This One and Magic Life (14 page)

THERE IS A MOMENT EACH AUGUST WHEN THE WORLD TILTS
toward fall. Its signal may be a certain slant of light or the fall of the first acorn. Usually it has nothing to do with the weather which is always hot and humid with late afternoon thunderstorms. The moment is discernible, though not the same for everyone. Which proved Einstein's theory, Thomas thought, looking out of the bedroom window at the day which, for him, had suddenly shifted toward fall.

His eyes felt heavy, clogged with sleep. He rubbed them. He was not an afternoon nap man and yet he had slept for two hours so hard he had been confused when he awakened, thinking it was morning.

The fan drew strips of coolness against his bare back as it oscillated in the afternoon stillness. Where was everyone, he wondered. Then he remembered the twins had said they were going to a swimming party. Hektor was probably at the pier fishing. But how had
Sarah managed to leave the bed without awakening him?

“Come,” she had said, taking his hand after lunch. And they had gone upstairs, and she had locked the door and made love to him. She had been the aggressor and his body had responded to her as always.

“Thomas,” she said. “Thomas, I love you.” And he had known it was true. It had always been true.

He put on his shirt and went down to the kitchen. It was empty. He poured himself some iced tea and walked out into the yard. Sarah, dressed in white shorts and a blue shirt, was sitting in the swing. She was not swinging, just moving slightly, making patterns in the sand with her sandals. Her hair, always lighter in summer, hung across her shoulders; her face was in shadow.

“What are you doing?” Thomas asked.

Sarah looked up and smiled. “Swinging.”

“Lazy man's swinging.” Thomas sat down by the tree. Sarah went back to her pattern-making.

“Something's going to happen,” she said finally.

“What?”

Sarah shrugged. “Just got the feeling in my bones.”

Thomas got up and began to swing her gently. “Nothing's going to happen we don't want to.”

“A lot has already.” Sarah suddenly jumped from the swing and fell forward on her knees.

“You okay?” Thomas helped her up.

“Sure.” She brushed the sand from her knees. “Let's go sailing, Thomas.”

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

“Well, let me go get some shoes on.”

“Don't bother. Let's just go.”

“The sand'll burn my feet.”

“Okay. But hurry. I'll wait for you on the beach.” Thomas watched her as she disappeared around the house. She moved like a girl, the same girl from Montgomery who had captured him and never let him go.

He went inside, put on a shirt, and slipped his feet into his boat shoes. By the time he joined Sarah on the dune, he was sweating.

“It's too hot to go sailing,” he complained.

“That's when you go sailing,” Sarah said. “To cool off.”

“We'll just sit there in the hot boat not moving.”

“Nonsense.” Sarah ran down the dune toward the boat, Thomas following. “There's a breeze. Feel it?”

“No.” But Sarah was already pushing the boat into the water.

“Get in!”

Sarah was right. There was more of a breeze than Thomas had realized. As they moved out into the bay, they saw Hektor on the pier and waved.

“I hope he'll be all right,” Sarah said, watching their son hold up a large fish for them to admire. “He's too sensitive.”

Thomas smiled. “Haven't you noticed? The girls are already lining up to watch after him.” He thought for a moment. “If you want to worry, Sarah, worry about Artie.”

“I'm not going to worry about any of them.” Sarah stood up. “I'm going swimming.” And she dived off the side of the boat in her clothes. By the time Thomas had tacked around, she was swimming hard toward the open gulf.

“Come on, Sarah,” he said, maneuvering as close as he could.

Her answer was to sink under the water. “Sarah!” Thomas called. But there was no sign of her. She was
gone as if she had never been there. Not even a ripple of waves marked where she had disappeared. “Sarah!” Thomas screamed. But she was gone.

He didn't dive in after her. The thought never occurred to him. He just sat in the boat while the afternoon sun beat against him.

“I'm here,” she said. She had surfaced as quietly as she had gone under. Her hands were grasping the boat's side.

“Yes.” Thomas helped her in. He wrapped her in a towel, held her against him; his breath came in short gasps.

“I wanted to keep swimming.”

“I know.”

“But I saw the boat up here. And you.” She leaned against him. “I'm so tired, Thomas.”

“So am I, Sarah.”

They stayed like this for a long time, drifting; perhaps they slept. A sudden gust of wind made Thomas look up. A thundercloud towered over the western bay. It was moving swiftly. As he watched, lightning arced from water to sky. “One and two and three and four,” he said as thunder rolled over them. “We have to hurry,” he said, moving Sarah from his arms, reaching for the sails.

