The pills I had dropped, I thought. "Mama?"

"Take the baby. Noble, and get her cleaned up for dinner. I have to get started on it," she said, rising from the chair.

I heard the door slam upstairs and a moment later Dave's footsteps on the stairway. He descended like someone going to his own funeral, his head down, his shoulders slumped. I took Baby Celeste's hand and started for the stairway. He paused and looked at me., and when he did. I saw such pain in his eyes, my own heart closed like a fist in my chest. His face was white with shock and agony. He just shook his head and continued down the stairs. He knew, of course. that we had heard the whole argument between him and Betsy.

Betsy's door was shut tight. I took Baby Celeste into the bathroom and helped her wash up and fix her hair. She loved to brush her own hair now and was very aware of how she looked, her clothes and shoes.

Betsy did not come down for dinner. Dave ate sparingly. Mama continually urged him to eat and not get himself sick over the situation.

"We'll do what we have to do, Dave," she said, putting her hand over his.

He nodded. "I'm sorry. Sarah. It wasn't supposed to be like this. I wasn't supposed to be bringing you new and bigger problems."

"For better or for worse," Mama recited. "In sickness and in health."

He smiled and looked a bit cheered. She threw me a glance that made me shudder a little. It was more like a conspiratorial glance. What did she think I knew or understood? I really felt sorry for Dave. and I was beginning to feel that I was part of some great betrayal. Even though I had no sympathy or love. for Betsy, I hated seeing him so distraught and defeated.

After we ate, Mama prepared a dish and told me to take it upstairs to see if Betsy would eat.

You don't have to do that. Sarah," Dave said.

"She's old enough to know to come down if she wants something to eat. 'We're not going to cater to her anymore, not now."

"We won't," Mama assured him, "but we can't let her neglect her health. Dave, especially now, now can we?"

He had to nod, to admit she was right, take it up to her."

"No. Noble can do it Besides, she might not open the door for you. She's in a funk. She's actually just embarrassed and feeling very guilty, and the sight of you only reminds her of her own failing."

"You're probably right about that, Sarah. Your mother is much wiser than I am. Noble. Maybe. she does get good advice from a higher source."

Mama smiled and then looked firmly at me. I didn't want to have anything to do with Betsy. but I took the plate upstairs and knocked on her door.

"I have some food for you." I said when she didn't respond.

I expected she wouldn't answer and I would just turn and bring the food downstairs, but to my surprise, she opened the door abruptly. She was standing there in her bra and panties.

"You're just gloating, aren't you? You and your mommy," she accused. I shook my head. "No, of course not. by should we gloat?"

"That's all right. I've got a big surprise for all of you." She turned back to her closet. She plucked a blouse off the rack and slipped it on, turning to smile at me as she buttoned up. ''You like watching a girl get dressed?"

"I came up here to give you this." I nodded at the plate. "Do you want it or not?"

She looked at the food. "I'm sick of the food your mother makes. Nothing is normal. I bet you've never had a piece of pizza." She turned and found a pair of jeans to put on.

"So you don't want it?" I asked, tired of her quips and nasty remarks. "You are bright," she said, sitting to put on her shoes.

I glanced to her right and saw a suitcase. 'Mat are you doing?"

"What am I doing? I'm getting a life, getting away from this insane asylum." "How can you leave?"

I asked, more curious than happy about it.

"Watch me and you'll get the idea. Maybe someday you'll wake up, realize you're becoming weirder and weirder, and you'll leave yourself, although I have big doubts. After all, how can you stop reading children's books and talking to shadows?"

She smiled at the expression on my face. "Oh, you didn't know I overheard you whispering out there sometimes, did you? Or that I put my ear to your door and heard you talking to no one. You're crazy, aren't you? Do you see dead people?" she asked. laughing.

"I know your mother thinks she does. Everyone knows about that.

"Which," she added, running a brush through her hair, "makes me wonder what the hell my father was thinking when he asked her to marry him."

"You just can't run away. You have a big problem to solve."

"Big problem?"

"We heard. We couldn't help but hear the way you were screaming at your father."

"Oh, so you're worried about me. Noble man?

Well, don't," she snapped, and tossed her brush onto the vanity table. "I don't need your help or your mother's or my father's either."

She scooped up her suitcase.

"'Where are you going?"

"Away," she sang.

"By yourself.'"

"No, not by myself, stupid. I met someone who's fun to be with."

"You mean Roy?"

"No, not Roy. Roy is too in love with himself and his glory as a college star. He's not going anywhere."

