Kendra's Window

Copyright (c) 1998 -- Marlowe C. Embree, Ph.D.

L'homme est un apprenti... la douleur est son maitre,

Et nul ne se connait tant qu'il n'a pas souffert.

C'est une dure loi, mais une loi supreme...

Qu'a ce triste prix tout doit etre achete. ¹

-- Alfred de Musset

¹ "Man is a servant;  sorrow is his master, and no one truly knows himself until he has suffered.  It is a hard law, but a supreme law, that only at this high price is anything truly purchased."

From where I sat, I could see the low-lying bank of storm clouds roll in from the west.  Dark and menacing they seemed, and the faint rumble of distant thunder a fitting counterpoint to my own thoughts.  Along the coast, a sprinkling of tiny lights began to appear.  The sea looked angry, its sullen slate-grey surface topped with surging crests of frothy white.  I rushed to close the window and draw the curtains.  "Kendra," I called.  "Come away from the window.  It's going to rain."

My daughter seemed not to hear me.  There was no response from the next room.  I rushed across the faded oak floor, my heels tapping out a staccato beat.  "Come away from the window," I repeated.  Kendra was sitting where she always sat, so close to the big bay window that her nose was almost touching the glass, leaning intently forward in the big metal chair, staring, always staring.  I looked, but there was nothing, only the sea and the cloud and the driving rain.  There never was anything, but Kendra was smiling, the secret smile that I had grown to hate.  "There's nothing to see," I said, forcing myself to seem nonchalant.  "You'll catch cold."  Kendra's window could not be opened, and I wasn't worried about her catching cold, but I had to say something.

"I saw him again," Kendra whispered.

I bit my lip, hard, until the tears almost came.  There was no point in getting angry.  Nor was there any point in asking who he was.  I knew as much about that as I would ever know, or Kendra would ever be willing to say.  "It's time for lunch," I replied at last.  "It's your favorite today, clam chowder.  Magda made it specially for you."

"That's nice."  Kendra turned adroitly, the ease with which she handled the wheelchair belying her weakness.  Five years she had sat in that chair, two-thirds of her life.  Yet if she cared she said nothing.  Kendra never said much about anything.  "Cornbread, too?"

"Cornbread, too."  I lifted her into my arms, though she was growing too heavy for me.  If Bill were here, I thought, he'd know what to do about him and all that nonsense.  But his fishing trips were all that kept us going during the slow months when the sighting of a tourist was an occasional aberration.  Tourist season was much too short, even in good years, and this had not been a good year.

There hadn't been too many good years, really.  Bill had wanted to let Magda go this year, but she'd been with us from the beginning and for once, uncharacteristically, Kendra had sulked for days upon hearing of the plan.  Finally he'd relented.  "It'll mean going out more," he said, "not that it'll do much good."     The Japanese fishing fleets had cut his business in half over the past five years.  Neither of us spoke much of it, but the day Bill had always feared, the day we would have to go back to the mainland, was looming ever nearer, like the storm that was already lashing the windows with a crescendo of wind and water.  Wordlessly I carried my daughter down the curving stairs to the old stone kitchen.  Magda was humming some rambling, ancient tune as she put the finishing touches to our noon meal.

"Hello, sugar!"  Magda's eyes lit up, as they always did, when she saw Kendra.  "Made your favorite today."  I deposited Kendra in the nearest chair, the one facing the stove.  I took the one beside her and sat, a little out of breath.  I brushed a stray wisp of hair from my eyes, forced myself to smile.  No point in thinking now.  Bill would be back soon and then we could do something.  But what?

"I know.  Mommy told me."  Kendra reached for the plate of crisp golden cornbread and took the biggest slice.  Her hands trembled only slightly as she layered it with honey.  "Did Daddy call this morning?"

We had an old shortwave radio set that Bill had built from a kit when Kendra was still a baby.  It had sputtered and crackled its way through many an anxious night when the winds were high and the seas were rough.  I had begged Bill to find time to call, but it was only noon and he and Olaf would be busy with the morning's catch.  If there was one, that is.  There was no point in worrying.  Not yet.

