A Permanent Member of the Family

by Russell Banks

  She stood and walked to the window and looked out. A half moon hung in the southwest quadrant of the sky. The lights of the city glistened on the rippled black surface of the bay, and the headlights of cars on the arched causeway steadily crossing from the mainland to Miami Beach looked like gold beads sliding down a string. She could understand how the prospect of living out her sixties and then her seventies and maybe even her eighties alone in Miami Beach had excited Isabel. It was a new world, a semitropical, Latin American city where everything worked because it was not in Latin America. A wholly new life awaited her here. After almost forty years of marriage, Isabel, like any woman, had made so many small compromises and concessions to align her view of what was desirable and necessary with her husband’s view that she probably didn’t know any longer what was desirable and necessary to herself alone. Jane understood how, suddenly cut loose from George’s cautious, reticent nature, Isabel might find the idea of living here six months a year exciting, enticing, liberating. Becoming a snowbird was the really big thing, the thing that George himself would never have embraced. He might have been willing to try it out, but only to demonstrate what a bad idea it was.

  In many ways it was a young person’s city—especially over here in Miami Beach, a chain of barrier islands made glamorous by movies and television, made famous by drugs and violence and illicit wealth and stylish by fashion shoots and art deco architecture. It seemed that every smart, ambitious person under thirty who couldn’t get to New York City or Los Angeles came to Miami. And it was also a city where for generations elderly people from the north had come to sit on benches in the park with the sun on their faces, an unread book or newspaper on their laps, while they waited for their breathing to stop. Isabel was not a young person drawn to the glamour, fame and style of Miami Beach, obviously; but neither was she one of those old people waiting to die. Jane stood at the window with her cell phone in her hand and typed: Isabel in v. rough shape. May need to stay here longer than planned. Call me when back from camp. XX J. She quickly hit send—before she had a chance to hit delete.

  GEORGE’S FAMILY FLEW BACK to their homes, jobs and schools in New England and upstate New York, and the following day Isabel and Jane turned to packing George’s belongings. With the convertible top down and Jane in the passenger’s seat, Isabel drove to the OfficeMax on West Avenue and bought a half-dozen banker’s boxes plus several larger cartons, packing tape, labels and Magic Markers. On the way back she stopped off at the Public Storage facility on West and Dade and reserved a five-by-ten-foot climate-controlled storage unit. Then the women went for a long lunch at the outdoor bookstore café on Lincoln Road.

  When they had ordered lunch, Isabel lifted her water glass and declared, “I’m really glad, Jane, that you of all people can be here with me in Miami Beach. I’m really glad I can share both the work and the pleasures of setting up my new life with you.” She extended her glass, and Jane clinked it with hers.

  Jane said, “Actually, I came mainly to hold your hand and help you cope with George’s death. This is a lot more . . . I don’t know, fun, I guess. More than it should be. So it’s like a guilty pleasure. You don’t need much hand-holding, and you seem to be coping surprisingly well. If I lost Frank . . . ,” she said and trailed off. She watched a pair of Rollerbladers, suntanned, hard-bodied men in their twenties, shirtless and hairless in tight shorts and wraparound sunglasses. They darted past the café and swooped like raptors through the shoppers and gawkers strolling along the sidewalk and were gone. “If I lost Frank . . . ,” she began again, “well, for one thing, I’d be unable to hold on to the house. We’re second-mortgaged to our eyeballs, first to help the girls finish college, now to help them pay off their college loans. The last few years, with the store failing and Frank out of work a lot, it’s been mean. At times we’ve had to live pretty much on my income alone, which ain’t much to shout about, believe me. But I guess it’s different for you,” she said.

  “Financially, yes. My little pension from High Peaks Country Day and our joint account at Adirondack Bank should more than cover my living expenses until I go back up to Keene and settle the estate. Something I can’t say to anyone, except you, Janey, so don’t quote me,” she said and lowered her voice, “but knowing that soon I’ll be a very wealthy woman has made George’s death a lot easier to bear,” she said. “Sounds awful. But it’s true.”

