Islands: A Novel Part 25

I stared at her.

"I didn't mean like that...."

"Will you give me a hand, Anny?" she said, faintly. "I've got a splitting headache. I think I'll have a nap until dinner. Are they staying?"

"They don't have to."

"Oh, by all means, ask them. Henry will be disappointed if you don't."

I helped her to bed and covered her with her comforter, and turned off the lights. I had thought Camilla would come to feel differently about the child when she had been in her presence for a while; the change in Britney was apparent. But it had not happened. I would have to curtail the visits. It was not fair to Camilla to force upon her a child she found so distasteful. She was one of us, too, and she could not, as we could, simply walk away. I would suggest to Henry that he take Britney out for hamburgers occasionally, instead of having her here for dinner so often. But it was strange....

"Cammy's really not well," Henry said when I brought up the topic of Britney and Camilla. "She's not herself. I'm going to get her in for a physical before this week is out, even if I have to carry her. Meanwhile, can you find something to do with Britney in the afternoons away from here? Isn't there something she might like to do?"

"I think we'll form a book club," I said lightly, and then realized that it might be a very good idea.

On a Sat.u.r.day morning in late February, Linda Cousins called me.

"There's been some men from some kind of real estate company out here, looking around the house and woods," she said. "They said Dr. Aiken told them back in the fall they were welcome to come look around. It doesn't sound right to Robert and me. Would you like us to tell them to leave?"

I started to say yes, and then Henry came into the room and I put my hand over the phone and told him what Linda had said.

"Tell her not to run them off," he said. "I'm going to get out there right now and see what's going on. You know as well as I do that Lewis never told them that."

"I'm going with you."

"Anny, I know how hard it is for you-"

"It's my house now, Henry. I've been letting it slide for too long. I don't want real estate people at Sweetgra.s.s. Not now and not ever."

We were starting for the truck when Gaynelle brought Camilla out, dressed for the day.

"You're not going out this close to lunch," she cried.

Briefly, Henry told her what was happening.

"Anny, you really ought not to go out there. Henry can handle it."

"It's my house, Camilla," I said. "I'm grateful for Henry's company, but if anybody tells them to get off the property, it's going to be me."

We got into the truck and Henry started it up. Over the engine's noise we heard Camilla call, "Be home before dark!," and there was real anxiety in her voice.

"She's so anxious now," I said worriedly to Henry on the way to Sweetgra.s.s. "So fretful, and so weak. And it's happened so fast. I didn't think people aged that fast."

"They don't generally. Usually you can see it coming long before there are such definite signs. I'm serious about getting her in for tests. This is getting really hard on you."

"Oh, no. No more than on you. Gaynelle makes all the difference. I just want Camilla well."

"So do I," he said. We were silent the rest of the way.

When we turned off the road and onto the long driveway into Sweetgra.s.s, my heart lifted at the sheer underwater green of the long tunnel through the live oaks, and the splashes of wild honeysuckle and dogwood standing like stilled snowfall in the dusky green. I remembered the first day I had ever seen it. It was hard to believe all that time had pa.s.sed. Out here, the marsh, the river, and the deep woods stopped time. I could just as easily be the wild-haired young woman in the too-new tennis shoes Lewis had brought here for the first time, and he could easily be waiting for me on the dock over the river, with fresh comb tracks through his wet red hair and a gla.s.s of wine for me, as he had done so many times before. I swallowed hard.

"Is this going to be okay?" Henry said.

We rounded the last curve and the house came into view, at once rooted in the earth and lifted into the air like a sail, and I nodded. This first glimpse had always borne me up in joy.

"Yes."

And after all, it was. It was easy to walk with Henry up the steps of the house, and through it, and out onto the dock, not like it had been with Lewis, never like that. But easy. I kept putting out all my sensors for him: in the beautiful, light-paneled library, in the dim upstairs bedroom where I had last seen him, at the end of the dock, where we had made love and swum naked in water as warm as blood. Where we had seen the bobcat. And I did feel him near, I thought: a diffuse, enveloping sense of him. But he did not walk hungrily just behind me, as he had done on Bull Street. I thought that he must be truly at rest here, and said so to Henry as we stood beside Lewis's grave in the deep live-oak grove. The stone I had ordered still had not come, but the ferns Linda and I had transplanted were flourishing, and the little white azalea was in bud.

