Elegies for the Brokenhearted

by Christie Hodgen

  “Gimme a break, “she said. “Can’t I have any fun? You want everyone to end up like you? What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to clean up. Take care of Michael,” I said. I tried to keep my voice down. He was asleep in the next room. “I want you to do a better job. The school year’s coming, and I won’t be around to help as much.”

  “I’m doing the best I can!” she said. She sat on the floor and cried, which had always been her strategy in arguments. “I didn’t ask for this!” she said. “I didn’t ask to inherit this.”

  I thought of our father, who had made drunken appearances on our doorstep, once or twice a year throughout our childhood. As we grew older I eventually came to liken his visits to the airing of Christmas specials, or the Thanksgiving Day parade, in that the thrill of his arrival was soon outweighed by the fact that it wasn’t as much fun as I’d remembered, what had once struck me as magical was now very plainly a cheap illusion. Eventually, as he stood shaking before us, I could only regard him with embarrassment, with pity.

  “You think you’re so great?” Malinda said. “You think you’re better than me? You just got lucky.”

  Given our family’s history, it wasn’t hard to guess what would happen next. One day, while I took Michael out for ice cream, Malinda left town, leaving behind nothing but a short note. Can you watch Michael for a couple days? I knew Malinda. I knew it wasn’t going to be a couple of days.

  In fact it was two years before she returned—sober, for the time being—to see Michael. By then he didn’t remember her (“That lady,” he said, “has blue hair”), and I had long since stopped seeing myself as a person burdened with the care of someone else’s kid—I had come to love him, and had put through the papers to adopt him. Malinda stayed with us for a while, crying almost constantly. Whenever Michael said or did something her eyes welled with tears. He was still at an age when things were new to him—every day he encountered something he’d never seen before—and it was delightful to watch someone respond to the world, its sights and its sounds, as if it were new. I was afraid that Malinda would want him back. But in the end she had only wanted to see him, to make sure that he was okay. “I just can’t do it,” she told me one night. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t do it. I know it’s a lot to ask, but you’re the best person I could think of, and I just can’t fucking do it.”

  The years went by. Michael grew into a boy. He was quiet and thoughtful, reserved, and I sometimes worried that he was damaged—that the turmoil of his earlier life had inclined him toward fear and melancholy. For a while he was intrigued by an imaginary character called Invisible Mailman. Whenever something went missing in the house, whenever something broke, whenever a room was dark and Michael didn’t want to enter it, he blamed it on Invisible Mailman. I didn’t really know how to be a mother—I was just making it up as I went along—and I worried about what kind of job I was doing. Michael often stared out the car window in a mournful way, and in moments like this I’d become convinced that there was something wrong with him, that I was messing him up. But whenever I asked him what he was thinking, it was something harmless. “I was imagining if a fox was running next to our car, how fast he would have to run to keep up with us.”

  “I think I see him,” I said. “I think I just saw the tip of his tail.”

  My days were long, and tiring, and I never felt quite sure of myself. I wondered whether Michael was eating enough, making friends at school, developing the right skills. But then again there were moments of great joy and lightness. Michael would do something funny, he’d imitate something he’d seen on television (“Hey, baby,” he said, cocking his head and winking, after he’d seen a clip of Elvis), and we’d laugh, we’d fall over laughing, and I’d know, if only briefly, that everything was going to be okay. Everything was working out just fine.

  Even my teaching had improved. After Malinda had left the first time I’d fallen into a dark, devastated mood that even my students—who had trouble seeing me as a human being, with problems and feelings of my own—couldn’t help but notice.

  “What’s wrong with you?” they’d said. Right in the middle of class.

  “What may or may not be wrong with me,” I said, “is none of your business.”

  “Ooooooooooh,” they said, “Miss Murphy’s in a bad mood!”

  One student, a skinny redheaded kid who was always cracking jokes, took the brunt of it.

  “Give me être,” I said to him. “In the future tense.”

