They leave the house not long after sunrise on Mag’s birthday, Mag in the backseat of the family Peugeot. They do not have a Buick or Oldsmobile like everyone else on their block. Instead, a French car, to go with the wine carefully stored in the basement, between the sump pump and the freezer. Mag’s father protests all of it, especially the car, though to no particular effect.
“You can’t buy a part for it,” he complains. “Everything you want you’ve got to order.”
“Stop acting like such an insurance salesman.”
“I am an insurance salesman.”
“You’re an insurance executive, which is a different matter entirely.”
They drive the deserted streets, leaving behind a thin blue haze of exhaust. The piston rings are going. Another thousand dollars sucked down the drain by his wife’s pretensions, Jack Marault tells himself. He has wondered more than once if she married him mostly because of his name. The weather changes quickly as they pass through the city’s outskirts. By the time they make their way through the gates of the arboretum west of town they are enclosed in dense mist.
“Why are we here?” Mag asks. At her age, wandering in a sprawl of greenery with her mother seems more like a sentence than a gift.
“Oh, you’ll see, honey,” her mother says.
Her father parks the car in an otherwise empty lot. To Mag’s eye this looks like a horror movie, in which they are the last people left alive on Earth.
They march through a grove of elms. The path leads to the edge of a lake. Nearby is a clearing, a room tucked in the woods, bordered by blooming lilies.
“Let’s sit for a minute,” her mother says.
By Mag’s reasoning, the faster they walk, the more quickly they will be done. “I’m not tired,” she says.
“That doesn’t really matter, dear. Come here and sit.”
Mag slips reluctantly between her mother and father on the damp park bench. Her father puts his arm around her shoulder and pulls her closer to him. She does not resist, though his wool coat prickles against her bare arm. Later she will wonder if he already knew what he would do that night. Of course he did, she decides. Whether that made this embrace more infuriating or dear Mag will never be able to say.
Her mother takes a small black box, bound with a white ribbon, from the pocket of her skirt. “For you,” she says, setting it in Mag’s lap.
Mag slips off the thin ribbon. Inside, on a bed of cotton, is a tarnished silver necklace inset with bits of diamond. What her mother is thinking Mag cannot begin to say.
She knows the story. The necklace belonged to her great-grandmother. Most people assume you cannot, or at least should not, take your wealth to the grave. Virginia Marault disagreed. Having nursed her many grudges for decades, she insisted that she be buried with her most valued possession, her diamonds. This in order to deny the pleasure of the inheritance to any of her relation
Mag’s superstitious family honored the command, burying the old woman with her jewels. The price of this bargain was an untended grave. Weeds climbed over the tombstone, cut from cheap, soft marble that was soon moss-cloaked and illegible. Thirty years after the burial, the state needed a corner of the cemetery for a road. A half dozen graves, including Virginia Marault’s, were to be moved. The family, having never visited the grave before, did however turn out for the exhumation.
The sweetness of the spring sunshine, the chickadees chirping, bees buzzing: all of this was related later as evidence that Nature itself was happy to see Virginia Marault plucked from the ground. Mag heard the story so often that she felt as if she had been there herself. The Marault men, passing a bottle of brandy back and forth. Their children playing hide and seek among the tombstones. The black dirt mounded on the grass by the pair of gravediggers sent out by the state. Then, finally, the rap of a shovel blade on the coffin lid.
Virginia Marault’s daughter ordered the state’s men out of the grave.
“The job isn’t properly done, ma’am,” one of them said.
“Done enough,” she replied. “You can wait with them.” She pointed toward her brothers. One of them raised the brandy bottle.
Virginia’s daughter slipped into the grave, clumps of dirt tumbling in after her. She brushed the dirt from her pink sweater, then wiggled the shovel blade through the rotted wood of her mother’s coffin. With her bare hands she pulled apart the lid.
There among tatters of cloth and bone was the necklace Mag now held. The silver was tarnished but the fragments of diamond caught the light.
