Gift of the Golden Mountain (74 page)

     When he turned around she saw that his face was wet.

     It was almost light before she felt him sigh and relax, and she could allow herself to slip into sleep beside him.

"What do you hear from May?" Kit asked, playing for time.

     Karin concentrated on the tea bag she was dipping in the mug of hot water. A few drops sloshed onto the white Formica of the cafeteria table and she blotted them, absentmindedly, with a paper napkin.

     "You know about the offer she got from the Geological Survey? But I don't think she's going to go back to work for a while. She's having too nice a time being Hayes's wife."

     "I think so too," Kit said. "His mother called yesterday to tell me that May wants to work with her to find Andy's child. That whole situation seems almost made to order for May."

     "What do you mean?" Karin asked. Kit could tell by her eyes that she was too weary, and probably too disturbed about her own situation, to make the connections, so she explained: "The child is Asian American, like May. There is a war, a cultural division
between the families . . . and a boy who will grow up not knowing much about his father, in this case—not knowing if he wanted him, if he deserted him, what the father's family was all about."

     Karin nodded, dully. "May did tell me they would like to resolve the question of Andy's son before they start a family of their own."

     Kit coughed to clear her throat. She felt a quivering on the inside and wondered if it would show in her voice. "I wanted to talk to you before you saw Philip," she began, "to warn you a bit. I think you are going to be surprised . . She stopped, tried to organize her thoughts. "He has made quite wonderful strides. He can type fairly well now, so you can have a conversation of sorts—though he tends to leave out a lot and you have to fill in the spaces. It's going to take months, and a lot of work, to teach him to speak again but we believe it is possible."

     Karin began to put her things together, she wanted to see him now, to get on with it. Kit could hear the beating of her own heart hot in her ears.

     "What I wanted to tell you," she said, rushing now, "is that I hope you know how deeply I care for you."

     She watched Karin walk away, her shoulder bag carried like a burden, weighing her down. Kit had meant to warn her, to prepare her. She had wanted to make it easier for Karin and for Philip, and she had not known how. Nor did she know what to expect from Karin. But she had gone too far now to turn back, it was all set in motion.

He was dressed and waiting, sitting with the typewriter positioned so she could read what he wrote without having to stand behind him.

     He waited while she went through the formalities: The chaste kiss on the cheek, the slow, sad smile into his eyes, the messages of love from Thea, from Faith. How well Annie and Thea got
along, how she felt Thea was finally ready to come back to enroll at Stanford next month. She began her apology then, starting by saying, "I feel I have let you down . . ."

     He stopped her by beginning to type.

     
Wait
, he wrote,
Please.

     She watched his hands crawl over the keyboard, watched each letter as it appeared on the paper:
In Sept. I go to Malibu ranch with Kit. She wants. I want.

     "I don't understand," Karin said, as if to herself. "Do you mean you are going for a visit?"

     He typed:
To live.

     "To live," she whispered, and stared at him. She could not take it in, could not fathom what it meant. Kit and Philip, going to the ranch together. To live, he said. She sat back in the chair and felt as if she were about to fly apart, all the molecules of her body to float off into space. A wave of nausea threatened to move into her throat. She closed her eyes to stop it and the room began spinning. When she opened her eyes he was watching her and she wanted to scream.

     Instead she forced her throat to open, her voice to say, "Tell me what you want me to do."

     Slowly, he typed.
Care for Thea, Dan. Care for you. Divorce me.

     She tried to think and couldn't. "I don't know what to say," she began, "I'm sorry, I know our marriage has not been . . . I haven't . . ."

     
NO
he typed, all in caps,
DEAR KARIN, NOT YOU. NEVER YOU.
Then he added,
My fault, total. Long story. Tell one day when you come Malibu.

     She took his hand then and let the sobs wrench out of her. "I'm so sorry, Philip," she said, "I wish it had all been different."

     She felt his hand press hers and looked up. A small flickering of muscles moved his lips in a grotesque smile. "I'll go find Kit," was all she could think to say.

She lay back on the great pink moire pillows in Kit's guest room, a cool towel on her head and tried to sip from the ginger ale Kit had brought to settle her stomach.

     "I feel better now," she said. "Not so dizzy."

     Kit stood in the doorway in an attitude of uncertainty.

     "Come talk to me, please," Karin said.

     She looked so miserable Kit wanted to put her arms around her to comfort her, but she could not. Not this time.

     "I don't understand, Kit. Can you explain to me what is happening?"

