December's Thorn

by Phillip DePoy

  “Yes.”

  “She does favor your mother, around the eyes.” Lucinda shook her head. “Lord. Your mother.”

  “I’d say amen to that.”

  “So she’s not your wife.”

  “She is not,” I assured her.

  “Short few days ago you had an invisible wife,” she said as we achieved the top of the stairs, “and this morning you’ve got a real live sister.”

  “Half,” I corrected.

  “Still family.”

  “Her real name is Isolde Newcomb.”

  That stopped her. “Oh.”

  “Her father was Tristan.”

  “Lord,” she said, breaking away from me, “you’ve got to be kidding, like the opera? Tristan and Isolde? Really?”

  I was about to comment on Lucinda’s knowledge of Wagner when it hit me that my mother’s naming her out-of-wedlock daughter Isolde was a perfect example of what my mother always did with the facts of her life. She’d been trying to tell her daughter, from birth, who her father was without actually saying the words out loud. That way, mother could think to herself, “I did everything I could to tell her who her father is. You can lead a horse to water.” Except that a poverty-stricken girl in Fit’s Mill with a strenuously debilitated mother could hardly have been expected to connect those dots on her own.

  “I know,” I finally responded to Lucinda. “I think that was my mother’s sadly twisted way of trying to tell Issie who her father was. But I’d have to say, once again: impressed with your wide range of knowledge. Opera and hummingbirds. Have you always been this eclectic in your interests?”

  “Why else do you think you’re in love with me?” she said, smiling sweetly. “You don’t realize that we have, over the course of the many years we’ve known each other, talked about everything under the sun? Twice? What else do you think there is?”

  “Well,” I began, heading toward the bedroom, “you are extremely attractive. Plus, there’s your proven ability to save my life. That always makes a nice addition to a comfortable relationship.”

  “Oh, that.” She dismissed my pronouncement with the wave of a hand. “I had to do that. I’m a nurse. We have an oath. I take it very seriously.”

  “The same way you take being engaged to me very seriously,” I offered.

  “Damn right.”

  We made it into the bedroom, and the sudden sight of my bed made me so tired I almost collapsed.

  Then something occurred to me, admittedly the product of a sleep-deprived mind.

  “Look,” I said, “I know you were worried about me, and called Dr. Nelson to see if I had lost my entire bag of marbles, but was there something else at work in your bringing her here? Was there some ulterior agenda?”

  “Such as?” She yawned, sitting on the bed and getting out of her white shoes.

  “Was it a test?” I demanded

  “A test? Of what?” She slipped off her hat and tossed it onto the nearby chair.

  “Did you introduce me to Ceri Nelson to test my commitment to you?”

  She stopped undressing and glared at me. “What? Your commitment to me was tested by that woman?”

  I realized that I had somehow maneuvered myself into a stupidly dangerous patch of emotional landscape, and resolved to obviate any argument.

  “I think I made it clear downstairs at the kitchen table a few moments ago,” I said clearly, “how I feel about you. And in front of ‘that woman.’”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “I guess you did.”

  “Well, then.”

  “Okay,” she acquiesced. “Any other major points before I collapse? I didn’t realize how tired I was until I sat down.”

  “That’s exactly why I’m still standing,” I agreed. “If I sit, I’ll be out.”

  “So? What else?”

  “Did I tell you anything about the child? I can’t remember whether you know about that or not?”

  “There’s a child?” She woke up a little.

  “Not really,” I said quickly, “I just thought he was. It was David Newcomb, another little person in the family. Issie’s cousin, and a very troubled soul.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He was in the ambulance you passed coming up the mountain,” I told her. “Dead.”

  “He’s the one who shot you in the arm,” she assumed.

  “No,” I corrected her, “that was Issie. Turns out she may, at this point, be several people. Or one really great actor. Or a combination of the two. By the way, did you know there was a cave down the slope from this house? It’s a big cave with an entrance and an exit. I can’t understand why I never knew it was there.”

