“Oh, my God,” Camilla moaned. “All day? Really? With those motorcycles out there stinking up the creek, and that child…I mean, I know she’s a pretty little thing and all that, but she’s not exactly the sort of child you’d want to come to your grandchild’s birthday party….”
Henry leered at her.
“Do I detect a bit of Lady Chatterley and Mellors the game-keeper here?” he said.
“No, you do not,” she snapped. “But you do know you’re going to have to go out and buy presents for everybody now, don’t you?”
And we did. The next morning I took off a half day and went foraging on King Street. I found a spangled child’s tutu in a vintage clothing store for Britney, books for Gaynelle, and, in the Harley-Davidson shop on Meeting Street, bought enormous logo T-shirts for T.C., Henry, and, just for a joke, for Camilla. Henry came in from his safari laden with packages that he said one of the girls at the clinic had wrapped for him. They looked it.
“Will one of you get me some nice, crisp new bills?” Camilla said. “That’s going to have to do for me.”
On Christmas morning I woke very early, as I had when I was a child, and like that child, felt a faint gnawing of excitement in the pit of my stomach. I dressed and went over to Camilla’s house. I would not wake her, I thought, but I’d make some coffee and a fire.
When I got there, I found the living room ablaze with Christmas tree and firelight, and the smell of coffee perking, and the ill-wrapped presents under the tree. Henry sat on the couch watching the fire. He looked up and smiled at me.
“I haven’t done this since Nancy was little,” he said. “It’s nice. I almost feel like putting a train set together, or something.”
I plopped down on the sofa beside him.
“It is nice. Where’s Camilla?”
“Still asleep. I was very quiet.”
We sat in silence for a little while, and then I said, sudden salt rising in my throat from the bottomless ocean of the grief, “Merry Christmas, Henry.”
He put his arm around me and pulled my head down on his shoulder, and said, “Merry Christmas, Anny Aiken. They say it gets better after the first one.”
At nine A.M. the motorcycle and the truck burped up, and peace fled. They came in shouting, “Merry Christmas,” their arms full of packages, Britney in a spangled Little Mermaid costume that left her skinny chicken’s shoulders bare. She wriggled voluptuously, and sequins peppered the rug.
“I can live underwater,” she sang.
“We ought to test that,” Camilla said under her breath, but she, too, was smiling.
For an hour we unwrapped gifts and exclaimed loudly and tried them on and tossed paper and ribbon everywhere. Soon Britney was hysterical with excitement, and insisted on doing her interpretation of the original Britney Spears’s “Oops! I Did It Again.” It was awful beyond imagining, and we all smiled just as broadly as Gaynelle did. Finally Britney choked on her bubble gum and began to cry, and was put down for a time-out in Camilla’s nunlike bedroom. I flinched for Camilla.
Dinner was loud and heavy and wonderful. Camilla had laid the table with her grandmother’s linen and crystal and silver, and lit white beeswax candles. Before we began, Gaynelle nodded at T. C., and he cleared his throat and bowed his bald, shining head and said, “For this and all thy blessings, Lord, we thank thee.” He had put on a blue suit for the occasion, dusted now with Britney’s spangles, and when he bowed his head, he brushed the beard aside. His hands were scrubbed raw; motorcycle grease was obviously difficult to dislodge. Suddenly I loved him.
“Amen. Let the games begin,” Henry said.
It was entirely a semirural Southern Christmas dinner, more familiar to me than I could have anticipated. I ate heartily, and so did Henry, and Camilla did her best. She faltered at the collards and fatback, but admired the ambrosia with fresh coconut. We all had two slices of T. C.’s tipsy fruitcake.
After dinner, Gaynelle insisted on clearing the table and putting the dishes away, and sent me and Camilla into the living room to sit before the fire. I was very tired, and could not imagine why, and Camilla was frankly nodding.
“You all need a good long nap,” Gaynelle said, coming out of the kitchen with a blinking, yawning Britney in tow. “I’m going to take this crowd home. We really enjoyed being at your house.”
I got up and went to her and hugged her.
