Cost. Roxana Robinson
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the sky. On Mount Washington, with her brothers, the skies had been open and wild, the constellations close. There were hundreds of falling stars. She'd fallen asleep watching them, then she'd waked in the night and seen them spread out above her. That had been before the accident.
She'd been fortunate, really. She'd had all that in her life, she'd done everything. Hiking, tennis, foot races—in eighth grade she'd won the fifty-yard dash. The coming-out parties, where they'd danced until the midnight breakfast, silver salvers full of steaming scrambled eggs; then they'd danced on again until dawn. Mary Rue's party in Virginia, the big white tent on the lawn, fireflies in the field beyond. The girls in long dresses, the boys in black tie. She'd had a dress with a rose-colored sash, the skirt like petals. She'd had all that. She was sorry for the people who'd been crippled since birth, who'd never known those things. You lost things to age, there were things no one her age could do. But she'd done those things—hopscotch on the sunny flagstone walk at recess, skating on the frozen pond. It was odd that she could call up all these distant things, when so many recent ones were gone.
Even after the accident, things had been all right for a while. Years. Sometimes Edward rubbed her back at night, though this was never mentioned to the children. She knew it would make him feel demeaned, like a servant. She'd tried never to let her pain be known; she knew it made him unhappy. He was used to pain, but during surgery the patient was anesthetized. (He'd used saws, she knew, electric drills, staples. Surgeons were used to it. The pain he inflicted was necessary, a part of the cure.) There was nothing to be done about her pain, and no point in discussing it. She tried never to talk about it.
Now she could see that Edward was beginning to fail. It saddened her. He was stiff now, and ungainly. His feet were heavy. He tired easily, and couldn't carry the groceries in from the car in one trip. He asked the store to use several small bags, so he could carry them one at a time. He didn't tell her, but she'd seen it. Since he'd retired, he'd been doing the marketing, because her limp was worsening.
Katharine's body had been giving out for decades, it was in endless decline. She was used to it, but Edward was not used to being in decline, and it was hard for him. He'd relied on his body all his life, it had always done his bidding. She didn't know what would happen to him, to them, if his body really did give out. She didn't think about the future. Edward had always been the one to do that. Anything might happen, they might both die in their sleep.
They had friends who had gone into those places, “facilities.” Assisted living. The Medways had put their names down five years ago, so when they needed it they'd have a place to go. Eleanor had sounded so smug about it, as though it were laudable to plan for her own destruction. But shouldn't you struggle against it, resist? Wasn't the thing not to give in? Katharine had resisted all her life. She'd never called herself “disabled” or “handicapped,” those words seemed like defeat. She didn't want now to put herself in another category. She didn't want to go into one of those places, nor did Edward. She'd rather die. In fact, she was secretly rather looking forward to dying: it would be another adventure. And a relief. She felt she'd earned it.
She wondered what Julia's thoughts were for the future. If she'd remarry. She'd had other men in her life, after the divorce, Katharine knew, but Julia never talked about them. Katharine hoped she'd remarry, it would be such a waste of beauty and possibility if she didn't. Julia's wide face, the lovely wings of hair, all that emotional vitality. Those long strong legs. Katharine loved her daughters' lean tanned legs, so straight and fine, their steps miraculously solid and even. They were her redemption.
How could Wendell have left Julia? Katharine had loved Wendell, his sense of humor, his warmth. How could he have done this? Broken something so lovely and intact.
“There's one,” said Steven. “I saw it with my wizening eyes.”
“I saw it, too,” Julia said: a bright streak of falling light, a flare of hope. She thought of Simon.
“I did, too,” Katharine said.
“So did I,” said Edward, pleased.
There, thought Julia, as though something had been exquisitely proven. She felt a wave of pleasure. Her parents were fine. They were frail, but they were wholly present. Risks lay in the future, but they always did. Just now, Julia, wrapped in the striped blanket, sat between her mother and her son. They were all sitting on the vast, sloping, darkened side of the earth, looking into the limitless reaches of the sky and watching miracles of light and motion. Right now they were safe.
When Julia woke, the house was silent. Her room was flooded with the thin light of early morning, and the plaster walls were bright with sun. The big dormer windows stood open wide onto the front meadow, and the air was cool and sweet.
As she woke she found herself thinking of Jack, and wondered if she had been dreaming about him. The glint of his red-brown hair that grew straight downward, resisting the part; the way he raised his chin when he laughed. He was so handsome: really, with his straight brows and brilliant blue eyes. It made more difference than it should.
Julia was smiling, remembering the time they'd been at a diner somewhere—where? Outside, it had been winter. Sitting at the counter, drinking coffee. Wendell was there, so it was before the divorce, and Steven. They'd been talking, with Jackie at the end of their row, listening intently.
Too intently: there was something odd about his look. He was staring at them, and they turned, one by one, to look at him. He was humming quietly, stirring his coffee. As they turned he began to sing, that corny ballad about the logger who stirs his coffee with his thumb. It took them a moment—Jack's expression was so earnest—to see that he was doing it, stirring his coffee with his thumb, his finger buried deep in the inky liquid. It was his face, that manic, deadpan stare: it still made Julia laugh.
Jackie was always the star, the center of things. There was a glitter about him, the hypnotic gaze, the slow wide smile. The sense of wild possibility. He might do anything, and you wanted to be there when he did. He didn't care what happened. Risk appealed, you could sense it.
It had caused trouble for years. All those times Julia had been called in to meet with his teachers, his principals. But Jack was a sweetheart, not one of those sullen, hostile kids who hated their parents. (Julia knew kids like that: what would you do? Shoot yourself?) No, she was grateful for Jack, good-natured, warm, smart, creative. He'd always gone his own way, and why not? He was electrifying. You couldn't take your eyes off him.
She remembered the time they'd all been down at the dock, loading the boat for a picnic. Jack was carrying the hamper with all the food, sandwiches, fruit, potato chips, cookies, napkins, the works. Wendell stood in the Whaler, receiving things from the others, setting them in the bottom. Julia was walking down the ramp, carrying her own bundles, when it happened.
Wendell took a bag from Steven and set it down at his feet.
“Hold on,” he said to Jack. “Let me move some of this. Everything's over on this side, let me balance it.”
“That's okay I'll take it around to the other side,” Jack said. He walked along the dock beside the boat, up to the bow, then started to walk around it, stepping casually off the dock and into the air. Dropping, with the loaded basket in his hands, into ten feet of ocean at fifty degrees. His expression, as he went down, was mild and unconcerned, his body frozen in mid-step, hands locked on the hamper.
It was so absurd, and electrifying: they couldn't believe they'd seen it. She'd been furious, all those soaked sandwiches, the ruined food. He was outrageous, he dismissed everything the rest of them took seriously: warmth, dryness, order. He liked chaos, reveled in it. But it was impossible to stay mad at Jackie, he was so funny. So original, so bright and charming, so good-natured.
Though it was hard not to worry about him. His life was late in starting, or something.