This One and Magic Life (4 page)

TYPICAL ARTIE THING, SPRINGING THE NEWS ON THEM THAT SHE
wanted to be cremated. And having Mr. Brock tell them after she's dead so nobody could talk her out of it. Not that they could have anyway. Nobody could talk Artie out of anything she'd set her mind on.

Mariel leans her head against the coolness of the car window; her eyes hurt and there were watery rainbows all around the lights. The tires whine as they cross a bridge.

The depth of her sadness over Artie's death is a surprise. This was the woman who her husband loved better than anyone else in the world, the woman who had stolen her child, the woman who was so beautiful and talented that she made Mariel feel dumb as dirt. Artie painted seascapes that hung in museums; she, Mariel, cross-stitched pictures of mallards. Dumb as dirt.

She gazes at Donnie who is driving like a robot. She can't see the expression on his face, but he hasn't said a word since they left Harlow.

“You're really going to take her to Birmingham to be cremated tomorrow?” she asks.

“Guess I don't have a choice.” They are on the stretch of road where, in the summertime, cars go rmmph rmmph over expanded concrete. They'll be in the Mobile city limits soon.

“I've been thinking.” She lets the words hang in the air.

He doesn't reply.

“We could go on and have the funeral, Donnie. Just like we planned. No one would know the casket was empty but us. Not even Father Carroll.”

At first he doesn't say anything. They pass the entrance to the battleship
Alabama
, anchored in the bay and lighted brightly for tourists. He says, “Hmmm.”

Mariel isn't sure if that's a yes or a no. “Well, we could. Tell everybody Artie requested a closed casket, which you know she would have. Father Carroll incensed her last night or this morning. God, I'm losing track of time. Anyway, whenever Mrs. Randolph called him. He wouldn't question it.”

He still doesn't say anything.

“Don't you think it would work?”

“Mariel, I don't think it matters.”

“Sure it does, Donnie. People in Mobile don't get cremated. You know that.”

“It's not a sin, Mariel. I read somewhere that in California half the people are cremated.”

“That's California.” She pauses. “Do you know anybody who was ever cremated?”

Donnie doesn't say anything. Of course he doesn't.

“And this way we wouldn't have to explain anything to anybody.”

“We don't have to explain anything to anybody anyway.”

Donnie looks over at Mariel. Under the streetlights, the lines in her face look etched. He reaches over and takes her hand. “Look, I don't care. Do what you want to,” he says. “But I'm still taking her to Birmingham tomorrow to the crematorium.”

“I'll work it out,” Mariel promises, crossing her fingers for luck just like she had when she was a child.

They ride in silence, each lost in thought until they stop at a light and Donnie asks if Dolly has said anything about Bobby.

“She hasn't mentioned him. I don't know if she called him about Artie or not.”

“Artie liked him a lot. I was out at the house when they called to say they were getting married. She made me open a bottle of champagne right by the phone so they could hear us celebrating.”

“I liked him, too,” Mariel says. “The whole thing's tragic.” Then, “The light's green.”

 

Dolly and May have built a fire on the beach with some cardboard boxes they found on the back porch. May is writing her name in the air with sparklers.

“M!” she shouts, running along the water's edge, her arms swooping. “A! Y!” And for a moment Dolly sees the name white against the darkness.

“Get some sparklers,” she had called to May. “They're in the little drawer on the right of the sink. Let's go down to the beach a while.” And she had thought, How well I know this house. Now she pushes some sticks May has found into the fire. They are wet and sizzle; they refuse to burn.

“It smells like old fish down here,” May says, sticking her hands out for more sparklers. “Stinks.”

“That's part of a jubilee. Tomorrow everybody will be cleaning the beaches. When Papa and Uncle Hektor
were kids they used to rake people's beaches to make money. Kids still do it. They'll be knocking on our door in the morning.”

“What about Artie?”

“You mean did she rake beaches for people? I never heard her say. Her mother might have thought it wasn't ladylike. She and I cleaned this beach, though, lots of times.”