"No, honey, he didn't.  But I've got the set all warmed up and ready to go.  Now eat your soup."  Magda dipped the giant ladle into the earthenware pot and poured a generous helping of the pungent mixture into Kendra's bowl.

"Looks bad out there," Magda ventured.  From where I sat, I could not see out the kitchen window, and the warmth of the ancient wood stove kept out any hint of the chill.  But I could feel, more even than hear, the driving rain pummeling the house.  I hated October:  too late for any tourist business, to early for the seasonal cheer of the holidays or for Bill to hang up his fishing gear for another year.  I did not reply but nursed my chowder, picking at it cautiously, though it was excellent, as was all of Magda's cooking.

"Now don't you worry, Emily," Magda scolded.  It was impossible to say how old Magda was, though she was one of the few remaining lifelong residents of the island and that surely made her decades older than I was.  Though we were more friends now than employer and employee, Magda still called me "Mrs. Nash" except when she was consumed by her maternal urges, and then she spoke to me as I might to Kendra when she was frightened or sulky, though that wasn't often.  "Bill's fine.  He's seen enough storms and this one isn't bad for this time of year."  I knew she was right but couldn't shake my sense of foreboding.  "I suppose," I said, listlessly taking another mouthful of the now-lukewarm soup.

"Can I have some more, Mommy?"  Kendra was already helping herself and normally I might have corrected her manners, but I just nodded.  "Magda, you're the bestest cook.  I love you."

"And I love you, baby."  Magda had softened considerably since Kendra's birth.  Though I had always felt a kinship with her, I had to admit that Magda had never been an easy person to like.  Until Kendra, that is.  I didn't know why.  "Now finish your bread.  Then there's a surprise."

"Cake?"  Kendra squealed with delight.  "Never you mind.  Just eat, like a good girl."  Magda's desserts were the envy of every bed-and-breakfast on the island.  She guarded her recipes with the zeal of an ancient scribe entrusted with the Sacred Texts.  Knowing how good a cook she was, and happy that we knew it as well, she pretended not to care.  But her smile betrayed her.  I forced myself to finish the soup, normally my favorite as well as Kendra's.

Kendra carefully collected the few remaining crumbs of cornbread with a honey-encrusted knife and lazily dropped them into her mouth.  "I saw him today, Magda," she said.

"Kendra, stop it.  Magda doesn't want to hear about that."

"But I did, Mommy.  He was there."

"I said stop it."  I felt flushed with embarrassment.  I didn't usually scold Kendra in public.  Magda wasn't exactly "public", but it felt that way just now.  "I told you I don't want you to talk about that."

"Okay," Kendra said.  Her eyes were moist, but there was a look of grim determination on her face.  I'd seen that look before.  I'd mentioned it to Father Crandon once;  there weren't many people on the island I could trust with something like this.  "Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them," he had quoted.  That had been no help.  What was I going to do with my daughter?  If only Bill would get back.

"It's all right, Emily," Magda soothed, reaching out to put a hand on my shoulder.  If she knew what Kendra meant -- Lord knows I'd never discussed it with her -- she gave no sign of it.  "I'll just go wash up these dishes."

"You can't, in this weather," I protested.  We had no running water, just a rusted-over pump out back.  The rain was torrential now;  it was coming in great waves that engulfed the house and the island and everything for miles around.  I forcibly wrenched my mind away from the image of Bill's tiny boat, floundering in the wake of the storm.

"A little rain doesn't bother me," she said.  I was too tired to argue.  She picked up the washtub and swung the door open.

"Mommy, are you mad again?"  Kendra's smile was disingenuous but my heart sank at the question.  Was I so terrible a mother as that?  "No, honey, I'm not mad."  I reached out, held her close.  None of this was her fault, not really.  Whose fault it was I couldn't quite fathom.  "Just don't talk about it right now, okay?  Maybe later."

"Okay."  Her smile would have won over the blackest heart.  "Can we have the cake now?"

I laughed in spite of myself.  "How do you know it's cake?"

