Last Summer at Mars Hill (4 page)

But tonight for some reason the night already felt old. Jason shivered and kicked at the pebbly beach. The last pale light of sunset cast an antique glow upon stones and touched the edge of the water with gold. As he watched, the light withdrew, a gauzy veil drawn back teasingly until the shore shimmered with afterglow, like blue glass.

“I heard her talking with Diana,” Moony said. Her voice was unsettlingly loud and clear in the still air. “She was saying she might stay on, after I go off to school. I mean, she was talking like she wasn’t going back at all, I mean not back to Kamensic. Like she might just stay here and never leave again.” Her voice cracked on the words
never leave again
and she shuddered, hugging herself.

“Hey,” said Jason. He walked over and put his arms around her, her dark hair a perfumed net that drew him in until he felt dizzy and had to draw back, gasping a little, the smell of her nearly overwhelming that of rugosa roses and the sea. “Hey, it’s okay, Moony, really it’s okay.”

Moony’s voice sounded explosive, as though she had been holding her breath. “I just can’t believe she’s giving
up
like this. I mean, no doctors, nothing. She’s just going to stay here and die.”

“She might not die,” said Jason, his own voice a little desperate. “I mean, look at Adele. A century and counting. The best is yet to come.”

Moony laughed brokenly. She leaned forward so that her hair once again spilled over him, her wet cheek resting on his shoulder. “Oh, Jason. If it weren’t for you I’d go crazy, you know that? I’d just go fucking nuts.”

Nuts,
thought Jason. His arms tightened around her, the cool air and faraway music nearly drowning him as he stroked her head and breathed her in.
Crazy, oh, yes.
And they stood there until the moon showed over Dark Harbor, and all that far-off music turned to silvery light above the Bay.

Two days later Ariel and Moony went to see the doctor in Bangor. Moony drove, an hour’s trip inland, up along the old road that ran beside the Penobscot River, through failed stonebound farms and past trailer encampments like sad rusted toys, until finally they reached the sprawl around the city, the kingdom of car lots and franchises and shopping plazas.

The hospital was an old brick building with a shiny new white wing grafted on. Ariel and Moony walked through a gleaming steel-and-glass door set in the expanse of glittering concrete. But they ended up in a tired office on the far end of the old wing, where the squeak of rubber wheels on worn linoleum played counterpoint to a loudly echoing, ominous
drip-drip
that never ceased the whole time they were there.

“Ms. Rising. Please, come in.”

Ariel squeezed her daughter’s hand, then followed the doctor into her office. It was a small bright room, a hearty wreath of living ivy trained around its single grimy window in defiance of the lack of sunlight and, perhaps, the black weight of despair that Ariel felt everywhere, chairs, desk, floor, walls.

“I received your records from New York,” the doctor said. She was a slight fine-boned young woman with sleek straight hair and a silk dress more expensive than what you usually saw in Maine. The little metal name-tag on her breast might have been an odd bit of heirloom jewelry. “You realize that even as of three weeks ago, the cancer had spread to the point where our treatment options are now quite limited.”

Ariel nodded, her arms crossed protectively across her chest. She felt strange, light-headed. She hadn’t been able to eat much the last day or two, that morning had swallowed a mouthful of coffee and a stale muffin to satisfy Moony but that was all. “I know,” she said heavily. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

“Frankly, I don’t know either,” the doctor replied. “If you had optioned for some kind of intervention oh, even two months ago; but now…”

Ariel tilted her head, surprised at how sharp the other woman’s tone was. The doctor went on, “It’s a great burden to put on your daughter—” She looked in the direction of the office door, then glanced down at the charts in her hand. “Other children?”

Ariel shook her head. “No.”

The doctor paused, gently slapping the sheaf of charts and records against her open palm. Finally she said, “Well. Let’s examine you, then.”

An hour later Ariel slipped back into the waiting room. Moony looked up from a magazine. Her gray eyes were bleary and her tired expression hastily congealed into the mask of affronted resentment with which she faced Ariel these days.

“So?” she asked as they retraced their steps back through cinder-block corridors to the hospital exit. “What’d she say?”

