Gone South (51 page)

“Sit.” The Bright Girl lifted her other hand, the fingers just as twisted, and motioned toward a flower-print armchair that had been turned to face the bed. The elderly woman’s voice trembled; either from palsy or being nervous, Arden didn’t know. Arden sat down, her hands clutching the pink bag in her lap, her heart galloping.

“Lemonade,” the Bright Girl said. Her breathing, too, looked painful. “Want a glass?”

“I … think I would.”

“I can put a shot of vodka in it for you.” The Bright Girl, surprisingly, had a midwestern accent.

“Uh … no. Just lemonade.”

“Pearly, would you? And I
will
take a shot of vodka in mine.”

The two women were silent. The Bright Girl stared at Arden, but Arden wasn’t sure where to park her eyes. She was so glad to have found this person, so glad to finally be there, but she was feeling a crush of disappointment, too. The Bright Girl wasn’t who Jupiter had said she was. The Bright Girl could not cheat time, and she wasn’t a faith healer. If she had a healing touch, then why hadn’t she been able to smooth the scars on Pearly’s face? Tears burned Arden’s eyes again; they were the bitter tears of knowing she had been wrong.

The Bright Girl — at least the time-cheating, never-aging, faith-healing part of her — was a myth. The truth was that the Bright Girl was a rather small, frail, white-haired eighty-five-year-old woman who had gnarled fingers and labored breathing.

“Don’t cry,” the Bright Girl said.

“I’m all right. Really.” Arden wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m —” She stopped. The floodgates were about to burst. It had all been wrong. It had been a cruel, cruel trick.

“Go ahead if you want to cry. I cried my eyes out, too, that first day.”

The tears had begun trickling down Arden’s cheeks. She sniffled. “What do you mean …
you
cried, too?”

“When I came here and found out.” She paused, her breathing strained. “Found out the Bright Girl couldn’t just put her hands on me and take it all away.”

Arden shook her head. “I’m not … I don’t understand. Take what away?”

The old woman smiled slightly. “The pain. The Bright Girl couldn’t heal me of the pain. That I had to do for myself.”

“But …
you’re
the Bright Girl, aren’t you?”

“I’m
a
Bright Girl.”

“Are you … are you a nun?”

“Me,
a nun? Unh-unh! I raised too much hell when I was a young girl to be a nun now! The thing is, I enjoyed raising hell. Seeing my father” — again, she had to pause to regulate her breathing — “squirm when the police brought me home. We didn’t get along so very well.”

Pearly came in, bringing a plain plastic tray with two jelly-jar glasses of lemonade. “Take this one,” he said, giving Arden a glass, “unless you want your head knocked off. Miz McKay likes the occasional libation.”

“I wish you would
quit
that! Over thirty damn years,” she said, speaking to Arden, “and he still calls me
Miz
McKay! Like I’m some weak little old flower that just slumps in the” — a breath, a breath — “slumps in the noonday sun! My name is
Kathleen!”

“You know I was raised to respect my elders. Don’t drink that down too fast, now.”

“I’ll gulp it in a second if I want to!” she snapped, but she didn’t. “Let us be alone now, Pearly. We have to talk.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“There he goes with that southern-fried crap again! Go out and pee on the flowers or something!”

Pearly left the room. The Bright Girl gripped her glass with both hands, drew it to her wrinkled mouth, and sipped. “Ahhhh,” she said. “That’s better.” She glanced up at the ceiling fan that turned above them. “I never could get used to this heat down here. For a time I thought I couldn’t stand it, that I was going to have to get back” — a breath, then another — “to Indiana. That’s where I’m from. Evansville, Indiana. You said you’re from Fort Worth?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s good, then. Hot in Texas, too.” She sipped her vodka-laced lemonade again. “That’s some birthmark you’ve got there.”

Arden nodded, not knowing how to respond.

“You came here to be healed, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And now you’re sitting there thinking you’re the biggest. Biggest fool who ever put on panties. You came down here to be healed by a young, pretty girl who never ages. Who people say lives forever. You didn’t come here to” — breathing again, her lungs making a soft hitching noise — “listen to an old woman spit and snort, did you?”

“No,” Arden had to admit. “I didn’t.”

