Night Navigation Page 29

  A ringing in the dark. For a second she doesn't know what it is. The wind still blowing, the rain hard against the balcony windows. "Oh god," she says. The phone and she knows who it is. How could he have gotten the number? She gropes toward the little red light of the cordless and even as she lifts it to press Talk, she makes her way down the stairs, heads for the half-bathroom. Eleven o'clock. Not the middle of the night. Maybe it isn't dire.

  "It's me," he says.

  She closes the door, lowers the lid on the toilet and sits.

  "I hope you weren't sleeping."

  "Yes." Yes, what? The only information she really wants is to learn that he's still three thousand miles away from "I'll be back."

  "This isn't a trouble call. I'm doing okay. I just wanted to get the number for the dentist. Thought I'd better get my teeth cleaned. I don't want to go through that gum torture again."

  "You aren't in Portland, staying with your cousin Kerry?"

  "I'm in Marwick, staying with Rozmer. Clean for four months."

  She breathes, comes up with a calm tone. "Good for you," she says. "That's a long time." What she wants is to get off as quickly as possible, taking this unqualified good news with her. "It's the Walton Dental Clinic. It's in the yellow pages. They've got a big ad."

  "Rozmer's my rep-payee now. No smoking allowed. Haven't had a cigarette in fifteen days. Except a few puffs now and then when I can dig a butt out of the bucket by the library. Off the meds too. Forever."

  No counsel. Don't open any doors. "Good … that you have a place to stay."

  "I got your number from those people you've let live in our house. They seem a little wacked. You left the desktop computer there. That was not a smart thing to do. Where's Luke?"

  He must have actually gone to the house. She'll have to call the tenants tomorrow. "He's with Marna."

  "The place down there doesn't allow dogs?"

  "They're allowed, but it seemed like a better idea to leave him with Marna."

  "I'd like to go see him."

  Go see Luke? Involve Marna in this?

  There's a screeching sound, something opening, closing. "I'm going to see if I can get visitation rights. Going to give Marna a call. Don't worry; not tonight. Tomorrow."

  "Okay." Marna's good at saying no if she needs to. Beyond Mark's voice, there's the sound of traffic, trucks passing. He must be calling from a pay phone near a highway. He's together enough to have a phone card, but why isn't he calling from Rozmer's?

  "Rozmer's wife would never allow Luke to stay with me. Not even a visit. Too bad because Gabe loves Luke."

  She does not want to hear bad things about Rozmer's wife.

  Mark drums on something metal close to the receiver. "And you know what else, Wolfie died. Wolfie died and Sammi got married. She actually sent me a wedding invitation in Portland. P.S. Wolfie died. Sammi married and Wolfie dead all in one envelope."

  "Oh, Mark…"

  "Have you seen my Rumi book, my Portable Jung? They're not in the barn, not on the bookshelves in the living room. You left a lot of books with the tenants. Not a good idea either to let them see the titles."

  "They invited you in the house?" She does not ask the real question. Were the tenants there? He doesn't answer, but she's almost positive Tess would not have given him a key. Maybe she'll have to call Tess at Carla's as well. The return to the need to jam her fist in the dike.

  "Well, I just wanted to let you know I'm back and doing okay."

  "I'm glad to hear that," she says. "I'll have the Rumi and Jung sent to you from Amazon Used Books. Are there any other books you need? Because it isn't a good idea for you to go to the house. The tenants have a long-term lease and it says we won't come on the property without a prior phone call."

  "Got to go," he says. "The pay phone's eating up my minutes."

  "All right." She stands, prepares to press End. More drumming.

  "The only really bad thing about living in Marwick is the crows."

  "The crows?"

  "They're always watching me."

  She makes her way back through the dark. She'll call Marna tomorrow, leave her a heads-up message on her machine if she's already gone to work. Marna cares about Mark. It might even be a good thing. Have to warn her about the crows, have to do that live over the phone. That he's reading: not a good sign either. Always a sign of mania coming on these days. She slips onto her side with as little movement as possible, but she can tell Richard is awake. "Mark's staying with Rozmer. Says he's doing okay. He just wanted the name of the dentist." She doesn't wait for a response. She already knows Richard is not going to say anything. The wind has died back some, the palms no longer brush the windows, the building has stopped moving. The shoe has dropped. They both lie awake for a long time.

  The place next to her is empty. Richard's already up. It's late. She'd like to go on sleeping. She sits, pulls on her nightgown. Her body feels as if it's been caught in a bus door and dragged down the road. A month of yoga stretches will be required to release her from the lock of one phone call. The storm is over. The sun is bright. There's the fishy odor of something dead in the mud flat, the smell of hot, dusty carpet. From the balcony windows she sees that the tide is so far out, there's a spit of sand that extends almost to the island. Portly senior citizens are wandering barefoot out there, carrying buckets. The gulls wheel about, scream. They all rise up from the condo dock and then resettle. A few minutes later they do it again. No apparent cause.

