The Enchanted Isle

18

Then i was on the sidewalk beside Mother, sitting there holding her hand, while the officers went around making notes and taking flashlight pictures. Then a guy was there, asking who called for a bullhorn. “I did,” said Mr. O’Brien, appearing from somewhere, “but it won’t be needed now. Take it back.” I began kissing Mother’s hand, and then began kissing her, on the mouth, I mean, but it was so cold I was terrified and started to wail. I wailed louder and louder and louder, like some kind of a banshee, and heard Mr. O’Brien say, “This girl is in pretty bad shape, and I’m taking her to Prince George’s General.” But I kept right on wailing while he stretched me out on my back and tried to get me quiet. Not that he did, at all. Then an ambulance was there, and two guys lifted me onto a stretcher and tucked a blanket around me. Then I was inside the ambulance, and then in some kind of a room with women and kids and guys with bandaged heads — the accident ward, I guess. But Mr. O’Brien was there and got action on me pretty quick. An intern bent over me, where I was still on the stretcher, and then had me carried away by orderlies in green smocks.

Then I was in bed, in a room, with my clothes all taken off, and he was jabbing me in the backside with a needle. Then he said to Mr. O’Brien, “That ought to do it for a while.”

Next thing I knew, I was lying under a sheet, with a hospital gown on that barely came to my waist, and I was sobbing into my hands, which I was holding over my eyes. And I heard some woman say, “That girl in the other bed is driving me insane. All she does is whoop and holler and bawl. I can’t read, I can’t sew, I can’t sleep, I can’t think!” Then another woman said, “It’s OK, I’ve arranged to move you out, into another room. Now!” When I looked a nurse was there, helping a woman get up from the other bed, put her kimono on, and leave. I was alone for a minute, but the crying kept right on. Then another nurse came in, carrying a bottle, and she threw back the sheet and took off my hospital gown, so I was naked. She said, “Now you have the room to yourself, and I’m going to give you a massage — that ought to quiet you down. But if it doesn’t, if you still can’t get control, then I have to slap you. Do you hear?”

“Yes, Miss, I hear.”

“Not as punishment. It’s the indicated treatment.”

“I’ll do my best, I’ll try.”

“You can if you make yourself.”

So she started the massage, slobbing the lotion on, which was what she had in the bottle, witch hazel I think. And I tried to hold in, but pretty soon the sobs broke out once more. Then pow, here came the slap, and then another and another. But I didn’t like it too much and started to scream. She slapped me still harder, but then suddenly she stopped. Then I heard a man’s voice say, “Perhaps if you leave me with her, I can get her quiet. It’s all right, I’m her father.”

When I twisted around to see, she was leaving and Mr. Wilmer was there. “What do you mean you’re my father?” I yelled at him. “You’re nothing but my stepfather, the guy that married my mother... and she’s dead!”

I really came out with it, but he took me under the arms, the way you take a child, lifted me up, and carried me to a chair, where he sat down with me in his lap. Then he reached for the sheet and pulled it over me, for warmness, but the part next to him was naked. Then he whispered, “If you want to cry, little Mandy, OK, let it come, nobody’s going to slap you. But don’t be surprised if I start crying too. I’ve had about all I can take, and I loved her too, you know.”

“When did you get back?”

“This morning.”

“What time is it now?”

“Just after two o’clock.”

“And what day is it?”

“Wednesday.”

“Then, it was last night that it happened?”

“That’s right. I was so glad, coming off the plane, that I’d be seeing her soon, and you, and then I was paged at the airport. When I went to the office, Clawson’s wire was waiting for me.”

Suddenly I realized I wasn’t crying anymore, and asked, “Why did you say you’re my father?”

“Mandy, I am.”

“We fixed it that Steve was my father.”

“I know about that. But I am.”

“I asked you why you say so.”

“It started when I was eighteen, gassing up in a filling station, when a girl ran in off the street, a teenage girl in slacks, to get a Coke from the machine. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and as she started out I said, ‘Hey.’

