Up Island (50 page)

We could talk face-to-face…”

“No, we couldn’t,” I said, my ears ringing with what really was, now, suppressed laughter, and put the telephone down.

It rang again and again and finally stopped. By that time my laughter had exploded and waned and stopped, and I sat in the dusk feeling that all the sleep in the world would not be enough, and knowing that I would never drop off. I got up and went into my bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet to take one of the sleeping pills that Charlie Davies had given me. This was one night I did not intend to toss and turn like a hagridden mare.

The pills were not there. I knew suddenly where they were.

I ran up the steps to my father’s bathroom so fast that I stumbled twice and almost went headfirst down into the living room. The vial of pills was there, but it was empty except for two. There was another bottle, full, beside it, with my father’s name and the name on the label of a doctor I did not know in Oak Bluffs. I knew now where my father’s sleep came from, knew on what wings my mother came to him in the nights when he went down deep.

I was at Dennis’s camp pounding on his door before I even realized what I was doing.

I spilled it all out, with him sitting on the sofa before the fire watching me but not moving to touch
434 / Anne Rivers Siddons

me as I jabbered frantically in my fear and anger, or when the tears of despair started down my face.

Finally, when I stopped simply because I was too drained to talk or weep any more, he said, “Leave him alone, Molly.”

“Dennis! Leave him alone? What if he…you know…”

“Leave him alone. It’s his business. If pain gets too bad, there ought to be an out. Everybody deserves that much.

Even an animal deserves that much.”

Rage flared deep in my chest where the awful fear had been.

“Oh, good, Dennis. Very good,” I cried. “That’s just what he said about you when I told him about the pills you had, and what you said about them. He said for me to let you alone, that I didn’t know enough about pain yet to know what I was talking about. Well, fuck him and you both, because I do. I know as much about pain as either of you ever will, and I’m goddamned sick of both of you, with your contingencies and your neat little plans for getting out when your famous pain gets too bad. What about the ones of us you leave behind? What are we supposed to do for our pain?”

“Who do
I
leave?” Dennis said coldly.

“Oh, God, I am so
sick
of hearing that! Your daughter!

Your family! Don’t you know what that
means
?”

He got up and limped to the window and pulled the curtain aside and looked out into the night. The window was raised just a little, and I caught the smell of fresh, wet earth and soft, sweet salt from the Bight, smells to break the heart. Eliot had said it: “April is the cruelest month…”

UP ISLAND / 435

“How many times do I have to tell you what I am?” he said in a lifeless voice. “I’m stone-broke. I’m probably flat out of time. I have one leg and a dick that works part-time and seventy-five pages nobody wants to read by a man scared pissless of women, who only knows the little boys he’s paid to know. Some book. Some expert. Some legacy for my so-called family.”

“You have your mother,” I said. He turned and looked at me, but said nothing. His eyes were as dead as his voice.

“I knew about it, Dennis,” I said. “I saw them one night. I saw what I guess you saw. I know that I can’t even imagine how awful it was for you for a long, long time, but you have her back now…”

“For how long, assuming that I did have her back or even wanted her? She’s probably going to kick off before I do.”

I was very angry, but under it there was pain as fresh and red as new blood.

“You have me, goddamn you.”

“They hired you,” he said.

For a while I simply said nothing, and then I said, my voice shaking, “You are behaving just horribly. Just horribly. What is the matter with you?”

“I have the exquisite, unassailable excuse of probably being about to die,” he said. “The question is, what is the matter with you?”

“My husband called me tonight,” I said, beginning to sob.

“He isn’t getting married after all. I don’t know how I ought to think about it…”

He laughed and walked away toward the kitchen, hopping on his one good foot, balancing on furniture.

“Congratulations,” he flung at me over his shoulder.

436 / Anne Rivers Siddons

“But I really must refer you to Ann Landers. She is, I think, more your style.”

I blundered out of the camp, treacherous tears beginning.

When I got home, my father was already upstairs asleep. In the light from the slightly opened door I could see that he had a small, secret smile on his face.