“I came to be healed, too. My ‘condition,’ as my father put it” — she nodded toward a walker by the bed — “used to be able to get around on a cane, but … I can hardly stand up on the walker now. I’ve had severe arthritis since I was a young girl. About your age, maybe younger. My father was from old money. The family’s in banking. Very social dogs, they are. So when the lovely daughter can’t dance on her crippled” — a pause — “crippled legs at the social events, and when the white gloves won’t slip over her twisted fingers, then. Then the specialists are called. But when the specialists can’t do very much, then lovely daughter becomes a pariah. Lovely daughter spends more and more time alone, growing bitter. Drinking. Screwing any boy who. Boy who’ll have her. Lovely daughter has several ugly public scenes. Then one day lovely daughter is told she will have a companion, to watch her and keep her out of trouble. Being enlightened bastards, we have hired a sturdy, nonthreatening woman of color who doesn’t. Doesn’t know what she ought to be being paid.” Kathleen McKay drank from the glass once more, her gnarled fingers locked together. “That woman of color … was born in Thibodoux. That’s about fifty miles up Highway One from Grand Isle. We used to share a bottle of Canadian Club, and she told me wonderful stories.”

Arden said, “I still don’t under—”

“Oh, yes, you do!” Kathleen interrupted. “You understand it all! You just don’t want to let. Let go of the illusion. I’ve been sitting right where you are, talking to an old, used-up, and dying woman. In this very bed. Her name was Juliet Garrick, and she was from Mobile, Alabama. She had one leg three inches shorter than the other. The one before her … well, I don’t remember. Some wicked deformity or another, I’m sure. Are you positive you don’t want a shot of vodka?”

“I’m sure,” Arden said. Her heart had stopped pounding, but her nerves were still raw. “How many … how many Bright Girls have there been?”

“Cemetery’s not far. You can go count for yourself. But I think the first two were buried at sea.”

Arden still felt like crying. She felt like having a cry that would break the heart of the world. Maybe she would, later. But not right now. “Who was the first one?”

“The woman who founded the hospital. Avrietta Colbert. Her journals and belongings and things are in a museum between the chapel and where the sisters live. Interesting, gutsy lady. Strong-willed. Before the Civil War she was on a ship with her husband, sailing from South America to New Orleans. He was a rancher. Wealthy people. Anyway, not far from here a storm blew up and smashed their ship. Smashed their ship in these barrier islands. She washed up here. The legend goes that she vowed to God she would build a church and hospital for the poor on the first island that would have her. This one did, and she did. There’s a photograph of her over there. She was a beautiful young blond woman. But her eyes … you can tell she had fire in her.”

Arden sighed. She lowered her head and put a hand to her face.

“The sisters came here sometime in the forties,” Kathleen went on. “They manage the place, pay the staff, make sure all that work’s done.” She finished her lemonade and very carefully put the glass down on the bedside table. “All of us — the Bright Girls, I mean — came from different places, for different reasons. But we all have shared one very, very important thing.”

Arden lifted her head, her eyes puffy and reddened. “What’s that?”

“We believed,” Kathleen said. “In miracles.”

“But it was a lie. It was always a lie.”

“No.” Kathleen shook her white-crowned head. “It was an illusion, and there’s a difference. What the Bright Girl could do —  what she was — became what people wanted to believe. If there is no hope, what reason is there to live? A world without miracles … well, that would be a world I wouldn’t care to live in.”

“What
miracles?” Arden asked, a little anger creeping in. “I don’t see any miracles around here!”

Kathleen leaned forward, wincing with the effort. Her cheeks and forehead had become blushed with anger, too; she was a scrapper. She said three short, clipped words: “Open. Your. Eyes.”

Arden blinked, surprised by the strength in the old woman’s voice.

“No, you can’t get your birthmark healed here! Just like I couldn’t get my arthritis healed, or Juliet Garrick couldn’t get her short leg lengthened! That’s junk! But what’s not junk” — a breath, a breath, a breath — “not junk is the fact that I can walk through those wards. Through those wards, hobbling on my walker. I can walk through them and people who are dying sit up they sit up in their beds and they smile to see me and for” — a gasp — “for a few minutes they have an escape. They smile and laugh as if they’ve touched the sun. For a few precious, precious minutes. And children with cancer, and tuberculosis, and AIDS, they come out of their darkness to reach for my hand, and they hold on to me. On to me like I am
somebody,
and they don’t mind my ugly fingers. They don’t see that Kathleen McKay of Evansville, Indiana, is old and crippled!” Her eyes were fierce behind the glasses. “No, they hold on to the Bright Girl.”

