The time had finally come. I had wondered how I would feel, yet, right at that instant, I couldn’t say. The intensity of the moment numbed my heart as the cold numbed my fingers and toes, but my mind raced. I had spent my last days trying to matter but had failed to accomplish anything of significance. What did that mean? Had I made peace with the fact that I would inevitably fade from memory as if I had never existed at all? Or in the wake of this moment, does it just not matter? What of my life then? Had I lived? My family—was I content with the way I left them? Our disagreements had dissolved into laughter—but was it enough? Was anything I had done enough?
White surrounded me for some time until little shapes appeared in the distance, and I knew I was close to the other side. I stopped and looked back at the house towering above the fog. I envisioned my sleeping family inside and pictured them waking, stretching, yawning. I thought of Sarah sitting up on the Grand Silvia’s loveseat and looking around for me, only to find the autograph book opened to the poem. I hoped she would read it to them. They were not my words. They were not the words of those children. We could not take credit for the verse’s significance, and yet it elegantly stated what we truly wanted to say all along. I wasn’t alone in that sense, which in itself was comforting.
An aroma like my grandmamma’s gingersnaps wafted in the air, and I could almost make out a tune, a whisper—my father whispering a song my mother used to play on her piano. I could hear his whispers, and I remembered that they used to sing. I had lost that memory along the way. What else had I lost?
I winced as pain pierced through my thoughts. I pressed the back of my hand to my forehead, radiating heat. A tickle drew my fingers to my lip, and I pulled back to see a drop of blood lingering on my finger.
I took a deep breath, lowered my hand and took in one last glimpse of my grandmamma’s house—my house. I turned away, away from my house, away from my family, and I walked. I walked into the white, into my eternal meadow and disappeared.
There is a small and simple flower,
That twines around the humblest cot,
And in the sad and lonely hours,
It whispers low: “Forget me not.”
-A common verse found in autograph albums at the turn of the century
The Monument
Marissa Stapley
The town hasn’t changed much, and Delia can’t figure out if this is what she’d hoped. She supposes it was part of the reason she and Anthony had been so charmed by it in the first place, all those years ago. They had found the town peculiar, but in a good way—and she probably still would, if she were in the mood to be charitable. But Delia is not, and never will be again, when it comes to this particular town. Even the name—Gananoque—is irritating to her. The memory of the way the townspeople called it “Gan,” as though it were a family member, or a dear old friend, or they were in a club that only the people who lived there year-round got to be in.
Arriving back in Gan (Delia calls it that in her mind too, and then hates herself for it, the way she might hate herself for inadvertently referring to her ex-husband by the pet name his lover called him, for example) is like being hit with a blunt object. When she drives through the archway that says, “Welcome to Gananoque,” she slows the car and rubs the side of her head. She considers making a U-turn and driving all the way back to Ithaca. But she doesn’t. She presses her foot on the gas and continues driving to the Holiday Inn Express, where she has booked a room because there is nowhere else to stay at this time of year. The girl at the check-in desk tells her the continental breakfast is “not to be missed.” Apparently, there is something called a pancake machine. “We just got it,” the girl, who has straight but yellowed teeth, says. “You just push a button and out comes a pancake.”
“How exciting,” Delia says, but the girl either ignores or does not grasp the sarcasm. Upstairs, Delia puts her valise on the bed but does not open it. Instead, she keeps her coat on, hoists her purse higher on her shoulder and leaves the room. She drives into town again and finds a parking spot. The piles of snow banked up beside the curbs make the sidewalks look like little tunnels. They had never been there in winter, she and Anthony. Only summer. So this is different at least, this snowy shroud the town is enveloped in. It helps dull the memories somewhat, and she is grateful for it. Or perhaps grateful is not the right word.
Why have I come?
She has thought about returning, so many times, over the years. But she did not come for her son’s funeral—she has regretted this, always—so why now? She can’t answer this. What she hopes to accomplish by coming never crystallized in her mind during the planning of the trip, or the hours she spent driving there, as she had hoped it would. And so she struggles as she stands on the sidewalk to come up with a reason not to get into her car and drive away, back through the arches. I could just go. Right now. She won’t even stop at the hotel to pick up her valise or check out. She’ll toss her room key out the window as she drives, feel for a moment like a criminal on the run. She’ll replace the luggage, the clothing and toiletries in the valise once she’s back in Ithaca. Or maybe she won’t. She has too much stuff anyway. She finds herself strangely elated by the idea of driving, unencumbered, out onto the highway again. Over the border and home. Safe.
But lonely.
This is the answer. This is why she has come. Because she is so alone that even one glimpse of the girl has the potential to provide solace. Because it has taken her this long to realize that, and it is too late now, but she still has to see.
