I reached across the gla.s.s top of the table and put my hand on hers. It was hot and dry. Mine was cold.
"Don"t be afraid, little one. I"m all right. These episodes are bad, but they don"t last." She reached for the decanter and poured herself some more.
"You"re sure I shouldn"t call-"
Tolly. I"m all right. There"s nothing anyone can do. Don"t fret. The pain"s much better."
I took our plates out to the kitchen, rinsed them, and left them in the sink for Nettie and Ovid. I thought that maybe I should try to call Daddy, and then decided that it would make her angry. When I got back to the verandah, dark was falling. The long evenings of summer 184.
were behind us. Night was closing in early, though the shadows of evening still held the humid heat of the day.
Max was leaning back in her chair, and there was just enough light for me to see that the look of pain had eased. She took a sip of bourbon and put her gla.s.s down. "It leaves me tired," she said. "Let"s sit here for a while and watch the stars."
I sat across from her, glancing at the unlit candles in their hurricane globes.
"Do you want any light?"
"No. Even candle flame adds to the heat. Look, there"s a star."
The wind was rising, but it was not a cooling wind. The gentle whirring of the paddle fan, the slow rolling of the waves across the sand, the chirring of locusts, were hot, summer sounds. A seagull screamed.
"Another star," Max said. "All the galaxies, the billions of galaxies-the possibility of billions of island universes -floating like bubbles in a great s.p.a.cious sea-"
"There"s the Big Dipper," I said, relaxing a little.
"The Great Bear," Max said. "I talk about the unimportance of size, the microcosm as immense as the macrocosm -but then I think of Beau Allaire sitting on a small island on an insignificant planet-how can G.o.d keep track of it all?
Do you think G.o.d really does count the hairs of our heads?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I don"t know why. It"s just what I think."
"At least you don"t give me glib answers. If human beings can program computers to count astronomical figures, why should G.o.d do less? If there isn"t a G.o.d who cares about our living and dying, then it"s all an echoing joke. I don"t want my life to be a bad joke, so I have to believe that G.o.d does care. That there is a someone who 185.
began everything, and who loves and cares." She shivered.
"Funny, how intense heat can make one break out in gooseflesh, just like cold. Let"s go up to my room. It"s cooler there. Why don"t you get ready for bed, and I will, too."
We paused on the landing, as always, to look at the statue of the Laughing Christ. The light touched the joyous face, and there was compa.s.sion in the eyes.
While I was changing in the green guest room, thunder began to rumble in the distance. The air was so thick with humidity you could squeeze it. The sky flickered faintly with electricity.
Max"s nightgown was ivory satin, so lovely it could have been worn as an evening dress. She sat on the white rug, her hands about her knees. A Chinese screen was in front of the fireplace, gold background with flowers and herons painted on it, "You"ve grown over the summer," Max said. "You"re going to be tall."
My old seersucker nightgown was too short. "Not too tall, I hope."
"You come from a tall family, and you carry it well. Don"t ever slump. That just makes one look taller. Hold your head high, like royalty."
The light from one of the lamps glinted off the decanter of bourbon and onto Max"s gla.s.s, half full of amber liquid. I hoped that she knew how much she should drink. Then I noticed a bottle of champagne. "I really don"t need anything," I said awkwardly. "There"s more lemonade if I get thirsty."
"I"ve already uncorked the champagne," Max said. "Hold out your gla.s.s."
I picked up the tall fluted gla.s.s which was on the hearth in front of the Chinese screen, held it out, and 186.
she poured. I thought her hand was a little unsteady, and I was concerned.
Why should I worry about that decanter of bourbon, or that maybe Max was drinking too much? If she was dying and it eased the pain, what difference did it make?
But it did. It did make a difference. This was not the Max I knew, the Max who made me believe there were wide worlds open for Polyhymnia O"Keefe.
Thunder again. Low. Menacing.
"To you," Max said, her voice slurring. "To all that you can be." Some of her whiskey spilled on the rug.
I wanted to throw it at the Chinese screen. This could not be Max, this woman with her hand clutching the decanter of bourbon.
She poured herself more. Her eyes were too bright, her cheeks too flushed.
Lightning flashed again, brightening the flowers on the screen. "That"s too close," Max said as the thunder rose. We could hear the wind whipping the trees.
"I"m afraid, oh, little one, I"m so afraid . . ."
Not of the thunderstorm.
"Afraid of the dark. Afraid of nothingness. Of being alone. Of not being."
This was naked, primordial fear. I wanted to call Daddy, but what would I say?
Max is drinking too much and she"s afraid of dying?
Lightning again, but this time there were several seconds before the thunder.
"Are you afraid?" Max whispered.
"No. I don"t mind thunderstorms as long as I"m not alone."
A slow wave of thunder rolled over her response. "I need an affir"-her words slurred-"an affirmation. An 187.
affirmation of being." She picked up her gla.s.s. I glanced at the decanter and saw that it was half empty.
Oh, Max, I wailed silently, I wish you wouldn"t.
She bent toward me, whispering, "Oh, my little Polly, it"s all so short-no more than the blink of an eye. Why are you afraid of Max? Why?"