  “I don’t feel like it, Mary.” He’d been calling me Mary all year.

  “It’s Ms. Murphy,” I said. “To be. In the future tense. Let’s hear it.”

  “I’m not feeling it today, Mary,” he said. He always won himself a little round of laughter whenever he defied me. “How come I gotta conjugate a verb?”

  “It’s Ms. Murphy,” I said. “And you do it because you can. To be.”

  “How about NOT to be?” he said, laughing at his own little joke. “Mary.”

  Before I knew it I had stormed over to his desk and turned it over. His books and papers went flying and he sat, stunned, with his hands held in the air. For a long moment the room was absolutely silent.

  “It’s cool,” he said, his voice high. “It’s cool, Ms. Murphy.”

  To my surprise the students were better after that. They started conjugating verbs aloud, they started turning in their homework. I changed my coping mechanism from benign neglect to intermittent bursts of petulance—I threw my book across the room, I evicted them from class. What they responded to, as it turned out, wasn’t some idea of bettering themselves for the future, some notion of the benefits they might gain from learning a language. What they responded to—what we all responded to, I realized—was the idea that someone was watching them, the idea that someone, somewhere, cared one way or another what they did, or failed to do. Over the years I developed a reputation. “Don’t take French,” I heard one student tell another in the hallway, “unless you’re ready to work. Miss Murphy makes everybody work, every damn day, no exceptions. She’s a bitch. But she gives a shit.”

  On Sunday evenings I took Michael over to Walter’s. We ate a meal together, then listened to music, played cards. Walter taught Michael to play checkers. And at the end of the evening Michael would watch as Walter and I played a game of chess. When there were just a few pieces left on the board Walter would ask about you, whether I’d settled my affairs with you. “Family’s important, you know,” he said. “It’s best to keep up with family.”

  “I know,” I told him. “I have a family.” Every time I said this, I’d realize with surprise that it was true.

  The rest of our evening’s conversation, though it supposedly centered around the game in front of us, would take on a painfully obvious symbolic quality. “Let’s see something,” Walter said. “Let’s see you move first, for once.”

  “Oh, I’m working up a plan,” I’d say.

  “I’m waiting.”

  “You’re never going to see it coming, I’m just wearing you down.”

  “I’m about worn out,” he said, “waiting for you to do something.”

  “You’re weakening,” I said. “You’re falling into my trap.”

  Then he’d capture one of my pieces, knocking it over with his own. “Too late,” he’d say.

  For the most part I gave very little thought to you, no more than I gave to a nagging unfinished errand, like an overdue library book. You crossed my mind occasionally. Every few months, flipping through channels after Michael fell asleep, I watched Les Witherspoon. Sometimes I stayed through to the end, to see you in “Margaret’s Moment.” And sometimes I didn’t.

  It was on a summer night, during one of Les Witherspoon’s sermons, that I first heard you were ill. Les was talking in a vague way about the devil, using the language of espionage—he spoke of infiltration, subterfuge, betrayal. Finally he came to the point: that the devil himself had found his way into his home, that he had chosen as hi
s victim the thing Les treasured most. “The devil,” he said, “is coming after me, because he knows I’m his enemy, he knows I’m working against him. And so he figures he’ll come after me in the worst way he can—he’ll come after my beautiful wife.” I’d been in a trance, half listening, but at this my head snapped up.

  “As many of you know,” Les said, “our beautiful Margaret has fallen ill with cancer. The devil has seen fit to steal himself away in her body, to spread his cancer through her, but I tell you as sure as I’m standing here he won’t get away with it, we won’t let him, no we won’t.”

  The next morning I woke Michael early and put him in the car. I hadn’t talked much about you, or even Malinda, and he was full of questions. Why didn’t he know about you? Why didn’t you live where we lived?

  “She married someone who lives somewhere else,” I said.

  Well, why didn’t you come to where we live?

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Why didn’t we live there, with you?

  “I don’t know.”

  What kind of mother were you? he asked. What kind of mother were you?