“No,” she said. “Please, Thomas.” She turned and looked directly at him. “Let's ride it out. You and me.”

Thomas looked toward Harlow, toward the house already shadowed by the cloud. “The children,” he said.

Sarah leaned forward. “You and me, Thomas. Just us.”

Her eyes were the greenish gold that bordered the thundercloud. Thomas looked into them and saw darkness, saw himself reflected in the darkness. “I love you, Sarah,” he said.

By the time he decided what to do, the decision was not his to make. The storm roiled over them.

“Thomas,” Sarah said, reaching for him. And in that one word was all the love he had ever longed for.

 

This is what their son, Hektor, believes happened that day. Some of it is true.

TWO DAYS HAVE PASSED SINCE ARTIE'S DEATH AND THE WORLD
goes on as before. The heat of August hovers over Harlow, darting into air-conditioned buildings when doors are opened, collecting in pools in parked cars. The breeze from the bay has given up; Spanish moss hangs limply.

The beach has been cleaned as much as possible. Still, swimmers avoid the water; dead fish can still be spotted floating on its surface. Flies and birds are having a field day; tourists leave.

Along the main street of businesses, nothing much is happening. Two ladies sit on stools in Elmore's looking at patterns for school clothes. Five dollars for a pattern. Whoever heard of such. They are trying to decide if it wouldn't be cheaper to go to the new Wal-Mart on 98. Mr. Patterson in the Harlow Pharmacy fills the prescriptions people bring in from Dr. Horton. Nothing serious. Days like this, he wishes he still had the soda fountain. There would have been people to talk to. He can't remember exactly why he decided to
do away with it. It seems it was his wife's idea. He thinks of the people congregated at the Dairy Queen and resents his wife. Sure, help was hard to find, but anybody could make a banana split. She could help him out instead of playing bridge all the time. “Chicken salad again,” she always says. “And no cards. I think I had two face cards all day.” And he thinks
Big Deal
and opens the
Mobile Register
to read about the California gangs that are selling dope in Alabama now. Turn on TV, it's just as bad. His wife has talked him into getting a gun to keep behind the cash register. Just knowing it's there gives him the creeps. He has bought a small TV to put on the counter and has become hooked on
One Life to Live
.

Next door to the drugstore was once a movie theater. Now part of it is a dance studio. Every afternoon a few little girls in leotards are dropped off by their mothers for Miss Angie Jemison to turn into ballerinas. Never mind that Miss Angie is batting zero. She was Miss Alabama 1946 and was in the top ten in Atlantic City doing an interpretative dance. No one is sure what she was interpreting as this was before the days of television, but a certain glory still attaches itself to her. Miss Angie wears wine-colored leotards with skirts to hide her belly and her sagging butt. She swears all her competition in Atlantic City was padded. “You could stick a hat pin in their derriere and they wouldn't even flinch,” she tells each group of aspiring ballerinas who also yearn to be Miss America. On Tuesday and Thursday nights, she teaches ballroom dancing to the junior high school crowd. “One, two, cha, cha cha,” she chants, nudging reluctant boys into place with a surprisingly painful yardstick.

At the Cash and Carry, Bear Barganier has just helped stack a load of lumber into the yard. Now he
sits in his office, sweating, a nitroglycerine tablet under his tongue. He feels the pain in his chest begin to ease, but his head begins to pound. He thinks he will be the next one to be buried in the Harlow cemetery. He is wrong; it is one of the reluctant ballroom dancers who will hit the sandy shoulder of the road on his way home, lose control of his motorcycle, and sail headlong into a live oak tree.

Father Carroll is having an early, cold supper, tuna salad and fruit, and a large glass of iced tea. He wishes he hadn't drunk the bourbon earlier. He would have liked a glass of white wine but knows, usually, when he's had enough.

Mothers are calling children in to clean up for supper. The commuters from Mobile are beginning to line up at the stop sign. On the bay a few sailboats sit, waiting for a breeze to move them. Many of these people will be at the rosary service tonight or at the funeral tomorrow in spite of hearing the services are to be private. In Harlow they assume that means nobody from Mobile unless they are invited.