She paused, getting her breath again. “I don’t lie to them,” she said after a moment or two. “I don’t tell them they can beat their sicknesses, if Dr. Felicien or Dr. Walcott don’t say so first. But I have tried — I have
tried
— to make them understand the miracle the way I and Sister Caroline see it. That flesh is going to die, yes. It’s going to leave this world, and that’s the way life is. But I believe in the miracle that though flesh dies, the spirit does not. It goes on, just like the Bright Girl goes on. Though the women who wear that title wither and pass away, the Bright Girl does not. She lives on and on, tending to her patients and her hospital. Walking the wards. Holding the hands. She lives on. So don’t you
dare
sit there with your eyes closed and not look at what God is offering to
you!”

Arden’s mouth slowly opened. “To … me?”

“Yes, you! The hospital would survive without a Bright Girl —  I guess it would, I don’t know — but it would be. Be terribly changed. All the Bright Girls over the many years have held this place together. And it’s not been easy, I’ll tell you! Storms have torn the hospital half to pieces, there’ve been money problems, equipment problems, troubles keeping the. The old buildings from falling apart. It’s far from perfect. If there wasn’t a Bright Girl to solicit contributions, or fight the oil companies who want to start drilling. Drilling right offshore here and ruin our island. Keep our patients awake all night long, where would we be?”

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the pillow. “I don’t know. I
do
know … I don’t want to be the last one. No. I won’t be the one who breaks the chain.” She sighed, and was silent with her thoughts. When she spoke again, her voice was low and quiet. “The Bright Girl can’t be any damn pushover. She’s got to be a fighter, and she’s got to do the hard work as best she can. Most of all” — Kathleen’s eyes opened —“she can’t be afraid to take responsibility.”

Arden sat very still, her hands gripping the drawstring bag.

“Maybe you’re not the one. I don’t know. Damn, I’m tired. Those sisters over there, praying and praying at the chapel. I told them. I said if she’s coming, she’ll be here. But maybe you’re not the one.”

Arden didn’t know what to say. She stood up from her chair, but she didn’t know where to go, either.

“If you stayed,” Kathleen said, “if you did what had to be done … I could promise you no one here would even see that birthmark. It would be gone. They’d see only the face behind it.”

Arden stood in a spill of light, caught between what was and what could be.

“Go on, then.” Kathleen’s voice was weary. “There’s a radio at the hospital. The ferry can get here from Grand Isle in half an hour. I know the man who owns the marina. He can find a ride out for you, take you up Highway One to Golden Meadow. Catch the bus from there. Do you have money?”

“No.”

“Pearly!” Kathleen called.
“Pearly!”
There was no response. “If he’s not outside, he’s probably walked along the path to the barn. Go over there and tell him I said to give you fifty dollars and call the marina for you.”

“The barn?” Arden’s heart was pounding again. “What’s … in the barn?”

“Horses, of course! Those things have always scared the skin off me, but Pearly loves them. I told him, when one of them kicks him in the head one day, he won’t spend so much time over there.”

“Horses,” Arden whispered, and at last she smiled.

“Yes, horses. Avrietta Colbert’s husband was a rancher. They were bringing horses back from South America on their ship. Some of the horses swam here, those started the herd. We raise and sell them, to make money for the hospital.” Kathleen frowned. “What’s wrong?”

Arden’s eyes had filled with tears. She couldn’t speak, her throat had clutched up. Then she got it out: “Nothing’s wrong. I think … I think everything’s right.”

She was crying now, and she was half blind. But she realized at that moment that never before had she seen so much, or so clearly.

He was sitting in a chair on the upper porch, the blue shadows of twilight gathering on the emerald lawn. A crutch leaned against the railing beside him. He was watching the sun slide toward the Gulf, and he was thinking about what had happened an hour ago.

The ferryboat had come from Grand Isle. He’d been sitting right there, watching. Two men and Sister Caroline had left the hospital, walking down the path to the pier. One of the men was bald and fat, but he walked with his shoulders back as if he’d found something to be proud of about himself. The other man, tall and slim and wearing a dark suit and a new pair of black wingtips someone on the staff had brought him yesterday from the mainland, had stopped short of getting aboard the ferry and had looked back.