Firefly Beach (8 page)

“Blame has never gotten any of us very far,” Caroline said. “So don’t do it to yourself now.”

They had arrived at Firefly Hill. The two sisters sat very still, staring at the door and wondering what kind of mood their mother was in. Would she be enthusiastic, ready to Visit the Sick with a big basket of freshly cut snapdragons? Or would she be frail, focused on her own arthritis or migraine headache to avoid noticing that her youngest child was going downhill fast?

The sun shone through a layer of high gossamer clouds. Not quite bright enough to throw dark shadows, it bathed the house and yard in an overall muted whiteness. A cold front was moving in, and the wind blew hard. Augusta appeared in the kitchen window. She was dressed, ready to go. At the sight of Caroline and Clea, she gave a hearty wave.

“Here we go,” Caroline said, opening the car door.

“Have you seen Homer?” Augusta called, looking around.

The old dog sometimes disappeared. No one knew where he went. He could be gone for hours, or even overnight, but he always came back. Caroline didn’t reply, knowing that Augusta’s defense and denial were already locked in place. She just walked across the yard, to kiss her mother and drive her to the hospital.

At the hospital, all was quiet and blue. The lights at the psychiatric nurses’ station had a shaded violet tone. Various monitors beeped and whirred melodically. The white-clad nurse pushing the medicine cart along the hall seemed to be swimming in contemplative slow motion.

From the far end of the hall, a patient let forth an eerie, ungodly howl, like someone in extreme agony. Standing with her mother and sister, Caroline had the impression of lurking in a strange undersea environment. For no reason at all, she wondered how it might feel to dive for treasure.

When signaled by the charge nurse, Caroline and Clea took their mother’s hands and walked with her into Skye’s room. The sight of Skye so still and pale, even more so than last night, made Caroline draw a deep breath. But her mother actually gasped. Caroline recognized this as a moment of truth: Her mother hadn’t had time to polish, encode, or reinvent the situation. Unguarded, Augusta simply stared at Skye lying in her hospital bed. With frail fingers she touched her black pearls while tears ran down her cheeks.

The heart monitor glowed green in the otherwise dark room. Caroline and Clea stood back, letting their mother bend close to Skye, kiss her bandaged forehead. Augusta was silently crying, her shoulders shaking under her mink coat. A storm of emotion shivered through her thin body, but Caroline watched her force it down. She wiped her tears. She squared her shoulders.

“Skye. I’m here,” Augusta said out loud.

“She can’t hear you,” Clea whispered.

“Skye. Wake up. Wake up, dear. It’s your mother.” Augusta spoke to Skye the way she talked to her daughters’ answering machines, as if she knew someone was sitting there listening, unwilling to pick up the phone.

“Mom, she’s sedated,” Clea said.

“Caroline told me she spoke to her,” Augusta said, sounding injured.

“Just a few words,” Caroline said, wanting to cushion the fact that she had been there and her mother had not. That had always been the case, and Augusta was very sensitive about it. Caroline felt the all-too-familiar pressure in her chest. Skye was so injured and troubled, her mother was so infuriating and needy, and Clea was kowtowing to beat the band. Caroline wanted to rush out, slam the door behind her, head for the airport, and get on a plane to anywhere.

“If she needs her sleep, let’s let her be,” Augusta said, sounding frustrated. “She’ll talk to me tomorrow. In the meantime, let’s go find Peter. He’s here, isn’t he?” And she left Skye’s bedside without another word.

Caroline and Clea drew together. With their mother gone, the old feelings came back: just the three of us, Caroline thought, holding Clea’s hand and looking at Skye. The way it’s always been. Three sisters on a lonely mountaintop, told to hunt by their father, holding hands when he turned his back. They had always taken care of each other.

Catching up with Augusta at the nurses’ station, the women heard the charge nurse say that Peter was with Skye’s doctor, who was just finishing up with another patient.

Augusta raised her dark eyebrows. No one could mistake her displeasure. She watched with silent disdain as the nurses moved methodically about their tasks. What did she want them to do? Caroline wondered. Make Skye’s doctor finish with his other patients faster? Serve cocktails?

