Guests on Earth: A Novel

by Lee Smith

  I was glad to enter the chapel where my sheet music, marked, awaited me at the organ, along with a little girl, one of ours, to turn the pages. Would my own little girl be musical? Would she perform this task for me? Or I, later, for her? At least it was cooler in the church, though there were few parishioners, mostly old women in black, filling not a quarter of the seats.

  The most remarkable thing about this old chapel is the big rose window behind the altar, which catches all the light, almost as if it is a light itself. As the mass continued, I watched that window turn from a vibrant pink to a darker rose to a sort of deep mauve. We all knew these signs. A storm was on the way. Several parishioners had already left, genuflecting as they slipped out with heads bowed. I had to stay until the final amen, of course. I thanked the girl and folded the music, leaving it on the organ, and bowed to Father, who put up a hand as if to stop me though I hurried on, hoping to make it back to Temps Perdu before the rain started, glad that at least I had remembered the raincoat, for I was so forgetful in those last days of pregnancy. Above all, I did not want to get wet, as it took days for things to dry on the wooden racks on the balcony at Temps Perdu, due to the humidity.

  Now the yellow air had turned dark and thick, though wind had begun to whip along the crowded sidewalk; traffic jammed the streets. A palm frond fell with a clatter as I rounded the corner and passed the post office. For a second I debated going in there for shelter, but then decided to make a run for it, taking a shortcut on the towpath by the river, which I usually avoided because of the shanties clustered alongside, inhabited by a changing collection of river people, as they were called—hoboes, grifters, drifters, and runaways. Down I went on the steps beside the bridge, then rushed along the dirt towpath, never looking to my left, where I knew that eyes were peering from the makeshift shacks. Occasionally someone called out to me, words snatched up by the rising wind. Halfway home I was already thinking, Oh why had I come this way? Why had I not stayed in the ancient stone safety of St. Catherine’s? Where I never prayed when I was playing, though now I began to pray in earnest as the sky turned pitch-black and the first long roll of thunder came across it and then the lightning struck so close that I could feel it all around us, illuminating each tree and leaf and bit of blowing debris on the towpath. “Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope,” I said, but it was already too late.

  “Honey, honey now, you better get out of dis storm, you better get on in here, cherie.” A deep voice, as big hands pulled me into the shack. Then those hands were on me—on us, everywhere—until I was down on my back in the mud, down but still twisting and fighting him off and then I was biting, hard, and he was yelling, and then a woman was yelling, too, saying, “You crazy thing, what you do, what you doing to her, oh Mother of God! You damn fool, what you doing here? Oh God, what you done?” and then I was rolling over and out, under the side, and stumbling back up onto the towpath where all was rushing dark and trees were falling everyplace. I knew somebody was coming after me. But then we were hit, hard, from the back, and I fell forward onto my knees in the mud.

  I was already in labor when I woke up, I could feel her alive and coming, straight through a wall of pain. But why wasn’t I at the charity hospital? Instead, I was surrounded by the beloved and concerned faces of my friends at Temps Perdu—the Hungarian tumblers from upstairs, identical twins; the sword swallower, Jean LeBlon; the jugglers; Madame Romanetsky’s son Michael; the old clown Hugo; and the little dwarf lady, Mrs. Franz, who had made me the soft pink blanket. I saw them all in the yellow glow of a hurricane lamp and several big, fat wavy candles that cast a flickering circle of light around all of us. The river people had brought me here, carried me here, through the flooded streets. I suppose I had told them to. The storm still roared outside, I could hear it. I knew we were lucky to be alive.

  “But where is Madame? Where is Madame?” everyone kept asking and then there she was finally, the fortuneteller, Madame Romanetsky, a huge presence in her familiar scarlet cape, striding into the circle abruptly, shedding water as she came straight over to me and placed both hands on my abdomen. Beneath the dripping black curls, a huge smile appeared on her face. “Aha! Showtime! Yes, my little Evalina?”

  “Yes,” I said, smiling back, as she touched my forehead gently, the sign of the cross.