"It's always cake when Magda says it's a surprise."

"So it is."  

We giggled like two schoolchildren over our conspiratorial secret. Magda returned, drenched to the skin, and I ran to help her with the heavy basin of water.  "Now let me do those, Magda, really.  Sit down and dry yourself.  The idea, going out in this weather."  But I was glad she had done it, done it for me and for Kendra.  I handed her a towel and she rubbed her hair vigorously.  It stuck out in all directions;  she looked like Medusa, wild-eyed and spectral.  Kendra laughed.  I shook my head.  "Is it bad?"

"It's not good."  Despite my proffered help, she started in on the dishes as I knew she would.  She said no more, but her eyes were clouded with worry, unusual for her.  I sat and watched silently as Kendra ate her cake with obvious delight.  Mine might as well have been cardboard for all I could enjoy it.  "Kendra, Mommy needs to be alone for awhile," I said finally as she finished the last forkful of frosting.  "Let Magda take you upstairs."

Kendra was used to my moods shifting as unpredictably as the island weather.  "Okay," she said, holding out her arms to her friend.  Magda smiled, warmly at Kendra, a bit too solicitously at me.  Together, they ascended the stairs to Kendra's bedroom.

I poured myself a cup of coffee and let my mind wander idly over our years on the island.  It was a habit I had when I was upset or worried, a way of escaping the tyranny of the present moment.  Usually my thoughts turned to dark memories of days gone by, but past burdens somehow always seemed lighter than current or future ones.

Bill's idea of island life had seemed unrealistic to me from the beginning, but it was his dream and I had gone along with him.  I always went along in the end;  maybe that was the trouble.  Unless I spoke directly of my worries, Bill never seemed to sense them.  The eldest of five brothers, he had early learned responsibility and leadership but knew little of the ways of women.  I'd married him, I supposed, because he had reminded me of my own older brother.  But really the two weren't much alike.  With effort, I pulled myself away from this line of thought.  I loved Bill, and despite our problems, I wasn't going to let him go without a struggle.  If nothing else, there was Kendra to think about.

Kendra had come along at a bad time for us, though as I pondered the question, it was difficult to state exactly when the better time might have been.  I had been aware of her tiny, fragile existence from the start, long before there was any certain basis for thinking myself pregnant.  I just knew, at a level too deep for words, and felt an immediate kinship with her.  I instinctively recognized that I was bearing a daughter, and mentally christened her Kendra at once, though it took months of wrangling before Bill finally accepted the name.  He'd initially wanted a boy, of course, but Kendra was a calming presence in my life from the first moment, a still point in an otherwise turbulent emotional sea.

That winter a viral epidemic swept the island, and I spent over a month in bed racked with fever and with torturous dreams of losing Bill, losing Kendra, losing everything.  I ate little and slept less;  Bill grew haggard with worry and overwork, and though he said little, my heart lightened a trifle at this evidence that he cared about me.  Dr. Ventura prescribed one patent medicine after another;  each tasted as terrible as the last and proved equally ineffective.  I finally recovered on my own, though frail and desperately worried about Kendra.

Life on the island being what it was, a hospital delivery was out of the question.  The nearest obstetrician lived three hundred miles to the south, and it was clear that in his mind the human race began with the rank of corporate vice president.  He wouldn't have thought twice about us.  I turned to Magda, who had become a friend and confidant as well as a live-in employee, instead.  My own mother was, of course, scandalized by this idea, but her protestations that I would not survive a home birth were met with lavish reassurances from Magda's side.  She had delivered hundreds of babies, she insisted, and was as good as any doctor.  I was grateful beyond words for her;  making friends had never come easy for me, and most of the other islanders were taciturn and aloof.  Magda was an anomaly in many ways;  the child of a Hungarian father and a Slavic mother, she carried her mixed cultural heritage like a shield against the perplexities of American life.  Though the nearest Eastern Orthodox church was half a continent away, she was energized by a deep private faith.  "Don't worry, Matir Bozha will watch over you," she told me often when she saw my eyes darken with worry about my unborn daughter's health, our finances, or my relationship with my husband.  Lacking a suitable church, she had turned her bedroom into a prayer nook complete with icons and candles.  Often, at the end of the day, I could hear her muttering ancient Slavic phrases in prayer:  "Matir Bozha zmylujsia nad namy tepjerh ipo vremeny smjerty namje..."  The words meant nothing to me, though I could hear the echoes of untold centuries of tradition behind them.  I found it mildly amusing that she felt it necessary to address the Almighty in Russian, as her English was more than adequate for everyday use.  Whenever issues of faith came up in conversation, her speech became liberally sprinkled with Slavisms even though, I presumed, the Heavenly Host was quite multilingual.