“I’m going to go mad if that doctor doesn’t hurry,” Augusta said. She spoke in her normal voice instead of a whisper, and nurses up and down the corridor turned to look. “They’ll have to admit me to this very floor if I have to stand here another minute.”

“Mother, shhhh,” Clea said.

“I have no respect for a doctor who makes the mothers of his patients wait like this,” Augusta continued. “I think it’s very rude.”

Caroline and Clea exchanged a glance. Whenever their mother became this imperious, it meant she was very scared. She refused to accept the things she couldn’t stand, the details of life she found too awful. Twisting reality was Augusta’s way of marshaling her own sanity. Clea slid her arm around Augusta’s slender shoulders, snuggling against the fur coat their mother had thrown on over her jeans and sneakers. Caroline felt her own rage start to abate.

“Doctors do it on purpose,” Clea said. “They like to make the mothers really squirm, waiting to talk to them. Ministers do it too. Peter learned it in divinity school.”

Augusta shook her head, her lips tightening. She was not about to laugh at anything. She was putting forth her best lofty grande-dame air, gazing appraisingly down the corridors as if she owned them. Like Caroline, Augusta Renwick had contributed to this hospital. Since Hugh’s death, her sojourns here had been for opening ceremonies, board meetings, or events involving her chaplain son-in-law. Coming to the psychiatric floor to visit her youngest daughter was most assuredly not in her realm.

Finally Peter came along, wearing his clerical collar and dark trousers. He was talking to another man. He kissed Augusta and Caroline, then pulled Clea into a massive hug. Caroline watched the way they held each other, whispered a few words, looking deeply into each other’s eyes until a slow smile came to Clea’s troubled face. Then he introduced Dr. Jack Henderson, the head of their substance abuse unit.

“How do you do?” Dr. Henderson said.

“Pleased to meet you,” Augusta said warily.

“Hi, Jack,” Clea said, stepping forward.

Augusta shuddered, possibly at the idea of this doctor getting too close, at the prospect of him knowing anything too personal about the family. Caroline had met him before, seen him at a retrospective of her father’s work.

“Hi,” Caroline said, shaking his hand.

“Do you know each other?” Augusta asked.

“I collect your late husband’s work,” Dr. Henderson said.

“Really?” Augusta asked, lightening up slightly. “That’s good to hear. Then you probably know that Skye takes after him. She’s an artist herself.”

The doctor nodded.

“She’s a genius, doctor. Truly brilliant, and I am not saying that just because I am her mother.” Augusta looked around the group for confirmation. Her eyes were glittering, as if tears were close by. “She’s a sculptor. She was recognized by the art world years ago, when she was very young. Right, girls?”

“She was,” Clea said. Caroline said nothing. She felt her mother lean against her slightly, and she held her hand for support.

“She’s so talented…” Augusta choked up. Touching her throat, she pulled herself back together. “But she seems to be blocked.”

“Blocked?” he repeated.

“I’m not an artist, so I don’t know,” Augusta said, “but her father used to say he’d kill himself if he couldn’t paint. An artist who can’t make art…She’s suffering so. Right, Caroline? We can see it, can’t we?”

“Mom…”

“That’s all it is,” Augusta said, trying to convince herself and everyone else.

“Hmmm,” Dr. Henderson said noncommittally.

“Mom, let’s wait for Skye to wake up,” Caroline said. “Let her talk to the doctor herself.”

Augusta shook Caroline off.

“Artist’s block,” Augusta said, her voice trembling. “It explains everything, I think. She’s so afraid she can’t work anymore. And her husband left her. It’s awful, it’s just so terrible….”

“Yes,” Dr. Henderson said inscrutably.

“Who wouldn’t drink a little under such trying circumstances? And I’m sure you know, alcohol fires the creative spirit. My God, could Hugh put it away! Skye takes after him even there, perhaps a little too much. If she could just moderate—”

“Excuse me?” Dr. Henderson asked.

