Neither Present Time

by Caren J. Werlinger

  “Anything?” Beryl whispered.

  “I can’t tell,” Aggie murmured, watching Cory’s face closely.

  Cory laid her head back, closing her eyes as she let the hand holding the papers fall to the bed. Though she couldn’t express it, she had realized what she was looking at – the hours and hours I spent trying to quantify exactly how much Father had taken and from which accounts, and here, hidden in the den all these years, was everything. That’s what he tried to tell me and now I can’t tell them.

  “Was this what you were trying to tell us about?” Aggie asked, not really expecting to receive affirmation from Cory.

  Cory shook her head.

  “Could you write it for us?” Beryl suggested.

  Cory’s left eye opened a bit wider, which Aggie took as an affirmative. Scrabbling through her bag, she found an envelope and pen. She tried to place the pen in Cory’s right hand, but it fell from the limp fingers which had no grip. Trying her left hand, Cory was at least able to close her fingers around the instrument. Aggie placed the envelope on top of a magazine and tried to hold it at an angle that would permit Cory to write.

  Laboriously, the pen scratched, making worm-like squiggles as Cory’s unsteady hand moved over the paper. After working agonizingly for a long time, Cory frowned and dropped her hand, exhausted.

  Together, Beryl and Aggie examined the envelope, trying to decipher the squiggly lines there.

  “H?” Aggie made out

  Beryl nodded. “H… e… Helen?” she guessed.

  Cory nodded.

  “But I can’t tell what the next word is,” Aggie muttered.

  “Neither can I,” echoed the guys, looking over her shoulder.

  They were interrupted by the doctor coming in with a nurse to check on Cory.

  “We’ll go wait outside,” Beryl volunteered.

  Ridley and George followed her down the hall to the small waiting room for the neuro unit. The flat grey twilight coming in through the windows as evening fell did nothing to soften the harsh glare of the fluorescents above. Mutely, they sat, each automatically reaching for a magazine which they stared at, rather than reading, as they flipped through the pages.

  * * *

  How many days has it been now? Beryl wondered as she stared at the same magazine covers scattered about on the little tables between chairs.

  Ridley and George had left – when? Yesterday? Maybe. The days were all melding together, no one any different from the others, punctuated only by a few hours of sleep here and there. “Call me every day, or if anything happens,” Ridley had insisted. Aggie’s parents and brothers had had to be told, and they had descended – “like vultures,” Aggie had told Beryl disgustedly. “They don’t care that she gets well. They just want whatever they can get from her. They think they’re owed something just because their name is Bishop.”

  Beryl had stayed out of the way as much as possible, alternating her time between the dismal waiting room and the cafeteria, only coming in to be with Cory when it was just her and Aggie.

  In the waiting room now, she nodded to a middle-aged couple who had been there all day as well. His father had suffered a brain aneurysm and was having surgery.

  “We’re still waiting,” said the wife with a tired smile, a mangled tissue clenched in her hand.

  How strange it is, Beryl thought, taking one of the hard plastic chairs, her elbows on her knees, forehead resting on her hands. We don’t even know one another’s names, but we learn these intimate details about each other – matters, literally, of life and death, simply because we’re thrown in here together and we feel this strange need to explain why we’re here, almost like we’re embarrassed about being caught here, all raw and emotional.

  Objectively, she knew and had repeatedly told herself, at Cory’s age, something had been bound to happen at some point, but it was so hard to see her this incapacitated and distressed over her inability to communicate. Why couldn’t she have died in her beloved garden, or just gone to sleep and not awakened? Damn, I hate hospitals, she thought, getting up and pacing restlessly.

  She heard sudden cries and moans behind her, and turned to see the middle-aged couple clinging to one another as a white-coated man sat uncomfortably beside them. With an awkward pat on a shoulder, the doctor left them to deal with their grief. Feeling like a voyeur, Beryl sidled away down the corridor, fighting the urge to run as fast as she could.

