The Year of the Lucy

by Anne McCaffrey

  She understood what had prompted his generous attitude in the studio. Did he honestly think that a passing interest in her work constituted an apology? Or the reminder that she, too, had been at fault in their relationship?

  Peace at any price, she told herself. She felt neither desire nor revulsion as she joined him on the bed.

  9

  THE NEXT MORNING Steve went off to work in high spirits, kissing her soundly in front of the kids. She stared after him, mildly astonished that he actually thought last night’s performance had mended all.

  She had been completely uninvolved in the lovemaking, responding out of habit. She wondered vaguely if that was how prostitutes felt, amused at such a thought – amused in an unfunny way. Why Steve hadn’t felt her unresponsiveness, she couldn’t guess. He hadn’t wanted to? Had there really been a time when she had adored Steve and his body, and the expression of their healthy appetites?

  No bang, no whimper, not even a gasp. Was that how a marriage ended?

  The question, popping unbidden into her mind, was startling enough. She rose quickly, busily clearing the breakfast table: anything to keep from thinking. She filled her coffee cup. None left for Sylvia!

  God, how she hoped Sylvia would be early this morning! Talk about needing to sound off . . . just to hear how silly a notion was . . . Mirelle gulped. How could she talk around something as devastating as this? You simply don’t just up and discount fifteen years of marriage one morning. And you sure as hell don’t bring it up as a subject of casual conversation.

  Rather desperate for diversion. Mirelle looked around the studio. She didn’t have anything to glaze or fire. She had nothing started on the wheel. Her eye caught Lucy. Okay, rub salt in. That might do the trick.

  The Lucy had been relegated to a corner so she pulled it out into the center of the room and uncovered it, backing off until the couch caught the back of her knees. She sank down.

  Lucy would have had an answer, at least a solution, or an idea. She wouldn’t have wanted me to quit, not when I’d come so far. She never disqualified the hard work required in any marriage: hard work on both sides. But, what do you do, if there’s nothing . . . nothing . . . there anymore?

  Despair, like a cold wave, swept over Mirelle. She began to cry, in sobs that came from deep in her guts. She drew her legs up to her stomach against the racking spasms. Her body was suddenly more committed to the exertion of weeping than it had been to last night’s sexual act.

  In one sane compartment of her mind, she was appalled at the intensity of her hysterics, yet unable to control herself.

  O, God, make the phone ring. Let someone come to the door. I’ll have to get control then. I’ll have to calm down. Someone! Help me!

  The door was flung open and Sylvia came bursting in. The shock stilled the next sob in Mirelle’s throat. She held her breath with every ounce of strength, determined not to let the sobbing resume. Sylvia! Thank God. Then Mirelle panicked. Oh, my God, what do I say? I can’t . . . I can’t talk. She’d know.

  ‘Any coffee left, Mirelle?’ Sylvia asked, halfway to the kitchen even as she called.

  ‘Make more.’ The two short words came out just as if Mirelle was concentrating on a vital detail. She struggled up from the couch and lurched into the laundry-room. She grabbed the first towel in the basket, turned on the tap and started slapping water in her face, still gulping back the remnants of the hysterical contractions.

  ‘You sure are eager-beaver in the studio this morning,’ Sylvia was saying cheerfully from the kitchen.

  Oh, please, stay there a little longer, Mirelle silently entreated as she grabbed a clean bra and pants from the dryer. Yesterday’s jeans were gritty with plaster and caked with paint but with a clean shirt over them . . . She even found a piece of broken comb with enough teeth left to get her hair into some kind of order. She dabbed at her eyes again with cold water but her hands were trembling badly. So were her knees.

  ‘Got a cup down there, Mirelle?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Mirelle peered at her shadowy reflection in the clear windowpane. One look and she’s going to know that I’ve been crying. And what’ll I say? Oh why . . . Well, you demanded someone’s presence. At least it’s Sylvia.

  High heels clacked on the bare space between hall carpeting and the stair tread. Mirelle, trying to smile, stepped back into the studio, shoulders braced for the inevitable question. But Sylvia’s attention was focused on the tray she carried and she didn’t look at Mirelle.

