Last Summer at Mars Hill Read Online Free PDF Page B

dying , she hadn’t since that first day said cancer. She’d left those words with the doctor, along with the scrips for morphine and Fiorinal, all that could be offered to her now. “Come on,” she said, and walked through the sliding doors. “I’m supposed to have lunch with Mrs. Grose and Diana, and it’s already late.”
    Moony stared at her in disbelief: was her mother being stoic or just crazy? But Ariel didn’t say anything else, and after a moment her daughter followed her to the car.
    In Mars Hill’s little chapel Jason sat and smoked. On the altar, in front of him were several weeks’ accumulated offerings from the denizens of Mars Hill. An old-fashioned envelope with a glassine window, through which he could glimpse the face of a twenty-dollar bill—that was from Mrs. Grose, who always gave the money she’d earned from readings (and then retrieved it at the end of the summer). A small square of brilliantly woven cloth from Diana, whose looms punctuated the soft morning with their steady racketing. A set of blueprints from Rvis Capricorn. Shasta Daisy’s battered Ephemera. The copy of Paul Bowles’ autobiography that Jason’s father had been reading on the flight out from the West Coast. In other words, the usual flotsam of love and whimsy that washed up here every summer. From where Jason sat, he could see his own benefaction, a heap of small white roses, already limp but still giving out their heady sweet scent, and a handful of blackberries he’d picked from the thicket down by the pier. Not much of an offering, but you never knew.
    From beneath his roses peeked the single gift that puzzled him, a lacy silk camisole patterned with pale pink-and-yellow blossoms. An odd choice of offering, Jason thought. Because for all the unattached adults sipping chardonnay and Bellinis of a summer evening, the atmosphere at Mars Hill was more like that of summer camp. A chaste sort of giddiness ruled here, compounded of equal parts of joy and longing, that always made Jason think of the garlanded jackass and wistful fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His father and Ariel and all the rest stumbling around in the dark, hoping for a glimpse of Them, and settling for fireflies and the lights from Dark Harbor. Mars Hill held surprisingly little in the way of unapologetic lust—except for himself and Moony, of course. And Jason knew that camisole didn’t belong to Moony.
    At the thought of Moony he sighed and tapped his ashes onto the dusty floor. It was a beautiful morning, gin-clear and with a stiff warm breeze from the west. Perfect sailing weather. He should be out with his father on the Wendameen. Instead he’d stayed behind, to write and think. Earlier he’d tried to get through to Moony somewhere in Bangor, but Jason couldn’t send his thoughts any farther than from one end of Mars Hill to the other. For some reason, smoking cigarettes seemed to help. He had killed half a pack already this morning, but gotten nothing more than a headache and a raw throat. Now he had given up. It never seemed to work with anyone except Moony, anyhow, and then only if she was nearby.
    He had wanted to give her some comfort. He wanted her to know how much he loved her, how she meant more to him than anyone or anything in the world, except perhaps his father. Was it allowed, to feel this much for a person when your father was HIV-positive? Jason frowned and stubbed out his cigarette in a lobster-shaped ashtray, already overflowing with the morning’s telepathic aids. He picked up his notebook and Rapidograph pen and, still frowning, stared at the letter he’d begun last night.
Dearest Moony,
    (he crossed out est, it sounded too fussy)
I just want you to know that I understand how you feel. When John died it was the most horrible thing in the world, even worse than the divorce because I was just a kid then. I just want you to know how much I love you, you mean more than anyone or anything in the world, and
    And what? Did