ARL RUSTLING
around in the near dark searching for his pajamas and wonder how long it will take for him to notice that I've folded them on his pillow. That man, Jonah, is still watching a movie and it's the middle of the night, for God's sake. And the telephone is silent. Where is Sylvie sleeping? In a shelter? A Dumpster? In a motel room with someone she just met? With Ralph? Or is Ralph here? Tomorrow I'm going to ask him.

Carl mutters something when he finds the pajamas. Why is it taking him so long to get into bed? When he finally pulls the covers back and slides in beside me, I nestle close to him. His body makes me feel warm and protected. When I awake again, music from
The Piano
makes me wonder for a moment where I am. Carl's hand is under my nightgown and he's holding my breasts. It's raining onto the metal roof and we're both awake. I turn toward him.

“Is it going to be all right?” I ask.

“Yes, my pet,” he says. “It is.”

He kisses my hair and murmurs something I can't hear. When he pulls me hard against him, I smell his scent, the scent that allows blindfolded mothers to find their children. I imagine that when he's gone, I'll sleep with his pajamas on my pillow. I loosen the tie around his waist until my hand slides down his smooth skin. When he pushes my nightgown up, we press against each other and he tells me he loves me. Why do we say that after forty years? I don't know.

He rolls on top of me and opens me. Charlie was shocked that we still do this. I don't remember how the subject came up but it was at some holiday dinner. Charlie said, “Mom? Dad?” looking from one to the other. “Really?” he said. He chuckled and patted my hand but I think he was horrified.

When Carl goes into me, I feel safe, not excited. Safe. After it's finished, he stays in me while we fall asleep. I don't sleep well. Each time I awaken, I find Carl sitting up in bed alert. The sound of videos from downstairs continues through the night but I have to strain to hear it.

When I finally wake up to the sunrise, Carl's side of the bed is empty and cold and there's no sound, no rain on the roof, no movie noise. My nightgown is pushed up around my waist. It's been a long time since we made love with anyone else in the house.

Yesterday I woke up thinking about what I wanted to paint, and today I think of Sylvie and wonder why the phone has been silent all night. Perhaps that's good. And the strange boy, Jonah. I'll ask him this morning if he knows her.

I'll finish that sock and start another today. When Sylvie comes for Christmas, we'll knit together. She wants to learn to turn a heel. We'll light a fire in the new woodstove and sit at the window watching the ice heave against itself along the shore and the ospreys steal fish from eagles, and we'll knit while we talk about our lives. Perhaps she'll tell me about Ralph. Perhaps he's a lovely man who's been through some trauma and is recovering. Or perhaps he's Jonah.

Sylvie, the old Sylvie, lies somewhere underneath all the layers of craziness. It's just a matter of digging her out. I've read that sometimes mentally ill people return to their old selves suddenly, without warning, and lead productive lives. This Ralph may be just the thing. One moment I hope she is with him, and the next I don't. He can take care of her, make sure she doesn't get hurt. She's never had a serious relationship with a man before but she says Ralph loves her. Sylvie would love her children if she had them.
Please, God, let him be a good man.
Sometimes I say things like
Please, God
this and
Please, God
that, but there isn't really any God. It makes me feel safe to say the words. Isn't that crazy?

On the way down the stairs I hear breakfast sounds. The seldom-used coffeepot blurps on the gas burner, and the toaster pops. They sit at the table, Jonah in my place. Why didn't Carl ask him to sit in the other seat? Jonah appears disheveled and his hand bounces staccato-like on the table. Carl meets me by the stove, kisses my neck, says, “Good morning, my pet,” and I'm glad Jonah isn't watching. That's kind of a private thing, isn't it?

He's filled the teakettle too full again and the water is still tepid. I put it back on the flaming burner to boil.

“Did you sleep at all?” I ask Jonah.

“Not much,” he says.

“How were the videos?”

For the first time this morning, I see his face. It's younger than it was yesterday, or perhaps it's the morning light. His eyelids droop from lack of sleep but there's a kindness that I hadn't noticed before, an old-soul look to him. His tongue flicks at the edges of his mouth as if food is stuck there, and his T-shirt is old, faded. I notice his wool jacket draped over the arm of the couch.

“Do you have others?” he asks.

“Others?”

“Videos.”

“No. Not many. A few old family movies. A couple of documentaries.
Planet of the Apes.
” Why would he want to know?

I do morning things. Check the answering machine just in case we didn't hear the ring. Lift the receiver of the telephone, just to check. There are two melons left in the fridge. I cut them both in half, scoop out the seeds, slice the halves into sections, and place them on a Blue Willow platter in the center of the table. A perfect still life, the orange flesh of the melons scattered over the deep blue figures against the background of the yellow table. It's perfect. Carl has set three place mats with small plates and knives to butter the bagels.

When I pass Jonah the spoon for his melon, we touch. I feel an excitement between us, a bond of some kind. It's just because he's so good looking, provocative, intriguing. When
you get old, a bit of that memory of lusty youth keeps you going. That's why I love to daydream. Sometimes Carl and I tell each other our dreams while we lie together upstairs, just for fun. Carl was one of my first lovers, so I figure I owe myself a few fantasies.

“Coffee ready?” Jonah asks.

“I'll get it,” I say. “Cream? Sugar?”

“No. Nothing. Black.”

“Did you hear the telephone during the night?”

“Not a sound,” he says.

“Did you see all the bird books? On the shelf?”

“No.”

“Why do gulls face the sun?”

“You asked me that yesterday,” he says.

“I'm sorry,” I say.

