The Second Coming (14 page)

Tired, she curled up in her bunk and fell immediately to sleep with only time to think: God, I am going to sleep without a pill!—and woke as suddenly. What woke her? The violet vapor from the glass grapes falling straight in her eye? No, the dog had barked. Or rumbled a deep throat rumble. He was sitting up, ears erect, hackles bristling along his spine like a razorback hog.

Someone was coming down the trail.

It was a troop of Girl Scouts, all but one hefty, most fat. They had shoulder patches which she could not make out. The fattest girl and the thinnest girl carried between them a banner which rippled but she could make out: Troop 12, Laf—? In—? Lafayette, Indiana? Surely Girl Scouts couldn't be older than fourteen or fifteen, yet they looked at least twenty and bigger than life. Their legs were like trees.

The fattest girl had straight blond hair that came straight down over her ears like eaves, like Kelso's.

Kelso grabbed her in the dayroom.

I know where you're going.

She did. Kelso knew everything.

You got visitors. Your folks come to see you. What they doing here? They only been here twice. Maybe they come to take you out of here. How come they keep you here? Don't they know what a dump this is? Don't they know they don't buzz you any more at good hospitals? You want to know what this place is for? This is for people who are too proud to go to state and too poor or stingy to go to a good private hospital. You want to know what it costs them here to keep us? Less than half what it does at state. They making money on us, honey.

Kelso had been at Valleyhead for fifteen years. When she was not too sick, she was canny and told the truth, but one look at her and you knew she could not make it for long in the world. There was no place for her to go. She was smart and had been a bookkeeper with Sears, but that wasn't enough. Sometimes she went to Atlanta, to her parents' house. Though she sounded countrified and looked like a fat lady running a service station in south Georgia, her father had a big house in Druid Hills. But she always came back fatter than ever, stiff as a board and obedient, hair coming straight down all around her head like a funnel. So stiff and obedient that once McGahey told her to sit down and she sat for hours until McGahey noticed there was no chair under her.

Isn't your father a doctor, Allie?

She shook her head.

A dentist, right. He could afford it. Maybe they taking you out.

She shrugged.

You could make it, babe. You're a smart cookie and you know how to get along if you wanted to. How come you don't try?

She shook her head.

I saw them coming in, all dressed up. They must be passing through.

She shrugged.

Talk to me, babe.

Okay, Kelso. (She jumped. Her voice sounded strange.)

Kelso laughed. I know why you don't talk. You so scared, you can't talk. I'm so scared I eat all the time. Now that's something. I'm so scared I get stiff so they'll buzz me. You're so scared you play dumb so they'll buzz you. Maybe we're crazy ha ha. But you're crazy like a fox. Come here, babe, I'll give you a hug.

Kelso gave her a hug.

You think I'm pretty, Allie?

She nodded and smiled.

You're pretty too, honey. You're going to make it.

She smiled and gave Kelso a hug.

Kelso, you are right about my parents. They were going somewhere. To a party evidently. Her mother was aglow in the drab little parlor next to Dr. Duk's office, tan skin glowing (and unbranny) against creamy linen, real old-fashioned linen with irregular weave, gold streak in her hair swept straight across her forehead, giving as always the effect of dash and motion even when she was still, gold aglow at her ears and wrists. Even sitting still she shimmered. Gold glinted. Her father in his candy-striped seersucker smiled and nodded, crouched in his chair, feet drawn under the chair and springing slightly. The two of them blew in like tropical birds. Dr. Duk in his tacky double knits and me in my T-shirt and jeans look like inmates and, she fancied, smell slightly sour.

They were going to a party but they came mainly to see her, they said. They had plans for her. They argued about the plans. There was this pleasant sense of plans being made for her, like her mother putting her on a plane for summer camp: now here's your money and here's your schedule and here's what you do during the three-hour layover in Atlanta . . .

Then there was this disagreeable feeling when they changed the subject from her to the party. They talked about Will Barrett.
Talk about me. Make plans.

One thing I must do: get past the point where I need other people to make plans for me.

I'll tell you whose party it is, Alistair, said her mother.

