Islands: A Novel Part 29

"And after you were asleep, we're pretty sure she went over to your house and started the fire. They found a gasoline can and a lighter in the kitchen."

We were all silent for a moment. This was beyond pain. It was like hearing a piece of fiction read aloud.

"She could walk," Henry said in the dead monotone. "She could all along. Gaynelle saw her do it once. After that, she watched Camilla as closely as she could. You know that she wouldn't leave you alone with her. Gaynelle caught on long before I did."

"I should have told Henry at the very beginning," Gaynelle said miserably from across the room. "But it just seemed so...crazy. I doubted my own eyes. I thought I would just watch, and together we could keep you safe. When I heard that she shouldn't walk anymore, and had to have the chair, I was relieved. But I guess I never really believed that. I'll never forgive myself."

"That makes two of us," Henry said.

"Her hip was broken," he went on. "I think it just collapsed under her in your kitchen. That happens a lot with osteoporosis as bad as Camilla's. She must have been on her way out of the kitchen when it broke. She surely called out, but you couldn't have heard her. Jesus, those last moments before the smoke got her...

"Well, anyway, Gaynelle was outside in her truck. She never went home. She was watching, and when she saw the smoke, she called 911 and then went in after you. When they got you to Queens, she called me. By the time I got there, the pneumonia had a good hold. It happens fast after being in a fire. Basically, we just pumped you full of antibiotics and kept you sedated until you could be moved. I knew you wouldn't want to wake up in the hospital. And I wanted you close enough so I could look in on you. This seemed like the best choice."

I nodded serenely. Everything he said made perfect sense. The universe seemed its old, orderly self when Henry spoke. It was when he stopped that pain as huge and relentless as a great white shark b.u.mped its snout against the plastic bubble. But then it swam away. I knew that it could not get in. Nothing could.

"Okay, here's the really bad part," Henry said.

I shook my head fiercely, but he nodded his.

"Let's get it all out, Anny. Otherwise the infection of it could kill you.

"We're pretty sure now that Camilla set the fire at the beach house. No one can really prove that, but there's good enough evidence for me. It was Fairlie she was after then. This time it was you. I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to live with that."

"Why?" I said, through the bubble. "Why?" Couldn't they hear how absurd they sounded?

I promptly choked. Henry gave me an injection.

"It isn't going to knock you out," he said, "but it's going to calm you down some. You simply cannot keep on talking. Otherwise I'm going to take you back to Queens. Okay?"

I nodded.

"All right. This part of the story goes way back. Lewis told you that I used to go with Camilla. And I did. We'd been together since childhood. We weren't engaged, but we both knew that would be the next thing. It had always seemed the right progression, the path to the simple, affectionate marriage and life that I thought I always wanted. Neither of us had ever dated anybody else, not really.

"And then I met Fairlie, and everything changed in an instant, and there was just no question anymore of who I belonged with. I told Camilla the next night, sitting in a car out at Lowndes Grove. It was Lila's debut party; I remember that.

"I never in the world expected the reaction I got. I knew it would hurt her; I hated that. But to go on as we'd been would have been intolerable and unfair. I saw a part of her I had never seen in the twenty-odd years I knew her. She cried and screamed until she lost her breath and almost pa.s.sed out. I just held her until she stopped, but then she started up again. I had a buddy in the Queens ER, and I went by and got a sedative for her, and by the time I took her home, she was out on her feet.

"I had to wake her mother and father, and I had to tell them. They got Camilla upstairs, and I gave them the rest of the sedative for her, and she finally went to sleep. I waited until they came down. It was one of the worst nights I've ever spent. I really thought her father was going to shoot me. By dawn we'd worked it out: we would tell everybody that Camilla dumped me, and I only got interested in Fairlie afterward. A rebound love affair, if you will."

He smiled without any humor. It was more a rictus of pain.

"Even Fairlie halfway believed that, although I told her later what had happened," he said. "She never told anybody else. I really don't think anybody knew. By the time Camilla met Charlie, right after that, it was all over Charleston that Camilla had ended our relationship and that I was nearly prostrate with grief. And I played the role, or at least I never refuted it. Guilt over Camilla has been with me all those years. I'll never forget her face the night I told her. I hated the lie, but living it made it possible for her to stay in Charleston. Back then, that kind of thing mattered a lot more than it does now.

"So for a long time we went along just fine; Camilla was warm and affectionate with me, and a good friend to Fairlie, and Charlie adored her. n.o.body questioned that. You remember those years. They were idyllic. Who could possibly have thought differently? After a while it just seemed natural to me. I had you all and Fairlie, and Camilla was happy with Charlie. Something that could have been very bad had ended well. We were the Scrubs.

