After the Fire Read online

  It was a glorious spring morning. The island wasn’t like the city, showy with flowering trees and blatantly overplanted flower beds. You had to keep an eye out for quiet spots of pride, a small clump of daffodils at a front gate, primroses along a path. The wild spring along the road was the moth white of the earliest blossoming berries. In the woods and meadows, wildflowers had to be hunted like Easter eggs.

  Once Henrietta turned into her own drive, she had no patience for the secrets of her own garden. She hurried into the house calling, “Hart! Hart!”

  Karen saw the last cars onto the boat, repositioned the ramp, and locked up. She couldn’t get the image of Henrietta’s face out of her mind. Perhaps it had been only a trick of the morning light, an illusion just as the reflected color of Henrietta’s scarves was an illusion. Karen could not persuade herself; yet she didn’t feel she knew Henrietta well enough simply to follow her home to check on her. Even if Milly Forbes had been at home, Karen wouldn’t have called her. Why didn’t Red have a phone? Might she phone Henrietta herself? They’d let her use the phone at the store.

  There wasn’t any answer. Had Henrietta perhaps stopped to see someone on her way home? Miss James? But if she wasn’t with Miss James, it might worry the old lady. Karen got into her car and drove over to the Hawkinses’ house, noticing the sign that marked their drive. Hen & Hart over Hawkins. Residents had been asked by the fire department to mark their places carefully since there were no house numbers, but the cute heterosexuality of a lot of them irritated Karen, this one included. It made her less certain that she should be intruding. She had to remind herself that Henrietta was a virtual widow, there alone, not one half of a smugly nesting couple.

  The car was in the drive. The back door stood open. Karen knocked on it anyway. Then she stepped inside. There was no one in the kitchen. She found Henrietta in her living room, staring out at the view.

  “Hen,” she said gently, “are you all right?”

  Henrietta turned an ashen face toward her. “Have you seen Hart?”

  “Hart?”

  “My husband,” Henrietta explained. “I’ve had such an awful scare—a sort of crank call at the ferry terminal—someone saying …”

  Karen stood near her, waiting.

  “Oh,” Henrietta said and stared before her again.

  “Saying?” Karen tried to prompt her gently.

  “It can’t be true, can it?” Henrietta asked, her usually strong voice nearly childish. “He can’t be dead.”

  She was too confused, too dazed for Karen to ask any practical questions, like the name of the place where her husband was or how her son could be reached.

  “I’ll make you some coffee,” Karen offered.

  In the kitchen she plugged in the kettle and then phoned the store.

  “Get someone to go to Red’s and get her over to Henrietta Hawkins’ as soon as possible.”

  Karen wondered about phoning the doctor, but she wanted someone who knew Henrietta better than she did to make that decision. As she waited for the kettle to boil, she tried to figure out what must have happened. The crank call at the terminal must have been the real thing and Henrietta just couldn’t take it in. Karen couldn’t find any instant coffee. Did Henrietta always make real coffee for herself? Karen unplugged the kettle and started again with the electric coffee pot. She worried about leaving Henrietta alone so long at the same time that she was glad to have the excuse to be away from her. She had always seemed to Karen so sane and strong. Karen’s experience with deranged emotional states was limited to other people’s sexual anguishes, usually complicated and blurred by drugs or drink, and she had never been any good at dealing with them. She left Peggy to cope. It had been hard for Karen to believe that such behavior was genuine. Peggy had told her not to measure everyone by her own Oriental inscrutability. It was only partly a joke.

  When the coffee was finally ready, Karen found Henrietta just as she had left her. Some innate courtesy roused her enough to acknowledge the coffee, but she made no attempt to drink it. Karen had the sense that Henrietta was trying to hide or at least to stay very still, almost as if she had broken bones whose pain could be outwitted if she didn’t move.

  Finally Red called from the back door, and Karen went to the kitchen to meet her.

  “Am I glad to see you!” Karen said and quickly sketched in what she thought must have happened.