  She listens. Richard is making strange noises below. Going in and out, up and down the outside stairs. Something's up. Something presses on her chest. She pulls on the clothes she wore yesterday and brushes her teeth. Downstairs she watches Richard moving about below. His truck is backed out of the garage, the tailgate is down. He has disassembled his bike and is now maneuvering the frame in. She scans the room. His book is gone from the little table by the La-Z-Boy, his rolls of quarters from the shelf, his sweatshirt and raincoat from the hooks. She sits down. Waits. When she hears him on the stairs, she opens the door. "What?" she says.

  He passes her, goes to the closet and drops his mud sneakers into a plastic bag. "I'm going back to Danford."

  "You're going back to Danford? What do you mean you're going back to Danford?"

  "I called Hillside this morning. I'm going to start radiation Monday." All the while he is opening drawers, rifling through.

  "You're going to start treatments Monday?" He doesn't answer. He's looking under things, the couch, his chair. Down in the cushions. "Did you lose something?" Again he doesn't respond. "You're going back to start radiation treatments. Well, then, of course I'm going with you. You have to give me time to get my stuff packed."

  He opens the door again, starts toward the stairs. "You're not going with me. I'll come back down to get you next month, end of March." She starts to follow. He signals for her to go back. "Get yourself some breakfast. I only have a few more things to put in the car and then we'll talk."

  Richard sits across from her, a folder marked MEDICAL RECORDS 1993-2003 in front of him. He does not look tired. In fact, tanned and trim from his bike rides, long walks, he is, as they say, the picture of health. The handsome older man, his loving gaze turned her way, like on those cruise ship ads. "The treatments are going to take five weeks. I'm going to get up every morning, drive to the hospital. Each treatment only takes a couple of minutes. Hillside has the latest, best equipment to beam in on specific areas of the prostate to minimize tissue damage, any side effects. I've thoroughly researched that. Everything."

  "But I thought you said they don't know for sure that the recurrence is even in the prostate area."

  "That's the crapshoot part. But from everything I've read, what the urologist says, this is the best number to bet on. So far the only signs are showing up in the PSA. The number's still small, but doubling, and even though there's no detectable tumor, it seems likely, for a shoot in the dark, the prostate's the best place to aim."

  "God, Richard."


  "Yep, why I've had such a time deciding."

  "I want to go with you. Be available to drive you if you don't feel up to it."

  "I'm going to feel up to it." He takes her hand. "It's going to be better for me to know you're here painting, walking the beach. We've already paid the rent for this place. I am not going to be good company. The best way for me to deal with this is to get involved in a big project, come back from the hospital and go at it. If the weather's not good, I'm going to finally tile the basement floor, but if it's a warm, sunny March…"

  "Be real," she says.

  "If it is, I've got outside jobs I'm looking forward to. Either way fall into bed at night, tired, my mind clear."

  The phone. "Oh, god," she says. "I'm not going to answer it." It rings and rings. Richard takes the folder, closes the door decisively. From the window she sees him raise the hood, pull out the oil stick. She goes down, the phone still ringing behind her.

  "And that's the other thing," he says. He is not looking at her, is turned away to get a wrench from his tool box. "Whether you're here or in Danford, he's going to call. He's going to call and it's all going to start up again. I don't need that right now."

  "I know."

  "Chances are he'll even end up down here."

  "That is not happening."

  He does look at her now. "If he wants to come down, he's going to chip away at you. And if I'm here, you're going to chip away at me to say it's okay."

  Richard is wrong: Mark is not going to call and call. She has changed the phone number, made it unlisted. Even the tenants will have to go through Marna. And now she must let Mark know.

  Mark, the Rumi Collection and Portable Jung should come to Rozmer's P.O. Box in a week or so. It's good to know that you have a secure place to live and that you have had such a long time of not using. Of course, after a continued long period of recovery, if you are able to do some part-time work and to save money toward us having a place built on the other side of the brook, I will help you with that.

  For now I am painting and working on becoming less anxious. To help with that, I won't be available by phone. If you need to reach me, Rozmer has my email address or you can write to me at P.O. Box 271, Crystal Key, FL 32455.

  Love, Mom

  The other letters attempting to tell Mark not to call are crumpled on her drawing board. It never feels okay not to try to help. When Mark first told her how Aaron begged him to stay that night, about his terrible guilt for leaving, for a moment she wished she could have been the last one in the cabin, the one who left Aaron there alone, wished she could lift Mark's burden onto herself, but right away, something in her drew back from that wish: no, no, how could she live with that?

  "It's fine with me if Mark wants to come and visit Luke," Marna says. She must be in her studio. There's the echo of all that space. "Luke will be thrilled. He's been a little down in the mouth. Tearing after Sheba the only game in town."

  "And the business with the crows?"

  "Doesn't sound good. But the fact that he's not drugging—and likely that's the truth or Rozmer wouldn't be giving him shelter—that's such a positive. I'm sure Rozmer's got his eye on him."

  "He says no more meds ever."

  "Here's the thing, Del, trust that Rozmer and I are up for it, that we'll give it our considerable best. We love Mark, but we've got some distance. So I'm not going to call to fill you in. How's the egg tempera feeling? I haven't worked that carefully since grad school."