“You cannot imagine the gift you gave us today,” I said. “It was generous beyond words.”
“You all are real easy to be generous to,” she said, and led Britney out the door. Henry came into the room from somewhere, wearing a heavy sweater.
“I’m going over to T. C.’s to watch the Georgia–Georgia Tech game,” he said. “He’ll bring me back when it’s over.”
“You mean you’re going out and riding that motorcycle,” I said, smiling.
“That, too.”
Camilla said nothing. She was asleep, with her chin on her chest.
I woke her and led her to her bedroom, and then went back to my own house and lit my fire. I thought surely that the grief pool would open again, but it did not. I simply felt hollow. The room was warm and quiet and dim, and the fire whispered, and I fell asleep on the sofa and did not wake until I heard Henry and T. C. come growling in.
The days after Christmas were gray and chilly and seemed endless, and the stillness at the creek was utter, and we turned inward upon ourselves again. We moved quietly, and spoke softly, and slept early.
But I believe that all of us remembered that, for a short while, in this place, there was life.
13
“YOU’VE GONE COMPLETELY NATIVE,” Lila said on a Sunday afternoon in late January. “I knew you would.”
It was one of those winter days we get in the Low Country that make you ache with sheer lust for spring. The temperature hovered around seventy-five, and the little wind off the creek was sweet and soft. The sun teased our cheekbones.
We were sitting on the chaises on Lila’s porch, drinking mint iced tea and watching Britney on the lawn sloping down to the dock, romping with Lila’s diminutive Honey. She had not brought the little dog out to the creek very often; her grandchildren clamored to dog-sit when she and Simms were away, and Lila was glad of their large walled garden. Honey was a determined and witless wanderer. My most vivid memory of her still is running blindly, her nose to the ground, her feathery tail waving with mindless joy. She was a pretty thing, but fretful and snappish with most people. But she had adored Britney from first sniff, and the love affair was mutual. Ever since they had set eyes on each other earlier that morning, child and dog had been inseparable.
We were alone on the porch. Henry and T. C. had gone blustering off on the Rubbertail just after lunch. Simms had a regatta at the yacht club. Camilla was sleeping. Gaynelle was with her in her darkened bedroom with the little CD player purring out a Mozart quartet. Gaynelle had discovered classical music, and could not get enough. She played it constantly while she was with us. It made me obscurely proud, as a mother might feel when a child abandons hip-hop for the first time and listens to Bach. Gaynelle had plenty of room, deep down, to collect riches.
“Meaning?” I said sleepily, knowing full well what she meant. Gaynelle and T. C. and the child’s presence today was purely social. I had called and asked them when I saw the day’s promise. To be with them, I had found, held off some of the emptiness. Henry and I were usually alone with Camilla on Sunday. But today the sensual sun called for energy and laughter, even if they were not my own.
“Meaning, as you know perfectly well, that your only social companions out here appear to be your cleaning lady, a mute bald-headed biker, and a trailer-park Lolita. I heard you had them all to dinner the other night, and then went over to James Island to the movies. How do you think all your old friends feel about that?”
“How do my old friends know about that? Is Bunny back in town?” I smiled. I would not be baited; the day was too perfect.
She blushed.
I didn’t mind. Charleston has a radar that defies all attempts at secrecy. And we certainly had not sought that. We simply had not sought company.
“You need to remember that you have any number of friends besides Henry and Camilla and Ma and Pa Kettle. Everybody in Charleston asks me when you’re coming back home. Nobody’s seen hide nor hair of any of you. People are starting to talk about you three, all alone out here.”
I burst into helpless laughter.
“Me and Camilla and Henry in a ménage à trois? The mind boggles. Maybe you could tell them we’re contemplating suttee. No, you know that Camilla is just not well. And I’m at the office every morning of the world, and Henry is at the clinic every afternoon. If anybody wants to see me, all they have to do is walk down Gillon Street.”
“It’s not the same thing. You’re sunk so deep in this creek, you’re drowning in it. Simms and I enjoy it, too; we come lots of weekends. But we do have another life.”