Donnie Sullivan drives down Main Street on his way to Artie's. Beside him, on the front seat, is the plastic container with Artie in it. He hadn't wanted to leave her in Mobile by herself on his mantel. The container's presence, however, has made him nervous. He doesn't know what to do with it. Artie is trapped inside it like a genie. At the stop sign, he should open it, let her come smoking out, granting wishes. “I want it to be the summer of 1948,” he will say and just like that he and Artie will be having a banana split that Len Patterson has fixed for them at Hawkins Drugstore. Mr. Hawkins will be watching Len to see he doesn't give Artie extra nuts and whipped cream. But Len will sneak some extra in, anyhow, hopeful for one of Artie's
beaming smiles. Her brothers knew her smiles well. There were three that she practiced before the mirror: the slight smell of shit smile (Hektor's name for it) which she would demonstrate to her brothers by slightly curling her lips, the butter is melting smile with the tip of her tongue run across her bottom lip, and the beam. Each had been known to throw the boys of Harlow into semi-catatonic states. Even Donnie and Hektor weren't immune, though they knew exactly what she was doing. Her slight smell of shit smile would send them scurrying to find out what they had done wrong. And her beam would make their day. She wouldn't have to say anything, just brush her reddish blonde bangs to the side (also practiced) and smile.

Donnie and Hektor were both in awe of her. She was so tiny, each of them could easily have picked her up with one hand. And yet, there was never any question after their parents died as to who the leader was. Hektor, who helped out at Dr. Barnes's veterinary clinic after school, announced to Donnie that the loudest female was always the leader of the pack. But Artie wasn't necessarily loud. Only once had she gotten so mad at Donnie that she had screamed at him, “You piss-poor excuse for a bastard's ass!” They both had been so startled they had begun to laugh.

“I think I need to go write that down,” Artie said.

They had simply wanted to make her happy, to keep her from being hurt. Each boy knew what her relationship had been with their mother; each knew the vulnerability that was so close to the independent, sometimes aloof exterior. They yearned for her to let them take care of her; they gave her to Carl and then to the world with a sense of loss, knowing she would have been incensed at the idea of someone “giving” her at all.

Donnie stops for the sign, waves at old Mrs. Hawkins, and wonders once more why Mariel has always been overwhelmed by Artie. By his whole family, even his dead mother. Mariel's brothers and sisters, with a couple of exceptions, have turned out to be perfectly nice people, hardworking, good company. Her mother is one of Donnie's favorite people. And yet, Mariel has always been preoccupied with Sarah Sullivan. “Your mother would have done it this way,” she tells Donnie when decorating a room or planning a party. But Donnie knows good and damn well that his mother would have been walking along the beach with the job turned over to someone like Mariel. “Do it your way, honey,” he tells Mariel.

And yet, he can imagine what it had been like for Mariel to be taken under his mother's wing. Mariel saw her when she was at her best, giving parties, attending church. The dark side was never evident then. What Mariel saw was a secure, beautiful woman who knew the social graces, who was charming and kind. That was the memory the town had of her. Thomas Sullivan they saw as the absentminded professor who had in some inexplicable way captured a radiant, beautiful wife.

Donnie turns onto the shell road and sees Hektor's pickup and Mariel's car in Artie's driveway. No one else is there, and he's glad. His stomach is still unsettled, and he wants to take Artie's ashes into the house.

The house. Donnie loves Artie's house with a passion. He loves the way the closet under the stairs smells of mothballs, the way pecans falling on the roof would wake them up when they were children, signifying the season's change. Sometimes he still catches the scent of his father's Prince Albert tobacco, of his mother's L'Aire du Temps. He wants nothing to happen
to this house. He wants Dolly to live here and put the Christmas tree in the parlor and tie pine boughs along the banisters. He wants his grandchildren's stockings hung by the chimney with care.

Maybe he and Mariel could move out here. He could ease out of the company. They could sit on the porch and listen to the creak of the swing.

And kill each other they would be so bored. Still, it wasn't an unreasonable thought. It was only a forty-minute drive to Mobile.

“Donnie?” Mariel is sitting in the den looking through a
New Yorker
.

“It's me.”

Mariel sees Donnie's package. “Artie?”

“Yes.” He goes over and puts it on the mantel. His hand feels very empty.

Mariel gets up and hugs him. She needs to know how he is. She needs to know about the trip. “I'm glad you're back,” she says.

