WE HAVE REACHED THIS ISLAND, this place he has chosen as his home, finally, once and for all. The far side of Maui, a place called Hana; a jungle, really—screeching birds, jumping fish, the roar of the ocean so loud that it can’t be called restful. These last few years, Charles has turned his back on technology, the modern age. Instead, he devoted his fierce attention to environmental causes—saving rain forests, hugging trees, preserving indigenous tribes. He fell in love with Hawaii; he even built a two-room hut, ostensibly for us but really for him. He knew that I would never consent to live permanently so far from everything we’ve known, so far from our children and grandchildren, our memories—and perhaps that was the point.
Here is where he is preparing himself to die.
The hut is too far from the closest clinic, so we have borrowed someone else’s home, and it grieves me that he will have to die within a stranger’s walls. But he seems content with the arrangement; a hospital bed is in the front room, positioned so that the ocean, yards away, is in full view. Charles is propped up in it, but there are no tubes attached to him, no noisy machines, no one checking his pulse every five minutes; all are banished, at his command. He has spent these last couple of days calmly making lists between naps of startlingly deep nature; there has been more than one moment when I was sure he had slipped away, only to be startled and relieved to hear him take a wrenching, crackling breath. These lists outline, in his usual exhaustive detail, the steps we are to take as soon as he breathes his last.
Farther from the beach, in another small hut, a man is crafting a long, narrow casket out of native eucalyptus to Charles’s specifications. Deep in the jungle, about a mile in from the ocean, two other men are digging a grave. It is on a plot of land big enough to hold two caskets; Charles has already informed me where I am to lie, when my time comes. Far, far away from the world, with only him for company; the precise thing I once longed for; the reason I abandoned my baby forty-three years ago.
Scott, having had a last, healing talk with his father, has left; his wife and child are in France, and he has been away from them long enough. Jon, too, had to return to Seattle to his family. Land remains, drifting in and out as I sit vigil, offering to relieve me. But I say no, rather snappishly. I want him to leave for now. I don’t want him to go far; I just want my son away from the house. I
Finally, I instruct Land to visit the grave site to make sure it’s progressing. And I wait, and I watch, and at last Charles snorts, and groans, and wakes up with a wrenching start, blinking as if surprised to find himself still living.
“What time is it?” Out of habit, he tries to raise his left arm, but his wrist is far too thin for a watch.
“Two o’clock in the afternoon.” I hand him a glass of water to sip. He can’t hold it himself, so I do it for him; I want to cry to see him so helpless, so wasted.
But then I remember the letters in my handbag. And I place the glass back down on a small teak table and return to his side, standing over him so that he can see me.
I have no time to reconsider; I plunge into it now, before he slips away again.
“The nurse gave me your letters,” I say.
He is tired, and sick, and his eyes look more gray than blue now, almost milky. “What letters?” he asks. And I realize he truly doesn’t understand.
“The letters you wrote.” I answer with the patience of a teacher, helping him to remember because I desperately need him to remember, so I can have this long-delayed moment of absolute honesty with him. “All three of them. To those women.”
“Oh.” He blinks as if trying to focus his eyes. Then he turns to gaze at the rolling, crashing waves outside his window.
“The letters to your—lovers, I suppose I should call them? Your mistresses?” I take a tremulous breath; I have been rehearsing this for forty-eight hours straight, even in my sleep. I will not stumble and cry and shout; I’ve done those things already today, walking along the beach before dawn, the pounding surf the only thing more stupendous than my rage. “Those women you hid away, all these years. Even more thoroughly than you hid me.”
“I didn’t hide you. I told you that, once.”
“I need to know why. I need to know how—how could you do this to me? To your children, especially? How could you hurt us all so?” Despite my vow, I feel the sting of angry tears.
I turn away, and so I can’t see his face when he whispers, “I never wanted to hurt you, Anne. But I did, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did!” I wheel around, prepared to continue this, but he interrupts: “No. Not now. But then. Back then, in ’thirty-two. The baby.”
The blow, as always, is visceral but not as devastating as it used to be. Time, as everyone told me then, does soften the pain.
“You? What do you mean,
“No. It was me. It was always me.”
Every muscle tensed against the onslaught of memory, I wait. Is this it? Is this all?
But he begins to breathe raspily, steadily. And I know that he’s fallen back to sleep.
CHAPTER 9
“BETTY, DO YOU THINK we ought to give him a bath tonight?”
“I don’t know. He’s still sniffling so, Mrs. Lindbergh. I think not.”
“You’re right, Betty, as usual.” I smiled at her, and she blushed, looking, for just a moment, like a young girl. Pretty, with red hair, a quick smile, Betty Gow normally exuded such authority in the nursery that I felt the difference in our ages acutely. I was only twenty-five to her twenty-nine. This always made me feel as if our roles should be reversed; that she should be the mother, and I the nursemaid. She simply knew so much more than did I.
“I suppose just change him and put him in a new sleep shirt?” I winced at the question mark in my voice. “I’ll be downstairs, seeing to dinner for the colonel. I’ll come up before you put him to bed. I wish we had brought more clothing with us this weekend, though. I’ll be happy once we’re all moved in.” I glanced around the airy nursery, freshly painted and papered; the only room of our new home that was completely furnished. So far we came down only on weekends, without Betty; playing family, I thought of it. Just the three of us, and I cared for the baby myself, almost as if it were a game. Knowing that I couldn’t do that much damage, for come Monday, Betty would be there to undo it.
But when Charlie woke up this past Monday sniffling and feverish, I’d decided to stay put until he was better. This morning, Tuesday, I’d rung up Next Day Hill and asked Betty to come out; I wasn’t feeling well myself. Taking care of a sick baby full-time was more work than I’d anticipated, and I felt my inexperience keenly. In short, I needed her help, especially since Charles had gone into the city as usual yesterday morning.
“Thank you so much for coming,” I told Betty again. “I hope you didn’t have any plans tonight?”
“Oh, Red and I were going to see a movie, but I called him and told him I couldn’t go, and he could either like it or lump it.” She winked at me, so assured; I had never been that assured of a man and even after being married for almost three years, I still wasn’t.
Standing there so competent, complete with my baby in her arms, Betty didn’t seem like a woman in love, and I fervently hoped she wasn’t. Her boyfriend, Red Johnson, was a nice enough man. But I relied too much on Betty; I didn’t want her to marry and leave me.
“Was he—was he angry?” I hated to pry, but Betty and I had so little to talk about, usually. Other than the