“‘Well, hey your own self,’ she answered.

“‘Where you think you’re going?’

“‘Well, it’s Saturday, isn’t it?’

“‘And what does that have to do with it?’

“‘On Saturday you wouldn’t know where you’re going.’

“‘Then, that means you’re coming with me?’

“By that time she was at the door of the car looking me over and held the Coke bottle at me for me to take a swig. About that time the guy came with my change, and she helped herself to a dime. She put in a call, then came and got in beside me. She said, ‘I told Mother I’d run into friends, and she gave me till six o’clock.’ I swore to have her back on time and ran her down to our beach house, one that my family had on the Bay, between the bridge and Annapolis Harbor. But it was late September, and we had it all to ourselves, the happiest day of my life — completely silly and mad, with that mad, wonderful girl. We went swimming, she in my mother’s bikini, I in my own trunks, and then we came back to the beach house. I got her home at six sharp, and her mother came out to shake hands and congratulate her on having ‘punctual, dependable friends.’”

“OK, and what happened then?”

“I had to go off to college. Yale.”

“Well? And what happened then?”

“Mandy, you know, don’t you?”

“Steve told me a little.”

“Then there’s no need for me to say more. I was stunned when she married Vernick. But, say this for her: she’d been going with him and honestly thought he was the one.”

“And when did you find out that you were?”

“The second I laid eyes on you.”

“Last week, you mean?”

“You’re the image of my little sister, whom your mother never knew, as she died before that day at the beach. And that same day I proved it by watching your lips, how they trembled, like hers used to do, when I made you recite that day. Remember? ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’? You looked like a cute little bunny, a rabbit eating lettuce. That night I convinced your mother, and we were going to tell you as soon as that mess was over.”

“Is that the surprise you had?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I went nuts trying to guess.”

“Mandy, you also look like your mother, and that’s what cost her her life. That boy mistook her for you. She died that you might live.”

“It’s what makes it so hard for me.”

He held me close, and I knew, of course, it was true, that I’d found my father at last, and was glad, but not very much. Actually, I didn’t feel anything, perhaps on account of what I’d been through. He began talking some more, about Steve, and the “glory-hole scapula he wore around his neck, a card with that title, which directed that he be cremated if he got killed in a crash and his ashes scattered on Number One. So his family are doing that.” And he also mentioned Rick, “whose family claimed his body and are burying him in the plot that they have in one of the cemeteries. I don’t know which one and really don’t much care.” I said I didn’t either and to please not talk about it. But he said, “I’m leading to something, Mandy: her I want near us, where we’ll be living now — at the house on the lake, our home, the one I had with her, that she helped build and lived in just one night. I want to bury her on our island.”

“Your... what did you say?”

“We had an island, she and I.”

“I want to hear about it!”

I popped out with that pretty loud, and pulled away from him so the sheet slid off and I was naked again. He looked at me very strange but got the sheet from the floor, put it over me again, and went on, “When the water was analyzed, of Dickinson’s Run on my place, it was right for fermenting grain, but to pump it I had to dam up the stream. So, of course, that made a lake, but when the water rose an island was made out there, a beautiful green knoll, full of laurel and pine and oak, just out from the shore. They opened the sluiceway at sunrise, and by noon when we got there, your mother and I in the car, with the picnic lunch she had made, the island was already formed, with the lake rising fast. We sat there talking about it, how it would be our place, our love nest that we would have, where we’d hold hands and be happy. I said, ‘We’re starting tomorrow, soon as the bridge is put in. The lumber is being delivered today, construction will take no more than two hours, and then romance can begin. It won’t be anything fancy, just a footbridge two boards wide. But it’ll have a handrail on it, in case the lady gets stewed.’” He explained, “That was a gag we had, that occasionally she got stewed. She didn’t, but she liked a glass of champagne.”

“Two glasses, Mr. Wilmer.”

“So OK, she liked a whole bottle!”

“And then had to go wee-wee.”