"Why wouldn't he be? This is paradise," Henry said. "I always thought Fairlie and I might get something like this. Lewis always said he could find us a place...."

We were both silent. I remembered what he had said about seeing Fairlie's family farm for the first time. I knew that he did, too.

There had been no other car in the driveway except Linda Cousins's Jeep when we arrived. Linda, in the kitchen as she always seemed to be, said that she had gone out and called to the real estate people that if they'd wait, Dr. Aiken's wife was on her way, and shortly after that they had left.

"We knew they weren't up to any good," she said. "People do come down the driveway sometimes and stop and look at the house, but they don't get out and prowl around. I'm going to get Robert to get a security gate with an alarm put up out at the road. If it's okay with you."

I agreed that we should do it, and thought, not for the first time, that I really had to make myself get more involved in the day-to-day running of Sweetgra.s.s. You could walk out of the little house on Bull Street and lock the door, and be fairly sure all would be as it had been when you returned. But not this vast plantation. It needed day-by-day tending, and I was deeply grateful to the Cousinses for staying on, as I had asked, and overseeing the property. But I could not let the load get too heavy for them. Both were old now, older than Lewis, older than Henry, though they were still active and vital.

"I need to get you some help out here," I said. "I've let it drag on too long. I'm going to start looking right away. Henry will help me."

I looked up at him, and he nodded.

"Well," Linda said, "if you could use him, I think Tommy might like to do that. He's getting married...did I tell you? No? To a premed student at MUSC, Jennie. We're crazy about her. She loves this place, and of course Tommy grew up out here, and they were thinking that if they could buy a little piece of land from you, they'd like to build a house on the river down near us. She'd keep on at school, of course, but Tommy thinks now that he wants to go into some sort of land management or conservation work. He'd be good at it, I think. He's followed his dad around out here ever since he could walk. And he's been keeping an eye on the longleaf crop, and talking to the extension agent when he thinks he needs to. He didn't want to presume, but we knew you weren't up to that yet, and it's been a pleasure for him to keep up with things. So I said I'd ask you-"

"Oh, yes, please!" I cried before all the words were out of her mouth. The plantation had been heavy on my heart in the time since Lewis's death. I knew that Linda and Robert could manage the house and grounds, but the vast longleaf plantings that were the plantation's cash crop needed constant nurturing, and were beyond my ken.

"I can't tell you how relieved I am," I said to Linda Cousins. "It's like I've been given a gift. Tell Tommy I'll have Fleming Woodward-he's our lawyer-call him this week, and we'll set it up. Oh, to have it go on with you all...Lewis would love that."

"So would we," Linda said, and hugged me.

We ate the velvety cold asparagus soup she had made for our lunch, and walked back out on the dock one more time before we left.

"Lewis and I saw a bobcat here the first night he brought me out here," I told Henry. "Right over there. Lewis said not long before...not so long ago that he saw tracks again right on this spot. It couldn't be our bobcat, of course, but I've always liked to think one of his offspring didn't want to leave the river, either."

"Probably got fifteen grandchildren by now," Henry said comfortably. "Anny, can I ask you what you intend to do with Sweetgra.s.s? Ultimately, I mean. You said you were okay for money, but I know you don't want to let it just sit here and deteriorate...."

"No. I think I'm going to deed the whole thing to the Coastal Conservancy, with the stipulation that whoever is in the big house, and the Cousins and their kin-like Tommy-stay for their lifetimes, if they like. Lewis always wanted to see this stretch of the river safe from development."

"It's just what he'd do himself," Henry said warmly. "Want me to call Fleming Woodward about that, too?"

"Well," I said hesitantly, "it probably ought to be me."

Henry began to laugh.

"Of course it ought to be you. What was I thinking? But can you really afford to do all that? You don't need money from the sale of Sweetgra.s.s?"

