Spirit of the Place (9781101617021) (27 page)

But listen: I'm talking about how you were always so focused on yourself that you were never focused on
me
.

Not even after my operation. I was normal, some said beautiful in fact. I was the star of those Junior League fashion shows at the Worth you don't remember, and then I was butchered by that goyishe neurosurgeon up in Albany your father met on the golf course. I came home dead from the face up, and did you take care of me, even once stay with me?

Nope.

Do you know what it's like to cry out of only one eye? Hear out of only one ear? Smile out of only one side of your face? To have to scrunch up your shoulder to blink your eyelid?

I'll bet that whatever girl you've chosen here it's going badly. You're about to fail again. You may ask yourself: “How do I know this?” Oh, I
know
. I know because I know
you
. Like you failed with
me!

Be well, from your
High Flier

How
does
she know?
It's uncanny. Could she still be
alive?
Hiding out? Wandering around town in disguise like in a witness protection program? Up on Cemetery Hill with binoculars watching all this? Could she somehow have faked her death? He made a mental note to ask Penny if she in fact had ever actually seen Selma's dead body and to check on Selma's death certificate. But Selma had faked his birth certificate, couldn't she have faked her death certificate too?

With the perverse thought that the letter might serve as an “exhibit” someday somewhere, he folded it as carefully as a love letter and slipped it into its envelope. Feeling heavy and light both, he drove out through the strangely portending May Day dusk to Cray and Miranda.

Lightning flashed and sudden thunder rolled from Rip Van Winkle land across the river onto the roof of the old house. It was Cray's bedtime and he was putting up a fight, wanting to play yet another game of Clue with Orville.

“Come on, Cray,” Miranda said, “bed.”

“No!”

“Come on. This is a fuss-free zone. Brush teeth, change into sleepy clothes, and get into bed.”

Another flash of lightning. Thunder blasted down sooner and harder.

“Only if Orvy reads to me alone.”

“Hey, Crayboy,” said Orville, “we both read to you, you know that.”

“But the thunder scares me so much I should get what I want.”

“Don't give me that scared stuff, kiddo.”

“It's okay,” Miranda said, sighing, giving in. “Just for tonight.”

“Yay!” Cray ran upstairs to the bathroom.

Miranda went into her bedroom to change. Orville followed Cray. There was a terrific crack of thunder. The lights flickered and, enfeebled, went out. They all shouted to each other and tapped their way along walls and downstairs to cabinets and found candles and a tiny flashlight and went upstairs again.

With the flashlight, Orville read Cray Kipling's
How the Elephant Got Its Trunk.
Cray asleep, Orville extracted his arm and headed into Miranda's bedroom, which was pitch-dark. Turning off the flashlight, he felt his way into bed with her. Thunder crashed hard just above their heads, like a fist coming down on the roof, shaking rafters and joists, traveling down the backbone of the house so that they could hear the tinkle of plates and cups in the kitchen.

In the dark they devoured each other with touches and kisses. They were hungry, as if their passion could fly in the face of their recent clashes at the edges of love, could lift their moods back to good. Mouths open, noisily, kicking covers off, they let go.

Settling into each other's arms and down into sleep, they heard the fists of thunder open to long fingers of rain, and caught the clean scent of sulfur whooshing up from the lowering layers of the downpour and in through the slit of a west window left open, a cooling echo of the storm.

All the lights snapped on. There they were naked. On the coverless bed in the glare of the cheap overhead bedroom fixture that Miranda had vowed for years to replace.

It was, remarkably, the first time they were seeing each other naked in bright light. Miranda had always insisted that they make love in the dark or by candlelight, and under covers. Orville found himself staring at her shriveled leg.

The muscle mass was scarcely enough to fill out the form of a leg, with the warped bone prominent. At the knee were the scars of its many reconstructions. At the ankle the tissue was scarred in a different way, perhaps from her orthopedic shoe or even from, in the past, her steel brace. Orville flashed on anatomy, the dissection room, the sudden cadaver. His medical training had leached out the shock from the bodies he saw. He had learned to put a lot of bleached white—white coat, white bandage, white pages of doctor logic—between his heart and his job. But this was different. He was naked too—no white coat, no job to do. Stunned by the sight, he was more stunned by being stunned, shocked at being shocked. He saw far worse, day in, day out.

In the moment before his medical mask came down, Miranda saw his shock, even a flicker of revulsion. Exposed, humiliated, by reflex she did something that may have been brave. She touched his cheek to turn his head toward hers, away from her leg so that he was looking into her eyes as she questioned what she was seeing in his. He fought her questioning. She sensed his fight. He sensed her sensing. She too.

It might have been a moment of profound connection. It had that chance. But they couldn't hold it. They looked away.

“You all right?” Miranda asked.

“Yes.”

“Turn the light off.”

“No, no, it's okay,” he said. “Let's face it.”

“I don't want to.”

“I do.”

“No, you don't,” she said. “Turn it off.”

“You don't know what I want.”

“A little discipline,” she said firmly, “is required. Please, turn it off.”

