Shine On, Bright & Dangerous Object

by Laurie Colwin

Sam had soft, thick, floppy hair. Washed, it felt like wilted lettuce, and as it dried it waved. At times he was so thin you could see the bones in his back, but he was too sturdy to be frail or anemic. He was filled with random, haywire energy. The next weekend I went to Cambridge, and until I graduated I commuted, happy, hyper, giving alarm to those at home. But I had found my proper heat and center: Sam and I formed our own elite.

  Even in those early days, my large range of feeling for Sam included an unimplemented protectiveness. What it came down to was that I was frightened for him, and in soppier moments I used to say little prayers for his safety. I put up with the lousy train from my college to Boston so as to spare Sam the chance to wreck his motorcycle on the Thruway and I bought him a gold St. Christopher’s medal, which he laughed at, but wore.

  Even at the start, I thought how young and daffy we were. How could we have known what we were doing? In love, we were like a pair of orphans in a story by the brothers Grimm, charming waifs against the cruel outdoors. Our wedding could have been the marriage of two colts. The word for us was adorable. It amazed me that at the age of twenty I had conducted a love affair and at twenty-one decided who the love of my life was and at twenty-two made a marriage. When I think of our apartment in Cambridge, I think of a set of rooms in a playhouse, with all our trappings and wedding presents gleaming on the shelves. We did what adults do—we had the newspaper delivered, we entertained, we washed the windows, took showers, dressed ourselves. Sam finished his last year of law school and I did graduate work in music. We had friends in for dinner. But sometimes it was hard for me not to picture me and Sam as two damp children bending over a toy car, absorbed and brainless, in the middle of a leafy road.

  2

  Sam’s funeral was tame, and eccentric. We closed up the Maine house and drove to Boston in a cortège. I drove with my parents and Sam’s grandmother. Meridia drove with Sara Lazary and Patrick drove with his father. My father and Leonard had arranged to have Sam’s body flown down to Boston airport and picked up by the tasteful firm of Merwick and Levada, Morticians. I was not sheltered from these details, but I had to ask for them, and was told what I wanted to know by Meridia or my mother, in the way the facts of life are gently and soberly explained to children. These encounters made me realize that Sam was now a black star, or a piece of side meat that had to be quickly dealt with before the sun spoiled it further.

  Sam was to be cremated, as he had once told me was his wish, although his ashes were not going to be scattered over the Yucatan peninsula, as was also his wish. He was going to the family plot in Moss Hill, Massachusetts. Sam would have liked a monster booze-up and a little keening, since his sentimental preferences ran to the loud and garish. He had once been to a wake—one of the great parties of his life, he said.

  The service was held at the cemetery and we spread out over the grounds, dotting the dark-green grass in our black clothes. Sam’s ashes were placed in a vault in the mausoleum of his grandfather Cyrus Bax. The minister read from Keats, and my father recited the Kaddish, a prayer Sam claimed to love in deference to my origins. Two days before the funeral I had gone by myself to a stonecutter in Roxbury who had chiseled on a thin, white marble slab:

  Samuel Pattison Bax

  And Death Shall Have No Dominion

  Rest in Peace

  and his dates.

  It had rained very briefly in the morning, and the sky was the weatherbeaten color of old barns. It was the sort of day on which you can read the inscriptions on the insides of antique wedding rings. We passed rows of Hewitts, Hulls, Tapleys, and Goldsmiths; passed graves so old that the headstones were wafer thin but you could see the eroded outlines of those gawking angels the Colonists were fond of.

  Cyrus Bax’s mausoleum was black marble. Perched on the top of it, like a resting sparrow, was a mournful little cherub. We stood under the trees with our heads bowed. When I lifted my head I saw that everyone was unhinged by grief. Even Sam’s grandmother, who was used to all this—having buried a husband, a sister, and most of her friends—seemed to cave in. She understood the passing of the aged, but not the wipe-out of the young. Patrick was standing closest to me, and I could see every line in his face. He stood so stiffly I was afraid a breeze might knock him over. The rays around his eyes—all the Baxes had them—looked deeper. After the minister finished and the Kaddish had been said and Danny Sanderson had placed the white marble slab over the vault, no one knew what to do next. If it had not been a funeral, if we had not all been cloaked in black, we might have been guests waiting for the picnic baskets to be opened—it was that bucolic.