  “I thought you loved Frank!” Jane said. “I mean George. I thought you loved George.”

  Isabel smiled. “Of course I loved him! And I’ll miss him terribly. We were married thirty-seven years. And I could concentrate on that, on what I’ve lost. Maybe I should. Most widows would. Or I could concentrate on what I had, thirty-seven years of companionship, and be thankful. But when you spend your life married to someone and he dies, in a sense you die, too. Unless you choose to be reborn as someone else, as someone unformed. And then it’s almost like you get to be an adolescent girl again. And right now, that’s how I’m feeling. Like an adolescent girl. Honestly, Janey, I haven’t felt this way since I was fifteen!”

  “So weren’t you guys happily married? I always thought you were happy together. Like me and Frank.”

  “Well, sure, Janey! A lot like you and Frank. Better keep that in mind, girlfriend,” she said and laughed.

  JANE WAS TOUCHED by how neatly George had arranged his clothing. She could picture him taking his clothes out of the dryer and carefully folding each item. His socks were rolled and lined up in rows by color, shirts folded and stacked in their drawer by color and fabric, neckties racked in the closet by stripes, patterns and solids, suits, sports jackets and slacks hung by color and material from light to dark, thin to heavy, shoes lined up in pairs on the floor beneath his suits and jackets like the front paws of large mammals, brown first, then black, then sneakers. Even his underwear was folded and stacked for easy access, as in a men’s clothing store. “George liked to say he did it so he could dress in the dark if he had to,” Isabel said. “But he never had to.”

  The files that George had shipped down from Keene for the winter, so many that he’d installed a two-drawer cabinet in their bedroom to hold them, now filled four banker’s boxes. Isabel said he was a pack rat who carried his pack with him. She’d decide next winter which files to keep and which to shred, she said. Most could go. For now she would hold back only the papers and records she’d need for negotiating the purchase of the condo. She’d close on it in the summer, after George’s estate and insurance were settled. To get the paperwork started she had already scanned and e-mailed digital copies of George’s death certificate to Ron Briggs, his attorney in Lake Placid, and Tim Lynch, his insurance agent. The reading of George’s last will and testament could not occur until Isabel met with Briggs, who had drawn it up and had amended and revised it annually according to George’s changing instructions. She did not know what was in her husband’s will and had never had much desire to know. It was like his investment portfolio—not really her business—more his hobby or a low-intensity obsession than money management, just something he enjoyed poring over, rearranging and reconfiguring on his computer late at night before coming up to bed.

  The two women loaded the boxes into the convertible, filling the trunk and backseat, and drove to the Public Storage building, where they placed George’s personal belongings and papers in Unit 1032, clicked the lock and left. The process left Jane feeling dazed and dazzled, inexplicably thrilled, as if she and Isabel had successfully pulled off a crime, a burglary or bank robbery. In the car on the way back to the condo, Jane shouted above the rush of the wind, “We should’ve put George’s ashes in the storage unit with all his stuff! His cremains! Is that really what they’re called, ‘cremains’?”

  “Yeah, according to Digger O’Dell. But you’re right! We should put George in storage with his other stuff! The urn’s still at the condo, on the sideboard. I completely forgot to pack it.”

  “We should get him now,” Jane said. “The ashes. I mean, it
. The urn.”

  “George.”

  ISABEL PLACED THE WOODEN URN on the dining room table, drew up a chair and sat down. She slowly unscrewed the top, but did not remove it. “I don’t know why, but this is suddenly making me nervous,” she said. “It’s like this is the last time I’ll ever see my husband. Or maybe it’s the first time. As if all those years married to him I never truly saw him, and now what I refused to acknowledge is inside this jug.”

  Jane said that didn’t make any sense. There was nothing inside the urn but a half pound of ashes. “Okay, human ashes. George’s ashes. But it’s inert matter, Isabel. It’s not George.”

