Cloven Hooves

by Megan Lindholm

  They ignore him, all of them getting in one another’s way as I stand at the edges, asking timorously, “What’s happened?” and “Where’s Teddy?”

  They don’t ignore me so much as overwhelm me with their muttered directions to one another as Tom’s father coaxes and then Tom stoops, reaches into the car, and lifts his mother out. She seems small in his arms, not the powerful woman she’s always been, and her head lolls against his shoulder. “Where’s Teddy?” I demand again as Tom’s father orders, “Turn on the porch light, for Christ’s sake!” No one hears me or answers.

  “Where’s Teddy!” I cry, and even I can hear the edge creeping into my voice. “Teddy!” says Mother Maurie, barely lifting her head, and her voice trails off in a moan. “Shut up!” Tom’s father roars at me, and then more softly, but not for my sake, “You’re only going to upset her again. The doctor says she needs quiet.”

  The procession is moving past me, Tom is already edging his mother inside the door, I can hear Ellie within, clicking on lights, conferring low-voiced with Bix. I grab Steffie by the elbow, jerk her back as she starts to follow her father inside. “Where’s Teddy?” I ask, and my voice is low, this is no demand, there is a threat here.

  She looks at me, her movie-star face gone flat, her eyes dulled. “He’s dead,” she says, without expression, and then, as if someone has thrown a switch, she drags in a deep ragged breath and tears come streaming down her face. “Oh, my God, Lynn, he’s dead. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, oh, my God!”

  I am staring at her, numb, when her father comes down the steps to take her from me. “There, baby, it’ll be all right,” he says comfortingly, and then to me, “Jesus, woman, can’t you see she’s had all she can take? Do you think I want to have to take her to the hospital to be sedated, too?”

  They are leaving me, the screen door is closing before I can ask, “What happened?”

  “Not now!” he snarls back at me. “It’ll only upset her to talk about it.”

  I attempt to follow them in, to at least find Tom, but his father turns on me again. “Not now, dammit! Tom will be out in a minute. You waited this long, you can wait a little longer! You sure as hell didn’t care about it when it happened!”

  “Oh, Daddy,” Steffie wails, and I can’t tell if she is trying to rebuke him for his unfair words, or if she rails at the unfairness of the world in general. It doesn’t matter, I stumble back down the steps as if pushed, and he shuts the door firmly behind them. The slam of it is a physical pain. My exile is complete. A fist in the face could not have stopped me better. I am left alone in the dark.

  Aren’t I always left alone in the dark?

  I turn away from the house, now lit and surging with shadows of life, and trudge back to the little house. I go in, not bothering with lights. I walk surely through its too-familiar darkness, crouch down beside the wicker sofa. No, he’s not here. Not here at all, hardly even a touch of him. A book or two, a blanket that still smells like his grubby little feet. That’s all. It might have been better if it had happened at home, I think, where I could have knelt by his little bed, touched his special pillow, his stuffed animals, the cold metal of his Tonka trucks. Here there’s nothing except his absence. Nothing to cling to.

  I find Where the Wild Things Are, hold the battered book close to my chest, feeling its corners dig into me. That’s all there is. And I wait. Tom will come soon. He’ll explain it all, tell me how my Teddy died, where he is now, what happened. Everything. If I just wait. The need to know exactly how it all happened is a surging thing in me, that builds and builds until I think I will scream, and then suddenly subsides into a not-wanting-to-know, a dread of details and images. Whatever he tells me, I will know for the rest of my life. Maybe these are the last moments I will have when my images of Teddy are all images of him alive, running, laughing, being tickled, riding a pony.

  Time is passing very slowly, I think. Very, very slowly. Tom will have carried his mother upstairs, will have put her down on her bed. Ellie will quickly shoo him out, will help her mother undress. Tom will stop, perhaps, to speak briefly to his father. I know this, and then he will come hurrying to me. It is only the waiting that makes it seem so long, not that much time has passed. He will come swiftly. He will tell me the things that will finally let me cry and grieve instead of sit here and feel confused or stupid. He will come to include me in the sorrowing, for it is, after all, our child who is dead, our child who we have shared, and so the grief is a thing we must share as well. I wait.