May sits down by the fire. Sparks of burning cardboard drift toward the dune.

“You stayed here a lot, didn't you?”

“Every summer. I couldn't wait for school to be out so I could come to Harlow. Probably hurt my folks' feelings I was so anxious. And we really didn't do anything much. Artie would paint all morning and Kelly Stuart and I would play. Her older brother built us a treehouse in the pecan tree. We loved that. And then in the afternoon when it would cool down, we'd swim or fish. Mrs. Stuart or Artie might bring us sandwiches to the beach for supper. Nothing, really. But I loved it.” Dolly puts another piece of cardboard on the fire. The cardboard curls with a hissing sound. “I still think when you cross the causeway the light gets brighter. Clearer.”

“But wasn't Aunt Artie gone a lot?”

“Not in the summer. Never in the summer.” Dolly feels drained. She lies back and looks at the stars which are blurred, indistinct. “Reese would plant a big garden and we would put vegetables in the freezer. I think I was the champion pea sheller of Harlow.”

“I helped her shell peas last summer,” May says.

“Did she say, ‘We're putting up nuts for the winter'?”

“Yep.”

The cardboard catches and flames. It's the last
piece. “This is our Turning of the Earth bonfire,” Dolly says. “Maybe it'll change our luck. God knows I could use a change.”

May lights a sparkler and throws it in an arc toward the water. “Witches, be gone!”

Dolly feels the warm sand against her back. She thinks she's too tired to get up and go into the house. If she had a blanket, she'd stay right here, see the earliest chord of sun. She struggles up. “We have to go in, May. Let's put the fire out soon as this piece burns.”

A few minutes later, they kick sand over the fire and start up the path.

“My sparklers,” May says. She runs back to get them. Dolly, waiting, imagines she sees May jump three times over the embers of the fire.

Witches, be gone.

 

Tired as he is, Donnie can't sleep.

“You okay?” Mariel mumbles when he leaves the bed.

“I'm losing my mind,” he mutters and walks out into the backyard, into air so heavy he can feel himself pushing against it.

This was the kind of August night when, before air-conditioning, as soon as his younger brother Hektor was asleep, he, Donnie, would fix their fan so it wouldn't oscillate but would blow only on him, not Hektor. It was the kind of still, sultry night that drew people from their houses to slightly cooler porches or to the damp sand of the beach.

One night, getting up to fix the fan, he had seen his mother coming from the beach. The lights were off, but as she crossed the yard, her white silk robe reflected the moonlight. He had gone to the window and watched her, wondering if she had been swimming,
thinking she had no business swimming by herself at night. And then his father had stepped from the porch and held out his arms and Sarah had walked into his embrace. For a moment they held each other, and then they began to move in a slow dance, circling the yard lightly, unaware that their son was watching.

The next morning, their father said that their mother was sleeping in and they should be quiet. Donnie, Artie, and Hektor were sitting in the kitchen eating cereal and Thomas, their father, was on his way to work with his usual books and thermos of coffee, his glasses and thinning hair. He wasn't forty, but to his children he had looked like an old man, bent.

“I don't believe they were out there,” Artie had said, slapping the cereal bowls onto the table. “It must have been a dream. They wouldn't have been out in the yard dancing in the middle of the night. Not Papa, anyway.”

But Donnie knew what he had seen, and the memory stayed with him all his life like a blessing.

“She's crazy, you know.” Later that day they were walking down the shell road carrying crab nets. “I hate everything about her.”

“You shouldn't talk like that about Mama, Artie,” Hektor said. “You really shouldn't.”

“You don't think she's so bad because she doesn't stay on you and Donnie.”

Donnie and Hektor both knew this was true.

“And Papa doesn't do a damn thing about it. Sits over there at the university. Comes home and dances with her. Shit.”

“Most of the time she's fine, Artie,” Donnie said.

“And some of the time she's nuts, and I'm the one catches it. Just once I'd like to do something to suit her.”

They reached the community pier and took out the plastic bag with chicken entrails they would use for bait. “I wish these were her guts,” Artie said, and Donnie felt like crying because Artie was hurting and because he loved all of them.