"But... who "Baby? You want to know whose baby I have inside me? Well, that's for me to know and you to wonder about." She laughed, "Don't look so surprised.

It makes you look even dumber than you are. Here, I changed my mind. Give me the food."

She reached out and with her free hand took the plate from me.

"This is what I think of your mother's cooking."

She dumped it on the floor. Then she pushed past me and started down the stairs, her suitcase banging against the balustrade. Dave came out of the living room and saw her descending.

"Where do you think you're going now?" he demanded. "Away from here!" she shouted, and opened the front door. I watched from the top of the stairway.

"Betsy, don't you dare leave this house," Dave warned. "I mean it. If you run off now with all these problems. I won't help you. I won't send you money. I won't a""

'Don 't... " she screamed, her eyes bulging.

"Stay here and die." She stepped out and slammed the door so hard the house shook.

Dave lowered his head like a flag of defeat. I came dawn the stairs slowly and Mama came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. She looked at Dave, who stood by the closed front door, and then she looked up at me. She was smiling.

And that smile turned my blood to ice.

14.

Dave Takes Sick .

Knowing that his daughter was pregnant and had run off with some new stranger she had met even after he had achieved what he thought was a new beginning for himself and her caused Dave to become as despondent as he had been the day he learned his son, Elliot, had died. He as much as admitted it to Mama, "No matter what I do or try to do. I'm a failure as a father. Sarah. I've lost both my children. My whole family is gone. I feel like a man in mourning."

I wanted so much to tell him that all was not lost, that he was actually living with and caring for his own grandchild. but I had no idea what horrible things might come from such a revelation. It would lead to another and another, and our world would unravel like a ball of string. Only Mama could unwrap the secrets in our world. Only she knew what should be told and when something should be told. To defy her was to defy the spiritual family who protected and loved us. I would surely suffer some terrible punishment for it. I might even be sent to hell.

The tears I shed for Dave could fall only behind my eyes. I knew he was the kind of person who would worry more about my sadness than his own, and that would make me feel even worse, make me feel even more like a liar and a deceiver. Maybe the real reason Mama restricted the number of mirrors in our house was to prevent me from looking at myself, from seeing who I was and what I was. She was always worried about what my face revealed, even if only to me.

"You might as well be the front page of a newspaper, shouting the headlines. Noble. Stop scowling," she would say, or. "Stop pouting. And for God sakes, when we go anywhere, stop pressing your nose to the car window and looking out at everyone and everything with such desperate interest. Anyone would think you had been kept locked up in the basement all your life."

Would I dare tell her that I did feel that way sometimes? Did I have to tell her? Couldn't she see my thoughts scribbled over my face anyway?

Dave was certainly getting easy to read. The more forlorn he became, the more drawn and haggard he appeared, the more concerned I grew. I watched and waited for Mama to do more to help him, but she didn't appear to be worried. Was everything exaggerated in my eyes? Surely, she could see more than I could see. I thought. Yet I knew he wasn't eating well or for that matter sleeping too well. I heard him get up often late at night and walk softly downstairs to make himself a cup of warm milk, or. as I discovered one night when I came out and looked for him, to just sit in the old rocking chair and stare out at the night as if he were waiting up for Betsy, who had gone out on a date. Did he wake up thinking, hoping, all that had occurred was only a dream, only a bad dream? Go down and sit in the rocking chair, he told himself. She"ll be home soon.

More and more he was drawn to the old rocking chair. He would even sit in it after dinner rather than sit on the sofa or the big cushioned chair. I wondered why he was drawn to it. Was he finally making a spiritual connection the way Mama often did with things in our house, things that had belonged to our ancestors? Did it give him relief or was he unable to resist it? Did it keep him trapped in his own depression?

Shadows deepened in every corner, walls creaked, and the chandeliers swung ever so slightly with every closed or opened door, sometimes their bulbs blinking like eyes. The whispering I often heard in the darkness grew louder and more frequent. Did Dave hear it. too? Did he think he was going mad? I saw a strange darkness in his eyes as he looked toward every sound. He was truly like someone who had stepped into a pool of depression, a quicksand of despair drawing him down, down. down.

He no longer rushed to ask Mama to take their famous romantic walks in the moonlight or starlight after dinner. and I noticed he would often drift into his own deep thoughts so quickly and for so long, he was even unaware of Baby Celeste pulling on his pants leg in an attempt to get him to pay attention to her.

"Dave." Mama would say.

"What?" His eyes would flutter as he looked about the room.

"The baby." Mama would nod at her sitting at his feet and looking up at him.

