"Mommy, wait," I called.

"See to your father," she replied.

Daddy emerged on his crutches, moving as quickly as he could. I went to help him, but by the time we got downstairs, Mommy had already driven off.

"She's gone mad again," Daddy declared. He and I got into his car and followed. I drove. Mommy had already parked her car and gone into the cemetery when we pulled up behind her.

"What is she doing?" Daddy mumbled. I helped him out. We had a flashlight in the glove compartment, but we were fortunate in that the moon was nearly full and there were only a few small clouds. The moonlight made the tombs and vaults gleam. The polished stone looked bone-white against the darkness. I stayed right next to Daddy as he hobbled along the pathway toward my brother's grave. Mommy had lit a candle beside the vault and then had knelt and pressed her forehead to the stone. Her shoulders lifted and fell with her sobs. I left Daddy's side and hurried to her.

"Mommy." I hugged her.

"I begged him," she whispered in my ear. "He was lonely without Pierre, but I begged him to let Pierre come back." Daddy leaned on his crutches as Mommy lifted her head from my shoulders and looked up at him. "I had to be here at midnight, Beau. It's the time-when the door between the two worlds opens just enough for my words to follow the candle smoke through."

Daddy leaned on his crutches and shook his head. "You're driving us all mad now, Ruby. You've got to stop. Come home and go to sleep."

"I couldn't sleep. That's why I came here," she said. "You see that now, don't you, sweetheart?" she asked me.

"Yes, Mommy."

She touched the stone of Jean's vault lovingly and smiled. "He heard me. He won't let Pierre leave us. Jean is a good boy, a good boy."

"Come home now, Mommy. Please." I helped her to her feet. She looked at Jean's tomb again, and then the three of us, crippled by our tragedy, hobbled along the pathway past other vaults and other scenes of sadness where the ground was soaked with similar tears.

I gazed back once and shuddered with the horrible vision of a second vault, twin to Jean's.

"Please, God," I murmured, too low for Daddy or Mommy to hear, "please help us."


17

  Please Wake Up

Despite being exhausted by the time we all returned home and to bed, I tossed and turned, slipping in and out of nightmares. When I woke, I welcomed the morning sunlight, but I felt as if I had just run a marathon in the middle of the summer. My sheet and blanket were drenched with perspiration, and when I sat up, my legs and my back ached from the twisting and turning I had done in my sleep.

I was the first to rise, wash, and dress. Both Mommy and Daddy looked as if they had been through the same wringer of horrors when they entered the dining room and sat down to breakfast. Mommy had already phoned the hospital and spoken to Pierre's nurse, who told her there was no change.

"At least he's not getting worse," I said, hoping to find a ray of sunshine in all this gloom.

"Yes, but he's not getting better," Mommy replied in a voice that was totally devoid of energy and expression. She ate mechanically, her eyes fixed on nothing. Daddy reached across the table and took her hand. She smiled weakly at him and then turned and chewed and stared. Daddy flashed a sad look at me, and I could tell that he was at his wit's end.

"Jack's coming tomorrow," I announced, deciding that a change of subject might be the best antidote to our depression. Mommy's eyes widened with some interest, and Daddy looked impressed. "Is that all right?"

"He's coming here?" Mommy asked.

"Yes. I invited him to stay."

Mommy looked at Daddy, who shrugged.

"From what I hear, we owe this young man a great deal," Daddy said. "The least we can do is offer him hospitality."

"I don't think I'm up to being a hostess," Mommy said.

"Jack won't expect anything special, Mommy. He's here to be at my side and offer his comfort."

"He sounds like a special young man," Daddy said.

Mommy sighed deeply. I knew there was no room in her heart and mind for anything but sadness right now, but I also knew we had to dwell on hope and find new strength.

While Mommy got ready to return to the hospital, Daddy returned the phone calls of friends and business acquaintances who had been inquiring about Pierre's condition. Afterward we drove to the hospital.

The three of us stood around Pierre's bed gazing down at him in silence. Mommy choked back a sob and sat beside the bed to hold his hand and talk to him softly. She left his bedside only to eat some lunch, and only at Daddy's and my insistence.

