Such Good People

by Martha Whitmore Hickman

  Just then, there was another knock at the door. A key turned, and Bart’s voice: “Hi! I see he made it. That’s some crate you’ve got out there. You have to push it to get it home?” He came in, laughing, he in his heavy mackinaw filling the door, his arms outstretched to his brother, and there was Paula behind him, pink-cheeked, wearing her purple down coat. They all hugged.

  “How about some coffee, or beer?” Laura asked. And to Philip, she said, “Have you eaten?” No, he hadn’t eaten—or at least he was ready to eat again. She went into the kitchen, put the heat on under the still-warm stew, and allowed herself a few tears. How Annie would have loved this homecoming.

  *

  With Philip here, they bought a wreath for the front door, and a Christmas tree. “Maybe,” Laura said to Trace as he came in from taking the tree from the trunk of the car and leaning it against the shed wall until time to bring it in. “Maybe we’ll get through this season after all.”

  He hugged her. “Sure we will,” he said.

  All fall, she had dreaded the coming of Christmas. All the familiar family rituals of Advent wreath and tree and gifts, of special foods, of going to church on Christmas Eve and coming home to spiced tea and Christmas cookies—it would all be a mockery, fraught with pain. They had talked briefly of going somewhere away from home, but they knew their sadness would follow them. Somehow, they would slog it through.

  Christmas was on Tuesday. On the previous Friday, Paula left. Bart brought his suitcase and moved back into his old room with Philip—“for old times,” he joked. “Besides, I get better food here than batching it on my own.”

  Two days before Christmas, Trace and Bart and Philip put up the tree. Trace brought down the box of ornaments from the attic—the pile of stockings on top, each with its name. Laura fingered them—the appliquéd felt and tiny sequins, the squared white letters of the names. “Please, let’s not hang the stockings this year.”

  She lifted out the box containing the Christmas creche she’d had since childhood. It was one of Annie’s favorite Christmas things. Since the time she was a little girl, she’d always helped Laura set it up on the mahogany buffet. Laura unpacked the pieces—Joseph with his knicked arm, Mary in a faded blue cloak, the baby Jesus now a blurred oblong of wax, his halo a dingy gold—and arranged them, wordlessly, a fierceness in her hands.

  On Christmas Eve, they went to church and, in the luminous darkness, sang.

  They came home, sat together in the darkened living room, the white lights of the Christmas tree blinking off and on, like new constellations demanding attention.

  Finally, they spoke of it.

  “All fall, I tried to study,” Philip said. “She was all I could think of.”

  From his chair in the corner, Bart nodded, his face a mask of pain. “I know what you mean.” Then he said, “A guy I work with has a sister who was in Annie’s class. She came in last week. She’d ridden with Annie a couple of times. She said sometimes a horse will just take off, and if they sense a person is scared—” His voice broke off, and Laura, remembering her conversation with Paula, thought, Don’t do this to yourself. There’s nothing you could have done.

  Philip turned toward Trace and Laura. “How is it for you guys?”

  There was silence for a minute, then Laura said, “I’ve dreaded Christmas. I wished it would never come. Who would hang the Angel of the Lord?” She laughed then. Annie had named it that years ago—a small red felt angel with worn gold wings. Always she had hung it as high as she could reach—its passage up the tree reflecting year by year her growing stature. It hung now, close to the top. Laura had put it there, asking no one, claiming it as her prerogative. They had probably seen her do it. They had not spoken of it, either. She got up and touched it now, turning it to catch the light. She sat down.

  In the quiet that followed, Trace said, “It’s been hard, of course. But I almost feel she’s here, come to be with us.”

  They looked at him, surprised. They would not have expected such a sentiment from him, such an intuition. “There’s a young graduate student in my department,” he went on. “Sometimes she reminds me of Annie.”

  Kate? Laura wondered.

  On Christmas afternoon, Paula called. Bart came from the phone. “She sends her love. She’s having a good visit.” He sighed in resignation. “She was going to look for a good opportunity to tell her mother. She hasn’t found one yet.”

