Crying Child

FROM THE AIR, THE ISLAND DOESN’T LOOK BIG enough to…

RAN DIDN’T GET BACK TILL LATE THAT NIGHT. I WAS…

I WAS LURED DOWNSTAIRS NEXT MORNING BY THE smells from…

I DIDN’T GET A CHANCE THAT DAY TO TALK TO…

RAN DROVE US INTO TOWN AFTER LUNCH. HE SAID he…

“I STILL SAY YOU WERE TAKING A TERRIBLE CHANCE.”

WILL TOOK HIS “SISTER” TO TOWN FOR LUNCH. IT was…

“I DON’T KNOW WHY WE DON’T JUST GIVE UP,” RAN…

RAN WAS THE FIRST TO MOVE. HE SLAMMED THE LID…

I DON’T REMEMBER HOW I GOT OUT OF THE ROOM.

MARY’S FINE. SHE AND RAN ARE IN SWITZERLAND now. Will…

About the Author

Praise

Other Books by Barbara Michaels

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

FROM THE AIR, THE ISLAND DOESN’T LOOK BIGenough to land a plane on. It’s a pretty sight, from above, calling to mind all sorts of poetic images—an agate, shining brown and green, flung down in folds of sea-blue satin; a blob of variegated Play-Doh, left in a basin of water by a forgetful child; an oval braided rug on a green glass floor.

Or a hand, in a brown-and-green mitten. The hand is clenched into a fist, with a thumblike promontory jutting out on one side. Across the broad end there is a range of hills that might be knuckles; at the other end, the land narrows down into a wrist-shaped peninsula. There are beaches there, like fur trim on the cuff of the mitten; the rest of the island is thick with foliage, somber
green pines and fir trees for the most part. The house is surprisingly distinct from above. The lighter green of the lawns and the gray outline of roofs and chimneys stand out amid the darkness of the pines. The only other distinctive landmark is the cluster of buildings that make up the village, along the thumb promontory, and its harbor, which is formed by the junction of thumb and hand.

And that’s where the figure of speech fails. You could compare the house to an oddly shaped ring, up on the knuckles of the hand, but the village doesn’t suggest any analogy. A diseased imagination might think of sores or warts; but there never was anything festering about St. Ives. It was just a charming Maine town, and not even the events of that spring could make it anything else. There was no lurking horror in the village. It was in the house.

I certainly wasn’t aware of horrors that morning in May. I had worries, plenty of them, but they were comparatively simple ones. I didn’t know, then, how simple.

Fortunately, fear of flying was not one of those worries. If I had had any such weakness, the plane I was in would have reduced me to a quivering jelly. It was the smallest winged thing I had ever been in. After the big jetliner that brought me from San Francisco to Boston, this object looked
like a squat beetle with stubby wings. The pilot flew it like a hot rod; with his long hair curling around the base of his neck and his grin almost buried in blond beard, he wouldn’t have inspired much confidence in a timid flyer.

Although I was in a hurry to reach the island, this charter flight from Boston wasn’t my idea; it was Ran’s. A brother-in-law who is also a millionaire has certain advantages. As Ran pointed out, the alternative arrangement would have taken a lot of time: another plane from Boston to Portland, then a bus or train or taxi from Portland to the coastal town of Richmond, which is the closest city on the mainland to the island; then a privately chartered boat. The ferry only runs once a day—in the summer. In the winter, I assumed, the inhabitants would have to swim.

It was a long swim. King’s Island—they insist on the possessive form—is the farthest out of all the islands of Casco Bay; so far out that it isn’t on the regular ferry route, which chugs like a commuter bus between Portland and the other islands that cluster thickly between the arms of Cape Elizabeth and Cape Small. The inhabitants of the island say that’s fine with them. They see enough tourists during the three summer months. The Inn, with twenty rooms, is the only hotel. A few private homes take in boarders, but there isn’t a motel or a resort hotel on the island. The Fraser
family owns most of it, and they have always refused to sell to developers, so there are no cabins or summer cottages.

Ran’s last name is Fraser.

I suppose owning things gives rich people the feeling that they can manipulate human beings as easily as they do inanimate objects. Ran has certain tendencies in this direction, but he gave up trying to boss me after I ran away from home. I was twenty at the time, and a college graduate; but I’d been living with Ran and Mary for ten years, and he carried on like a Victorian father whose daughter is planning a career in a bawdy house. His original idea was for me to hang around the family homestead on Long Island after I graduated until I hooked one of the wealthy young males he kept dragging home. When I insisted that I wanted a job instead, he offered me fourteen (fourteen—I counted them) different positions in Manhattan, from an assistant editorship in the publishing house he controls to running my own interior decorating business—which he would buy for me. I literally had to elope, down the stairs at 2A.M. , with my suitcase under my arm—but not with a man. My companion on that flight wasn’t a human being, it was a bizarre quality called pride.

