Those Harper Women (49 page)

Diana stands up, and slides her arm through the dogs' tandem leashes. “Oh, Mother.”

The dogs interpret Diana's rising as a sign that a walk, or some other adventure, is about to begin, and they leap about her, struggling and pulling at her arm.

“What does that mean?” Edith asks. “‘Oh, Mother.' Like that.”

“It would never work. We'd be at each other's throats in two days. You know how we are.”

“I'd try,” Edith says. “And it only needs to be … for a little while.”

“Is there.…”

“Is there what?”

“Is there anything I could
do
here, Mother? This garden—”

“Oh, this garden needs so much work done to it!”

“When I was little, I used to talk to the flowers. I gave them all names. I'll bet you didn't know it, Mother, but I have a green thumb.”

“We could work on it together!”

But Diana shakes her head. “No, it's impossible, Mother. Poo would drive you crazy, and so would I. It would be mad.”

“But you could at least stay a few weeks. Couldn't you? I'd like it. Wouldn't you like it?”

Sitting there, Edith tries to think of some inducement, some lure. Entreaties float to her head, then burst, like bubbles, their words lost. If only I could promise her something, Edith thinks. What can I promise her? If only Charles could miraculously join them, move with his old urgency down the steps and across the terrace to where Diana stands, a few feet away; with his purpose, he could persuade her. But no such accessory is provided. Edith demands wings, with which to fly across the intervening space to her daughter, but these are not offered either, and she sits very still on the stone bench watching Diana, and the dogs who sniff and paw the ground at her feet.

Diana rubs the fingers of her free hand up and down across her thigh and smiles at the dogs. “Still, it would be nice to get out of my stockings and girdle for a few days, and just lie in the sun, and bake. That would be nice,” she says to the dogs, “wouldn't it, boys?”

“Then stay. Just for a little while. Please.”

“Well, perhaps …”

In the changeful pattern of sunlight that falls through the garden trees, Edith leans forward, one hand gripping the corner of the stone bench. This bench, this territory, becomes the only thing of substance which she has to offer. It is the monument to everything she has, and must keep, and must gather around her. Diana must come to her on this ground. “Come sit by me,” she says.

But the dogs are straining at their leashes. Even the poodles seem to be urging Diana to be gone.

Edith holds out her hand. “Come …”

The Customs House clock strikes the hour, as usual a little off. Distracting them, its stroke seems to pull the world away from them, away from the stone bench, away from the garden, away from the house, away from the hill and over the town to the sky where a plane circles above the island, cutting an invisible path in the air.

Diana looks at her watch, then looks up. “That must be their plane,” she says. “Why couldn't you at least have gone to the airport, Mother, to see them off? It would have been nice.”

“I could ask you the same question,” Edith says. “Why couldn't you? She's your daughter.”

“Oh, I know. And all you did was bring her up.”

From the sky, the island is shaped like a fish in flight, with Picara Point forming the long dorsal fin, and the cluster of satellite islands seeming to pilot St. Thomas on its escape through the blue water.

“It looks as though it's flying away from us, doesn't it?” Leona says, her face pressed against the glass. “Instead of us flying away from it.” And then, “Running away. Am I just running away again?”

“That will depend.”

“Will we ever find what we want? Will we?”

The plane departs the sky, abandons the island to the sun which shines impartially on half the earth, even though it seems so personal; to the sun which doesn't care whether two women ever sit on a stone bench in a garden, or whether their hands ever touch, or whether, having touched even once, even tentatively, they will ever touch again.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1964 by Stephen Birmingham

Cover design by Amanda Shaffer

ISBN: 978-1-5040-4046-4

Distributed in 2016 by Open Road Distribution

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