     Kit sat in a small chair next to the bed, and tried to think how to start.

     "I don't understand either, Karin. I wish I did. The way things happen, it is so strange . . . life is strange. When you and Philip married it seemed so right to all of us, and I believe in many ways it was right. I'm not certain what would have happened to Thea and Dan if you hadn't married their father. But you did marry him, and because of that those children have a chance for a happy, whole life now. Philip knows that as well as any of us. And I believe you and Philip were good for each other for a time, too. Just as Philip and I were once good for each other—for a very brief time. I didn't allow a relationship with Philip then because I knew it wouldn't last. It was wonderful, but ephemeral, and that is all it could have been at that time in our lives. But . . . and this is the hard part to explain . . . when Philip and I came together again, after his accident, it was as if . . ." she hesitated, her neck flushed ". . . as if finally, it was time for us. Out of both our needs—mine as desperate as his, if truth be told—this, well, wonderful sweetness emerged. I so love being with him, K. The age difference doesn't seem to matter any more."

     She leaned forward, reached for Karin's hand, "Ever since Connor died, Karin, I have carried this loneliness around inside of me. And now it's gone. Philip says he has much the same feelings. We didn't plan for this to happen, darling, but it did."

     Karin looked confused, as if she still didn't understand. "I'm not sure . . ." she began, "I thought maybe you were doing it for me . . . so I wouldn't feel so guilty . . ."

     Kit shook her head. "No, as much as I love you, I promise you I am not doing it for you. I am doing it for me, and for Philip. But I hope . . ." she hesitated again, "I hope with all my heart that it is right for you, that you can finally feel released from any obligation."

     "When Philip said I should divorce him, he wants it for himself?"

     Kit nodded, and asked, "Does that hurt?"

     Karin managed a tremulous smile; she seemed to be taking stock. "No. No it doesn't. I don't know what I feel, Kit. It's so . . . new."

     "Darling," Kit said, moving to sit next to her on the bed, "we want so for you to be happy, to feel free. Because in a way, we can't until you do. Does that sound selfish?"

     Karin shook her head. "It's just so . . . strange . . . all these months, I've been walking around feeling that I should be doing something I couldn't bring myself to do. And now that feeling is gone, but I don't have anything to put in its place. I don't feel free, not yet. Kit. Maybe it takes awhile. I just feel kind of . . . stunned."

     "Stay here a few days, let's talk—the three of us. We can make it right, together. I know it, K, I just feel it!"

     Karin had never known Kit to be so animated, so intense. Her cheeks were blazing. Karin said, "I'll call to see if it's okay with Thea."

Occasionally now, when Israel spoke, he was continuing a dialogue from his childhood with people no longer alive. He talked to his mother about going out to collect coal along the railroad tracks— would he get to pull the wagon? he wanted to know. And he talked to someone named Odell who had been at Ft. Benning, Georgia
with him, and who had never understood. "Let me explain," Israel would plead, "don't turn your back on me, please let me explain."

     He floated in and out of a morphine fog, now and then rising to the surface of consciousness. His body grew frail, but his great voice was not diminished. He would sing the old hymns, beginning in a low, slow mode, "I was sinking deep in sin, / Far from the peaceful shore. / Very deeply stained within, / Sinking to rise no more." And then his great, booming bass would move into the almost rollicking chorus, "Love lifted me, / Love lifted me, when nothing else would help, / Love lifted me!" Abigail would join in sometimes, she had learned all the old Protestant hymns in the mission school, or any of the children who wandered on and off the lanai, where he spent most of each day.

     On the day after Annie returned from Honolulu, he opened his eyes, saw her sitting beside him, and said in a perfectly reasonable voice, "If I had it all to do over again, I'd work in a bakery so I could breathe in the smell of warm bread all day long, all day long."

     Annie laughed. "I just popped two loaves into the oven—you missed me baking your daily bread, didn't you, sweet man?"

     "My mama used to bake bread," he rambled on. "I'd go to the back door of the house where she worked, and she'd let me into the kitchen, her black arms'd be all dusted with white flour, and she'd give me a little piece of bread right out of the oven, and sometimes she'd pile applesauce on it, with cinnamon sprinkled on top."

     He closed his eyes. She thought he had drifted off again when he asked, "Where'd you go?"

     Annie soothed his forehead with a damp washcloth. "I stayed with Thea while Karin was in California. I was only supposed to be away three days, but Karin needed to stay on awhile longer, and she wasn't feeling well when she came back so I kept her company for another day."