The Marriage of Sticks

by Jonathan Carroll

  I smiled and felt my spirit lift. “It’s possible to smell hope?”

  She nodded. “When you know how.”

  “And what about the fingertips?”

  “Look at them.”

  I held up my left hand but saw nothing at first. Then I gasped. The tips of my fingers were changing colors—the colors of clouds on the sky. As if a strong wind was pushing fleecy clouds across the sky, clouds that were white, purple, orange-red. They moved over my fingertips in a passing rush. The colors of storms, sunsets, early morning. All of them together flying across my fingertips.

  I guess I made some other noise because the moment I did, the colors disappeared and my fingers returned to their proper color. I kept staring at my hand. Eventually I looked at Frances again but with a whole new perspective.

  “That’s what I saw when we were in Crane’s View. You can’t because you haven’t been trained. I did it to you now so you could see for yourself.”

  “All women have that? On their fingers? All of them when they’re pregnant?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you learned how to do that in Romania?”

  “Among other things.”

  “What else, Frances? What else do you know?”

  She sighed loudly. “Not enough. I was too young to appreciate what they were offering. Knowledge pursued me, but I was faster. When you’re young you’re only interested in parlor tricks, Miranda, things that can impress others or get you in the door.

  “But these people, and they were from all walks of life, were willing to teach me incredible things because I was with Shumda. If only I’d had the patience and dedication! I met a Yezidje priest, people in the Sarmoun Brotherhood… You can’t imagine who I knew when I was there. But none of it penetrated. The young are like rubber—everything bounces off them.

  “Shumda called me bimba viziata, his spoiled child, and I was.” She sighed again and rubbed her hands up and down her sides. “You talk to shadows too much when you get old. Old memories, old regrets. I could have learned so much when I was a young woman, but I didn’t and that was a great mistake. But I do know some things. I knew you were pregnant. I know that what you’re going through now is a result of that pregnancy.”

  “And James’s ghost? Or the noises I heard outside? The little boy in our house?”

  “They’re part of it. Believe me, it’s all necessary for you now. Something enormous is about to come into your life and all of these things are part of the overture.” She walked over, put her hands on my tense shoulders, and kissed the top of my head. It was the first time Frances had kissed me.

  When I got back to Crane’s View, the rain was having an intermission and the sky was full of black fat thunderclouds. After getting out of the train I stood on the platform and stared at that turbulent sky, remembering my fingertips and what had happened in Frances’s apartment earlier. The day had exhausted me, but I decided to walk the mile to our house. I wanted the exercise. The air smelled delicious and ripe as it always does in the country after rain.

  As I walked and breathed deeply of the thick air, I kept thinking about what she had told me. More than anything else, “there is another world” kept chiming in my head like a clock striking twelve. Like it or not, that world had become part of mine. I would have to accept it and go wherever it led me. But how would it affect my relationship with Hugh? And our child?

  Frances told me about a dull man she knew who suddenly, in middle age, was able to see what people would look like when they were old. For the rest of his life he had to live with that… talent? Curse? What would you call it?

  Another man suddenly developed a frighteningly accurate ability to read palms. That lucky fellow went mad because it reached a point where he could see nothing else but people’s palms and the certain fates that awaited them.

  “Need a ride? You look tired.”

  I looked up and saw Chief McCabe leaning on the roof of his car in front of the bakery. He held a French cruller in one hand and a small carton of milk in the other.

  “No, thank you. I just got off the train and this walk is bringing me back to life. But I have a question.”

  He grinned and nodded. “You don’t want a ride but you got a question. Okay. Shoot.”

  “Have you ever known anyone with special powers? People who could tell the future or read palms, that sort of thing?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “My grandmother. Spookiest person I ever knew. Always knew when you were lying. The family legend. No one of us ever lied to her because she always knew. Worst part was, if you did lie, she hit you. Lie—BANG! When I was a kid she must’ve got me a thousand times! Shows how smart I was, huh? Why do you ask?”

  I didn’t even know McCabe, but for a moment I wanted to tell him everything. Maybe after what had happened that day, I just needed a friend.

  “Oh, yeah,” he went on, “and Frances Hatch too. She gets tuned into weird channels too sometimes.” His car radio squawked and he bent in to listen. I couldn’t make out what it said.

  “Gotta go. Someone’s screaming up on Skidmore Street.” He popped the rest of the cruller into his mouth and took the milk with him when he got into the car.