  I wait for what seems like hours. My legs cramp, I grow chilled, and the weight inside me seems to grow heavier every minute. Slowly, I start to believe that all this might be real. Teddy might really be dead, it might not all be some odd mistake, some peculiar Potter error.

  At three o’clock in the morning, I realize Teddy is dead.

  The knowledge comes after I stagger to the kitchen to look at the clock. Three o’clock. Yes, it has been that long. And the lights in the kitchen and the living room of the big house still burn. Over there, they still talk and grieve together.

  I go to the door and open it. I go out on the porch, down the steps.

  I can’t go any farther. This is as far as I can go toward Tom. I don’t know why, but it is so. I sit down on the steps and wait. I am still not crying. I have never been one to cry over the big things. Cry over a smashed thumb, a ruined book, an insult from a boy you don’t even know. But not for your dog hit by a truck, not for your parents. Not for your little son.

  I try to think of Teddy dead, but I can’t make it seem real. Perhaps it won’t seem real until Tom comes to tell me.

  A very long time later, the door of the big house opens. Tom comes out. It has to be Tom, because it’s not Bix or his father. But it doesn’t walk like Tom, it shuffles, head down. It comes across the yard slowly, stops by the steps when it sees me.

  “Oh, honey, what are you doing out here all alone?” he asks me gently, and gathers me up.

  “Where else would I be?” I ask him, confused suddenly.

  “I thought maybe you’d gone to bed, as exhausted as the rest of us,” he says into my hair. He opens the door, clicks on the light. He is ten years older. Lines in his face, bloodshot eyes, his pale hair looks more grey than blond in the incandescence. His arms still around me, he walks toward the bedroom.

  “What happened?” I have to ask. My voice sounds surprisingly steady.

  “Oh, baby,” he says, and chokes. “He … slipped. All the noise and the machinery. Fell, I guess.”

  I can barely decipher the words. He gulps them out, between suppressed sobs. He does not look at me. He takes several deep breaths.

  “Mom … We had to take her to the hospital, too, when she heard. Doctor said it might be just the shock, or maybe her heart. We gotta be real careful of her for the next couple days.”

  Bedroom. Light on. He starts dropping clothes, walking out of them. Digs the bed open, climbs in.

  “What happened to Teddy?” I ask again.

  “Oh, Lynn!” It is an agonized cry, a plea. “I … I should have known better. I shouldn’t have let him come. I should have left him with you. It’s my fault. Is that what you want to hear me say?”

  He starts shaking, huge running tremors that rattle him. I don’t want to hear him say that. I don’t believe it’s true. But I am sure it is what his father has made him say a dozen times already, just as I am sure it is what his father wanted to hear him say. I feel like a heartless wretch, but I still have to ask, I still have to say, “I need to know exactly what happened!”

  “I—ca-ca-ca-n’t!” He is hysterical. The word they use in those old-fashioned novels. Beside himself. Our son is dead, and my husband has been so hammered that he cannot put three words together. His eyes are Teddy’s eyes, wide, panicky, as he cannot take a breath, cannot breathe out, cannot form words, only sounds like the beginnings of words. I kick off my sandals, crawl into the bed beside him, put my arms around him, and rock him. And rock him. He sh
akes and cries, and I know that up to now he has been unable to shake or cry. They took that away from him and gave it to Mother Maurie and Steffie. They have been allowed to grieve for their grandson, for their nephew, but Tom has had to be strong and responsible and manly. So now, he, who was there, who saw it happen, can finally grieve. I cry with him as I rock him, but it isn’t for Teddy. It’s for him, and then it’s for me. Crying because I cannot even grieve, they won’t even let me do that.

  He curls up, fetal position, but I hold on to him, put my warm belly against his cold back, try to shelter him, try to hold him. Toward dawn he grows still. I think he is asleep, but then he whispers, “I’ll tell you about it tomorrow. Okay? Tomorrow?”

