Low Country (39 page)

or what I would be. I don’t see how you’ve gone on.”

“Well, I have other people I love, other things,” I

said. “All of us do. It’s hard to see that at first, but…we

do.”

And then I remembered that, so far as I knew, she

did not, and muttered, “Sorry. I assume a lot.”

“Oh, I have them, too,” she said. “Even if most of

them are dead. I just found them. It’s a powerful feel-

ing.”

“Maybe not all of them are dead,” I said, thinking of

Ezra’s black eyes on her.

“Maybe not,” she said. “Maybe not.”

We were silent again until I pulled up in front of her

condo in the harbor village. Despite the balmy

weather, it was still winter, and the darkness had swept

in suddenly and completely from the west. There were

a number of big white yachts in the harbor, their

portholes radiant with the lights of cocktails and din-

ners being celebrated, and the flagstone walkway

around the harbor was full of tanned, sun-bleached

people strolling to the shops and restaurants, or from

one boat to another. In the old live oaks the tiny white

lights that always reminded me of Christmas twinkled

in the skeins of silvery moss. Soft rock music drifted

from somewhere. It was festive and rich and quite

lovely, and about as real as cotton

Low Country / 351

candy. I knew suddenly that if I ever saw this over on

the island I would have to leave. That day. That mo-

ment.

We made a date for lunch the next week—I was not

going to let this accessible new Sophia go—and I drove

slowly back to the house. It was dark except for the

light I had left in the kitchen. As I pulled into the

driveway, I saw a man come out of the back door and

down the steps. Before I could even feel uneasy, I saw

that it was Hayes Howland and felt a sharp sting of

resentment instead. I did not want Hayes going in and

out of my house when I was not there. I supposed,

with weary resentment, that I would have to start

locking my doors after all. It was ironic to think that

when I finally capitulated to that, it would be Hayes I

was locking out, and not the occasional random robber

or rapist.

I met him at the back steps.

“Are you stealing the silver?” I said, trying for light-

ness.

“Looking for Clay. I haven’t been able to raise any-

body on the phone all afternoon, and I got uneasy. I

saw Charlie at lunch, and he said Clay was not in such

hot shape. You weren’t locked, so I went on in. He’s

asleep upstairs. I didn’t want to wake him.”

“Good of you,” I said waspishly. “He’s been sleeping

a lot. Charlie says he needs it. He also says he’ll be

just fine once he gets enough rest, so

352 / Anne Rivers Siddons

I’m letting him do it. I expect he’ll be back at the office

in a day or two. Can it wait, whatever you wanted

with him?”

“Oh, yeah. I was just being a mother hen. But now

that I’m here…Caro, have you had a chance to do

what we agreed on? About Dayclear?”

I knew in that instant that that was why he had

come. Not to check on Clay, but to see if I had been

to Dayclear yet, to put the company’s proposal to the

village. I don’t know why it made me so angry. From

the beginning I had known that he was in a hurry for

an answer.

“I’ve just come from there,” I said, looking straight

at him in the darkness. I could scarcely see his face,

only the gleam of his pale blue eyes.

“I told them exactly what you told me. And essen-

tially they told me it was up to me since I owned the

island, and I told them that it wasn’t going to happen.

And it’s not. I’m sorry, Hayes. I know that puts you

all in a bind. But you redid the plans once. Surely

there’s an avenue you haven’t explored yet. In any

event, I cannot let it happen, and I won’t.”

He stood silently, looking at me, and then down at

his feet.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Caro,” he said. “Clay will be,

too.”

“I know. Let me tell him, Hayes. I want him to hear

it from me.”

Low Country / 353

He shrugged. I could just make out the gesture.

“Better do it soon,” he said, and padded away over

the carpet of wet live oak leaves to the Porsche that

crouched in the dark like a big cat.

I watched him out of sight, and then walked around

the house and through the front yard, over the dunes

and down to the beach. I had not known I was going

to do that, but this time there was no heaviness, no

darkness, no prickle of panic. I merely felt still and

empty and very tired. I slipped off my sneakers and

padded across the silky, snake-cold sand to the firmer,

icy salt-slicked sand at the fringe of the surf and sat

down on the trunk of the fallen palm tree that had been

Carter’s fort and Kylie’s balance bar.

There was no moon, but the stars were huge and

cold and near, and the sea itself seemed to breathe off

a kind of radiance, like smoke. It made a long, infinitely

gentle susurration: Hushhhhh. Hushhhhhh. There was

almost no surf at all; what there was was white lace

against the blackness of the beach. There was no other

sound, and no one at all on the beach. I knew that if

I looked behind me I would see the lights of all the

other houses that fringed our stretch of shore, see their

windows lit for dinner and the coming evening. But I

did not look back. I looked far out into the whispering

sea, and I looked up into the sky.

“I wonder what you would make of all this?”

354 / Anne Rivers Siddons

I said to my daughter in the sky, or in the water, or

wherever it was that held her. I felt her very near. “I

wonder what you would do about the island if it were

your decision to make.”

But of course I knew the answer to that; she would

make the decision that I had made. She was me and I

was her. There had never been any question of that.

It struck me then that it was time. It was, finally, time.

“I’m going to let you go,” I said aloud. “I don’t know

how to do it, but I’m going to do it tonight. You need

to be your own person now. If you were still with me,

I’d be doing this about now…trying to learn to let you

be yourself. So this is it, kid. You’ll have to help me.

I don’t know what I need to do next.”