You didn’t for a lot of years, I thought. Not like the one we had at the beach.
“I like my life,” I said.
“Oh, Anny, look at you,” Lila cried. “You’re thin as a stick. Your hair hasn’t been cut in months. To my knowledge you haven’t put on lipstick since you moved out here. You don’t ever go out to lunch with anybody anymore. You ought to fix yourself up some; Henry ought to get off that damned motorcycle and see some of his friends. For God’s sake, he could go sailing any day of the week with Simms; Simms is always saying he doesn’t have anybody to sail with—”
She stopped with a gasp. I did not look at her.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I really am. It’s just that I want you to have something else besides looking after Camilla.”
We were all worried about Camilla that winter. She seemed to be dwindling before our eyes, like a woman made of sand, at the mercy of every small wind. She never complained, but she was frequently so dizzy that two people had to hold on to her, and she slept through the afternoons and evenings as if drugged. But she could not, she said, sleep at night, and indeed, every time I got up in the night and looked out my window, I saw her bedroom light burning. Henry had checked her frequently, so far as he was able, and found nothing basically wrong with her heart, but he thought she needed a full blood workup and other tests. Camilla flatly refused to go into Charleston to her internist.
“I’d be better if I could just sleep nights,” she said, and in desperation, Henry brought her a supply of Ambien. But her light continued to burn in the night. And still she slept in the daylight. She looked now like a portrait of a beautiful aristocrat that had faded with age. It had been a sudden change. It seemed to me it had started just after Christmas.
“Why do you do it?” Lila said, stirring her tea with her finger. “She ought to be at Gillon Street with round-the-clock help; surely she can afford it. Either that or Bishop Gadsden. She needs to be near Queens. Henry ought to be firm with her.”
I looked at her.
“Isn’t that what we all swore we wouldn’t let happen?” I said.
“Oh, Anny, that was so long ago! It was a kind of…you know, a joke. None of us ever meant for you to end up a slave. Lewis would hate it.”
“I wouldn’t even have been a part of you if she hadn’t been the first to take me in, and with all her heart, too,” I said. “She’s held me up many times. She’s held us all up.”
Lila dropped her eyes, and I knew she was remembering, as I was, those painful days after we knew that Simms was seeing other women, when she had sat as close to Camilla as a child to its mother, and Camilla had soothed and comforted her.
Tears welled in Lila’s eyes.
“I know,” she said. “I just hate what’s happening to you all. All of you should be getting on with your lives instead of hiding out here.”
“Lila,” I said, “right now this is my life.”
Camilla came shuffling out just then, with Gaynelle supporting her. She wore a crisp cotton skirt and a white shirt, loose on her now but bright and pretty. Her hair was put up in neat braids on top of her head, and her lipstick was fresh. She smelled of her customary Caleche. I thought that she looked far better than I did.
“Lila’s absolutely right,” she said, letting Gaynelle settle her into a rocking chair. “I couldn’t help overhearing. Anny, you really must go back home, at least during the week. I’ve got Henry and Gaynelle. I simply can’t let myself eat you alive.”
I looked down at my hands; they were clenched and white-knuckled.
“I can’t,” I whispered. “I just can’t right now. It’s such a mess I wouldn’t know where to begin and…I don’t know. I don’t think I can be there alone.”
“Well, that’s easy enough to fix,” Gaynelle said, smiling at me. “I’ll come with you and we’ll get it in shape in no time. I’d love to do it with you.”
I took a deep breath to refuse, and then lifted my hands and dropped them.
“You’re right. I need to take care of it. I’d love to have your help, Gaynelle.”
“Good for you!” Lila said heartily.
Camilla smiled.
Just then we heard the Rubbertail returning, and saw the white plume of its dust. We heard shouts and laughter, too. Even Lila smiled at the sound. When the bike roared into the turnaround and T. C. and Henry got off, I suddenly saw Henry, fully saw him, for the first time in weeks. At this distance, swinging off the bike and loping toward us, on the porch, newly and faintly tanned and squinting against the low sun, he looked so much like the Henry of years ago that my heart squeezed. Apparently Camilla thought so, too; I heard her give a very small gasp.