  “Okay,” I say softly, holding him still, and he suddenly goes limp in my arms. Asleep.

  I lie in bed and wonder what has become of Teddy. And Tom. And me.

  SEVENTEEN

  * * *

  I never did find out how Teddy died.

  They think they told me. Every time I try to ask about it, they get angry. It is so simple for them. He fell, and was killed. Crushed by a machine? Hit his head on the way down? I don’t know. Only that he slipped. I have gathered that from Tom’s broken words, and perhaps it should be enough for me. But a part of me wants to know every scalding detail. Where was he? On the tractor with Bix, or riding on the hay truck with the bales? Did something lurch and he slipped, did a bale hit him and he fell? Was he being reckless, jumping about in the dust and the noise and the motion, or was he sleepy perhaps, in the heat of the day, the roar of the machines a dull lullaby to his numbed ears, slipping quietly down beneath the massive wheels? Did he cry out, and that cry went unheard in the noise of the equipment, or was it enough to startle the grown-ups, to make them glance about immediately and ask, “Where’s Teddy?”

  I play the scene a million ways in my mind. Sometimes he falls from the tractor, right under the big black wheels and is crushed silently, and they do not even notice. That is the worst one. Where the noisy machines pass over him and move on and he lies in the hot field under the immense blue sky and the white sun, and his last little bit of life sputters from him unnoticed. I see him crushed and discarded in the stubble, a pastel scene like Christina’s World, a small bit of color in an immense field where noisy machines work in the distance. The image makes me want to scream. I don’t want him to have died as I am living, unnoticed and unimportant to the great and noisy work at hand.

  Other scenes occur to me as well, replay graphically in my mind, swift counterpoints to one another. As we were coupling in the grass, the faun and I, was that when he was dying, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth? As we splashed each other and laughed and shrieked, did he call out for me, or was he already dead and silent in the hot sun of the dry open field? Or was the life crushed from him as Pan lay atop me in the waters of the beaver pond and I rutted with him, as animal as he? Why had I felt nothing, noticed nothing when the keystone of my world was ripped from its arch? How could he die and I not know it, go on merrily fucking away under the bright forest sun? There is no one I can ask these questions. No one even seems to sense my anguish. They are all too busy, and I am dragged into their frantic activity.

  Teddy’s death has become less an event than a grand family project. There is not time for grief or quiet reflection. There is too much to be done. They cover up his death in all the doing that follows it, the errands, the plans, the procedures. The next few days are a carousel of activity, as if we are planning a party or a masqued ball. No one has time to talk about what happened. They talk all around it, take care of a thousand details arising from it, but of that day, no one speaks. Not ever.

  Tom and Steffie and I go to the funeral home to look at caskets. Tom looks like a haggard hick, hair uncombed, plaid shirt, rumpled jeans. Steffie looks like a bisque doll, pale, but perfect in her grief. In her subdued navy dress with the flat white collar, she reminds me of a grieving Quaker. I don’t know what I look like. I don’t think anyone can see me. The salesman certainly doesn’t talk to me. He confers with Tom, low-voiced, and looks at Steffie’s legs. I walk slowly through the display room, touching satin linings, brass-tone catches, studying cutaway views of caskets constructed from man-made wonder materials. None of it touches me. I cannot understand what I am supposed to be looking at. How can any of this matter? I am back in my silence, alone, wondering.

  Steffie breaks down, just after she selects a white casket with blue satin lining and the deluxe option package. She clings to Tom’s shoulder, sobbing. Her foundation makeup leaves pale pink smudges on his shirt. The salesman drifts past me, keeping a discreet distance from the grieving woman, and mutters to me, “Poor lady. She’s really taking this hard, isn’t she?” I don’t answer, and he doesn’t notice.