“Perhaps you could suggest moderation!” Augusta said gingerly, offering the doctor his solution. “Half-measures don’t come easily to any Renwick, that’s for sure—”

“Mom,” Caroline interrupted, stopping her.

“I believe moderation would help Skye. If she could just cut back a bit. You know, just stick to cocktails and wine with dinner. Don’t you agree?” Augusta continued, unfazed, her hand cupping her chin as if she were a consulting physician.

“No, I’m afraid not,” the real doctor said.

“Excuse me?” Augusta asked.

“Moderation rarely works with alcoholics. Total abstinence is the only way.”

“Skye is not…an
alcoholic,
” Augusta said, shocked and wounded.

Linking arms with Caroline and Clea, she glared at the doctor. Insulated by her family, she felt safe. She wanted him to see that the Renwicks were good people who loved one another. She wanted him to understand that although eccentric, they were not crazy, not the sort of people who became alcoholics. Bad things had happened to them, but adversity had built their characters. Caroline ached for her mother, recognizing that in her vulnerability she was terrified for Skye.

“Last night,” the doctor said, “she told me about the hunting incident.”

“Well,” Clea said, holding Peter’s hand. “Then you know.”

Just then the doctor’s beeper went off. He gave everyone an apologetic look, shook Augusta’s hand, and hurried down the hallway. Everyone watched him go. Caroline had expected her mother to look relieved at his departure, but instead her pallor had increased. She had a thin film of sweat on her brow.

“Augusta, sit down,” Peter said, leading her to a cluster of chairs at the end of the hall.

“It was an accident,” Augusta said out loud. Her tone was quiet, almost humble. Tears spilled down her cheeks. Her hands trembling, she pulled at her pearls.

“It was,” Caroline said quietly.

“Skye was just a child,” Augusta said to Peter, her eyes wide. “She had no business shooting a gun in the first place. Haven’t I always said that?”

“Yes, Augusta,” he said. “You have.”

“Skye wouldn’t hurt a soul. She never meant to harm that man. A hunting accident, that’s all it was. No one ever suggested otherwise, there were never charges brought.”

“Skye isn’t bad,” Caroline said. “No one is saying that.”

“He called her an alcoholic!” Augusta said.

“She drinks,” Caroline said.

“Dad’s drinking changed,” Clea said, “after it happened.”

“It was a tragedy,” Augusta said, “a horrible thing that happened a long time ago. But there’s no reason Skye should pay for it the rest of her life.” Bewildered, she looked at Caroline. “Is there?”

Caroline shook her head. She was picturing the young man. She had heard the gunshot and Skye’s scream, and she had been the first to find him. It had been fall, a bright blue day with yellow leaves covering the trail. He lay on the ground, the blood pouring from his chest. His eyes were bright and clear. His name was Andrew Lockwood, and he was twenty-five years old.

“Tell me why,” Augusta said, staring straight into Caroline’s eyes.

Caroline remembered taking her jacket off, pressing it into the hole in his chest. She could still feel the heat of his blood, see the question in his eyes. All the time, Skye, her voice as high as a baby bird’s, asking what had she done, what had she done.

“Because she killed him, Mom,” Caroline said quietly. “She didn’t mean to, but she did.”

January 7, 1977

Dear Joe,

I remember one of my letters to you, all about Clea and Skye and the magic of having sisters. Well, this one’s not quite so nice. Did I mention my father? He’s an artist. Okay, he’s a famous artist. He tells us that he wants us to know How the World Works. (Boys have it easy, in case you’re wondering) (according to him, anyway.) (I’m going parentheses-crazy.)

Girls have to be tough. Learn how to take care of ourselves. So he takes us hunting on Redhawk Mountain.

He loves us, you see.

He wants us to learn everything we can, really taste life. We camp out, go fishing and hunting. We go pretty far out in the country, and we have to fend for ourselves. I hate the hunting part. Killing is very hard—I know he’d be upset to know how much I hate hunting even squirrels.