The three of us sit at the table, eating ripe cantaloupe while the morning sun exposes dust drifting across the room. My seagulls stand one-legged in the wind, their feathery bottoms tilted up toward us. Jonah doesn't speak but his hand has ceased its tapping and is now gripping a hot cup of coffee. The only sounds come from eating and drinking. Carl and I usually chat at breakfast. When I look at him he seems bewildered by Jonah's taciturn manner.

“Are you tired?” I ask.

“No.”

“Would you like to call your mother to pick you up now?”

“No. Not yet. She'll be sleeping.”

“Another bagel?”

“I'd like to go to the tree,” he says. “The pine tree in the
painting.”

“Why would you want to do that?” Carl asks.

“To prepare the way.”

“What?” Carl asks. “Prepare what way?”

“Did Sylvie climb that tree?” Jonah asks. “Did she?”

Why does he ask? I glance at Carl. Yes. He wonders, too.

“I don't mean to pry,” Jonah says. “I'm just curious.”

His leg jiggles under the table and he sips his coffee. He's eaten most of the melon slices. He piles one empty skin segment onto the other as if he's building a structure of some kind.

“Where's your home?” I ask.

“My home is where the heart is.”

“And where is that?”

“Wherever I am.”

“Your parents?”

“Dead.”

“But I thought—”

“Jonah and I were discussing the ethics of human cloning,” Carl says. “Weren't we, Jonah?”

“Yes, Carl. We were.”

“He says widespread use is inevitable and it's too late for laws to stop it.”

“Like what if there were two Sylvies? Would they both be as lovely? Would you cherish them equally?”

“How do you know Sylvie is lovely?” I ask.

“Pictures. All over the house. And what if there were two Stalins? Two Hitlers?”

“You know her, don't you?” I ask.

“Your daughter? Why would you think that?”

“Well, it just seemed as if you might.”

When Jonah leaves the table to get more coffee, I catch Carl's attention. I'm worried, but Carl reassures me with his eyes. But something isn't right.

“What's under the fish, Carl?”

“The fish?” Carl asks. His voice is thin.

Jonah steadies his steaming coffee in one hand, runs his other hand through his tousled hair. No one asks Carl about the fish. It's just one of those things, like the emperor's clothes. One of Carl's residents asked me about it once because he'd noticed it when Carl was operating. Kind of hard to miss, the boy'd said. Something he got as a teenager, I told him. And that was that. I knew there were numbers under the fish. The
Z
was clear through the blue eye, and the last number,
3,
protruded from the notch in the tail. I didn't have to ask. I just knew. Like Carl's scarred back, all crisscrossed like that. Someone did that to him. He didn't need to tell me. Of course, I knew he was in a camp. But some things are better left alone, buried in the past as they should be.

I find it difficult to look at Carl because I know what I'll see in his eyes, the embarrassment, the fear.

“Did they do that to you, Carl?” Jonah jolts the table when he paces by, spills his hot coffee over his hand. “Shit. The fucking coffee's hot. Did it hurt, Carl? The needle? What else did they do, Carl? Is Sylvie yours? From your sperm? Didn't they mess with you down there, too?”

I can't do anything but look at my plate. Carl's anger fills
the kitchen but Jonah doesn't seem to notice it. What can I do? What can I say? I don't think the boy will harm me but I'm afraid anyway. Should I stand up? As he paces back and forth, drips from the coffee cup spatter the floor. He's young. Twenty-five. Maybe thirty. He shoves his hand in his jeans pocket and pops something in his mouth, swigs it down with the hot coffee. How could I have been attracted to him? What happened to his old soul? I think we've got to get him out of here.

“Burned my tongue,” he says. “Now then.” He sits down at the table and looks at us. “I guess that wasn't any of my business, was it?”

“No,” Carl says. “It wasn't.”

Tears pool up behind my eyes and I struggle to keep them from streaming out. The boy is disturbed. God knows, we recognize it now. He jiggles his leg again but says nothing. Movement out the window startles me but it's just the gulls leaving their boulder. One drops a clam onto the granite ledge and just leaves it there, smashed.

“Is she adopted?” he asks.

“No,” I say. “She is from me and Carl. All the children are.”

I hate myself for answering his questions because it's none of his business. But I think of his mother nursing him and holding his hand on the first day of school and worrying right now about where he is.

Do all mothers remember their children's first day at school? Carl took the day off from surgery. The hospital thought he'd lost his marbles, a well-respected surgeon with
a long waiting list taking the day off to take his little girl to school. But he wanted to be there if she got scared and needed him.

We walked, Sylvie in the middle, the three blocks to the Milford Grammar School, chattering like magpies about snack time and recess and new kids and making paper chains. Sylvie's small hands gripped our fingers tight. She asked when it would be over, as if it were an operation.

I still remember her clothes. Red plaid jumper. White blouse, gray cardigan in case it got cold, black patent-leather Mary Janes, white ankle socks with Scottie dogs embroidered on them. Her braids were tied with red grosgrain ribbon and her part took a decided swerve along the back.

At the classroom door she turned and in her five-year-old voice told us to leave, that she was fine, although her face was smeared with tears and she had bitten a piece of loose skin from her lip so that it bled. She folded her arms in front of her and tapped her Mary Janes on the hard tile floor until we kissed the top of her head and walked down the corridor toward the door. Other parents cried, too. We weren't the only ones.

Did Jonah's parents cry when they left him at kindergarten? Are his parents really dead? I wonder. He calms down, slows his jerking leg, sits back in the chair. His fingernails are clean, trimmed, his fingers smooth. Does someone take care of him?