“She’s improving. She has a long way to go,” the nurse said.
“Is she out of danger?”
She checked my face again. “She most likely is.”
We seemed to be yelling in the quiet room.
“What can be done?”
“Watch and wait. She’s young. Her body wants to heal.”
She checked the catheter bag, the dressings, all without asking me to step outside. I’d become part of the furniture. When the nurse had gone, I spoke to Nan quietly and held her hand. She was so large when she was in my house, her spirit filling the space, but in the bed, she was only a small girl, a berry. The thought of Lachlan’s gravestone falling onto her made me sick over and over again. I felt it in my own bones.
An orderly stopped in the doorway. I barely looked up, only noticed the uniform. She came in and touched Nan’s leg. It seemed too personal a touch, and I bristled.
“Excuse me,” I said, which I never say. Who the hell are you? would have been more representative of my feelings.
She turned toward me and her hair swung around, flinging droplets. Wet hair, and not a woman at all.
He’d shaved. I’d never seen him without a beard big as a mountain man’s, but it was gone now. Without all that hair, his skin showed clear and clean, pale from nonexposure. I stepped away from the bed, making room for him. He passed by me, all soap and shampoo, and he laid his hand on Nan’s brow, as he had in the cemetery after the accident. He brushed her hair tenderly with his fingers. I probably should have looked away to afford them privacy, but I was transfixed.
After a while he went back over to the two chairs in the room. I was tired by then and sat down next to him. He looked very thin without his hair, like a dog freed from a coat of neglected mats. And he smelled good. That was a first.
“You look a lot better,” I said.
He gave a small shrug.
“I’m so glad Nan is better. I can’t help picturing her over and over with the stone on her legs.”
Why did I say that? What did I want, what did I expect? It was a reference to horror—and Virgil was clearly sufficiently horrified.
He let go, of all his muscles, all his strength, his wherewithal to endure, and collapsed to the side, down and down and down, until his head and shoulders were stopped by my lap. If my lap hadn’t been there he’d have hit the floor.
And then, Elspeth, the strangest thing happened. I had a vision. I saw something I can only call his soul. It was an orb, a glowing sphere with no edges, though wisps sprouted from its vaporous caul, and searched by sensation for pathways outward in a casual but also purposeful desire to connect with what existed outside. I saw a tentacle come for me, and I hoped I had a soul of my own open enough to receive the gesture—
No. That’s abstract. Let me try again.
He was light. A dead branch. I could feel the whole of him. He sobbed hard and noiselessly and I had no idea what to do. Awkwardly, I put my arm over him to prevent a fall. His breath was uneven and tears ran from his eyes. I was afraid to move, and embarrassed in advance for the coming moment when he’d realize it was me he’d reached for—someone he didn’t know. Seconds passed. His heart beat against my arm and I felt a crackling inside my chest, an eggshell breaking. My stony heart. He still didn’t move. All the conventions of comfort were being violated, and I was surprised and undone by it. I lost my bearings, my heart seemed to stop—but instead, it received him. I don’t know how else to put it. My mind got out of the way and a door opened. Pictures came to me—Virgil running down a playing field, Virgil walking down a path at a college with his head down, Virgil as a baby working out how to stack blocks, snapshots of his past, maybe twenty in all. I still see them clearly.
He stayed in my lap for a long time. There was no clock in the room to measure by, no nurse came in. We stayed attached, and when he finally sat up and pulled away, it was from a different person than who I’d been when he fell. For many days afterward all I could think was: something has happened to me.
It happened. I feel no skepticism about it. That’s because of you. Remember how you always said there is a parallel universe to ours where everything is as it should be? Virgil’s naked grief put me in touch with that parallel place, and I saw him at his core. He may have seen me at mine as well. I wonder if we will ever talk about it.
The next morning I set out to get his clothes. It snowed a little overnight, and my footsteps showed on the way to the cabin. A song played in the cold air, each note hardening like cooling candy rather than floating off on a breeze. I listened with a passive curiosity, and slowly it came to me it was my voice I heard. I was singing! “O come, O come, Emmanuel.” I thought of you, El, and how delighted you were when we had the opportunity to hear or even belt out this hymn with its dour and solemn duty outlined for the new baby Jesus. Ransom captive Israel. Tall marching orders.
No one had been in the Chalet for weeks, so it was very cold. I got a shiver of nostalgia at the sounds of the boards under my feet, mimicking a downward slide on a scale as I pressed on them, and rising up again as I lifted my foot. Wouldn’t it be a pleasure to have recordings of favorite sounds to listen to when one was far away?
In the main room Virgil had moved the furniture to suit his purposes. The small dining table was now a desk on which lay a stack of notebooks and a pottery mug full of pencils. I stared at the tableau, feeling a sense of déjà vu. I opened a notebook and stood by the window and read a few pages courtesy of the morning light. A love story, it seemed. Polly was right—he was an artist. A writer. In a past stage of life I would have been horrified by my invasion of someone else’s privacy, but in my grief I’d become more feral, and the niceties of conscientious behavior seemed a bit quaint. Now that I knew he had a project, the contradictory behavior he practiced toward the little girl, ignoring her all day at home but not once leaving her side in the hospital, made better sense. He was working and what is a worse disturbance than a child? Didn’t someone say that the pram in the hallway is the enemy of art?
I went to Nan’s room. One of Polly’s old quilted spreads was pulled up under the pillow—the one with the white background and tiny pink and green flowers strewn everywhere. If I remembered, the other side was green-and-pink stripes; I lifted the corner—yes. A stuffed bear rested against the pillow, and a collection of lucky stones, black with a white line in circumference, walked across the sills. A white wooden chair in the corner, and a small chest of drawers, also painted white, against the far wall—furniture that had belonged to the Hancocks since the age of the dinosaurs. On top of the chest sat the paper, pencils, and crayons I’d given Nan. Her clothes barely took up one layer per each drawer.
At the hospital I handed him a paper bag of clothes, his toothbrush, a notebook, and some pencils. The two chairs were still next to each other, but I felt shy about sitting beside him again. I also felt shy about moving the second chair, but that seemed the less fraught alternative. I carried it to the far wall and opened my book. It was peaceful, really, sitting in the room, reading and waiting. The quiet concentration of thought might be good for Nan, as if we were nuns in the room praying for her. Every so often I looked up and glanced at Virgil. Strands of hair obscured his face. The fifth time I looked up he was already looking my way, but not exactly at me. Looking into space in my direction. I made an expression of compassion, for Nan, and for the long hours we spent sitting here. He blinked. We looked back down.