  “I know, I know. But since he died, I’ve been feeling high, almost stoned, more excited by my life than I’ve felt in years. Maybe ever. I guess that’s been obvious. But now all of a sudden, after not giving a good goddamn, I’m almost ashamed for not having acted properly bereft and mournful. Of not even feeling bereft and mournful. And I’m fucking scared, Jane. It’s like George, pissed off and vengeful, is trapped inside this wooden jug like an evil genie inside a magic lantern, and by taking off the top I’m freeing him to torment and haunt me.”

  “You don’t have to open it. You can leave the evil genie locked away forever,” Jane said and reached for the urn. She grabbed it by the neck, but Isabel held on and pulled back. The cover flipped off, and both women let go at the same instant, and gray and white ashes emptied onto the table. The urn rolled away and fell onto the tile floor.

  “Oh, my God!” Jane said. “I’m so sorry!”

  Isabel said, “My fault. It was my fault.” She pushed her chair back from the table a ways and, still seated, leaned forward and examined the pile of ashes closely. Extending her right hand, she drew her forefinger through the spilled ashes, moving her finger back and forth, spreading the heap across the table, as if searching for a lost ring, some small remnant of her marriage, or an omen that would tell her how to live her life in the future. What she uncovered were six steel buttons, which she gathered one by one into her left hand. “Look!” she said and held them out to Jane.

  “What?”

  “These are U.S. Navy buttons. At least, I think that’s what the anchors signify.”

  “So?”

  “They’re not George’s. He was never in the Navy. He was a conscientious objector during Vietnam and worked at McLean, the Boston mental hospital. Then went into teaching. He never wore a military uniform. He never owned anything with buttons like this.”

  “So this isn’t George?”

  For a long moment the two women looked at each other in silence. Finally Isabel shook her head and said, “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I’m actually relieved this isn’t George. Of course, it isn’t. These ashes aren’t anybody!”

  “Should we return the ashes to Digger O’Dell, the Friendly Undertaker?” Jane asked. “Or just vacuum them up and when the job is done toss the vacuum cleaner bag down the rubbish chute?” Jane started to laugh, a tight little giggle at first, then larger, long laughs that made it difficult to speak. Isabel joined her, and soon both women were bellowing with laughter, nearly choking with it, tears streaming down their cheeks. The absurdity of it, the ridiculousness, the idiocy of thinking the ashes were not just George’s ashes, but were actually him, George Pelham himself, come back to haunt his newly emancipated widow!

  When she was finally able to brake and slow her laughter, Jane said, “You realize that somebody out there has your George in a jar. But if we take this jar back to the Digger, if we demand that he exchange it for George, assuming he even knows who he gave George to, what the hell good will it do?”

  It was pointless to try to exchange these ashes for George, Isabel said. Pointless, and cruel to whoever actually had George and did not know yet that they did not possess the cremated body of their husband or father. Probably by now George had already been cast from the stern of a boat into the Gulf Stream or scattered across the green waters of Biscayne Bay, Isabel reasoned, or else he was enshrined on a living room altar, surrounded by votive candles, statues of saints and orishas, baby shoes, cowrie shell necklaces and hen’s feet. Which would really piss George off. “I’m starting to love thinking the ashes are actually a person. A stranger.”

  “How do you know these are a man’s ashes, though? Someone’s husband or father,” Jane asked.

  “Oh, I can feel it. You can always feel it when a man’s in the house. They tend to soak up all the available energy.”

  “So what are we going to do with them? We can’t just vacuum them up and toss the vacuum bag down the chute.”

  “Why not?”

  “Yeah! Why not?”

  LATER, THE TWO WOMEN SAT OUT on the terrace sipping white wine, once again watching the sun set behind the Miami skyline. From somewhere inside the apartment, Jane’s cell phone rang. “That would be Frank,” she said. After waiting half a minute, she sighed, put down her glass and left the terrace to answer it. The phone was in her purse on the bed in the guest room, and she managed to get there before call answering kicked in. It was Frank.

  She knew instantly that he was angry, though he tried to hide it. “Glad I caught you,” he said. “Thought you and Isabel might be out on the town tonight.”

