Lake News (43 page)

“Don't you take pride in what you write?”

“I suppose.”

“Then you're like him in that.”

John wanted to think so, but writing was different from building stone walls. Stone walls were functional and aesthetic. They didn't have the power to ruin people. Writing did. That was the part of it that stuck in John's craw. So maybe Terry was right. Maybe he wasn't tough enough to hack it, if hacking it meant wielding a poison pen.

Yes, he took pride in what he wrote. He had left Boston when that ceased to be the case. He took pride in
Lake News
. It was well written and served a positive purpose—was functional and aesthetic.

It was—yes—like Gus's stone walls.

Shortly before dawn, Gus's eyelids flickered and opened. John was quickly up, leaning over the bed. “Dad?”

Gus focused on nothing at all, then on John, but if there was awareness or thought, he didn't let on. When his eyes slipped shut, John looked at the heart monitor. The beat took an erratic turn, then steadied.

He stepped back when a nurse arrived. She checked Gus, checked the monitors, and withdrew.

John didn't know whether to try to get Gus to wake up again or not. Waking up was a good sign, definitely cause for hope, but if it caused erratic cardiac activity, he could do without seeing Gus wake up yet. The lines were more even now. More peaceful.

So he stood quietly for a time, studying Gus's face. Many a night, as a child, he had done this while Gus slept in the big chair by the woodstove. He had been less threatening asleep than awake. Dorothy had been calmer
then, too, even affectionate, as she watched Gus and warned John to be still.

Dawn brought a gentle, flattering light that enhanced the memory. When Lily stirred and came up to stand beside him, John said, “He really was a handsome guy. You can see some of it now.” He saw a full head of neatly cut hair, a clean shave, straight shoulders, strong hands. “My mother still talks about it. He was antisocial but handsome.”

“How did they meet?”

“Over a flat tire. She was driving through the hills with a friend, looking at foliage, just about this same time of year. He was a good-looking outdoorsman, who came right out of the woods to give them a hand when it looked like they'd be stranded. A month later, she came back looking for him with three tins of her mother's coffee cake. She was infatuated. Hung around watching him work and baking him things, until he realized that she was his single best shot at settling down. He was nearing forty. She was young and pretty and eager.”

John sighed. “I never dared mention her name, the few times I saw him after they split.”

“You saw him here?”

“During college. I thought he'd be proud that I'd got that far. He wasn't. He didn't want to look at me. So I never stayed long. I left, and then it ate at me, all I had wanted to say but didn't.”

A nurse came in with two mugs of coffee. She checked on Gus, adjusted the rate of a drip, and went out.

John welcomed the warmth of the mug in his hands.
Having Lily beside him was a help, but the winds of his history with Gus were cold. Oh, yeah, a lifetime of “shoulda done's.”

“I wanted to tell him,” he said quietly, “that I understood what happened between my mother and him. That it wasn't all his fault. She made him out to be something he wasn't. She was the one who went after him and then couldn't hack it when life in the Ridge wasn't romantic. He never made promises. She was the one with the expectations, so she was the one let down. I can't blame him. Not for the marriage, not for the divorce. I wanted to tell him that.”

So you have,
he could practically hear Lily say. But she simply nodded and remained close.

Lily had never sat vigil with a dying man before. A month ago, had someone told her she would be doing it for Gus Kipling, she would have shuddered. But right now she couldn't picture being anywhere else. A psychiatrist might have said she was making up for not being in town when her father died, but she didn't think so. Her being here had nothing to do with Gus and everything to do with John.

She wanted to be with him. It was as simple—and easy and natural—as that.

Hard to explain to her mother, though, when Lily called her shortly after seven.

“But why are
you
there?” Maida asked. There was enough of an edge in her voice to trigger a conditioned response in Lily. A rush of white noise started to build.

Lily fought it. She closed her eyes and forced herself
to think clearly. “Because John's here. He's having a hard time.”

“Gus Kipling won't thank you.”

“I'm not here for him. John and I were talking last night when he learned about Gus. I couldn't lll-let him come alone.”

“Kiplings have a history of using you. First Donny, now John. This feels familiar, Lily.”

“It's different,” she said and reminded herself that she was a big girl. She didn't have to ask Maida's permission. “I'm only calling to see if one of the orchard hands can cover in the cider house, so that I can stay here.”

“Are you sure you want to do that?” Maida asked. “Word will spread. Do you want the town to know you're there?”

Lily was suddenly exasperated. “Well, why not?” she cried boldly. “It adds an interesting twist to the story, don't you think?”

Morning ripened. Harold Webber came, as did other staff doctors. The general reaction to Gus's condition was one of surprise, but it stopped short of optimism. All signs pointed to a further weakening. While they agreed that Gus was holding on better than they had expected he would, they predicted that the next hours would be crucial.

John allowed himself to hope. He envisioned Gus waking up and being mellowed by having a near brush with death. He imagined the two of them having a few months, maybe more, of quality time. John could be satisfied with that.

As morning became afternoon, Gus did wake up occasionally. Each time, he pulled himself from disorientation to focus on John—and he did recognize him. John knew it. He didn't know, though, whether the recognition was helping or hurting.

Then, come midafternoon, the beat of the heart monitor shifted. Doctors and nurses came on the run, and after a medication change, Gus's heart steadied, but it wasn't a good sign. There was talk of a secondary attack, worsening color, fluid in his lungs.