This bit of grave robbery hardly changed the family’s fortunes. “Sentimental value, I hope, but in terms of monetary worth…” The appraiser had never bothered to finish the sentence.
≈
“Your father had some questions,” Mag’s mother says. “About whether this is appropriate. I told him I had no doubt in my mind.”
That much, at least, Mag does not question. She tries to slip the necklace into her pocket.
“Oh no, dear, you’ve got to put it on,” her mother insists.
Mag knows it is pointless to argue. She hands the necklace to her father, who fumbles with the tiny glasp.
“How do I look?” she asks him.
Mag can not decode his expression. Mournful, it will seem in retrospect, as if he wishes he could stop what was happening but knows he is unable.
She and her father have a quiet alliance against her mother’s illusions. “You look beautiful, sweetie,” he says at last. “As always.”
They drive home, eat supper, watch television and go to bed. And as Mag and her mother sleep, Jack Marault slips out of the house. He takes the clothes he has stuffed in a brown leather stachel and ten thousand dollars from the family account. The police find the Peugeot abandoned at the Greyhound stop. There is not a single written word of explanation.
Mag throws the necklace to the back of her drawer. Until the day of her wedding she never wears it again, nor does her mother ask where it has gone.
Chapter Seven
A week or so after Mrs. Hennessey’s death, her son pushes a trolley loaded with empty boxes into her room. He has come for his mother’s effects. “I’m so sorry,” my mother says to him. Unlike her own boys, William Hennessey found time once or twice a week to visit his mother. He is a bit of a flirt, even with the old ladies in the home. What harm did that do? It is a pleasant reminder of those years — too few!— when men flirted with her as a matter of course.
“It was quick, at least,” he says. “She wanted that. She wanted to go while she was still in her right mind.”
“She was indeed,” my mother replies. “Still in her right mind.” He does not need to know about those last few fear-struck moments. He can go on thinking, like everyone else, that she died in her sleep.
William pulls a chair up next to hers. My mother has made herself a small sitting area near the window, with a table and hard-backed chair that she nagged the boys to bring for her. “One of my kitchen chairs,” she told them. “But not the kitchen table, it’s too big. The table from the front hall would be best.” Let them figure out which chairs had been in the kitchen. And they nodded, the traitors, as if her house were awaiting her return. Too bad for them if they were forced to buy her furniture back from a dealer at a bloated price.
The lie offended her more than that they had sold the place. On second thought, she was equally offended on both counts. She signed the title over to them years ago. They insisted then that it if she did not, her estate would disappear someday in death taxes or nursing home fees. She did not necessarily trust her boys, but neither could she think of how to put them off. She depended on them for the odd bit of heavy lifting, or help with various paperwork — Medicare forms, taxes, all that official foolery. She should have hired honest professionals to meet her few needs. It would have cost her less.
“Would you care for a cup of tea, Mr. Hennessey?” she asks. She had persuaded the boys to bring her a small, plug-in tea kettle. She could offer visitors
that much, even if she must ask that they fill the kettle themselves. She couldn’t manage with her walker.
“A pleasure,” he says. They watch the pot, as if it might do something interesting. Audrey had hung a lace curtain, which hides the parking lot from view. When the sun hits the lace it gives off a familiar smell that reminds her of home.
William Hennessey takes her hand and holds it between both of his. Her extremities are always so cold. His hands feel as if he has just pulled them from a fire.
He reminds her of my father. Not in appearance, naturally, since James was slight up to the day he died. Mr. Hennessey is a substantial figure. It is, rather, a matter of sensitivity. Mr. Hennessey is making time to sit with her. He holds her hand. He looks at her as though she is still a person with opinions and feelings. He manages to stir in her a memory of her physical self, of those tender moments with James. She smiles slightly at this pleasant surprise.
“Now there’s a consolation of age,” he says, smiling back at her. “A cup of tea is enough to make us happy.”