After Chase died, she and Anthony’s marriage did not last long. Delia had read a study somewhere about the percentage of marriages that failed once a child was lost or tragedy struck, and she felt relief in using this as an excuse to dissolve it. She was not ostracized by her friends the way some women were when they left their husbands. He didn’t even seem to resent her that much, though he pretended to be angry. Anthony was and always had been a blustering, angry man, used to getting what he wanted—and when he didn’t, look out. She remembers getting the news about Chase and being on one hand torn apart by her grief. And on the other, terrified of the rage she knew Anthony would fly into. Though she had been surprised with how quickly it had flamed out. How swiftly it had deadened him, inside and out. She wonders if she would have stayed with him, had he been able to sustain the rage longer, perhaps pass some of it along to her, goad her into anger instead of anguish.
But that was a long time ago. 1967. Back then, she had believed that perhaps she could move on from the loss of her son—upon whom both she and Anthony had pinned a variety of hopes and dreams, different to each of them, and had never thought to check in with him, with Chase, about what he wanted—and build a new life.
Delia had gone through anger, yes, a brief anger that was one of the stages of grief—at least, that’s what the self-help books had told her—and had raged inwardly against her son. How could you be so bloody irresponsible? Why would you go out on the river on the early ice with your young wife? Why would you take a risk like that, when you had a baby at home? But she knew why. He was following his passion, building his dream, working frantically to construct the fishing camp with his wife before the season was over. And she had raised him to believe in himself—so, likely, he had believed himself to be invincible. My fault, in the end.
When she had moved through the anger phase, she had even felt a grudging admiration for him. Had she ever followed a passion? No, never. And now she is an 80-year-old woman who is estranged from the rest of her children for committing various offenses—chiding a grandchild for his lamentable manners here, making a cruel comment about one of her daughters’ husbands there, withholding affection when they were young, apparently, all of them had told her this—and trailing behind her not one but two unsuccessful marriages. And all the second marriage got her was a smattering of stepchildren to resent her and excommunicate her, too. She can’t even remember why. She supposes she could laugh about it, if it weren’t so pitiful.
She walks carefully along the slushy sidewalk. Is she looking for the girl? Possibly, yes. (Of course she is; why else would she be there?) The girl. This is how she has always referred to Chase’s child in her mind. A distant pronoun—and certainly not as her granddaughter, no, never that. She walks down Main Street and turns right, left, left, until she can see the river and the old, long-closed factories, as well as the row of hotels and inns that are open in summer but are not open now.
Soon, as she knew she would be, she is standing in front of Summers’ Inn, the place where Virginia—who had captured her son’s heart and caused him to abdicate the family throne and move to this town to become a muskellunge fishing guide, of all things—was raised, the place they came to as a family once, for a vacation that would change the course of their lives forever.
The inn is perched at the edge of the riverbank, at the point where the Gananoque River flows into the St. Lawrence and loses its identity completely. Delia sees the yellow-gray stone walls of the inn, the navy blue shutters on every window, the red roof, the weathervane in the shape of a sturgeon. She sees the guest cabins and the dock and the white-painted boathouse and the old gas pump. She sees the tree with the rope hanging from it, and then, suddenly, it is no longer winter, and there is sun shining through pine boughs, and the wooden window boxes are filled with white zinnia and ivy, and Chase is swinging out over the river on the rope tied to the maple tree, and there are deck chairs and the soft murmur of conversation and music and Delia is crying. Quickly, she wipes the tears away.
The front door of the inn opens. Without looking to see who it is, Delia moves off, rushes down the street, does not walk carefully now, does not worry about slipping and falling and breaking her hip, and instead focuses on her flight away from that place. She doesn’t get far, because she is too old to move very fast. She only makes it to the end of the street before she is breathless. She stops and looks back and sees a young woman in a white parka shoveling the front steps. The girl. Delia knows.
She watches as the girl works, then leans the shovel against the outer wall of the inn and drags a container out from under the stairs and begins to shake salt onto the walk. The dutiful granddaughter, caring for Lilly and George, who would have raised her after both her parents died that night on the ice. Delia is filled with impotent jealousy. She is sure the girl will look up, alerted to her presence by the power of her bad feelings, but the girl is absorbed in what she’s doing and does not. Safe. You are safe. Keep walking. But Delia can’t move. There is a blond braid poking out from beneath the girl’s woolen hat. Delia can’t see her face, because she is too far away and she is not wearing her glasses.
Soon, too soon—because Delia, despite herself, is drinking in the girl’s presence, hungrily, fearfully—the girl replaces the container under the steps. She claps her mittened hands together, turns and starts down the walkway. She crosses the street and walks toward Delia while Delia stands still, too frightened to move. Go! Turn around! But then the girl crosses the street. Delia watches as she turns into the parking lot of the play house, where in the summer a theater company puts on plays and musicals for the tourists. We had watched The King and I there. We had seen On Golden Pond.
Delia begins to move, so she can keep the girl in her sights. The girl is standing at the side door of the play house now, removing her mittens, reaching into her pocket, producing a key. It is at this point that she finally looks up, finally senses she is being observed. She raises a hand and waves in that small town way people who live in small towns wave, as if everyone is a friend. And Delia finds herself waving back—and in that moment, the loneliness retreats. Then the girl opens the door and goes inside the play house.