  Laura called up Rachel. “How are you, Mother?”

  “I’m all right. Ella and Jackson are here. How are you?”

  They talked for a while, then Rachel said, “Howard has some science meetings in New York. He’s coming to see me on his way. When are you coming?”

  Laura remembered the acrimonious discussions last fall about when she would go to visit Rachel, was glad not to have to repeat that. “I’ll come after New Year’s—after Philip goes.”

  The phone rang again before she got out of the kitchen. It was Ginny, calling from Hadley. “I knew this would be a tough Christmas. Tom and I are thinking of you.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “It was dear of you to call. How are you?”

  “Fine. Fred’s here, too. He sends his love.”

  “Oh! And mine to him. Tell him I’m working on his drawings.”

  She heard murmurings at the other end of the line. “Here, you tell him.”

  “Laura?” Fred’s voice came on. “How are you, dear?”

  “We’re okay. Our boys are here. Thanks for sending the material.”

  “How does it look? Anything that catches your eye?”

  “I’ve started some sketches. Just started, though. I haven’t done much of anything lately—getting ready for Christmas.” And I hadn’t the heart for it, she thought to herself.

  “No hurry. When are you coming up?”

  “Sometime next month, to see my mother.”

  “I’ll try to get over while you’re here. I’ll check with Ginny.”

  “That’d be great.” They said good-bye and she hung up, her hand light on the phone. She realized she was smiling. She stood for a moment by the window. Outside, the neighbors’ Christmas lights sparkled in the darkening night. The sounds of caroling children drifted up the street. The season, though so colored with sadness, still offered its tender mercies, its promises of hope, its gifts of the love of family and friends. Didn’t it?

  “How’s Grandma?” Philip asked when she returned to the living room. He sat slouched against the sofa, his red shirt pulled taut by the book he held propped open on his chest, his hand spread across a glossy green page.

  “She’s doing all right—very well, in fact. She’s surprised us all, how well she’s managing with Grandpa gone. She’s quite a gutsy woman, my mother.”

  He laughed. “Good.” He shifted the book and tilted it toward her. “Look! Argonne Woods.”

  “Argonne Woods!” she repeated. “What book is that?”

  He flipped the cover over to show her the title —American Wilderness. “I just discovered the picture.” He returned to the photo—deep woods, the winding river in the distance, in the foreground a few sprigs of white trillium and wood violets. He read the caption, “‘Argonne Woods. One of the last stands of virgin timber in the East.’ Our old hangout,” he said.

  Years ago, Trace had taken them to Argonne Woods. He’d gone there when he was young. After the first time, they were all hooked. They went every spring, to stay a weekend in a log cabin by the river—its edges blurred by burgeoning green and the occasional cloud of wood smoke sent up by a controlled Park Service fire. It was one of Annie’s favorite places. “When I get married,” she’d said, “I’m going to Argonne Woods for my honeymoon.” They hiked in the woods, the ascents and glades and lookout points familiar to them year by year. In the evenings, they played Monopoly and hearts, gathered at the round table beneath the flared metal cone of the single hanging light and promised that next year they would remember to bring a brighter lightbulb.

  She sat dow
n on the sofa by Philip. “We didn’t go last year. Annie didn’t want to. She said she was too busy.”

  Philip looked away, regret etching his face. “She would have,” he said softly. “She wrote me, begging me to get off school and come. She said with Bart and me both gone, it would just be too sad.” He sighed. “I was busy. I didn’t think I could take the time.” His voice caught in a sob. “Every day since she died, I wished I’d said, Yeah, let’s go. I thought there would be time.” He moved his hand deliberately over the page, as though to erase in the lushness of these trees the memory of his sister’s wish ungranted.

  Laura put her hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t know,” she said. “She didn’t tell me.”

  Trace came into the room, wearing his new shirt from Paula and Bart. “Nice?” He turned around for their approval.

  “Yes. But look, Trace. Argonne Woods.”

  He came and looked over Philip’s shoulder.

  “It was one of Annie’s favorite places in the world,” she said.

  “Where did we get this book?” Philip asked.

