Eye of the Storm

  Why was she trying to get me to be her ally in all this? I didn't want to agree with her about anything, not even the weather. I was silent,

  "You're coming, of course," she said. "I've already discussed it with Jake."

  "I don't know if I should," I nearly sobbed. Just the thought put ice in my blood.

  "That wouldn't be nice," she said. "You are Brody's sister," she reminded me with relish.

  "I don't think they'd want me there," I said.

  "No one has said such a thing. If you don't come, you'll look like you are responsible," she emphasized.

  That terrible thought curled up in my heart like a vicious, evil worm.

  "It will generate more nasty gossip about you and the family and will hurt Grant even more," she continued. "You come, stay in the background, but show your face and express your sympathies," she ordered. "It's all arranged. Just dress properly.

  "I've got to go. I'm the only one who can get Grant to take in a morsel of food. He's a shadow of himself. The house is full of mourners, most of them very important people. The story has been in all the papers. As dreadful as it all is, in the end. Grant will emerge even larger."

  "How horrible." was all I could say to her, but she wasn't prepared to hear anything that she didn't want to hear, especially from me.

  "Out of tragedy, the truly great emerge. Make every setback a lesson and search for something to gain from it," she recited. "My father taught me that and I have never forgotten it. If you're wise, you'll listen to me."

  "I've got to go. Good-bye," she said.

  Mama would say, "That woman's got a chunk of coal in her chest where her heart should be."

  Without Jake I wouldn't have been able to make it through the funeral. As we drove to the church that day, he talked about my grandmother and her ability to maintain her stature and class regardless of the situation.

  "I must say," he told me. "I rarely, if ever, saw her flustered. Even when she told me she was pregnant, she spoke from strength."

  I know he was telling me all this so that I wouldn't be afraid or panic, but when we approached the church. I couldn't believe the size of the crowd. Brody's former high-school teammates had all come down, dressed in their varsity blazers. Those closest to him were now his pallbearers.

  Aunt Victoria greeted me and took me down the aisle to sit in the pews reserved for the immediate family. All eyes in that church had turned to me. I could feel the curiosity, the questions, the surprise pouring from them and washing over me. I tried to keep my own eyes locked on the altar, but the sight of Brody's coffin choked me up. I couldn't swallow; I could barely breathe.

  Oh God. I thought, please don't let me faint or do anything to bring any more attention to me.

  Grant did look gaunt, thinner, with dark circles around his eyes. My mother was obviously packed full of drugs. She wavered, barely moving under her own strength. Victoria told me the woman beside her was a special duty nurse she. Victoria, had decided to hire.

  "Grant thought it was a very good idea," she whispered as we moved into the row.

  I must admit Alison looked terribly afraid and smaller to me. When she gazed at me, at first she didn't react. She watched Aunt Victoria and me settle in and then she turned away. Gazed at the coffin, and finally looked back at me, her eyes now full of daggers.

  My mother never lifted her head. The minister didn't attempt to make any sense of the tragedy. He confined his remarks to how lucky we all were to have had Brady with us for as long as we had. Except for Alison who smirked throughout the sermon, no one showed any reaction or emotion. Grant stared stoically ahead and my mother kept her head down, her eyes closed like someone just enduring, waiting for the pain to end.

  The pallbearers took the coffin out of a side entrance and the funeral procession continued on to the cemetery. After Beneatha's death. when Mama and I had some quiet time together, she told me that you really don't believe someone you love is gone until the moment you see them lowered into the around.

  "It's that dust unto dust." she said. "That's what brings it home here," she explained slapping her palm against her breast so hard I winced anticipating her pain. "In church you keep thinking it's just a ceremony for someone else, but once you gaze into that grave, all denial falls away like some fortress wall you had built around yourself"

  How those words rang true for me when we drove through the marble arches and stopped at the Hudsons' section. My mother crumbled. Grant fell to his knees and Alison became hysterical. Brody's teammates stood by. stunned by the reality, every young man's face turned back into a boy's face fill of fear and shock. It couldn't end fast enough.

