Under the Wide and Starry Sky

CHAPTER 79

Louis sat in a chair by her bed. It was after midnight, and the others had gone to try to sleep. Outside, a gale was blowing, and the rain made a hellish tattoo on the sheet-iron roof. Thank God they had found her in the endless density of the bush.
They’d been taking turns watching Fanny. Her face was waxen pale, her breathing slow. So weak, he would think, and then she would rise up suddenly, thrashing at anyone in her way, and in a burst of strength try to run away.

She stirred again. Louis straightened, ready to grab hold of her. As if in imitation, she sat up. “You’re the cause!” she shouted when she saw him. She tried to bite his arm, and when he drew back, she scrambled off the other side of her bed and raced to the door.
“Belle!” Louis called out. “Lloyd!”

In the hall, Belle had her arms around her mother. Louis and Lloyd pulled Fanny back into the bedroom, where she fought with the strength of a man.

“We will have to tie her down,” Belle said.  “Otherwise she will hurt herself. Or one of us.”  Louis  saw  a  streak  of  blood  come  up  where  Fanny’s  ?ngernail  had  scratched  her daughter’s cheek.

Belle went to get sheets while Lloyd held his mother. She tore them in thick strips and wound them around Fanny’s ankles,  which  Louis held fast,  knotting  the  ends onto the metal bedstead. Belle crossed the sheets over her torso and had Lloyd tie the ends with a rope beneath the mattress. Then they crisscrossed sheets to cover her shoulders.
Lafaele was standing in a corner, riveted. He didn’t speak.

In the morning, while Lloyd and Lafaele kept watch, Louis and Belle walked around the lawn, speaking softly lest the natives overhear.

“There is a doctor in Sydney,” Belle said. “His family befriended me when I was there.” “Yes?”

“He has worked with people who are  … like Mama. His name is Roth. They say he’s good.”

“Do you know how to reach him?” “I’m in touch with his wife.” “Then you shouldn’t hesitate.”

“How will we manage a two-week cruise with her in this condition?”

“Morphine. Whatever is required.” “What do the others know?” she asked.

“Lafaele found her, and he’s awful at keeping secrets. So they all know now.” “I wouldn’t be surprised to see the medicine man from Apia show up for an exorcism,”
she said with bitter humor. “That would be like Lafaele. He and Mama are devoted to each other. He will want to help.”

Belle looked up at Louis and saw the tears streaming from his eyes. She patted his back tenderly. “It will be all right.”

“It’s so sad, now that one understands.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face. “It’s been going on for months, over a year, when I think back. She blows up at the slightest thing. You know your mother. She’s high-strung. But lately, I’ve been thinking, Something ain’t right.” He dabbed his eyes.  “It breaks my heart to see her tied down.”

“It had to be done.”

“How did you know what to do?” “I saw it done once. In Paris.” “At a hospital?”

“At home.”

“Ah, of course, Hervey was delirious—” Belle turned her eyes to his. “No.” Louis felt a chill run across his scalp.

“A doctor came. She was seeing things, and would wander through the apartment at night. It was for her own safety.”

“I knew she was depressed after Hervey’s death,” he said slowly, trying to remember what  she’d  said  about  that  time. “Any  mother  would  be.  But  I  didn’t  realize  she had … broken down so.”

“Well, she did. Sometimes I wonder if a little piece of her never got quite right again.” Belle rubbed her eyes. “Thank God Austin is back in California—”

“—and my mother in Scotland. Neither of them could bear it, I think.” That  night,  Louis kept  watch  beside  Fanny’s bed,  where  she  slept  ?tfully.  When  she
woke,  she  looked  like  a  demented  stranger.  Her  face  made  tragic  contortions  as  she whimpered. At least she was unbound. Dr. Funk had come up from Apia and given her

sleeping pills. The good German doctor, called away during his cocktail hour and mildly inebriated, had put out his cigar and come inside. When he saw the state she was in, his whole attitude sobered. “I know Dr. Roth,” he said simply. “Take her to him as soon as you are able. I will prepare a sack of medicines to carry with you, enough to last the voyage to Sydney.”

Pacing the bedroom, sorting through memories of their years together, Louis began to see the scattered ?ngerprints of an unwell woman. What had Baxter said to him just before he departed for America to pursue Fanny? Henley fears you are going to face a life of alarms and intrigues and perhaps untruths. Louis winced at the thought that his former friend had clearer vision  than  he.  When  he  re?ected on  individual  incidents,  though,  he  saw  how  easily mistaken they were for the normal expressions of Fanny’s personality. She was by nature a ?ery, complicated woman. He had been drawn to her because she was earthy and untamed, compared to the overre?ned girls his parents admired. She showed the very qualities he’d been trained to politely suppress in himself. I wanted what she had. It occurred to him that those traits,  over time,  had bloomed into insanity.  His eyes had not seen  her madness coming, but he wondered now if his unconscious mind had recognized it long ago.
He thought of Jekyll and Hyde. The characters had erupted from the deepest place inside him. The story had ?owed out as if it were telling itself. There were truths in that story not even he had understood entirely. Truths about what happens when a person’s repressed desires fester until they turn monstrous. He shivered to remember the words he’d used to describe the connectedness of Hyde to Jekyll. Closer than an eye, closer than a wife.