Wildwood (21 page)

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Authors: Drusilla Campbell

BOOK: Wildwood
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“More like there’s a huge high pressure system off the coast, blocking the moisture. They said on the news last night it’s like a wall keeping the rain to the north of us.”
“Maybe it’s the Rapture.”
“Anglicans don’t believe in the Rapture.”
“The end of the world then.”
“I don’t think we believe in that either. At least not the Apocalypse.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard today.”
“You’re in a cheerful mood this morning, Hannah Tarwater.”
She stood and arched her back to stretch it out. What would Father Joe say if she told him that more than thirty years before she had killed a boy and abandoned his body to the coyotes. The night before she had almost told Liz the whole story, but the words weren’t there. She would never be able to tell anyone what really happened that day, not the full truth.
“Talk to me, Hannah,” Father Joe said. “What’s eating you?”
She walked across the little garden and tossed the dead heads in a waste barrel, sat down again. “I didn’t sleep well.”
“Worrying about the end of the world?”
“I know I’d feel better if it rained.” She remembered the touch of the rain spray Liz brought her from Florida. It made her want to cry, the memory of rain.
“So what’s on your mind?”
“Do you believe in the subconscious, Father Joe?”
“Absolutely. I’m an Anglican. It’s one of my vows.” She didn’t smile. “Don’t you?”
“I don’t want to.”
“Why’s that?”
“I think there’s something in mine trying to get out.”
Father Joe chuckled.
“It’s like I’m the cage and my subconscious is the panther.”
“I know the feeling you describe, Hannah.”
“What do you do about it? How do you make it go away?”
“I try not to fight it. Embrace it. Let whatever’s in there ease out of the cage, so to speak.” For a moment he stirred his coffee with a plastic spoon, then he shook his head irritably. “Forgive me, Hannah, that wasn’t an honest answer. The true answer to your question is that I
wish
I could calmly embrace the panther. I
wish
I could always and completely trust that whatever’s going on in my mind, it’s the Holy Spirit at work. I shouldn’t be afraid, I should let it out. I pray for that kind of faith, but I don’t always have it. Like most people, I use up a lot of energy trying to keep the panther in the cage or trying to convince myself it isn’t there at all.” He finished the last swallow of his coffee. “Even when it’s clawing at me through the bars.” He tossed the dregs into the garden. “There’s a priest I know up in Millbrae. I trust him so when it gets really bad, we meet halfway, find a church and I make my confession. Maybe that’s what you need. It cleans things out, sets things straight.”
“That’s what my friend says.”
“Then you have a wise friend.”
That stopped Hannah. She thought of Liz as intelligent but never wise.
They stowed their coffee cups behind a rock and walked toward the church. Hannah remembered Mrs. Phillips.
“Gail Bacci says you went into her house.”
“Oh, I’d been in there before. Once or twice a month she’d invite me for High Tea.” He laughed. “Being an Anglican, some people always assume I’m partial to crumpets and tea. I never could tell her what I really wanted at four in the afternoon was a cold Corona.” He fitted an iron key into the lock on the church door. “She couldn’t care for the house or herself anymore, but even so she didn’t want to move up to Crestwood. I never really convinced her. Just did the deed. She seems happy now, though.” He held the door for Hannah. “You must have known her, Hannie. You were neighbors. Her son was the boy—”
“I know.” She stopped on the threshold. “Joe, did she have a happy life?” She hoped for a surprise, a little reprieve.
“War widow. Son died when he was fifteen. That’s a lot to bear.”
“She was unhappy then? Always?”
“Some people don’t have a great capacity for happiness to begin with, Hannah. I think maybe Orna Phillips was one of those.”
“I never knew her first name.”
“Why all this sudden interest?”
Hannah looked into the gray recesses of the stone church. She felt the truth clawing at her insides.
“I guess I’m depressed.”
“For some time.”
“I try not to be.”
“Maybe too hard, eh? There’s no crime in it, Hannah, being unhappy.” Father Joe placed his hand on the small of her back. “Go on in, my girl. Down on your knees.”
Tears welled against her lower lid.
“When you’re ready, Hannah. I’m here.”
They stepped into the vestibule of the old church and her head filled with a favorite smell—cold stone and old incense—a smell that meant permanence and quiet and being small again.
“Did I go to the boy’s funeral?” she asked, stopping beside the first pew. “I can’t remember.”
“You were there with your mom and dad. I imagine it was a pretty deep shock to lose someone who’d lived next door to you all your life. And by an accident that could have happened to any of you kids.”
“Strange how I remember some things so clearly but the rest is just gone. Why would I forget?” She couldn’t believe what Mindy said, that it was normal to forget what caused her pain. If that were true, why couldn’t she just forget everything about Bluegang. Why was some of it so clear, so clear it hurt her eyes, her whole head, to look at it.
“You were such an open-hearted little creature, Hannah. Into everyone’s business, asking questions all the time. Full of great big emotions. Billy Phillips’s death was probably the first time you ever thought about your own mortality. That’s pretty heavy stuff for a little kid.”
Father Joe left her to change into his vestments and Hannah took her favorite place at the back of the church and knelt to pray. But the prayers wouldn’t come and finally she gave up and daydreamed about Angel instead.
 
