by Sara Dillon
We looked in shop after shop for a dress. Nothing was quite right.
At last we found a long red dress with a bamboo pattern on the thigh. A ridiculous dress; not Chinese, not Thai; dark red cotton with short tight sleeves. This was the dress I was to wear to the fellowship event, and Sandy would be with me.
We went to a Flemish street fair, with rides and a Ferris wheel. It was honky tonk and unpleasant; the day was warm and chilly at the same time; papers blew down the street. We meandered through the crowd. Sandy wanted to go on the Ferris wheel, so we climbed aboard and were strapped into one of the little seats that swung back and forth in the air. The wheel began to move and we rose high above the town, the red brick and the steep-angled slates and the green countryside beyond. Higher and higher, until it wasn’t apparent from all the way up there which century it was; birds we might have been, atop a roof in old Flanders.
Sandy moved his hand across to where the bar that held us in snapped into place.
I could open this and push you out, he said. It would be worth it. They’d get me, but it would be worth it. That’s what you deserve, damn you.
We never went to the fellowship event.
We somehow went, by train and boat, back to Dublin and the garden flat, opening the door and finding the rooms silent and still. It was suddenly spring.
There were little outings; for spring, in the name of spring. The sun shone even into the recesses of the little garden flat. We walked out together, and one Sunday afternoon we took the train. I don’t remember where we were going or why, but off we went to the outer suburbs on the train, along the seacoast. I was wearing a white jacket; Sandy sat opposite me. The train window was open and we were passing by row upon row of apartment blocks. Suddenly, the train seemed to lurch and I was falling sideways. There was blood everywhere. I thought the train had fallen off the track, had hit something, and I stood in the aisle calling out, Am I dying?
No, people told me, you’ve been hit in the head with a brick. Those teenagers are at it again, throwing things into the train windows. And there on the floor was a concrete block, with stones stuck jaggedly in the cement.
They stopped the train and an ambulance came to get me; I remember the stretcher and the hospital and the African doctor telling me everything would be all right.
My white jacket was streaked with blood.
Stay quiet for at least a week, they told me.
Sandy was told in no uncertain terms that I had to lie still, and could not do for myself. Improbably, he agreed to make me a bed on the floor.
I lay there through the spring afternoons. There was no longer any pretence that I would attend my lectures or do any more with the year, so I simply lay there thinking. I felt the period of time until the fellowship ended like a great ticking clock in the corner of the room. I lay silently, with the wound on my forehead that slowly faded behind a white scar; I watched the sun come into its own again; I watched the afternoons lengthen.
I waited, watching the clock. One day, when Sandy left the house, and I had seen him disappear at the end of the road, I got up out of bed, packed what I could easily carry, and walked all the way to a much busier street where I could hail a cab.
I went to the airport, got on the next plane I could, however I managed it, and went back home.
Sandy tried to phone me there, and I told him that if he didn’t leave me alone we would do something awful to him.
I even asked Daddy to get on the phone. Daddy said, Don’t you ever call this number again, and, miraculously, Sandy didn’t.
Book IV
Stannard and Boston; late 2006
It might not sound like much, the chance to teach a comp lit seminar at Stannard State. As I drove up the winding road onto campus, still in Granmma’s old Buick, it was oddly familiar. I saw Calvin and me as we’d been thirty years earlier, the day we’d been selected to read our poems, mine about houses and love, his about the navy blue ocean. It was the same endless winter and the bleak landscape, exactly the same then as now, the coffee and donuts smell that pervaded the campus buildings. Didn’t Merrill come with us that day? I couldn’t exactly recall.
I sat in the cafeteria, not feeling any older. I thought of that line from way back at Saint Theo’s, was it Elizabeth Bishop, or some philosophical sort of poet like that, In a dream you are never eighty. No, it was Anne Sexton, everyone was reading those bells in bedlam poets then. I didn’t like that poem too well, but in its way, it was useful. I sat and took in the glittery look of the slope, the straight dark trees, almost a Kazakh sort of a scene, the constantly replenished snow and the few adaptable birds.