  But someone was supposed to speak. I didn’t remember until he came forward that it was Henry Jacobs, Sam’s professor of constitutional law. He was a small man in a sober banker’s suit and he was the only adult I had ever heard Sam express constant liking for. His classes were the most popular at the law school: he was quiet, but passionate, and underneath his great seriousness, he was impish. The several times he had come to our apartment for dinner, it was like entertaining a Talmudic scholar from another century.

  When he stepped in front of that huge mausoleum, he looked like a garden gnome. I wondered if Meridia and Leonard found it strange that their son had married a Jewess and was being eulogized by a scholar wearing a skullcap.

  Henry Jacobs blinked at the glare and began.

  “We come in sorrow today to bury our dear Sam, our lovely boy. He was son, brother, husband, student, and lawyer. May God in his infinite mercy and justice look upon his soul with all the love deserved it.”

  His voice was shaking. There were large spaces between all of us. No one wanted to be near. I could feel the wet grass through my shoes. When Henry Jacobs called Sam “our lovely boy” I bent my head and tears streaked down my cheeks, one after another.

  “Dear Sam, your presence taught us fleetness, the joy of being mobile. Let us not ponder what could have been, but try to rejoice in what was. May we all learn from your life the sweetness and glory of a passionate spirit and may we think of you when our courage falters. May God bless you and keep you.”

  When he turned to me, his face was wet and slumped and so was mine. I was amazed at him: he was the eccentricity at the service. Even Meridia, who was generally impassive in public, looked astonished and moved. I was terrified that I would burst into tears on Henry’s shoulder. My crying had been done in private, in the shower with the water running down so I could howl unabashedly. I was afraid that if anyone let go in the midst of this poised silence, no one would be able to carry on, or get through the days to follow.

  Danny Sanderson had given me a bunch of lilies, and as people started to leave the graveside, I put my lilies in front of Sam’s plaque. I didn’t want him to rest in peace. I wanted him to bounce around in death as he had in life, fearless, goofy, and fleet.

  The Bax house was packed when we got there. My mother, who knew her way around Boston, had ordered catered sandwiches and cakes, and my father had attended to Leonard’s liquor supply. It was a sign of how far gone the Baxes were that my parents had been allowed these gestures: Leonard and Meridia never let anyone do anything. I was elbowed by aunts and cousins, patted on the arm by the people from Sam’s firm, taken aside by friends with offers of country houses if I needed shelter, and I was talked up quite a lot. No one wanted to talk about Sam at all: the idea was to distract the attention of the bereaved, but I didn’t want my attention distracted, and as the afternoon went on, I felt awkward and distorted. I had had Sam for five years, but Meridia and Leonard had lost a son, and Patrick a brother. I was only a relatively recent wife.

  My parents and the Baxes sat on the sofa, and respects were paid to them. Danny Sanderson cried with his arms around me and then went home, drunk and tranquillized. When I tried to tell Henry Jacobs how grateful I was to him, he waved me away and said, “Come see me in a few weeks and we’ll talk.” When I left the living room he was talking to Meridia and my mother. Then I went to find Patrick, who had disapp
eared.

  I found him in the attic, which had been the playroom when he and Sam were boys, shooting darts from nine feet.

  “I’m sorry I deserted you,” he said. “I realize we’re the guests of honor, but I really can’t take all that shit.”

  I sat on the edge of an armchair and watched him shoot. He and Sam were fanatic dart players when the weather kept them indoors. He was shooting ’round the clock, but hadn’t got past six.

  “I don’t mean to defame the occasion,” he said. “But I’m sure Sam would have wanted me to play darts.”

  I said, “Stop it, Patrick.”

  “Actually, it’s a very good outlet. Isn’t that what they’re calling it these days? You ought to try it, although I don’t remember your being very good, or were you?” He had given up ’round the clock and was shooting for bull’s eyes.

  “Here,” he said, handing me the darts. “You get to shoot from seven feet since you’re smaller.”