  ‘Oh, you’re working on the Lucy again? That’s good. I’m all for charitable works but in moderation.’

  ‘Not working. Just checking.’

  ‘Coming down with a cold? Your voice is rough.’

  Mirelle hastily cleared her throat. ‘No. Frog. Coffee’ll help.’

  ‘Where’s your cup? Ooops!’ Sylvia filled it and handed it back to Mirelle, still without looking at her, being intent on not spilling the hot liquid. ‘You don’t happen to have another of those silly pigs, do you? Like the ones you made for Tonia and Nick? Because I have to have something as an inconsequential birthday present and the pig would be so appropriate.’ Sylvia dropped her voice to a droll pitch to stress the fact that the recipient was unlikely to appreciate the obscure insult.

  ‘I’ve two rough plaster ones, easily finished and glazed.’

  ‘On the shelf here?’

  ‘Over more to the left, behind that plaque. Right there.’

  Sylvia stretched up, blindly but carefully feeling along the shelf. Then her fingers located the right shapes and brought both pigs down. She took them over to the window, turning them into the light and chuckling.

  ‘You wouldn’t mind, would you? I mean, if you’re doing some serious work on the Lucy . . .’

  ‘No, no. I don’t mind at all. I’m sort of worked out at the moment, idling as it were.’

  ‘In that case, Madame da Vinci, I want the pig pink and polka-dotted. A raucous pink and a putrid purple for the dots. Could you possibly prostitute your art for little old me?’ Sylvia swung round then, her eyes still on the bigger pig, her grin malicious. ‘How long will it take?’

  ‘To glaze and fire? Two days at the most.’

  ‘Sure I’m not interrupting an important phase?’ And Sylvia gestured at the Lucy.

  ‘No. Not at all. I’d tell you. Here, drink your coffee and I’ll put on the underglaze right now,’ Mirelle said. She could brush on a glaze without having to look directly at Sylvia.

  Sylvia curled up on the couch, watching as Mirelle, with deft small strokes, applied the coating. She gave a shudder.

  ‘I could never work that precisely. My stomach gets wrapped up in knots.’

  ‘You’re the expansive type. That’s why you can’t be good with small motor movements and controlled gestures.’

  ‘You said it!’ Sylvia sounded so unexpectedly bitter and caustic that Mirelle looked up. Her face was still averted but the coffee cup was shaking in her hand.

  Mirelle suddenly realised that, although she had not wanted her friend’s attention, Sylvia had been avoiding Mirelle in an adroit manner.

  ‘Do you know what I was doing when you came this morning, Syl?’ she asked, without thinking it over.

  Sylvia ducked her head down and rubbed a forefinger on the rim of her cup. ‘No. What?’

  ‘I was having a first-class case of hysterics, praying to Almighty God to make the phone ring or let someone come to the door so I’d have to get hold of myself.’

  Slowly Sylvia met Mirelle’s eyes. Her face, expressionless and almost ugly with its lack of animation, was sadly old. She’d no make-up on which, if Mirelle had not been so self-concerned, would have immediately indicated distress.

  ‘If you could have seen me throwing cold water on my face, tearing clothes out of the dryer so you wouldn’t catch me in my nightgown . . .’ and Mirelle started to laugh at the inanity of it. ‘The two of us playing the same game . . .’

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned.’
Sylvia stared at Mirelle for one moment longer and then began to chuckle. Color came back into her face and the infection of Mirelle’s giggles doubled hers. They sat across the room from each other, laughing at themselves.

  ‘Okay, what were you hysterical about, Mirelle?’ Sylvia finally asked, wiping her eyes.

  Mirelle shook her head, as much at herself as to indicate an inability to answer.

  ‘Oh, things just dumped on me all of a sudden. You?’

  Sylvia grimaced. ‘All right, we’ll play it cosy a little while longer.’

  ‘Maybe if we both talked AT each other at the same time, neither of us would hear what the other said and our terrible confessions would remain secret?’

  Sylvia gave Mirelle a long sideways glance. ‘I think you’ve got the right end of that stick, my friend. But,’ and she sighed deeply, ‘now that we’ve had a therapeutic laugh at each other, I do feel better.’ She cocked her head quizzically at Mirelle.