I thought of course about the seminar and all that about the self; a Japanese self, a Russian self, a girl’s self, a self like a big ridiculous suitcase, a self that says yes, one that says no, or no thank you, Lily Briscoe, Mr. Ramsay, and Dazai on his bar stool. Then the self that says yes and yes again, but to all the wrong things.
Maybe that was the Irish self, or a version of it.
I went to pick up Emmet and as soon as he saw me he ran to me, in the wildest kind of joy; then immediately said, Have prize to me?
No, Emmet, I said, I can’t bring presents every day.
So he threw himself to the floor of the day care, surrounded by bees and butterflies, his little beige curls bobbing up and down tragically, his face red and wet with tears.
The woman on duty smiled sympathetically, but wearily; after all, she’d been with him all afternoon, and said, Come on, now, Emmet, off you go with Mumma.
And so I hauled him out to the car, mine, my prize as it were, strapped him in the car seat against his will; all this over the present that wasn’t; maybe a matchbox car, but better yet something that made noise, like a rescue vehicle that barked, Out of the way! Out of the way!
We picked up Madina at her afterschool. I could see from the hallway that she was pouting, waiting for me so that she could unleash her dissatisfaction.
Where were you? She said without any greeting. I was waiting forever.
Emmet began to run in circles around the afterschool room, scattering papers as he went.
Dina, Dina, he chanted.
Wha-at, she said, standing, waiting for me to get her coat, her hat, gloves, everything.
They pulled and tugged on either side of me in the cold night, Emmet half crying and Madina moping.
Emmet had to be allowed to turn the key in the door, had to turn on the lights, off, on, off, on, as well as the radio.
Play restaurant, he said.
It was hard to get him to wash his hands; I had to warn him of germs and sickness. Sometimes I’d turn around quickly to find Madina giving him a little shove.
But as the evening went on, they told their little stories; they ate their chickey and rice. I reminded Emmet how he used to call my dinners caa-ca, and they both laughed.
At bedtime, Emmet tried to get one more book than the number I had said. If I told him three, he demanded four, Peees, peees, he insisted.
He tried to shove as many cars, trucks, and stuffed animals under the bedclothes as would possibly fit. After a while, when he couldn’t fight it any longer, his little Tatar eyes would close, he would stop talking mid-sentence, and a great peace and quiet would settle over the room.
Cuddle with me now, Madina would say petulantly, clinging to my bathrobe, sometimes holding my head down. Stay with me.
There was nothing I could do about the approach of Christmas; I remembered that movie from my childhood, and the sonorous warning: Christmas is not coming this year. How it made us cringe and hold our hands to our faces in fear and dread. Who could be so cruel as to steal our Christmas?
But so it continued to come; as in the time of the Grinch, it came just the same. We got Vermont presents for everyone, and packed up the car. I could not avoid it. For the first time since my escape, I contemplated return, a very brief return, though one that endangered my survival as surely as a wild and low-tech return from space into ea
rth’s atmosphere, brushing past the sun on my left, the cold emptiness of space on my right.
There was an invisible net that fell from the sky around mid-New Hampshire; cross through it and you were in the Boston zone.
I couldn’t do much about Christmas. Probably only once or twice in my life had I missed going home for it. Gramma had been the Queen of Christmas when we were little, in the big beautiful house, before everything went wrong. Holly and strings of lights and snow made of cotton balls, even on the top of the manger. The French doors mysteriously closed to keep us out; the smell of the tree, the silence of six a.m. mass. It was then that heaven and earth intersected, and it had all been her doing. Even this Una says she doesn’t remember. But how could she not?
And I guess this made us Gramma’s little Christmas angels.
I suffered from this sense of disappointed perfection, of almost perfection, in odd and unaccountable ways. So many aspects of life were affronts to this sense of perfection; unfair, inexplicably snatched away at the point of completion.
