Desert of the Heart: A Novel (9 page)

“Sit down here.”

Evelyn sat down on a rock step and covered her eyes, struggling against a need to cry or be sick or sleep. She felt Ann’s hand on her shoulder move to the back of her neck, a strong, careful hand against her skin. Gradually she lost her consciousness of the earth’s spinning. It was still.

“Well,” Evelyn said, straightening up, “how I welcome the convention of time and space.”

“Have you been dizzy before?”

“Umhum. It must be altitude.” Evelyn turned to Ann and smiled an apology. “I don’t awfully like … heights.” Or the adolescent depths of eyes, child, grown child. That will do.

“You’re the second one this week I’ve almost lost,” Ann said, turning away. “I’m going to have to carry smelling salts.”

Ann closed herself so quickly that Evelyn could have been uncertain of what she had seen, but she had taught too many students not to recognize the unguarded look and the silence. In her office, she would have known just how to behave. She would have assigned an extra essay on Donne and turned the longing into scholarship. Now, without a role to play, she was uncertain. She did not want to turn Ann away.

“What did you major in at college, Ann?”

Ann glanced back at Evelyn, her eyes amused. “I never got around to deciding. When I was at Mills, I thought about history or philosophy.”

“But you left Mills.”

“Yes, I made an indecent proposal to the special assistant to the Dean and was expelled.”

The directness of the explanation shocked Evelyn into laughter.

“It was funny,” Ann said, “really terribly funny. You see, I was only sixteen, and I didn’t know anything at all about your world. I was … is ‘naïve’ the word, I wonder?”

“My world?”

“You know, the decent, respectable academic world, the grove of grapefruit and lemon. The lady was apparently interested in the state of my soul or the nature of my problem, whatever the phrase is. She took me for a moonlight ride, parked, and then sat, waiting. I was terribly embarrassed. It didn’t occur to me that she was waiting for me to talk. I sat, too. Then finally I thought, ‘Oh, what the hell’ and kissed her. It shocks you, too, doesn’t it?”

“Why did you do it?” Evelyn asked.

“I thought that’s what she was waiting for. You see, around here, if somebody takes you for a moonlight ride, it isn’t to discuss the state of your soul.”

“Even if it’s the assistant to the Dean?”

“Well, I’d never been to college before. I’d never known an assistant to the Dean. And, by the time I did go to the University of Nevada, I was a good deal more worldly. I haven’t kissed an assistant to the Dean since.”

“I can’t quite believe that.”

“That I haven’t kissed …?”

“Sorry, my pronoun reference is poor.”

“What don’t you believe?”

“What kind of a world did you grow up in, Ann?”

“This one, and it doesn’t teach you much about the customs of natives in other parts of the country. But I’ve learned. Here I am, discussing the nature of my problem. I am not disoriented or confused. It will never seem really natural, but …”

“In your mind,” Evelyn said slowly, hanging on to the conversation with growing uncertainty, “cliffs are not places for discussion.”

“Why not?” Ann said, turning to Evelyn with an easy grin. “I really loved your world. It taught me a lot. I’m just more at home here. Feeling better?”

“Yes,” Evelyn said, “not exactly at home, but better.”

“Shall we go?”

Evelyn walked to the car, her mind retracing as precisely as her steps did the path that had led her to the conversation just completed. But she could not discover how she had got there by going back. She only recognized that she had been at the edge of a cliff and had retreated.

As they drove back to Reno, Ann began to tell Evelyn stories of Frank’s Club, which made her laugh, and they arrived back at the house gay and relaxed from the day’s outing. Walter was not at home for dinner. Virginia had asked to stay in her room. Only Frances sat down at the table with them. Like a latecomer to a cocktail party, she tried to hide her sobriety, but Evelyn and Ann could not quite catch her up into their own mood. Funny stories were replaced by half-serious discussion, which finally gave way to explanations.

“What’s the news of Janet’s baby?” Frances asked.

“Didn’t I tell you? The last operation’s on Monday.”

“Who’s Janet?” Evelyn asked.

Ann explained Janet to Evelyn. “So she drives ninety miles over the desert and ninety miles back every night.”

“When does she sleep?”

“When the baby does, I guess, and on her day off.”

“Well, she’ll be going down to San Francisco then,” Frances said.