  Somewhere around Virginia I considered that I might be making a fool of myself—cancer meant a lot of things, and yours might be of the minor sort. But when I finally pulled up to the house, just before midnight, I saw that all the lights were on, and there were several cars parked in the driveway. A bad sign, I thought. I rang the doorbell, whose chime was so resounding that it could be not only heard, but felt, from outside. A woman answered the door and I had to explain to her who I was. “I’m Margaret’s daughter,” I said.

  “What now?” she said.

  “Margaret Witherspoon, I’m her daughter.”

  “Oh!” she said. Her brow wrinkled. “Oh! Excuse me!”

  The woman led me through the house, and Michael tagged along. There were groups of people milling around the living room and kitchen. I began to worry that you had died—that these people had gathered together for your funeral. But then the woman led me into a large room, where you were lying with Les on an enormous bed, watching Leave It to Beaver. He had his arm around you, and his fingers played in your hair.

  “Les,” the woman said, “someone here says she’s Margaret’s daughter.”

  You turned and saw me. Hi, baby, you said very casually, as if we’d spoken just moments before, as if you’d been expecting me. And in fact you had been. We knew you were coming. Les and I prayed for it and we knew you’d come any day now, we could feel it.

  Les got up and spread his arms. “Thank the good Lord you’re home,” he said. “We just knew you were coming home, we just knew it.” He walked toward me and enclosed me in a hug so crushing I couldn’t breathe. He smelled strongly of pine, a woodsy cologne. “The devil,” he said, still holding me tight, “is trying to make his way into this house, what we’re doing is filling it up with people, with warriors, we’re filling it up with God’s love, we’ve got a constant vigil going here, the lights are always on, people are staying up and keeping watch, we’re not going to let him in. You’re going to be a part of it, a crucial part of it. Your mother’s own flesh and blood. We’ve been praying for your arrival, and now that you’re here, we’ve got the advantage, we’ve got the upper hand, the devil can’t possibly stay in this house with you here.” One of Les’s habits, I realized, was to treat complete strangers as if he had known them all their lives, as if he’d been waiting for them to return to him, as if he’d long been missing their company.

  I watched you from the stifling confines of Les’s embrace. You nodded your head whenever he spoke. You smiled peacefully, knowingly. I had never seen you in such harmony with anyone. Finally Les let go of me and led me over to the bed. I sat beside you. You were still beautiful—you were always beautiful—but it was clear that you were very sick. Your cheeks were sunken, and your skin had a grayish cast to it. And there was something about your eyes I’d seen before only in the dying—a wistful quality, as if you were looking back on the present moment from a great distance. You placed your hand on mine. “I knew you’d see the light,” you said. “I knew you’d come join us in our trial.”

  “You’re home now,” Les said. “You’re finally home.”

  Then you noticed Michael, who had been lurking in the doorway. He was a reserved boy and it was his custom to stand apart from people, watching them, until someone spoke to him. When you saw him you flinched. For the briefest flash you fell out of character. A pained, desperate look came across your face, and your eyes welled with tears. But then you recovered. Well hello there, darling, you said. I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you. Welcome home.

  I wasn’t at all at home in that house, but for the next month I more or less moved in, wandering about like an explorer who had stumbled upon a new civilization. There were always a great many people there, their cars lining the driveway and spilling out into the street. They milled around, conducting the business of the church, which seemed more like a corporation, or a political campaign, than a spiritual undertaking. You and Les had set up a kind of headquarters in the bedroom, and all day long people came in and out with questions and requests. There were recordings that Les had to review and approve, sermons and speeches to be prepared, bills to be paid, money to be invested, study groups and camps to be coordinated, staffing and promotion of the day care center. Most of the time Les waved these questions away, saying that they weren’t important, but you insisted he deal with them. The church, you said, is more important than either one of us. For years I had wondered how you could have changed so entirely, how you could have forgotten your old life so completely, but with all the commotion going on around you, I understood.

