There were others there, workmen and their wives, the contractor and architect, and a few I’d seen quite often in my days in Provincetown, a pharmacist and a locksmith, even the mailman I recognized without his uniform. Warren was there, his wife beside him, and I caught his eye and waved to him.
“And what about these others?” I said. “Your crew? What’s going to happen there?”
We had moved beyond the awning and into sun, and I saw Alma, the photographer, squatting down to rearrange things in his camera bag. Kelly was standing over him, and when I looked back to see the gathering at the tables and the others I was asking about, I caught sight of the old nun marching across the Manor’s lawn, then stepping into shadow under the still umbrella and reaching for a plate. Carolyn was there as well, her starched uniform like a cutout dress for a paper doll, brighter and more severe than the nun’s soft, dingy cotton. Larry had moved between them, a wraith in night clothing, and the three were talking, looking very much like maskers in some ancient miracle play.
We were standing at the meadow’s brink, and I looked out at Kelly’s ruined house, half dismantled in the time since I’d arrived. I could see a green, official truck, off to the left at the barricades, men in uniform carrying sawhorses and blinker lights. The barricades were coming down as well, and I saw a dark car, moving slowly through the meadow toward the Manor. I knew it was the man named Arthur, Kelly’s chauffeur, and that he was making the trip for the last time.
“It’s pretty simple,” Carlos said, “and not unexpected. Larry’s going back to Philadelphia and his AIDS hospice work. Frank and Erica will stay here for a while, getting used to each other, then maybe even staying on. I can’t be sure. As for my father and Ramona, they’ll stay too, at least for a while. John’s heading back beyond Tampico, in a week or so with Alma, to the village and Chepa. He says he’ll be there permanently and we can visit if we want. The only one to wonder about is Gino. He’s been talking about Chicago, but then he speaks of the West Coast, even New Mexico and Arizona. The only sure thing is that he won’t be here for long. Says he has some wandering to do.”
“And what about you?” I asked. “And Kelly.”
“We’re staying put,” he said, smiling up at me. “You can come over for dinner anytime.”
By the time the party was drawing to a close, the sun had dipped down in the sky behind the Manor, and the few remaining elements of Kelly’s house, a vacant doorway of studs, scattered clapboards, and a pile of chimney bricks, were silhouette figures at the escarpment’s crest, the flat sea visible beyond. Months of wind and shifting ground had loosened every nail and mortar line. They’d had no need for heavy equipment, and the dismantling had been easy and quiet and had gone unnoticed as the party progressed. Even the lighthouse was silent and inactive now, its beam dark under its black witch’s hat, all the tourists departed. And all the guests at the party, but for the principals, had departed too, and I turned from the meadow and saw the empty tables under the awning, a few remaining champagne glasses and soiled linen napkins on the white tablecloths. Then I saw Alma. He was adjusting his tripod, settling the legs down in the lawn, the large camera tilting above. It was taking him some time to get it right, pointed toward the edge of the Manor’s property, the lens aiming out into the meadow beyond. We were alone out there for a moment, and I caught that acknowledgment in his enigmatic smile once the camera was fixed in place and he looked up from his work to see me watching him. Then we were no longer alone.
They were pushing the narrow ambulance stretcher unsteadily through the grass newly grown above the sod, its spongy softness grabbing the wheels and causing all four of them to lean into the task. Carolyn and the nun flanked the temporary bed, and Kelly pushed at the foot, while Larry pulled at the handle near the man’s bald head. I saw what looked like a bowl of fruit resting on the prone figure’s chest. Then it moved, and I knew it was the yellow chihuahua, then saw her head and saw the sun shining transparently through her broad ears. The others were to the side and behind the conveyors, watching out for them, and I started across the lawn, then thought better of it and pulled up at the canopy’s edge. He’ll get there eventually, I thought, and he did, much quicker than I’d imagined, and I saw them turning the stretcher to face into the camera when they reached the meadow’s brink, then saw the nun cranking a handle to the side near the figure’s chest, until he had risen and was resting as if sleeping in a lounge chair, at the beach or at a resort in the mountains, his small, vibrant pet alertly curious on his soft lap.
Alma stood at the tripod, waiting, long hair glistening in the sinking sun, the black hood hanging, graceful as a veil on a mannequin, ready to be lifted up and put on, and when I looked back to the man in the stretcher, I saw the others gathering around him, getting ready for the picture.
John stood beside his wheelchair, fingers touching the handle above the leather back, his scar an emblem of that sweet, youthful impetuosity below his bushy brow, and Carlos had climbed into the chair, switching generations. He’d tilted his fedora back so that his broad forehead was a stone slab in the sun, and Kelly stood to the other side of him, hand on his shoulder in certain possessiveness, looking down at his profile, face expressive in the grin of a lover who has found a good cowboy or politician. The man in the stretcher was flanked on the other side by Frank in his white shirt, his bulldog face fixed in formal expression reminiscent of a general standing for a portrait to be hung in some official place, and Erica stood at his elbow, the light frosting her blond hair and casting shadows that looked like heavy makeup into her angular features. It was as if she were posing in a parody of her former self, that beleaguered woman dragged by the hair to a toilet, and her broad smile was making a proper joke out of it.
Gino was beside her, at the tableau’s perimeter, shorter even than she was, but taller in the broad sombrero he’d donned for this occasion, a miniature revolutionary in a cartoon etching of Zapata’s army, and I saw the V shape of Ramona’s fingers above his hat’s crown for a moment, then saw her nudge into Manuel beside her, laughing and shaking her loose hair. Then her fingers were gone, and she had settled in against her husband, behind her father, and was looking out at the camera smiling, one in a satisfied family at the end of reunion, waiting for the commemorative moment. Carolyn, in her little white hat, stood behind Carlos in the wheelchair, the nun beside her, and beside the nun was Larry in his African skullcap, and I thought he was looking over at me and not at the camera. The three were those maskers once again, this time the resurrected after the magic pills, ready for a curtain call. Then there was Arthur, in his dark chauffeur’s uniform, his look hid under his hat brim, standing at the stretcher’s head, the skull face of the citizen who had saved the Manor below the shadow of his chin.
Still, the man’s eyes were closed, that skull shadowless and without particular expression, and I knew his was the eventual face of all of us approaching our final repose, and I thought of the Mexican etchings and engraved prints Carlos had displayed for me on my coffee table close to a year ago.
The sun disappeared behind the Manor completely, just as Alma crawled under the black hood. He raised the metal T holding the explosive up above the camera at arm’s end. Then he said something, in Spanish or another language, that I didn’t understand, though the others did.