Ariel stared straight ahead, through the glass doors to where the summer afternoon waited to pounce on them. Exhaustion had seeped into her like heat; like the drugs the doctor had offered and Ariel had refused, the contents of crystal vials that could buy a few more weeks, maybe even months if she was lucky, enough time to make a graceful farewell to the world. But Ariel didn’t want weeks or months, and she sure as hell didn’t want graceful goodbyes. She wanted years, decades. A cantankerous or dreamy old age, aggravating the shit out of her grandchildren with her talk about her own sunflower youth. Failing that, she wanted screaming and gnashing of teeth, her friends tearing their hair out over her death, and Moony…

And Moony. Ariel stopped in front of a window, one hand out to press against the smooth cool glass. Grief and horror hit her like a stone, struck her between the eyes so that she gasped and drew her hands to her face.

“Mom!” Moony cried, shocked. “Mom, what
is
it, are you all right?—”

Ariel nodded, tears burning down her cheeks. “I’m fine,” she said, and gave a twisted smile. “Really, I’m—”

“What did she say?” demanded Moony. “The doctor, what did she tell you,
what is it
?”

Ariel wiped her eyes, a black line of mascara smeared across her finger. “Nothing. Really, Moony, nothing’s changed. It’s just—it’s just hard. Being this sick. It’s hard, that’s all.”

She could see in her daughter’s face confusion, despair, but also relief. Ariel hadn’t said
death
, she hadn’t said
dying
, she hadn’t since that first day said
cancer.
She’d left those words with the doctor, along with the scrips for morphine and Fiorinal, all that could be offered to her now. “Come on,” she said, and walked through the sliding doors. “I’m supposed to have lunch with Mrs. Grose and Diana, and it’s already late.”

Moony stared at her in disbelief: was her mother being stoic or just crazy? But Ariel didn’t say anything else, and after a moment her daughter followed her to the car.

In Mars Hill’s little chapel Jason sat and smoked. On the altar, in front of him were several weeks’ accumulated offerings from the denizens of Mars Hill. An old-fashioned envelope with a glassine window, through which he could glimpse the face of a twenty-dollar bill—that was from Mrs. Grose, who always gave the money she’d earned from readings (and then retrieved it at the end of the summer). A small square of brilliantly woven cloth from Diana, whose looms punctuated the soft morning with their steady racketing. A set of blueprints from Rvis Capricorn. Shasta Daisy’s battered
Ephemera.
The copy of Paul Bowles’ autobiography that Jason’s father had been reading on the flight out from the West Coast. In other words, the usual flotsam of love and whimsy that washed up here every summer. From where Jason sat, he could see his own benefaction, a heap of small white roses, already limp but still giving out their heady sweet scent, and a handful of blackberries he’d picked from the thicket down by the pier. Not much of an offering, but you never knew.

From beneath his roses peeked the single gift that puzzled him, a lacy silk camisole patterned with pale pink-and-yellow blossoms. An odd choice of offering, Jason thought. Because for all the unattached adults sipping chardonnay and Bellinis of a summer evening, the atmosphere at Mars Hill was more like that of summer camp. A chaste sort of giddiness ruled here, compounded of equal parts of joy and longing, that always made Jason think of the garlanded jackass and wistful fairies in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
His father and Ariel and all the rest stumbling around in the dark, hoping for a glimpse of Them, and settling for fireflies and the lights from Dark Harbor. Mars Hill held surprisingly little in the way of unapologetic lust—except for himself and Moony, of course. And Jason knew that camisole didn’t belong to Moony.

At the thought of Moony he sighed and tapped his ashes onto the dusty floor. It was a beautiful morning, gin-clear and with a stiff warm breeze from the west. Perfect sailing weather. He should be out with his father on the
Wendameen.
Instead he’d stayed behind, to write and think. Earlier he’d tried to get through to Moony somewhere in Bangor, but Jason couldn’t send his thoughts any farther than from one end of Mars Hill to the other. For some reason, smoking cigarettes seemed to help. He had killed half a pack already this morning, but gotten nothing more than a headache and a raw throat. Now he had given up. It never seemed to work with anyone except Moony, anyhow, and then only if she was nearby.

He had wanted to give her some comfort. He wanted her to know how much he loved her, how she meant more to him than anyone or anything in the world, except perhaps his father. Was it allowed, to feel this much for a person when your father was HIV-positive? Jason frowned and stubbed out his cigarette in a lobster-shaped ashtray, already overflowing with the morning’s telepathic aids. He picked up his notebook and Rapidograph pen and, still frowning, stared at the letter he’d begun last night.