Her breath was heavy with whiskey. Her words were thick. I was afraid. I didn"t know what to do, how to stop her. How to make her be Max again.
In the next flash of lightning she stood up, and in the long satin gown she seemed seven feet tall, and she was swaying, so drunk she couldn"t walk. And then she fell . . .
I rolled out of the way. She reached for me, and she was sobbing.
I scrambled to my feet. Ran. I heard her coming after me. I turned at the landing, rushed down the stairs, heard her unsteady feet, then a crash, and turned to see that she had knocked over the statue.
I ran on, panting, past the dining room, slipped in my bare feet on the polished floor, and almost fell. I reached out to steady myself, and my hand hit the light switch, and the crystal chandelier bloomed with light, and the light touched the smile on the face of the portrait of Max"s father.
"Pa!" she screamed out, staggering toward me, carrying the statue. "d.a.m.n you!
d.a.m.n you! I"m just like you, d.a.m.n you!"
I pushed open the heavy front door and burst out into the pelting rain.
I ran up the long drive, hardly realizing I had on only my nightgown. The crushed sh.e.l.ls hurt my feet but did not slow me down. My nightgown was drenched and 188.
clung to my body. I felt a sharp pain in my foot. Rain streamed from my hair and into my eyes, so that the headlights of an approaching car were nearly on me before I saw them, and heard the sh.e.l.ls crunching under the tires, and veered to the side of the road.
Brakes were slammed on. The car stopped. A window was opened and someonelooked out. "Polly!"
It was Ursula.
"Something told me-" She flung open the door. "Get in, child."
Ursula would take care of everything.
I stumbled into the car.
"Child, what happened?"
"Max is drunk-oh, Urs, she"s-drunk-and I got away from her and ran. She . . .
she ran after me, she knocked over the statue of the Laughing . . . and the light came on and hit the portrait of her father, and . . ." I babbled on, hardly knowing what I was saying.
"Oh, Max," Ursula said. "Oh, Max." She started the car again and drove up to the house. "Wait here, child." She ran indoors. I heard her calling, "Max! Max, dear, it"s Urs. Where are you?" And the door slammed on her words.
Two
191 I n the morning, before time to take me to the airport for my plane to Cyprus, Sandy came into my room. Once again he suggested that I might want to call the United States. "Phoning anywhere from Cyprus isn"t easy." He didn"t say, "Do you want to call the family?" or "Do you want to call Max?" and I think he was leaving all options open.
I just said, "No, thanks." And then, because I felt that I was being ungrateful and ungracious, I said, "I think it"s time I cut the umbilical cord."
"From your family?" he asked. "Or from Max?"
I fumbled in my suitcase, refolding a blouse.
"I should have realized," Sandy said, "how young and vulnerable you are.
You"re so mature in some ways it"s easy to forget how inexperienced you are in human relationships. You idolized Max, and that is always the prelude to disaster."
-I speak five languages, I thought irrelevantly, and it doesn"t make any difference at all.
He put his hand over mine. "The toppling of your 192.
G.o.ddess was nothing I could have conceived of, and I do not in any way condone what happened. But it was an aberration, a terrible one, and it was nothing that had anything to do with the Max I have known for twenty years."
I shut the suitcase, clicking the latches.
"Do you know, Polly, can you guess, what it must have cost Max to call me, to tell me what happened, what she did? The fact that she could do that tells me just how much she loves you, not in any erotic way, but as her child."
I heard, and I didn"t hear. I rolled up the cardigan, the Fair Isle cardigan I"d brought in case it turned chilly, and put it in the shoulder bag.
"Your parents do not know what happened, because you didn"t tell them, and that speaks well."
For me? For my parents? For Max?
"I think you will be able to forgive what happened, Polly. I"m not sure they would be able to. And they would blame themselves."
"They didn"t have anything to do with it."
"I know that. But your parents wouldn"t." He paused, looking at me, "Ursula says that Max has stopped drinking entirely, except for what Urs gives her for pain, and she doesn"t want that but Netson has ordered it. I realize that nothingcan take back what happened, what Max did. But would you want never to have known her?"
"I don"t know."
"Perhaps where I hold Max most at fault is in letting you worship her. But you are a contained person, Polly, and I doubt if Max realized the extent of your adoration. Maybe you didn"t, either."
I nodded, mutely.
193.
"You"re all right, Polly." He rubbed his hand over his beard. "Nearly ready?"
"Yes. Thank you, Sandy. I"ve loved these days with you and Rhea. Thank you."
"No thanks needed. You are very dear to us." He pulled me to him, kissed my hair. "Have you been keeping that journal for school?"
"Every day. I try to describe things, not only the ancient sites, but little things, like the men with braziers standing on the street corners in Athens selling roasted corn. That surprised me. I think of corn as being only American."
"We bring our worlds with us when we travel, we Americans." He gave me his rough, Uncle Sandy hug. "You bring the scent of ocean and camellias."
"That"s nice. Thank you."
"And that young man, Zachary, who seems so taken with you, brings the smell of money and power. To the Zacharies of this world, Turkey, Pakistan, Kuwait are interchangeable. They exist only for their banks and insurance companies and megabucks. When money is your only concern, there isn"t any difference between Zaire and Chicago."