Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [85]
“Clifford.” Sarah spoke a bit more loudly than necessary, given he wasn’t hard of hearing but simply unpunctual in the way he responded. “This is Franny.”
She put on the strongest smile she could manage, while gazing at her father’s brother from a depth of grief she had never anticipated. “Hello there,” she said, stretching her hand toward this frail man whom she’d known from her early childhood, the perennial bachelor, the crazy uncle who’d been touched even before he went crazy.
“Hello,” Clifford answered, shaking her hand.
Kip watched Franny even as Clifford found it impossible either to stop looking into her eyes or release her hand.
“Hello,” he said again.
“Hello,” she answered this time, very tenderly attempting to free herself from his grasp.
“Mary, what took you so long?” he asked.
She looked at Kip, then at Sarah and Marcos.
“I’m sorry?” she asked, with a broad smile.
“Mary. You’re my niece, aren’t you?”
Removing her hand she stood up straight, turning to Sarah. “Does this happen? What should I do?”
“Just go along with him,” Sarah said. “No harm.”
“Yes, Clifford, if you say so.”
“Why’d you take so long?”
Clearing her throat, reaching behind her for Marcos’s hand, she said, “Take so long?”
“You’ve come to get me out of here, haven’t you? We can go back home now, can’t we?”
“Not today, Clifford,” Sarah said.
“Why not?” he asked Sarah, never taking his eyes off the younger woman, whose cheeks now flushed crimson.
“Because Mary’s not ready to take you home today,” said Kip, intervening at last, gently touching Clifford’s forearm.
“What about tonight?”
Sarah said, “You don’t like it here anymore?”
“I do, I do,” answered Clifford, concentrating now on Sarah. “I just thought my niece had come to take me back to Gallup.”
Marcos tried to help. “She’s not from Gallup, Clifford.”
“I think you’re confusing me with somebody else.” Horrible.
“No.” Clifford shook his head, solid and swift, back and forth, gazing at the linoleum. “No, no.”
“Maybe Cliff and I should take a walk,” said Kip.
Clifford looked at Kip, still shaking his head.
“Let’s do it, pal,” Kip finished, standing, urging Clifford to his feet. And as if nothing unusual had happened, they walked down the corridor that led away from the atrium.
“Sorry, Franny,” Sarah apologized. “I never saw him act like that before.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “I understand.”
They had lunch at a restaurant near the Norris Bradbury Museum, Sarah’s treat, and though Kip had planned on joining them, he stayed behind at the center and ate with the patients instead. They talked about Tsankawi, about the incident with Clifford, about evening plans, as families do, but even the vigilant Franny failed to notice Sarah’s eyes on her. Having long since accepted Franny into her life, much as she embraced Kip, Sarah suspected that the day was coming when she’d have to ask Franny—much as she had challenged Kip—to reveal a little more about herself. Yes, Clifford was mentally out of it, but where in fact was Franny’s mother, Mrs. Johnson? Why all the delays that Franny had alluded to in her coming west to meet Marcos and the Montoya family in Nambé, where her daughter had been living? On holidays, when she didn’t phone her mother or get any calls from Princeton, Marcos must have asked himself these same questions, but looked blindly beyond whatever she might be harboring. Sarah inferred that day a different history might range behind this business of Franny’s mother. Franny disguised her secrets well, but after Clifford’s peculiar onslaught, Sarah sensed some fabrication subtly betraying itself. She didn’t know what, but the stitching showed, the persona’s mask had fallen a tad askew.
After lunch, the couple headed home. On the way they stopped at Otowi, the sacred place—according to San Ildefonso belief—where the Rio Grande speaks. With pants rolled up to their knees, they waded along the narrow silty shore, listening to the river burble and chatter and sough.
“What do the Indians believe it’s saying?”
“Whatever you