“I'm glad to be back.” He lets himself rest against her for a moment, his cheek against her hair that smells of shampoo and perspiration. He moves his hands against the familiar back, the rib cage that sinks to the knobby spine. How frail, he thinks. How frail. And he holds her closer.

“We are all armadillos,” he hears Hektor say. But armadillos have armor. We have nothing but these thin bones.

Mariel, her head pressed against Donnie's chest, is looking at the package on the mantel. This is it, she thinks. This is all there is. The body. Such a little thing to make such a big fuss over.

“I don't understand a damn thing,” she says.

“I don't either.”

They move apart and smile at each other.

“How's Dolly?”

“Miserable.” Mariel sits back down, closing the magazine and putting it on the table.

“You sounded funny on the phone,” Donnie says.

“Two—well, actually, three—big bourbons chugalugged. They hit me.”

“You okay now?”

“Better. I was so loopy at one point, I decided the funeral thing was stupid and called Father Carroll and told him it was off. I just told him part of the truth, not that Artie was cremated. Anyway, he came barreling out here to find out what was going on. But by that time, I'd already decided I was right to begin with, that we ought to go ahead with the funeral. Other than thinking I was crazy and more than a little hysterical, he didn't suspect anything.”

Donnie sits beside her on the couch. “Honey, having the funeral is fine. In fact, I've been thinking you're right. I've done what Artie wanted done with her body. The funeral is for us.”

Dear God, Mariel thinks. She eyes the package on the mantel. It is quiet which surprises her. “Tell you what, Donnie,” she says. “We've got an hour or so before the rosary. Why don't you stretch out here for about twenty minutes and I'll fix you something to eat.”

“Something light,” Donnie says.

Mariel plumps the pillow and helps Donnie pull off his shoes.

“Something light,” she agrees, spreading the summer afghan over him. But his eyes are already closing.

 

Hektor is lying in his old bedroom right above the kitchen when he hears his mother and father talking. The voices are faint, but so familiar, that he gets out of bed, kneels, and puts his ear to the vent.

“The potato salad is delicious,” he hears Mariel say.

“I had some,” Father Audubon answers. “Peach pie, too.”

“Shit,” Hektor mumbles. What on God's earth had he been thinking of? His knees creak as he gets up and walks a little stiffly back to bed.

The voices follow him. Unable to distinguish words, he can still detect tone, rise, and inflection. It was the music of his childhood, soothing, comforting, his mother's laugh and the deepness of his father's voice. It was what he had fallen asleep to, imagining them sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee. And on nights when the music was missing, or was discordant, he would pull his pillow over his head and remember the nice sounds.

Hektor sits on the side of the bed and thinks about the voices, how none of them had known what to expect from one day to another. There would be days on end when their mother would lock herself in her room. And then, one morning, they would awake to the smell of blueberry pancakes and bacon, and everything would be fine. There would be days of partying, of walks on the beach. And then one day, their mother would start criticizing Artie, the way she looked, walked, ate. Everything about her. Sometimes Sarah would leave home. Once she was gone for almost six weeks. His father had found her, somehow, in New Orleans and had gone to get her. When she came home, she had brought them presents and they had awakened the next morning to the smell of bacon. She had brought Hektor a kite that was shaped like a dragon. It was red and gold, and it snapped and curled in the wind like a live thing. They had sat down and eaten breakfast as if nothing had happened. Except for Artie. She had taken an apple and walked down the
beach. When Hektor went to fly his kite, he had seen her sitting against the dune, her head down on her knees. Running down the beach with the dragon soaring into the air behind him, he had felt guilty for being so happy his mother was home. For Hektor there was always the beach to run to, the water to swim and fish in, and the bicycle to jump on and whirl away down the shell road. Donnie, he knew, felt the same way. But Donnie was more caught between their mother and Artie.

Hektor has often wondered if the good times out-weighed the bad for their father. It had seemed so to the child Hektor. He had seen Thomas's hand reaching for Sarah's in church. He had seen him standing in the dining room looking at the table his mother had readied for a party. “Come look, son,” he had said. “Have you ever seen prettier flowers?” And Hektor knew he never had. Nor had he ever seen shinier silver or a whiter tablecloth. His father's hand had reached out and touched the lavender and yellow flowers. “Your mother is an artist,” he said.

“Artie is, too,” Hektor said. “She can draw anything.”

“I know she is,” Thomas Sullivan agreed. “Your mother knows it, too. They're a lot alike, you know.”