"We've got to get him to the hospital."
He nodded and lifted Jean in his arms. Pierre and I followed him out of the woods and across the field. Mommy was seated on a bench, her face drained and white, her tears flowing, her lips quivering.
"We've got to rush to the hospital," Daddy shouted and headed for the car. Mommy shook her head violently, as if to drive off mosquitoes. I took Pierre's hand and we both helped her to her feet.
We all piled into the car. Mommy and I remained in the back with Jean. She kept his head on her lap and stroked his hair, her tears now falling on his face as well.
I don't remember the ride. Daddy had the car on two wheels around turns, his horn blaring at anything and anyone in our way, driving them off the road. We pulled into the hospital emergency lane, and Daddy scooped up Jean again. Mommy rose slowly to follow. All hope was gone from her. She was a shell of herself, drifting along with us.
A team of doctors and nurses worked on Jean. I sat with Mommy in the lobby, holding her limp hand. Pierre sat beside me, stunned, his head against my shoulder, his hands clutching my other hand as if he hoped I could pull him up from the tragedy unfolding around us.
Mommy had been sitting there staring blankly at the wall, when suddenly she spoke: "If only I had left the party . . . if only I had spoken to Nina before she died."
"Stop that, Mommy. Nina had nothing to do with this."
She shook her head and sighed so deeply I thought I heard her chest shatter. She continued to stare ahead with vacant eyes, waiting.
In my mind I envisioned what they were trying to do with Jean. They were injecting the antivenom; they were defibrillating his heart; they were drawing the water from his lungs. Daddy was beside them watching, praying, a man turned to stone.
Time had no meaning, so I didn't know how long we actually waited before Daddy emerged, followed by some of the medical staff. There was no need for words. Everything was said in their faces.
Pierre, who had drawn even closer to me and put his arms around my waist, still clung desperately. The analytical part of me, incredibly detached emotionally, wondered when we as children first understood the finality of death. We are told that people who die go away forever to a place that is nicer, and that eases our confusion and the pain because we can imagine them even happier. It helps us to put them aside, to forget, to turn back to those who are still with us.
But later, at some fragile age, we suddenly realize that death is more than just a ticket on a train or a plane, and we understand the temporal nature of our own lives. Sometime, somewhere, somehow, we, too, will take that inevitable journey. But nothing is more unfair and unreasonable than when a child is made to go.
Maybe Jean wouldn't have become a doctor or a lawyer, but maybe he would have become a great athlete or a good businessman. He would have had his own family and his own children. He was still at the well of "maybes," there to draw from the dreams and possibilities. He was curious and alive and full to the brim with a desire to live every moment, to taste every cookie, drink every soda, laugh every laugh, run until his heart felt as if it would burst, climb trees and have a dog at his feet or a cat in his lap. He was Everyboy, our own Huckleberry Finn, more comfortable in a pair of torn jeans than in suit and tie, never annoyed by strands of hair over his forehead, eager to poke his finger into the pie or the cake icing.
And now he was no more.
"He's gone," Daddy said, and the stone face crumbled under the flow of his own cold tears.
Mommy raised her eyes toward the ceiling and screamed just before she collapsed into Daddy's arms. I was so shattered by her reaction that I never noticed Pierre had toppled back. But when I looked at him, I felt a second stab of ice through my heart. I realized he had fallen into a catatonic state, his eyes wide open.
Our tragedy was just getting under way.
To see Pierre without Jean at his side was like looking at someone who'd had a limb removed. He always looked incomplete; so it was understandable that he would fall into a state of shock, perhaps even deeper and more intense than the shock Mommy was feeling. The doctors examined him. They thought he would snap out of it after a while. They advised us to take him home and pay him as much attention as possible. Daddy had carried his one twin son into the hospital, and he had to carry the other out. We drove back to the chateau as if we were already in Jean's funeral procession. Mommy lay back, her head against the side of the car. I sat with my arm around Pierre, holding him beside me and whispering words of comfort in his ear. Daddy was mechanical, going through the motions of what had to be done. He carried Pierre into the chateau, and I helped Mommy. Daddy put Pierre to bed, but we weren't going to stay there. Daddy had the servants get our things together quickly, and he called ahead and had our doctor waiting at the New Orleans house. Then he made the arrangements for the transfer of Jean's body to the funeral parlor. I was at his side, ready to help him with anything, but he wanted me to concentrate on Pierre, who still hadn't snapped out of his
semiconscious state. When it was time to leave, he had to be carried to the car, where he lay limp against me all the way to New Orleans. Mommy was collapsed in the front seat, her eyes shut to keep out the reality.
Nothing travels as fast as bad news. We weren't home an hour before the phones began to ring. Daddy had to call Europe to tell Grandpa and Grandma Andreas what had happened. As usual, they had gone to the Riviera for the summer. Grandma Andreas told Daddy that Grandpa was too sick to travel home for the funeral. He had suffered a stroke the year before.
The doctor had given Mommy a sedative. He examined Pierre and thought he would snap out of his shock soon. Following the doctor's orders, I tried to get him to eat something, drink something; but he wouldn't open his mouth. I began to fear that the doctors at the hospital and our doctor might have underestimated the intensity of his emotional trauma.
The air of gloom that had permeated our house before we went to the country was nothing c
ompared to what followed. Death had made a camp in our dark corners; it moved proudly and freely through the corridors, dimming every light, fading every color, making every flower droop, and painting our windows with a gray tint so that no matter how much sunshine fell from the blue sky above, it looked like rain to us. People spoke only in whispers and lifted their feet so their footsteps were barely audible. The servants glided in and out of rooms to do their work and then hovered together in the kitchen or the pantry to console each other. The ticking of clocks began to sound like thunder.
Later in the day Daddy gathered all his inner strength to greet people in his study and finalize the arrangements for Jean's funeral. In the dim lamplight, he looked ashen and gray, like a man who had aged decades in minutes. Early in the evening, just after one of his business associates left, I entered his study. He was sitting back in his desk chair, staring blankly at the opposite wall. He didn't seem to notice me.
"Daddy," I said.
He turned to me as in a dream. His dark eyes shone, full of tears. "Yes, Pearl."
"It's about Pierre, Daddy. He's not improving. He hasn't eaten anything since . . . since the hospital. He won't even sip water."
"He's blaming himself," Daddy said, shaking his head. Then he pounded his chest with his closed fist so hard that I winced. "I am the one to blame," he declared.
I hurried to his side and put my hand on his shoulder. "Of course you're not, Daddy. No one's to blame."