  We shot for half an hour, but neither of us was much good. Patrick was slightly drunk, and although we avoided looking at each other, I know the board was swimming for both of us. Our shots got more and more awry and we were both crying without making any noise. Patrick seemed crippled with grief. I asked him if he wanted me to get Sara, but he told me she had gone back to New York.

  When the afternoon crowd left, the evening crowd arrived. In the kitchen, Meridia, my mother, and I discussed why they felt I should not go back to my apartment—mine and Sam’s. I had spent three nights at the Baxes’ and had been home only to change my clothes. I said I wanted some time alone and they were forced to understand, since they did too.

  At the end of that long day, there was a lot of clutching. Meridia had me by the arm and my mother had me by the hand. They were both exhausted and I felt like a hammock holding up two pillars. Leonard and my father sat silently on the couch, sipping whiskey and smoking their pipes.

  They wanted me to stay because they wanted me around: I was their direct link to Sam; I was his memento. And they were probably afraid that I might shoot myself, left alone with all Sam’s things. Patrick drove me home, while I added guilt to grief.

  I said, “Was it wrong not to stay?”

  “It’s hardly polite for the bereaved to walk out.”

  “For God’s sake, Patrick.”

  “It’s okay. Anything is okay at times like these.”

  “I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “I’m sure they understand perfectly.”

  “I just want a little space for myself,” I said.

  Patrick’s knuckles were white on the wheel. “Elizabeth. Shut up.”

  We were both severely whipped. It is awful to know that your catastrophe involves everyone else. It allows you no safe haven: there is no one available for sheer comfort, since the people you most want are mourning too. I shut up and we drove in silence, but when we got to the apartment, Patrick followed me in. He didn’t want coffee or a drink. We sat around, too manic to sleep, too tired to say anything. I told him if he wanted to stay, I would make up the sofa for him. He only nodded, so I brought out the bedding and put it on the couch.

  “Do you want to go for a drive?” he said.

  “I want to drink some bourbon and go to sleep.”

  I made him a cup of tea, and when I brought it to him, he was pacing. He looked more like Sam than I had ever seen him—like Sam at his most restless. His hair was flopping onto his forehead, his eyes were slightly wild, and his shoulders were so hunched with tension the blades almost touched. He took a few sips of tea, paced some more, and then he stopped and hurled the cup at the wall. It shattered, leaving a large, watery stain.

  I put my arms around him, and he held me so tight I thought I would stop breathing. He didn’t make a sound, but his entire body shook. We were so close you could not have passed a thread between us, and when we pulled apart, the collars of our shirts were wet with tears.

  I said, “Go to bed now, Patrick.”

  He bedded down in Sam’s pajamas, and when he was under the covers I sat beside him and stroked his hair until he closed his eyes and seemed to be asleep, but when I got up, he took my hand and wouldn’t let go. I didn’t want to go. He was Sam’s brother. Up close, he smelled like Sam, of grass and soap. I lay down beside him and he curled his arm around my waist as you would clutch a newspaper in a windstorm to keep it from blowing away from you. We slept like spoons, and I kept waking. He was restless in his sleep, fevered and damp, but he kept his arm around me. It was like sleeping next to drying clay.

  Hours before, I had put my lilies on Sam’s grave. I didn’t want to remember, but I did. Memory is sensual, not logical. I could see the lilies, their velvety insides and the smudge of pollen they left on the front of my black dress. I remembered the set of Henry Jacobs’ shoulder as he walked to the cars with Patrick. I remembered that we looked like a group of people who have been rained on, not like the victims of real grief. It was a terrible, unspeakable loss. It made me want to crack my head against the wall and yowl, but I was pinned to Patrick. I didn’t want to wake him, but I couldn’t keep from crying. I held myself so stiffly the tears forced their way out of me, and although Patrick didn’t wake, he turned around in his sleep, put his arms around my neck, and sighed.

  When I woke up, our arms were still entwined. He was sleeping and I felt slightly cooked, he was so warm. It was raining. Dim light flickered in. The tea stain had dried on the wall. Patrick stirred, and I stirred. I wanted to get up, but he held me down. Then he kissed me on the mouth, pushed me away, and fell asleep again.