"And when Charlie died, Camilla was the perfect widow. G.o.d, who didn't admire her strength and courage? She held the Scrubs together; it could have been the start of our breaking up. She held us together with her sheer love. She did that until that New Year's Eve Fairlie and I told everybody we were going to retire to Kentucky. And when the chance came, that night when I forgot about the opera and Fairlie got mad at me and went out to the beach house, she took it. Camilla had been content to let things perk along, until she knew we were leaving for good. She had to move then. And after Fairlie was gone, she helped Lila find the houses at the creek, and she literally held everybody together until I came stumbling in from the Yucatan, half dead, and she could look after me. She knew I couldn't have gone anywhere else. Not at the time. And she took wonderful care of me. Do you remember?"

I nodded my head up and down vigorously, like a good child being taught something in school. I did remember. Camilla had literally held Henry up and put him back together. Okay so far. I could follow this story as well as anybody. I felt proud of myself.

"So she was content with the life we all had. It seemed as if we might last at the creek. And then Lewis...was gone, and you were alone, and it was obvious that I was fond of you. She couldn't have thought it was anything but the same fondness I felt for all of us, but neither could she abide any sort of feeling on my part at all that didn't center on her. She did her best to talk you into moving back to town. She had all her accidents when we two were away together somewhere. She got really ill when we took to riding with Gaynelle and T. C. And she just couldn't stand it that I was so fond of Britney. Gaynelle is sure it was Camilla who opened Lila's door and let Honey out. And as for the jewelry she intimated that Gaynelle had taken, they found it in her desk drawer, after the fire. It's been Camilla all along, and I never saw it, and when I think that maybe I could have prevented this, it makes me sick."

There were tears running down his face now. They traced silver through the white stubble on his face. Henry seemed to have aged ten years. Hard years.

"How could you know?" I rasped, shaking my head at him when he tried to shush me. "How on earth could you have known? How do you know now?"

Gaynelle came over and sat on the edge of my bed. The room was dark except for the circle of warm amber light from the lamp. In it, her face was dry and furrowed and as narrow as a fox's. There were more than two casualties in this terrible, unimaginable thing.

Henry put his head back and closed his eyes, looking, simply, dead and embalmed. It occurred to me that Henry literally might not be able to bear this. The fear of that nibbled at the edge of the bell jar, but did not come in.

"I found her diaries, or whatever they are," Gaynelle said. "And I sat down and read right through the ones she had with her. These started when Mrs. McKenzie died, but I think there must be others that go back to when her husband had his heart attack and she realized she was free. I'm not a bit ashamed that I snooped. By that time I was getting a real funny feeling about her. I'd seen her walking when she was supposed to be in the chair, remember. And I absolutely know that she cut her own head and crawled into the bathtub the day you and Henry went out to Sweetgra.s.s and stayed gone so long. I found the soap dish she did it with. It still had blood and hair on it. I should have gone straight to Henry the day I read those d.a.m.ned books. But G.o.d...it just sounded so crazy. I thought at first she was writing fiction."

Dread iced my stomach and heart. I knew that she was going to tell me what was in the notebooks Camilla had always kept, and I knew that it would change my life dreadfully and forever. I turned my head away from her and shut my eyes.

"No, stay with it," Henry said. "It makes everything clear. It will wreck you if you don't understand."

But I still did not open my eyes.

"Every page was like a page in a diary," Gaynelle said. "Like what happened to her that day. They were calm and reasonable and even funny sometimes; she's a good writer. Was. The thing is, none of that stuff happened. It was all about what she and Henry had done that day. About what they had for breakfast, and what they did during the day, and where they went, and what she made for dinner, and about...how they made love every night. She even wrote two or three times about their wedding. It was the biggest and most beautiful wedding Charleston had ever seen; n.o.body since had come close to it. It was about their children, too. Not her boys, hers and Henry's children. They were perfect, a combination of the best of both of them. By the time I finished reading, I knew how they had grown up, and where they went to college, and who they married, and all about the grandchildren. She talked about all Henry's honors at the hospital, and the books she published, and the plantation they had out on the Edisto River. And every night, the big love scene. Every night. There was not a single mention of any of the rest of you. Not her husband, none of you. Oh, G.o.d, I should have told Henry that day...but somehow I just couldn't believe it."

"Don't beat up on yourself," Henry said wearily from the chair. "I'm the one who should have seen it."

I don't see how, I thought mildly. Who would have believed this about Camilla? I don't think I do. Not at all. She told me that night that she loved me. She gave me every chance to say I wasn't staying; she had tears in her eyes...who could doubt that? I think she did love me. Just maybe not as much as she did Henry. Just not enough. I can understand that....

"Who knows about it?" I choked out.