  Red went in to Henrietta, sat down beside her and took her hand.

  “Can you tell me what’s wrong, Mrs. Hawkins?”

  Henrietta started to speak and then shook her head.

  “Do you feel sick?”

  Henrietta didn’t answer.

  “Call the doctor,” Red said quietly to Karen.

  When Karen had done so, Red directed her to sit by Henrietta while Red went off to phone the hospital in Vancouver. Karen found it oddly natural, even comforting, just to sit there holding Hen’s hand.

  “You were right,” Red said. “They’re very glad she made it home. They were worried about her.”

  Then Red knelt down in front of Henrietta and said directly to her, “I’m going to call your son.”

  Henrietta didn’t respond.

  The doctor arrived while Red was on the phone talking with Hart Jr. Karen stayed with Henrietta, leaving Red to explain in two directions at once. Then the doctor spoke briefly on the phone. Finally he came into the living room. He looked hardly stronger than Henrietta, a man semi-retired because of problems with his own health.

  “Henrietta,” he said gently, “Hart is dead. Your son is coming. I want you to rest now. I’ll give you something to help you rest.”

  Karen could feel the old hand flinch, but Henrietta obediently rose and let herself be guided into her bedroom where Red undressed her and settled her in bed.

  “I’ve given her a shot,” the doctor said as he came out of the bedroom. “She’ll sleep now for a few hours. Can one of you stay with her?”

  “Yes,” Red said, “I’ll stay.”

  Karen looked at her watch. She should leave for the pub in just a few minutes.

  “I could come back later,” she offered, “and give you a break.”

  “That’s okay,” Red said. “I’ll just stay on till her son gets here.”

  “Her husband’s been sick so long,” Karen said. “I wonder why it came as such a shock.”

  “She’s old,” Red said, “and tired. And it’s something she can’t fix.”

  “It surprised me,” Karen admitted, “to see her like that. I guess I’ve always thought of her as what I’d like to be when I grow up.”

  “There aren’t any grownups,” Red said.

  “Aren’t there?” Karen asked. “What about Miss James?”

  “Old isn’t grown up. She made running away into what she calls ‘career choices.’ Oh, she’s a nice enough old bird, I’ll give you that …”

  “You’re cynical, Red,” Karen accused.

  “I don’t know words like that,” Red said.

  “You haven’t any faith in the goodness in people.”

  “Some people are good when they can afford to be,” Red allowed. “Most people can’t afford that and won’t. I don’t believe in anything about anybody.”

  “Then why are you willing to be so good?” Karen challenged.

  “I’m not good!” Red exclaimed with a laugh. “I’m about to be an unwed mother, remember?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that,” Karen said.

  “That’s not what you’ll hear at the store or the pub. I’m trash. Even to the likes of Sadie, I’m trash.”

  “You don’t have to listen,” Karen said. “You don’t have to believe that.”

  “I don’t,” Red said. “I don’t believe anything about anyone.”

  “Why are you willing to stay here for Hen, then?” Karen asked.

  “I owe her,” Red answered.

  As Karen drove to the pub, she pondered Red’s moral view. It was clearer and more realistic than Kar
en’s own, but it was too simple surely and gave no room for the altruism in some people, which wasn’t purely a luxury of the rich in pocket. She was surprised at Red’s harsh judgment of Miss James. Of course, Karen didn’t know these women as Red did.

  No man is a hero to his valet. How peculiarly so many old maxims lay on the rural hierarchy of island life. Karen was their servant, too, whether she sold them ferry tickets or waited on them at the pub, and she had been thinking of them as her betters. The old ones she respected anyway, but not in a social sense. Karen had been raised the daughter of a highly regarded university professor, and she had a college degree herself, which was why her father would think the work she did now demeaned her—or he would if she began to think of it seriously, as a way she could spend her life. You were to make something of yourself so that no one dared to look down on you.