My joy at the first sight of my daughter was cut immediately short when I saw her thin, spindly legs.  I knew at once that she could never hope to walk and was immersed in waves of deep guilt.  I was certain that Kendra's condition was my fault.  Slowly, though, I began to see that Kendra herself was little affected by her handicap.  Her disposition was as bright and stable as mine was dark and tumultuous.  She rarely cried, smiled early and often.  She seemed wise beyond her years, as if an elderly woman had been encased in an infant's body.  Looking into her placid blue eyes, I remembered an old legend that some babies were born with "old souls".  Those startling blue eyes were a source of wonder to me;  both Bill's and my eyes were a dark chocolate brown.  I could have imagined that she was not really our child, but given the troubles in our marriage, I knew better than to joke with Bill about that.  He always took me far too literally and too seriously.

Remembering my own childhood, I had hoped to give Kendra a little brother or sister as a playmate, but it was not to be.  Still, Kendra seemed happy in her small world;  Magda and I, and Bill when he was at home, seemed family and friends enough for her.  Self-contained, she seemed happy to amuse herself for hours at a stretch, playing with dolls or just sitting and staring out her window.  Of course, that was where all the trouble had started, too.  I didn't want to think about that.  I had tried to talk with her about it a few times, but she only looked at me intently and said nothing.  Kendra always seemed to understand far more than she could say, but at times she seemed almost patronizing to me.  Twenty-five years her senior, I felt distinctly annoyed at this, then ashamed of being annoyed.

The crackling of the shortwave radio pulled me away from my reverie.  "Emily?"  the voice faded in and out through the static.  "Are you there?  Come in."

I rushed to the handset, my heart in my throat.  Bill never called just to talk;  "the radio is for business" had been his only remark the one time I'd complained about that.  "Honey?  What's wrong?" I bleated.

"A squall's come up.  A bad one.  We're taking in water now."  Knowing my husband's penchant for understating things, I knew how bad it must be.  Bill never asked for help.  "I can't seem to reach the Coast Guard.  Can you try them for me?"

"Where are you?"  I reached for a faded navigational chart, cursing (not for the first time) Bill's chosen career and my own weak failure to insist that he become a landsman.  "Just off Sand Point, about a mile out," came the reply.  "But the current's strong.  Can't find our way inland."

A hurried consultation with the Coast Guard officer confirmed my worst fears.  "I can't guarantee that we'll find him in time, Mrs. Nash," he drawled.  "Visibility's down to a quarter mile, and it's gusting to forty knots.  But we'll give it a try.  Keep this frequency open."  He wouldn't have had to tell me that.

Magda hurried to my side.  I quickly filled her in, my eyes flooding with tears.  "Stay by the radio.  I have to tell Kendra.  Call me the minute you hear anything."

I rushed upstairs to where Kendra was sitting quietly by the window.  Her eyes were like stars, and she wore a shy smile.  My heart broke at the thought of the news I had to share.

"Sweetheart," I began, turning her chair toward me, "I have something to tell you."

"I know.  It's Daddy.  But it's going to be okay.  I talked with him.  He promised it would be fine."

"What?"  I could no longer make sense of much of what Kendra said.  The possibility of mental illness crossed my mind, as it had in the recent past.  This time I could not suppress it.  "How could you have talked with your father?  The radio's downstairs."