On that we both burst out crying, holding each other close. Then, like with her that day, I could taste the salt of his tears. I said, “Go on about the island. Are we going to go there too? Is it going to be our island?”

“Don’t you want to be near her, Mandy?”

“Oh yes! And near you, too.”

“So we were kidding alone when trouble appeared or what looked like trouble to her. Five deer — a stag, three does, and a fawn — stepped out of the brush over there, walked to the edge of a lake they’d never seen before, and started looking unhappy. And she started looking unhappy. I said, ‘Hey! Quit screwing your face up like that! And besides, what are they glawming about? In the first place, there’s plenty to eat over there, laurel and dogwood and grass, and plenty of water to drink. In the second place, the bridge will be built tomorrow, and if it’s good enough for you it’s good enough for them — and they don’t even drink champagne!’ And more of the same. She said, ‘Well, I haven’t said anything?’ Unfortunately, Mandy, she could talk louder saying nothing than anyone else can whooping. And then, anticlimax, here came the deer, swimming. Or at least four of them did, the stag and the three does. But the fawn was afraid and hung back. So, of course, his mother had to go back. The three others paid no attention, but when they reached our side they went on to the salt lick that was down the hill from us. But on the far bank it kind of tore your heart, the doe’s efforts to lead Junior in, and his fear of the water. I chimed in with more of the same, ‘No reason, no reason at all, that he can’t stay right where he is. Tomorrow he’ll cross in style.’

“And then, Mandy, disaster struck.

“On our side, a dog appeared on the shore, just a cur, just a wild dog. They’re a feature you don’t think much about, but they’re murder just the same to all wild things in the woods. He didn’t bark, a very bad sign, just pricked up his ears and plunged in. It took him no more than half a minute to swim those twenty yards, but when he walked out and shook himself, Mama was waiting for him. A deer’s no match for a dog, and all she could do was strike at him with her front hooves, but he had to deal with her before he could kill the fawn, which he at once proceeded to do, charging at her, growling, and snapping. So then he got a surprise. Do you know what it was, Mandy?”

“Mother, I would say.”

“That’s right, Mandy, you guessed it. That dog had hardly showed when she was out of the car, scrambling down the hill to the water’s edge. She whipped off her dress, hit the drink, came out, and faced the dog. He tore in, growling and snapping at her legs, but she grabbed him back of the ears, mashed his head to the ground, and then got hold of his tail. Mandy, she swung him like some kind of a hammer, like in the hammer throw of some non-Olympic games! One, two, three, around and around and around, and then she let him go. So he was yipping up in the air as he sailed over the lake, but she didn’t even wait to hear him splash. She grabbed that little fawn, and with Mama pushing alongside, trotting, splashing, and swimming, she brought him across to our side, where he went trotting off to have his turn at the salt lick. She didn’t know what fear was!”

At that, he burst out crying again, and I did. He said, “Mandy, she loved jokes and music and dancing. Pleasure people are brave people! Laughing is brave!”

“Don’t hold back, let it come!” I told him in between sobs. “I love you. Now I know you’re my father. Now I do!”

I kissed him then, on the mouth, holding him close so he would know I was his. When our crying had kind of died off, he said he would go to court and acknowledge me so I could use his name, which he did and I did. So now I’m Amanda Wilmer, five foot two, 36-24-35, of Lacuvidere, Rocky Ridge, Maryland. It was at Lacuvidere, a beautiful, beautiful place, a one-story white house overlooking the lake, with a veranda like at Mount Vernon, that they held the first service for her. Then the bearers carried her down and across, holding her high on the bridge so they could go single file. I almost died when I heard “Dust to dust,” and the minister crumbled earth on the coffin. But then my father touched me, and he was crying too but looking in a direction he wanted me to look, and when I did, there was a little fawn, another little fawn, a tiny spotted thing that couldn’t have been more than one day old, lying under a tree, holding still so as not to be seen. And I knew what was in his mind: that in the little creature a new life was starting out, and it seemed a beautiful thing that it should be staring at her as they lowered her into the grave.

That’s all. I’ve told it.