The Mermaid Chair - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

SUE MONK KIDD is the author of the novels, The Secret Life of Bees and The Mermaid Chair, and the memoirs, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, When the Heart Waits, and Firstlight, a collection of early writings. The Secret Life of Bees has spent more than 125 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was adapted into an award-winning movie. The Mermaid Chair, a #1 New York Times bestseller, was adapted into a television movie. Each of her novels has been translated into more than 24 languages. The recipient of numerous literary awards, Sue lives in South Carolina with her husband.

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CHAPTER ONE

February 17, 1988, I opened my eyes and heard a procession of sounds: first the phone going off on the opposite side of the bed, rousing us at 5:04 a.m. to what could only be a calamity, then rain pummeling the roof of our old Victorian house, sluicing its sneaky way to the basement, and finally small puffs of air coming from Hughfs lower lip, each one perfectly timed, like a metronome.

Twenty years of this puffing. Ifd heard it when he wasnft even asleep, when he sat in his leather wing chair after dinner, reading through the column of psychiatric journals rising from the floor, and it would seem like the cadence against which my entire life was set.

The phone rang again, and I lay there, waiting for Hugh to pick up, certain it was one of his patients, probably the paranoid schizophrenic whofd phoned last night convinced the CIA had him cornered in a federal building in downtown Atlanta.

A third ring, and Hugh fumbled for the receiver. 8Yes, hello,e he said, and his voice came out coarse, a hangover from sleep.

I rolled away from him then and stared across the room at the faint, watery light on the window, remembering that today was Ash Wednesday, feeling the inevitable rush of guilt.

My father had died on Ash Wednesday when I was nine years old, and in a convoluted way, a way that made no sense to anyone but me, it had been at least partially my fault.

There had been a fire on his boat, a fuel-tank explosion, theyfd said. Pieces of the boat had washed up weeks later, including a portion of the stern with Jes-Sea printed on it. Hefd named the boat for me, not for my brother, Mike, or even for my mother, whom hefd adored, but for me, Jessie.

I closed my eyes and saw oily flames and roaring orange light. An article in the Charleston newspaper had referred to the explosion as suspicious, and there had been some kind of investigation, though nothing had ever come of it=things Mike and Ifd discovered only because wefd sneaked the clipping from Motherfs dresser drawer, a strange, secret place filled with fractured rosaries, discarded saint medals, holy cards, and a small statue of Jesus missing his left arm. She had not imagined we would venture into all that broken-down holiness.

I went into that terrible sanctum almost every day for over a year and read the article obsessively, that one particular line: 8Police speculate that a spark from his pipe may have ignited a leak in the fuel line.e

Ifd given him the pipe for Fatherfs Day. Up until then he had never even smoked.

I still could not think of him apart from the word 8suspicious,e apart from this day, how hefd become ash the very day people everywhere=me, Mike, and my mother=got our foreheads smudged with it at church. Yet another irony in a whole black ensemble of them.

8Yes, of course I remember you,e I heard Hugh say into the phone, yanking me back to the call, the bleary morning. He said, 8Yes, wefre all fine here. And how are things there?e

This didnft sound like a patient. And it wasnft our daughter, Dee, I was sure of that. I could tell by the formality in his voice. I wondered if it was one of Hughfs colleagues. Or a resident at the hospital. They called sometimes to consult about a case, though generally not at five in the morning.

I slipped out from the covers and moved with bare feet to the window across the room, wanting to see how likely it was that rain would flood the basement again and wash out the pilot light on the hot-water heater. I stared out at the cold, granular deluge, the bluish fog, the street already swollen with water, and I shivered, wishing the house were easier to warm.

Ifd nearly driven Hugh crazy to buy this big, impractical house, and even though wefd been in it seven years now, I still refused to criticize it. I loved the sixteen-foot ceilings and stained-glass transoms. And the turret=God, I loved the turret. How many houses had one of those? You had to climb the spiral stairs inside it to get to my art studio, a transformed third-floor attic space with a sharply slanted ceiling and a skylight=so remote and enchanting that Dee had dubbed it the 8Rapunzel tower.e She was always teasing me about it. 8Hey, Mom, when are you gonna let your hair down?e

That was Dee being playful, being Dee, but we both knew what she meant=that Ifd become too stuffy and self-protected. Too conventional. This past Christmas, while she was home, Ifd posted a Gary Larson cartoon on the refrigerator with a magnet that proclaimed me worldfs greatest mom. In it, two cows stood in their idyllic pasture. One announced to the other, 8I donft care what they say, Ifm not content.e Ifd meant it as a little joke, for Dee.

I remembered now how Hugh had laughed at it. Hugh, who read people as if they were human Rorschachs, yet hefd seen nothing suggestive in it. It was Dee whofd stood before it an inordinate amount of time, then given me a funny look. She hadnft laughed at all.

To be honest, I had been restless. It had started back in the fall=this feeling of time passing, of being postponed, pent up, not wanting to go up to my studio. The sensation would rise suddenly like freight from the ocean floor=the unexpected discontent of cows in their pasture. The constant chewing of all that cud.

With winter the feeling had deepened. I would see a neighbor running along the sidewalk in front of the house, training, I imagined, for a climb up Kilimanjaro. Or a friend at my book club giving a blow-by-blow of her bungee jump from a bridge in Australia. Or=and this was the worst of all=a TV show about some intrepid woman traveling alone in the blueness of Greece, and Ifd be overcome by the little river of sparks that seemed to run beneath all that, the blood/sap/wine, aliveness, whatever it was. It had made me feel bereft over the immensity of the world, the extraordinary things people did with their lives=though, really, I didnft want to do any of those particular things. I didnft know then what I wanted, but the ache for it was palpable.

I felt it that morning standing beside the window, the quick, furtive way it insinuated itself, and I had no idea what to say to myself about it. Hugh seemed to think my little collapse of spirit, or whatever it was I was having, was about Deefs being away at college, the clich+d empty nest and all that.

Last fall, after wefd gotten her settled at Vanderbilt, Hugh and Ifd rushed home so he could play in the Waverly Harris Cancer Classic, a tennis tournament hefd been worked up about all summer. Hefd gone out in the Georgia heat for three months and practiced twice a week with a fancy Prince graphite racket. Then Ifd ended up crying all the way home from Nashville. I kept picturing Dee standing in front of her dorm waving good-bye as we pulled away. She touched her eye, her chest, then pointed at us=a thing shefd done since she was a little girl. Eye. Heart. You. It did me in. When we got home, despite my protests, Hugh called his doubles partner, Scott, to take his place in the tournament, and stayed home and watched a movie with me. An Officer and a Gentleman. He pretended very hard to like it.

The deep sadness I felt in the car that day had lingered for a couple of weeks, but it had finally lifted. I did miss Dee=of course I did=but I couldnft believe that was the real heart of the matter.

Lately Hugh had pushed me to see Dr. Ilg, one of the psychiatrists in his practice. Ifd refused on the grounds that she had a parrot in her office.

I knew that would drive him crazy. This wasnft the real reason, of course=I have nothing against peoplefs having parrots, except that they keep them in little cages. But I used it as a way of letting him know I wasnft taking the suggestion seriously. It was one of the rare times I didnft acquiesce to him.

8So shefs got a parrot, so what?e hefd said. 8Youfd like her.e Probably I would, but I couldnft quite bring myself...