by Sukey Forbes
Lidian Emerson.
I had always struggled with my famous forebear’s philosophy, finding it opaque, when deep down I wanted it to be as if I were sitting beside his chair and simply absorbing his wisdom, as if something in the DNA provided for a natural and easy transmission of his ideas. But the “transparent eyeball”? The “Oversoul”? It took me forever to realize that a schoolgirl appreciation and being able to fill in the right jargon on a quiz was not the point, and that the only thing that mattered about my famous ancestor’s ideas was their resonance in the heart, not the head. There was a far more intuitive way of appreciating Emerson, along with everything else in the world, and that way was my way.
My first memory of a spirit encounter was very Emersonian in its merger of the natural and the supernatural, the domestic and demonic, and of course it took place on Naushon. We were staying in the big Stone House up on the hill above the harbor, my brother Jamie and I sharing a room, and there was a huge thunderstorm. I remember hollering until my mother finally relented and came in and got us. I had been terrified, and suddenly it turned very cozy. My father was smoking a pipe, standing in profile in front of a huge bay window that looked out over the harbor pasture, when lightning struck an old pump house and danced along the ground. I could have sworn I saw a human form emerge from that flash of electricity and walk across the field.
Given this family tradition of seeking and seekers, perhaps it was not so unusual that six months after Charlotte’s death, when a friend suggested I might want to pay a visit to a medium—a woman with special abilities who was able to contact what’s often called the Other Side—I was guarded, but not entirely resistant. In fact, this experience wound up changing my view of life, death—everything—fundamentally. It altered the course of my grieving to help me move away from mere suffering and complete the circle of my own personal search.
“In Nature every moment is new,” Emerson wrote. “The past is always swallowed and forgotten; the coming only is sacred. Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit . . . People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.”
2
Storm Warning
At Naushon, I’d always felt sheltered, grounded, and safe. The landscape of the Outer Banks, the cherished family spot of the very different tribe I’d married into, could not have been more different. When my husband, Michael, and I first began to vacation there, on what was not much more than a sandbar that ran just offshore and parallel to the North Carolina mainland for about seventy miles, I felt exposed and vulnerable.
For three summers we rented a place in Avon, a tiny town reachable only after a long, monotonous drive along a narrow road lined with pampas grass, windswept strip malls, sand-filled parking lots, and shingled houses that faced either the ocean or the bay. My first impression of that narrow spit of land must have come from sailors in my family telling stories of storms and shipwrecks, because I kept thinking about ghost ships and death by water. And about Roanoke, Virginia, the English colony just across the bay where, in the late 1500s, all the settlers disappeared without a trace.
We were living on the West Coast at the time. I’d been something of a rebel child, trying to escape the emotional straitjacket of my upbringing by relocating to California after college, and then, marriage and family life kept me there. But Michael and I relished the idea of East Coast vacations to keep us in touch with family. Naushon was the meeting place for the Forbes clan, and it was important to me that my children be a part of that. For my husband’s large Irish family, the Bighams, the Outer Banks was just as sacred.
Some people loved being able to see water on either side, but I found the lack of trees and solid, higher ground disconcerting. There was something so tentative about those houses up on stilts, exposed to the wind and the open sea. I guess I was used to having more to hang on to. I needed less of a sense that everything around me had been put together last week, and that it could all be gone with the next high tide. I was a bit spooked, too, because just before our visit I had had a terrifying dream, of being on the Naushon ferry, of the children and I falling off. In my dream, I grabbed Cabot and Beatrice but I could not reach Charlotte, who slipped beyond my grasp into the sea. I woke up gasping, with the sickening feeling of having let my daughter drown yet knowing I could not save her.
If I found any reassurance during those two-week mini-reunions in North Carolina, it was in the presence of Annie, my sister-in-law. The wife of my husband’s brother Harry, Annie was fun to spend time with, and a great mom, but she was also a pediatric anesthesiologist at a major teaching hospital. Avon was at least an hour from the nearest emergency room, but with Annie on the scene, at least I knew we were in good hands should one of the kids need medical attention.
Harry is a doctor, too, a cardiologist, but his patients tend to be on Medicare. Annie works with children, and beyond that, she’s a force of nature, so much so that her nickname as a chief resident had been “Commando Anne.” Her legend increased within the family when she performed successful abdominal surgery (general anesthesia, halothane in a mason jar) on Mr. Quiggles, her daughters’ pet mouse.
Back when her girls were small, I used to rib Annie about the way she kept everything in her home locked down with childproof latches, including the toilet seats—very problematic during personal urgencies in the middle of the night. Everywhere she went she carried a full emergency kit, including the bags and tubes for pediatric IV. I would venture to say we were the only vacationers on the Outer Banks equipped with airway kits and resuscitation masks in all sizes from infant to adult.
