Club Storyville (6 page)

Not expecting a response, or not caring what I might have to say, Ariel got up and left me to the garden, but none of it, not the gentle spring breeze nor the sounds of the birds in the trees, sounded happy. What little happiness I had managed to find in the world, I realized, I had just destroyed.

Chapter Four

A
fter what I had done, I didn’t know how to be around Ariel, but that didn’t much matter, because Ariel clearly had no desire to be around me. If I was around when Nan suggested a walk, Ariel would tolerate my company, but she never posed the invitation herself anymore.

I had no way of knowing how Ariel was with Nan when they were alone, but, when I was present, she had become less free, each word chosen more carefully, as if she was afraid one that weighed too heavy would break some delicate balance between us and send us both tumbling into Hell.

Gone were the smiles that had sent my heart soaring each time I entered Nan’s room. They had been replaced by calculated nods, precisely respectful of my position as her employer’s granddaughter. Then, after the acknowledgement, Ariel would busy herself at a distance from me, and I wouldn’t know how to feel.

Relief, I thought, was what I should be feeling, because it was the only way to lessen the symptoms, if we kept a safe distance from each other. The constant ache, though, was what I noticed most, because the fact that Ariel refused to talk to me or to look at me didn’t stop my yearning for her to talk to me and to look at me, the way she had before I made my accusations and she decided me more trouble than I was worth.

“What’s the matter with you two?” Nan asked one day, drawing Ariel back into the conversation she was purposefully trying to ignore. “Why are you fighting?”

“We’re not fighting,” I said, feeling a twinge at the truth of it. Fighting meant two people cared enough about their positions, and each other, to put in the effort to reach an agreement, or at least an explosive end. Since whatever it was Ariel and I had ended all at once in a rather calm, collected manner in the garden, I could only assume she didn’t care enough to help me figure out what was going on inside of me.

“You do know, I can still see,” Nan was irritated by my dismissal, and Ariel must have decided she needed to intervene before I could make more of a mess of things.

“I think we just know that it’s best not to get too attached,” she looked to Nan, and Nan alone. “I won’t be here forever.”

Sucking in a quiet breath at her response, it was something I hadn’t thought to consider, that our situation was only temporary, that Ariel would leave, and my feelings would have no choice but to go with her. Where the realization should have filled me with relief, though, I felt suddenly void, as if all good things in the world had abandoned me. It was only then I realized how much the hope Ariel had given back to me lived inside of her, and how it would die completely as soon as she was gone.

Desperate to hold onto the feeling, the belief in the joy of life I felt as she held me on the swing, as I stood with her beneath the canopy of stars, and at the highest peak I had ever known when our mouths met hotly in the garden, I tried to will Ariel to turn to me, to look at me, to speak to me, but I didn’t possess the power to make her do anything. I didn’t even have the right to make a request.

By accident, I had made myself Ariel’s enemy, something she had to fear. She must have thought she had no allies, would never believe I was still on her side, and with no one to stand with her if it came to defending herself, she had to be extra careful. Glances and speech were weapons that could be turned around on her, so she used them sparingly whenever I was near.

M
uch to my surprised delight, it was touch, for which I no longer dared hope, that came first. Leaving Nan’s room one morning, I felt Ariel’s hand on my arm outside the door and turned to find her right there, so close I wanted to press into her, to invite her comforts, to embrace the part of myself I had been desperately trying to push away.

“She’s dying,” Ariel declared, and I felt the instant chill where her hand had been hot on my skin only a moment before.

Ariel’s eyes turning kind on me for the first time since the garden, they tried to provide some solace, and I couldn’t stop staring into them, feeling as if it had been a lifetime since they last looked at me that way.

I wanted her to have stopped me for a different reason, a better reason, to tell me what I’d been longing to hear without acknowledging it, that she felt what I felt. Not that it was okay to feel that way, because I knew that it wasn’t, but that we at least felt that way together, and if we were going to feel those things, and be damned to Hell for feeling, we may as well have the benefits that went with it.