  Aunt Victoria stood behind Grant. When his friends helped him to his feet, she was there trying to hold his hand. My mother had to be carried to the car. Finally, the worst was over. The long trip back to their home was a blessing. They could sleep in their limousine and restore some strength.

  I wanted to go back home, but once again. Aunt Victoria insisted I go with the rest of the family.

  "Either you're going to be a part of this family or you're not," she snapped at me when I started to protest. "You pay your respects decently."

  I felt like I was being whipped around, but she made sure to add more guilt on my conscience.

  Of course. I had never been to my mother's home. It wasn't as large as Grandmother Hudson's, nor was it on anywhere near as big a tract of land, but it was a very impressive estate of nearly seventy-five hundred square feet with a pool that had water cascading over fieldstone. There was a large gazebo and a long circular driveway lined with hedges and old-fashioned lamps. The house itself was a threestory Georgian. The entryway opened to a curved staircase on the left. To the right was a large living room, filled now with mourners. Aunt Victoria had arranged for the food and service. Grant had a large office toward the rear of the house and that was where he was greeting his friends. My mother was upstairs in bed.

  I saw no point to my being here. I didn't know anyone, and most people had no idea who I was. They didn't even know I had been living with Grandmother Hudson, I imagined they thought I was one of Alison's friends. She had a group from her school gathered around her in the den-library. I glanced in at them and quickly went by before Alison saw me. I didn't want to speak with her. if I could help it.

  I wasn't sure I should say anything to Grant, but Victoria seized my hand and told me I should.

  "Tell him how sorry you are," she instructed.

  "What does he know about Brady's visiting me?"

  "Megan didn't tell him much. I had to fill in the details," she said, closing her eyes as if it had given her great pain.

  "What details?" I asked, my heart pounding. What did she tell him about me and about what had happened?

  "The difficult situation you were in, of course," she said. And not because of any fault of your own," she added, her eyes shifting toward the ceiling. I knew it was a gesture meant to point up to my mother's room and point the finger of accusation at her.

  "Grant kept Brody in the dark. too." I snapped at Aunt Victoria.

  "Not because he wanted to. Believe me," she said. "The poor man, the poor, poor man."

  She stopped at the office doorway and practically turned me into the room. Grant was out of view, surrounded by his associates and friends. Some of them turned to look our way and then they parted and I saw Grant seated on a nailhead red leather sofa, a drink in his hand, his tie undone, his hair disheveled. He fixed his eyes on me, but didn't show any emotion or interest.

  "Rain would like to express her deep sympathy to you, Grant," Victoria said approaching with me.

  His eyebrows lifted and he studied my face, looking for proof of my sincerity.

  "I'm sorry for your loss," I said. "I'm sorry that I didn't get to know Brody better."

  He nodded. his eyes softening and then he closed them and leaned back.

  "Do you need anything. Grant?" Aunt Victoria asked him.

  He just shook his head. r />
  She and I turned and left the room. On the way out she muttered, "he doesn't need anything except for a wife who can stand by him when he needs her the most."

  I couldn't leave without seeing my mother, regardless of what Aunt Victoria told me about her being completely under sedation. I told Victoria.

  "She won't even know you're there," she said. "Why waste your time?"

  "It's far from a waste of time," I spit back at her and headed for the stairway. Aunt Victoria watched me a moment and then turned to go back to her selfappointed duties as surrogate wife.

  I didn't know where to go upstairs, but I didn't have, to because my mother's nurse was just coming out of the bedroom. She paused to greet me.

  "May I help you?" she asked.

  "I'd like to see Mrs. Randolph," I said.

  "She's not seeing anyone just yet," she told me. "I'm sorry. I'm sure you understand." She gave me a plastic smile.

  I flashed her a similar smile, turned and pretended to follow her down the stairs. When she walked into the living room. I stopped and went back up. I slowly opened my mother's bedroom door and peered in.

