Orbit 5 - [Anthology] Read online

  Why doesn’t the storm come?

  I wait for the storm and don’t go down to the lake after all. Another day, I tell myself, and leave the canoe on the car top.

  I mix a gin and tonic and wander with it to the back yard where nothing moves now. I stare up at the ash tree; it has grown so high and straight in the twenty years since we planted it. I remember the lightning that shredded the cherry tree that once stood there, the splinters of white wood that I picked up all over the yard afterward. The following week Father brought home the tiny ash stick and very solemnly we planted it in the same spot. I cried because it wasn’t another cherry tree. I smile, recalling my tears and the tantrum, and the near ritual of the tree planting. At eight I was too old for the tears and the tantrum, but neither Father nor Mother objected. I sit in the yard, letting the past glide in and out of my mind without trying to stop the flow.

  At six I dress for dinner with Dr. Warren and Norma. This is our new ritual. My first evening home I dine with the doctor and his wife. They are very lonely, I suspect, although neither says so. I walk through the quiet town as it dozes in the evening, the few occupied houses tightly shaded and closed against the heat. Norma had air-conditioning installed years ago and her house chills me when I first enter. She ushers me to the far side, to a glassed porch that is walled with vines and coleus plants with yellow, red, white leaves, and a funny little fountain that has blue-tinted water splashing over large enameled clam shells. I hesitate at the doorway to the porch. Dr. Staunton is there, holding a glass of Norma’s special summer drink which contains lime juice, rum, honey, soda water, and God knows what else. He is speaking very earnestly to Dr. Warren, and both rise when they see me.

  “Miss Matthews, how nice to see you again.” Dr. Staunton bows slightly, and Dr. Warren pulls a wicker chair closer to his own for me. He hands me a glass.

  “Edgar has been telling me about the research he’s doing up here with the boys,” Dr. Warren says.

  Edgar? I nod, and sip the drink.

  “I really was asking Blair for his assistance,” Edgar Staunton says, smiling, but not on the inside. I wonder if he ever smiles on the inside.

  Blair. I glance at Dr. Warren, who will forever be Dr. Warren to me, and wonder at the easy familiarity. Has he been so lonesome that he succumbed to the first outsider who came in and treated him like a doctor and asked for help?

  “What is your research, Dr. Staunton?” I ask.

  He doesn’t tell me to use his first name. He says, “I brought some of my graduate students who are interested in the study of dreams, and we are using your town as a more or less controlled environment. I was wondering if some of the local people might like to participate, also.”

  Vampire, I thought. Sleeping by day, manning the electroencephalograph by night, guarding the electrodes, reading the pen tracings, sucking out the inner life of the volunteers, feeding on the wishes and fears ...

  “How exactly does one go about doing dream research?” I ask.

  “What we would like from your townspeople is a simple record of the dreams they recall on awakening. Before they even get up, or stir much at all, we’d like for them to jot down what they remember of the dreams they’ve had during the night. We don’t want them to sign them, or indicate in any way whose dreams they are, you understand. We aren’t trying to analyze anyone, just sample the dreams.”

  I nod, and turn my attention to the splashing water in the fountain. “I thought they used machines, or something....”

  I can hear the slight edge in his voice again as he says, “On the student volunteers only, or others who volunteer for that kind of experimentation. Would you be interested in participating, Miss Matthews?”

  “I don’t know. I might be. Just what do you mean by controlled environment?”

  “The stimuli are extremely limited by the conditions of the town, its lack of sensory variety, the absence of television or movies, its isolation from any of the influences of a metropolitan cultural center. The stimuli presented to the volunteers will be almost exactly the same as those experienced by the inhabitants of the town. . . .”

  “Why, Dr. Staunton, we have television here, and there are movie houses in Hawley, and even summer concerts.” Norma stands in the doorway holding a tray of thumbnail-sized biscuits filled with savory sausage, and her blue eyes snap indignantly as she turns from the psychologist to her husband, who is quietly regarding the Harvard doctor.

  “Yes, but I understand that the reception is very poor and you are limited to two channels, which few bother to watch.”

  “When there’s something on worthwhile to watch, we tune in, but we haven’t allowed ourselves to become addicted to it,” Norma says.

  I wish Norma could have waited another minute or two before stopping him, but there will be time, through dinner, after dinner. We will return to his research. I take one of the pastries and watch Staunton and Dr. Warren, and listen to the talk that has now turned to the value of the dam on the river, and the growth in tourism at the far end of the valley, and the stagnation at this end. Staunton knows about it all. I wonder if he has had a computer search out just the right spot for his studies, find just the right-sized town, with the correct number of people and the appropriate kind of eliciting stimuli. There are only twenty-two families in the town now, a total population of forty-one, counting me. Probably he can get five or six of them to help him, and with eight students, that would be a fair sample. For what, I don’t know.

  I listen again to the Harvard doctor. “I wasn’t certain that your townspeople would even speak to us, from what I’d heard about the suspicions of rural villages and the like.”