  He drove off before I could tell him. It was a Japanese woman. A Mrs. Hayashi. I had never seen her before. She had taken too many pills and the hallucinations were driving her mad. Her children stood on windowsills in a high building waving happily to her down below. Bye-bye Mama. Then one by one they jumped. She watched as they dropped through space and hit the ground directly in front of her. I saw her face, the wide open mouth screaming to her sanity to help.

  Outside her small house on Skidmore Street, neighbors stood worriedly at the window watching her on the floor, pulling her hair and screaming in a language none of them understood.

  I saw it.

  Five hours later Hugh came in looking pale and very drawn. He went into the living room and sat down in his new chair and let out a low groan. I got him a drink and asked if there was anything I could do. Unsmiling, he kissed my hand and said no. Sweet man that he was, he looked up with weary eyes and apologized for not being able to make lunch earlier. He’d had an awful day. An important deal for a rare Guadagnini violin fell through. He had argued with his assistants. Charlotte called and accused him of terrible things.

  I sat on the floor next to him and leaned my head against his leg. I had wonderful news to tell him but didn’t. After dinner. I would cook and it would be wonderful, the most delicious meal I’d ever made. After dinner, when we both felt better and the day was ours again and the moment was right for such a surprise. Then.

  We sat in silence. It started to rain again. When he spoke, Hugh’s voice was flat and toneless, as if it had been washed of all color.

  “Know what I love? In the summer when you leave the windows open in the bedroom and go to sleep. There’s a breeze blowing you can just feel on your face. As you’re drifting off, the wind picks up, but you’re too sleepy to do anything about it.

  “Then in the middle of the night, a big bang wakes you up in a second. A storm’s raging outside and all your windows are flapping back and forth. Like they’re applauding. Like they’re applauding the storm.

  “So you get up, sleepy as hell but wired from the shock, and go around closing them. Everything’s wet, the windowsills, the floor.… While you were sleeping this thing blew in and drenched everything.

  “The best part is standing at the open window and getting wet. I put my hands on the sill and stick my head out into it. The wind’s whipping, things are tremendous out there. It’s three in the morning and no one’s around to see it. Only you. The whole show’s just for you.”

  I put an arm around his leg and squeezed tightly. His hand was on my head, ruffling my hair. Neither of us moved for minutes. The only things that changed were the sounds of the wind outside. Hugh’s hand stopped moving. The rain gradually slowed and stopped too. Everything stopped. The silence was thick as fur. Despite all the surprises a
nd excitement of that bizarre day, the next minutes were the most peaceful and fulfilling I ever knew.

  When I finally moved to get up, because my back was beginning to hurt, because it was time to cook our dinner, because afterward I could tell Hugh about our baby, his hand slipped from my head. I saw that he was asleep.

  He was dead.

  Part Two

  7. Sin Tax

  Three days after his funeral I saw Hugh again.

  Standing at the kitchen sink, I looked out the window at the small yard behind the house. I could not feel my body. I could not feel anything. Since his death, I had moved through the days in a walking stupor and felt best there.

  What had surprised me was not the horror of the loss, but the gain of so many terrible things. The gain of time: if he were here now, we would be doing this together. Now there was nothing to do. If he were here now, I would be doing this for him. Now there was nothing to do. If he were here now I would touch him, talk to him, know he was in the next room… the variety was dreadful, endless.

  As was the space around me. The space in our new double bed, the house, the life we had just begun together. Hugh’s empty easy chair, the empty shoes lined up carefully in his closet, the table with only one place setting.

  The silence grew palpably larger, the days longer, the nights indescribable. And there was a sudden, almost religious importance to objects—his coffee cup, his razor, his favorite recipe, television show, color, tree. I stared at his moving boxes with the funny names on them. Tarzan Hotel. Sometimes I reached in and touched an object. Some things were sharp. Some smooth. Always Hugh’s. A silver penknife with a broken blade inscribed Sarajevo on the side. A cranberry baseball cap with Earlham across the top. A volume of poetry titled The Unknown Rilke. Horribly, I turned two pages into it and read this before it registered:

  Now we awaken with memories,

  facing that which was; whispered sweetness

  which once pierced and spread through us

  sits silently nearby with its hair all undone.

  Another box contained some of the sticks he had collected. When I saw them I immediately left the room.

  I scoured my mind for things he had said, his opinions, beliefs, jokes, anything mentioned off the cuff, in passing, in earnest. Anything. I wrote it all down because I wanted every trace of Hugh Oakley for me and our son. I sat in his chair for hours and hours trying to remember everything. But it was like picking up rice grain by grain after spilling an entire bag on a white floor full of cracks. It went all over and so much of it was invisible.