“But Artie—”

“Just shut up!” Artie leaned over the rail and dropped the crab net into the murky water, watching it sink slowly out of sight. “Just shut up!”

Now Donnie eases into the hammock and closes his eyes. Once more he sees Sarah walking into Thomas's embrace; once more they dance, light, young. How little we know our parents, Donnie thinks. How little we know each other.

He sleeps. When he wakes, stiff and uncomfortable, a brilliant Venus shines low in the morning sky.

 

Dolly can't sleep. She wanders the house. She looks at the picture above the mantel, a pier in moonlight with the figures of a man and woman standing apart. The man is looking at the woman, but her face is turned toward the water. It's not like most of Artie's work. “An early one and the light's messed up on the water,” she had told Dolly and pointed out how the shadows were wrong. But Artie had liked it well enough to hang it over her mantel, and Dolly has always loved the picture, believing the figures are Artie and her husband Carl who was killed in Korea, killed before they ever had a life to live together, a marriage to weave.

Now Dolly turns on the light over the painting and studies it. She sees the shadows that Artie said were wrong, how they reach toward the pier, how the woman's hand is cupped, holding something that may be a shell, a suggestion of color.

“I came down to get a
Nancy Drew
.”

Dolly jumps. She hasn't heard May come up behind her.

“I thought you were asleep.”

“I tried. Some birds are fussing right outside my window. One of them keeps saying, ‘Wee, wee' like the little piggy.”

“They do that after jubilees; they get frantic and can't settle down.” Dolly puts her arm around May and pulls her close. “You hungry? You want something to eat?”

“No. I'm full.” May looks up at the picture. “That's Aunt Artie, isn't it?”

“I don't know, May. I've always assumed it was and that the man was Carl, her husband. But look at the way she's standing away from him. And the way he's looking at her.”

“He's fixing to go get himself killed and she's mad at him about it.”

Dolly kisses the top of May's head. Little girl sweat and shampoo. “You're too wise, little one.”

“I know.” May giggles.

“But not too wise for a
Nancy Drew?
”

“Nope. I love Aunt Artie's
Nancy Drew
s. I like the way they smell.”

“Me, too. Do you know how to turn on the light under the steps?”

“Sure I do. Sometimes I just sit in there and read. Aunt Artie says she used to do that, too. Hide in the closet and read.”

“I used to do that myself. I'm glad she saved them for us.”

“Me, too. 'Night, Dolly.”

“ 'Night, sweetheart. Is your papa asleep?”

“He's snoring louder than the birds are yelling.”
May goes toward the hall, and Dolly turns back to look at the picture. For the first time, she realizes that one of the shadows in the background may not be a shadow but a small boat. She rubs her hand over her eyes which are blurring. Sarah and Thomas. The figures could be her grandparents with Sarah already looking toward the boat that was waiting for them.

Dolly sighs. Or it could just be a pretty picture with the shadows messed up.

“I know what's in the lady's hand.” May is beside her again.

“What?”

“A brass button.”

Dolly sees that it's possible. “What makes you think that, May?”

“I asked Aunt Artie and she told me.”

“Why a brass button?”

“Don't know. I didn't ask her.” May hugs Dolly. “ 'Night, again.”

“Sleep tight.”

May nods, holding up several books.

After she has gone, Dolly reaches up and covers the painted hand with her own. A brass button.

She feels disoriented, the room no longer as familiar. There is so much this house has to tell her. So much it will never tell her. Stories end.

She puts out the light and goes up the steps, past the room where Hektor is sleeping, past May's room where a light is on. The good scent of almonds follows her. She doesn't undress but lies across the bed looking out toward the pier, the moon-tipped water.

“Something is going to happen,” she whispers.

 

In the Harlow jail, a drunk Reese is dreaming that Artie has bought a wagonload of sunflower seeds.

“Plant them, Reese,” she says. “On the beach.”

“But they won't grow there, Artie,” he protests.

“But if they did, wouldn't it be pretty?”