  I took a shower, dressed, and while I was making the coffee, I heard him get up, and heard the water running in the bathroom. Then he appeared, red-eyed and dressed, his hair slicked down the way Sam slicked his hair down when it was wet.

  “You know,” he said, “it’s a blessing in disguise, this business. It spared you the misery of eventual divorce.”

  I hit him open-handed in the face. He went pale, but he was not surprised.

  “But you have to admit, it’s true,” he said.

  And I had to admit, the day after Sam’s funeral, it probably was.

  3

  No one was remarkably happy when Sam and I decided to get married. No one took us very seriously. Patrick treated us with the scorn you might deal out to children overstimulated at the movies. My mother wondered if the Baxes would mind having Jews in the family, but they didn’t care one way or the other. Meridia seemed to be slightly worried for me. Leonard and my father, who referred to Sam as “that kid with the motorcycle,” thought weddings were for women, children, and dogs, so they paid the bills and smoked their pipes.

  In the end, they married us off as if we were some curious but not very interesting experiment in hybrid roses, and there was obvious relief all around. Sam, as we knew, was the unspoken trial of his family. Hadn’t he broken almost every one of his bones? Didn’t he own a motorcycle so huge and fast it couldn’t be insured? Hadn’t he been known to get drunk and sprint over hedges or drive his car in reverse at fifty miles an hour down one-way streets? But Sam knew where his real obligations were. He had gone to school like a good boy. He had gone to college and graduated magna cum laude. He had made the law review and was attached to a good firm. Those were the things that counted, so there wasn’t much Leonard and Meridia could hang him for, and thus they knew they had no reason for concern.

  But was I concerned? Sam wasn’t mine. He was his own. I often felt that I had won Sam the way you win the lottery: there were no conditions to your luck. Only after the fact did I realize how scared I had been, and how out of a bundle of fear I had knitted an impossible sort of tolerance.

  The easiest thing to produce in others is guilt, and Meridia was an artist at it. She did it subtly: her eyes looked pained, but she knew the effects of good soldierism, so she never said a word. Things wounded her only in her silent heart, whose chambers beat with the blood of approval or disapproval, but she would never sta
te her case. The lines on her forehead showed you that she accepted things with dead-set finality, and she suffered for it. With this she trussed her youngest up like a chicken, and smiled benignly upon him so that he might feel, but never know, whatever it was that bothered her. That benign smile kept him guessing.

  The love of Sam’s life, before he met me, was a girl called Jocelyn Heathers, and from what he told me I figured she was the queen of the guilt producers. Between Meridia and Jocelyn, Sam sweated and stewed in his own sense of wrong. Jocelyn admired the freeze-out, the silent treatment, the slow burn. If Sam was rowdy at a party, didn’t call when he was meant to, wanted to go camping with his pals, got drunk, passed out, talked dirty, or belched at the symphony, Jocelyn withdrew heavily. Her code of conduct was elaborate and rigid and Sam broke her rules one by one by one. Like Meridia, she never articulated her disappointment, but her reaction was precise while Meridia’s reactions were imperceptible but far more effective. They wanted him to be a different boy, he thought. I, on the other hand, wished he were less reckless, less willful, but I never said so because Sam was Sam, and that was my part of the bargain. If he had made himself less reckless, less willful, wouldn’t he have been a different boy?

  Jocelyn Heathers, whom Patrick called “that jolly hockey-stick,” was the sort of girl Sam hung around with before he met me. She looked like someone in deep thrall to field sports, was large, blond, and woodsy. Her hair was as straight as a guitar string and altogether she was as ruddy as a brick fireplace. Together they went hiking, skiing, and backpacking until Jocelyn realized that Sam’s notions of good clean fun were not hers. It was not her intention to find the most dangerous crags during a rock climb and perch on them with the tip of one unsteady foot. She did not wish to swim out beyond the breakers. Jocelyn studied political science and was a solid Democrat. After she and Sam broke up, she married a medical student called Denton McKay and moved to Maine. When Sam died, she sent me a note of condolence written on her husband’s prescription pad.