Somehow her mother had managed in three visits to get on a first-name basis with Dr. Duk. They were buddies. She too was a bird-watcher and had enlisted him in her Christmas bird count. Dr. Duk: nodding and smiling, straining every nerve, blood rushing forward to his face, to keep up with this dashing exotic person—his buddy?

It's a very dear and old friend, said her mother.

An old boyfriend, said her father absently, grinning his eye-tooth grin, feet springing under him.

It's Will Barrett, said her mother. You know the Barretts of Linwood-Asheville?

She could tell by the way her mother hung fire ever so slightly, eyes flicking, that she was waiting for Dr. Duk's reaction.

You mean—! said Dr. Duk, straining forward another inch.

Yes, Will married a Peabody. They own the joint. She died. Now he owns the joint.

The joint? said Dr. Duk. All the grass, eh?

(Jesus, don't try to make jokes, Docky Duck. You're much better in your listening-doctor position, legs crossed, thigh hiked up as a kind of barricade, gazing down at your unlit Marlboro as if it were a Dead Sea scroll.)

Yeah, all the grass, Alistair. They own the whole joint, half the country, the mills, the hotel. And that rascal Will! Not only did he marry a Peabody, he also made it on his own, from editor of the
Law Review,
straight into the top Wall Street firm, one of the Ten Most Promising Young Attorneys, early retirement, man-of-the-year here—I mean, he did it all! I should have known better—but he was always out of it when I knew him—little did I realize what was going on behind that absentminded expression. Just wait till I get my hands on that rascal! So who do I end up with? Old blue-eyes here. But he's cute. Aintcha, hon?

Her mother leaned over and poked her father under the ribs.

There was Dr. Duk straining every English-Pakistani nerve to catch on to the peculiar American—or were they Southern?—ways of this dashing woman, her odd abusive banter about her old boyfriend (!) in the presence of her husband (!), who sat there grinning and not paying attention, getting her hands on that rascal (!). It's a long way from Dukhipoor, Doc. But he laughed and kept up as best he could, looking only slightly beleaguered.

Knock knock, Doc.

The party is for Will's daughter, who is getting married to a wonderful boy, said her mother, an architect from Stanford, who happens to be the best man in the entire country at restoration. And guess where they're going to live, honey?—in the old Hunnicutt house next to us! And guess—

She stopped listening until they began talking about her.

They began to argue about something. She heard her name and pricked up her ears.

They were arguing about the plans for her future.

Kelso, why are they suddenly interested in my future?

Her mother had plans for her.

Her father had different plans for her.

They argued about the plans. She was amazed and pleased. There were plans for her!

The pleasant feeling came back. They argued angrily, but the anger was between them and not toward her. Dr. Duk once again in the familiar territory of ill will, relaxed, hiked up a thigh, took out a Marlboro.

Her mother's plan (her mother: sitting bolt upright now, leaning forward, hand open to Dr. Duk, eyes fine): I want Allison to come home with us, Alistair. Not to your old room, honey. I know you don't want that, but listen to this. Jason Cupp is restoring downtown Williamsport. We have a chance to buy the old Hunnicutt place for a song. Jason and Leslie will live there and restore it. And guess what's out back? Remember? The old carriage house. It's so lovely, the old bricks weathered and worn into scoops outside and down to cobblestones inside. You can move in in three weeks. Wait, dear! You haven't heard the best part. We're also converting the old Atlantic Coast Line railroad station into, guess what, a community art center! Painting, music, plays, you name it. And guess who we want for our music director? It wasn't my idea. The board wants her.

The Board
or
Aurora bora
?
she said.

Boring or beautiful? said Dr. Duk, looking at her with a smile (they were after all two of a kind, she and Docky, compared with these exotic outsiders). I think beautiful.

She skipped three grades, said her mother. She was the youngest girl ever to enter Mary Baldwin. She won the music prize her sophomore year and gave a concert her junior year, the only time it's ever been done.

