Gift of the Golden Mountain (56 page)

     One blink. "Okay." (Why, she wondered, did she feel he was angry with her?)

     "Are you in pain? Yes. Okay, let's localize. Is it in your feet? No. Your lower legs? Yes."

     It took ten minutes to discover that his lower right calf had been cramping, that it had been going on all night, and that it was driving him crazy. She had asked him that: Is it driving you crazy? And he had answered with a fluttering of his eyelids, which was answer in itself.

     The last question was always: "Are you comfortable now?" Sometimes it took tin hour to get there. Karin hadn't realized how much she had come to dread the routine until yesterday, when nurse Parnell had said she would do it—there had been such a flood of relief. She bit her lip, realizing that the anger she had felt was not so much for the discomfort it had caused Philip as it was her own disappointment.

     "Okay," Karin made herself say, pulling her chair up close to
the bed. "You will want to know what I found out at Thea's school this morning. You know I was meeting with Mrs. Rourke, the principal—and she had already talked to all of Thea's teachers, and she had asked the school psychologist to sit in. They are concerned about Thea's behavior, too. I decided to wait until this morning to tell Thea I was going to her school, and when I did she just flatly refused to go at all. Marge is going over to the house now, she said she has been wanting to spend some time with Thea and this would be a good morning for her."

     She rubbed his hand, and went on: "I know how sensitive you are to your girl, and I know you have seen how tense she has been . . . after coming to see you every day for so long, then suddenly not coming this past week. You have been worried, haven't you?"

     Philip blinked once, his eyes steady on her face.

     "I knew you would be. The school psychologist gave me the name of a psychiatrist—a woman who treats adolescents, mainly. I'm going to talk to her tomorrow, if it's all right with you. Just to ask her advice, at this point . . . is that all right?"

     He didn't answer for a time; then he did blink yes.

     "If you object . . ." Karin began, but was interrupted by a young nurse who came in apologizing: "Mrs. Ward, I'm so sorry I'm late," she said. "There was an emergency on five, and two of their nurses are out and I had to cover . . ."

     "It's all right," Karin said, "Everything is under control here."

     Turning to Philip, the nurse asked, "Are you okay? Is there anything I can do for you?"

     He blinked once, waited, and then once again.

     "I read that as a yes and a yes rather than a delayed no. I'm getting good, right?" the girl laughed.

     Philip blinked once again. It took her six questions to discover that his bed was wet.

When the nurse left and Karin came back into the room she apologized, "I'm sorry, I should have asked you if there was anything else I could do to make you comfortable—I usually do, but this morning I'm so out of whack . . .

     He blinked once. Yes. He understood. Her eyes filled with tears.

     "I am sorry," she said again, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "Sometimes I sit here and look at you, and I want so badly to hear your voice, to get your advice, to know what you are thinking. Then I feel so awful, thinking about what I want to hear, when I can only imagine how grim this is for you. Okay. I can hear you telling me now, 'Get on with it, girl,' so I'll get on with the family news. I want to tell you about Dan, too. He's called every single day since he got out of basic training. He said they didn't throw anything at him that came close to being rough enough. That sounds like bravado, but it isn't, really. I just think it is how he is coping with what has happened to you. He'll be getting leave soon and he's coming home. I'm glad because I think he'll be able to comfort Thea. I know you don't remember much about those first days after it happened," she went on, "but I'm not sure either Thea or I could have managed without Dan. I was surprised, I have to admit, at how steady he was."

     "Test time," an aide called out, knocking and walking through the door at the same moment. "We have to take Dr. Ward to X ray for a scan. It'll be a couple of hours—if you're going out, you might want to call before you come back."

     As she bent to kiss Philip goodbye, a wave of dizziness swept over her. She straightened and concentrated on keeping her balance.

     "Are you all right, Mrs. Ward?" the attendant asked.

     "I'm fine," Karin told him, "I've been feeling a little woozy—I hope it's not the flu."

     "Plenty of that around here," he answered, as he wheeled Philip out of the room.

She had to hold herself back, not to run through the lobby. She covered her mouth as she passed the flower shop to avoid the sweet, funereal smell of carnations. Outside, she held on to a post while she took in several large gulps of air; if I had to go back inside right now, she thought,
I could not do it.

The music was loud enough to hear from the front door. The Who, Karin thought. That means she's at home. As she put her key in the lock, Marge opened the door from the inside.

     "I can't find her," she said, "I got here about ten minutes ago, and I've been looking . . ."

     Karin switched off Thea's stereo and the house seemed to swell with the silence. The women stood, listening. A tree limb brushed against the window; the wind was rising, it was going to rain. Karin began to tremble.