  But most ignorant people felt superior to Karen and her father. Even their rights as citizens were at the whim of the government. Why wasn’t he angry? Why did he instead want to prove himself good enough to people who should have been beneath his contempt? Red was still just a kid, but she’d learned that she was “trash” even to pathetic drunken Sadie, and she kept her pride. She didn’t care what they thought, any of them.

  Why should I? Karen wondered. For all the contempt she felt for Milly Forbes, her judgments nevertheless stung. And, if Henrietta Hawkins was friendly, Karen felt reassured of her own value. And was shaken to see that old woman in a state of collapse.

  Was she wrong to see her father’s vanity exposed in his sexual behavior and therefore to judge his pride in the same way, a false striving of self-serving ambition that would never change the color of his skin or the design of his eyelids? There were people in the camps who had killed themselves. Surely their despair wasn’t more honorable than that surviving generation of overachieving super-patriots.

  There were simplicities in being a fatherless bastard which Karen both mistrusted and envied. She was learning that the mirror of her own value could not be the face of a father, lover, or child, nor could she find it in the old women among whom she’d been looking for role models. Certainly she didn’t want to be someone who perpetually ran away from failed loves, inadequate friendships, and meaningless work until she was so old and deaf that her inadequacies could be blamed on great age.

  The healing wound of Karen’s pride had begun to itch.

  Chapter IX

  MILLY LAY WATCHING THE sunlight on the fresh roses which Bonnie had brought this morning. If Milly had had more energy, she might have demanded whether these, too, had come from Forbes, but she hadn’t the strength or mind for vexation. She was reduced to passive and basic pleasures. Roses in sunlight, the at first very painful and now just miraculous reawakening of her bladder and bowels. Milly had dealt with her body so long as an aging enemy that it was a largely forgotten experience to be aware of it simply as a servant to her consciousness. She breathed and felt her lungs at work acquiring oxygen for her blood which traveled through her veins carrying nourishing messages. For every conscious effort she made, her body carried out thousands of instructions she was not aware of. She felt amazed by it and grateful.

  In birth, the child’s body was the miracle. Milly’s own, torn and depleted, breasts sore with her first milk, had been something to be pitied—a crude and vulnerable vehicle for life, hardly belonging to her at all, though a vital convenience for the child. And very soon—she had never been able to think how—it would have to be repaired and restored to the uses Forbes made of it.

  Now no one else’s need pushed at her. She could lie and rest and let herself heal for herself. She didn’t resent the nurse’s urging her out of bed for the short journey to the bathroom, and, though she didn’t yet look forward to the time she spent sitting in a chair each day, she knew she would.

  While Milly had been very sick, Bonnie seemed nearly always at her bedside. Now she came briefly in the morning with flowers or a magazine, came back in the afternoon for a real visit and occasionally again briefly in the evening.

  “Don’t muck up your evenings for me,” Milly told her. “There must be lots of old friends you’d like to see.”

  “I don’t,” Bonnie assured her. “You were on the way to a party tonight, that’s all.”

  Milly didn’t really remember most of the people Bonnie referred to, expecting her mother to be familiar with high school and college friends who had frequented the house and who had often been more charmed by Milly than Bonnie had liked. They had never been much more than a blur of young faces to Milly but when Bonnie had complained at her mother’s behavior, her friends became something more of a challenge to beguile. “I’m teaching you how,” Milly had said to her daughter.

  Instead of complaining that she couldn’t be expected, even with full presence of mind, to remember all those callow young, Milly let Bonnie chatter on about them and their affairs until, for lack of other interests, Milly began to look forward to Bonnie’s reports like episodes in the soaps. She could probably have watched television instead, but, since she had lived on the island, she was out of that habit. Bonnie, right there in the room with her, was an easier distraction.

  “You should do your eyes like that all the time,” Milly commented one evening when Bonnie came more dressed up and made up than usual.

  It pleased Milly that Bonnie after that came to visit with a careful face, whatever the time of day. It was as if she were a kind of stand-in for Milly until she could rouse herself to prepare her own public face again. She was relieved that Martin had gone away now that she was better, for he would have been a strain on her vanity.