  “Then let’s get to work. Michael, go get us a basin of water, and another sheet or two, and Sasha, you bring all the towels you can find . . .” Madame Romanetsky barked out directions as people scattered to do her bidding. Meanwhile she shed layer after layer of clothing, from spangled dress to shift to undershirt and knee-length shorts, then tied back her snaky hair, whereupon it became clear that she was actually a man. In fact he was a handsome man. He grinned at me. “Surprised, no?”

  “Yes,” I managed to say.

  “Do not worry, my sweet. I have done this before. Many times before, in a different life. Doctor Roman is here now! And soon”—gently he parted my knees and peered below, holding a candle—“very soon, I’d say—another person will be here with us in the room as well. A miracle! Now, Michael, the basin, please, and that cloth . . .” He washed my face off carefully with the cool water, clucking and dabbing at my injuries. “Never mind, my sweet,” he said, “soon you shall be pretty again, and best of all, you will have a baby!” He gave me water to drink, then brandy, making me swallow it straight from the bottle. “Medicine!” he grinned. “And now, my friends, if you will—” Doctor Roman made a sweeping gesture, clearing most from the room, before he washed me carefully all over. By then I was beyond embarrassment, having passed into that realm of gold, of purest pain and joy. I was thinking, I will remember this moment for the rest of my life. And now it is true. “Soon,” he said. “It will be soon. And when I tell you, push!”

  Suddenly it was happening, I was pushing and then she was coming, and then she wasn’t, though my blood poured onto the towels. Doctor Roman was reaching inside me. He sat up. “Go—bring Mrs. Franz back, like the wind,” he said to Michael, beside him.

  “This will be more complicated than we would wish,” he told me, “as this baby is choosing to make its entrance feet first! Perhaps it will be a tumbler—a little acrobat, no? Ah, Mrs. Franz!” for she had arrived and stood trembling beside us, her mouselike face terrified. “Can you help us?”

  “No . . . no . . .” She spoke faintly.

  “Ah, but you must help us, dear, for your hands are so much smaller than mine. You see? Look!” Doctor Roman spread his own large hand in the air. “Now, go over there and wash up in the sink, with the soap, and then come back, yes, that’s it. Now come here, beside me, where you can see.” The Hungarian twins stood holding the hurricane lamp out over us, first one of them and then the other, both still as posts, never wavering. “And I will be right here, darling, just do exactly what I tell you. You are a huge help, darling little Mrs. Franz, you will save the day.” Mrs. Franz was crying silently, huge tears rolling down her mousey face, all nose, and then I couldn’t see her anymore over the great heaving mound of my belly, and then I couldn’t see at all, anything.

  When I came to, Doctor Roman was cutting the cord with a sharp silver knife, and I was already holding my baby who was beautiful, just beautiful, as I had known she would be, round blue eyes and all that curly dark hair, and perfect in every way. I touched her fingers and her toes. “All present and accounted for!” said Doctor Roman, beaming. Others were clapping him on the back, but Michael kissed him full on the mouth. Oh! I thought. Not his son . . . the sword-swallower’s girlfriend came in with a big bottle of red wine for everybody to pass around while my baby made snuffly noises as I held her. That was before the storm was over and we went to the hospital, that was before her head began to swell, and swell, and swell. Three days later they took the shunt and the tubes out, and she died in my arms at the charity hospital, where they kept me for a long while afterward.

  PIETÀ. NOW I remembered it all—the feel of her, the smell o
f her, and once I remembered, I had her with me from then on, and I have her still. She will never leave me, nor I her. Pietà. I blew out the candles in the drawing room at Highland one by one, put on my coat and gloves and walked out into the beautiful new-fallen snow, still and unbroken all around. I knew I should go back to my room. Instead, looking down toward Asheville, I had a sudden, overwhelming urge to plunge off down that mountainside and find Pan deep in his lair, beneath the smooth white sweep of snow, for he was my kind, and now I knew it. I stood out there until the church bells began to ring out all over Asheville, from mountain to mountain, across the clear cold air. Midnight, Christmas Eve. I headed back to Graystone.

