by A. LaFaye
Rubbing the surface of the desk, I remembered how I wished Pater had written a letter to me. Jake and I wrote to each other, just for the fun of getting letters in the mail. But I longed to be a part of the letters that swallowed up so much of Pater’s time. I even snitched one once to read it, but Pater appeared as if on a wind and snatched it away from me, shouting, “Never read! Never read!” He shook it over me. I thought I’d disappear under the weight of his anger. I ran and hid under my bed.
From then on, he kept his letters locked away. And we never talked of them. But I still liked to study at the rolltop. I felt closer to Pater, almost as if I sat in the shadow of his soul.
He found me studying when he came in hours later. Standing over my shoulder, he closed the book. “Minds never fill up, but new thoughts need to be strong and clear to stay.” He kissed the top of my head. “Sleep now.”
“Okay, Pater.” I shuffled out of my chair.
“Night, Lyza.” He sat down.
And I went off to sleep with math problems tumbling over unopened letters in my head.
Fever
“Mayra!” Pater’s call for Mater yanked me out of sleep. Did he call out of a nightmare?
“Mayra!” he called again—a sharp needy cry.
Mater didn’t answer with her soft, “Coming, Evan,” echoed by the slithery shuffle of her slippered feet across the hardwood floors.
Panic struck me like the sudden shocking chill of falling into icy water. Racing to their bedroom, I saw Pater fluttering over Mater, his hands sweeping over her sweaty face, then tucking the blankets snuggly under her. Her eyes closed, her body still, I knew the fever had taken her deep inside herself.
“I’ll get Dr. Mansfield!” I shouted on my way out the door. We’d slept through the day. I found myself stumbling into the darkness of early night.
Going down the point and along the shore meant an hour’s ride by bike, even longer on foot, so I slid into Pater’s boots on the seaside porch, then ran for the cliff, the laces snapping me in the calves.
Cursing myself for not seeing the sickness when Mater swooned, I crossed the beach, then scrambled over the rocks to reach our boat. As I rowed into the waves, the black sea rolled and sprayed almost as if it flowed against the tide to hurry me along.
I stumbled on the Barclay Street Pier, but didn’t stop. I just picked myself up and ran toward Primmel Square with my knees bloody and aching. “Dr. Mansfield! Dr. Mansfield!” I shouted as I crossed his cobblestone courtyard. He’d taken to sleeping in his office since the influenza had come to Kingsley Cove.
He had the door open before I reached it, one hand on the knob, the other struggling to find the end of his coat sleeve.
“Lyza?” he asked into the dark, settling into his coat and grabbing for his bag. “Lyza Layton?”
“It’s Mater. The fever’s got her.”
“Evan must be beside himself,” he said, closing the door and flipping the wooden sign below the lantern so it read, “Out on a Fever Call.” He scribbled our last name on it in chalk.
The fever had Mater, but we all knew Pater was the one in real danger. Folks said he had only half a mind, so he needed Mater to do his thinking for him.
That’s what folks said, and the truth clung to their words a bit before it fell away. But there was no denying Mater’s illness would run him ragged.
By the time I got back with Dr. Mansfield, Pater had Mater cocooned in blankets and warmed by a raging fire that nearly leapt over the hearth. The doctor hurried into the room, saying, “I’m here, Evan. I’m here.”
“It’s so high her lips are blistered!” Pater shouted.
His words drove nails through my feet and pinned me to the doorway. Fever blisters. A fever so high it burned the skin. The thought of it made me run my cold hands over my face. “Mater,” I whispered, seeing myself walking into the trees, the mourning bell echoing behind me, my black skirt swaying against my legs, my hand gripped tight around a brass handle. A keening note falling silent on my lips, I squeezed my eyes against the vision.
Even in the hallway outside the room, I could hear the tremble of Dr. Mansfield’s voice, “What a shame. What a shame.”
Pater shouted, “There’s no shame here! She’s sick. Sick.”
“I know, Evan.” Dr. Mansfield tried to calm Pater. “But there’s nothing I can do.”
“Medicine. She needs medicine.”