  ‘I feel better, too.’

  ‘Good, then these two blind mice can fare forth anew to find that better mousetrap.’

  Despite Sylvia’s brisk rejoinder, Mirelle recognised that her friend had only the most tenuous grip on herself.

  ‘I wonder if a better mousetrap would do any good at all?’ she said softly.

  Sylvia glared at her. ‘You’re nearly there,’ and she gestured dramatically at the Lucy. ‘Even this feckless thing,’ and she pointed angrily at the half-glazed pig, ‘is cuts above the usual twee gimcrackery. You’ve got an outlet. You create . . .’ Sylvia broke off, her eyes filming with tears. Instead of giving way, she blinked furiously, knuckling her eyes with brusque strokes. ‘Can you produce a very very bad purple for the spots?’ she asked in a wheedling tone.

  Dutifully then, Mirelle took her bottles of coloring from the shelf and found a clean jar. She sprinkled in a few grains of red, blue, a bit of orange luminescent paint, and mixed. Sylvia didn’t approve. They spent the next hour trying to extract from the pigments exactly the shade in Sylvia’s mind.

  ‘Of course, it’ll fire darker, and more vitriolic,’ Mirelle said when an approximation of the vile shade had been achieved.

  ‘This is going to be horror,’ Sylvia said in triumph. ‘Honest, Mirelle, it’s a shame to do this to such a nice pig,’ she added contritely.

  ‘He should care. He does what I tell him.’

  ‘Can I come back tomorrow and see the damage?’

  ‘With or without?’ asked Mirelle coyly.

  ‘What? Tears? Or laughter?’ Sylvia grinned back, the shadows lifted from her fine eyes. ‘Thanks, Mirelle.’

  ‘Ha! If you hadn’t come when you did . . .’

  Sylvia’s hand closed tightly on her arm for a moment and then she whirled off, striding up the stairs. Mirelle followed her to the door, waving as she drove off in her usual gear-grinding hurry.

  She caught sight of her reflection in the hall mirror. With no make-up, she looked totally washed out. She was reaching for her purse to get her lipstick when the phone rang.

  ‘Mirelle?’ a very hoarse voice queried as she answered.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is the name . . . hmmmm . . . of your doctor? Ahhhheemmm. I don’t know one in this goddamned town.’

  ‘Jamie? You’re sick?’

  ‘As nearly as I can . . . ahhemm . . . decide, I died last night only no one knows there’s a corpse in my bed. I need a doctor!’

  ‘I’ll call Dr. Martin immediately.’

  ‘Nepotism?’

  ‘What? No, he’s not a relative.’

  ‘That’s reassuring.’

  ‘Jamie, you’d joke on your deathbed.’

  ‘And where do you think I am?’

  ‘Oh, hang up so I can call the doctor. He’s very good about coming on house calls.’

  ‘He’d better be.’ With that acid comment, Jamie hung up.

  Will Martin actually answered her call. He couldn’t get to Jamie until mid-afternoon but he gave her the scant assurance that if the man were able to make a phone call, he’d be able to last until then. He did promise to make Howell his first stop.

  It was now 10:45 and Mirelle decided that Howell ought not to have to wait that long for succour. The hell with propriety. The man had no one else in town and Margaret’s college was way up in Massachusetts.

  She took eggs, milk, bread and some consommé, and made it to his development by 11:02. The front door was locked. She hesitated but she didn’t want to rouse him out of bed if she could avoid it. She went around the back door, which was also bolted tight. She stood by her car, trying to remember the layout of the house, and with sudden inspiration, raised the garage door. The kitchen door was unlocked; the kitchen was a shambles of unwashed dishes and used pans. She walked through to the hall, which was neat except for the suitcase, hat and coat dumped in the middle of the entrance way. Several days’ accumulation of mail had fallen through the door slot. She went upstairs. The first room she peered into had a rumpled bed but no occupant. The second room also had a used bed. The third room, the smallest, was darkened and she didn’t at first discern the figure in bed. She walked over, for one moment convinced that Jamie was motionless in death.

  ‘I thought . . . ahhemm . . . you were the garbage man,’ he said in a painful rasp.

  ‘They collect garbage on Thursday on this side of town.’