  Bonnie asked her if she would like other company.

  “Who?” Milly wondered.

  When Bonnie mentioned Chas Kidder’s wife or Chas himself, Milly declined.

  “Hen might come one of these days when she’s in seeing Hart.”

  “He died, Mother,” Bonnie said gently, as if such news might upset her mother.

  “Well, good!” Milly exclaimed. “I hope Hen packs up and goes round the world on a freighter.”

  “Would you like to do something like that?” Bonnie asked.

  “Oh, I’ve hardly got the money to live the way I do,” Milly said dismissively.

  “I get a lot of perks in the travel business, you know,” Bonnie said. “I maybe could arrange something.”

  “I wouldn’t have the clothes,” Milly said.

  “They’re not all fashion-plate cruises,” Bonnie said.

  “But those are the ones I’d like,” Milly said. “And anyway I wouldn’t want to travel alone.”

  Bonnie didn’t press the issue, and, though Milly didn’t take her seriously, she got a new vicarious pleasure in the travel magazines her daughter brought to her.

  “What a comfort it must be,” the nurse said to her, “to have children like yours.”

  Milly realized that, in fact, it was. But nearly everything was a comfort to her in these placid days of her returning strength. She did not want to be hurried, and no one was hurrying her.

  Then one day Bonnie said, “The doctor thinks you might go home day after tomorrow, if I’d go with you for a week or ten days.”

  “You can’t miss that much work!” Milly protested, who had not until that moment put her mind to the work Bonnie had already missed.

  “I can,” Bonnie reassured her. “And I’d really like to, Mother.”

  “But what would you do with yourself on the island? You’d be bored to death.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. I always loved it there.”

  “Did you?” Milly asked, mildly surprised, and then she remembered that she had once loved it there, too. “Nobody your age comes any more,” she said.

  “I’ve seen enough people in the last couple of weeks to last me a while,” Bonnie said. “I could take walks. I could do a little yard work for you. There must be things you’d like done around the house. And we can just go on visiting. It’s been years since we’ve done tha
t.”

  Bonnie spoke in a tone wistful rather than reproachful, allowing Milly to remember faintly a time when she had felt companionable with her children before they had begun to witness her humiliation and to tell her all those things about herself that made humiliation even more inevitable. Bonnie had never been brutal to her as the others could be, but Milly had shrunk back even more from her kindness which made it all too clear that she had become an object of pity.

  “The girl, Red, said she’d come in as much as I need her,” Milly said. “And Hen. But, if you can spare another week, I would like it.”

  Admitting this wasn’t difficult because Milly really was feeling proud of this healing body of hers. It deserved Bonnie’s attention and kindness as it did her own. Milly had a peculiar feeling that she and her daughter together would be leaving the hospital with a new life on their hands—her own—and she was free after all these years to give herself that attention and receive it from her daughter.

  The rationale for great community effort quite left Henrietta when she was faced with the question of a funeral for Hart.

  “Is there really any point?” she asked her soberly concerned son. “For his friends he died years ago.”

  “He didn’t for you,” Hart Jr. reminded her.

  That certainly was the fiction she had kept up for all these years, but now she had to face the fact that the disagreeable stranger she had visited so faithfully was really her husband, and he was dead, his body lying on a shelf in the funeral parlor awaiting her instructions. Deprived of his company all these years, she didn’t want him carried back into the house like a piece of furniture.

  “Did he have … any wishes?” Hart Jr. asked, this solid, middle-aged banker, being her son.

  “Wishes? He would have liked just once to win the salmon derby.”

  “I mean about what’s to be done now,” her son said with obvious patience.

  “Oh. Not really. He favored cremation generally. But for himself I don’t think he cared one way or the other. He used to say it was for the living to bury the dead any way it suited them.”

  It was hard to call up such information. The Hart who had been so accessible to her for these lonely years had been replaced by a dying old man who could be angry with her for bringing the wrong flavor of ice cream and might have a tantrum at the thought of her turning him into ashes, except that he was dead.