"Oh. I'm sorry. Hi, Celeste," he would finally say, and lift her into his lap, but his concentration was still directed elsewhere, lost in his thoughts. Was he thinking about his dead son or his errant daughter?

Weeks and weeks passed. Betsy didn't call or send any letters, which, according to Dave, was not unusual.

"Whenever she ran off like this. I would hear nothing or know nothing until the day she returned.''

"Once she sees how much trouble she's in, shell come hurrying back," Mama assured him, but he shook his head.

"Things are different this time," he muttered.

"There's just too much resentment in her heart. I've made mistakes, many, many mistakes."

Mama assured him he hadn't, but he seemed inconsolable. During the next few weeks, he ate even less and less, lost weight, and developed dark circles around his eyes. He plodded along with his head down, his shoulders turned inward, going to work in a robotic, mechanical manner, and rarely brought home any interesting stories or told us about funny occurrences at the pharmacy.

"I know you're taking your vitamins," Mama told him. "but you need some of this, too."

Periodically she had him drink one of her herbal mixes designed to restore energy. Only, this time it didn't seem to be working as quickly as it usually did for others. including me.

Eventually. Dave began to miss work. He would wake up with a bad migraine, take the medicine he dispensed to others, then sleep most of the day. Mama gave him her own remedies as well, and sometimes they worked rapidly and he was up and about and back to work, but more often than not, he remained lethargic and, in any case, never seemed to regain the glow of happiness and enthusiasm with which he had come into our lives.

Whenever he did show an interest in something, especially something he might do with me, I quickly agreed. I took rides with him to get things for the farm, had lunch with him at a fast-food place, even though Mama hated them, and willingly left whatever I was doing when he asked me to join him. I even went for walks with him in the afternoon. He would stop to look at his former home and tell me how he had felt when they had first moved in.

"It wasn't much to look at when we first moved in. Betsy hated it, of course. but Elliot seemed excited enough about it. He wasn't the great help on the property you are to Sarah, but he wasn't depressed or negative. After a while, he did seem to get along with his new friends. That's true, isn't it?" he asked me, as if he wasn't sure. "Eventually he was happy here, wasn't he?"

"I would say so. yes," I told him.

That pleased him, and seeing him smile about anything these days was a boon.

"I didn't have anywhere near as wonderful a place to roam when I was a boy. Noble. I grew up in Newark, New Jersey. We lived in a nice town house, but we had no yard as such. My parents weren't wealthy people, but we were comfortable. I could go to the parks or take rides to go hiking, of course, but to just step out your front door and have all this" a" he waved his hand a" you're a lucky kid. Noble, a lucky kid. Your ancestors knew what they were doing when they settled here."

"Mama told us our great-great-grandpa Jordan's heart pounded the way a man's heart pounds when he sees a beautiful woman when he set eyes on this land.

She said he fell in love with every tree, every blade of puss, every rock he saw and just knew he had to live here and work his farm here and build his home here,"

I recited. I had heard it enough times when Noble and I were growing up.

"Yes, well. I can understand the way he felt. I was very happy to find that house and so cheaply. too.

Of course. I didn't know the full story about the previous owner and what people thought he might have done to your sister. but I think I still would have gone forward. I'm glad I did," He smiled at me.

"Otherwise. I wouldn't have met your mother and I wouldn't have met you."

We were on another late-afternoon walk. This time we had followed an old trail through the woods.

one I hadn't taken for some time. I was reluctant to do it now, but he was insistent. The trail was overgrown, but not enough to hinder our walk. I knew where it would take us, and that set my heart to thumping faster. It wasn't long before we reached the creek, not far from where my brother had died. It seemed the stuff of dreams now, nightmares.

The creek wasn't as full as usual, but it was as clear as ever, the rocks beneath the water gleaming in the afternoon sunshine. We saw small fish swimming in what looked like maddened and frantic circles and a turtle struggling to get to the top of a rock.

"He probably thinks he's climbing Mount Everest," Dave said, then took a deep breath. "You can breathe here. You can feel alive. Yes, you were a lucky kid, a lucky kid," he muttered, if only Elliot wouldn't have been as wild and reckless. We would have had some family, huh. Noble? You guys would have been brothers in the true sense of the word.

Maybe together, you would have had a positive impact on Betsy.

"Oh, well," he sighed. They say life's an accident and death is an appointment you have to keep. Some things are just meant to be. What do you think?"

"I don't know." I really didn't.

"Right. Why should you be so philosophical at your age? You have your whole life ahead of you."