It all seemed somehow related.
We arrived at Una’s door, and for a few moments, it appeared no one was home. It was always colder in South Boston; a good ten degrees colder than Cambridge, which I had been used to. From the minute she bought the towering old house in Southie, Una hated it and vowed to put it on the market. Ten years later, there they were, with the house in varying stages of restoration, its five stories tall and skinny as what you’d find canal side in Amsterdam; the staircases going straight up, as if into the sky itself.
We stood and we stood and I began to think there really was no one home. They’d forgotten; they’d gone out. Hugh had a sports event of some kind, a hockey game perhaps. Emmet pounded on the door. And then Una appeared, smiled, opened the several doors leading to the inside of the great, mid-nineteenth century house, one that climbed precariously into the sky.
So much had happened in that house—it was the place I’d first brought Madina back to, it was where so many repetitious Thanksgivings and Christmases had taken place.
Oh, Lord, Una said, looking down at Emmet. I hope he’s not out of control.
Where’s Sven? I asked. Sven was good for a party any time; cracking open a bottle or two of wine. I didn’t know if he and Una really liked each other; it was impossible to tell. Yet they stayed together, so perhaps they did after all.
I didn’t want to be back. I felt myself weakening. I felt the pull, the undertow of the repetition. There was the untrimmed tree in the corner of the cavernous living room. I had the urge to turn and go, and yet there I was, taking off my coat and hanging it on the familiar hook. There was Emmet on all fours, heading up the steep staircase to look for toys. Madina stayed quietly by my side, wanting to eavesdrop.
Sven appeared from down in the kitchen (there were two floors below where we sat), carrying a tall green bottle of Alsace wine.
Hi, hon, he said genially, hugging me and Madina in turn. How you doing? Sven took things in stride, including my recent disappearance from the law school scene, an event in which he had even gone so far as to take on my case. How’s Greensboro?
He had already absorbed the information; we lived in Greensboro now. Maybe later we wouldn’t. Or would. Whatever. To that extent, Sven was not one of us, always second guessing each other and taking pot shots at any and all decisions made.
Well, I said, it’s complicated.
How so? he asked, pouring me a glass. Madina, Hughie’s upstairs and really wants to see you, he went on. Madina left reluctantly.
We’ve got to deal with Gramma, Una said, as if it could be dealt with that minute.
In what sense?
She’s struggling, she said ominously. Una had special terms for certain observable psychological states; struggling, or out of control, or at the worst of times, really bad. Something’s going on was another favorite. And down in the dumps.
Is she weaker?
Well, sure, she’s not getting younger. And she’s bored. This was the equivalent of Una’s belief that kids needed mainly to run around outside. Grandma, she believed, needed to be taken out shopping, to CVS or better yet the Christmas Tree Shop.
But I knew that this was a reference to me; that I had caused this new phase, the downward spiral.
I cannot move back here.
And no one is saying you should.
Fill ‘er up? Sven suggested cheerfully.
As we always did for “sleepovers,” as the kids called them, Emmet and I cuddled together in the tiny half bedroom at the front of the house. The streetlights shone through the icy tree branches; we were directly above the street and all night I heard people talking as they passed by, some swearing in the Southie dialect, liberally peppered with exotic profanities. Emmet’s eager, anxious face was transformed in sleep, into a calm, placid mask, happy in his dreams, contented and satisfied in a way the daytime could never provide. The radiator hissed; it was the warmest room in the house, Una always said, though that wouldn’t have been hard. Madina had chosen to sleep in Hughie’s bottom bunk, and, unusually, the territorial Hughie had allowed this.
Hughie always carried a book with him, even at mealtime, and when tired of the conversation, simply turned to his book, slumping sideways, slowly and deliberately turning the pages no matter what was going on around him. When asked a question, he seemed to be emerging from a deep sleep, or another world. He would look up and say, Huh?, answer perfunctorily and then return to his book.