  “How ridiculous,” Norma says.

  “Yes, so I am learning. I must say the reception we have received has heartened me tremendously.”

  I smile into my drink, and I know that he will find everyone very friendly, ready to say good morning, good afternoon, how’re things, nice weather. Wait until he tries to draw them into reporting dreams, I tell myself. I know Dr. Warren is thinking this too, but neither of us says anything.

  “I would like your help in particular, Blair,” Edgar says, smiling very openly now. “And yours, Norma.” I swallow some of the ice and watch Norma over the rim of the glass. She is terribly polite now, with such a sweet smile on her pretty face, and her eyes so calm and friendly.

  “Really, Dr. Staunton? I can’t imagine why. I mean, I never seem to recall anything I dream no matter how hard I try.” Norma realizes that the tray is not being passed around, and she picks it up and invites Staunton to help himself.

  “That’s the beauty of this project,” Staunton says, holding one of the tiny biscuits almost to his lips. “Most people say the same thing, and then they find out that they really do dream, quite a lot in fact, and that if they try to remember before they get out of bed, why, they can recapture most of it.” He pops the biscuit into his mouth and touches his fingertips to the napkin spread on his knees.

  “But, Dr. Staunton, I don’t dream,” Norma says, even more friendly than before, urging another of the biscuits on him, smiling at him. He really shouldn’t have called her Norma.

  “But everybody dreams....”

  “Oh, is that what your books teach? How strange of them.” Norma notices that our glasses are almost empty, and excuses herself, to return in a moment with the pitcher.

  Dr. Warren has said nothing during the exchange between Norma and Staunton. I can see the crinkle lines that come and go about his eyes, but that is because I know where to look. He remains very serious when Staunton turns to him.

  “You would be willing to cooperate, wouldn’t you, Blair? I mean, you understand the necessity of this sort of research.”

  “Yes, of course, except that I’m a real ogre when I wake up. Takes an hour, two hours for me to get charged up for the day. My metabolism is so low in the hours just before and after dawn, I’m certain that I would be a washout for your purposes, and by the time I’m human again
, the night has become as if it never existed for me.”

  Dr. Staunton is not sipping any longer. He takes a long swallow and then another. He is not scowling, but I feel that if he doesn’t let it show, he will have an attack of ulcers, or at least indigestion, before the night is over. He has no more liking for me than I have for him, but he forces the smile back into place and it is my turn.

  “Miss Matthews?”

  “I haven’t decided yet,” I say. “I’m curious about it, and I do dream. I read an article somewhere, in _Time_, or _Newsweek_, or someplace, and it sounds very mysterious, but I don’t like the idea of the wires in the brain, and the earphones and all.”

  Very patiently he explains again that only his student volunteers use the equipment, and others who specifically volunteer for that phase. I ask if I might see how they use it sometime, and he is forced to say yes. He tries to get my yes in return, but I am coy and say only that I have to think about it first. He tries to get Dr. Warren to promise to approach other people in the town, try to get their cooperation for him, and Dr. Warren sidesteps adroitly. I know the thought will occur to him to use me for that purpose, but it doesn’t that evening. I decide that he isn’t terribly bright. I wonder about his students, and I invite him to bring them, all of them, to my house for an outdoor barbecue the following night. That is all he gets from any of us, and dinner seems very slow, although, as usual, very good. Staunton excuses himself quickly after dinner, saying, with his off-again, on-again smile, that he must return to work, that only the fortunate are allowed their nights of rest.

  No one argues with him, or urges him to linger, and when he is gone I help Norma with the dishes and Dr. Warren sits in the kitchen having black coffee, and we talk about the Harvard doctor.

  “I plain don’t like him,” Norma says with conviction. “Slimy man”.

  I think of his pink face and pink hairless hands, and his cheeks that shake when he walks, and I know what she means.

  “I guess his project isn’t altogether bad, or a complete waste of time,” Dr. Warren says. “Just got the wrong place, wrong time, wrong people.”

  “I want to find out exactly what he expects to prove,” I say. “I wonder what sort of contrast he expects between students and our people. That might even be interesting.” I wonder if the research is really his, or the idea of one of his graduate students. I try not to draw conclusions yet. I can wait until the next night when I’ll meet them all. I say, “Dr. Warren, Father keeps begging me to bring him home. Do you think it would help him?”

  Dr. Warren puts down his cup and studies me hard. “Bedridden still?”

  “Yes, and always will be, but I could manage him in the dining room downstairs. He’s so unhappy in the nursing home. I’m sure the house, the noises there would bring back other days to him, make him more cheerful.”

  “It’s been four years now, hasn’t it?” Dr. Warren knows that. I wonder why he is playing for time, what thoughts he has that he doesn’t want to express. “Honey,” he says, in the gentle voice that used to go with the announcement of the need for a needle, or a few stitches. I remember that he never promised that it wouldn’t hurt if it would. “I think you’d be making a mistake. Is he really unhappy? Or does he just have moments when he wants the past given back to him?”

