T. Boyle - San Miguel

“No,” she heard herself say, her eyes tearing now, “no, I’ll be all right,” but it was as if some clawed creature had hold of her throat and wouldn’t let go. It took a long moment, Edith rushing into the room to snatch up the water glass despite the fact that Will was half-dressed, and then she had it to her lips and she felt the claws ease their grip. She took a deep wheezing breath. And then, standing there in the doorway, feeling light-headed and weak, endured another long spiraling moment before she could ask her daughter what the matter was.

“It’s Ariel,” Edith said, and suddenly her eyes were brimming.

“Ariel? Who’s Ariel?”

Will’s voice came down like a hammer, hard and disapproving: “The lamb.”

She didn’t understand. “Lamb?” she repeated stupidly.

“Mother, he’s cold. He’s been bleating all night. He’s shivering.”

She became aware then of the sounds of the morning, of birdcall from beyond the window, of Ida, below, slamming the door of the stove, of a low murmur of voices from the yard — Jimmie and Adolph — and beneath it all, faint as the creak of a door’s hinge, the weak trailing bleat of a motherless lamb left out in the cold of the night. Then she was following Edith down the stairs and out the door into the wind that tirelessly skimmed the frigid air off the surface of the ocean and drove it over the island. The lamb was there, tethered in the yard, its eyes dull and unfocused. It had been curled into itself on the ground, but when they came out in the yard it stood shakily and made as if to bleat, yet no sound came out.

Jimmie and Adolph, sipping coffee out of dented tin cups, looked on indifferently.

“Do you see, Mother?”

It was Edith’s idea to carry the animal into the house and set it down beside the stove, where it could be warmed, though that didn’t seem sensible, not at all. You didn’t bring barnyard animals into the house, not unless you were an animal yourself. The creature was going to die, she could see that in an instant, anyone could, but the look on Edith’s face, the way she took charge and insisted, melted her. “All right,” she said, following her daughter through the front door and into the parlor cum dining room of the house that was like a barn itself, “but you’ll have to tether it to the stove, because I will not have that thing running through the rooms and, and, relieving itself, do you understand?”

Edith was already bending to the stove, the animal held fast in her arms, and she was rocking it like a baby, like her own child. “Yes, Mother,” Edith said mechanically, not bothering to glance up at her.

“And any mess it makes”—she held it a beat—“you are responsible for. Solely responsible. Do you hear me?”

Why she was always expecting the worst, she couldn’t say, except that her illness had colored her view of the world, dragged her down, made her see for the first time in her life what lay beneath the surface of things. People made plans, invested their money, educated themselves, raised children — and for what? For the promise of an afterlife? For the glory of God? To forge another link in the chain of being? She didn’t want to be a cynic, not with Edith to worry over, not with Will and the household and all the rest of the responsibilities that bore down on her day and night. She truly wanted to believe that her life had purpose, that they would make money out of this venture instead of losing the last capital she had, wanted to believe that living out here on this island would repair the damage to her lungs and that Edith’s pet would recover and grow stronger by the day — and she would have prayed for it if she hadn’t lost the habit.

The day flew at her, full of complications. Every time she came into the parlor, there was the lamb, tethered to the stove, and Edith nursing it. It smelled of urine and the pellets it scattered across the horse blanket Edith had spread beneath it. Frail, withered, its skin sack-like and loose, it stood shakily and then fell back into the bundle of its limbs. Still, by dinnertime that night she had to admit that the animal seemed to have taken a turn for the better, gazing up alertly out of its resinous eyes as Edith patiently fed it, one sopping finger at a time. “Do you see, Mother?” she said, running a hand down the length of it while it strained forward, pressing itself to her.

“It’s certainly an improvement,” she said, “don’t you think so, Will?”

Will had just come in from the yard, where he was building a toolshed with the help of Adolph, a kind of make-work in advance of plowing and sowing the fields and widening the road when the seed and sticks of dynamite arrived on Charlie Curner’s boat, promised for the second week of the month. His face was sunburned. There was dirt under his nails. “Yes,” he said absently, but then he glanced down at Edith and the lamb and his eyes came into focus. “Damned foolishness, if you ask me.”

Edith’s shoulders tensed. The lamb let out a soft bleat, as if in protest.

Marantha didn’t tolerate profane language in the house, because it was cheap and it lowered them all, not just the profaner but the household itself, and Will knew it. She drilled him with a look. “That was a harsh thing to say, Will. If you’d like to know, Edith sat up with that animal half the night and she’s been entirely diligent about feeding it and cleaning up after it too. Give credit where credit is due.”

He didn’t bother to respond. He just stalked through the room and down the hall to the kitchen, where the washbasin was. She could hear him saying something to Ida and then Ida’s voice, fluttering back at him.

Edith glanced down the hall, tucked her skirts under her and sat lightly on the floor beside the lamb, pulling it to her. She stroked its ears, whispering to it, her chin trembling with her emotion. “I don’t understand why anything I do, no matter what, is always wrong,” she said finally. “Am I wrong? Am I always wrong?”

What she wanted to say was something along the lines of Mind your skirts, now, or You’ll get filthy down there, but instead she just shook her head and said, “No, not at all.”

* * *

The following morning the house awoke to sunshine. It was warm enough for the lamb to go out into the yard and Edith went with it, though as the day wore on Edith was in and out of the house a dozen times, helping Ida roll out the one decent carpet they’d managed to bring with them, hanging pictures and rearranging the furniture in an effort to make the room more homely. Twice, driven to distraction by the animal’s incessant bleating, Marantha had to remind her to go out and feed it, and by late afternoon Edith, her feet up on a stool and a novel propped open in her lap, seemed to have forgotten about it entirely. Night fell. They were in the kitchen, helping Ida prepare the meal. Ida was talking about the mainland, about what people would be doing back there right at that moment and how strange it was to think of it. “They’d be going out,” Edith said. “To the concert hall. To hear music. To see a play.”

“And to the restaurant after,” she put in. She could picture it, the tablecloths, linen napkins, fruit piled high on the sideboard, cheeses, a steak buried in onions and mushrooms and the waiter there at your elbow. A glass of sherry. The murmur of voices. May I bring you anything else, madame?

Ida paused a moment — she was dredging chicken parts in flour while the oil snapped in the pan before her — and gazed over her shoulder at the darkened window as if she could see all the way across the channel to the coast beyond. “Or the sweetshop,” she said. “Wouldn’t that be the thing?”