“No,” I disagreed with her assessment of Nan’s condition automatically. “She’s...” Fine, I thought to myself, but it was a lie I couldn’t buy or sell. Nan was the same in spirit, but she was no way near the woman I once watched put out a fire in the kitchen with nothing but a folded newspaper and determination.

“She’s dying, Elizabeth,” Ariel risked another touch upon my arm, but didn’t let it linger. “She doesn’t want you to know, but I think it’s important for you to know. You should spend all the time with her you can. I’ll stay out of your way.”

In the face of what she was telling me, I couldn’t rally my irritation to remind her I wasn’t the one doing the avoiding, that I still came and still wanted something I couldn’t explain, but felt anyway, that her last touch on my arm had left something other than traces of sympathy behind.

“How long?” Tears filled my eyes, and Ariel reached for me again, but just as my heart leapt in anticipation of her touch, she diverted her hand, tucking it into the crook of her opposite elbow as if to trap it in place.

“A few weeks,” she replied. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you for telling me,” I heard myself utter, though I wasn’t sure why. It was the polite thing to respond, just the thing people said in such situations. No one was ever thankful for being told she was about to be robbed of one of the most important people in her life.

“She wants to have dinner in the dining room when your brother gets here,” Ariel went on, and I wondered how I could have forgotten about Scott, and his upcoming visit, if only for a second. “It will be nice for her. She’s proud of all of you. You should be happy about that. She’s had a good, long life, and she knows it. I know that doesn’t make it easier for you, but it does for her.”

When I could think of nothing to say in response, because death pretty much trumped all arguments, Ariel turned and started back into Nan’s room without another word.

“Ariel?” I meant to call to her, but it came out like a prayer, and when Ariel glanced back at me, sympathy and affection warred with something less forgiving on her face.

I didn’t know what to say to her, what I wanted to say to her. I just didn’t want her to go. I wanted to feel her arms around me, to get lost in her, and I wasn’t sure what I might do to make it happen.

Recognizing, perhaps, what a danger I posed to both of us, Ariel stole my chance, continuing through the door of Nan’s room and leaving me barely afloat in my confusion.

Nan would die, I realized. It was as inevitable as the sun disappearing from the sky at night, or the garden losing its flowers come winter. And, when she died, Ariel would leave. And, though those two things should have been a million ticks apart on the spectrum of loss, both were of equal pain.

Chapter Five

N
an allowed Ariel’s close monitoring, but she didn’t want her life saved when it was time for it to be over. She didn’t want doctors called in, or to be put into a hospital.

Ariel didn’t tell me that. I overheard Mama and Daddy talking about it one night, Mama’s voice coated thicker with sadness than I expected, seeing as she and Nan barely got along.

“No use meddling with death,” Nan responded when I asked her why she would make such a decision. “It just keeps coming, and it always wins in the end.”

“I always thought you’d live forever,” I whispered, and her laugh turned to a cough that had Ariel rushing over to check on her, before tapering into a wheezing sound that made me want to cry the tears Nan wouldn’t.

“I don’t want to live forever,” Nan declared. “I just want to live well while I’m here. A beating heart doesn’t mean a life worth having. Isn’t that right, Ariel?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Ariel replied, and it sounded as if she was giving her consent.

Watching her walk off again, leaving Nan and I alone at the bed, anger boiled inside me, and, without thinking, I pushed to my feet to trail Ariel to the window. Looking back over my shoulder to make sure we were far enough that Nan couldn’t hear, when I turned back to Ariel, she looked bothered, like she didn’t want to be even that alone with me.

“You agree with her?” I asked, but Ariel’s eyes never moved from whatever she was staring at on the other side of the glass. “You want to just let her die?”

“I don’t want her to die,” Ariel returned in a firm whisper, “but I can’t stop that. I can let her do it with as much control and dignity as possible.”

“So, she could die tomorrow,” I announced, and when Ariel pulled her eyes from the window to glance beyond me, I knew to lower my voice. “Or she could live three more months, and you’re saying tomorrow is okay?”

“It’s what she wants,” Ariel returned.