Getting from our home near San Francisco to the rental in North Carolina was a full day’s travel no matter how we did it. The last time we made the trip, Cabot was five, Beatrice was eighteen months, and Charlotte was four—three little blond dervishes running through airports. All of us have fair skin, and standing in line, I often felt very aware of just how much we did not look like a study in American diversity. Sometimes I wondered if we were tempting fate by being too white, too privileged, too prosperous, or too happy. But that would change soon enough.
Our condo in Avon was right next door to Harry and Anne’s, on the bay side, in a cul-de-sac with eight other identically shingled houses up on stilts. Harry and Michael’s parents were there as well, and they shared our unit with us. It was one big, happy family with no pretentions, no privacy, and no lock-jawed WASP emotional reserve.
The North Carolina coast can get stinking, steamy hot in August, and as a result, much of our vacation life took place on one of the large porches that each of the houses had on the second floor. The children could be contained, playing safely, while the breeze kept everyone cool. We would lounge out there, shifting from coffee and tea and newspapers to books and board games, followed by a snooze, followed by cocktails and dinner.
The complex also had a swimming pool, and Charlotte in particular loved to escape the heat by splashing in the water. She used to say to me, “Mummy, I like to be fresh and cool.” Anne and Harry’s girls, Grace and Julie, were eight and ten that summer, and they made a wonderful fuss over their four-year-old cousin, treating Charlotte like a little princess, playing endless games of Marco Polo under the watchful eye of various parents, as well as Grandmom and PopPop Bigham.
At the end of one perfectly ordinary day, we gathered at Anne and Harry’s for dinner, and any meal that I don’t have to manage is a perfect meal in my book. The kitchen gene simply did not express itself in me, and I’ve always been happy to defer to someone else’s expertise, especially when it’s a take-charge personality like Anne’s.
The conversation around the table was highly animated, as it always was in the Bigham family, and after a little wine had been shared it took serious effort to capture the floor and work in your particular anecdote. The Bighams have never been afraid to embellish whenever a few frills might be required to top what h
ad already been a tall tale. Coming from my rather austere New England background, I loved all this emotional energy, the way the whole family would lean in and listen when Harry Senior went on about his grandmother delivering moonshine during the Depression, or his own experiences as a GI in Italy at the end of World War II. The kids especially hung on his every word.
After dinner we piled into the cars and drove off to get ice cream cones, which was a ritual rated just below Communion in the Bighams’ spiritual universe. Our group of eleven overwhelmed the small ice cream parlor, but after a while everyone had his or her favorite flavor. Then, with cones in hand, we moved outside to the lawn and watched the late setting sun glide down into the bay. We have photographs of the children with ice cream on their faces, turning cartwheels and playing in the fading light of that hot and sticky summer evening.
Getting the kids to bed that night was easy. When they were small I used to sing a John Denver song to them called “For Baby,” which begins, “I’ll walk in the rain by your side.” When I got to the line in the chorus that says, “And the wind will whisper your name to me,” I’d lean down and whisper “Cabot” and “Charlotte.” (Beatrice, still too young for this sort of thing, was already asleep in her own little room.) I finished the song, gave each of the kids a kiss, and tiptoed out. Charlotte and Cabot were both asleep before I reached the bedroom door.
It was about an hour later when I heard the scream. There was such an urgency mixed with terror in that voice that it haunts me to this day. I ran to the children’s room and saw Charlotte sitting up in her bed. I went to her and pulled her close, but her head against my chest was so hot I felt scalded.
I called out to Michael. “Charlotte’s sick. Come help me.”
Then I picked her up and carried her into the bathroom. I put her in the tub, turned on the faucet, and began splashing cold water over her. Charlotte had never really had any serious issues. Certainly she’d never had a fever like this.
Michael came in and hovered over my shoulder. “What is this? What’s happening?”
Charlotte had begun to point her toes, her feet curling inward. This was very weird, and made me very worried. I tried to stay in the moment, not letting my imagination run away to all the awful places it could go.
“How do you feel, Sweet Pea?” I asked her.
She stared up at me but didn’t speak. She was conscious—she was not having a seizure—but I didn’t know what the hell was going on. The muscle in her jaw began to twitch. Then I watched as her calf muscles contracted, then her thigh muscles, then her torso and her arms.
“I’m getting Anne and Harry,” Michael said. And then he was gone. I waited, feeling sick to my stomach as I watched my daughter locked in these painful contortions.
A few moments later the two doctors appeared in the bathroom, Annie with her black bag, their two girls trailing behind and looking very tentative. Within a couple of minutes Annie had sized up the situation, hung an IV bag from the shower rod, and had a line carrying fluids into a vein in the crook of Charlotte’s arm. My daughter was still frighteningly rigid, but the worst of it was that she couldn’t control her neck. We were all on her left, but her head was turned to the right, her eyes focused on the wall.
I glanced up just long enough to catch the eye contact between Anne and Harry. The level of concern that registered on their faces was not what I wanted to see. But at least they were with us. At least we were not stuck on this sandbar in the middle of nowhere with all the medical expertise of an MBA and an art history major.