“There is no medicine to stop a fever like this one.”
“Ice? Can we bring up ice?”
We had an icehouse in our cliff. The best in the area. So many folks paid to store ice there, we had it packed high enough to butt heads with the bats.
I jumped up, ready to help Pater haul ice up the cliff, but Dr. Mansfield looked at me with the certainty of death in his eye. He shook his head.
Stepping into the room, I said, “You know how Mater hates ice, Pater.”
Pater shivered. “It’ll be the death of me.” He mimicked Mater right down to the burring lip buzz she always ended that sentence with.
Sitting down beside her, he stroked her face. “We went ice-skating on Sheffield Pond, the three of us. Lyza in her furs on a sled. Mayra and me on skates. We whirled and swirled. But Mayra let go.” Pater’s eyes had the glassy look of memory in them. “‘Let me show you how to skate backwards!’ she said. She went back and back. She laughed. Then she fell. The ice broke, like an old floor giving way. I ran. Got a big thick stick like I seen in a book Mayra read to me. Held it out. She grabbed it. I pulled. I pulled. Lyza’s furs kept her warm.”
Pater jumped up. “She needs Lyza’s furs!” He ran for the nursery, where they kept all my baby things.
Dr. Mansfield watched him go, then his eyes settled on me. “Come here, child.” He held his hand out. “You haven’t a lot of time.”
I took his hand. It felt sweaty and cold at the same time, much as I did when the fever had me in its grip last winter. I let him pull me to the bed. He backed away. I sat beside Mater. Kissing her cheek, Mater’s skin burning my lips, I put both my hands on her face to cool it, pulling back just enough to see her eyes. “I love you, Mater. I love you.”
What good would it do to beg for her life. I’d only waste what little time I had. “I love how your laugh sounds like the beating of a hundred moth wings. I love how you put your penny prints in the crust of a pie. How you lick the back of your thumb, then swipe it hard and quick against my cheek to make a point. I love . . . I love . . .” The tears came too hard, I couldn’t catch my breath. I just buried my face in hers, hoping my tears would cool her.
I felt warmth, like a thick blanket covering me. My baby furs, the very things Pater had bundled me in when I fell sick. Surviving that illness left an invisible blanket inside me that protected me. Why couldn’t I slip it out, wrap Mater in it?
Felt the soothing weight of Pater lying next to us, his arms wrapping around us, his voice a deep distant murmuring. “Go away. Go away. Go away.”
Pater tried to chant the fever back, but he couldn’t. It swallowed Mater and never let go. She died at dawn, the birds chittering in the trees outside the window, the grass glossy with dew, the funeral wall aflame with the pinks of the rising sun.
“Good-bye, Mater.” I kissed her cooling cheeks and sat up, my own face wet with sweat from being wrapped in the furs.
Pater had fallen asleep next to her, his head resting on her chest, listening to her heart.
“I need to go into town, tell Verna. She’ll bring your uncles out to help.” Dr. Mansfield moved toward the door, the back door, even though the boat was docked around front.
I nodded, following him, feeling the chill of his fear in his wake.
“They’ll be here soon, Lyza.” He stumbled out the door. “Soon.”
Closing the door behind him, I leaned my back against it. My mind filled with the bitter sting of colliding ideas—Mater died. An idea so hard and quick that it cut straight though me. Pater would wake to find her gone. That thought seemed as
deep and teeming as the sea. And in it, I could lose him too.
I’m adrift in a boat gray with age. No oars. The water dark. The sky full of night. I sit in the middle, facing the bow as it points toward the shore. I hear Mater’s cello call. The deep, mournful notes drift over the low, lapping waves. Her lantern burns on the rock. I see no one. Not even the door of Pater’s workshop in the shadows along the cliff. I need to get to shore. Be sure Mater is safe. Find Pater.
But when I stand to dive in, the boat rocks, ready to capsize, pin me under it, force me into that water as dark as squid ink, deeper than the longest anchor chain. I could swim. Reach the shore. My mater, but the music. She’s stopped playing. No, no. I dive for the water, but only break the surface of my sleep.
