T. Boyle - San Miguel

By the time Ida found her—“Mrs. Waters? Ma’am? Are you out there?”—she was sprawled in the grass like a broken umbrella, chilled through and coughing so violently it felt as if her lungs had been turned inside out. How much time had gone by she couldn’t say — she’d been elsewhere, in her mother’s arms, racing her sister down the sun-dappled sidewalk to the drugstore, reading aloud from the Book of Revelation (“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more”) while the pastor and her mother looked on as if she’d just reserved her place in heaven — but it seemed as if she’d heard Ida calling for hours. She tried to respond, tried to cry for help, but her voice wouldn’t come. She’d asked Dr. Erringer about that, about the huskiness of her voice, its weakness, the way it failed her at crucial times, and he’d given an abrupt little nod of his head. “Nothing to worry over,” he told her. “A symptom of the disease, that’s all. The sort of thing all phthisics have to confront to one degree or another.”

“Mrs. Waters?” There seemed to be a light in the distance — a lantern, Ida’s lantern — and she gathered her legs under her and laid one palm in the cold muck to push herself up, so weak suddenly she sank back down again as if her legs had been cut out from under her. She might have stayed there until the ravens came to pluck out her eyes and the beetles surged up out of the earth to reduce her, to consume her, but for the shadow that came hurtling out of the void to fall on her in a rush of churning paws and frantic barking.

“Ma’am?”

“I’m here,” she whispered, the dog nosing at her, licking her face, muddying her dress till it was no better than a rag.

Ida’s face loomed up out of the void, weirdly illuminated by the lantern she held out before her. “Ma’am? Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

It took her a moment. The coughing came in waves, like breakers hitting the beach. She pushed the dog away. Cleared her throat. And finally, though Ida was right there, seeing her at her weakest and worst, she leaned over to spit in the grass because she couldn’t help herself, the sputum grainy and discolored, the taste in her mouth so foul it was as if she’d tried to swallow some dead thing. But then the dead thing was already inside her, wasn’t it?

“I’m all right,” she said. “I’m fine. I’m just — I seem to have lost my way.”

The days fell away like the skin of a rotten fruit. She was in bed, waiting for the hemorrhage to come on while the household tiptoed round her, Will grave, Edith so white-faced it was as if she were wearing a mask. But then the hemorrhage didn’t come — she had a cold, that was all, her eyes itching and her nose running and a bronchial cough compounding the problem, yes, but it was a cold and nothing more, the sort of thing anyone was susceptible to. A cold, that was all.

The fog lifted. It rained. There was a day of sun. And then she was up on her feet again, sniffling perhaps, weakened, humiliated (she’d had to do her business in the chamber pot and it was Ida who had to see it there and dispose of it), but able to work at sewing the lambrequins for the shelves and go out of doors to feed the turkeys and chickens and walk round the yard and even partway down the road for exercise.

She was alone in the house, a Sunday afternoon, the sun high and everyone else taking the day off — or the afternoon, anyway — to go out hunting Indian artifacts, pottery shards, arrowheads. Edith was on horseback, Will on one mule, Adolph on the other, Jimmie and Ida following along on foot. They’d begged her to come in order to make her feel a part of things — at least Will and Ida had, Edith so swept up in the excitement of the horse and the treasure hunt she didn’t even try to hide her indifference — and that was thoughtful and she was touched, but she told them she wasn’t feeling up to it. Ida made a little moue of sympathy. Or pity. Will had just nodded.

For once, the house was warm. Will had built up the fire before he left, very solicitous— Can I get you anything? Are you sure you don’t want to come? It’ll be an adventure —and with the sun shining and the wind down it was pleasant, even in the corner by the front window where there always seemed to be a draft. She brought her crocheting into the parlor and sat there at the window, where the light was good, thinking to work on the shirt she was making for Edith, but as soon as she got settled she laid it aside. She was bored. Profoundly bored. It was the fault of this place, of course, each day identical to the next, nothing to do but work at sewing, knitting, cooking, cleaning, and the same faces to look into and the same unchanging conversation every night. The same cards even. The four walls. The bowed ceiling. Will would make a comment about the sheep, the barn, his dynamite sticks. Jimmie would say something in return, Adolph staring across the room as if he were working out the metaphysics of sheep dip or the broken haft of a spade. Edith, she would say, just to hear herself, what are you reading? Edith, looking up from her book: Nothing. A novel.

She got up from the chair and drifted across the room to the table where Edith had left her latest book, the one she’d insisted on buying before they’d left the mainland, and idly picked it up. It was by E. R. Roe, a name she vaguely recognized. Light reading, she supposed. Harmless enough. The author had written a preface to this, his fourth novel, and it really wasn’t so much a preface as an advertisement. Her eyes fell on the last line: “A glad zest and hopefulness might be inspired even in the most jaded and ennui-cursed, were there in our homes such simple, truthful natures as that of my heroine, and it is in the sphere of quiet homes — not elsewhere — I believe that woman can best rule and save the world.”

Rule and save the world . She closed the book and set it back on the table, angry suddenly. If only they’d stayed in San Francisco. If only she’d resisted. Rule? She ruled nothing. And as far as saving the world, she’d give everything she had if she could only just save herself, for Edith’s sake if nothing else, because what would Edith do without her?

It was then that something made her look up, some sixth sense, and she caught her breath: there was a face in the window, a man’s face, staring back at her. If she’d been home, in the apartment or even the rented house in Santa Barbara, she wouldn’t have been so startled — this man, he was a Chinaman, she saw that now, a Chinaman holding something up to the glass as if to offer it to her, would have been a delivery boy from the laundry or a yardman or some such, and Will would have dealt with him. But here, his appearance was so unexpected, so impossible, it was as if he were an apparition from another realm, and it jolted her. She didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Just stood there staring like an animal in the zoo.

His eyes were fixed on hers. He reached out and tapped at the glass with his index finger, very softly, politely, and gave a discreet shake to the object — objects — he was holding aloft in his other hand. Dun things, flattened, gathered together on a loop of wire. And what were they? Slabs of meat? Fish of some sort? He smiled suddenly, his eyes lost in their creases, his face shining and hopeful. It came to her that he was harmless, a castaway, survivor of a shipwreck, a man in need, perhaps hungry and thirsty, maybe even injured. She went to the door, pulled it open and stepped out onto the porch.

The man widened his grin, gave an abbreviated bow. He was short, shorter than she, wearing an embroidered skullcap and a long silk tunic over a pair of ordinary twilled cotton trousers. His hair was braided in a queue. On his feet, gum boots smeared with the residue of one sort of oceanic creature or another. “Bao yu,” he said, holding the dun things out to her.