Dearest Moony,

(he crossed out est, it sounded too fussy)

I just want you to know that I understand how you feel. When John died it was the most horrible thing in the world, even worse than the divorce because I was just a kid then. I just want you to know how much I love you, you mean more than anyone or anything in the world, and

And what? Did he really know how she felt? His mother wasn’t dying, his mother was in the Napa Valley running her vineyard, and while it was true enough that John’s death had been the most horrible thing he’d ever lived through, could that be the same as having your mother die? He thought maybe it could. And then of course there was the whole thing with his father. Was that worse? His father wasn’t sick, of course, at least he didn’t have any symptoms yet; but was it worse for someone you loved to have the AIDS virus, to watch and wait for months or years, rather than have it happen quickly like with Ariel? Last night he’d sat in the living room while his father and Gary Bonetti were on the porch talking about her.

“I give her only a couple of weeks,” Martin had said, with that dry strained calm voice he’d developed over the last few years of watching his friends die. “The thing is, if she’d gone for treatment right away she could be fine now. She could be
fine
.” The last word came out in an uncharacteristic burst of vehemence, and Jason grew cold to hear it. Because of course even with treatment his father probably wouldn’t be all right, not now, not ever. He’d never be fine again. Ariel had thrown all that away.

“She should talk to Adele,” Gary said softly. Jason heard the clink of ice as he poured himself another daiquiri. “When I had those visions five years ago, that’s when I saw Adele. You should, too, Martin. You really should.”

“I don’t know as Adele can help me,” Martin said, somewhat coolly. “She’s just a guest here, like you or any of the rest of us. And
you
know that you can’t make Them…”

His voice trailed off. Jason sat bolt upright on the sofa, suddenly feeling his father there, like a cold finger stabbing at his brain.

“Jason?” Martin called, his voice tinged with annoyance. “If you want to listen, come in
here,
please.”

Jason had sworn under his breath and stormed out through the back door. It was impossible, sometimes, living with his father. Better to have a psychic wannabe like Ariel for a parent, and not have to worry about being spied on all the time.

Now, from outside the chapel came frenzied barking. Jason started, his thoughts broken. He glanced through the open door to see Gary and his black labrador retriever heading down to the water. Gary was grinning, arms raised as he waved at someone out of sight. And suddenly Jason had an image of his father in the
Wendameen,
the fast little sloop skirting the shore as Martin stood at the mast waving back, his long hair tangled by the wind. The vision left Jason nearly breathless. He laughed, shaking his head, and at once decided to follow Gary to the landing and meet his father there. He picked up his pen and notebook and turned to go. Then stopped, his neck prickling. Very slowly he turned, until he stood facing the altar once more.

They were there. A shimmering haze above the fading roses, like Zeus’s golden rain falling upon imprisoned Danaë. Jason’s breath caught in his throat as he watched Them—They were so beautiful, so
strange.
Flickering in the chapel’s dusty air, like so many scintillant coins. He could sense rather than hear a faint chiming as They darted quick as hummingbirds from his roses to Mrs. Grose’s envelope, alighting for a moment upon Diana’s weaving and Rvis’s prize tomatoes before settling upon two things: his father’s book and the unknown camisole.

And then with a sharp chill Jason knew whose it was. Ariel’s, of course—who else would own something so unabashedly romantic but also slightly tacky? Maybe it was meant to be a bad joke, or perhaps it was a real offering, heartfelt, heartbreaking. He stared at Them, a glittering carpet tossed over those two pathetic objects, and had to shield his eyes with his hand. It was too bright, They seemed to be growing more and more brilliant as he watched. Like a swarm of butterflies he had once seen, mourning cloaks resting in a snow-covered field one warm March afternoon, their wings slowly fanning the air as though They had been stunned by the thought of spring. But what could ever surprise
Them,
the Light Children, the summer’s secret?

Then as he watched They began to fade. The glowing golden edge of the swarm grew dim and disappeared. One by one all the other gilded coins blinked into nothing, until the altar stood as it had minutes before, a dusty collection of things, odd and somewhat ridiculous. Jason’s head pounded and he felt faint; then realized he’d been holding his breath. He let it out, shuddering, put his pen and notebook on the floor and walked to the altar.