by John Saul
June moved to face her daughter, but the effort was too much for her distended body. As she sank back into her seat she reflected that it might be difficult to explain the old small-town custom of welcome wagons to a twelve-year-old city child anyway. Instead, as they passed the Paradise Point school, she touched her daughter’s hand.
“Doesn’t look much like Harrison, does it?” she asked.
Michelle stared at the small white clapboard building, surrounded by a grassy playfield, then grinned, her elfin face reflecting her pleasure at what she saw. “I always thought they automatically paved the playfield,” she said. “And trees. You can actually sit under trees while you eat lunch!”
Two blocks past the school, Cal slowed the car nearly to a stop. “I wonder if I should stop in and speak to Carson?” he mused.
“Is that the clinic?” Michelle asked. Her voice revealed that she didn’t think much of it.
“Compared to Boston General, it isn’t much, is it?” Cal said. Then, barely audibly, he added, “But maybe it’s where I belong.”
June glanced quickly at her husband, then reached out to squeeze his hand. “It’s just right,” she assured him. The car came to a full stop, and the three Pendletons looked at the one-story building, no larger than a small house, that contained the Paradise Point Clinic. On the weatherbeaten sign in front, they could barely read the name of Josiah Carson, but Cal’s own name, in freshly painted black letters, stood out clearly.
“Maybe I’ll just pop in and let him know we got here all right,” Cal suggested. He was about to get out of the car when June’s voice stopped him.
“Can’t you go later? The van’s already at the house, and there’s so much to do. Dr. Carson won’t be expecting you to stop. Not today.”
She’s right, Cal told himself, though he felt a twinge of guilt. He owed Carson so much. But still, tomorrow would be soon enough. He closed the door and put the car in gear. A moment later the clinic disappeared from sight, the village was suddenly behind them, and they were on the road that paralleled the cove.
June let herself relax. Today, at least, she wouldn’t have to see the old doctor who had suddenly become such a major force in her life, a force she neither liked, nor trusted. A bond had sprung up between her husband and Josiah Carson, and it seemed to be growing stronger each day. She wished she understood it better—all she knew, really, was that it had to do with that boy.
That boy who had died.
Resolutely, she put it out of her mind. For now, she would concentrate on Paradise Point.
It was a pretty drive, deep forests on the inland side, and a narrow expanse of grass and bracken separating the road from the crest of the bluffs that dropped precipitously to the tiny bay below.
“Is that our house?” Michelle asked. Silhouetted against the horizon, a house stood out starkly from the landscape, its mansard roofline and widow’s walk etched against the blue sky.
“That’s it,” June replied. “What do you think?”
“It looks great from here. But what’s the inside like?”
Cal chuckled. “About the same as the outside. You’ll love it.”
As they approached the house that was to be their new home; Michelle let her eyes wander over the landscape. It was beautiful, but, in a way, strange. She found it difficult to imagine actually living with all this space. And the neighbors—instead of being right through the wall, they were going to be almost a quarter of a mile away. And, she noticed excitedly, with a graveyard between them. An actual, for-real, old-fashioned, broken-down cemetery. As the car passed the graveyard, Michelle pointed it out to her mother. June looked at it with interest, then asked Cal if he knew anything about it. He shrugged.
“Josiah told me it’s his old family plot, but that they don’t use it anymore. Or, I guess, he doesn’t plan to use it. Says he’s going to be buried in Florida, and doesn’t give a damn if he never sees Paradise Point again.”
June laughed out loud. “That’s what he says now. But wait’ll he gets there. Bet you a nickel he hotfoots it right back up here again.”
“And tries to buy the practice back from me? And the house? No, I think he’s really looking forward to getting away from here.” He paused a moment, then: “I think that accident shook him up more than he’s let on.”
Suddenly the laughter left June’s voice. “It shook us all up, didn’t it?” she said quietly. “And we didn’t even know the boy. But here we are. Strange, isn’t it?”
Cal made no reply.
Their new home—Josiah Carson’s old home.
His new life—Josiah Carson’s old life.
Who, Cal silently wondered, was fleeing from what?
As the car came to a stop in front of the house, Michelle leaped out and stared up in rapture at the Victorian ornateness of the place, ignoring the peeling paint and worn woodwork that gave the house a curiously foreboding look.
“It’s like a dream,” she breathed. “Are we really going to live in this?”
Standing beside her, Cal put his arm around his daughter’s shoulders and squeezed her affectionately. “Like it, princess?”
“Like it? How could anyone not like it? It looks like something out of a storybook.”
“You mean it looks like something out of Charles Addams,” June said, emerging from her side of the car. She peered up to the high roof of the three-story house and shook her head. “I keep getting the feeling that there must be bats up there.”
Michelle frowned at her mother. “If you don’t like it, why did we buy it?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” June added quickly. “Actually, I love it. But you have to admit, it’s a far cry from a condominium in Boston.” She paused a moment, then: “I hope we’ve done the right thing.”
“We have,” Michelle said. “I know we have.” Leaving her parents standing next to the car, she bounded up onto the porch and disappeared through the front door. Cal reached out and took his wife’s hand.