I watched light appear over the steep roofs. Emmet stirred and held out his hands.
Go Gamma ‘day? he whispered, and of course he had it right. He was always taking inventory. We would be visiting Gramma.
Her little white apartment in the assisted living facility was as neat and tidy as ever. She always placed things just so, even the soap. The towels were folded just so, the magazines stacked up just so. Her clothes always matched, right down to the hankie and pin. Emmet burst in with a great whoop and ran to give her a hug.
And there she was, smaller than before, but bright and lively in her wheelchair, perched in a corner of the room with a thick novel by her side. Gramma was a great reader, and a fast one. She could read a huge novel in a matter of hours. Since she’d gone into the assisted living, she had stopped listening to her Irish music; it was as if she thought she had to, as if she wasn’t allowed music any more. She’d also stopped taking a brandy before bed. Yet she still read large and difficult and romantic novels. I wondered what she thought as she read them.
She lay against the back of her wheelchair and looked around, as if confused.
How did you get here? she asked.
We took a taxi from Harvard.
You didn’t have to, she said, but it wasn’t clear whether we didn’t have to take a taxi, or didn’t have to come at all.
It was easy, I said. Only a few minutes.
Of course it’s not a few minutes.
Una’s coming later.
Oh? And Sven? Gramma liked to have the men show up.
I don’t know.
It doesn’t matter. She leaned back again and closed her eyes.
What’s wrong? I asked. It came out with an edge, though I’d not intended that.
You know what’s wrong, she said, eyes still closed. Oh, my eyes bother me so much.
Is something the matter with your eyes?
It’s the same thing I’ve always had; you know.
Why don’t you see the eye doctor?
They don’t have any doctors over there. You can’t get an eye doctor, just that same one, and he’s so clipped.
Madina asked if they could watch cartoons. I hate cartoons, Madina, I said, my voice rising, what do you need cartoons for?
But she took the remote and switched the television on anyway, just as if I hadn’t said anything. Oh, Madina. She looked sideways at me, but didn’t reply.
Oh, you’ve gotten so big, Gramma said to her. I hope you’re not fresh. Madina, who hated criticism, fli
cked her hair and turned away.
Gramma closed her eyes again and ran her hands along the arms of the chair.
Please tell me what’s wrong, I said. It sounded childish, petulant.
Stop torturing me, she said. Of course you know what’s wrong.
What, what?
What you did; you know what you did.
What did I do? It was so pointless, yet I couldn’t stop myself.
How will you be able to take care of these children now? she asked.
What do you mean? That’s ridiculous.
Oh, it is not ridiculous. Then she waved her hand as if to shoo me away.
I told you about the course I’m going to teach.
I knew when you said you wanted to do law that you wouldn’t be happy, but you went into it with your eyes open.
People can change, I said. It sounded so silly.
Jack and Meg were going to come on for Christmas, but I begged him not to.
Why did you do that?
Why would they want to come home to this?
To what? What have I done?
Oh, honey, please, she said, as if giving up, putting her hand to her stomach to ward off some unnamed pain. Jack of course was my elder brother, who had recently remarried and moved to a golfing community in the mountains of Virginia.
Jack’s been married about a thousand times, and moved houses to match. People can change, I can change; why can he move whenever he wants?
It’s completely different, Grandma whispered wearily.
How beautiful she had been; tall and charming. She had loved cars and dancing and had been engaged by her own admission at least three times. Daddy had doted on her, adored her, through every crisis had waited on her and enjoyed it. I never thought she would survive without him, but here she was, well dressed in her wheelchair, and over ninety.
On Christmas afternoon, Una, Sven and I brought over a cake and a bottle of wine. The kids played tag in the hallway and we toasted. Nothing was said about Vermont. Not a word. For that day, it disappeared. Keep it light with her, Una had always warned me. Don’t tell her what you are really thinking. You always feel you have to prove something, to have a showdown. Just tell her what she wants to hear.