“Oh, yes,” she replies. “A cup of tea. Will you take sugar, Mr. Hennessey?”
She always enjoyed James’ trim aspect. Not that anyone would have guessed it to look at him in his workday clothes, but he was very tidily muscled. He had his routines, his sit-ups and push-ups and so forth, not to mention his work around the house and their walks with the dog, which kept him fit.
Every generation thinks that it invented intimacy, which is probably true enough. Certainly my mother felt that way with James. She would watch as he took off his work suit, shake it out and put it on a hanger. He seemed unconscious of himself as he did so, though she imagined it also to be something of a performance. He was like a Greek sculpture, except that he came with no fig leaf. Well… She sighs lightly. To think that having her hand held now would be such a pleasure. It would be tragic, except that the sensation itself was so soothing.
“May I ask you a question?” Mr. Hennessey says. “About my mother. If you won’t find that upsetting.”
Mr. Hennessey is a handsome man in his own way. He has a full head of gray hair and a goatee that suggests a bit of mischief. My mother does not so much care for the feel of facial hair on men, the odd prickle on sensitive skin. She finally ruled against the mustache that James once thought to grow. But in Mr. Hennessey’s case she approves.
“I wonder about her last moments,” he says. “Whether she had anything to relate.”
“She died in her sleep, Mr. Hennessey,” she replies. “She had nothing at all to say.”
He smiles slightly and shakes his head. “I doubt that anyone truly dies in his or her sleep. It seems a large event to sleep through, don’t you think?”
She shrugs. “By the time I could give you a full report, Mr. Hennessey, I’m afraid it will be too late. Assuming I am as fortunate as your mother.”
He takes her hand again and looks at her with surprising intensity, as if he were focusing not on her eyes, but on some spot deep inside her head. As if he could read her mind. Ridiculous, that, but she can not shake the thought.
He leans toward her. “Don’t you think it would be fascinating, Mrs. Brimsley,” he says softly, “if we could ask a child what comes before life on this earth?”
“I’ve never bothered to think of it, I’m afraid.” She hopes this won’t lead to a discussion of abortion. She gets enough of that at church.
“I’m sorry.” He tips his head. “A baby can’t tell us anything, you see. But a woman such as my mother. She could…” He stops.
“Could what?” my mother asks.
He pats her hand. There is a quality to the man that she has trouble identifying. So many men think only of the things you can see, measure, hit with a hammer. Mr. Hennessey is obviously different than that.
She tries to be practical. She has no use for mumbo-jumbo. She cannot afford it, given the events of her life. Still she finds Mr. Hennessey most appealing, and has no desire to disappoint him.
“Oh, I believe this is a more complicated world than we allow ourselves to imagine,” he says with a slight smile.
“I’ve often hoped it was just the opposite,” my mother replies.
“If I could trouble you to think about the time of my mother’s passing, Mrs. Brimsley. For whatever you can recall.”
“Maybe there was something that escapes me now,” she says. Maybe she would tell him something more, or create whatever it was he wanted to hear. She would have to think about that. “At my age, you know… “
“Go ahead,” he says. “I have nothing but time.”
“If you could come back in a few days, I could think on it until then.” The days stretch ahead, one as empty as the next. Another visit would be something to anticipate. Some story, regardless of its truth, would be a small price to pay.
“Excellent,” he says. He kisses her cheek lightly. She does not object to the rasp of his goatee. She does not object in the slightest.
≈
Minutes later Hennessey stands with his car keys in his hand and wonders why he brought up that nonsense about his mother’s last words. While she was living he struggled to tune her out. If there were a way to communicate from the beyond, she would surely find it without his help.
He says what others expect or desire. There is his problem in a nutshell, he tells himself. Now he has obliged himself to visit again. His mother finally in the grave and what does he do but take on another old lady. Hennessey manages a small, rueful laugh as he starts his car. There is so much he seems unable to escape.