“It’s going to be fine,” he said, the first acknowledgment either of them had made to the fears they had shared about the move. “Come on, let’s go look around.”
They had bought the house furnished, and after very little discussion had decided not to try to sell the furniture that came with it. Instead, they had sold their own. Their furniture had been simple and low, and though it had fit perfectly into their Boston apartment, June’s artistic eye had told her immediately that it was wrong for the high ceilings and ornate decor of the Victorian. They had decided that a change of lifestyle might as well involve a change of taste, and now they explored the house together, wondering how long it would take them to get used to their new environment.
The living room, set carefully behind a small reception room to the right of the front door, was piled high with the boxes containing their lives. One quick look was enough to shake June’s confidence about the wisdom of their project, but Cal, reading his wife’s mind, assured her that she could relax—he and Michelle would take care of the unpacking; all she had to do was to tell them where to put things. June smiled at him in relief, and they went on to the dining room.
“What on earth are we going to put into all those china cupboards?” June asked, not really expecting an answer.
“China, of course,” Cal said easily. “I’ve always heard that possessions expand to fill space. Now we’ll find out. Are we going to have to eat in here?” The doleful look on his face as he surveyed the formal dining table with its twelve chairs made June laugh out loud.
“I’ve already got it figured out. We’ll convert the butler’s pantry into another dining room.” She led him through a swinging door, and Cal shook his head.
“How the hell could people live like this? It’s obscene.” The butler’s pantry, containing a sink and a refrigerator, was larger than their dining room had been in Boston.
“It’s particularly obscene when you consider this place was built by a minister,” June observed archly.
Cal’s brows rose in surprise. “Who told you that?”
“Dr. Carson, of course. Who else?” Before Cal could make any reply, June had proceeded into the kitchen. This, she had already decided, was where the family would live.
It was a huge room, a fireplace dominating one wall, with two large stoves, and a walk-in refrigerator, which had been disconnected years earlier. When he had taken them through the house, Josiah Carson had suggested that they tear it out, but Cal had thought the old refrigerator would make an ideal wine cellar: perfectly insulated, though prohibitively expensive to use for its original purpose.
June walked over to the sink and tried the tap. The pipes rattled for a few seconds, coughed twice, then produced a gushing stream of clear, unchlorinated water.
“Lovely,” June murmured. Her eyes went to the window, and her face lit up with a smile.
Beyond the window, some fifty feet from the house, there was an old brick building with a slate roof that had once been used as a potting-shed. It was the potting-shed that had convinced June that the house would be perfect for them. One look had told her that it could easily be changed into a studio—a studio where she could spend endless blissful hours with her canvases, developing a style that would be truly her own, something she had never been able to accomplish in Boston.
Seeing the smile on her face, Cal once more read his wife’s mind.
“Let’s see,” he said thoughtfully, brushing his hair back from his brow. “There’s the butler’s pantry to change into a dining room, and the potting-shed to change into a studio. Then I suppose I could change the barn into a workshop, the front parlor into a sauna, and the study into a surgery. Once that’s finished—”
“Oh, stop it!” June cried. “I promise you, I’ll do everything in the studio myself, and most of the butler’s pantry, too, All you have to do is unpack—and then get on with your country doctor act!”
“Promise?”
“Promise,” June said softly, coming into his arms and hugging him close. “Everything will be all right now. I’m sure it will.” She wished she truly believed her own words.
Cal kissed his wife, then let his hand rest for a second on her rounded belly. Under his fingers, he could feel the baby move. “We’d better get upstairs and figure out where the nursery is going to be. Seems to me like this little critter is about to make its debut.”
“Not for six weeks yet, at least,” June replied. But she happily followed her husband upstairs, eager to decide which room could best be changed into a nursery. There’s that word again, she thought. This seems to be our year to change.
They found Michelle on the second floor, in a corner bedroom commanding a sweeping view of the bay, Devil’s Passage, and the ocean beyond. To the northeast, the village of Paradise Point stood in silhouette, the spires of its three tiny churches thrusting upward, while its neat white frame buildings huddled close together, as if to protect each other from the furies that raged constantly in the waters around them. June and Cal joined their daughter, and for a moment the small family stood together, examining their new world. Their arms slipped around each other, and for a long moment, they reveled in a closeness and warmth they hadn’t felt for a long time. It was June who finally brought them back to reality.
“We’d thought this might be the nursery,” she said tentatively. Michelle, seeming to come out of a trance, turned to them.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I want this room. Please?”
“But there’s a much bigger room on the other side of the house,” June objected. “This one’s so small …”
“But all I need is my bed and a chair,” Michelle pleaded. “Can’t I have this one? I could sit on the window seat forever, just looking out.”
June and Cal looked at each other uncertainly, neither of them able to think of a reasonable objection. Then Michelle went to the closet, and the question was settled. Michelle reached up and groped around at the back of the closet shelf.
“There is something here,” she said triumphantly. “I had a feeling there was something in this closet, and I was right Look!”