  Down the hall, she saw Aggie’s mother, Debbie, emerge from Cory’s room, saying loudly, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Aunt Cory.” She gestured Aggie from the room and, together, they had a whispered conversation in the hall before Debbie walked away toward the elevator.

  Aggie saw Beryl and waited for her.

  “What was that about?” Beryl asked.

  “Oh,” Aggie sighed tiredly. “She’s after me to start looking at nursing homes, and reminding me how expensive they are.”

  Just then, a pair of young women entered the room, saying hello to Cory and Aggie.

  “It’s the therapists,” Aggie explained. “They come a couple of times a day.”

  “Let’s go eat something, then,” Beryl suggested. She wasn’t really any hungrier than Aggie, but someone had to make them eat, rest, do a few normal things – what’s normal now? she wondered. Normal has changed.

  Chapter 42

  Everyone in America is glued to televisions and radios. They will all remember where they were on November 22nd, 1963. Corinne, as she sits at Helen’s bedside, is vaguely aware that some tragic event has occurred elsewhere, but her world is here – in this room. Helen’s brave fight against her cancer is ending, and Corinne has insisted on taking care of her at home.

  “Why?” she asked when the doctor suggested she go to the hospital. “You can’t make her better. Can’t we just keep her comfortable here?”

  “This seems to be your lot in life,” the doctor sighs with a mix of admiration and sympathy. Corinne is still pretty, but her eyes have lost some of their light and her face is worn and fatigued. He arranges for a nurse to come to the home to assist Corinne and Mary.

  Terrence, who rarely came in to see Candace after her stroke, comes to visit with Helen daily when he gets home from the hardware store. And Mary, who has come to see Helen as another daughter, has been an invaluable help to Corinne in caring for her.

  Helen’s parents came to Columbus the past summer as Helen became too weak to travel. They were clearly uncomfortable being around their daughter.

  “It is a terrible thing to have your child go before you,” Mary said to them sympathetically, but Helen laughed and said to Corinne later, “I’m not sure what shocked them more – the realization that I would go before them, or the reminder that they’re mortal as well.”

  Until recently, Helen was up, often sitting in her garden, her frail body wrapped in sweaters and heavy coats against fall’s chill. Peters, the gardener, doffing his cap respectfully, would still consult with her about the garden’s upkeep and future projects.

  Corinne has stood, watching from the back patio as they plan, as if there are going to be future projects, she thinks angrily.

  Helen, as if she can feel Corinne’s anger, turns to her as Peters totters off, gesturing her over. Reluctantly, Corinne obeys, sitting stiffly next to Helen on the bench.

  “Don’t hate it,” Helen says, taking her hand.

  “What?”

  “The garden. Don’t hate it because it reminds you of me.” She turns to face Corinne. Her features are skeletal, she has lost so much weight, but to Corinne, she is still the handsome, cocky woman she first met twenty-three years ago. “Love it,” Helen says. “Care for it as you have cared for me.”

  “It’s so unfair,” Corinne says, her voice cracking. “Doesn’t it make you angry?”

  Helen holds her hand more tightly. “It is unfair,” she concedes. “But… the things we’ve seen in our lifetime…” She shakes her head. “We may not have had as much time as we would have wished, but the
love we squeezed into those years is more than most people get in a lifetime.”

  Corinne reminds herself of that conversation as she sits and listens to Helen’s breaths becoming shallower… I should call someone, but she doesn’t want to leave for even a second….

  And then, the breaths are no more.

  * * *

  Beryl sat bolt upright in bed. Aggie, startled from a restless sleep, sat up beside her.

  “What is it?” she asked groggily.

  “We are such idiots!” Beryl exclaimed, jumping out of bed.

  “What?”

  “Where did she always visit? Where did we find her that morning? Come on!”

  Aggie slid out of bed and followed Beryl down the hall to Cory’s room, Percival and Winston trailing, snuffling their displeasure at being awakened so rudely.

