“We’re here, Liddy,” Anna said softly. “We’re almost at the sea.”
The car door swung wide, and Mr. Styles lifted Lydia from her arms. Anna stepped out of the car. At the end of the street, under a gray expanse of sky, she sensed the ocean, like someone asleep. Wind yanked pins from her rolled hair, and they twinkled onto the pavement. Carrying the chair, she followed Mr. Styles to his house. He turned the front door handle, Lydia still in his arms, and pushed open the door.
The cripple lay quietly against him while her sister opened and prepared the wheeled chair in the front hall. Dexter was growing accustomed to the contortion of her face, her unblinking stare. When the chair was ready, he placed her in it, and the sister anchored her with belts and straps. There was a U-shaped stand to hold her head upright. Her hands were bent and folded at the wrists; he’d a powerful urge to press them flat. “How did she become this way?” he asked.
“It happened when she was born.”
“I’m asking what caused it.”
“She hadn’t enough air.”
“But why? Why hadn’t she enough?” He could not repress his impatience. Problems he couldn’t solve made him angry.
“No one knows.”
“Someone knows. You can be certain of that. She must have a doctor.”
“The same one for years.” She was doing the very thing he’d wanted to do: straightening out those bent wrists enough to cuff them to the chair, her touch brisk and gentle at once.
“Has he helped her? This doctor?”
“There’s no cure.”
“What kind of doctor accepts that his patient will get worse?”
“I suppose he makes us feel better.”
“Nice work if you can get it,” he muttered, and saw her start. These must be old arguments.
“Can we take her outdoors?” she asked.
“Yes, of course,” he said, chastened. “The porch is right over here.”
He led her into the front room, toward the porch door. Beyond the windows, the sea was a flat gray iridescence. It appeared calm, but the moment he opened the door, a rigid wind assailed them. The cripple jolted in the chair as if she’d been slapped.
“It’s too cold,” cried the sister, stricken. “I didn’t dress her warmly enough.”
“Relax. We’ve plenty of blankets.”
He wasn’t entirely sure where Milda kept them. As always, she’d gone to spend Sunday with her family in Harlem, from whence she would return in time to fix their breakfast Monday morning. As he swung open closets and riffled through drawers in search of blankets, he experienced a moment of appreciation that his family was not at home. The situation was too painful, Lydia too troubling. He didn’t want his children exposed to her.
He’d been unaware of the existence of a second-floor linen closet, but there it was, blankets folded neatly within. He saw the enormous Landrace wool that George Porter had brought them as a gift after a hunting trip to Lapland. He seized that, along with four others, and sprinted back downstairs. He and the sister set to tucking blankets tightly around Lydia. Her hat was laughably insufficient—Dexter wrapped one of the smaller blankets around her shoulders and used the Landrace to swaddle her head, hat and all. In order to do this, he had to lift her head from its stand and hold it in his hands. It had that surprising weight of all heads, her hair impossibly soft, the skull inside it knobby and raw. Holding her head, Dexter felt the protesting part of himself—angry, eager to be done—slide abruptly away. He settled into the project of providing this accursed creature an experience of the sea. He absorbed the importance of it, the singleness of the task. It was a relief.
When Lydia was fully bundled, Anna wheeled her onto the porch for the second time. Her sister’s eyes snapped open at the first blast of wind. Anna leaned down so their heads were level and looked out, tethering her gaze to her sister’s. Water and sky were all she saw. No convergence of ocean with land; the stone-and-concrete barrier was too far below. No beach, in other words.
“Mr. Styles,” she said, “I’d like to take her onto the sand, if that’s all right. I can do it alone.”
“Nonsense. There’s a path at the bottom of these steps that leads to a private beach.”
They each took half of Lydia’s chair and carried it down the steps. The path was pressed gravel, wide and well maintained enough that Anna could push the chair along it easily. Her sister’s eyes were shut—perhaps she’d gone to sleep. Anna wondered if, after all this effort, Lydia would even be able to take in the beach; whether she would drift through the interlude in the drowsy limbo where she spent so much of her time. Anna experienced a throe of frustration: a wish that her sister would do more, be more.
Several steps led from the path down to the sand. Dexter lifted the chair and carried it, taking big draws of sea air. The chair was heavy and cumbersome with Lydia in it, but he liked having his muscles tested. The sand was the gray-white of bones. It seemed to rise up, encompassing the bottoms of the wheels when he set down the chair. “I’ll take half,” she said, although he doubted she could carry it far in the sand. The water was some distance away. She did, though. He was impressed by her physical strength.
Anna called for him to wait and took off her pumps, setting them side by side in the sand. Her hat was useless; she anchored it under her shoes. Quickly, she plaited her hair and slipped the plait inside the collar of her coat. She felt the cold gritty sand through her stocking feet as they resumed their march. The wind teased and bludgeoned, as if daring them to continue.
They stopped once more, to rest. Dexter wrapped the Landrace more securely around Lydia’s lower face, so that only her eyes met the wind. They were open but empty-looking, like the windows of a house no one lived in.
At last they set down the chair near the water. Panting from the walk, Anna leaned her head against her sister’s and watched a long wave form, stretching until it achieved translucence, then somersaulting forward and collapsing into creamy suds that eked toward them over the sand, nearly touching the wheels of Lydia’s chair. Then another wave gathered, reaching, stretching, a streak of silver dashing along its surface where the weak sunlight touched it. The strange, violent, beautiful sea: this was what she had wanted Lydia to see. It touched every part of the world, a glittering curtain drawn across a mystery. Anna wrapped her arms around her sister. “Liddy,” she said, speaking into the blankets where she thought her sister’s ear must be. “Can you see the sea? Can you hear it? It’s right in front of you—this is your chance. Now, Liddy. Now!”
See the sea the sea
Rinfronyoo.?Liddy!?Liddy!
Canyeerit?
Hrasha?Hrasha?Hrasha?the sea