I took a job in San Francisco because it was about as far away from Ran and Mary as I could get, and
I needed that distance to keep myself from crawling back. I was so homesick and so broke those first three months that I almost did weaken. It took Ran another three months to forgive me. He called on New Year’s Eve. After that he and Mary called almost every week, just for company and gossip. But the last two calls had been something else. It was because of those calls that I was in the air over the coast of Maine in a plane that looked like a sick lightning bug.

The first of the significant calls came in April. It was Ran telling me with curt brevity that Mary had lost her baby. That wasn’t how he phrased it. In fact, he corrected me when I used the word.

“Baby? It wouldn’t have been that for another six months. Fetus or embryo; I never can remember which comes first….”

The words sounded callous, and so did his voice. I wasn’t shocked; I thought I knew why he was so determined to avoid the emotional overtones that particular word carries. So I didn’t sympathize; I didn’t offer to come back east, though I knew how desperately unhappy Mary must be. I also knew that Ran would resent any suggestion that he wasn’t the only thing or person Mary needed.

I’m ten years younger than Mary. She brought me up by hand, like Pip’s sister, after our parents died in an automobile accident when I was nine.
There’s no one left, now, except a distant cousin in Milwaukee, so there are a lot of reasons why Mary and I have always been even closer than sisters usually are. But I knew Ran was a little jealous of that relationship. Oh, he loved me like a brother. He had taken me into his heart and home without hesitation when he married my sister. But the combination of money and masculinity made him very sure of himself; he resented the hint that any woman he cherished could possibly need anything, or anybody, else.

Yet not even Ran could realize how much losing this baby could mean to Mary. She had been pregnant twice before, and had miscarried both times. Then there was nothing, for six long years, despite all her efforts—and, to do him justice, all Ran’s efforts. The doctors said there was no physical reason why they couldn’t have children. It wasn’t until recently that I had realized how much Ran must have hated it all—especially the fact that his gangling adolescent sister-in-law knew all the gruesome details. Mary wasn’t reticent; the problem was so important to her that she had to talk about it. The schools didn’t go in for sex education in those days, but I got all I needed from Mary.

I wrote to her, of course, after Ran called. I got a brief scrawl in reply, and a promise that she’d write at length later. That letter never came. Instead there was Ran’s second call.

It was typical spring weather in San Francisco—cold. I was huddled over my imitation fireplace trying to work out a sketch for an ad for face cream. It wasn’t my job. Beauty Aid is one of our big accounts, but junior artists don’t originate layouts. Still, I thought, maybe if I came up with something spectacular…

When the phone rang I jumped, I was concentrating so hard. As soon as I heard Ran’s voice I knew something was wrong. He has a deep baritone voice that gets softer and deeper when he’s upset. That night it was almost a bass rumble.

“When are you taking your vacation?” he asked.

“First two weeks in June,” I said; and the funny feeling at the pit of my stomach began to spread out. “You know that, Ran; we discussed my coming to visit you—”

“Could you come now instead? And stay longer?”

“I’ve been at the agency less than a year. They don’t—”

“What about an emergency leave?”

There was a long silence. Then I said, “Start from the beginning. What’s wrong with Mary?”

“Nothing physical. She’s fully recovered from the miscarriage.”

“Don’t make me drag it out of you, Ran. Do you think I’m that dumb, that I’ll flip when you mention mental illness?”

There was a little chuckle from the other end of the line.

“That’s what I like about you, Jo—that hard core of brutal honesty. Yes, her illness is mental. Melancholia, depression, whatever you want to call it. A nervous breakdown—”

“Never mind what I call it; or what you call it. What does the doctor say? I assume she’s seen a doctor?”

“A dozen doctors. Gynecologist, neurologist—”

“Psychiatrist?”

“Well…”

“For God’s sake, Ran—”

“Wait a minute; don’t jump on me with both feet.” He was laughing again, I could hear him, and the anger that I use to veil my fears, even from myself, spread and grew stronger. Before I could say anything, he went on, soberly,

“Of course I took her to a psychiatrist, after the other doctors found nothing wrong. The man she saw was first-rate, and Mary seemed to like him. Trouble was, he couldn’t take her on full time. And that’s what she needs, apparently—five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year.”

“There are other psychiatrists.”

“He gave me the names of three others. Mary has seen all three. The third man was a disaster. She took a violent dislike to him. Now she absolutely refuses to see another psychiatrist.”