  Beryl was already on her knees in front of the window seat, prodding and pressing the base. “Turn on the light, will you?”

  Aggie flipped the switch just as Beryl depressed a panel that opened with a soft click.

  In unison, they gasped as the panel swung open on hidden hinges to reveal – “a shrine,” Aggie whispered.

  There, laid out lovingly, were small sprigs of holly leaves and berries, arranged around a handsome earthenware urn.

  Off to one side was a stack of books. Aggie pulled the top one off and opened it. “A journal,” she murmured in wonder. “Aunt Cory’s journals.”

  Next to the journals was a bundle of letters and old postcards, tied with a faded ribbon. “I’ve seen her reading these recently,” Aggie said. “And here’s your book,” she said, picking up the Rumer Godden book which had led Beryl to the Bishops in the first place.

  “Look at this,” Beryl said, reaching in and retrieving a hand-calligraphied scroll sitting on the other side of the urn.

  Aggie leaned close as Beryl unrolled the parchment and read:

  “Surprised by joy – impatient as the Wind

  I turned to share the transport – Oh! with whom

  But thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,

  That spot which no vicissitude can find?

  Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind –

  But how could I forget thee? Through what power,

  Even for the least division of an hour,

  Have I been so beguiled as to be blind

  To my most grievous loss! – That thought’s return

  Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,

  Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,

  Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;

  That neither present time, nor years unborn

  Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.”

  They sat, tears streaming down their cheeks as they read the lines of the poem over and over.

  “Who –?”

  “Wordsworth,” Aggie murmured. “Oh, Beryl,” she whispered, as she pressed her fingers to the calligraphied page, “This is what she wanted to tell us.”

  Beryl wrapped an arm around Aggie’s shoulders. “It must have been breaking her heart to think this might never have been found. Or that the house might have been sold with all of this still here.”

  They sat for long minutes, staring at Cory’s shrine to Helen, to their love.

  “I know it’s the middle of the night,” Beryl said, “but I feel like we shouldn’t wait to tell her we found these.”

  Aggie looked at her in alarm, but didn’t question. “Let’s get dressed.”

  * * *

  “Who called you?” Cory’s nurse asked in bewilderment as they encountered her in the corridor.

  “No one,” said Aggie. “We just… we had a feeling we should come. Why? What’s the matter?”

  The nurse’s face fell. “She had another stroke. A massive one. I was just going to call you to tell you to get here right away. You should go in.”

  Aggie and Beryl hurried to Cory’s bedside. The nurse followed them in. A doctor they didn’t recognize was standing next to the bed.

  “These are her nieces,” the nurse said by way of introduction.

  “Her systems are shutting down,” he said clinically. “We can put her on a ventilator, and for nutrition, we can insert a feeding tube.”

  “Don’t!” Beryl nearly blurted. She clamped her mouth shut, waiting, hoping Aggie would be strong enough, now that it was time to make the hard choices….

  “You said she didn’t want any resuscitation,” the nurse reminded them.

  Beryl held her breath. She loved Cory dearly, but this was Aggie’s decision.

  Aggie nodded tearfully. “That’s right. She was adamant that she didn’t want to get to ninety-four unless she could walk to the party.”

  Beryl smiled through her own relieved tears.

  “We’ll leave you then,” the nurse said respectfully. The doctor followed her out of the room.

  “You should tell her,” Beryl prompted.

  Aggie nodded again. Going to the bed, she leaned close and said, “Aunt Cory, we found it. We found all the things you had collected under your window seat. They’re safe now. We’ll take care of them. We’ll take care of both of you. We’ll take care of everything.”

  There was no indication that Cory heard or understood. Her face was slack, her eyes closed, her breathing labored.

  “Just keep talking to her,” Beryl said, positioning a chair near the bed for Aggie. “I know she can hear you.”

  * * *

  Beryl waited until a decent hour to call Ridley.