"I'm fine," I said. "Besides the trusts for the children and bequests to Robert and Linda, and a separate trust to maintain Sweetgra.s.s, it all came to me. There was more than I thought. Lewis was good with his money. I know that the lovely and talented Sissy had a go at my inheritance, but Fleming blew her out of the water and only told me about it later. People have been doing my work for too long. I don't want to start to dislike myself."

"No. Don't do that."

It was just dark when we pulled up to the turnaround in front of the creek houses. I was drowsy and satiated, as if I had had a heavy meal, but I knew it was simply relief at finally getting Sweetgra.s.s in order. It had the feeling of a long-put-off job well done.

"Where is everybody?" Henry said, and I looked at him. His fair brows were knit. I looked toward the houses. Mine and Simms and Lila's were dark, but Camilla's blazed with lights, as it should have, of course. But then I saw that the front door stood wide open, and that Gaynelle's truck was gone.

Henry and I were out of the car and into her house before the doors had slammed shut.

There was a Post-it note stuck on Camilla's screen door.

C. fainted in bathtub and cracked her head open, it read. I'm taking her to Queens emergency. Please come. It was signed G.

Henry called ahead and barked orders to the nurses' desk and we drove back down the dark, moss-tunneled road toward Charleston in silence, and at a speed I would not care to repeat again. As we went over the West Ashley bridge, with the great hospital complex shining ahead in the night like a lightship, I said to Henry, "Let's decide something now. I think it would kill her to move her, either back home or to some kind of facility. Later, maybe, she can go to Gillon Street with some help, but for a few months, let's try our best to keep her at the creek, and let's stay with her. That vow we took means everything to her. I'd like to promise her we'll stay, if she's not too bad. Obviously, if she's seriously hurt or ill, we can't. But can we try?"

He looked over at me, his thin face lit green in the light from the dash.

"Are you willing to give up that much more of your life?"

"What else have I got to do?" I said. "Sooner or later I'll have to make some long-range plans, but one of the things I've loved best about the creek is that n.o.body pushes me. It's like being a kid just after school's out, with a whole, endless summer before me. Do you remember that sense of limitless time and s.p.a.ce?"

"Best thing about summer," Henry said. "Okay. If we can, let's give it till fall. We can tell her that. It should ease her. I know she's been afraid we'd go off and leave her. She talks about it a lot."

"Will you mind just letting things drift for that long?"

He grinned. "You bet I won't. Lila has been trying to get me paired up with some nice lady for weeks now. I'll bet she's asked me to dinner ten times. I'm scared to move back home."

I laughed a little. It was true. An eligible bachelor in Charleston is worth his weight in Georgian silver. Never mind his age or circ.u.mstances. If his provenance is downtown, he can eat dinner out for the rest of his life, providing he is compos mentis. I've even wondered sometimes if that requirement was cut in stone. Some of Charleston's greatest and most engaging eccentrics come very close to mania, and they do just fine if they have a decent tux and know whose dining room they're in.

"n.o.body is after me," I said. "Should I be hurt?"

" 'Thank the living G.o.d that made you,' as the guy says in 'Gunga Din.' Besides, I think you scare the ladies of Charleston."

"Why on earth would I do that?"

He looked over at me.

"You're a thoroughly nice woman, Anny. And a pretty one, even if you don't think so. And now you're a rich one. Are you kidding? They're scared those quote 'eligible bachelors' will be after you, instead of their cousin from Columbia, or their best friend who just got a divorce. They'll be overjoyed to hear that you're staying out at the creek."

"So we're agreed," I said, as he pulled up before the Queens emergency room. His face was closed again.

"We're agreed," he said.

Camilla was still in the emergency room when we got there. The hospital waiting room was full of tired, silent people. Gaynelle sat among them. She jumped to her feet and ran to us when we came in.

"What have you heard?" Henry said.

"They've still got her in some little room back there," she said. "n.o.body will tell me anything. I feel just terrible about this; she asked for a cup of tea, and I made it and came back, and she was lying half in and half out of the bathtub, unconscious, bleeding like a stuck pig from her forehead. I didn't know she wanted a bath. She was in bed writing in her book when I left her to make the tea. If anything bad is wrong with her, I'll never forgive myself."