He did so, and lay down again beside her. She spread the light blanket over them.

They lay there in the dark. The lightning was over. The thunder was over. Only the snare drums of rain persisted.

The silence seemed, to Orville, to go on a long time. For Miranda, the silence was moving terribly fast—in a second a chance would be lost.

“We have to talk,” she said, “about your leaving.”

He stiffened. “Fine.”

After he said nothing more, she asked, “You
can
leave in fifteen weeks. Are you going to?”

“I don't know.”

“When
will
you know?”

“I can't tell you. I wish I could but I can't.”

“At this point—now—what's your best guess?”

“I'm sorry, but I really have no idea. I wish I did, wish I could decide now. I want to stay, want desperately to stay—I'm totally crazy about you and Cray—but I'm not sure I can stand it here, stay alive here. Not just the town, the ghosts. Selma. You don't know how much it hurts.”

“I'd like to know.”

“Yeah, well, maybe.” He sighed. “I'm sorry, but I guess we've both just got to live with it a while longer, until closer to August. Maybe we just try to live with the faith that it'll all work out for us, for all of us.” He paused. “There are all kinds of options. Maybe you and Cray could come with me?”

“You have options, I don't.”

“Maybe you do.”

“Easy to say, but no. If I were alone, fine.” She couldn't keep the sarcasm out of her voice as she said, “You may have noticed that I'm not.”

Orville felt jolted by this, like when you step off one step expecting there to be another and there's not. “Are you saying that because he's not mine?”

“‘Mine'?”

“Biologically.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “I'm going on the assumption that on August 27th you're gone.”

“So he'd be mine if I stayed?”

“Careful, Orvy,” she said, trying desperately to be careful herself. “We've got a lot at stake here, and history's not on either of our sides. Take care.”

He tried to take care, but it was like trying to take care with a current pushing you further out and at an angle so you knew that if you didn't strike out for shore right away and with strong strokes and taking into account the angle, you'd never get back.

“Look,” he said finally, “I know you're afraid of what's happening. I am, too. But the way you've been lately, kind of mopey, and really tense with me and Cray? Maybe it's because Cray is so much into me lately. Maybe that's what's bothering you?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not.”

“Yeah, well maybe your fear about what might happen is bringing about what you're afraid of. Maybe your fear's provoking what you fear.”

“Thanks a lot,” she said, really hurt. “Like your contempt does?”

“What? You're saying I'm contemptu—”

“Damnit! I'm saying stay or go—but don't poison everything!”

· 22 ·

One Wednesday morning about five weeks later, when the fleeting Columbian spring had already given way to Mosquito Heaven in the surrounding swamps and citizens were already sweating and slapping and scratching and cursing the pestilential Columbian summer, Orville sat in his office staring at Bill's latest postcard, thinking how thrilled Cray would be to see it. It was from southern India and showed elephants carved into cliffs, “Elephant Cliffs, Bay of Bengal.”

Howdy, doc!

Having great time but boy the grub is hot. Riding elephant all day a mixed bag. Babs got sick but is OK. Hot as hell. Starbusol running low. Wolfy and Kenni a pain. Their son Glenn joined them today. Divorced, out of work, nose hair.

Yr frnd, Bill

A call came from the hospital. In broad daylight just outside the CCC (Colored Citizens Club) on Diamond Street, a kid had shot another kid for a leather jacket.

Orville had just finished saving the kid and was signing out to his coverage for the rest of the day when the nurse rushed in with a telegram.

WOLFY AND KENNI AND GLENN GONE AND SO IS ALL OUR CASH AND BABS DIAMONDS STOP PLEASE WIRE FIVE GRAND TO ADDRESS BELOW STOP OTHERWISE OK STOP LOVE BILL STOP

Dismayed, Orville recalled how Bill, distrustful of checks and credit cards, always carried a big wad of cash around town with him. But had he been carrying big wads of cash around the world with him, too? Never trust a young guy with nose hair. He tried to wire money through the Columbia post office. Despite the clerk's shock at attempting a new task, it seemed it might just work. But then there was a breakage.

Orville had promised Miranda he'd pick her up at ten thirty to help her set up for the gala benefit luncheon for the Worth. It was to be held at noon at the Joab Center house, a historic Nantucket whaler's house shaped like a ship, moored out on Harry Howard Avenue just beyond Penny and Milt's ranch. He'd arranged coverage and had been all set up to get there on time until Bill's telegram. Knowing he would be late, he picked up the phone to call her, surprised to find that he was fearing her reaction.

Miranda, rushing to get ready for the benefit luncheon, felt sick to her stomach, headachy and light-headed. All her senses seemed hyperacute. Cray had a summer cold with some of the same intestinal symptoms, so she figured she'd caught it from him. Orville had said that there was something going around, but he
always
said that there was something going around. Her period was three weeks late. She half-thought pregnancy but given what he'd told her about his medical condition, dismissed it.