Annie sent the girls to get all the ice out of the refrigerators. When little Julie came back with the first bucket, Anne dumped it into the bathwater. Charlotte was throwing off so much heat that the ice turned to liquid as soon as it hit the surface. Grace came in with a second bucket from the condo next door, and Anne poured that in as well. It also melted instantly.
For a moment we stared at the water and held our collective breath. That was all the ice we had. We were going to need more ice.
Harry used a digital thermometer to take Charlotte’s temperature. The device began to beep at 105—as high as it would go.
“Should we call an ambulance?” I asked.
I expected these two very competent doctors to say, “No need. Got it covered.”
But without missing a beat, both of them gave me an emphatic yes.
We had to wait a very long while for the EMTs, and while we waited my heartbeat was so loud I was sure everyone else could hear it. The gnawing in my stomach got worse and worse, but then the situation improved. The fluids transfusing into Charlotte’s veins and the cooling water surrounding her seemed to be bringing her fever down. Her rigidity began to soften, and she could even turn her head to look at me. But Anne and Harry still had these grave expressions, and they were still carrying on their own private doctor conversation with their eyes.
After what seemed like forever, the emergency team arrived and we briefed them on the situation. They lifted Charlotte onto the stretcher and got her ready for transport forty-five miles north to the hospital in Nags Head.
Anne and Harry said they would stay behind with Cabot and Beatrice. The grandparents were rather miraculously still asleep in another part of the house.
I would have preferred for our in-house physicians to go with us, because I trusted them a lot more than I trusted those EMTs. The only thing I said, though, was that I was going to ride with Charlotte. Michael got in the car behind us and we set off.
This was the first time I’d ever envied my husband his Catholicism. I wanted to pray, but I didn’t really know how. Instead, my mind filled with all the negative possibilities, all the existential horrors that I knew were out there like the blank landscape and the night sky and the equally empty waters of the bay.
Later, Michael would tell me that he spent the entire drive trying to work out a deal. His job is all about negotiation, and he begged God not to take Charlotte, at least not that night. We both knew that small, innocent children die every day, but Michael made the case that, even from an entirely selfish perspective, there just ought to be some recognition for all the years of devotion he’d put in, all the times he’d said the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary. God had to do what God had to do—just not now, please.
We passed along the darkened road lined with pampas grass, the windswept strip malls, the sand-filled parking lots, and after a while Charlotte seemed better, cooler, and she began to chat with me. We both were still terrified, but we settled into the standard routine of “mother sits at sick child’s bedside and works to distract, amuse, and comfort.” I sang songs to her, and we talked about all the ordinary, fun things that had happened that day. I tried to acknowledge the fear she obviously was experiencing, while also trying to lessen her fear by dismissing the gravity of the situation. If only I could reassure myself.
Michael, of course, was not in on any of this. When he pulled up to the emergency entrance behind the ambulance, he did not know whether his child would be dead or alive. I watched him step out of the car and almost swoon when he saw me smiling.
“Hey, Sweetie Pea!” he called out to Charlotte. I’d never seen him look so vulnerable.
I watched the tension in his body fall away as she said, “Hi, Daddy!” His prayers had been answered. God was on our side. At least for now.
The ER docs were able to see us right away. They made Charlotte comfortable and monitored her vital signs as her fever continued down into the normal range. She had a bad bout of diarrhea, but she appeared to have stabilized.
“A nasty rotavirus,” they said, combined with dehydration. But somehow I knew that wasn’t the case. As much as I wanted to believe it, something in my gut told me that we weren’t going to get off so lightly.
But the doctors smiled reassuringly, wished us a good night, and sent us home.
Michael and I rode back to Avon in stunned silenc
e, staring out at that isolated beach road once again, with Charlotte asleep in the backseat. I looked out into the blankness of the dark ocean surrounding us and, in my head, kept hearing a Gordon Lightfoot lyric that asks about the love of God and where it goes when it disappears. It was from a song about a shipwreck.
My sister Laura had seen that dark side. Her son Dawson, the same age as Cabot, had been diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia at the age of four. For the first time it hit me that I never really understood what she’d been going through. How can you understand, unless you have a child in that kind of situation yourself? The Greeks said that we suffer into wisdom. I didn’t want to gain that kind of understanding. I wanted Charlotte to be well.
When we got to the condo I reported in to Anne and Harry while Michael carried Charlotte up to bed. When Michael came back down to talk, he related a version of our experience at the hospital that was more upbeat than mine. He seemed to accept the ER physicians’ assessment at face value. Neither Anne nor Harry said anything, but I saw a glance pass between them. They gave us hugs and their own reassurances, and after they left, Charlotte slept through until morning. Neither of her parents slept a wink.
• • •
The sun came up and it was sweltering as usual. We turned the air-conditioning to high and kept Charlotte inside. Generally she seemed fine, but she was so sore from the muscle contractions of the night before that she hobbled around as if she’d just run a marathon. At breakfast, to cheer her up, Michael told her that she walked like the most adorable little penguin he’d ever seen.