By the Bay (3 page)

She watched as
Owen
got up and went over to draw a bottle of pop from the cooler. Del
a
ware Punch, her favorite. He handed it to her, then nodded as though to tell her she could continue.

She  laughed out loud. “But what if I don’t want a home and children, Aunt
Florence
.”

Her aunt stared at her. “But that’s what every woman wants.”

Jillian sipped at the pop, savoring its cold sweetness.  “Not me. And you shouldn’t think that my mother is keeping me from the life I want. Let me tell you what it was like in Kansas,
Auntie
. I taught sweet little children all day and was bored to death. I boarded in a pleasant farm house with a nice family who had a son who wanted to marry me.”

Aunt
Florence
blinked.
“You didn’t like him.”

“Oh, I liked
Stanley
a lot. He’s a nice man, a hard worker, good and kind.”

Aunt
Florence
waited breathlessly. “Has he asked you to marry him?”

Jillian’s smile widened. “Several times. I hated to hurt his feelings, but you can’t say yes just to save someone
’
s feelings, no matter how nice they are.”

Aunt 
Florence
sagged in obvious disappointment and
Owen
chuckled.

“So you wanted to come back here to escape all the niceness?” he guessed.

She nodded, th
a
n leaned across to take her aunt’s hand. “Don’t worry about me, Auntie. The reason I haven’t gone after what I wanted is because it’s impossible. I want adventure and excitement, a life that never settles down to the humdrum. I want a knight in shining armor to come galloping down to the valley, not to rescue me, but to carry me off to help him slay dragons and rescue maidens. I don’t want to die in bed of old age.”

Aunt
Florence’s
mouth gaped.

Jillian got to her feet. “I must get back to Mother,” she said firmly, bringing the conversation to an end.

“I always said she read too many books,” she heard Auntie tell
Owen
as she walked toward the doorway.

But it was
Owen
who called after her, ignoring the presence of his customers scattered through the restaurant. “Adventure doesn’t come galloping at you, Jill,” he said. “You have to go looking for it.”

Nothing was changed. When she was a little girl
s
he didn’t like girls’ stories. She liked
Treasure Island
, the Hardy boys and
Oliver Twist
. Oh, she was still a girl in her imaginings, she was still Jillian Blake though she lived out the exciting tales that were considered by most to be the province of boys.

And when she got older, when she was in her teens the adventure includ
ed
her and a dashing hero as well. They solved mysteries, flew into outer space and risked danger in the
wilderness
together.

It wasn’t until she was grownup that she realized opportunities for girls to go exploring were few and far between. The police department where her father had once worked didn’t hire girls. If they went to war, it was as nurses sent to look after the brave wounded. Even the daily newspapers sent females to write and put together stories of society parties and clothes, not the real news stories.

She’d been unusual enough in that she’d gone on after high school to train as a teacher. Teachers and nurses, the two professions open to women. But the college had been near home, she had driven over to nearby Brownsville to attend classes. Her evenings had been spent back in Port Isabel
taking over Mother’s job at the grocery.

Christine Blake, her health failing rapidly, was no longer able to hold down a job and spent most of her days tortured by horrible headaches.

While most of her friends were marrying and starting families, Jillian was working and looking after her mother. After graduation and a
half
year of working to fill out the year of a pregnant first grade teacher, thanks to her Kansas aunt, a real job had opened up.

Mother had cried and protested. Jillian tried to talk her into going along. Aunt
Florence
and
Owen
had said they would see to her and with a feeling that was a mixture of relief and guilt, Jillian drove the rusty old car that had been her father’s to Kansas.

Kansas, where she had found life even more tame. She didn’t like the dusty farm country and hated the routine of life that ground her into the dirt. The people had all seemed alike to her, men and women too easily contented, anxious only about the war their sons were being sent to fight and the crops that were being coaxed from the dusty earth.

This was punishment, she thought, for seeking something better. Women didn’t have adventures; they stayed at home and looked after things for the men who did.

She’d been glad to come home to Port Isabel.

If the day had been sane, the night was a familiar kind of insanity. Christine seemed to grow restless as the twilight crept in, refusing her supper and moaning aloud in wordless pain. The lights out and the shades drawn, Jillian gave her a second dose of the pain medicine the doctor prescribed and sat at her side, knowing that only time and silence could provide relief from the headache that plagued her mother.

She would have given anything, would have taken on her mother’s pain as her own, to give the woman on the bed release. She had willed it  so, prayed that it might be so,
but
over the years and the headaches had only gotten worse.

Now she sat helplessly and listened to her mother cry out. Gradually though as the hour crept toward midnight, Christine’s face soothed of its lines of pain and her wild tossing came to an end. She slept for perhaps an hour and Jillian slumped, dozing in her chair. In another five minutes, she promised herself, she would get up and change from her dress into a nightgown and crawl into her own bed. She had to report for work in the morning and must have a little rest.

Exhausted, she put off the moment of action, too weary to move. Then, quite suddenly, her mother’s long lashes lifted and she stared into the darkness.

“Davis,” she said. “You’ve finally come.”

Jillian’s heart sank. “It’s only me, Mother. You’ve been having one of your sick headaches.”

“Nonsense, you’re only a baby Jillian. You can’t talk.” Christine flung the bedcovers aside and climbed from the bed. “He’s here for us, Jilly. Dad’s come home to get us. I must get your things together
because he will be in a hurry to leave.”