Henry shook his head. "I don't know. n.o.body's supposed to know about the notebooks, but I had to give them to the police. Otherwise they'd have been sniffing around you. It was your house, you know. The books cleared up a lot of unanswered questions about...Fairlie, I guess, but there was no use reopening that. It wouldn't have changed anything. The chief said they'd be put into a closed-case file, but this is Charleston. Could be n.o.body knows, could be half the city does. There's certainly been enough talk about it. Too much happening over and over to the same people. The same people who'd always been a closed corporation. It's irresistible. I think Simms squashed some of it; Freddy Chappelle at the Post and Courier is a great friend of his and after the first news item, there hasn't been another word about it. TV has let it alone, too. n.o.body has confronted me about it, but Gaynelle's gotten a lot of flack, and I expect you'll get plenty when you're up and around. So many people have called Lila that she got an unlisted number. She doesn't know it all yet, by the way; tell her if you want to."

"Did Lewis know?" I managed. It was like eating fire, but the pain stayed outside the bubble.

"I don't think so. He may have sensed something, but I don't think he really knew. He wouldn't have gone off to Fort Lauderdale and left you there if he'd known. He'd surely have figured it out if he'd been around the last few weeks, though. Although, when you think about it, if he'd been around, none of it would have happened. It would still be just pages in those unholy books."

"I'm glad he didn't know," I whispered. "Are you going to tell Lila and Simms?"

"I'm not going to tell anybody. I'm not going to stay in Charleston, Anny. I can't. I just can't be here anymore. If I could change anything, I'd stay, but I can't, and I have to be somewhere I can get out of my own head. You're well cared for. I can go now."

"Where?" Gaynelle said. I watched them peacefully. Sense; it all made such good sense.

"I don't know. Maybe somewhere with the docs. Maybe...oh, G.o.d, I don't know. I'm sorry to fade out. I just know I can't breathe this air anymore."

"Was she crazy?" Gaynelle said. "She just about had to be, didn't she? But she seemed so normal...."

"I don't know what 'crazy' means," Henry said heavily. "Obsession, maybe. But it really doesn't make any difference, does it?"

He gave me another shot then, and kissed my cheek and said that he would see me before he left. I knew that he wouldn't. Beyond the bell jar the world swayed perilously, but it held. I slid again toward sleep, as I must have been doing for days now, and the last thing I thought before it claimed me was, It was Camilla who held us together after all. Maybe just not in the way we thought.

The bell jar held firm for several weeks. I ate Gaynelle's wonderful meals, and slept and slept, and watched endless television. I seldom went downstairs; we had a small set in the upstairs library, and I watched there, lying stretched out on the sofa, covered with a quilt of Lewis's mother's. I did not light the lamps, and I did not let Gaynelle open the curtains to let in the late spring light. Wisely, she did not push me.

People called and she answered the phone and told them I was fine, but resting. People dropped by and she answered the door and said that I was resting, but would look forward to seeing them soon. The first week or so the door and telephone bells rang almost constantly, but ultimately I proved to be uninteresting prey, and soon they tapered off. I was glad. The noise had blasted into my TV shows.

I got addicted to several daily reruns-The X-Files, The Twilight Zone, Jag-and grew fretful when anything interrupted me while I was watching them. I did not watch CNN, and never the local stations. March segued into April, and April into early May, without my really knowing it. Gaynelle was wonderful. Anyone else would have prodded and cajoled and threatened to get me up and around again but she had an exquisite sense of the time it took to begin to heal. Only once did she say anything to me about my self-imposed isolation.

"I guess I ought to put this all behind me and get on with it, huh?" I said idly one evening, flipping through People magazine. Gaynelle bought me armsful of magazines, and I read them avidly. But never the news weeklies.

"I don't imagine you'll ever be able to put it behind you," she said. "But you'll probably want to get on with it sooner rather than later."

But that was all she did say.

Inside the bubble I was warm and safe and endlessly sleepy. I tried to tell Gaynelle about the bubble, and how it comforted me.

"Shades of Sylvia Plath," she said, and I smiled. I had forgotten once more how avidly she read. "And look where it got her," she added.

I really don't think I thought much about Henry, or even about Camilla. I knew that I would have to, someday, but not now. Not now. I could think now of Lewis, though, and sometimes I talked to him.

"You don't blame me for staying holed up for a little while longer, do you?" I said. And, "Good Lord, Lewis, I was watching TV last night and they said it was the first day of May. You know that thing we all used to sing out at the beach: 'Hey, hey, first of May, outdoor s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g starts today?' And remember that one May first that we did? Out at Sweetgra.s.s. I had pine needles in my b.u.t.t for days."

I did not realize at the time that I was speaking aloud.