  Lucinda stared at me with all the intensity her exhausted eyes could muster. “Sweetheart, you knew that cave was there.”

  “What?” I stared back, only confused.

  “We used to—you and me, we used to go down there sometimes to spark in the younger days. You don’t remember that?”

  I suddenly felt very weak, and a little sick.

  “We quit going down there when we caught your momma and Tristan Newcomb doing the same thing as we were about to. We talked about it all the rest of that day. You know. It was near Thanksgiving day, that year before you left town for college.”

  The vague feeling of nausea remained.

  “I don’t remember” was all I could say.

  “Well, I’m not surprised. You were very upset. I’d like to forget about it myself.”

  “But.” I blinked. I took a breath to go on, but Lucinda interrupted me before I could speak.

  “Sweetheart,” she said, yawning, “I thought I could hear all this before I went to bed, but I’m worn out just hearing the highlights. I’m pretty sure I have to sleep now.”

  “You know—you’re right.” I stumbled toward the bed. “Sleep first. Then talk.”

  She was out of her nurse’s uniform in seconds, and under the covers, eyes closed.

  I struggled with my shirt, and it hurt my arm, but I was already half in dreams. I sat in my chair for a moment, avoiding the nurse’s hat, so that I could take off my boots, and glanced out the window at the snow in the soft morning light.

  For a second I thought I saw a dark figure in the woods just beyond the yard, someone hidden in the last bits of night there, but then a deer stepped out of the shadows and seemed to look up at the house.

  I thought then about the long, cold, lonely walk Isolde Newcomb—my sister—had made, many times, from Fit’s Mill, over the mountain on logging roads and through thick trees and rhododendrons, just to stand in those same shadows and stare into the house, my house. I imagined her longing; her impossible fantasies about what a happy family must have lived in this house. I could almost feel her desperation and rage; it was a nearly biological reaction. And as I felt a surge of compassion for her pain and sorrow, I understood that it was my sorrow, too. I had also stood on the outside of my family, looking in, always hoping for something that had never arrived: an actual family. Because Issie’s fantasies about what went on in this house were entirely fictitious. She was jealous of a mother who cared and a father who was present, and neither of those characters had ever existed. There were, indeed, figments of her imagination. And mine.

  For another instant I felt what she’d felt: shivering, out there in those woods, watching the warm light in the kitchen and the white, fragrant smoke from the chimney, imagining what lovely things must be going on in that house. Then, with equal clarity, I felt her turn away from the house in silence and begin to trudge through the snow on the long, long walk back to the place over the mountain where she lived, for the most part, alone.

  Thank God Lucinda murmured then, already asleep, or I might have drowned in melancholy. I somehow got out of my jeans and into the bed beside her. She sighed like a happy child when I pulled a second quilt over us, and finally settled in.

  I caught one last glimpse of the bare tree limbs out my window, just as the morning sun turned them white, almost burning, like lon
g thin candle flames. Behind them a vaguely charcoal sky was changing to the palest blue I had ever seen, and everything in the world was turning into light.

  POSTSCRIPT

  On the last day in January I returned home from a long, solitary walk in the woods to find that a parcel had been delivered to my door. From a distance I thought it might be a new loaf of bread from Orvid Newcomb, but as I stepped onto the porch it was obvious that the package was too narrow and square for that.

  I picked it up with no small amount of curiosity. Special delivery events have always been rare and suspicious commodities to me. I was all the more puzzled to see that it had come from Ceri Nelson.

  Stepping inside, I tore open the bundle. I switched on the lamp beside the door. Late afternoon was about to turn into evening, and the house was dark and cold.

  In the package there was a leather-bound book.

  There was also a very official-looking document entitled “Certificate of Sanity” suitable for framing. It had my name on it, in bold letters, and it was signed by Dr. Ceridwen Nelson. That made me smile—she was acknowledging that she had, indeed, lost her bet to me.