 
The crunch of the Volvo’s tires on the gravel drive woke Liz. She had been dreaming of water, of rain and of swimming. She reached across the bed to the nightstand where she’d laid her book, spread eagle, the night before. She propped herself up on the pillows and read for a while. The book was
Justine,
a favorite from college days.
She would tell Hannah and Jeanne about the baby today when they were together at lunch. She put down the book and practiced her dialog.
I have something to tell you both.
Hannah would think cancer or AIDS because her mind worked that way. Jeanne would think that, whatever the news was, Liz was dramatizing . . . because she always thought Liz dramatized.
I’m here for an abortion.
They would be stunned and then sympathize, they might say it served her right after all these years. Hannah would offer to drive her to the clinic.
Not much longer, she thought, laying her hand on her stomach. What should she feel? Odd, this disconnect.
She read a little longer and dozed off again. The house began to stir and she heard zing and ping video sounds from Eddie’s room. She got up and dressed for a run. For longer than usual she stretched, feeling creaky and old, bloated and mildly out of sorts. The house seemed awfully busy, awfully early, and she was eager to be off like a dog with its nose to the wind.
Hannah turned from the stove and smiled at her as she came into the kitchen. “Bacon: the breakfast that kills.”
“God, I love that smell.”
“I’m making a feast. How long will you be?”
“Half an hour?”
“It’s chilly out there.”
 
 
Liz turned left at the end of the driveway. She meant to turn right, run past Hilltop, up and around Overlook Road; but instead and without thinking she went down Casabella Road toward town. She glanced at her watch: 9:20. Seven minutes down and twelve back, allowing for the hill.
The road swung into the hairpin turn at the Bluegang bridge and then up a rise and to the right. The air seemed to crackle in the arid cold, but the sun warmed the back of her neck; and when she rolled her head to the left and then the right, the stiffness melted out. Casabella swooped into a wide turn and sloped down the hill past more old houses, villas and cottages and all of them perfectly restored. The street was an architectural gallery. Three blocks. Two blocks. One. And there it was, her house. A woman in running clothes sat on the front steps reading the newspaper.
Liz stopped. The woman looked up.
“Mrs. Sandler?” Hannah had told her the woman’s first name but Liz could not remember. She stopped at the edge of the property. “I’m Liz Shepherd.”
Mrs. Sandler smiled and waited.
“I used to live here.”
“Oh. Shepherd. Of course.” She put out her hand. “Glad to meet you. I’m Mitzi.”
“The house looks wonderful.”
Had it always been beautiful? It troubled Liz to think that she had lived seventeen years of her life oblivious to the beauty around her. What she remembered most clearly was being embarrassed by the busy-faced, old-fashioned house in the unfashionable part of town. She had wanted to live in a shake-roofed ranch house out by the country club, like Gail.
She pointed up. “That was my bedroom. We called it the turret.”
“The corner tower.” Mitzi Sandler folded her paper,
The New York Times,
and stood up. “We’ve turned it into a playroom for the kids. Our daughters.”
Liz nodded.
“Would you like to see inside?”
Liz looked at her watch.
“Actually, I’m staying with Hannah Tarwater—”
“I know Hannah. She’s terrific.”
“We’ve been friends—”
A buzz came from the cell phone on the steps.
Mitzi looked apologetic and reached for it, saying as she did, “Look, if it’s not convenient now, I’d love to show the old girl off another time. Can you come back later in the week? We’re going to be working in the basement but—”
“Thursday?” Liz asked.
Mitzi Sandler nodded, smiled and punched a button on her phone and said, “Hello.”
 
