Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [114]
What a dreadful apartment, Vivian thinks.
“Is he going to die?” Alphonse asks, looking up at her.
“No, Alphonse, he is not,” Vivian says emphatically, knowing that this is what one should tell a boy of twelve years old, though of course one cannot possibly know if a man is going to die or not, and frankly, from where she stands, it doesn’t look very good for Sexton Beecher. Her minds leaps ahead in time and she sees that she will want to take Honora back to her own house and make her stay there until the woman is on her feet again, which could be quite a while.
Vivian hears the footsteps on the wooden stairs outside and thinks, irrationally, that the police have come to solve their problem, to mop up the mess, as they do in gangster movies. But then she realizes, with some dismay, that this cannot possibly be the case, can it? Because in this particular movie, she and Louis and McDermott and Ross and Sexton (especially Sexton) and even Alphonse and Honora are the gangsters. And then she sees, through the screen at the kitchen door, the white hoods over the faces of the men and thinks, Something is very wrong here, because everyone knows that the Ku Klux Klan operates only in the south. Yet even then, and ever optimistic (for Vivian scarcely knows how to be anything else), she imagines that these men in their ridiculous white hoods with dark round circles for their eyes and noses will somehow explain themselves and restore order to this hideous and frightful situation.
But then the first man enters the kitchen, and Vivian understands at once that it is not going to be like that. It is not going to be like that at all.
Honora
She bends over her husband and pins his arms. His face is mottled bright white and dark red, and this, even more than all the blood, frightens her. She calls out that she needs help. McDermott comes and then Alphonse’s mother, a small woman Honora has wanted to meet. She has wanted to tell this woman that Alphonse is a sweet boy, but of course his mother must already know this. Sexton is yelling Honora’s name and grabbing for his crotch, even though that is not exactly where he has been hit. He says I’m sorry over and over and over, and she keeps trying to shush him and calm him down. He grabs for his crotch again, and Alphonse’s mother looks over at her as if to say, Who knows what a man will get up to when he thinks he is dying?
McDermott is standing behind her now, and Honora knows that he is seeing this thing that Sexton is doing and hearing him say I’m sorry over and over.
“Sexton,” she says, putting her face close to his. “Don’t speak. Just rest. You’re going to be all right.”
She glances up at McDermott and then back down at Sexton, and for the first time since she entered the room she thinks that her husband might actually die. She bends close to him and says, “Hang on, Sexton,” but she can see, in an ominous relaxation of his features, that he is drifting into unconsciousness. And then an urgent question rises within her, and she knows that she has only seconds to answer it.
The life inside her body is as much Sexton’s as it is hers.
She looks at McDermott again and wishes that she could tell him that she is sorry, that if she had to do it over again, she would not have been afraid under the tree that sounded like water. She would have had no fear and would have let him love her, and if that one night was all they had together, well then, so be it, because, really, what honor was there in denying love?
Sexton jerks his body, as though, even semiconscious, he wanted her whole attention. She thinks, I have to do