  Finally, there was a short, typed note, obviously also from Ceri:

  Fever,

  I hope this note finds you well. Enclosed please find the diary of Isolde Newcomb. I have her permission to send it to you; we both agreed that you might want to read it. More anon.

  Best,

  She had neglected or forgotten to sign it.

  I examined the accompanying book, flipping through its pages. It was nicely worn, and had no words of any sort on the cover, or lock, as some diaries have. It took me a minute to recognize the handwriting, but I realized finally that it was the same as the scrawl on the back of the photograph of Issie and me. It also came to me then that the date on the picture that we had all assumed to be her death date was, obviously, right around the time she must have discovered that Tristan was her father, and that I was her brother—a death of another kind. Many of the pages were blank; several had been torn out.

  I turned to the first page and read.

  Dear Diary,

  Mother gave you to me this morning for my tenth birthday, and then taught me how to write on your pages, and I am very proud to have you. Mother brought it to me from New Orleans, where I lived until I was five but do not remember it much because I was sickly. She has told me that it was a hot and humid place. She was gone for almost two months. I am glad that she is home. I have eat the last of the turnips and was wondering what might be my food in December.

  Dear Diary,

  I am sorry I did not write you for over a year but I have been put up at another house and did not have you near. Mother was gone for eighteen months, but she is here now. I stayed with a man name of Ramsey. He works in the gas station but he also makes good liquor. He’s a nice man, and even when he was drunk, which was most of the time, he was never mean to me. I asked Mother if he might be my father and she just laughed so I guess not.

  Dear Diary,

  I have spent all summer with Mother and I was glad of it for a while. She showed me how to cook and what to put in some of her potions. She told me not to tell anyone about her potions, but I guess it is all right if I tell you, because you are a book and not a person. But Mother is sad now, and I do not know what to do. She drinks all of Ramsey’s shine and it does her no good, because she cries or argues with me about little things such as which way the toilet paper goes on the roll, over or under. I cannot see how it matters, but she is very strict about things now. I do not know why.

  Dear Diary,

  I am writing a history essay for my school. I like school. My sixth-grade teacher is Mrs. Barksdale and she likes me. I will write my essay here for practice on penmanship, which counts.

  WORLD WARS, A HISTORY REPORT

  First there was World War I. The I is a Roman Numeral. That stands for One. It was about the Kaiser and the dreaded Hun. A Hun is a German person and a Kaiser is a man in a pointed helmet. That war was in 1917.

  After it was over there was a party that lasted ten years called the Roaring Twenties because everyone in America was twenty years old, or acted like it. There were flappers then. A flapper is a girl who cut her hair a certain way and rolled her stockings down. They drank gin from a bathtub and danced all over town.

  Then there came the Great Depression, when everybody felt really bad for a long time. People were lined up in straight lines, like for the cafeteria, just to get a loaf of bread. No one had any money, and it was very cold.

  Then came World War II. The II means Two. That war was about Hitler who was the worst person that ever lived. He was also a German person. He killed about a million people and shaved off the ends of his mustache so that it looked like there was a caterpillar on his lip. He did this to frighten children. We had to stop Hitler from living in the White House where the president was, so we went to Germany and we bombed Japan with the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb is one small bomb that packs a big wallop, and when we dropped it on a city, that city turned into a mushroom. That’s how powerful the atomic bomb is.

  World War III, and by now you know what the III means, is a secret war. It is being fought right now by invisible men. I think they cannot wear clothes or else you would see them, like The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells. For this reason the men who fight World War III are cold all the time, and so they call this the Cold War.

  I believe that we will keep having World Wars with lots of Roman Numerals because the Romans were a warlike people, as it tells us in our history book. We should stop using Roman Numerals because they cause wars and they are very difficult for a sixth-grader to learn.