As she packed up the brie and Jarlsberg and English water crackers and cups and plates for the benefit, she felt on edge. Mrs. Tarr and she were supposed to have done the event together, but Mrs. Tarr's beloved cat Randolph had died and she was paralyzed with grief, listening to old Mabel Mercer records at home. Cray, too, had loved Randolph. He and Miranda had helped her bury the cat in her backyard the day before. Miranda was left to run the benefit herself.

As she worked, she tried to keep her mind off what had been going on with Orville and her, and with each of them and Cray. She realized that the two of them had been kind of limping along and that Cray was feeling it. With just a couple more weeks to go in school, her son seemed to have drawn back from her even more, and even from his god, Dr. Rose. The other morning when Orville had gone to wake him up, Cray, half-asleep, had shouted at him.

“You can't just dive right in! You have to do it gentle-gentle, like Mom!”

Miranda sensed that Randolph's death was stirring up Cray's feelings about his father's death. She felt a secret sadness in her son and wished Cray would just bring it out into the open. She felt it, too, late every spring, when the Columbian weather started to remind her of the sultry heat of the Gulf of Mexico. She wished they could grieve together. Not only she and Cray, but she and Orville, too. To her, Orville's grief over his mother's death seemed to be coming out as impatience. Lately, Miranda had noticed that her sadness irritated him. A big worry—his loss of patience at sadness.

And her work to finish her thesis had stalled out. She couldn't seem to find consistent time to work on it, and when she did she couldn't focus. As if the Columbian Spirit, watching itself being documented, was casting its spell of breakage.

“Sorry I'm late,” Orville said, coming into the kitchen. “I got jammed. But it's only ten forty-two, so we still should have plenty of time.” He pecked her on the cheek. “How do you feel?”

“Lousy.”

“Sorry to hear that. Symptoms?”

“The same. Same as Cray.”

“Yeah, there's a lot of that going around.”

“He's better. I'm worse.”

“Sure you're up to this?”

“With your help, yes.”

They pitched in together packing up the wine and cheese and munchies and utensils and napkins and soon found that they were way behind schedule. They couldn't be late because Miranda was the only one with the key to the Joab Center house. Amy would be waiting for them there.

Orville carried the heavy cases of Chardonnay and Beefeater gin and tonic and limes and armloads of Jarlsberg and brie and Stone Wheat Thins and Korn Kurls and Planters Peanuts from the house down the slippery, wet bluestone-and-grass path to the Chrysler's famous trunk space. After several sweaty and buggy trips he took a break and leaned against the hood, staring blankly out over the fetid river to the barren-seeming mountains, starting to feel as he had all those years shopping with his mother in stifling department stores in Albany as she tried on hat after hat, shoe after shoe, dress after dress for some family function like a bar mitzvah or yet another cousin's daughter's wedding or an endless number of ferocious Selma and Sol anniversary parties. In those stores he felt that his heart would stop with boredom or even had stopped without his knowing it because his brain had gone dead first without its knowing it either.

Up that river, he thought, Henry Hudson had sailed, duped into the fantasy of being on his way to the Northwest Passage to India, duped into imagining that the Furious Overfall was just around the next bend. Maybe it had even been right here, 375 years ago, right at this very spot that Hudson realized the shallowness of the water meant he had made a terrible mistake.

Glancing at his watch, Orville realized that now they were late. The Worth Savers and Amy would arrive finding a locked door and no Jarlsberg. He looked back up the walk to the door. No sign of her. His irritation grew.

Miranda rushed into the bathroom and threw up. Looking at herself in the mirror as she rinsed her mouth and washed her face, she wondered, Is it possible? After what he had told her, no. Should I tell him what I suspect anyway?

Leaving the bathroom she was overcome with a confusion of strong feeling—worry and fear, hope and happiness. The power of it all—all at once—staggered her. Maybe I will tell him. Yes, right now.

In the kitchen she saw that Orville had forgotten the punchbowl and cups. She picked them up and walked with difficulty to the door. She suddenly felt flushed and then light-headed. She leaned against the doorjamb. Looking out from the darkness of the old house into the bright noonday sun, she was stunned by how just plain
yellow
the forsythia looked, finally, just now, in bloom.
Roses are pruned when forsythia blooms.
Mother, when I was a girl, told me that, in her garden in Boca Grande—and with such kindness!

“Damnit, Miranda, can't you hurry up!”

Smacked to attention, she looked up, seeing him standing at the car, his impatience obvious. She still felt faint, scared suddenly about falling. She heard, as if from a distance, the glasses go
clink clinkclinkk
against the punchbowl. She tried to keep standing, to hang on.

“I'm coming,” she said firmly, and started walking carefully down the flagstones slippery with rain and mud from his repeated trips back and forth to the car, the slap of her bad foot muted by her taking care.

He rushed up the walk to her, a pained look on his face.

“Sorry, I didn't see you in the doorway—I thought you were still inside.”

He took the punchbowl and cups and offered her his arm.

She didn't take it. “Let's just go.”

They were late. Amy was in tears. Some of the Worth Savers had already come and gone. Not many stayed. Fewer gave. The benefit was a bust.