To Abner Island
Pater awoke, calling for Mater, “Mayra?”
I stayed at my post by the door, holding my breath. Wishing Jake could be there to help me.
“Mayra!” Pater shouted as if Mater had gone hard of hearing.
My limbs felt as if Pater had carved them in stone. I only had the strength to move my lips. “She’s gone, Pater.”
Silence.
Pater didn’t cry. He didn’t scream. I couldn’t even hear him breathe. For an instant, I thought he’d dissolved under the weight of his grief.
Sliding to the left, I looked into their room. Pater wiped her face as if he were preparing to carve her features into his memory. Kissing her forehead, he wrapped Mater in my old furs and picked her up like he might be carrying her to the bath, as he did years ago when she’d had the measles. But he didn’t stop at the bathroom. He kept right on walking out the front door.
My body stiff but suddenly light, I stumbled after him, his heavy boots clunking on my feet.
He carried Mater toward the stairs. Was he taking her body to the sea? He didn’t take any notice of me as he headed down to the shore. Walking out onto our dock, he set her in the hammock on our longboat as if he were putting her down for a nap, then started untying the boat.
Where was he taking her?
I knew he wouldn’t respond if I tried to speak to him, so I just jumped into the boat as he pushed off. The tide bumped the boat out to sea. He started the sputtering motor. The boat got under way. He headed northeast—Abner Island. He was taking Mater to Abner Island. To bury her next to her pater no doubt.
Waiting for Mayra
Pater carried Mater out to the point of Abner Island, where Grampy is buried among the pines they planted when he bought the island. Pater set Mater down beside Grampy’s grave, then said,” I’ll be right back, Mayra.” He staggered past me, unable to even see me.
Watching him head for our cabin, I thought maybe I should follow, but it didn’t feel right to leave Mater on that cold point with the wind whipping in off the sea and the chilling spray showering her through the trees. Kneeling beside her, I gripped the fur over her hand, knowing Mater hated cold water. It reminded her of falling through the ice. When the spray turned cold or rain came in late fall, she’d wrap her arms around herself and stare into the past, saying, “Death doesn’t scare me, Lyza. Life’s not meant to last forever. It’s the dying that frightens me. There’s nothing worse than fighting when you don’t know what direction you’re headed.”
There was no fight when Mater died. The fever took her in her sleep. She never even knew she was dying. At least God gave her that.
Pater returned with a shovel, but I couldn’t watch him bury her. I walked back to the boat and waited. The slow bobbing put me to sleep.
I sit in that gray boat again, in the dark of night, my hands knuckle white around the oars. The oars. I can row to shore. To the lantern blazing on the rock.
Putting my back into it, I push into the waves, then pull back, push, pull, push, pull—a flow of muscle and movement. I do not feel the bow rising into the waves. Cannot see the shore grow closer. I row until I ache, but never move.
Then the lantern blows out and I am awake.
I spun around to get my bearings. The sun had sunk behind gray rain clouds and made everything look as washed out and drained as I felt. I straightened up to wait for Pater. He didn’t come.
As I debated whether I should row back to shore and get Jake’s help to convince Pater to come home, it began to rain, pelting the canopy over my head. Pater wouldn’t come out of the rain. He’d keep digging until the cold spring rain chilled him straight through. I had no time to make it to town and back before Pater worked himself sick. He may have survived the influenza but that wouldn’t protect him from the ravages of the weather and his own worry.
No, I had to go bring him in. He wouldn’t come if the grave wasn’t finished, so I went to the cabin to start a fire first. The front door stood open, a half circle of rainwater marking the floor.
Shrouded in shadows, I couldn’t see a thing as I stepped inside. But the place didn’t feel empty. The distant warmth of another person touched me like the heat from a radiator traveling across a narrow hall.
“Pater?”
He didn’t answer. I went to the sink, took the lantern from the wall. Shaking it to be sure it had oil, I pulled a match from the brace on the bottom and lit it. Holding the lantern away from me, I spun in a slow circle, the shaft of light rolling over the silent dusty room. I found Pater sitting on the bed with his back wedged against the wall.