John waited in the hall with Lily while the doctors worked, but as soon as the bedside was clear, he was back again at the rail. Desperate enough to do something, with Gus looking waxy now, he took his father's hand. It felt awkward in his—uncomfortably limp and cold—but he couldn't put it down now that the connection was made.

“Come on, Gus,” he murmured. “Come on. Don't leave me hanging here. Don't you dare leave me hanging here.” When Gus didn't respond, he said, “I'm trying to help. For Christ's sake, I'm trying to
help.”
When still there was nothing, he got angry. “You can hear me, Gus. I know you can. You always could, just turned away and made like what I had to say wasn't worth your while, and maybe it wasn't back then. I let you down. I'm sorry I did that. I let you down, and I let Donny down, and if I could turn back the clock and change that, I would. But I'm here now, and I want a chance.”

His anger faded. How to sustain it, without Gus's sneer?

Defeated, he opened his hand and studied those old,
scarred fingers. They seemed vulnerable in ways Gus himself never had. More to himself than to Lily or Gus, he murmured, “How to ask forgiveness from a man who won't listen?”

Those fingers moved then—not much, but enough to suggest life. John looked up to find Gus looking straight at him. The sound the old man produced was hoarse and broken, but every blessed word came through.

“You gut it ass backwuds,” he said. His eyes closed, then reopened. “ 'T's me let you down… 't's me failed… 't's me was… nevuh good 'nough… not f'y' muthuh… not fuh Don… not fuh you…”

John was a minute taking in his meaning. “That's not true,” he said, but by then Gus had closed his eyes, and something was different this time. It wasn't until Lily was touching his arm and the room was filled with doctors and nurses that John realized the monitor had gone flat.

They tried to resuscitate him. They shocked him once. When that did nothing, they tried a second time and a third. There was a moment's pause, then a reluctant exchange of glances. In the next instant what little hope there had been seeped away, like air from lungs that had finally ceased to work.

The doctors and nurses left.

“He said what he needed to say,” Lily whispered, then she, too, left, and John didn't try to stop her. For a final few minutes, he needed to be alone with his father.

He didn't say anything. He didn't even think anything. He just stood there holding Gus's hand in both of his now, studying the face that he had both hated and
loved. When the time seemed right, he gently put Gus's hand down on the sheet. He bent, kissed his father's cheek, and started to leave.

But something drew him back to the side of the bed. So he stood with Gus a little longer, and it was a peaceful time. When he was sure that his father's soul had passed to wherever it was headed, he gave Gus's shoulder a last gentle touch and left the room.

Lily had waited and watched from the hall. She straightened when John came toward her. He looked exhausted but managed a sad smile. Without a word, he took her in his arms and held her so tightly that his arms trembled, but she wouldn't have complained for the world. Giving him comfort pleased her more than she would have imagined possible.

When he finally drew back, his eyes were moist. He raised them to the ceiling and took a shaky breath or two. Then he looked at her and said, “I'll drop you home. I have to go to the Ridge.”

They drove back to Lake Henry in silence. When he pulled up at the cottage, he thanked her. “It meant a lot having you there.”

She pressed a finger to his lips, then shook it to suggest that he shouldn't say another word. Feeling that same incredible fullness in her heart, she climbed out, watched him turn and drive off. When the Tahoe was gone from sight, she walked slowly around the cottage.

It was nearly five in the afternoon. The lake mirrored Elbow Island, the far shore, and the sky, all seeming calm and reverent in the wake of Gus's death. Needing to
commune with it—with Celia, with a loon or two—she crossed the pine needles, went down the railroad-tie steps, and out to the very end of the dock, all the while wondering whether she was crazy to feel what she did.

But all the wondering in the world couldn't stop the feeling, nor did she really want it to.

John felt a loss the minute he left Lily at her cottage, but the need to go to Gus's place was great. Gus's place? It was his place, too. But had it ever really been his home? He had grown up there. No amount of repainting, relandscaping, or refurnishing could change that fact. Driving along Ridge Road now, with Gus dead and gone, he had to acknowledge the connection.

He parked beside the tiny house and walked inside as he had thousands of times as a kid. The small living room was the bedroom that he and Donny had shared. Dropping into the sofa, he heard the sounds of those years—yelling, but laughter, too. Gus wasn't happy by nature, but John's mother was. And Donny. He and Donny had fun times.

John put his head back and closed his eyes. He felt weary in ways that went beyond the physical—weary in ways that had to do with being the only surviving male in this house, the head of the family, so to speak. Arguably, he had borne that responsibility for the past three
years. But bringing food, paying a maid, and repairing the house were physical things. What he felt now was emotional.

The weight of it was too much after a night without sleep. He dozed off in no time, sitting right there on the sofa as Gus had done so often of late. A muffled cry brought him awake with a start.

Dulcey Hewitt stood just inside the front door with a hand over her mouth. She pressed it to her chest. “You
scared
me,” she breathed. “Here I'd just heard about Gus and I was comin' over to straighten up so's you wouldn't find a mess, and there you are, sitting just the way he was.”

For a minute, John was groggy enough to be confused. Then he remembered that Gus was dead, and felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach. With an effort, he pushed himself forward.

The light was on. Dulcey must have done that. It was dark outside.

He ran a hand over his beard and into his hair. “What time is it?”

“Eight. I'm sorry about Gus.”

John nodded. “Thanks for coming by last night. I wouldn't have wanted him to die here alone.”

“Were you with him?”

Again he nodded. He looked around. “Nothing much is messed. He didn't have the strength at the end. Go home, Dulcey. Be with your kids.”