  It was a very large bedroom with a sitting area that had a small sofa and reclining chair facing a television set. The large windows had light blue velvet drapes and gauzelike white curtains. The floor was covered in a butter-soft, thick dark blue carpet.

  At first I didn't even see my mother. Her bed was custom made and larger than the ordinary kingsize bed. It had tall, round posts, a footboard with an embossed rose and a headboard with two more roses crossing each other to symbolize lovers. Almost lost in the oversized pillows was my mother, her dark hair loose around her milky white face. The comforter was up to her chin. Her head was turned slightly away from me.

  I closed the door softly behind me and walked to her. Her eyes were wide open, but even so she still looked like she was asleep.

  "Mother," I said softly. "Mother."

  She slowly turned to me and just stared with that blank look in her eyes.

  "I want you to understand how I am really very sorry and sad about Brody."

  I didn't think she was going to answer or that she had even heard me, but she suddenly shook her head and nearly smiled, her lips folding inward.

  "Our sins." she whispered. "come back. You can try to bury them, to burn them, but they're out there, just waiting for an opportunity. Remember that. Remember."

  I shook my head in opposition. She widened her eyes.

  "You're the opportunity."' she declared. "You came back. It's in you. The darkness, the evil," she whispered. "It's in you."

  Tears burned under my eyelids. I swallowed and shook my head.

  "Yes, yes, you came out of the night. It's my fault, of course. It all started with Larry and my father. I heard you cry when you were born. Don't you think I've heard that cry again and again?

  "I don't know where it will end," she said. "All I can do is wait. What did the minister know? If he knew the past, he would have shaken his finger at me and pointed to the coffin. I should be in that coffin. not Brody.

  "The baby was crying," she said. "When they took the baby, she was crying. I knew it was wrong, but my daddy wouldn't listen."

  "Mother, you're not making any sense. Listen to me..."

  "All I can do is wait." she muttered and turned her head away. "Wait."

  "Mother. you've got to get stronger." I told her. "Think about Grandmother Hudson. Think about Grant and Alison."

  She closed her eyes. I stood there, looking at her for a few long moments and then decided it would be better if I spoke to her after some time had gone by. I reached out and touched her hair.

  She smiled with her eyes closed.

  "Mommy, is that you?" she asked. "I'm not afraid now. You can go back to sleep. It was just a bad dream. I boomed it just like Daddy said and it's gone."

  "Good-bye," I whispered and left her room.

  As I was descending the stairs. Alison appeared at the foot of them and gaped up at me with her hands on her hips, two of her girlfriends at side. One of them said. "I told you.'

  "What were you doing up there?" she demanded.

  "Talking to your mother," I said. "You should be up there holding her hand and not visiting with your friends." I added and started for the front door.

  She reached out and seized my arm, spinning me around.

  "Why did you come here? You don't belong here. If Brody hadn't gone to see you, he'd still be alive,"

  "Think what you want." I pulled my arm free and walked out, but she followed me onto the portico, her girlfriends practically attached. Jake stepped forward from the Rolls in anticipation.

  "You brain-washed my grandmother to give you so much," she spit at me. "but we'll get it all back. You'll see. We're getting it all back!"

  I didn't respond, continuing toward the car.

  "You're some kind of freak, you know that? Just some kind of freak! You don't belong anywhere near our family. My daddy will get rid of you, just wait.

  "That's my grandmother's car," she shouted when Jake opened the door for me. "You don't belong in it. You belong in the back of a pickup truck. You belong in hell!"

  I turned and looked back at her. Her braces glittered in the sunlight that slipped through the narrow opening in the increasingly overcast sky, and her eyes looked like two little marble balls with little black circles at the centers. She had her hands clenched into fists and she had stiffened her body in defiance.

  The blood that we shared surely was in retreat in both our bodies. I thought. I couldn't imagine ever having a warm moment between us.

  Whose fault was that? Mine? My mother's? My grandfather's? Ken's?