"Whatever it is, it is a.s.suredly not your fault," Henry told her. "She knows to call you when she wants to go into the bathroom. Let's just see."

He disappeared into the warren of cubicles through the swinging door of the ER, and Gaynelle and I sat down to wait. In the lurid fluorescent glare, she looked bone weary, and older than I had ever seen her. I probably did, too. I took her hand and squeezed it.

"You can't read her mind," I said. "n.o.body can do that. You know how she hates being dependent. She probably thought she could manage a bath by herself...."

Gaynelle's head was tipped against the sofa back, and her eyes were closed.

"I'm not leaving her alone again," she said. "I'm going to be with her every breath she draws."

"You think that's good for her? She hates to be hovered over."

"It's good for all of us," she said.

Henry came back presently and sat down with us.

"It's not too bad," he said. "At least the cut isn't. The ER doc took a couple of st.i.tches, and she's had X rays and an MRI. There's maybe a little concussion, but nothing to worry about. I'm admitting her, though. This time she's getting the full workup. Tab Shipley's writing the order now. She wants me to stay with her; she's really shaken up, so I think I will. You all go on back home. I'll come give you a report in the morning."

"When will you sleep?" I said.

"In the on-call room. In an empty room. In the linen closet. You learn your intern year to sleep anywhere. I'm going to knock her out, and she'll sleep till morning. I'll have plenty of time to rest."

Gaynelle and I didn't talk much on the drive home. Once she said, "I wish he'd stay in the room with her."

"Why on earth? She surely isn't going anywhere in that hospital room."

"You never know," Gaynelle said.

Henry came home in time for breakfast, just before I left for work. Gaynelle had come in, even though I had told her to sleep in while she could. She had made French toast, and Henry fell on it like a starving man.

"She's awake and fairly comfortable," he said. "Her head hurts and she's several different colors of purple, but her vitals seem okay. They'll get the blood work and the other stuff done today. Depending on what we find, I might be able to bring her home tomorrow or the next day. I'm worried about her bones. In the X rays they looked as porous as screen wire."

The test results came back, and had Henry stern-faced.

"Blood work's okay, though she's a little anemic. That probably causes some of the dizziness. Her heart rhythm is a little slow. Her blood pressure is low. But it's her bones that worry me. Her ankle and wrist aren't healing at all like they should, and there's a big area on one sacrum that looks like Swiss cheese. She could break a hip just by turning over in bed, and that would be the end of living out here. She knows all that. I made her promise that from now on it's going to be a wheelchair. I don't want any pressure on those bones. She's not happy, but I think she knows it's the only way she can stay at the creek. I promised her we'd all stay, like we agreed, so long as she behaves. Gaynelle, do you think you can manage her in a wheelchair? We can easily get some more help out here."

"I'm sure," she said. "In a way, it'll be easier. I won't have to worry so much about her p.u.s.s.yfooting around places she shouldn't be."

Camilla came home two days later with a shiny folding wheelchair accented with dark blue leather, a carful of flowers, and a black eye that covered half her face. It was lunchtime, and we had asked Lila to come and share a light celebratory meal. She had arrived with a great armful of white lilies and Honey in her carrier, and she and I were sitting on Camilla's porch, while Britney and Honey chased each other on the lawn, drinking orange blossoms and turning our faces up to the blessed sun.

It was a diamond day, when even the light trembles in glittering shards. The tiny new green leaves glittered, the light chop on the creek was like dancing tinfoil, and the sky was so blue that it hurt to look at it. The fresh smell of damp loam and pine from somewhere came in on the wind. When Henry got out and unfolded the wheelchair and helped Camilla into it, we all cheered, and she smiled the old enigmatic, V-shaped Camilla smile. Britney came dashing up to her and laid a bouquet of early tulips on her lap.

"Mama got them for me to give you," she said shyly.

"Thank you, dear," Camilla said. "Tulips are my favorite."

Britney squirmed with pleasure and dashed off after the little dog, who was yipping frantically on the bank of the creek.

"Bring her closer to the house, Britney," Lila called. "I don't like her being so close to the water. Not with that gator around."

"I've never seen the gator around here, Miz Howard," Britney said.