  “I bought it,” Trace said. “Last week.”

  “You didn’t tell me?” Laura asked.

  “I would have. We’ve been so busy.” He sat down. “You were able to get through to Mother? How is she?”

  “She’s well. I told her I’d come up in a couple of weeks. I talked to Ginny, too. I’ll see her and Tom. And Fred,” she added impulsively.

  “Fred?”

  “Ginny’s brother. I told you about him. An old flame—sort of.” Was she teasing him? He seemed not to notice.

  Instead, he said, “Fine,” and picked up a new book, a study of political systems, and began to read. She looked at him in wonder and consternation. Had he not heard? Was he so secure—or disinterested—that the mention of revisiting an old flame aroused no touch of concern and speculation? He was lost in his book. Should she be glad at such trust? And who was this Kate Morton?

  She picked up American Wilderness. It fell open to the picture of Argonne Woods and for a few minutes she tried to reenter that world, with all of them there, walking the trails together.

  After a few minutes, she put it down. Bart and Philip had gone outside to trade notes on car maintenance. The house was quiet. She leaned back in the chair, eyes half-closed, watching the sparkle of tree lights, the flicker of ornaments as the slight motion of warm air rising moved them against the deep green of the pine. Her eyes traveled up the Christmas tree to the red felt skirt, the bent gold wings of the Angel of the Lord, turning in the light. Where are you, my darling? Suddenly, the words cut through her heart. She felt overcome by a feeling of unutterable loneliness. Slowly, she stood up and moved toward Annie’s room. Trace seemed not to notice her leaving. Once in Annie’s room, she stood for a moment before the louvered doors of the storage closet, then opened the door and took from the shelf, where she had put it five months ago, the box of Annie’s ashes, brown-wrapped in its mailing paper. She sat down on the bed and cradled the box in her lap, her body leaning forward to surround it with her own warm flesh. Tears fell on her skirt, made dark splotches on the wrapping paper of the box.

  Moments passed. She looked up, toward the open closet door. There on a lower shelf were some old books—children’s books, a Bible, an old Farmer’s Almanac.

  Laura’s grandfather had given her the Bible when she was recovering from her childhood illness—along with a Bible-story coloring book. She remembered some of the pictures in the coloring book—one of Jesus and the children, his face turned sideways and the shepherd’s crook in his hand, the children in white gowns reaching below their knees. Another picture of an angel by a wall and a huge stone. She remembered sitting up in bed, coloring the angel. Her mother stood beside her.

  “What color are the wings?” she’d asked.

  “I don’t know,” her mother said. “Gold, maybe?”

  She remembered pushing through the crayons and looking for a gold one, then finding it and coloring in the wings.

  Laura found Rachel frailer but in no apparent crisis. She was confined to bed most of the time. The doctor’s prediction that she might require permanent catheterization had been borne out: A flannel-covered bag was hooked to the side of the bed. When Rachel got up once or twice a day to walk around the room or sit at the table, the bag went with her. “Is it uncomfortable?” Laura asked. “No, I’m used to it.” After their first acknowledgment, they did not speak of it.

  At supper, Rachel sat propped against pillows, her shoulders listing to the side, her head tipped so far, it almost touched her plate, but she did not know it—a small curled woman, her mouth working around bites of food, her hand on the teacup so unsteady, Laura looked away lest her mother read the fear in her eyes.

  After supper, they talked awhile, but soon Rachel said, “I’m tired. Help me back to bed.” Laura pressed her arm around her mother’s shoulders, guided her as she shuffled the few steps back to bed.

  Rachel lay back, her eyes closed. When she opened them, her glance brushed over Laura. Then, not speaking, she reached for the evening paper, its pages fanned out on the bed. She had already been through it once. She began to turn the page slowly, but her eyes didn’t move. When she finished, she turned back through it again, stopping at each page, her eyes not moving over it at all.

  Laura got up and went into the kitchen, where Carlena was finishing the dishes. She picked up a towel, but Carlena took it from her. “No, no, I’ll do it.” She looked at Laura. “There now, dear, you mustn’t cry. Your mother’s had a good life. She’s not suffering.”