“I don’t think so. Ken’s going to take the baby.”

“Why?” Frances asked.

“She’s afraid of losing her job. Anyway, she can’t afford to take time off.”

“Well,” Frances said, “it’s hard, isn’t it? But just think how lucky they are that surgery can do what it can. Just a few years ago there wouldn’t have been any hope at all.”

“When I look at Janet,” Ann said, “I wonder how lucky she is.”

“You don’t know what it is to have a child and want it to live,” Frances said.

“No, I suppose I don’t.”

“I’ve left my cigarettes upstairs,” Evelyn said, excusing herself quickly.

Frances was wrong: Ann might not know what it was to have a child and want it to live, but she must know what it was to want a child. Any woman knew that. And there was a generalization about womanhood that even Evelyn could share. She had wanted a child just as this young Janet wanted her child to live. Like Janet, she had been willing to sacrifice anything in the world for it. And she had sacrificed, before she was through, a good deal of the world she had known. At first it had been only the humiliation of doctors, for herself and for George. One appointment after another, one specialist after another, each result hopelessly successful: by clinical definition she and her husband were unquestionably female and male, fertile and potent. But there had been no child. After each alone had offered up his secret sex to the laboratories, had admitted to specialists his private, unscientific fears, together they submitted themselves to experiment, making love by the book, by the calendar, by the temperature chart. The cheapest and crudest pornography could not have been more destructive to the spirit of love, but the fact was accomplished. Evelyn conceived a child. When she lost it at three months, they did not try again. They talked once or twice of adopting children, but it was only talk. Neither any longer had confidence enough in himself or in the other to feel capable of children. And, as Evelyn realized what had happened to them, she felt a terrible guilt for the desire she had had. It was a sin to want so badly anything you could not have. That was an oversimplification, of course. And it wasn’t just the one thing, the wanting children. It was much more complicated than that. But it would have been easier, so much easier, if they could have left themselves to an old-fashioned childless fate. There might have been, even after the hope was gone, some tenderness left. The final horror had not been the losing of the child, a simple clinical failure. “It often happens that way,” the doctor had said. “You’ll see. There’ll be nothing to the next one.” He’d had a new pill, she remembered, and ordered the prescription by phone for her. When it arrived, she paid for it, opened the bottle and flushed the pills down the toilet. The doctor was exactly right. There would be nothing to the next one. She would never again say to her husband, “Now, tonight.”

Frances was wrong. The doctors were wrong. And that young Janet, driving across the desert alone at night, must know that her frail, crippled, living wish was wrong. Or could she know? While the child lived, could she be ungrateful? Could anyone really give up before it was over?

“Evelyn?” Ann was calling up the stairs. “I’ll be right there.” Evelyn picked up her cigarettes.

“Stay there. I’m bringing up your coffee.” They met in the hall. “Frances is fixing a tray for Virginia. I thought we could have coffee in my room, and I’d show you some of my cartoons.”

“I’d love it,” Evelyn said.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Evelyn said as she followed Ann up the stairs to her attic room. “Virginia really shouldn’t spend so much time alone.”

“She wants to go home,” Ann said, “back to her husband, but she doesn’t know how to admit it.”

“Do you think she won’t get her divorce?”

“If she can think of a way not to. It’s hard for someone like Virginia to admit she’s wrong, even to herself.”

Ann opened the door and held it for Evelyn. It was a large room. On the far wall, under the window, was a long drawing table. Racks above it held tubes of paint, bottles of ink, brushes, pens, pencils. Shelves underneath stored paper. One sketchbook lay open before a high stool. Otherwise, it was a work area as orderly as an operating theater. But Evelyn’s attention shifted almost at once from this focus of the room to the other walls. There were hundreds of books on bookshelves built to the eaves.

“Look at the books! I’ve been living on four books for days with a library right above my head.”

“Come up and get anything you want any time,” Ann said.

She walked over to the drawing table and sat back against the high stool. Evelyn walked over to her.

“And this is where you work.”

“When I work.”

“Who are the children?” Evelyn asked, looking down at five small photographs Scotch-taped to the wall.

“That’s Kim from Korea, Ming from Hong Kong, Hung from Vietnam, Eftychia from Greece, and Carmela from Italy.”