This wasn’t anything new. For years now, her mother had gone through periods when she insisted her husband was still alive and would come home to reclaim his family. In those delusions Jillian was sometimes her current age, or might be any age in between. Tonight she was an infant.

Christine peered suspiciously at her. “Who are you? I don’t know you! What are you doing in my house?”

“Mom, I’m Jillian, your daughter.”

“Nonsense.  Jilly is only two months old. She’s over there in her crib.”

Christine walked to the other side of the small bedroom, obviously finding what she sought. “See! There she is sleeping like a sweet baby.” She laughed softly. “Babies are so dear when they’re asleep. I can’t wait to show her to her daddy. He won’t believe how much she has grown.” She stood there, her gaze tender as she looked down at something only she could see, her hand reaching out to pat what she obviously thought was her baby.

Jillian’s heart ached. “You’re tired, Mother,” she said gently, reaching for Christine’s arm.  “You’ve had a sick headache all day and now you need to rest.”

Indignantly Christine jerked her arm free and went over to look out the window. “Look how big the cotton has
grow
n
. We’ll be picking it soon.
Florence
, we’re going to pick enough this fall to buy you some new clothes. Wouldn’t you like a new coat for school this winter?”

Now she was back in east Texas with her sisters. Auntie, who was in her forties was evidently a little girl in Christine’s eyes.

Jillian knew from experience that there was little benefit  in argument, in trying to bring her mother back to reality. Sometimes she went on like this for days, obviously living in a world more to her liking. Other times, she might be
all right
and herself in a matter of minutes.

Jillian hoped this was to be a brief interlude.

Two hours passed before Christine could be persuaded back into her bed. In the meantime she’d chattered wildly. Having decided tonight that Jillian was one of her sisters, this time she was Aunt Dorothea
,
the one who lived in Kansas, she’d spent half an hour scolding her for being such a flirt and having a taste for wild boys. Jillian couldn’t help smiling a little at the thought of steady Uncle Mel, her aunt’s farmer husband, and wondered if he’d once been
different
or if her aunt had followed  her sister’s advice and finally settled down with a stable young man. Knowing Uncle Mel, she’d bet on the latter.

It seemed unfair to peek at the past through her mother’s eyes this way. Poor Mom had no idea of what she was revealing and Jillian didn’t know if her memories were true or imagined. But her dignified middle-aged aunts had a right to their privacy.

Still there was no way to still the flow of words and Jillian supposed that while she’d been away, only Auntie’s sympathetic ears or an unaware helper had received these confidences.

Anyway she didn’t look anything like Aunt Dorothea who was a plump brunette with a sweet way about her. Wryly, Jillian admitted to being neither plump
or
brown-haired and certainly not sweet of disposition.

But over the years Mother had chosen her to play many roles from that of her own long dead mother to each of the sisters. Mother chose who she wanted to be at her side and it was
rarely
the current incarnation of her actual daughter.

By the time she finally went to sleep, Jillian was shaking with exhaustion but knew she’d never be able to settle into slumber without winding down first. She was only hours away from starting her new job, but would just have to rely on coffee and willpower to get her through the day. Aunt
Florence
, who had managed to line up help to start in two more days, had volunteered to fill in herself for tomorrow—actually already today—and the next day.

Jillian was just considering the choices between warm milk and a novel as a relaxer when a soft knock sounded at the
front
door. Cautiously she went to peer out a window that gave her a few of the steps and saw that the visitor was a tall, lean man, his face shadowy in the dim moonlight.

Immediately she knew
it was the man from the night before
. Her heart raced and her breathing was hard and fast. Nobody but a fool would open the door to a stranger at this time of night.

She heard his voice. “I waited, but you didn’
t come,” the deep voice sounded through the door.

“I can’t,” she whispered, not sure he would hear her. “My mother is sick.”

He seemed to hesitate. “Another time,” he finally agreed. She heard his footsteps move slowly down the walk and sagged against the locked door. How foolish to be so disappointed
.

She drank her warm milk and went to bed to lie shivering between her sheets until she finally fell asleep just before dawn.

When Aunt
Florence
came to stay with Mother so she could report to the first day of her teaching assignment, she was neatly dressed and apparently self-possessed
.
The visitor from the night before seemed little more than a peculiarly awkward dream and the congratulated herself on her good sense in not letting him in. She didn’t mention the incident to her aunt.

“Have a good day, Jillian,” her mother called after her as she started toward the door. Jillian smiled. Thank goodness! Her real mother was back this morning.

Chapter Four

They’d left him without water and food, intending that he die of thirst and starvation, but Philippe was a survivor. Since he was a boy he’d had to leap from one stone to another in the pathway to staying alive and though the island was little more than a bare sandy strip with little vegetation and no fresh water, he put together a makeshift raft from driftwood and bits from the occasional palm tree and floated and swam across the bay to the mainland.

But somewhere in between in the dark shallow water of the bay he’d lost himself. The world he’d found on the other side could not be.

He’d crept on to shore, soaked and weary, to see strange lights and buildings. Madness! It had finally come. Too tired to reason it out, he’d crept behind one of the buildings that couldn’t be there and fallen into unconsciousness, knowing that he would wake up and find it had only been an illusion.