  I feel angry with him suddenly for not understanding that when Father is lucid he wants to be home. I can only shrug.

  “Think on it, Janet. Just don’t decide too fast.” His face is old suddenly, and I realize that everyone in Somerset is aged. It’s like walking among the pyramids, at a distance forever changeless, but on closer inspection constant reminders of aging, of senescence, of usefulness past and nearly forgotten. I turn to stare at Norma and see her as she is, not as she was when I was a child waiting for a cookie fresh and still warm, with the middle soft and the top crackly with sugar. I feel bewildered by both of them, outraged that they should reveal themselves so to me. There is a nearby crack of thunder, sharp-edged and explosive, not the rolling kind that starts and ends with an echo of itself, but a rifle blast. I stare out the window at lightning, jagged and brilliant, as sharply delineated as the thunder.

  “I should go before the downpour,” I say.

  “I’ll drive you,” Dr. Warren says, but I won’t let him.

  “I’ll make it before the rain. Maybe it’s cooler now.”

  Inconsequentials that fill the days and nights of our lives, nonsequiturs that pass for conversation and thought, pleasantries, promises, we rattle them off comfortingly and I am walking down the street toward my house, not on the sidewalk, but in the street, where walking is easier.

  The wind starts to blow when I am halfway between Magnolia and Rose Streets. I can see the Sagamore House ahead and I decide to stop there and wait for the rain to come and go. Probably I have planned this in a dark corner of my mind, but I have not consciously decided to visit the students so soon. I hurry, and the wind now has the town astir, filled with the same rustles that fill my house; scurrying ghosts, what have they to worry about if the rain should come before they settle in for the night?

  Along First Street most of the buildings are closed forever. The ten-cent store, a diner, fabric shop, all sharing a common front, all locked, with large soaped loops linking the wide windows one to one. The rain starts, enormous drops that are wind driven and hard. I can hear them against the tin roof of Mr. Larson’s store and they sound like hailstones, but then the wind drowns all noise but its own. Thunder and lightning now, and the mad wind. I run the rest of the way to Sagamore House and arrive there almost dry, but completely breathless.

  “Honey, for heaven’s sake, come in and get some coffee! Dorothea starts to lead me to the kitchen, but I shake my head and incline it toward the parlor off to the left of the entrance.

  “I’ll go in there and wait out the storm, if you don’t mind.” I can hear voices from the big room with its Victorian furniture and the grandfather clock that always stutters on the second tick. I hear it now: tick -- t ... t ... tick.

  “I’ll bring you a pot of coffee there, Janet,” Dorothea says with a nod. When she comes back with the tray and the china cup and the silver pot, she will call me Miss Matthews.

  I try to pat my hair down as I go into the parlor, and I know that I still present a picture of a girl caught in a sudden storm. I brush my arms, as if they are still wet, although they are not, and I shake my head, and at that moment there is another very close, very loud thunder crash, as if to justify my action. The boys stop talking when I enter. They are what I have known most of my life since college: young, fresh-looking, indistinguishable from seniors and graduate students the world over.

  I smile generally at them and sit down on one of the red velour couches with a coffee table before it that has a bowl of white roses, a dish of peppermints, magazines, three ashtrays, each carved and enameled and spotless. The whole room is like that: chairs and chairs, all carved, waxed, gleaming, footstools, end tables, console tables, Tiffany lampshades on cut-glass lamps ... The boys are at the other end of the room, six of them, two on the floor, the others in chairs, smoking, sipping beer or tall drinks. Dr. Staunton isn’t there.

  Dorothea brings my tray and does call me Miss Matthews and asks if I’d like anything else. I shake my head and she leaves me alone with the boys. There is a whispered conversation at the other end of the room, and one of the boys rises and comes to stand near me.

  “Hi, I’m Roger Philpott. Are you Janet Matthews? I think you invited us all to dinner at your house tomorrow.” Tall, thin, blond, very young-looking.

  I grin back and nod. I look toward the others and say, “Maybe by meeting just a few of you now, I’ll be able to keep your names straight.”

  Roger introduces the others, and I remember that there is a Johnny, a Victor, Doug, Sid, and Mickey. No one is grotesque, or even memorable. They regroup around me. Outside we can hear the hail, undeniably hail now, and the wind shrieking in the gables and eaves, all dwarfed by the
intermittent explosions of the thunder. Several times the lights flicker, and Dorothea returns with hurricane lamps that she places in strategic places, after a glance to see if I have accomplished my goal of becoming part of the group of students.

  Roger switches to coffee, but the other students reorder beer and gin and bitter lemon, and Dorothea leaves us again. Roger says, “I don’t know how long some of us will be able to take life in the country. What do you do around here?”

  I laugh and say, “I come here to rest each summer. I live in New York the rest of the year.”

  His interest quickens. “Oh, you work in the city then?”

  “Yes, Columbia Medical Center. I’m an anesthesiologist.”