 
Jeanne preferred the 10:30 service at St. Margaret’s and always sat up front. “For the theater,” she told people. By which she really meant “for the mistakes”—like the time the acolyte dropped a plate of consecrated wafers and the priest had to eat every one of them while the congregation pretended not to notice. Most mistakes were more subtle and only noticeable to those who, like Jeanne, had participated in the Anglican liturgy all their lives and knew it well enough in all its rites to let her mind drift and think of other things.
God and church didn’t have much to do with each other in Jeanne’s mind. God seemed like wishful thinking but the Church made excellent sense. Jeanne did not like to think of a world minus the Ten Commandments, minus reward and punishment.
She genuflected and crossed herself, never missing a beat. She said the words of the Creed and Thanksgiving while she thought of all the things she had to do before the end of next week. She knelt for the Confession, resting her hands on the back of the pew in front of her. She laid her head on her hands and closed her eyes.
A hangover drilled at the inside of her skull.
She had only intended to soften the edges of the evening. A few glasses of wine was like applying an airbrush to the guests at Hannah’s table. Their flaws disappeared. No moles, no wrinkles, no unsightly hair. Nobody bored her, not even Gail. But it hadn’t worked. The more Gail talked, the less she said; and Teddy, glossy and smug, had laughed at every joke. He meant it when he said he planned to ask her for money. His fawning irritated Jeanne like a burst of poison oak she couldn’t stop scratching. And as if that were not bad enough, Mindy—who by all the laws of life should have been a bitter, neurotic, drug-addled ruin of the Sixties—was contented and self-accepting as the Buddha himself. All Mario did was remind Jeanne of the past. Like every other girl at Rinconada High School, she had adored him.
The thought of love powered the drill in her head.
Which was worse? Drinking on purpose or trying not to drink and still doing it? Either way she went, she mirrored her parents. Her father had been a slow, purposeful, daily drinker who took a shot of Jack Daniel’s every hour or so from midday until bedtime the way some people dose themselves with aspirin for constant pain. By nightfall he was a zombie but still able to lay down the law. Her mother had regularly tried not to drink; but eventually, after a week or a month of white-knuckled abstinence, she succumbed, drank and wept and blamed herself for her son’s death, blamed Jeanne for daring to live on, and took to her bed.
The usher touched Jeanne’s shoulder. Old Mr. Applebee. Since his wife died he seemed to have forgotten how to comb his hair. Jeanne smiled at him, rose, genuflected in the aisle, then stepped back to let the boys she’d brought from school go before her where she could keep an eye on them. She imagined her own boy at the same age as these. Adam Weed had stayed behind at the school; his father had said they were not churchgoers. Teddy was afraid Simon Weed would take his son out of school at the first hint of trouble. Teddy the Know-it-All. Teddy Mr. Big Bucks. Jeanne knelt at the altar rail, crossed herself and lifted her hands for the Host. She wished for once Teddy would get what he deserved. She grabbed the chalice when the priest offered it.

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