  And that’s how it goes. Like a giant shopping spree. Florist shop, for flowers for the funeral. Plot of earth to dig the hole in. Headstone, so no one forgets. Dress for Steffie. Dress for Mother Maurie, who is still too weak to shop for herself, but has given Steffie a note on crisp white paper that tells her size and preferences, NO POLYESTER is printed plainly in her concise hand. Hats for Steffie and Mother Maurie, in black of course, and Steffie’s has a wisp of black net on it. Plain black pumps. Black stockings. Guest book. Guests? I wonder wearily. Suit for Tom, for the funeral. Appropriate tie. That takes almost an hour. She picks out new clean clothes to dress our son’s body in. We trail in her efficiently grieving wake. Sometimes, when no one is looking, I take Tom’s hand and hold it between both of mine. It is always cold, so cold he does not seem to feel me holding it. And in each and every store, I have to let go of it soon, for in each and every store Steffie breaks down shortly after completing her purchase. She always turns aside from the counter or the salesperson and gives a few warning tremulous sniffs that are Tom’s cue to come forward, to put his arm around his sister’s shoulders and reassure her. Always she turns into him, resting her clear forehead on his shoulder, one slender hand on his arm, as she weeps. Like the salespeople, I stand and watch. Perhaps I am here to witness this, perhaps someday I will be called on to come forward and give testimony to how deep Steffie’s grief was. I don’t know.

  I don’t know anything anymore.

  I don’t see much of Tom. Not alone. When he comes home, he sleeps, deep sweaty sleeps that leave his eyelids gummy and his eyes webbed with redness. Days he does the errands, talks on the phone, listens to Steffie and Ellie and his dad. At the big house. He spends his evenings at his mother’s bedside, or at the table in the big house kitchen, settling details, writing checks, totting up expenses, handling it all with Steffie at his elbow. It seems to me they have become miniatures of their parents. Teddy should have been their son, the perfect Potter child, by Potter, out of Potter, with none of my feral blood to ruin him. How close they all draw to one another, how efficiently they close me out without even knowing they are doing it.

  I spend my evenings alone, in the dark, holding a book and sitting on a wicker couch. I try to grieve, and cannot. It’s like it’s not my turn, so I wait. Wait for this to stop, for life to start again, for everything to go back the way it was before. It’s almost funny, I thought I hated my life the way it was before, and now I long for it. All I can think about is going back to it. I can’t seem to grieve, not the way I am expected to, and I know this angers Tom’s father. I cannot weep endlessly, as Steffie does, or go about my housework muttering, “Teddy, oh, my little Teddy” like Ellie does. Instead I do stupid things. I feed and groom the pony. Houdini turns sullen and unpredictable when he is ignored, and I feel some obligation to Teddy to make the pony feel better. I wash and mend and fold all Teddy’s clothes. What was once an endless round of a job has become a finality. All of his toys are finally in a cardboard box under the wicker couch. They stay there, miraculously, as they have never done before. There are no Tonka trucks lurking in the dark hallways at night, no plastic cowboys in the bottom of the bathtub anymore. I stack his books and wonder what to
do with them. Do I tidy my child out of my life, close up the empty space by removing all these place holders? His possessions remind me of zeros in a math problem. By themselves they are nothing, but they stand for the value Teddy had in our life. They hold open the wound so I can probe it, and every day I touch what was his to keep the pain hot and real.

  It occurs to me once that the faun probably wonders what has become of Teddy. I picture him waiting by the stream, but I reject the image. No. I do not want to imagine him concerned and caring. I want to think of him as sly and carnal. I want to imagine that somehow he tricked me into what I did that day, that somehow there was coercion, treachery, even violence on his part. But not even my fertile imagination can make any of that plausible. What I did that day, I did. And I did it while my child was dying, and that is what makes it wrong and shameful and dirty. I cannot make the one thing a consequence of the other; I cannot even imagine it as a punishment from God for my copulating with a beast. It is not guilt I feel. Only a disgust with myself that somehow, while my child experienced the agony of death, I was joyously and mindlessly rutting.

  I wish I could sit very, very still in a quiet place and think. Very often I wish Tom were there to hold me, that we could sit quietly together, close, and think about our son and all the things he was. But Tom is always busy, his mother needs him, the funeral director called, the church maintenance man called, has anyone called Cousin Ed yet and told him the sad news? Tom has to do it all, and it all has to be done from the big house, and I can no longer go in there.