  “Is she always like this—reading, not seeing?”

  “She’s good in the mornings. You’ll see a big difference in the morning.

  *

  Carlena was right. The next morning, Rachel was much brighter. She asked about Trace, Bart and Paula, Philip.

  They spoke of Rachel’s friends, Laura prompting, going down the list one by one.

  “Alice?”

  “Alice has bad diabetes, you know. Her foot doesn’t heal.”

  “Mabel?” Mabel Olmstead had long been a favorite of Laura’s. She’d often visited her when she came to Hadley.

  “Mabel is in Cramer Home.”

  “Oh. Does she like it?” Rachel had talked once of trying Cramer Home herself. It was after Will died.

  “I think she likes it. She has friends there. She misses Barney, of course.”

  “Sometime I’d like to visit her. And Eloise?”

  “Oh, I guess I didn’t tell you. She’s gone to live with her daughter in Connecticut.”

  Laura looked up quickly. Was there censure implied in this comment—“gone to live with her daughter”? Rachel’s face seemed untroubled, free of resentment or guile.

  “I didn’t know that.” She hurried on. “How about Marjorie?”

  “I never hear from her. She’s way out in the country. Joe is still living. I guess they’re all right.”

  But when they had finished the account of family and friends, there seemed little to say. Rachel dozed off. Laura drank the last swallow of cold coffee, observed how the trees edging the back hill were still winter-gaunt. How the trees had grown over the years since Rachel and Will had built this house on what was pastureland on Will’s father’s farm. Now the street was lined with houses—the last lots bought years ago. “We were first,” Rachel said. “We could have had any lot we wanted. I wanted to face toward the hills.” And she would look up at the dark horizon line lifting and falling beyond the last row of houses. “‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,’” she would say, giving a biblical blessing to their choice, all those years ago.

  She looked back at Rachel, sleeping now, and hungered with a hunger reminiscent of childhood for her mother’s presence. Rachel was so frail—these few days together could be their last, and how to make the time blossom before it slipped away?

  *

  It was Rachel herself who provided a key, inadvertently, from her simple phy
sical need. She was cold. “Will you get me another blanket, dear?” she asked, and Laura, for once circumventing Carlena’s ever-present helpfulness—she was in another room and didn’t hear—went upstairs to find one.

  The blanket Laura chose was a handwoven wool coverlet of cream and deep blue. Her great-grandmother had woven it as part of her trousseau, weaving the name of her beloved— Dewitt, Dewitt, around its four borders.

  “Here, I brought this one,” she said, unfolding it and spreading it over Rachel, releasing the smell of mothballs into the air.

  Rachel’s face brightened. “My grandmother wove this before she was married.”

  “It was so romantic,” Laura said. “Lillian and I loved to go up there when we were playing house. When did you get it? I don’t remember its ever not being there.”

  “My father was her first child,” Rachel said, her hand moving back and forth over the cloth, her dry skin scratching against the soft wool. “She gave this blanket to my father when my grandfather died.”

  Laura turned it around in her mind. She had not known that part of the story. “Do you think of him often—your father?”

  “Yes. I think of Will, too. Sometimes I get them mixed up, which is which, putting them in the wrong place—Will in the house in Troy, my father here, taking care of Mother and me.”

  Laura looked at her mother, the wistfulness in her face and, in some way emboldened by the blanket, she ventured, “I like to think that in some way they are still loving you, caring for you.”

  Rachel’s face contorted with emotion. “I hope so,” she said.

  She looked off into the distance and after a minute Laura said, “What are you thinking of ?”

  Her mother turned back. “I was just thinking of the color of Annie’s hair.”

  Laura’s eyes filled with tears. “Yes,” she said.

  “Darling.” Rachel reached out to her and she laid her head on the edge of the bed and her mother stroked her hair. “You think of her every day,” she said.

  “Yes”—her voice muffled against a lift of the coverlet. “It’s like the air I breathe. Or the lenses of my eyes.”