I was still crying, softly and hopelessly, when I got into bed, but the two Halcions I had taken kicked in quickly, and I was asleep in my cave under the stairs even before Laz got up off the hearth rug and came wagging and padding to bed.

When the telephone rang, deep in the night, I woke swiftly and cleanly and reached for it, so sure that it was Dennis apologizing for his behavior that I was already framing my reply: “I quite understand. Let’s say no more about it.”

Restrained, noncommittal, dignified. Altogether better than he deserved.

But instead of Dennis’s contrite voice, I heard a breathy, small gulp, as if a child were sucking in air, and then a soft, bubbling, frantic spill of sound that I listened to in consterna-tion for about half a minute before I realized it was Luz, and that she was speaking Portuguese.

“Luz! It’s Molly. English. Speak English, please,” I said, and she stopped and drew a long, sobbing breath, and said, all at once, “Bella is making funny noises. Like a duck, quack, quack! Molly, come! I don’t like this! She won’t get up!”

I bolted upright, already reaching for my blue jeans.

UP ISLAND / 437

“Listen, Luz. Call 911. Can you do that? Hang up the phone and then dial 911, and when somebody answers, tell them you need help at the Ponder farm off Middle Road.

They’ll come right away. I’m right behind. Do you understand? Hang up and dial 911.”

“She looks funny,” Luz whimpered, and put the telephone down. I could hear her rustling around in her bedcovers, making small, mumbling sounds, but she did not pick up the phone again and she did not hang up.

I called 911 myself and ran out of the house and across the glade to Dennis’s. A light in the living room still burned, and when I hit the porch, running hard, he was at the door, looking out. He still wore the clothes he had had on, and he was pale and red-eyed.

“Come on,” I said before he could speak. “It’s your mother.

Luz called and I can’t be sure what’s wrong, but something is. I’ve called 911.”

“Shit,” he said softly. And we did not speak again until I had helped him into the truck and was jerking it around to make the hard left into the lane. Then he said, “I’ve been expecting this for a while. I guess you have, too.”

“For some reason I really haven’t,” I said. “I don’t know why. I’ve always known she was very ill. But it could be nothing; you can’t depend on Luz, and I’ve had some false alarms with Bella before. Let’s don’t jump to conclusions.”

“Good old Molly,” he said between clenched teeth. “Ever the voice of reason. By all means, let us not jump to conclusions.”

I whipped my head around at him.

“Don’t you dare start on me again, Dennis,” I said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you tonight, and
438 / Anne Rivers Siddons

right now I don’t care. Just don’t you speak to me again that way.”

He was quiet for so long that I looked over at him. He sat with his head down, his hair falling partly over his eyes, and his hands on the dashboard were clenched and white-knuckled.

“You’re hurting, aren’t you?” I said, my chest contracting with fear. Were any of us going to be spared on this horrible night?

“Not so much. A little. It’s not the bad stuff, I don’t think.

I banged my stump the night we went sledding, and it’s gotten sort of inflamed. I was going to call the doctor in the morning and see if he could give me a shot, or something.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have put something on it for you. I’ve got stuff at my house…”

“I really don’t think our relationship has progressed to the point that I’d feel comfortable showing you my stump,” he said prissily, and I blinked incredulously before I realized that he was teasing me. Before I could even smile, he said,

“I’m sorry, Molly. I’ve been a prick tonight. I guess…I really didn’t want to hear that about your dad or your husband.

My mother, either. The world is just shit-full of things I don’t want to deal with tonight, but there’s no reason for me to take it out on you. I’d start this day over if I could.”

“I don’t mind,” I said. “It’s okay. It really is.”

So much for dignity and restraint. If I had not been so frightened for Bella, I might have grinned like a Cheshire cat at Dennis Ponder. But I was frightened, and so was he. I could feel his fear in the soft darkness, smell it, like acrid smoke.

