Leaving Lucy Pear(50)

It took Bea a moment to realize that he was speaking to her. In her mouth, her sweat tasted bitter. “I didn’t know,” she said.

“Excuse me,” Emma said, starting to leave the room. “I’ll go get Mr. Hirsch.”

“I’ll get him,” Bea said.

“I don’t mind.”

“But I do.”

Bea went, leaving their wary looks. Upstairs, Ira was in his chair. Bea sat next to him, on the chest that held quilts, which would also be moved. She followed his gaze out the window, trying to guess what he was looking at. The harbor in the distance? The gray sycamores? The pear trees down in the orchard, heavy now with fruit, their leaves whiffling and steaming in the hot breeze? The pears would be ready for picking soon, still hard but green, ready to soften off the stem. She would have to leave before that, go to Boston for her usual week, return only after they were sure to be gone.

“Your bed’s ready,” she said.

“I won’t have the view.”

“I know.”

“Do you remember, when you were small, I took you to see a rock, around the other side of the lighthouse? If you get in just the right position, she comes into view, a Puritan woman, reclining?”

“Of course I remember. Mother Rock.”

Bea nearly went on. Mother Rock was where she’d been going on her frequent breaks from writing the speech. She took Ira’s binoculars as she had earlier in the summer but now, instead of the whistle buoy to stare at, there was the woman’s sharp nose, her tall forehead, her square, grimly set chin. There was nothing particularly motherly about her, but neither had there been, apparently, about the king of Denmark’s mother, Ann, for whom the rock—and the whole cape—had been named. Bea liked the challenge of finding her. She liked climbing down from the thicket of beach rose, settling herself on a rock, adjusting her eyes until the woman rose out of the rock. Sometimes she was plainly there, waiting. Other days Bea had to will and pry her into focus. The binoculars weren’t necessary—the problem of Mother wasn’t one of distance but perspective—but Bea wore them anyway, out of habit, and sometimes, once she’d been staring successfully at the profile for a while, she would lift them to her eyes and watch as the woman, magnified, was again obscured.

“I would like to see that rock again,” said Ira.

Bea touched his forearm, the hard tendons she’d allowed to pass for strength. “You can’t see it from the house,” she said. “Even if we let you live up on the roof, you wouldn’t be able to see it.”

“I mean I want to go down there. In my chair. Albert could do the final lift.”

Bea looked at him. “You said you never wanted to go anywhere in your chair. You said, ‘All I’ll ever do in this undignified piece of crap is stay right here.’”

Ira kept looking out the window. “Emma changed my mind,” he said.

Albert was halfway down the drive, headed for a swim, when he heard Emma call, “Mr. Cohn!”

He stood limply, soaked with sweat, unable to manage a step back in her direction. After reassembling the bed, he had moved the chest of blankets, then the wheelchair. Finally, he had left Bea and Ira sitting quietly in the great room like an old married couple, their backs to the newly appointed parlor with its fresh, morbid bedsheets.

“Pardon me, Mr. Cohn, but you asked Mrs. Cohn why she didn’t tell you about Ira, and she said she didn’t know. And I thought you should know I think that’s true. I believe it. I think she can’t bear it.”

This was more than he’d heard Emma say. “She’s very attached to him,” he agreed.

Emma stood, as if expecting him to go on, then started to back-step toward the house. “Have a nice swim. I’ve got to get home, to the children.”

“Thank you for coming on a Saturday. Will the same driver pick you up?”

“He will. That’s fine. Will you stay the rest of the weekend?”

“I haven’t decided,” Albert said, because he was used to suspending those sorts of decisions. But he knew that he would stay. He had come up each weekend since Bea’s fit, to keep her company and to save her from Lillian doing the same. (I’m fine, Bea said, but if I have to see my mother I might not be.) It was a relief: focusing on someone else’s trouble, carrying things.

“I think it’s good for her,” Emma said. “To have you here. Though perhaps it’s not my place to say so.”

“How does she seem during the week?”

“Honestly, all right. Not chipper. But.”

Albert smiled. “But she isn’t a chipper person.”

“Does she—pardon me—but Mrs. Cohn said—does she ever—does she still talk about wanting a child?”

Albert, not knowing what else to do, looked at Emma’s hands. They were large for a woman, and visibly strong, and bore a disturbing number of scratches—nothing moving Ira’s bed could have caused. “She spoke with you about a child?” he asked.

Emma shrugged apologetically and started again to back away.

“Never,” Albert said. “She’s never said a thing about it.” Which was at once true, factually speaking, and also so bound up with lies—omissions, evasions—as to feel almost sinister. He pulled at the towel he’d hung around his neck, as if to hide the clawing of his heart, while Emma, visibly embarrassed, shook her head in a particularly vehement, sorry way, the way another Irish nurse had shaken her head at him long ago, overwhelming Albert with confusion. Mr. Cohn, forgive me, the nurse kept saying. She had shown up at his office at ten in the morning, a few weeks before he and Bea were to be married. She wouldn’t talk until he shut the door. She saw the announcement in the papers, she said, recognized Bea’s name, knew her picture unmistakably. She had seen her name through the years, a speech here or there. She had felt no obligation to anyone until now, she said, now she couldn’t live with it—she tapped her firm bosom—if she didn’t tell the girl’s husband-to-be. Forgive me, forgive me. She told him about the baby, told him it was supposed to go to an orphanage but that one morning, before dawn, she went to fetch the infant for its usual diaper change and found it gone. I woke the uncle. We looked everywhere, then found the mother down in the pear field, asleep in her nightgown. Filthy. Forgive me. But the baby . . . her head shaking that quick, almost angry shake, like a bird flushing. The aunt dismissed me.