Through the evening meal, I am even more acutely aware of the tension underlying every word, of the veiled, accusing looks directed at me. I want to shout, “This is not my fault!” But I say nothing. After supper, while the family is at evening service, I take a bath, then stoke up the fire in the living room and settle in for another vigil.
This is the worst night. My body defies my intentions; my mind shimmers toward dreams, toward hallucination. The flickering light of the fire vibrates, and phantom shapes emerge from the dark. I slip in and out of sleep, and again I keep Shadow beside me, under my hand.
And again the basement door opens, once soon after midnight, the second time after four. I’m almost convinced that I hear soft laughter.
At five I go out to the deck. Another clear day. The moon hangs in the pastel wash of mist and sky, so nearly a perfect disk, my old eyes can’t discern the slight flaw in perfection. But it isn’t full yet.
Tomorrow night it will be full.
I don’t bother to go to bed. I’m afraid to, afraid I might sleep through breakfast, and I am determined to make an appearance today at the morning meal. I let it be known then that I don’t feel well, and the family’s faces are mirrors attesting to the fact that I don’t look well. For the first time since our final lesson I see something in Stephen’s eyes other than accusing doubt.
And Miriam watches me, smiling that knowing smile. I wonder if no one else sees it.
Half an hour after school begins, I collapse, fall out of my chair amid the children’s cries of alarm. They are convinced, and so are the adults when they come in response to the children’s shouts. Jerry carries me to my room, then Bernadette takes over, sends everyone away. She’s brought her medical case, and she listens with the stethoscope to my heart, checks my blood pressure with the old sphygmomanometer. She asks if I hurt anywhere. I shake my head. Then she prepares one of her teas—swearing irritably that it’s only a combination of willow bark and foxglove, that there is nothing remotely resembling a soporific in it. Obviously I don’t need a soporific now. I just need sleep.
And sleep I have—a day of sleep, sweet sleep to knit up my raveled sleave. This is also part of my preparation.
The cast of the light in the windows serves as my clock, and I know it’s evening when Bernadette comes in with a tray: a bowl of chicken broth and a cup of tea. She checks my vital signs, frowning absently, then props pillows behind me and puts the tray on my knees.
I ask, “What time is it?”
“Suppertime. So, have some of that broth. No—the tea first.”
I drink the tea, knowing I need the medicines that give it such a bitter, earthy taste. I take a few spoonfuls of the broth, and I am in fact ravenous, but I drop the spoon, let it clatter against the bowl, let my head fall back, my eyes close. “I’m… not hungry….”
“Eat it anyway,” she retorts, then with a sigh, “All right. I’ll leave it so you can have some later. Cold.”
She puts the bowl on the bedside table, removes the tray, then sits down beside me, presses her fingers to my wrist. “Pulse still a little fast. Thought you might be having a heart attack this morning. You could, you know. Blood pressure runs high. You’ve got poor Jeremiah going like a weather vane. Doesn’t know what he should think.”
An astute observation, but I neither speak nor move, and she asks, “Is there anything you haven’t told me? Anything hurting you?”
“No. Nothing you can do anything about.”
She snorts at that. “Well, maybe a few days’ rest will do something about it.” The bed shifts as she rises, and I open my eyes.
“Bernadette… where’s Shadow?” I can only hope I haven’t let too much anxiety come through in my voice.
“You want her in here?”
“Yes. Please.”
“I’ll find her.”
The door opens, closes. I lie waiting for what seems an hour, but no doubt is only minutes. I must have Shadow in this room with me.
And finally the door opens again. I shut my eyes, and I’m drowsily grateful when Shadow jumps up on the bed and nudges at my hand with her nose. I pet her perfunctorily, then seem to sink back into sleep. I hear the door close.
I’m not asleep. I watch the light fade into dusk, listen to sounds from the house: the family at supper; then the clatter of pots and dishes; then, finally, the house is quiet. I hear singing from the church.
I have no light to read by, so my mind flows free, casting up memories like flotsam. I remember my last phone call to my mother. I remember boys and men I loved, or thought I did. I remember making love. I remember deaths I’ve grieved. I remember walking with my parents on the beach, finding a shell so eroded in the tumbler of the waves that its outer wall was gone, exposing the spiral structure within. Dad said, “It looks like Mozart sounds,” and Mother laughed and sang a Mozart melody. She sang beautifully then, but she stopped singing after Dad died. But at that moment the nacreous spiral of the shell and Mozart made sense in relation to one another. And years later Rachel told me, “Painting works on the same level in the mind that music does. People think they’re responding to the subject matter. They aren’t. Not if the painting is good.”
I can’t see the paintings on my walls in this dim light. I don’t have to. I know them all, know their sources and the music in them. And I think about the books in the vault, remember the days before they were buried there, when Rachel pored over them, always frustrated by the shortage of time and light. It wasn’t only the knowledge in them she sought; that was subject matter. She sought the music—the music that sings in the mind in response to relationships sensed in time, in cause and effect, in the becoming of transitions. She hungered for that music and reveled in the realization that her appetite was insatiable.
Evening service is over, and Bernadette comes in to check on me one last time before she goes to bed. I ask her to leave a candle, otherwise scarcely speaking or opening my eyes, except when she starts to take the bowl of cold broth. “Just leave it. I might wake up hungry.”
She shrugs, then goes to the door, pauses for a Parthian shot. “Be careful, Sister. We’re not as tough anymore as we think we are.” Then she makes her exit, leaving me to wonder what she meant by that.
I wait until I hear no sound at all in the house, then wait a few minutes longer. Finally I push the covers back. I’m still dressed, except for my boots. When I was put to bed, Bernadette simply loosened my already loose clothing. I cross the worn carpet in stocking feet and, when I reach the sliding glass door, look cautiously out into the greenhouse. I see no lights in the north wing. I go to the door into the hallway, open it a few inches. No light under Jerry’s door.
I return to the bed, sit down to pull on my boots. Shadow is awake, watching me. I don’t offer her any encouragement. Next I go to the closet for the dark shawl, then to my souvenir drawer. I find Jim Acres’s handcuffs, break the string on the key, and put them in my skirt pocket. My cane is on the back of a chair. The silent whistle is on the bedside table. I slip the chain over my head, hold the whistle against my heart for a moment as if it were a talisman. Shadow follows me around, tail wagging tentatively.
I pick up the bowl of broth, down a couple of spoonsful, then put it on the floor, and when Shadow begins lapping at it, I blow out the candle and retreat to the glass door, ease it open, step out into the greenhouse, ease the door closed again.