  For all I know it is Thursday and has been . . . ahhhem . . . for five mortal long days. Did you call that doctor of yours? Or are you considering me for a death mask? Sorry. I’m indestructible. I’ve never had a sick day in my life.’

  Forgetting any lingering shyness, she put a hand on his forehead: he was burning and his skin parched dry. She snapped on the bedside light and he waved irritably at her to turn it off. She saw enough in the brief instant: his eyes were bloodshot with fever, his face white and drawn, with several days’ beard. She could hear the rales in his chest as he gathered wind in his lungs to speak.

  ‘I absolutely detest women . . .’

  ‘At this moment, James Howell, your likes are immaterial. I don’t need Dr. Martin to tell me you are very a sick. At the least, bronchitis; at the worst, lumbar pneumonia.’

  She automatically set about smoothing the untucked, disordered blankets and felt the dampness of the sheet. He’d been sweating profusely, which explained the musical beds.

  ‘I’m going to change the bed in your own room. I’m going to get you clean pajamas,’ she said, walking back to the big room by the stairs. She opened dresser drawers until she found clean, laundry-packaged nightclothes. She scooped up the bathrobe that was crumpled on the floor, and returned to him. ‘You will get up and change. Quickly. And wash your face. By then, I’ll have finished making your bed. If you haven’t moved, I’ll change and wash you myself.’

  She said the last as she was searching the linen closet for sheets and pillowcases. She heard him cursing as he lurched out of the bed; the exertion caused him to cough in tight barks that must have hurt his throat dreadfully from the sound of them. She heard further curses over the sound of running water as she stripped the bed and changed it quickly. She lowered the blinds against the brilliant morning sun and cleared the debris on the bedside table.

  ‘Your bed’s ready. I’m going to get you some hot soup,’ she called.

  ‘You’re a managing female,’ he said in a hoarse voice from the bathroom but, as she descended the stairs, he walked unsteadily down the hall.

  While the soup was heating, she gathered up the dishes with congealed and hardened food and put them to soak in the sink. She made a pile of the first-class mail, hung up his hat and coat and then carried the consommé and mail up to him.

  He scowled at her when she entered the room, but it was a half-hearted attempt at disguising weakness.

  ‘What’s your daughter’s college address?’

  He put down the spoon halfway to his mouth.

  ‘That is enough meddling,’ he said with genuine anger.

  ‘Jame
s Howell, you are very sick.’

  ‘Thank you, I’ll wait for the doctor’s diagnosis. I appreciate your phoning him and all this,’ he said, indicating the fresh linen and the soup, ‘but that is quite enough. Thank you!’

  With that unqualified dismissal, he went back to his soup.

  ‘You are insufferable, James Howell. How long have you been feverish? From the amount of dishes, I’d say you’d been able to feed yourself for at least four days of eggs and toast. The milk in your refrigerator is soured so it’s at least a week old. You haven’t picked up a newspaper from your front door for five days. And I don’t see even aspirin in your medicine cabinet.’

  ‘You are also a prying woman.’

  But Mirelle could see that he was more sound than fury.

  ‘Eat!’

  ‘It’s a liquid,’ he said with precise enunciation. ‘I’m drinking it.’

  ‘When did the fever start?’ she asked, lowering her voice at his tacit capitulation.

  He grimaced over the heat of the consommé.

  ‘I started feeling lousy in Atlanta but we still had the Camellia circuit to do. I got off the plane Saturday at Philly and came straight home. Oh, look, call my agent, Dave Andorri. The number’s in the red address book on my dresser. Dave’ll have to get Heinrich to play at the Tuesday affair. He knows the repertoire. Ohh, hell!’

  His hand was shaking enough to spill the soup from the spoon. Mirelle got a towel from the bathroom.

  ‘You are not going to feed me,’ he said in an unequivocal tone.

  ‘You’re quite right. I might lose a finger. But I am going to put a towel where you can spill without drenching your last clean pair of pajamas.’

  She made the call to his agent, while he glowered at her, relaying the message.

  ‘I’d wondered why I hadn’t heard from Jamie,’ Dave Andorri said. ‘He’s never sick. How sick is he?’