Yeah, I was smart. I opened my mouth and nothing came out. I forgot the words. Forgot the Schubert, blew the Wolfe. I stood still and looked at them. Time passed. People looked away. They were embarrassed. Not only embarrassed but frightened and hateful. Who are you, you bitch, to do this to us when we didn't want to come here in the first place? What to do? Leave. Check out. Went off the stage, straight out the fire-escape door, into the street, and right on out of town.

Clink clunk. As I see it, said her mother, all the ingredients are there: she'll be at home among family and friends, she'll have her own lovely little place. But what's most important she'll be working at something she's good at and something we need—she's wonderful with children. And just to be on the safe side, we could all fly up here every weekend to check in with you. What do you think, dear?

Nnnnaaaahrgh.

Yes. Well, I agree, honey, it must come as quite a shock. But think about it. What do you think, dear?

If I think about it, all I can think of is those scooped-out bricks and those cool dead colonial blues and grays and me lying in a closet with the shakes.

But what she said aloud was: Things though loose can be jammed nevertheless. Blue is for you but the instigation of color is climbing on the Sirius me.

What? said her father. What did she say? he asked her mother.

I know, dear, said her mother, aglint and fond.

Her father's plan (her father, hitching forward and putting one forefinger on the other forefinger): No, Doc, no way. Allie is not ready to leave your care. (Why were they all of a sudden making these plans?) But I don't see why she should be cooped up here. What do you say to this: a house, her own house, here in the neighborhood, under your wing, so to speak, close enough so she can take part in groups and crafts and so forth. The nicest place money can buy. What's money if you can't make your kid happy? As a matter of fact, we saw one of these chalet-duplex-condos this morning which would be perfect.

For you to come up and play golf, said her mother. But if we restored the Hunnicutt house—

So you could be national secretary of the Dames, said her father, smiling back to his eyeteeth, feet springing under the chair.

Now Walter, said her mother.

She could see that Dr. Duk was just beginning to see that her father smiled all the time and that all his expressions, even frowns, occurred within the smile. For example, now he was grinning angrily, not smiling.

She used to work for her father, as assistant to the dental hygienist, after she flunked life and had come home but before she curled up in a closet. He had passionate and insane views on every subject. She was certain that one reason he had taken up dentistry was so he could assault helpless people with his mad monologues. In he'd come, smiling and handsome, hands scrubbed pink, breath sweet with Clorets, and while she kept the patient's mouth dry with a suction tube, he'd stuff the same mouth with hot wax and crowns and fillings and fingers and then he'd come out with it: “What's wrong with Mao?” or “What's wrong with Franco?” or “Do you know what I'd do with them”—striking coal miners, hippies, queers, niggers, Arab sheiks, Walter Cronkite, George Wallace (yes! a hick, a peckerwood), media Jews, Miami Jews (but not Israelis!), Ronald Reagan (yes! a two-bit actor), Roosevelt (!), Carter, Martin Luther Coon, Kennedy, Nixon (yes! a crook), the Mafia, Goldwater (yes! he runs Arizona with Mafia help), J. Edgar Hoover (yes! a homosexual fascist punk). He liked General Patton. He had seen
Patton
eight times. “You know what I'd do with all of them? Line them up against that wall and go down the line with my BAR”—he grinning and boyish all the while, she embarrassed for him (was that her real sickness, that she was embarrassed for everybody? and for a fact everybody did so badly!), the patient's eyes rolling. “You want to know my philosophy? Shape up or ship out. If the cat keeps crapping on the rug, the cat goes—that's all! If the cook sasses me, the cook goes. What's wrong with that?”

What do you think, Allie? her father asked her. You take the top of the chalet. There's a room in the back with a balcony and the damnedest view you ever saw. Well?

Wif you? Wiv view?
she heard herself say.

Why did she sound so crazy around her parents? Because no matter what she said or did, her mother would make her own sense of it and her father wouldn't like it. So it didn't matter what she said. It was like being alone in a great echoing cave. There was a temptation to holler.

A view! said her father. You wouldn't believe the view!

Interesting, said Dr. Duk, safe behind his thigh and therefore more able to conceal himself. You thought she said
with view,
meaning room with view. But thought I heard
with you,
meaning praps she might have some reservations about living with you. With you both. With yall.