Comes the Blind Fury

when they were in front of the school did he say anything, and when he spoke, his voice was triumphant.

“Take a look at that, will you? And tell me if you think she’s a ‘recluse.’ ” He spat the word out as if it was something bitter.

June followed his gaze and saw Michelle, leaning against a tree, merrily swinging the rope for the younger children. They could hear her voice, louder than the others, carrying across the schoolyard:

“Call for the doctor,

Call for the nurse,

Call for the lady

With the alligator purse …”

She stared at the scene, almost unable to believe what she was seeing. I was wrong, she told herself. Everything’s going to be just fine. I was overreacting. Today, in the clear sunlight of the fall afternoon, everything seemed perfectly normal.

Michelle saw them, waved, and handed her end of the rope to Annie Whitmore. She started toward them. When she reached the car, she paused, a smile lighting her face.

“Hi! What took you so long? I was getting worried. But not very worried.” She climbed into the backseat of the car.

“Everything’s fine, honey,” Cal said. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

But as he spoke, June wondered. His voice, though she knew he was trying to control it, was shaking. Not much, but enough so she knew he was lying. Her worries flooded back to her — perhaps Michelle was getting better. But was her husband?

Michelle turned restlessly in her sleep, moaned a little, then woke up.

It wasn’t a slow waking, the kind that makes you wonder for a few moments if you’re still asleep. It was, rather, the instant awakening that comes with a disturbance, an unusual sound in the night.

And yet, there had been no sound.

She lay very still, listening.

She could hear only the steady crashing of the sea against the bluff, and an occasional rustling as the autumn winds brushed branches against the house.

And Amanda’s voice.

The sound was comforting to Michelle. She snuggled deeper into the bed, listening.

“Come with me,” Mandy whispered.

Then, more urgently: “Come outside with me.”

Michelle threw off the covers and got out of bed. She went to the window and looked out.

The moon was nearly full, casting an ethereal glow on the sea. Michelle let her eyes wander over the scene. Finally they came to rest on the studio, sitting small and lonely on its perch at the edge of the bluff. Then, as her eyes remained fixed on the studio, a cloud seemed to pass over the moon, obscuring her sight.

“Come on,” Mandy whispered. “We have to go outside.”

Michelle could feel Mandy pulling at her. She pulled on her robe, tying it snugly at the waist, put on her slippers, then left her room, walking slowly, carefully, listening to Amanda’s voice.

In her room, her cane was still propped next to her bed.

She moved through the darkened house and went out by the back door. Steadily, Mandy’s voice guiding her, she walked across the lawn and let herself into her mother’s studio.

A canvas, the seascape her mother had been working on for so long, stood on the easel. Michelle stared at it in the gloom, its colors faded to shades of gray, the whitecaps appearing as strange points of light in the foreboding picture.

She felt herself being drawn away from the easel, and moved toward the closet “What is it?” she asked, her voice barely audible.

She opened the doset door and stepped inside.

“Make me a picture,” Amanda whispered to her.

Obediently, Michelle reached for a canvas and took it to the easel. Setting her mother’s painting on the floor, she replaced it with the canvas she had brought from the closet.

“A picture of what?” she asked.

In the darkness there was a silence, then Amanda’s voice, suddenly dearer, spoke to her once more.

“What you showed me. Make me a picture of what you showed me.”

Michelle picked up a piece of charcoal and began sketching.

She could feel Amanda’s presence behind her, watching over her shoulder as she worked.

She drew quickly, as if some unseen force was guiding her hand.

The figures emerged on the canvas.

First the woman, just the bare outlines, her limbs stretched languidly on a studio couch.

Then the man, above her, caressing her.

Michelle began to feel a certain excitement as she drew, an energy flowing into her from the presence at her shoulder.

“Yes,” Amanda whispered. “That’s the way it was … I can see it now. For the first time, I can really see it. …”

An hour later Michelle took the canvas off the easel, put it back in the closet, and replaced her mother’s picture exactly as it had been before.

When she left the studio, there was no sign that she had ever been there. No sign at all, except the charcoal sketch buried in the jumble at the back of the closet.

When she woke up the next morning, Michelle wondered why she still felt tired.

She had slept well that night.

She was sure she had.

And yet she felt tired, and her hip was throbbing with pain.

CHAPTER 16

June’s eyes filled with concern as Michelle came into the kitchen. In silence, she noted the pronounced increase in her daughter’s limp. There was a tiredness in the child’s eyes that worried her.

“Are you all right this morning?”

“I’m all right,” Michelle replied. “My hip hurts, that’s all.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t go to school,” June suggested.

“I can go. I’ll ride in with Daddy again, and if my hip isn’t better this afternoon, I’ll call you. Okay?”

“But if you’re too tired …”

“I’m all right,” Michelle insisted.

Cal glanced up from the newspaper he was reading, and gave June a look of warning, as if to say, If she says she’s fine, she’s fine — don’t push it. Reading the look, June turned her attention to the eggs she was scrambling. Michelle eased herself into a chair opposite her father.

“When are you going to finish the pantry?”

“When I get to it. There isn’t any hurry.”

“I could help you,” Michelle offered.

“We’ll see.” Though Cal’s voice was noncommittal, Michelle could feel his rejection of her offer. She opened her mouth to protest. then thought better of it. She decided to drop the subject.

Upstairs, Jenny began crying. At the stove, June glanced upward, then turned to her husband and daughter.