  She said no, they were going to stay in and watch a movie. She asked him if he’d killed his deer. She had learned years ago to ask that way, not to ask if he “got” or “shot” a deer. And it was his deer, not a deer.

  He said yes, a 127-pound six-pointer, butchered, wrapped and already in the freezer. “Killed him over on the north side of Baxter with a single shot at fifty yards. So when are you planning to come home?” he asked. It was more a directive than a question.

  She said, “Unclear.” Which was the truth, she realized as soon as she said it.

  “Yeah, well, okay. But that night security job at Whiteface Lodge, it finally came through. I have to start tomorrow at midnight. The house is a mess,” he added.

  “Well, clean it up, then.”

  “I won’t have time. On account of working the night shift. I was just letting you know in advance, in case you come home tomorrow night. I was hoping you could get back up here soon. Your boss, Dr. Costanza, he’s been calling from the school. He left a couple messages asking if you planned on resuming work soon. That’s how he put it. I didn’t return his call, since I didn’t have an answer for him. You want me to call him?”

  She said no, she’d take care of that herself. She sat down on the bed, placed the phone on her lap for a second, then put it back to her ear.

  He was in the middle of saying, “So when are you coming back?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Isabel stood in the guest room doorway, wineglass in hand. She looked at Jane with a steady, unblinking gaze and mouthed the words, Stay as long as you want.

  Jane looked intently back and nodded. She said to her husband, “Frank, I really don’t know when I’m coming back.”

  “That doesn’t sound so good. Is it on account of Isabel, or on account of you?”

  She hesitated, then answered, “Both.”

  Frank was silent for a moment. He said, “It’s supposed to snow this weekend, according to the Channel Five guy, Tom Messner. Up to a foot. It was minus ten this morning. It’s minus five here at the house right now. ”

  “It was eighty here today, and sunny. It’s pretty much like that every day here.”

  “Wow. Except for hurricane season, right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Except for hurricane season.” She said she had to go, it was time for the movie. She wished him luck tomorrow at his new job. He thanked her, and they said goodbye to each other and clicked off.

  Isabel set her glass on the bedside table and sat down beside Jane and put her arms around her. It was almost a motherly gesture at first, comforting, consoling, the kind of embrace Jane had expected to give to Isabel, not to receive from her. It made Jane believe for a moment that she could be fearless, as fearless as Isabel, that s
he could be reborn as someone else, as someone unformed, and that, like Isabel, she could become an adolescent girl again. She laid her head on Isabel’s shoulder and smelled her perfume mixed with sweat, and a chill like the shadow of a cloud passing below the sun moved over her arms and shoulders, and when the chill had passed, it was as if the sun had emerged from behind the cloud, and a great warmth covered her body.

  For a long moment they held their positions, as if each were waiting for the other to decide what they both would do or say next. And when neither woman decided, they both let their arms drop and turned toward the open door and the living room beyond and beyond that the floor-to-ceiling window and the terrace, the bay twenty-two stories below and the city at the far side of the bay and the setting sun bursting scarlet at the horizon like a fireball, painting the ragged gray clouds above the bay with cerise stripes.

  For a long while neither woman said anything. Finally Isabel spoke in a voice barely above a whisper. “I would be happy if you stayed here.”

  “Until?”

  “Until you decide what you want.”

  Jane stood and walked slowly to the door. For a second, she stopped at the door. She knew that tomorrow morning she would leave for home, for Keene, for the wintry north, for her husband, the father of her two grown daughters, her dour companion and the permanent witness to her remaining years. She turned around and looked back at Isabel, who was standing next to the bed, watching her, and realized that she had already said to Isabel everything that needed saying.

  BIG DOG

  The afternoon of the day the director of the MacArthur Foundation called to tell Erik that he’d won a MacArthur, Erik and Ellen were scheduled to have dinner in Saratoga Springs with four close friends. The director instructed him to keep the news confidential until it was released to the press, but Erik decided to announce it tonight anyhow to Ted and Joan and Sam and Raphael.