I wriggled off the log and stretched out against it,

leaning my head back, letting it take my weight. The

damp cold of the sand seeped through the seat of my

blue jeans, but it seemed a point of connection to the

earth, not an uncomfortable intrusion. I closed my eyes

and willed myself to think of nothing at all except her.

I tried to empty my mind even of the image of her, and

let just her essence, the warm, secret displacement of

air and space that was Kylie in my soul, fill me.

It was a mystery, what happened then. I think

everyone gets perhaps one to a lifetime. I know that I

made it in my mind, but I know, too, that it

Low Country / 355

was more than that, and I will always know that, no

matter who tries to dissuade me. No one will, because

I will never tell anyone. Not even Clay. This was my

mystery, mine and Kylie’s. I lay still on that empty

beach with her filling me, and behind my eyes there

began to appear golden prickles of light, like the ones

that always come when you hold your eyes shut hard.

And then one of the pinpricks began to grow larger

and larger and brighter and brighter, so that it pressed

hard against my lids, and I opened them to ease the

pressure and the light drifted out of me and into the

air, very slowly, and up into the sky. I watched it as it

grew smaller and smaller, and finally I lost it among

the winter stars.

I closed my eyes again and waited. And then I saw

behind my eyelids that very slowly, infinitely slowly,

it disengaged itself from the body of stars and grew

larger and more golden, and began to drift down again,

down and down until it hovered in front of my face

and bumped at my cheeks and lips with a cool sort of

frisson, like the feeling a lit sparkler makes against your

skin. A kiss, a nibble. I opened my eyes and it came

in. I closed them. I felt it linger there just behind my

lids, warm and cool at the same time, and then it slid

down and down and came to rest in my chest, in what

felt to be the absolute center of me. And there it stayed,

until I finally opened my eyes for good and all and

said, “Yes. Okay. You’re

356 / Anne Rivers Siddons

safe and so am I. Thank you, darling. Go to sleep

now.”

And I believe that she did. And I believe that she

sleeps there now and always, and will never again have

to answer some sad, silly, frantic summons from me

or anyone else. Wherever else she is I do not know,

but I believe that the very living core, the essential

flame of her, is inside me. I believe that.

When I finally got up off the beach and went inside

my house, it was to find my husband still asleep on

my daybed, his face looking, finally, cool and

smoothed and full again. I kissed him on the forehead,

and he stirred and mumbled, and then fell back into

his long sleep.

“I just wanted to tell you that I have her home, and

I think you can go back to your own bed,” I whispered.

In the morning when I woke, I found a note on my

bedside table that said, “Feel terrific for some reason

& have gone into the office. Call me later. Thanks for

hanging in there.”

I lay there looking at the new morning on the face

of the sea and thinking that if I was lucky there was

time for coffee before I called him and blew his world

to bits.

12

B
ut I did not do that, after all, because when I
finally

had had enough coffee to jump-start my courage and

called him at his office, it was to learn, from a Shawna

whose smirk was almost visible over the wire, that he

was gone again.

“Just ran out the door,” she said happily. “Got a call

about an hour ago from Atlanta and he and Hayes

were out of here like scalded tomcats. He said for me

to tell you when you called, and that he’d be away

three or four days. The bigwigs are flying them to

Texas to see some kind of Wild West theme park thing

out there. Reckon we’re all going to be wearing ten-

gallon hats. Oh, and he said to tell you he was just

fine, felt great, and to call Charlie and tell him. That’s

his doctor, isn’t it? I could do that for you. I wouldn’t

mind talking to that doctor myself. I heard about Pu-

erto Rico.

358 / Anne Rivers Siddons

Somebody needs to tell him just what’s going on, and

I know Clay isn’t going to do it.…”

“Thank you so much, Shawna,” I said through

clenched teeth. It dawned on me that my head was

pounding badly and my nose was stuffed up. Sinus

infections are spring’s first gift to me, and if I was in

for one, the last thing I needed was to listen to Shawna

chirp her love and ownership of my husband to me at

ten o’clock in the morning.

“I’ll call Charlie myself,” I said. “We went over last

week and saw him; he knows all he needs to know

about Clay’s condition. He’s been our doctor for a

long time. He was in our wedding. He would want to

talk to Clay or me.”

I heard her affronted little snort and realized that I

had been cruel, and did not care. Shawna set herself

up for rebuffs like a tenpin, over and over again. I

wondered if she thought that if I were out of the picture

Clay would sweep her into his arms? Look at her one

afternoon, walk slowly to her, pull the pins out of her

hair, and remove her glasses and whisper, “My God.

I never realized.”

Fat chance.

The sinus infection settled in by noon. I knew that

I had done it to myself, sitting in the damp wind on

the wet beach last night, and did not care at all. The

infections make me sick and so dizzy that it is hard to

walk, and the pressure in my

Low Country / 359

eyes and cheeks feels like intense sleepiness. My face

swells and my eyes close, and I am good for nothing

but to burrow into bed and sleep. I know that they last

approximately three full days and nights; if I take anti-

biotics, perhaps two and a half. When the fourth day

dawns I am invariably as clear-headed and full of en-

ergy as I ever was, and so I have learned to give in to

them, cancel whatever I can, and crawl into bed with

hot tea and magazines.

And that is what I did. Estelle knows the drill now;

she does not hover, but she keeps a carafe of hot tea

beside my bed, and leaves soup and sandwiches for

me, and goes on about her business. If Clay is at home

he checks on me occasionally, but I really do prefer to

be left alone, and it pleases me when one of the attacks

happens to fall during one of his business trips. I don’t