  "It's lovely. The illumination. You can do 'looking down through water' at pebbles, fish, that kind of clarity. I'm excited to start on the horseshoe crabs once they return. I think of you painting Hoop."

  "I've got him with his head leaning into the side of a mostly black Holstein, biggest bag I've ever seen. Fastened my drawing paper right to the barn wall, cow shit and all. And Richard?"

  "He begins his treatments Monday."

  For the first time she punches up "prostate cancer recurrence" on the internet. Until this moment, the few facts she has have always been filtered through Richard. Pages and pages of sites flash up. Richard was right, it's full of "mays." A lot of "ifs" as well. But there's so much specific information she's never known about Richard's original diagnosis and treatment in 1994, she can't figure out which "if" fits Richard: Was Richard's original Gleason grade below 7, the PSA before surgery less than 10? Were the margins clear when they completed the operation? Without that knowledge, she doesn't know which set of "maybes" to drop into. She does know that when the residents who'd assisted the surgeon emerged from the operating room after five hours, they looked as if they'd been run over. As they huddled together waiting for the elevator, one said to the others that he'd never seen so much blood. They didn't realize that the woman who sat waiting on the bench was listening.

  All of the sites talk about hormonal therapy. "However, there is data available that the early addition of hormonal therapy to whatever local therapy is given may significantly increase life expectancy." Why hadn't Richard chosen to have hormonal therapy once his PSA began to indicate a possible recurrence? Why not now? She knows Richard is already aware of all this, but has decided not to go that route. She knows he would not welcome a call urging him to reconsider. She reads on. When she comes to the words "impending spinal collapse," she hits Close. She gets on her bike and rides out to the airstrip, the shining Gulf on her left all the way.

  Though she often hears their raucous caws in the distance, crows never come to the deck. Not even when she strings hunks of bread along the railing. These, gone in minutes, swooped up by the gulls and boat-tailed grackles. Not even when she lays out the fat she's trimmed from the chicken thighs after the great white egret wings in, does his daily mindful tai chi stalk back and forth until she brings him something raw and wet. This egret, who will follow her into the living room if she doesn't remember to slide the screen door shut. She's not had much interest in the crows up until now. She's been working in egg tempera all month, the egret's trailing white wedding plumage, his long yellow beak's bright green streak much more compelling than the sooty crow, an ink-and-pencil bird. But this morning, here one is, only a few feet from her, alone on the railing, facing toward the foggy sea, one leg slightly twisted, perhaps from an injury or a birth defect. She moves softly to the open window and as she lifts her pad and pencil, one black eye turns her way.

  The phone does not ring. She draws. She's getting some work ready for a group show in Crystal Key along with six other artists in a critique group she's been part of all the years they've been coming down here. She's had a few of the memory pieces matted and framed.

  She and Richard seldom talk. She emails him daily, humorous, upbeat messages: the return of the white pelicans who sit in rows out on the flats, all facing in the same direction; how the two horned owlets peer down at her from an old osprey nest each time she rides her bike through the cemetery; that three dolphin cruise by daily, beating the water as they form a circle to herd the mullet. Always the doings of the egret. Richard's emails are brief and to the point: ten treatments into the total twenty-five and he feels no negative effects. These first days of March have been sunny and in the high sixties: perfect outdoor project weather. He's rented a big bulldozer and is doing major excavations, the definitive solution to all the drainage problems.

  Then, the emails begin:

  I hate to risk using the internet because I feel certain those people at the house have hacked into our system and that it will be all used as evidence against me. But sending mail takes too long and probably is no safer. The thing is, the shadow has the most disturbing influence. To become conscious of the shadow involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real.

  Jung. Must be he's gotten the books. Evidence of what?

  I have warned both Marna and Rozmer that they are not to give out any information. No point in saying anything to Rozmer's wife since I already know she's part of it. Yesterday she placed a black frame by the door w
here I'd left my basketball. A frame. Do you get it?

  Dear Mark, in order to lessen my anxiety, I have joined a Zen monastery where there is no contact with the outside world. She leaves a message on Marna's machine: "Marna, if Mark is starting to call you, starting to come by your house uninvited, give him my number. I just received a very disturbing email: extreme paranoia. There's no reason why you should be pulled into this further. I'll call you tonight."

  Rozmer will be working at this hour and she doesn't really want to call him anyway since Mark might answer the phone. And she doesn't want to email Rozmer either. Mark might have Rozmer's ID number. Speaking of paranoia. And the tenants? She doesn't want to frighten them. They must already wonder what's going on from her last vague call about changing her phone number, that they should contact Marna if they needed to get in touch. And now these emails are going to pour down the wire into her machine, into her mind. Really just as threatening in their own way. Maybe more so. The cool of words composed more daring than words spoken. And of course she must answer in a way that doesn't escalate the situation. From previous experience she knows (1) not to suggest he go to the hospital and get on meds, and (2) not to suggest that the delusions are delusions.

  Mark, it sounds as if things are difficult for you right now, a frightening time. I think Rozmer often has a good understanding of you and what's going on. I hope you are able to trust his perspective, that you will let him be a help to you. Love, Mom