Candles Burning

Fifty-seven

THE water surged gently, very close to me. My cheekbone rested on damp sand. A ghost crab danced en pointe within inches of my face. Grass shook and shivered in the light air off the water. Slowly my breathing matched that of the waves washing the shore, and my heart beat with it and in counterpoint. A great tide of whispers fell over me, caressing me, tugging at me; retreated, releasing me, only to lift me again, draw me down, lift me, rock me, and the rays of the sun refracted through the water, lighting uncountable points of cold flame. The flicker licked at my eyes, stinging them with the fire inside each salt crystal.

Someone hovered over me.

A rackety little fan stirred the air. The smell of the sea wafted in through an open window.

I was on my own bed in my crooked little room. The someone hovering was Cleonie. Her hand closed around mine on the sheet.

I didn’t want to open my eyes yet. I wanted to take an inventory of myself, to see if I were all in one piece, and not bleeding, not bone-broke, not dismembered. I wanted to be sure of what I would see: Cleonie, my room.

One cool drop, two drops, fell upon my lips, from the warmth of Cleonie’s other hand, close above my face. Two more drops of water: my lips unstuck. Her hand let go of mine and burrowed under the nape of my neck to lift my head a little and then there was the cool mineral edge of a glass, a sip of iced water.

She let me back down. I peeked quickly from under my eyelids. The reassurance in her eyes relieved me; I took a good breath and let my eyes open up. Cleonie sat on the edge of the bed next to me, a tumbler of water in one hand. Whumpet whumpet whumpet: So quoth the little electric fan on my dresser.

She shook her head in slow amazement. “Jesus save us.”

Miz Verlow was coming down the hall. I closed my eyes, was afraid to see her. She tapped softly at the door and opened it to look in.

“She be restin’,” Cleonie told her.

I stopped myself groaning. Why couldn’t Cleonie have told Miz Verlow that I was asleep again?

Cleonie got up and Miz Verlow took her place on the edge of the bed, Miz Verlow’s cool hand coming to rest gently on my head.

“Perdita says Roger found her on the beach?”

“We figgered for sure she be sunstruckt, drown and daid.”

“But you’re still in this world, aren’t you, Calley.” Miz Verlow lifted her hand. “Open your eyes. I want to see your pupils.” To Cleonie, she said, “Did you check her pupils?”

“Yes’m, Miz Verlow.”

I stared up at Miz Verlow fixedly, in the hope that all she would see in my eyes was the state of my pupils.

“I’ll sit with her, Cleonie,” Miz Verlow said.

Cleonie went out.

Miz Verlow’s face was oddly stiff on one side and she was hollow-eyed. She had had that root canal. Her whole lower face was braced against pain.

“Did you fall asleep on the beach or get a cramp swimming?”

“I don’t remember.”

“That’s convenient. Someone’s been in the attic. The door was open. Is that the key on that chain around your neck?”

Her words seemed to summon the chain and key into existence; I had not felt them before but now I did, half choking me.

She hooked one finger under the chain and against the skin of my neck and yanked. The chain bit at me, and then it was gone, hanging in her hand.

It appeared to be the chain from the attic light, run through the hole at the top of the key.

“I was looking for a carpetbag to borrow. I’m gone to Tallassee,” I lied. “I want to find Ford. Or one of my uncles. It’s a good time to go, while Mama’s away.”

Miz Verlow nodded. “And how did you come to wind up semiconscious on the beach?”

“I don’t remember. Maybe I fainted.”

Miz Verlow glanced around, saw the water tumbler and handed it to me.

I took a mouthful and then another, amazed at how cool the water still was and how dry my throat felt.

Miz Verlow made a carefully neutral observation. “The heat up in the attic can be fierce, never mind how easy it is to get sunstruck on the beach.”

I thought of all the times Mama and Miz Verlow and the guests remarked upon the heat, the lack of it, the wind, the rain, the drought, ad infinitum, and suppressed a giggle.

A speculative gleam appeared in Miz Verlow’s eye. “Calley, you have been taking your vitamin, haven’t you?”

My vitamin. Of course I was taking my vitamin. I couldn’t imagine how taking it would prevent a swoon from the heat in the attic.

As if in answer, she said, “You could be anemic.”

I didn’t think that I needed to respond.

“Calley, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you, if you thought you were pregnant?”

I could hardly believe what I heard—it’s a cliche, but that’s really the way I felt.

“You’re too young to have a baby. And Grady Driver is experience and nothing more.”

“Grady’s my friend and that ain’t ‘nothin’ more’.”

“Of course,” agreed Miz Verlow. “And a handy useful young man he is and entirely appropriate to screw.”

My face burned all the way to the helices of my ears. She meant to shock me, of course, to show me that she was unshockable. And that I could keep no secrets from her.

“The footlocker is up there in the attic, the one they tried to stuff Daddy into and it’s still bloody,” I blurted. “Mama and I left it in Elba but it’s in the attic, over our heads. It has been all this time. And I found something in it.”

Miz Verlow’s hand went swiftly again to my brow. I had risen bolt upright in my agitation.

“Lie down again, Calley.”

Words continued tumbling out of my mouth without me knowing what I was going to say: “There was a thing in it.“

Miz Verlow hushed me. “Shhh.” She tucked a blanket up around me. “You’re all shiver. Quiet yourself now, Calley. I’m going to get you something to help you sleep.”

Cleonie must have been stationed just outside. She came in as Miz Verlow went out, to sit down and hold my hand again. In a very few moments, Miz Verlow was back, with the plastic lid of a small jar in her hand. In it were two homemade pills. For the first time and without knowing why, I was afraid of them. A depth of confusion that I had never experienced before in my life overcame me.

Yet my lips parted, my mouth opened, Miz Verlow put the pills on my tongue, and Cleonie held the water tumbler that I might drink. The pills went down like hard little dried peas. Immediately, I shook uncontrollably for several moments and then suddenly, a calmness came over me. I don’t remember closing my eyes or falling asleep. When I woke in the morning, I remembered dreaming of sleeping with my eyes open. Lying there in my room, while Cleonie sang to me and the moon fell into the sea.