Galveston (39 page)

“I guess she invited you and Father Garret when they were out riding together today.”

“But I didn't know they went riding together. Dad said—”

“Yes, I saw them when I was with Tommy Driscoll, going up Avenue K in her rig. Of course I saw them from behind and the sun was in my eyes, but I'm sure it was them.

“Anyway, I wish you could come tonight. It'd be so much more fun.”

“Another time,” I said absently, wondering why Dad had lied about not having seen Claire all day. Oh well, perhaps I just misunderstood him, my mind being on Roman Cruz during our conversation.

Chapter 8

Sunday night it rained, and Mother became ill.

I'd written entries for the past three days in my diary, then gone to bed at ten, too excited to sleep, and lay awake until twelve, when the wind began to rattle the shutters and the rain came like dancing feet upon the roof.

Rain was something I hadn't counted on. Never, in considering the dangers of giving myself away, or being discovered by someone, for doing the unforgivable act for a young lady, had I thought of the simple, irrevocable problem of rain. Rain could keep me from the beach, steal away precious time with Roman. What if it should keep up for days? It often would, once it began, and we hadn't yet had a good shower this summer.

I lay there wondering whether I could manage to go to the beach anyway. If I could not, would Roman understand why, or would he say to himself, “Well, if she lets a little rain get in her way, forget it.”

Oh, surely he couldn't be so unreasonable. Yet at this stage he must have wondered a time or two whether I'd have nerve enough to return to him again.…

At twelve forty-five Dad knocked softly at my door, and opened it. “Serena, are you awake? Mother's taken sick, I'm afraid she's pretty ill.”

“Yes, what's wrong?” I got up, reached for my robe.

“She's been vomiting. I'm going to fetch Doc. Will you stay with her?”

“Of course. Go along, but wear your mackintosh. You can't take a chance on getting a cold and being sick, too.”

“Yes, Nan. That's thoughtful of you,” he said, and closed the door. It hadn't been thoughtfulness, really. I only dreaded the idea there might be one more obstacle in the way of my seeing Roman, for with the sound of the rain had come the startling realization there were many things which could happen to ruin my plans. If Mother and Dad were both ill … I scolded myself for selfish thoughts, and went to Mother's room.

The stench was deplorable, and it occurred to me she must have been sick for some time before Dad heard her and came in to check. How pathetic to lie in misery, unable to form the words for seeking help. He'd put a porcelain pan by her bed and she'd filled it with the undigested food of her stomach, and now lay back limply. Her hair was wet, her forehead covered with perspiration. Some of the nasty liquid had dripped down the side of her mouth, and now stuck at the edge of her chin.

“Mother, poor dear, let me empty this and I'll come back and change the bed and clean you up,” I told her, picking up the stinking pan. It is frustrating to care for a sick person who cannot tell what is wrong, or say what they think might help them feel better. I'd fed her a supper of ham and potatoes and peas around six o'clock, and had eaten the same food myself, so I knew this couldn't be what was making her ill. I emptied the pan and filled her pitcher with water, then cleaned her face with a wet cloth and changed the bedclothes. There was little more to do, then, except wait for Doc. All the while I sat beside her bed, I kept thinking I might not be able to go in the morning to see Roman, and hating myself for the thought.

“Mother, I wish you could tell me if there's anything I can do,” I said finally, impatient for the doctor to come so I would know.

She looked at me vacantly, and a small smile crossed her lips. One never knows why Mother may smile, or why she cries. You can only guess something has pleased or displeased her, real or imagined.

She put out her hand and I reached for it, held it in my own. Her fingers are skeletal things, the thin skin of her hand embossed with the complex of veins underneath. It felt clammy that night, and somehow the feel of it saddened me and I wanted to bury my face in her breast and cry as I had when I was a child. How many times over the years had I cried in frustration, wondering when she was ever going to get well, before I finally resigned myself to the fact she'd always be the same woman who came home from the hospital one day and didn't recognize me?