"Not with Daddy.  With him."  She turned to stare at the window.

I started shaking uncontrollably.  All my vague, pent-up, unfocused agitation coalesced into a sudden irrational rage at Kendra.  Aghast at myself even as I acted, I slapped her hard on the cheek.  She turned in surprise, tears filling her eyes.  I ached inside but could not stem my anger.  I took her head in my hands and shook her.  "Listen!  This is nonsense.  You've got to stop this right now.  There's nobody outside that window."  I turned and rushed from the room without waiting for a reply, ashamed and shaken.

Magda passed me on the landing, her dark eyes flashing fire.  "Ny i zhizny!  She's only a child.  Get hold of yourself."  I no longer could care about what she had heard or what she thought.  I was going to lose my husband to the sea, my daughter to some insane fantasy of who knows what that was swallowing her mind alive.  If I lost my only friend too, that would merely complete the triad.  I rushed past her without a word.  I had to get back to the radio.  I sat down at the kitchen table and began sobbing uncontrollably.

In about ten minutes Magda came back downstairs and wordlessly put her arms around me.  She had always been quick to understand, quick to forgive.  I doubted that Kendra would be so understanding this time.  "There, there," she comforted me as if I were a fractious child.  "It will all work out somehow."  I was sure she was wrong but accepted her love for what it was.

The call from the Coast Guard came through a few minutes later.  "This is the Oleandra.  We've got them.  Both are fine.  Boat's beyond repair."  Good, I thought.  Now Bill would have to stay with me.  There was no money for a replacement.  "Expect us at the station in under an hour."

I ran to the closet for my raincoat and the keys to our dilapidated old station wagon.  I was flooded with sudden relief and gratitude about Bill, mingled liberally with agony over my treatment of Kendra.  I looked helplessly at Magda.  "Go on then.  I'll tell Kendra for you."  There was no time for any better resolution.  I nodded and rushed out the door.

At the Coast Guard station, I rushed to Bill and kissed him, oblivious to the presence of Olaf and the captain or to his own obvious embarrassment.  "You great fool," I scolded.  "Maybe now you'll listen to me about this fishing business."  This would usually have provoked a fight but this time, for once, Bill merely smiled, a bit ruefully.

On the way home, I listened to Bill's story of the near disaster.  I was only half attentive to the details;  he was back, I was glad to be near him, but my apprehensions about Kendra were overcoming everything else for me.  Finally I told him, omitting the humiliating details of my own behavior.  "Is our daughter going crazy?"

"I don't know."  Bill's forehead was wrinkled with concern.  He never expressed much emotion -- he was the most annoyingly objective person I'd ever met -- but he was obviously troubled in his own way about his mysterious daughter.  "Lots of children have imaginary playmates.  That's normal enough.  But this seems way beyond that.  She really believes this.  Maybe we need to call in a professional.  God knows how we can afford it, what with the boat and all."

I had no reply.  I was glad, for once, for my husband's practical, analytical mind, so different from my own.  Surely the two of us working together could figure out something.  I reached for Bill's hand.  We drove the rest of the way home in silence, my head resting gratefully on his shoulder. How I needed a strength greater than my own.

At home, I pulled Magda aside as soon as the tearful reunions were over.  "How's Kendra?"  I probed.

"I don't know.  I'm worried about her this time.  She seems distant, too withdrawn.  I think maybe she's coming down with something."  This was Magda's tact;  we both knew what was really going on.

I hurried upstairs to Kendra's bedroom, my mind a jumble of unrelated fears.  I couldn't imagine what I was going to say to her.  I must be getting old, I thought;  not so many years ago, I'd have been able to come up with something on the spot.  Now, everything seemed a blur.  I scanned my memory banks for anything I could remember about an analogous situation but, surprisingly, came up blank.  I'd have to trust my instincts, or something.

As usual, Kendra was staring out the window.  She turned at my approach, and her warm smile told me that all would be well.  She was still my daughter after all.  I rushed to her side and hugged her.  "I'm so sorry," I said.  "I really love you."

"I know, Mommy.  It's all right.  Really."