  Maybe it was a combination of everyone tossing his or her self- interest into the fragile boat of love, sinking it in the sea of tragedy we were destined to cross together.

  We might all drown.

  At this point I didn't care. I didn't care at all.

  6

  Never the Same

  .

  The weather, which had been threatening all

  day, finally changed for the worse. About an hour or so before we had reached home, the rain came. The sky burst open. Sheets of wind-swept drops whipped across Jake's windshield. The wipers were barely able to provide Jake with a clear enough view of the highway. All around me, the deluge of water streaked the windows, carving streams of tears in the glass. I could almost hear the sky crying over the monotonous sweep of the wipers and the hum of the tires on the wet pavement. Other cars rushed by, their headlights on, everyone looking like he or she was driving in a panic.

  "We're getting a big one," Jake muttered. I had curled up in a corner of the rear seat and closed my eyes, opening them only when we heard the clap of thunder rolling over the roof of the car. The fast-falling drops sounded more like pebbles being heaved on us. A streak of thick lightning on our right seemed to singe the very air. Low clouds resembled smoke rising out of the trees and meadows, even rising from the houses that we rushed by.

  Maybe it was the end of the world. I thought. Maybe the events in my life were so severe. Nature decided to throw in the towel and start someplace else, on another planet, perhaps, where life would evolve into people far less cruel to each other and themselves, and especially Nature.

  Jake tried to cheer me up by describing some of the fun he had had in storms when he was younger, especially a time when he was once caught in a sailboat with a girlfriend he had told he was an expert sailor just so she would go out with him.

  "Ever hear the expression. Caught in the web of your own deceit? Well. I turned that sunfish over three times, soaking us both, until finally I had to confess I didn't know how to get us back to short. She bawled the hell out of me and finally when we were in shallow enough water, we walked the boat in. You wouldn't think a kid so awkward in the water like that would end up in the navy, would you? But I did.

  "Every time that girl saw me afterward, her eves would get wide and crazy, she'd hunch
up her shoulders and scream, 'Who are you trying to drown these days. Captain Marvin?"

  I felt myself smile. but I didn't laugh. Jake was watching me in the rearview mirror. "I guess I was never exactly a candidate for the Don Juan award. The female animal has always been a mystery to me."

  "It's all a mystery to me. Jake," I finally said. "Well, maybe the trick is not to spend so much time worrying about it. Princess. Maybe the trick is to just push forward and leave those questions to priests, philosophers and teachers. huh?"

  "Maybe," I admitted. After a long silence between us. I said. "Next time Victoria comes around, I thinkI'll just give in to everything, Jake. There's no mystery about that. I don't belong here."

  "Hey, forget that idea. You belong here just as much as anyone."

  "I don't think I belong anywhere at the moment. Jake.'

  "You'll change your mind in the morning," he said. "When this storm clears, well take Rain out. She's overdue. She's been asking after you," he continued. That brought another smile to my face. ''She lifts that hoof and stomps and neighs and twists her head and peers out of the stable looking for you. I can tell. I speak horse."

  "Okay, Jake," I said laughing. "Until I leave, I'll ride her for You."

  "For you. too. And for her," he corrected.

  The rain didn't let up before we reached the house. In fact, the storm seemed to grow stronger. Trees were being bent in the wind to the point just before they would snap. Many branches had broken and were already scattered over the driveway and the street. Jake said he would call the grounds people in the morning and have them come up as soon as the weather permitted.

  "You want me to do anything for you. Princess?'" he asked when he came to a stop in front of the house.

  "No, Jake. There's nothing to do. I just want to get some rest,"

  "Have some of that hot tea you call MIF," he suggested.

  "Right."

  "I'll call in the morning," he said. "You know how to reach me if you need me."

  "Thanks. Jake. Don't get out and get wet for me. Just take the car home." I said. "I'm not going anywhere for a while. That's for sure." I said. I opened the door. but I didn't try to open the umbrella. I was confident the wind would take it out of my hands or break it if I did.