There were no lights in the farmhouse but the UP ISLAND / 439

struggling fire, but it was enough to see that Luz was crouched on the floor beside the overturned recliner with Bella Ponder’s big head in her lap. Forever after I wondered how Luz had gotten herself out of bed and across the floor. She herself did not remember. In the fire-flicker her little yellow face was as serene as that of a seraph high on a cathedral, eyes closed, and she rocked Bella’s head back and forth and sang to her a little Portuguese song in a minor key that sounded like a child’s song, a nursery air. I ran to them and knelt down, leaving Dennis to make his way into the house with his crutch. I wanted to be the first to see Bella Ponder. If it was too bad, perhaps I could make her look a bit better before her son saw her.

It was bad, I could see that at once. Bella lay on her back where she had fallen from the recliner, her great arms crossed and her fists pressing into her chest, her face absolutely colorless, the white of dead narcissus. Huge, pearled drops of sweat stood on her forehead and at her hairline. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were slate blue, working silently.

“
Ajudar-me
,” she whispered. “
Ajudar-me. Papa, ajudar-me
…”

“Bella,” I said, and she opened her eyes. They were flat and black and focused on something beyond me. The pupils were pinpoints.

“Mama?” she said, and I knew she had gone into a far country where I could not follow.

“It’s Molly,” I said, dabbing at the sweat on her forehead with the tail of my shirt. Luz smiled and rocked, smiled and rocked, sang and sang.

Behind me I heard Dennis’s voice slip into the little nursery song along with Luz. I was surprised somehow that he knew Portuguese, but it stood to reason.

440 / Anne Rivers Siddons

He had heard it for the first seventeen years of his life.

Dennis came then, flopping awkwardly down on the floor beside his mother.

“Bella,” he said tentatively, and then, “Mother. Mama. Can you hear me?”

Bella’s eyes came back from the far country and saw him.

They widened, and a small smile curved the terrible blue lips up. “
Papa
,” she whispered. “
Magoar. Papa
…”

“It’s Dennis, Mama,” he said. His voice was hardly stronger than hers.

“
Dennis! Ah, Dennis, obrigado
…”

I closed my eyes briefly. I did not know if she thought she was addressing king or son. I did know that she would not stay long in the farmhouse, one way or another.

Dennis Ponder looked at me, wildness in his gray eyes.

“An ambulance…”

“I called from home. Let me get a blanket. We shouldn’t move her…”

The tri-town ambulance came howling into the yard then, and I ran to the door to let the crew in, switching on lights as I went. Just before I jerked the front door open, I heard Dennis, whispering, “Don’t you dare die on me. Don’t you fucking dare leave me again, old woman…”

He went with them in the ambulance to the hospital in Oak Bluffs. I stayed behind with Luzia, wondering what to do next, wondering what on earth, now, my role was in the farmhouse and on the pond, what the right thing to do was.

It seemed to me that there would certainly be an immutable up island ritual for this, but I did not know it.

UP ISLAND / 441

One of the young EMTs, a square, sandy-haired youngster who looked vaguely familiar, had helped me get Luz back in bed. He did it tenderly and respectfully, saying, “Let’s get you back where you belong, Miss Luzia,” and I thought that he must somehow know Luz, but could not think how that could be. Bella had not let medical help come into this house for years. Luz, mumbling and vague, let us tuck her in, and lay there smiling expectantly, as if waiting for a treat.

“Thank you,” I said to the boy. “I don’t quite know what to do next…”

“Somebody’s coming,” he said. “Just hang on. We’ll take care of them.”

And he was out the door and into his vehicle before I could ask who. When it had screamed away toward Middle Road, I drew my chair up to Luz’s bed and took her hands.

“You mustn’t worry. Dennis is going to take good care of her, and we aren’t going to leave you alone.”

“I know,” she said sleepily. “She told me. Would you read to me, please? I haven’t heard
The Once and Future King
in ages and ages.” And I picked up the flaccid book, which fell open to a point near the middle, and began to read as the sky over the sea to the east began to lighten infinitesimally:

“ ‘A white-front said, “Now, Wart, if you were once able to fly the great North Sea, surely you can co-ordinate a few little wing-muscles here and there? Fold your powers together, with the spirit of your mind, and it will come out like butter.

Come along, Homo sapiens, for all we humble friends of yours are waiting here to cheer.” ’ ”

I had not gotten far before there was a quiet knock at the door and Patricia Norton let herself into the room.