Year after year, there has been almost no change in her demeanor. Mother's hand is warm and soft, or it is clammy. Mother's hair is clean and limp, or wet, from a night of bad dreams, perhaps, hanging in cords around her shoulders; Mother eats her supper or refuses it; she looks out the window and writes meaningless words across a piece of paper in an almost indecipherable scribble; she smiles or cries, shivers from the cold or perspires from the heat. She is a fragile will-o'-the-wisp of bones and skin, existing in a faraway world of her own.… I sighed and gave her hand a squeeze.

The clippity-clop of horse hooves rose to the window, and I went down to let Dad and Doc in and hang up their coats. Doc is very good about coming when needed. That night his hair was mussed and he wore his pajamas and robe. He'd hurried here from his own bed to care for a retching invalid.

“Well now, what's the matter with you, Janet?” he asked matter-of-factly, pretending as always that she understands what he says. He took her temperature, asked me what she'd eaten, then did a curious thing. Claire had left a vase full of pink oleanders next to Mother's bed the day before, and he began to examine the blossoms and leaves. I was puzzled by his actions, but Dad seemed to guess what Doc was doing.

“Say, you don't think she might have eaten off one of those blossoms, do you?”

“It doesn't look that way, but then I wouldn't leave them so close to her bed.” He handed the vase to Dad, who, at a loss as to what to do with it, finally placed it on the windowsill across the room.

Doc removed the thermometer, screwed his eyes up to read it, then reported, “Temperature's normal. I would guess she ate something today that disagreed with her. Probably no call for alarm, though. Got some medicine in my bag here she can take every four hours—one spoonful—and she might drink some cool water, and maybe some broth tomorrow. I'll stop by then and see how she's doing.”

He went to his case and pulled out a medicine bottle of white liquid. “Looks like a gully washer out there,” he said, directing his gaze across at the window. “Always hate to start off a week with rain … something disheartening about it. Now, open up, young lady, there you go.”

Mother seemed to trust Doc Monroe, and never gave him trouble when he looked after her. He'd lived down the street for a long time, and perhaps been kind to her before her accident. Funny how I can sense how she feels about various people, something about her eyes. I think she liked James right off, and she seems to feel content with Mrs. McCambridge. Regardless of how she feels about Claire, she was fond of Charles Becker. I could see that readily. He came by often before his death, and many times stayed with her so that I could leave during the hours I normally spent with her. To Dad she has almost a pathetic attachment. She'll clasp his hand sometimes, as he sits with her, and hold it and fondle it for as long as he'll stay.

Before Doc left, he gave me the medicine bottle, as though he entrusted me with her getting well, and said, “Now, don't forget to see she gets this on time. It's very important, missy.”

Did he know I had other plans for the morning? Was he the one who'd alerted Dad I was seeing Roman? Surely not, I told myself, and thought how easily I could be driven beyond reason about finding out. I could get where I trusted no one, suspected everyone was against me, and all because of my own guilt feelings trapping me.

As Dad and Doc Monroe left I counted the hours. Next dose at five o'clock, then one at nine. My heart leapt. It would be perfect. I could give her a dose just before I left; that is, if she was feeling well enough for me to go, and besides, Mrs. McCambridge would be here to look after her. Surely it wouldn't look too awful if I left, unless, of course, she was still very sick, and unless the battering rain failed to stop as I had begun to pray it would.

I looked in on her once more before getting into bed at two. She was sleeping peacefully, defying anyone to guess she'd ever been ill at all. I believe the sickness must have been all but past before Dad woke me.

I heard his footsteps on the stairs, just before I dozed off, and wondered, as I have many times, whom he has to look to for comfort. Is it enough, having only God in heaven to give consolation, or must one have something more tangible here that he can see and hold? Was I enough, as Dad had always tried to make me feel, or could anyone ever replace what he'd lost in his wife? Then another thought flashed across my mind: just a few days before I'd found another Old Saratoga bottle on the kitchen table, emptier, even, than the last.