I had to find a way to bridge the gulf, to make up for what I had done.  I sat down and started gently stroking her hair.  Suddenly I knew what to say.  "Tell me about him," I asked quietly.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes.  I'm sure.  I won't get mad, I promise.  I really want to know.  What does he look like?"

"Bright.  All shining."  Kendra's words were artless, unrehearsed.  I stared out the window, seeing only droplets of rain and a bank of dark clouds above a sullen sea.  What world did my daughter inhabit?  Were the things that were so real to me -- this floor, this wall, this table, this bed -- as amorphous and intangible to her as her mysterious imaginings were to me?  I ached to find a connection.  "And do you know what?"  she continued, after a brief pause.

"What?"  I smiled as encouragingly as I could.

"He wants me to join him.  Outside the window.  Mommy, I want to.  Can I?  Please?  He says it should be soon."

I startled.  What could she mean?  I glanced in fear at the window, then steadied myself.  Even a normal seven-year-old could not break a one-inch thick pane of tempered glass.  The window was sealed and could not be opened;  I'd tried once, with a crowbar, and had failed.  Besides, Kendra was confined to her wheelchair.  "I wish you'd stay with me," I said at last.

"I'll try, Mommy.  But I'm tired now.  I want to go to sleep."

"Of course, darling."  I lifted her into her bed and kissed her good night.  She seemed slightly feverish, and I thought again of Magda's words.  With the damp weather and all the excitement, I felt unwell myself.  Still, Kendra had never been ill before.  I filed the observation away as one more thing to worry about when the time was right.

Bill was already asleep from exhaustion when I arrived downstairs.  Magda had a steaming cup of tea waiting for me, and we sat together at the kitchen table.  I poured out my fears about Kendra, Bill's remark about the need for professional help.

"Absurd," Magda retorted.  "That child's as normal as you are.  Not everyone sees the world in the same way.  Once you turn her over to some doctor, you really would lose her.  You'd never get her back then."

"I know," I agreed.  "But what else can we do?  I'm losing her now.  She really thinks there's someone outside her window."

"Maybe there is."

A sudden thought sent chills up my spine.  "You don't mean -- you don't think --"

"No, child.  It's a second-story window above a sheer sea cliff.  You can rest easy about that.  There's been no man at her window."

"Then what?"

Magda rose, taking my empty tea cup away to wash.  She wore an enigmatic expression I could not fathom.  "Maybe it was Matir Bozha."

I lay awake in Bill's arms most of the night trying to make sense of it all.  Magda's remark meant nothing to me;  I finally dismissed it as Slavic superstition, or evidence of impending senility.  What I could not dismiss was the dilemma of what to do about Kendra.  What if Magda was right about the psychiatrist?  What if, in destroying Kendra's fantasies, we ended up destroying her as well, or alienating her from us forever?  Yet we clearly could not let things go on as they had been.  My daughter was losing all touch with reality.  In another five years, what would she have become?  I could not discern the right course.  Convention said to defer the problem to the experts.  Love said to trust my daughter's heart.  I could not decide and finally fell into a troubled sleep.  I dimly sensed that something profound was about to take place, but what it might be eluded my awareness.  Half-formed, chaotic dreams filled my mind in which I was pulled back and forth between two worlds -- my world, Kendra's world.  It was an uncomfortable feeling.  Which of us, I wondered, had the better grasp on what was true and important?

I awoke to Magda's screams for help.  "Emily!  Bill!  Come quickly!  It's Kendra."  I raced upstairs, Bill following close behind.

Kendra was lying quietly on her bed.  Her head was turned toward the window, her eyes wide in anticipation, her smile beatific.  She did not stir when I called, nor did she appear to be breathing.  "I'll call the doctor," shouted Bill as he sprinted back downstairs.  Magda shook her head and said nothing.

I reached for Kendra's hand, outstretched as if in greeting.  It was already cold and stiff, and I saw at once how things stood.  They thought she was dead, but at last I recognized the truth.  My daughter had finally decided to join her Friend outside the Window.