There was a great deal of pressure building on Daddy, too. He had business problems and tried to handle them over the telephone, but some things required his presence. I told him it made no sense for all three of us to hover around Pierre's bed. He finally agreed and had a driver pick him up in a limousine to take him to some business meetings. I sat with Mommy and spoke with Pierre's nurse, Mrs. Lochet, a pleasant woman in her late fifties with short, thick gray hair and light blue eyes. Afterward I met Sophie for coffee in the cafeteria. I told her I had informed the hospital I wouldn't be able to return to work.

"My parents need me at home right now," I ex-plained. She was sad about it, but I assured her we would always be friends.

"Maybe when you become a doctor, I can come work for you," she suggested.

"There's no one I'd rather have at my side while I tend to patients," I told her.

When I went back to Pierre's room, I found that Mommy had fallen asleep in her chair. The nurse and I gazed at each other and stepped outside the room to talk so Mommy could sleep.

"Have you ever seen a patient like Pierre improve?" I asked her.

"Well," she said hesitantly, "this is my first case where the patient has gone into a coma from psychological reasons. I have had comatose patients who were injured and who improved. I even had a young man who was shot by a mugger and who went into a deep coma and later improved. You can't give up hope," she added, but I didn't see any optimism in her eyes, and she did shift them away from me quickly.

Dr. LeFevre visited and merely said, "We'll see," when I asked her for an opinion.

Daddy returned to take us to dinner, but Mommy was so tired that we decided it would be better to just go home. Sitting in a chair and talking to Pierre all day didn't require much energy, but it was emotionally draining for my mother. She looked so bad, my heart cried for her. Her eyelids drooped, her lips trembled, her complexion was pallid, and she walked with stooped shoulders.

When we arrived home, Mommy decided to lie down. Her supper would be brought to her room, but she insisted Daddy and I eat in the dining room. We did, but we weren't very talkative. It was as though Pierre's funeral had begun.

"The doctor told me Pierre could go on like this for months and months," Daddy finally said. "I don't see how your mother is going to last. She was convinced her rituals and appeals to various spirits would help. Now that all of this mystical business has failed, she's at the lowest point I've ever seen her. I'm afraid we'll be visiting her in a hospital soon, too."

I tried to sound hopeful, to find the words that would restore faith and hope to him as well as to myself, but my well of optimism had run dry. All I could do was shake my head and mutter, "She'll be all right. Everything will be all right."

Daddy smiled. "You can't let any of this get in your way, Pearl. I know you are not a self-centered person by nature, but I don't want to hear any talk of you postponing your college education," he said firmly. "It's enough you had to quit your job at the hospital."

"But—"

"Pearl, promise me," he insisted. When I didn't respond immediately, he looked as if he might burst into tears, but he raised one arm and added, "We can't lose everything, even our dream for you."

"Okay, Daddy. I promise," I said. My chest ached. I knew if I didn't get up and go upstairs soon, I would sob openly and only make things harder for him. I forced a smile and excused myself.

When I looked in on Mommy, I saw she was asleep. I started for my room, but something drew me to the twins' room instead. I opened the door that had been kept shut tight since Jean's death and Pierre's transfer to the hospital, and I stood there gazing at their toys—Jean's frog and insect specimens on the shelf, his model airplanes and cars, their bookcase filled with adventure stories and books on animals and soldiers. How many times had I looked in and pleaded with the two of them to straighten up their things before Mommy saw the mess?

I smiled, remembering Jean's impish grin and Pierre's serious concern. I recalled them playing checkers, each of them looking into the other's identical face after every move in search of a reaction. Usually, Pierre won, and when Jean did win, I had the feeling Pierre was letting him win.

They were both hoarders, refusing to throw anything away. Their toy chest was filled to the brim, and in their closets were cartons of older toys and books. It was as if they wanted to mark and save every stage of their development, every moment of pleasure, every new discovery. Mommy was always pleading with them to sort out the things they would never use again, but how do you throw away a memory?

What would become of all this now? I wondered. Would Daddy see that it was discarded or given to poor children, or would it be stuffed in some attic corner and left to gather dust and cobwebs?

I stood in the doorway until I realized the tears were streaming down my face so fast and so hard they were dripping off my chin. Then I closed the door softly and went to my room to read myself to sleep.