  CHAPTER 12

  CHRISTMAS MARKED THE END of something, and the beginning of something else. I could feel it running through my body like my blood. Time itself seemed to change in nature, both speeding up and slowing down simultaneously. The remainder of my life at Highland would be very brief, though the snow made it seem like forever.

  And at a mental institution, snow changes everything. Of course, patients are already cut off from the rest of the world, but now they really felt like it; now they knew it. Mail didn’t come; buses didn’t run; frequently, staff members couldn’t make it into work. Visitors couldn’t get there either. The kitchen ran out of eggs, bread, and once—horrors!—coffee! There was no more required hiking every day in the fresh air. Now everyone must participate in supervised exercise classes in the gymnasium, which didn’t go too well, with whistles frequently blown, and patients stalking angrily off the floor. I didn’t blame them. The all-important routine was broken, producing anxiety, at the very least, and often more serious disturbances. January and February are the worst months for depression anyway, as everyone knows. All the rooms on the top floor of the Central Building were taken, it was whispered, with extra beds placed up and down the halls.

  Yet somehow—perhaps because I was living at Graystone now—I didn’t mind the snow. In fact, I liked it. For once, the inexorable kaleidoscope had stopped turning, so that I could catch my breath. Now we all lived inside the snow globe that was wintertime at Highland, 1948. This was our whole world. Yet it was also infinite, the open landscape of our dreams and desires. For the very terrain was changed. Familiar hills and dips and stone benches and even ravines disappeared, to be replaced by the shining topography of the snow. The unbroken surface of a new world stretched out before us, a world where anything was possible.

  Soon after Christmas, I was awakened in the middle of the night by an ambulance pulling up in front of Graystone with its red lights blinking in my window; two uniformed crewmen jumped out and opened up the back to haul out a stretcher. They were met on the icy sidewalk by Suzy Caldwell and Dr. Schwartz, suddenly materializing out of nowhere. Beneath the streetlight, Dr. Schwartz’s hair surrounded her face like a frizzy dark halo; Suzy’s plaid wool pajama pants hung down below her winter coat. I ran down the steps to hold the front door open, while Suzy and Dr. Schwartz followed the men with the stretcher, which contained a prone, tightly-wrapped female figure, hands folded, eyes closed. They set her down in the hall while taking care of the paperwork.

  I knelt beside the stretcher. “Amanda?” I asked.

  She opened her eyes, then gave me a wink. “Tampa was terrible,” she said.

  The minute the emergency crew left, Amanda jumped up to hug Dr. Schwartz. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she cried. “I can never thank you enough!” Dr. Schwartz put a finger to her lips, and Amanda continued in a whisper. Not only was the Judge a sex fiend, she said; he was also crazy. Amanda understood this now. She had pretended to be catatonic until he finally sent her back to Asheville.

  “I swear, it was the only way I could get out of there alive,” she said. “He would have killed me if I tried to leave him.”

  “I said I’ll help you, and I will,” Dr. Schwartz promised, “but you’ve got to be sick for a while, you understand. I could lose my job over this.”

  Immediately, Amanda’s whole pretty face went slack, and her head dropped forward in a parody of depression. “How’s this?”

  “That’s good,” Dr. Schwartz said, “but you don’t want to overdo it, either. Now Suzy, and Evalina, I don’t have to tell you that this is a very sensitive, confidential matter.”

  “You can count on me, Doc.” Suzy sounded exactly like George Fayne in my beloved Nancy Drew books.

  “Me, too,” I said immediately.

  “I know I can, Evalina.” She smiled at me. “And you are very, very good at keeping secrets.” Thin, small Dr. Schwartz was a moral giant, I realized, a woman of uncommon principle. I respected her immensely.

  Amanda was assigned the other corner room upstairs. Her story made me worry about Dixie. Why hadn’t I heard from her yet?

