She forgot about Sarah and Courteney. She forgot her dislike of him, and all her suspicions — that he had driven her here, that he was being so kind, only because he wanted a crack at the land that Brendan had promised her. She heard herself say, in a husky voice, “This is crazy, standing out here like this.” She heard him answer, “Let’s go inside.” She watched his free hand fumble with the key in the oversize lock, but it was only when they moved inside her darkened room and he held the side of her head in his hand that she realized what she was doing. If they fell into bed, into their old, practiced embrace, she would never be able to let him go again.
She drew back from him. She tried to smile, although she knew he couldn’t see her in the dark. She said, “You’re sweet, taking care of me like this — really. I appreciate it. But maybe we should get some sleep.” Her tongue was thick in her mouth.
She heard Waldo take a deep breath and then laugh. “Sorry,” he said. “All that dancing — I got carried away. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
You were thinking of us, she wanted to say. The way we used to be, all the time we spent together — how could you give it all up? She said, “We’re both exhausted. Will you wake me early?”
“Seven? We’ll have some breakfast and then we’ll take a look at the maps and start wherever you want.” He touched her hair and then he left.
Wiloma undressed in the dark and then lay down carefully on the bed. When she closed her eyes the room began to spin. She sat up, her spine pressed against the headboard, and she turned on the reading lamp. Her body felt prickly, warm, oversensitive; next door, through the thin wall, she could hear Waldo moving around. He brushed his teeth. He dropped his shoes on the floor with a thump. She tried not to remember the slow, deliberate way he used to undress in their bedroom. She tried to tell herself she was glad she’d sent him away.
She did some breathing exercises and then meditated for ten minutes. Body is a reflection of Spirit, she reminded herself. The body cannot desire what the Spirit does not want. Her Spirit did not desire Waldo, not at all; she and Waldo were totally unsuited. And the yearning she felt in her skin and bones was false, an artifact, a creation of the alcohol that had poisoned her system and of her exhaustion and fear. It was insignificant, nothing, and she was glad she’d had the sense to send him away.
She was glad, and yet she could not sleep. She picked up the phone, thinking that she might, despite the lateness of the hour, check in with Wendy and make sure she and Win were all right, but when she dialed her number, a voice she couldn’t place right away answered, “White residence.”
“Hello?” The voice clicked in her brain. “Christine? Is that you?”
“Wiloma,” Christine said.
Wiloma held the phone away from her and stared at it. Christine — what was she doing there? “I thought you were coming tomorrow. I’m sorry, I meant to call you earlier. There’s been a little problem with my uncle.”
“I heard. Wendy told me all about his disappearance. But I know you’ll find him — you know how important it is that I start work with him immediately.”
“I know,” Wiloma said. “We haven’t found any trace of him yet, but I think I know where he’s headed — with some luck I’ll find him tomorrow morning. I’ll have him home with you by dinnertime.”
“Your husband’s with you?”
“Ex-husband.”
“Whatever. Don’t let him distract you — remember that he does not have the best interests of this Healing at heart.”
With her words, Wiloma suddenly saw the evening’s events in a different light. Christine was right, she thought — Waldo had not come on this trip to help Brendan, nor had he held her out of desire or love. He wanted something, several somethings, and none of them were worthy. She would have to guard herself against confusion. He was sleeping already, in the room next to her; she thought she could hear his gentle snores. He was sleeping, and dreaming of Sarah and Courteney, and plotting the houses he hoped to convince her to let him build on Brendan’s land, and she’d been a fool to let his warm hands and the bewildering fragrance of his neck seduce her. She was here to find her uncle; nothing more.
“I’m all set up here,” Christine said. “We’re ready to go. But you have to bring your uncle to me soon. We don’t have much time.”
“Tomorrow,” Wiloma said, and she thought of her children. They couldn’t have been pleased to have Christine arrive unannounced. She hoped they had been polite. “May I talk to Wendy?” She wanted to hear her daughter’s voice, wanted to tell her what had happened — not about the restaurant, not in detail; not about Waldo’s warm hands or the dancing or the moment at the door, but just something, any thing: “We had a pleasant evening,” she might say. “Your father and I.”
Christine said nothing. “Hello?” Wiloma said. “Are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“Would you put Wendy on?”
“It’s terribly late,” Christine said after a brief hesitation. “The children are fine, but it’s so late — maybe it would be better to wait until tomorrow to talk to them.”
Wiloma looked at her watch. It was late, it was quarter past one; it wouldn’t be fair to wake Wendy just for the comfort of hearing her voice. And Wendy and Win were safe, she knew, in Christine’s care — she hadn’t felt entirely comfortable leaving them alone, and Christine’s presence in the house reassured her. “It’s all right. I’ll talk to them tomorrow.”
“That would be best.”
“They’re all right? They must have been surprised to see you.”
“They’re fine. They were a little startled, but you prepared them well. They’re nice children.”
“They are,” Wiloma said.
“How about you? Are you all right? You sound a little displaced. Disoriented.”
“I’m fine,” Wiloma said. She felt a sudden yearning to confide in Christine, but she pushed it aside; Christine had enough to do, she had to focus on Brendan. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” Christine said.
Wiloma hung up and slept for a while, but her dreams were haunted by visions of Brendan, shrunken and writhing in pain, trying to die and unable to free his Spirit from his body. She woke drenched in a clammy sweat. I have to find him, she thought. I can’t let him die like Da. Then she lay in the darkness, unable to keep herself from reliving her grandfather’s last days.
She’d been alone in the house with him, in Coreopsis: 1961, six weeks after her nineteenth birthday. Gran had died that March of a heart attack, and Brendan had left for St. Benedict’s; Henry had married Kitty and fled with her to Irondequoit. Her neighbors had been busy baling hay and her friends were working or off to college or newly married or pregnant or both; and she’d been trapped alone with Da in a house that smelled of death.
The house had smelled of other things as well. It smelled of a refrigerator seldom cleaned, of food left out on countertops, of the damp spot below the sink where water dripped from a leaky pipe. It smelled of the mice that had drowned in the basement — that July had been wet, there’d been puddles down there — and of cat: Mimi had been fifteen, and sometimes she went on the furniture. It smelled of Da, who had lain in his bed all summer, wasted and incontinent, while the cancer that had first appeared as a lump in his armpit ate him away.