“I’m getting a little chilly,” she said to Gaynelle. “I think I’ll take a nap till dinner. Lila, it was like champagne to see you. Kiss Simms for me.”
Lila gave her a peck on the cheek and Gaynelle led her from the porch just as Henry came up to the steps.
“Did I run you off?” he called after her.
“Of course not. I’ll see you at dinner. You look like the dust man.”
The next Saturday Gaynelle and I took cleaning supplies and drove into Charleston, to tackle my house on Bull Street. Henry sat with Camilla on her porch; the weather had held and the marsh was beginning to green, very faintly. It was the second greening I had seen here. Lewis had seen it with me the first time. I squeezed my eyes shut. Time enough later for tears. Henry and Camilla were drinking coffee and laughing as we left. It made me happy to see her laugh.
We turned onto Bull Street and my heart began to hammer. Sweat popped out at my hairline. If he was here, could I bear it? Would I be afraid, as I had been the last time I came here?
If he was not here, could I bear that?
Gaynelle pulled her truck into the garden parking space and sat looking at the house, and then at me. My lovely house shone like a jewel in the green gloom of the live oaks.
“It’s a perfect little house,” she said. “Like a fairy tale. It looks like you. But it’s hard, isn’t it? You’re white as a sheet. If it’s too much, I can do it in a couple of hours and you can go shopping or get a latte or something. It’ll be easier to come into it clean.”
“No,” I said. “It’s my house. Mine and Lewis’s. I will not be afraid of it. Let’s do it.”
It took us just over four hours to set the house to rights. We scrubbed, swept, waxed, vacuumed, dusted, put away the things I had left scattered when I had run from the house. I was able to do it as long as I was with Gaynelle. She seemed to sense that. She never left me alone in a room. As I touched the beautiful old wood and fabric, the china and crystal and books and bibelots that had been the texture of our lives, I looked for Lewis, listened for him, waited for his touch. The sense of him had been so strong the first time. Ever since, when I thought of him, I thought of him as somehow waiting in this house. I was ashamed. I should have run back here to be filled up with him; instead I fled him, running away from a dead man with pearls for eyes whom I did not know.
“Lewis,”
I whispered a couple of times. “I’m home. Where are you? Please let me know.”
But he was not there. As we moved methodically through each room, scrubbing and airing and polishing, I had no sense of him at all. Grief began to rise in my throat. I realized that I had, on some level, fully expected to find him here. But if he had ever been in this house since I lost him, he was gone now. From now on, I would have to think of him under the earth at Sweetgrass. Somehow, I could not bear that.
I stifled a sob and Gaynelle put her arms around me. “You go on out now. Everything is ready for you when you want to come back, but you’ve had enough for one day. Go sit in the sun on that bench. I’ve just got to go through the closets…but maybe you’ll want to do that later.”
“No,” I whispered. “Please. You do it.”
And I waited while she cleared Lewis’s closet, and brought his clothes out in a couple of suitcases and put them into the back of the truck, and covered them with a tarp. I did not see them again. I asked her if she would find a good use for them, and she said she knew just the place. I never asked where it was.
I cried silently all the way home, and she drove peacefully, not speaking, only reaching over to pat my knee every now and then. I loathed crying in public, but somehow it seemed all right with her. By the time we pulled into the driveway at the creek, I had stopped, and mopped my face. Gaynelle gave me a final hug.
“You were brave today,” she said, and drove away. I trudged up the steps to my house, drained and weary to my bones. I was, I thought, cried out for the rest of the month, at least.
Henry was sitting on my sofa, reading the New York Times and drinking red wine. He had built a fire and lit the lamps, and the room put out its arms to me. Night was falling, and with it the temperature.
He looked up at me, and then patted the sofa for me to sit beside him. I sat.
He studied me, and then said, “Bad. I was afraid it would be. You’re braver than me; I still can’t go home.”
Islands Page 30