     "Stay here," Marge said, "I'm going to make a more thorough sweep."

     Karin could hear Marge as she entered each room . . . the spare room first (she would see that Karin slept there), then Dan's. She heard the closet door squeak open and close again. On down the hallway, into the master bedroom. Philip's room. Then Marge's voice, loud, calling: "Karin, come!"

     Thea was huddled in a corner of Philip's big closet, her face just visible between the folds of his suitpants. Her expression was blank, empty, lost. A long thin wail escaped into the awful silence.
Thea is screaming
, Karin thought, until she felt the sound ripping out of her own throat. Thea crouched motionless, clutching to her chest an old leather case, and Karin knew exactly what was in it: Philip's father's straight razor.

Israel's arm was hurting him, I could tell by the way he favored it when he lifted my chair through the doorway. I pretended not to notice. I hadn't wanted to ask him to take me to Karin's, it was drizzling out and cold, and I knew he wasn't up to it but I also knew it would have angered him if I had asked anybody else.

     On the drive over the bridge he had said to me, "I just keep thinking of how they were that night at the big party Mrs. McCord gave them down at Wildwood. And in Hawaii, at the luau on the beach. That poor sweet little girl . . ." I did not know if he meant Karin or Thea, and I did not want to interrupt to ask. There was a certain comfort in the low, biblical roll of his voice:
"For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing, and for the habitations of the wilderness a lamentation."

     Kit was already there, and Marge and Hank. Thea sat in a corner of the sofa, a quilt over her knees as if she were an invalid. She waved weakly to me, and managed a smile when Israel called out in one long breath, "Hello over there in the corner little Miss Thea Ward, registered California driver, when we going to the drag races darlin'?"

     I took one look at Karin and I wanted to cry. Her eyes were rimmed in red. I reached for her hand and could not help but see her poor fingernails, bitten so deeply beneath the quick that they were bloody. "Dear child," I blurted, "you have got to have some relief."

     "Exactly right," Hank Fromberg said, putting his arm around her firmly and leading her over to the sofa to sit next to Thea. "And that's what we're here to talk about, Karin . . . and Thea. Both of you need a respite . . . no, listen to me first Karin. May wants the two of you to come to Hawaii to stay with her for a little while. There is a very fine private school in Honolulu, Punahou, and we've talked to some people we know there, the Browns, their daughter Lynne is going there—you remember Lynne, Thea. She'll be happy to have you go to classes with her while you're there, if you want to."

     Thea was looking at Hank intently, as if everything he was
saying was of tremendous interest. He asked, "What do you think? Does that sound like a plausible idea, Thea? Going to Hawaii for a while?"

     "Wait," Karin tried to cut in, "I don't see how . . ."

     Thea began to cry then; she lowered her chin to her chest and sobbed quietly. "Darling," Karin said to her, "please, don't cry. Tell me, do you want to go to Hawaii?"

     The child said nothing.

     "Yes?" Karin prompted. "Would it help to get away for a bit?"

     "I can't go back," Thea said, her voice rising with the threat of hysteria, "I can't see Daddy like that any more. I can't."

     "All right," Karin said, petting her to quiet her down, "all right honey, you don't have to go, we'll figure it out."

     Kit had been quiet all this while, but now she broke in, "We've all talked about this, Karin and Thea. Behind your backs, I'm afraid, because we are worried. We think that you should go to Hawaii together. I know it is hard to leave, but let me tell you something. Marge and I had a talk with the psychologist at the hospital today. He thinks that Philip is so overwhelmed with the need to deal with his family that he can't deal with what is going on within himself. He even believes that Philip might feel a sense of relief, if he knew you were someplace where you were getting some rest.

     "There are therapists who could be brought in to work with him. And I will be able to help. As a matter of fact, I dropped by the hospital this afternoon, after Marge called, to take him a book about Morse code. I remembered Philip saying that he knew it once, and today when I asked him if he would like a refresher course he said yes. So that would be something I could work with him on while you are away. And you could take a copy with you, so when you get back you'll know it too.

     "One more thing. I know you go in every afternoon, Karin, so I knew Philip would be wondering where you were today. I told him that Thea wasn't feeling well, and you had asked me to come and explain why you couldn't be there. I asked him if it upset him,
not having you there, and he made the signal for 'no.' Obviously, he wanted me to explore that answer, and I tried to. I asked several different questions, but it was only when I said, 'Are you worried that Thea and Karin are pushing themselves too hard?' that he said 'yes.' What both of you have to remember is that he loves you, and that he is quite capable of being enormously worried about the effect his illness is having on you."