Britney was staying with her aunt's family, and was absorbed with pageanting and taking little Henrietta to obedience cla.s.ses. Gaynelle saw her many nights and one day most weekends, while JoAnne came to stay with me. We watched the Fox network together, religiously. Gaynelle said that Britney was wild to come and see me at Bull Street, but I just smiled vaguely.

"Not quite yet. Soon though."

Marcy came one day, and hugged me and cried, and said not to worry about Outreach. Camilla's sons had gratefully sold the building on Gillon Street to Simms Howard just before they took Camilla to California for burial, and he was redoing the loft, but had said that Outreach could stay in our part of the building as long as we wanted, at the same rent. Once I would have wondered caustically who Simms was redecorating the loft for, but it did not occur to me now.

"That's awfully nice," I said. Marcy chattered desperately on a bit, and then went home. I found The Big Chill on a cable station and settled in to watch it with Gaynelle.

Linda Cousins called from Sweetgra.s.s to say that everything was going well, and Tommy was doing wonderfully with the longleafs, and not to worry about anything.

"Isn't that sweet?" I said.

Lila came and gave Gaynelle a copy she had had made of the photo of the Scrubs on their first day at the beach house, the one on which we'd sworn, and copies of other photos of all of us, in the water, on the dunes, romping with the dogs, eating by candlelight. Gaynelle had been afraid to give them to me at first, afraid that they would shatter my fragile balance, but when I finally saw them I only smiled with dim pleasure.

"Oh, look, Gaynelle. Don't we all look young, though? And that's Gladys; you know, I told you about Gladys."

It was like looking at photographs in a biography of someone you knew rather well, but not intimately.

Gaynelle cut my hair, and it hugged my head in a cap of rough curls.

"You look eighteen," she said.

And she brought me some new jeans and T-shirts from Target, because mine had grown loose and shabby. I wore little else those days.

"You need to get out in the sun and get those legs tanned," she said. "You've got pretty legs."

"Soon," I said. "I promise I really will, soon."

In what felt to be the middle of a night in early June, Gaynelle came into my bedroom and shook me awake.

"You've got a visitor," she said, grinning. "Get up and get dressed. Put on some long pants and a sweater. I put some over there on the vanity bench for you."

"Gaynelle, it's not even morning," I whined. "Just tell whoever it is to come back sometime during the daytime. G.o.d, what do people think?"

"GET UP AND PUT ON THOSE CLOTHES!" she shouted. "I MEAN IT! RIGHT NOW!"

I was so startled that I did what she said. Very faintly, the thin eggsh.e.l.l gla.s.s of the bell jar cracked.

Downstairs Henry was waiting for me in the sitting room. He was tanned the color of saddle leather, and had the beginnings of a silver beard. His hair was longer than I had ever seen it, and there were new sun creases in the corners of his blue eyes. He wore jeans, a black leather vest, and boots. I simply stared.

"h.e.l.lo, Henry," I said finally. "G.o.d Lord, look at you. You look like The Wild One. Where's your racc.o.o.n?"

"Hi, Anny. Want to go for a little ride?"

My head was spinning.

"Sure," I said. "Whatever."

We walked down the path through the garden and out to the curb. It was very dark; the faux gaslight in front of my house had gone out.

"You look nice with your hair like that," he said.

"Thank you. You look pretty spiffy yourself."

Neither of us mentioned the time of night.

At the corner of Bull Street and Wentworth, he stopped under the streetlight and looked at me.

"Aren't you going to ask me where I've been?"

"Do you want to tell me?"

"You're d.a.m.ned right I do. I've been in Iowa with T.C. We went out to a big bike meet. I rode with them all the way. It was...wonderful."

"You rode to Iowa on a motorcycle?" I said stupidly. Through the crack in the bell jar, something very like laughter began to seep in, fizzing.

"I G.o.dd.a.m.ned well did," he said. "On this."

We turned the corner, and the light struck a huge, bulbous motorcycle parked at the curb. It shone blackly in the light. It looked like an archaic Cretan drawing of a bull.

"It's an Indian," he said. "They just started making them again. I bought it in Iowa. T. C. thinks I'm crazy, he says there are too many kinks in this model, but there haven't been so far. I worship this lady. Come on, Anny. Get on."

"Get on?" I was aware of how stupid I sounded.

"Get on the bike behind me. I'm going to blow some of the stuffing out of your head. It's time, Anny. It's long past time."

"How did you know about the stuffing?"

"Because I had it, too, until we got halfway to Iowa. And Gaynelle says you haven't even been out of the house. We're starting now. Get on."

I did. The big bike had a wide, deep seat, and I fit easily into it. I wrapped my arms around Henry's waist and put my face against his vest, and simply sat, breathing in leather and gasoline and June and Henry.