At five o'clock I awoke and gave Mother her medicine, disappointed to notice the rain continuing. Then for the next two hours I slept fitfully, dreaming that Roman came over and he and Dad sat at the kitchen table and grew drunk together.

At seven o'clock I was awakened by the pleasant twittering of birds, and opened my eyes to face a room brightened by sunlight. I thought perhaps this was a “sign,” as Dad might have termed it, of God showing me he wanted me to be with Roman, that he condoned everything and wouldn't punish me. For I was afraid even then of being punished.

Roman never changed from the gentle, tender loving partner he was at the beginning. Each time I left the house in the morning, with Mother in the safekeeping of Mrs. McCambridge and Dad off on his church duties, I felt a sense of relief and an anxious stirring inside, an impatience to get to him. Although James sometimes walked with me as far as Marybeth's, often he did not, spending time instead with Tommy Driscoll. When I went alone, I scarcely ever went all the way to the Fischers', running instead straight to the back door of the Pavilion and into Roman's waiting arms.

He always made me feel as though he waited as anxiously for me as I had awaited the appointed hour to go to him, and I began to have the reckless feeling that this interlude in our lives could go on forever, without our ever being found out, or his growing tired of me.

Even on the days of his darker moods, when we were as likely to do nothing more than stand on the beach and talk, or talk upstairs in the tower, as to wind up locked in each other's arms, he made me feel as though he needed me. One morning I found him at the surf's edge, arms folded and feet slightly apart, so that when I saw him I thought of the god Apollo, and said playfully behind him, “It is the god Apollo, god of the song and the lyre.”

He turned on me almost angrily, as though his mind were miles from the beach and the rolling surf, and me. “Oh, it's you. You're early, aren't you?”

“Maybe. Did I bother you?”

“No, come here,” he said, and I went to him and he put an arm around me, and we stood together for a long time without speaking. Then he said, “That so-and-so boyfriend of yours came to the show last night. Sat right up front where I could see him.”

“Nick, at the show? I didn't know he was going, haven't seen him for a week.”

“That Bible-toting, high-minded bastard. I felt like yanking him out of that chair and beating the hell out of him. Excuse the unfit language.”

“Roman, you couldn't do that—then everybody would find out about us.”

“And that would be terrible, wouldn't it?” he said coldly. “Would bring your reputation among the Galvestonians right down to the ground.”

“It isn't that, darling. It's just that if my father found out we were seeing each other I'd probably never get away to the beach again.”

“Maybe it would be just as well, at that.” The wind was stronger suddenly, blowing our hair as though to coax us away from the water.

“No, don't say that, please.”

“All right. Let's go for a swim,” he said, then playfully added, “Besides, your bathing attire looks far better wet.”

As we splashed around in the warm salty water I said, “By the way, what's happened to the boys in the band? I never see them playing ball around here anymore.”

“Morning rehearsals have been cut to almost nothing as the summer wears on, and the boys have scattered in all directions. Some go to the public beaches, where they can meet girls. The Professor isn't around much anyway. He has a friend in town.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Yes, that kind of friend, dearie.”

“Roman, this is July. It's been almost a month.”

“I know. Only two more to go.”

“It's a long time between the end of this summer and next June.”

“Yes, a very long time. And I still don't know whether we'll be back.”

I'd been floating on my back, and now raised up and stood in the water. “You mean they haven't renewed the contract?”

“It's too soon to tell how the receipts are going to run.”

“But what'll we do if—”

“Let's don't talk about it, for God's sake, can't we just make the most of what time we have together?”

“Of course, I'm sorry. I shouldn't be pushing ahead like that … don't know what got into me. Time is too precious to spend it worrying.…”

The first of a legion of leaden clouds passed above and sprinkled us with rain then, and we ran toward the stage door for cover. “Oh gosh, I can't stay long,” I said as we ascended the tower stairs. “It would look funny if I stayed while it was raining.”

“What would you do if you were at the Fischer place?”

“Go into the bathhouse, but only for as long as it took to let up a bit. You know, rain down here has a way of going on and on.”