  In conclusion, I believe that we are having wars the wrong way. When I play war outside with Billy Dendy, like Civil War or Army Man, we hide in the woods and we make sounds with our mouths. These sounds are for the guns and bombs.

  When someone gets exploded in our games, they make a big jump and a loud noise, but that is all. And then when it starts getting dark, Billy’s mother calls us and we go inside and have dinner.

  I believe that we should stop having wars until everyone in them can get up and go home to dinner with Billy Dendy’s family when it starts getting dark.

  All of these things are all true historical facts that were told to me by my Mother which is one of my three required sources, the other ones are the World Book Encyclopedia and our book, History Through the Ages.

  Dear Diary,

  It’s been some time since I wrote in these pages but I am upset and I have no one else to tell it to. A man named Hector Graves got smart with me today. He grabbed me and tried to feel under my skirt. I kicked him as hard as I could between his legs and you can bet he let go of me quick. I came home and told Mother, but now I am scared. She had been taking her medicine, which I don’t know what it is but it makes her nervous, and she was all red in the face and weepy. I thought she would tear down the house when I told her about Hector. She started screaming and sent me to my room. I heard her on the phone. I don’t know who she is calling, but I can feel that something bad is going to happen. The trouble is that I flirted with Hector before he grabbed me. I knew I ought not to do it. He was drunk and laughing, and I lifted my skirt twice, just for a second. I cannot tell this to Mother because she is mad as a hornet as it is. I hope she is not calling my school. I do not want them to know about this.

  Dear Diary,

  Guess what! I am taking you to Atlanta! After all these years, I am going to college! Mother has paid for the whole thing, which I do not know where she got the money, but I am as happy as I can ever remember. I love school, and there is a man in Atlanta who teaches at my school who Mother says is the best teacher in the land. He has a funny name like me, and he is not too old so I hope he will not be boring. As soon as I finish writing these lines, I will pack you into my suitcase and off we go!

  Dear Diary,

  It is the middle of my first semester at college and I am in love. I am in l
ove. I like to write that. He is my teacher Dr. Devilin but I call him Fever and he does not seem to mind. He told stories last week about Iseult who was an Irish princess and her name is also Isolde, like mine, in some of the stories. These are the most beautiful and romantic stories I have ever heard, and they are very old. They date to the second century AD, and have survived. Some of them are the basis for an opera by Wagner. Some of them influenced the King Arthur stories. I cannot say if I love these stories so much because I was named after the woman in them, or because I am in love with the man who is telling them to me. I will take all of his classes. He will notice me after a while. Even though I am shy in class and do not talk much, I can see him looking at me sometimes. He told us about a research trip he is taking after Christmas and I will go on that trip and he will see that I am in love with him and he will talk with me about it. I do not think I have ever been happier in my life.

  After that entry there were missing pages, torn roughly from the inner spine. On the last page in the book were written the following, baffling lines:

  Open up your fortresses of gold, you setting sun. Loosen and drive home the ruby leaves; now autumn’s here to stay. I see the breeze in the chestnut limbs. I know the silver rising of the moon behind the pines. I hear the music of the saddest song I know. It’s following behind me as across this wide mountain field I go, toward home.

  Excerpt from

  The Story of Tristan and Iseult

  DR. F. DEVILIN

  as found in

  The Journal of Jungian Folklore, Vol. 173

  Word of the knight Tristan preceded his coming, brave beyond measure, beautiful beyond compare. As the nephew of King Mark of Cornwall it was expected that he would find his way to his uncle’s court at Tintagel. He had already slain the Red Dragon of the Tamar Valley, and solved the riddle of the stone at Mên-an-Tol.

  But in the winter of his twenty-third year, he flew in between his uncle and an arrow meant to kill the king. He was mortally wounded, and would surely die. King Mark had heard, as everyone had, the stories of a great healer in Ireland, Iseult the Mother, and her daughter of the same name. He sent Tristan in a boat across the ocean to Ireland to be healed.