The rain had begun lashing the windows. The wind had picked up.
“Pater, there’s a storm brewing. We should get home.”
He didn’t stir. He kept his eyes fixed on the front door.
“Pater.” I stepped forward. “We need to get home.”
“Not before I see Mayra.”
“Mater’s gone, Pater. You can’t see her.”
“I know she’s gone. That’s why I’m waiting.” He sounded stern, as if he’d grown tired of repeating himself.
“But she’s dead, Pater.” The words chilled me. “She can’t come back.”
He stared at me. “She’s coming back. We just have to wait.” He turned to the door.
Staring out that open door into the growing darkness, I recalled a night that summer when Pater got up and went outside just after the old clock in the hall struck midnight. I heard him talking as though he’d met someone in the dark. An old friend. Mater had a wedding dress to finish. I could hear the tapping of her rocker as she sewed. Wondering who Pater could be talking to at such an hour, I slipped out into the backyard, facing the road.
Pater crouched in front of the funeral wall, holding a lantern up to the faces of the marchers he’d carved there. He knew them all by name and spoke of them as if they’d lived and only he had recorded their memory.
Seeing me, Pater touched one face, saying, “This is Betty Lewis. See this scar on her cheek. A mountain lion. She’d gone into the hills to hunt for her lost boy and came face to face with a she lion protecting her own.” Giving the face a push, he turned it around in the hollow socket he’d carved into our stone fence. “This is her son, Brian. He’s passed now too. The fever took him. Pater had carved his face right down to the ridges between his eyes and their lids, all in a face no bigger than a fig.
He spoke with his eyes fixed on the face like he wanted to be sure he’d gotten it right. The certainty in his eyes filled me with a sense a safety.
To keep that feeling whole, I never asked Pater questions. I didn’t want to hear the ends of his stories or see the blank searching look that came over him when he hadn’t yet found the next face to carve. Keeping him with me in the here and now meant more to me than knowing the details about the lives of the people he carved. Where did they live? How did they die? None of that mattered.
But now the memory of those stories filled me with a haunting emptiness. Had those faces belonged to real people? Was that why he felt so certain Mater would be back?
I shook the thought away. No. Pater had only fallen into a story he wanted to be true. After all, he was a man who saw angels in meteors. Now he expected Mater to come t
hrough that open door.
Only she wasn’t coming. She’d died while I’d survived, taken by an illness that left me standing. Mater’s strength outstripped mine in all things—patience with Pater, fighting gale winds to batten down the house in a storm, boiling the sheets for Dr. Mansfield when the sick filled St. Gregory’s. These things did little more than wind her, but they left me stumbling weary. Had they really worn her so thin she had nothing left to fight with when the fever came for her?
My longing for her sluiced through me, leaving a dull ache in its wake. Empty and chilled, I felt Pater’s need to believe. Wished Mater would appear on the doorstep, wet from the rain, but smiling when she saw Pater, saying, “Ready to come home, Evanae?”
Would she smile when she saw me? Or scold me for standing still in a stark cold cabin while Pater shivered where he sat. She’d want me warm. Warm and safe. He’d be neither out here on the island and I’d never change his mind, so I started a fire, then headed out to find help.
“Don’t go.” Pater’s small voice stopped me. “She’ll want you here when she comes.”
“I’m going to get Granny.”
“Oh, she won’t wait for Mayra. She’s a blind one.”
“I’ll be back soon, Pater.”
“So will Mayra.”
I left Pater in the near dark waiting for Mater.
What Right?
Taking the rowboat, I headed into the storm, knowing I had a stretch of rough sea to churn through to reach our house. My mind wrestled with the image of the gray boat never nearing the shore. It is but a nightmare, Lyza, a vision of your fears.
The rain pelted my face, soaking my nightclothes, stinging as it washed over my skinned knees. The pitch and roll of the waves churned my stomach. Windy howls chased me through the gloom like a keening tune. In all that raging, I could see the shore grow closer, giving me a dull sense of calm.