  A Christmas visit back home with Mama had been entirely too much for Myra, also, who returned to us disheveled and weepy. And Ruth had been “bored out of her skull” she announced, immediately setting off through the snow on foot to help with inventory at her beloved job in town. Very soon, she’d move into her own apartment and work there full-time, Highland Hospital behind her so long as she took her medications. We were all more or less on our own at Graystone those days, with Suzy Caldwell’s visits very infrequent because of the snow.

  JINX CERTAINLY MADE the most of this situation. We all liked her—you couldn’t help liking Jinx—that ready grin so full of life, totally undiminished by everything that had happened to her, the bright green eyes darting everywhere, missing nothing. Everyone was drawn to Jinx as if to a flame; when she was present, it was like she was the only person in the room. You couldn’t stop looking at her. Yet we were wary of her, too, instinctively I suppose, for we never discussed this among ourselves. It was not so much that Jinx was younger, but that she was so different from the rest of us, different in kind, in a way we soon came to understand. For Jinx had no moral sensibility at all; she believed that the rules didn’t apply to her, so they didn’t. Boys were often involved, though who knows how or where she met some of them—a grease monkey from town; a Western Union delivery boy in a uniform; another who appeared in a big truck wearing a cowboy hat, grinning from ear to ear. I liked that one.

  I knew I should have turned her in the day I came back after work to hear honkytonk radio music the minute I opened the door and found Jinx and Horace, one of the black boys from the kitchen, drinking from a paper cup and jitterbugging like crazy on the flowered parlor rug. “Hey Evalina! Woo woo!” she called out as Horace swung her around, rolling his eyes at me. The beat was rapid, hard. Horace appeared to be double-jointed as he twisted down to the floor. I took off my coat and sat down to watch, soon joined by Myra who whispered to me in a disconsolate way, “You know, I will never have that much fun in my whole life. Never.” A true statement if I ever heard one.

  But I never turned Jinx in for anything. I knew that she was only passing through—a phenomenon, like a comet. And only once was I truly upset by her behavior at Graystone.

  I HAD RUN back in the middle of the day to get something I’d forgotten, and was at first amused to hear the bumping of the bed against her wall, along with masculine laughter and Jinx’s own flat little voice. But I soon became uneasy—not only because I feared someone else might come in, too, and then we’d be compelled to act—but also because these sounds brought back certain memories. I sank to the steps, clinging to the newel post at the bottom. Then came Jinx’s high-pitched animal cry, followed by heavy footsteps on the floor, the slamming door, and suddenly he bolted down the staircase right past me, taking the steps two at a time as he put on his jacket.

  But it was a man, not a boy—and I was very surprised to realize that it was Charles Winston, the shell-shocked veteran who had collapsed in Dr. Sledge’s therapy group, the one who had shot the little girl during the war. He was almost ready to be released, I knew, back to his family in Winston-Salem and the giant tobacco business that awaited him. Luckily he didn’t even notice me, charging ri
ght past as he adjusted his cap and pulled on his gloves against the cold. I could hear Jinx running water and singing in the bathroom when I finally crept up to my room and retrieved the music I had come for, then walked swiftly back to the hospital, telling no one.

  I FOUND MYSELF haunting Hortitherapy whenever I could, especially in the afternoon when my work was finished, always on the lookout for Pan, though he was seldom present, most often out working with the grounds crew as they struggled to keep the roads and walkways cleared. I also looked for him as I walked to and from Graystone, and watched for him from the hospital windows throughout the day, but he was hard to see. He was always hard to see.

  Mrs. Morris kept a fire in her woodstove and a pot of spice tea going on top of it, trying to maintain the sense of homeyness she strove for, I believe, trying to create a little oasis of life in all that snow. Actually there was not much real work to be done in the dead of winter, though she was endlessly inventive. Each resident had one or two African violets to take care of, snipping back, watering, and feeding, all of them placed on the long shelf in front of the picture window where they produced a truly breathtaking array of blooms, like a cheerful little crowd with their brightly clustered blossoms. Beyond them, through the picture window, the glistening snow swept up toward the dark tree line.