  “She never woke up?” he asked.

  “No,” Beryl said, sniffling. “They said this last stroke was massive. I’m glad she went. She wouldn’t have wanted to be here if it meant being a vegetable.”

  “How’s Aggie?”

  Beryl shrugged. “She’s lying down right now. We’ve been up since about one. I think she’s okay. She knows it was Cory’s wish not to have any kind of machinery hooked up. It’s just hard to be the one who says ‘no’.”

  “Better than being the one who has to eventually step up and say ‘turn it off’,” Ridley pointed out. Beryl could hear the hard edge to his voice, the one he usually had when he was reliving something related to the ambush, and she wondered – though she had never asked – whether any of the members of his unit had survived on machines for a while.

  “Is there going to be a funeral?” he asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” Beryl said. “We found her journals and papers.” She explained the cache hidden away in Cory’s room. “There may be instructions in there for what she wanted done.”

  “Well, let me know,” he said. “I want to be there. She was really special.”

  “Yeah, she was. I will let you know as soon as plans are made.”

  “Take care – of you and Aggie.”

  “I will.”

  Beryl peeked into the bedroom, thinking she might also lie down for a while, but the rumpled bed was empty. Going down the hall, she found Aggie sitting in Cory’s rocker, leafing through some papers.

  Aggie looked up as Beryl entered the room. “Look at this,” she said, holding out a handwritten page.

  It was Cory’s request to have her ashes blended with Helen’s and have them both scattered together.

  “Where?” Beryl asked.

  Aggie shrugged. “She doesn’t say. Maybe it didn’t matter as long as they were together.”

  Beryl sat down on the floor and pulled out one of Cory’s journals. “Do you mind?” she asked before she opened it.

  “Of course not,” Aggie said. After a moment, Aggie pulled out another. Mesmerized, they read, occasionally reading passages out loud to one another, saying “did you know this?” or “listen to this.”

  “I had no idea,” Aggie said a few hours later, her eyes moist with tears. “No idea she gave up so much of her life to take care of everyone else. Terrence, then Candace, then Helen. And finally her mother. And the time she and Helen lost…”

  “I know,” Beryl murmure
d, her finger marking a passage. “But listen to this.”

  Chapter 43

  The cherry trees in D.C. were in full bloom as Beryl, Aggie and Ridley made their way to the Lincoln Memorial. A gentle breeze blew from the south, bringing the promise of warmer weather to follow, swirling the pink blossoms on the ground into small eddies of color and texture.

  Ridley, wheeling himself along the pavement, said, “I wonder if this is legal?”

  Beryl laughed. “That’s why we’re not asking.”

  Aggie laughed also. “Somehow, I think Aunt Cory and Helen would like it better if it isn’t legal.”

  At the base of the steps, Ridley parked his chair and stood with his crutches. “Do we go up, or stay down below?”

  “I think we’ll be less noticeable down here,” Aggie said.

  They walked around the base of the memorial until they came to a relatively unpopulated area where the wind was blowing toward the river. Aggie reached into her bag and pulled out a small wooden box, inlaid with an intricate design of ebony and mother of pearl.

  “Twenty-some years is a lot to some people,” Aggie said, “but I imagine to Cory and Helen it felt not nearly long enough. Now, they’re together for eternity. Nothing else will ever separate them again. No more loss, no more sorrow.”

  “I envy them that,” Ridley said.

  “A love that lasted a lifetime and beyond,” said Beryl, smiling at Aggie whose eyes were bright with tears.

  Aggie met her eyes, blinking rapidly and nodding as she slid open the top of the box and tipped out the ashes within. The three of them watched the grey flecks swirl and scatter on the breeze, landing on the surface of the Potomac and gradually floating away on the current.

  “What are you going to do with the rest of the ashes?” Ridley asked.

  “We’ve interred some in the garden,” Beryl said. “We had a plaque made and tucked it back near the grotto.”