“That’s not right,” I uttered. All those Sunday school teachings about the sanctity of life and appreciating what God gave us, I thought I understood what they meant. So young, I thought I could fathom the pains of old age, the fear of poor health, and I couldn’t imagine a single reason alive would ever be worse than dead. “I’m going to tell her it’s not right,” I declared. “She should do everything she can to stay alive.”

Whirling away, I forced Ariel’s hand, which shot out to catch my arm and prevent my intervention. “Don’t pressure her.” Her eyes were stern as they finally landed on me. “She will do what you want.”

“I’m glad,” I returned, trying to break away, but Ariel engaged her other hand to keep me from asking Nan for something I didn’t understand I had no right to ask of her.

“She’s tired, Elizabeth,” her voice gentled, her eyes filling with tears as her hands turned softer on my arms. “She’s hurting. Let her go.”

At the time, I didn’t recognize it as some of the best advice I would ever be given, to know when to hold on and when to open my hands to set someone free. All I knew was Ariel’s hands were entrancing where they slid up and down my arms, her eyes peered through the wall that had formed between us, and the light pouring through the window made her look radiant.

Realizing how much I wanted her to kiss me, right there in front of Nan and God and the transparent glass through which the entire world might see, I stepped out of her touch and tried to draw elusive breath.

“I should go help Mama with dinner,” I raised my voice so Nan would hear my excuse to escape.

“What time will your brother be here?” Ariel asked.

“Around five,” I said, and she nodded as if to say she would have Nan ready.

Turning to look at Nan, she was much too curious where she watched us from the bed, and I wondered how much she had seen, if she knew we were talking about her, and then that I had almost forgotten she was there at all. “I’ll make sure he comes in as soon as he gets here,” I told her.

“He’d better,” Nan replied.

“Are you having dinner with us?” The question, tossed over my shoulder, came out of nowhere, and I didn’t know what I was doing asking it. No one had mentioned Ariel’s presence, not even Scott, and I didn’t have the authority to offer such an invitation without going through a tribunal. In a moment of impulse, I had simply seized power, as if I was the master of the house and my word could be made law.

When Ariel said nothing, I knew she thought I wasn’t talking to her, that I was simply reaffirming Nan’s place at the dinner table. “Ariel?” I turned back, and the ruthless sunlight turned her near golden. “Are you having dinner with us?”

“No,” she shook her head. “This is your family.”

“Scott is bringing a friend,” I felt stung by her answer. “I’m sure Mama won’t mind.”

Well aware of how Mama felt about her, and about her presence in our home, Ariel could only laugh, and I knew, if I asked a hundred different ways, she would say no a hundred different times.

“Of course, she’s coming to dinner,” Nan came to my aid, and it wasn’t so much her words that were jolting, but the strength with which she declared them. “She’s had to leave her own life to stay at the bedside of an old lady for months. The least we can do is give her a good meal.”

Though my word had attempted to masquerade as it only moments before, even Ariel recognized Nan’s word truly was the law of the house, so she did her best to look delighted as she turned from the window. “Well then, I guess I am coming.”

“Good,” I said, a thrill going through me when I knew I should have been worried. “I’ll let Mama know.”

Turning a bright smile on Nan as I turned to go, for getting the answer I wanted out of Ariel, even if it shouldn’t have been the answer I wanted, I was certain I heard Ariel’s troubled sigh clear across the room.

A
ll afternoon spent in the kitchen with Mama, my ears were perked for the sound of Scott’s arrival. The instant I heard the familiar crackle of gravel that always brought Daddy home from work, I rushed from mixing up the coleslaw into the evening sun, which glinted off the hood of an unknown car as it came to a stop in the drive.

Whipping Scott from the passenger’s seat before he could get his feet beneath him, I latched on with all my might, so glad to have him home, that he hadn’t abandoned me, even if it felt like he was about to abandon me to go fight Nazis, with no guarantee which he would come back, a hero or a corpse.

“Did you miss me?” Scott sounded nothing but amused by my enthusiastic greeting.

“You know I did,” I clung more tightly to him.

“I’ve only been gone three months,” he returned, and it was hard to believe.