Delia retraces her path, back the way she has come, right, right, left this time and back onto Main. She feels strangely exhilarated, in a way she hasn’t in a long time. She walks until she reaches a café. Inside, she orders a pot of tea and then, impulsively, a maple scone. People come in and out. Everyone seems to know everyone else, and many people give her the same casual wave the girl had.
Delia bites into the scone—it is crumbly and cakey, there is icing on it, it reminds her of something from her childhood—and allows herself to imagine what it might be like to live in a place like this. Too soon, though, the scone is gone, and her tea is tepid. She checks her watch. An hour has passed. She does not know what to do with herself, but feels she cannot loiter any longer. Outside, she walks back the way she came once more, down the streets that are suddenly as familiar as home, but painfully so. She goes to the play house. She tries the door. It is locked, of course. What on earth are you doing?
She peers inside at the darkness and thinks the girl must not be there any more, but then she sees her, passing by with a sheaf of papers. Delia ducks, and the movement alerts the girl to her presence. The girl stops, startled, and then she laughs and goes to the door, unlocks it and pokes her head out.
“You scared me,” she says, laughing again. “For a minute, with that coat, I thought you were—I don’t know, a bear or something.” She stops laughing when she seems to realize Delia is not laughing, not even smiling.
There is an uncomfortable silence during which time Delia looks at the girl’s face and tries not to appear as desperately ravenous as she is. But there is nothing in the girl’s face to feed her hunger. The girl is a dead ringer for her mother, Virginia. But she does not look like Chase at all, and, realizing this, Delia feels herself harden against the girl. She knows with sudden clarity that the moment when she allowed herself to wave and felt her desolation temporarily recoil is all she’s going to get.
“Is there something I can help you with?” Mae. Her name is Mae.
“I was wondering if there are any plays scheduled. I’m just here for a day or two, and I thought I might…”
“You’re in luck. Tomorrow there’s a matinee. It’s just community theater, so not quite, or anywhere near, as professional as what you might see here in the summer, but it’s not bad, if I do say so myself. I’m in it,” she continues, and Delia thinks she senses something nervous in the girl’s chatter. Or maybe it’s just the way she is when she talks to strangers, or when she talks at all. What does Delia know about this girl? “Romeo and Juliet. We’ve condensed it from the original version. So it’s shorter.”
“That’s generally what happens when one condenses something,” Delia says dryly, and then, with further clarity, she knows why her daughters don’t want anything to do with her. She remembers one of them saying once, “Why do you always have to be so mean?” She doesn’t intend it, not really. But she is mean.
The girl seems immune to it, though. “Yes, true,” she says. “My Aunt Viv is the one who did it, and she told me she didn’t want to have to cut anything. I mean, it’s Shakespeare, who does? But really, on a Sunday afternoon, in a cold theater, no one has the time or inclination to sit through the full version of anything. I’m not making it sound that attractive, am I? I’m probably driving you away.”
“No, not at all. I’ll be there. What time?”
“Two-thirty tomorrow. You can get your ticket at the door.”
“See you then,” Delia says, and she retraces her steps for the final time that day, finds her car, drives back to the hotel, enters her room, lies down on her bed and falls asleep blanketed by her coat.
~~~~
Delia parks in the lot of the play house. She is early, so she waits in the car, the key still in the ignition, the heat still on, until five minutes before the show is scheduled to begin. Inside, she buys a ticket from a young man sitting at a table. Ten dollars. The boy has trouble making change from Delia’s 50-dollar bill. “Don’t worry,” Delia says. “Just keep it.” On a sign, it says the show is a fundraiser for a local organization that raises money for the underprivileged youth in town to engage in the arts. Art lessons, music lessons, dance classes. Why bother, Delia thinks, and knows this is another of her cruel thoughts.
Delia finds a seat
near the back. The play begins almost the moment her back hits the seat. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes. A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life. She feels bored, as she always does when watching live theater. Until the girl comes out. It surprises her that the girl is not playing Juliet, as she had expected. She is Lady Capulet. This is because she’s not a girl, Delia reminds herself. She is in her twenties. The girl who plays Juliet is truly a girl, probably no more than 16.
Delia finds her attention wandering when Mae is not on stage, but focuses hard every time she appears. She is a surprisingly good actress. She is better than the young girl playing Juliet, for example, who is passionate, yes, but who is also obviously acting, who does not necessarily have an understanding of the words she speaks. Whereas Mae speaks the words easily and causes them to make sense because she seems to see the sense in them. The pain in them. The pain that a mother would feel as she loses her child in slow increments.
“Is there no pity sitting in the clouds, that sees to the bottom of my grief?” the girl playing Juliet shouts, clasping her hands together at her pale bosom. “O sweet my mother, cast me not away! Delay this marriage for a month, a week; or, if you do not, make the bridal bed in that dim monument where Tybalt lies.”
In that dim monument.
Delia finds herself watching Mae even more closely now, finds her own heart pounding as this young woman, her granddaughter, there, she has uttered the words, even inwardly, says: “Talk not to me, for I’ll not speak a word: Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee.”
Legacy- an Anthology Page 10