  The motto of Les’s team was “Make it happen.” People were always shouting it to one another—they answered their phones this way. Les and his followers seemed to be under the impression that they could make you well, that your cancer was some kind of trial whose outcome was under their control, that it was simply a matter of faith. Now and then, when an idea struck him, Les would clap his hands together and rub them. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he’d say. “We’re gonna find someone who knows something about herbs. Someone who’s lived in the rainforest. A medicine man.” Sometime prior to my arrival, Les had declared that talking about your illness only gave it strength, and so people were forbidden to speak of it. The only people who mentioned your pending death were your doctors, who spoke of it in vague terms. “With cases like this,” they said, “it can take weeks, sometimes months, for the cancer to overtake the body.”

  “With the exception of miracles,” Les would say.

  “Of course, of course!” the doctors would say, flustered. “Miracles.”

  You had a full-time nurse named Quiz. She was a short, squat woman with the rasping voice of a lifelong smoker. She wore the same thing every day—maroon-colored scrubs and white tennis shoes—and she gave off an air of no-nonsense practicality. Her attitude toward you was pitiless and pragmatic. She moved around constantly. She changed your sheets, did your laundry, washed your hair, vacuumed your room, monitored your vitals and distributed your medications, bathed you, massaged your legs. When I offered to help with your care, Quiz wouldn’t hear of it. “I’m paid till five,” she said, “and that’s how long I work.” She hardly ever took the breaks she was entitled to. For her meals she liked bologna sandwiches with mustard on white bread, which she could make in under a minute, and eat in just a little more. “No fuss, no muss,” she said. She drank diet soda all day straight out of aluminum cans, and when she was finished she crushed them in her hand as though they’d done her a personal injury. Every two hours she stepped outside on the front porch for a cigarette, which she smoked as if she were in some kind of race.

  It was during one of these cigarette breaks that I learned about the nature and history of your cancer—no one else in the house would speak of it. Not long ago, Quiz said, you had suspected you were pregnant—your womanly cycles, as sh
e called them, had stopped, and your stomach was swollen. But you’d taken a test and it had come up negative. For a few months, busy with work, you did nothing. Weight gain, you thought. Menopause. But then you grew tired, and you were overtaken with sharp pains. When the doctors cut you open, they saw that the cancer was everywhere, and they simply closed you back up. The only care that your doctors could recommend was palliative. “Which is me,” Quiz said, draining a Tab. “Twenty years I’ve been doing this. The same thing every time. But it never gets any easier.”

  “How long does she have left?” I asked her.

  “Week,” she said. “Ten days. It’s hard to tell.”

  I asked you why you hadn’t called Nana and Pop, who had retired to Florida and were only a short drive away, and you said it was because you weren’t dying—that God was merely putting you through a trial. So I called them myself, and they drove up to see you. They visited you every day but didn’t stay long. They were always wearing the same thing (Pop in his bus driver’s jacket and Nana in her Senior Ladies Bowling League windbreaker, with its clever slogan across the back: “Dolls with Balls”) and as with other people whose clothes never changed—waiters, soldiers—they seemed less like people than functionaries, people fulfilling a duty. Nana had drunk herself nearly into a stupor. All she could do was press your hand and give you a sad half-smile. Pop simply patted your shoulder and said, “You look good today. You look good.” Theirs was an uncommunicative generation. Pop had been held for five months as a prisoner of war in a German camp and had been starved to the brink of death, but he’d never once spoken about it. And so your premature death wasn’t about to start him talking. “Well,” Pop said after twenty minutes, “we don’t want to wear you out.”

  They declined to stay in the house, and continued to live in their mobile home, parked outside on the street. In the evenings they invited me and Michael into their miniature world, where the beds and tables folded down from the walls. They drank highballs and watched game shows—Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy! Each of them had developed a tremor that caused their heads to nod in perpetual agreement with everything. They were in their eighties now, and their lives had come to this, this tiny coffin-shaped pocket of the world.