I know I must add him to my list. Because of his involvement in my mother’s life. Because he is kindling her memories. Because he is interesting in his own right, and there is no rule, so far as I have noticed, against pursuing whatever I please.
Chapter Eight
Normally Mag sleeps like she is drugged. Her head hits the pillow and it’s off to dreamland. But with the first night in her new home comes an unwelcome surprise. She closes her eyes, dozes off, and awakes with a start a half hour later. Wald sprawls across their bed. She waits impatiently, as if sleep is a train that is running late. Wald snores lightly. The house makes its own small ticks and shivers, as all houses do. “Wald,” she says at last. “I can’t sleep.” He mumbles something, dreaming.
She remembers how he looked when they met. Sensitive eyes, generous lips, a head of corkscrew curls. She sized him up and made a choice in an instant.
“Put me on your shoulders,” she said. He had reasons to refuse. The mob, the police, the inevitable tear gas; at any moment the stampede could begin and there he’d be, staggering around with a girl on his shoulders. But she grinned and that was that.
“I can’t see anything,” she added.
He shrugged and knelt so she could climb up his back. Her bare thighs pressed against his neck. He took hold of her ankles and stood.
Over the years she had forgotten exactly why they and all those thousands of others were in the street that day. Some outrage. Nixon and Kissinger bombing Cambodia, maybe that was it. Anyway, it was warm. The sun shone as it does in spring, the soft light falling in patches through the first leaves. The branches intertwined over the street. Doubtless the birds sang their lungs out, but they were wasting their time. All she could hear was the commotion of the police helicopter, the cops’ barked orders, the mob’s chanting.
“Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh! NLF is going to win!” They were in the street outside the ROTC building, a little castle built of cream-colored brick.
She yanked his thick hair as she screamed along with the others. He tugged on her ankles. “Hey, easy,” he said.
“Sorry.”
A minute later she was pulling at his hair again. He’d have to live with it, he decided.
The crowd surged back and forth, not for any reason she could make out. The cops, each of them holding a plexiglass shield and riot baton, stood behind a black iron fence supported by stone pillars. Her thighs pressed against Wald’s ears. Her b
elly pushed against the back of his head. Suddenly all of it struck her as ridiculous — the twitchy cops, the angry cadre, the dares and double dares. She wished he would set her down in the shade somewhere.
A wild-haired comrade in a white t-shirt climbed atop one of the pillars. “Rip it down!” he yelled. “Come on, rip it down!” He did a dance up there, capering like the revolution’s own leprechaun, until one of the cops grabbed him by the ankle. A gang of them were on him at once, thrashing with their clubs. When at last they stepped away, he was motionless on the grass, his legs splayed awkwardly, his face and shirt red with blood. For a moment everyone stopped to consider the fact of the matter — that the line between posturing and pain could collapse so quickly. Then the battle began.
The mob threw itself against the fence. Once, twice. The third time it gave way. A pair of the stone pillars tumbled, one of them catching a cop who screamed as his leg snapped under the falling rubble. Cops tossed tear gas grenades. They waded among the protesters, lashing out with their clubs on all sides, hardly caring who they hit, or where, or how hard. She saw a girl not five feet away whose forehead was split down to the bone, her eyes frantic behind a curtain of blood.
“Put me down,” Mag yelled. The crowd pushed against them. Some were eager to get at the cops, others scrambled to flee. Beneath her Wald lurched back and forth, buffeted by the mob.
The helicopter dropped to tree-top level. A white cloud poured from it, driven downward by the propeller wash. She couldn’t help but cough. Then he was coughing, too. Tear gas. The cops pulled on their masks. She could hardly see or breathe. They tumbled to the street, the two of them a knot. Someone stepped on her hand. Mag wondered, surprised by her sense of calm, if she was to be trampled to death here in the street on a heavenly spring day. And all this because she had dimly perceived that this boy, whose name she still didn’t know, might serve on the path to the future. She pulled at his arm and cried, “Come on, get up!”
Thereafter Page 4