“Isn’t she a dear, little girl,” Evelyn said, looking at Eftychia.

“She’s nine. She’s in the fourth grade. She wants to be a teacher. Carmela isn’t so practical. She’s all for coming to America to be a movie star.”

“How did you find out about them?” Evelyn asked.

“Answered an ad. They only cost fifteen bucks a month apiece.”

“What a wonderful thing to do.”

“It’s the easiest and cheapest way to have children I know,” Ann said. “They’re so little nuisance. A letter and a check a month is all they need.”

“So these are instead of children of your own?”

“I suppose so,” Ann said. “With all the surplus children in the world—they’re being dumped in India and China the way we dump wheat—I figure motherhood should become a specialized profession like medicine or law for people really suited to it.”

“How do you decide you’re not one of those?” Evelyn asked.

“Ann! Ann!” It was Frances’ voice, distant but urgent.

Ann was across the room before Evelyn had time to move. As Ann opened the door, her name came again, louder, almost a presence in the room.

“All right, Frances, I’m coming,” she called.

When Evelyn reached the hall, it was empty. Virginia’s bedroom door was open. Virginia lay on her bed, Ann and Frances standing over her. Ann was shaking a pillow out of its case.

“Call the doctor, Frances, right now,” Ann said. “And don’t get into a flap. Virginia’s all right.”

Frances came out of the room, crying.

“What is it?” Evelyn asked. “What’s the matter?”

“She’s slashed her wrists. She’s killed herself.”

“For Christ’s sake, Frances,” Ann yelled. “Don’t stand there gossiping! Call the doctor!”

Frances hurried off down the stairs. Evelyn did not know whether to follow her or go into the room.

“Evelyn, get me another pillowcase off your bed,” Ann called.

Evelyn did what she was told. When she got back into Virginia’s room, she saw the blood for the first time, great, purple-brown patches of it on the sheets, on the rug by the bed. Ann was finishing a rough tourniquet on Virginia’s left arm. She seemed unconscious.

“Thanks,” Ann said. “Now take the top sheet and tear me strips of it.”

Evelyn hesitated, reluctant to uncover Virginia.

“Quickly!” Ann said. “Then get a blanket to cover her. Grab one off the closet shelf there.”

By the time the doctor arrived, Ann had stopped the bleeding and was sitting quietly by the bed, adjusting the tourniquets. Evelyn stood just inside the door, ready to do anything she was told. Frances stayed in the hall, talking unhappily to herself.

“Well, this is a pretty amateur job,” the doctor said, after he had uncovered both wrists. “If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. You don’t want to be a simple butcher. All the same,” he said, turning to Ann, “it’s a good thing you found her. She’s done a fair amount of bleeding.”

Virginia stirred and moaned.

“You go right ahead and moan, young lady, and be grateful you still can.”

“Dave … Davie,” Virginia whispered.

“He’ll be here shortly,” Ann said. “Well, I’m going to wash. Is there anything you need, doctor?”

“No. Here’s the ambulance now.”

“Could I borrow your towel?” Ann asked Evelyn. “Mine are all upstairs.”

“I’ll get it.”

When Evelyn brought the towel to Ann, she was soaking her hands in a basin full of water.

“You certainly knew what you were doing,” Evelyn said, “Is she really going to be all right?”

“Oh, sure,” Ann said. She reached over to take the towel. “She wasn’t even trying, or she’s ignorant. You don’t slash a wrist like that. You cut it like this.”

Ann demonstrated with her finger across her own wrist. Evelyn, looking down, noticed for the first time the fine diagonal scar across Ann’s wrist.

“An old attempt,” Ann said, “but not my own. It was an idea my father had before Frances came along.”

Evelyn stared at Ann, too shocked to reply.

“Well, now it seems to me we should give Dave-Davie a ring and tell him it’s time to come to take Virginia home. Pride has only drastic ways out, doesn’t it?”

“You’re angry.”

“Yes, I’m angry. I love life. Despair always makes me angry. It’s the one sin I believe in.”

Evelyn turned to watch the stretcher-bearers carry Virginia out of her room and down the stairs, but it was not Virginia she saw; it was George. “I don’t quite,” she said quietly. “I mean I don’t quite believe in despair, whether it’s a sin or not.”

“I’d better go to the hospital with her and phone from there.”