In her hand, Michelle held a doll. Old and dusty, it had a porcelain face framed by hair almost as dark as her own and a little lace bonnet. Its gray dress, faded and torn, must once have been covered with ruffles, and on its feet were a tiny pair of cracked patent leather shoes. June and Cal stared at it in surprise.
“Where do you suppose it came from?” June wondered aloud.
“I’ll bet it’s been there for centuries,” Michelle said. “But it must have belonged to a little girl once, and this must have been her room. May I have it? Please?”
“The doll, or the room?” Cal asked.
“Both!” Michelle cried, sure her parents were about to give in.
“Well, I don’t see why not,” Cal said. “We’d probably do better to have the nursery right next to our room anyway. We can convert one of the dressing rooms, I suppose,” he added with an amused glance at June. Then he took the doll from Michelle and inspected it carefully. “It looks just like you,” he observed. “Same brown hair, same brown eyes. Same raggedy clothes!”
Michelle snatched the doll away from her father, and stuck her tongue out at him. “If my clothes are raggedy, it’s your fault. If you couldn’t afford to dress me, you should have left me in the orphanage!”
“Michelle!” June gasped. “What a thing to say. You didn’t come from an orphanage …”
It wasn’t until her husband and her daughter began laughing that she realized it was a joke between them, and relaxed. Then the child inside her moved, and June suddenly found herself wondering what would happen when the baby arrived. Michelle had been an only child for so long. What would it be like for her? Would she feel threatened? June remembered everything she had read lately about sibling rivalry. What if Michelle hated the new baby? June put the thought out of her mind. Her eyes fell on the sea outside the window, the gulls wheeling overhead, the sun shining brightly. On the spur of the moment, she determined to spend as much time as she could enjoying the sun. It wouldn’t, after all, last forever. Fall was coming, and after that, winter. But for now, there was a warmth to the air. Impulsively, she left Cal and Michelle to begin unpacking while she went out to explore what was to be her studio.
They worked as quickly as they could, but the mountain of boxes seemed to remain as high as ever.
“Want to knock off a while, princess?” Cal finally asked. “There’s a couple of Cokes in the refrigerator.” Michelle promptly left the carton she was struggling with and preceded her father through the dining room, the butler’s pantry, and into the kitchen. She threw herself into a chair and grinned happily.
“Imagine—a butler’s pantry! Did Dr. Carson have a butler when he lived here?”
“I don’t think so,” Cal replied, expertly flipping the caps off two bottles and handing one to Michelle. “I think he lived here all by himself.”
Michelle’s eyes widened. “Really? That’d be creepy.”
“Place getting to you already?” There was a teasing tone to Cal’s voice that made Michelle grin.
“Not yet. But if anything comes creeping at me through the door tonight, things might change.” Her gaze went to the window, and she fell silent for a moment.
“Something on your mind, princess?” her father asked.
Michelle nodded, and when she faced her father, there was a seriousness in her eyes that struck Cal as being beyond her years.
“I’m glad we came here, Daddy,” she said finally. “I don’t want you to be unhappy anymore.”
“I haven’t been unhappy—” Cal began, but Michelle didn’t let him finish.
“Yes, you have,” she insisted. “I could always tell. For a while I thought you were mad at me, because you never came home from the hospital—”
“I was busy—”
Again she interrupted him. “But then you started coming home again, and you were still unhappy. It wasn’t until we decided to move out
here that you started being happy again. Didn’t you like Boston?”
“It wasn’t Boston,” Cal began, unsure how to explain to his daughter what had happened. The image of a little boy flashed through his mind, but Cal forced it away immediately. “It was just me, I guess. I—I can’t really explain it.” He smiled suddenly. “I guess I just want to know the people I’m treating.”
Michelle turned the matter over in her mind and eventually nodded. “I think I know what you mean. Boston General was weird.”
“Weird? What do you mean?”
Michelle shrugged, searching for the right words. “I don’t know. It was like they never knew who you were. And when Mom and I went there, they never even knew we were your family. That snotty one in the main lobby always wanted to know why we wanted to see you. You’d think that after this many years, she’d have recognized us.…” Michelle’s voice trailed off, and she gazed at her father, wondering if he understood. Cal nodded.
“That’s it,” he said, relieved that he wouldn’t have to tell her the truth. “That’s it, exactly. And it was the same way with the people I treated. If I saw them three days later, I wouldn’t recognize them. If I’m going to be a doctor, I think I ought to have the fun of knowing who I’m helping.” He grinned at Michelle and decided to change the subject. “What about you? Any regrets?”
“About what?” Michelle asked.
“Coming out here. Leaving your friends. Changing schools. All the sorts of things girls your age are supposed to worry about.”
Michelle sipped on her Coke, then looked around the kitchen. “Harrison wasn’t such a great school,” she said at last. “The one in Paradise Point is much prettier.”
“And a lot smaller,” Cal pointed out.
“And it probably doesn’t have a bunch of kids wrecking it all the time, either,” Michelle added. “And as for friends, I’d have had to make new friends next year, anyway, wouldn’t I?”
Cal looked at her in surprise. “What do you mean?”