  Holding a glass of water in my hands, I stood at the kitchen window staring out at the yard. Before I realized it, I was smiling. I had remembered something new: Hugh saying we should plant pumpkins and sunflowers out there because they were the clowns of the flower kingdom. How could you not laugh at a pumpkin? How could sunflowers not make you smile? I drank some water and felt it cool down my throat. I put the glass against my forehead and rubbed it back and forth. The telephone rang and I closed my eyes. Who would it be this time? What on earth could I say to them? Leave me alone. Can’t you all just leave me alone now? I opened my eyes again.

  Standing twenty feet away across the yard were Hugh and the little boy I had seen the first time we visited the house. The phone rang again. Hugh looked exactly as he had the day he died. He was dressed in the same clothes—dark slacks, white shirt, the blue tweed sport jacket from Ireland he liked so much. The phone kept ringing.

  Over that noise, I heard something tapping. I didn’t recognize what until I looked down and saw my shaking hand. The water glass rat-a-tatted against the metal sink.

  The little boy turned around and knelt down. The answering machine clicked on. I heard my calm voice say the old message: “We’re out now, but please leave a message…”

  Barely able to control my shaking hands, I slid the window up and called Hugh’s name. Called it, cried it, whispered—I don’t know how it came out. He looked at me and gave a small breezy wave, as if I were calling him for lunch and he’d come in a minute. But he had heard me! And he was really there! But he was dead. But there he was.

  I was so amazed, so riveted, that I didn’t notice what the boy was doing. Didn’t see him pick up the stone and throw it.

  It hit me in the face. I grunted and staggered back. Hands over my eyes, warm blood already gushing over my fingers. Stepping on something, I twisted my ankle hard and fell down. I tried to put out a hand to stop the fall. But it was so slick with blood that as soon as it touched the floor, it skidded sideways. My head hit with a loud thud.

  I lay on my side and tried to blink, to clear my head. Everything had slowed almost to a stop. Blood was in my eyes and I couldn’t really open them. I was viciously dizzy. I lay still and heard myself pant. When I could, I wiped my face and opened my eyes. I saw the rock on the floor. That is what I had tripped over. It was brown and silvery and huge. A big rock on the kitchen floor. I remember thinking even then, even there. What’s this rock doing here?

  And then something else. Nearby a child was laughing.

  None of it was clear to me. I tried to focus my mind on this thing and that—getting the blood out of my eyes, seeing clearly, regaining my balance. But reality was tipped on its side and I could not right it. The child’s laughter remained above and inside and around my confusion. It was the only constant and it was very clear.

  “What happened to you? This is a bad cut.”

  “I fell.”

  The doctor stopped bustling for the first time since entering the room. An ugly woman with a monk’s haircut, she narrowed her eyes. “You fell?” She was wearing white surgical gloves and she pointed a finger at the bandage on my forehead. “That doesn’t look like a fall, Ms. Romanac. Are you sure?” Her smile lasted a second. We both knew what she was saying. “It looks like you were struck with something. Something heavy and sharp.” Her voice rose indignantly on the last word. Her stern face was ready to be outraged. If I didn’t tell her the truth, I would feel that rage. She moved and spoke with the undiscerning sureness of a hanging judge. I was glad I didn’t know her.

  I started to shake my head but my neck hurt terribly, so I stopped. “My neck hurts too.”

  She put a hand on it and gently felt up and down with her fingers. “That’s normal. It’s either the trauma from the fall or you jerked it unnaturally and twisted the muscles. It’ll go away in a couple of days. But this is what really concerns me.” Again she pointed to my forehead. “We don’t usually see this kind of cut from a fall.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out in an aggravated, tired-of-this whoosh. “No one bit me, Doctor. All right? I’m alone. The man I lived with died a few days ago.”

  Her expression remained unchanged. Emergency room doctors have heard every lie and story in the world. “I’m sorry. But a wound like this usually indicates abuse. I could explain the technicalities of it to you, but that’s not necessary. Are you on any kind of medication?”

  “No. I was given Valium but I don’t take it.”

  She went to her desk and scribbled on a pad. “Here is a prescription for a muscle relaxant for your neck, and this one is for pain. Are you seeing anyone? A counselor or a therapist? They can be very helpful when you’ve lost someone close.”

  “Ghosts,” I wanted to say. I’m not seeing a therapist but I have seen ghosts. One even threw a rock at me.

  “Thank you for your concern, Doctor. Do I have to come back here?”

  “Yes. I’ll need to remove the stitches in a week.”

  I stood up very slowly but still my head throbbed and pain went down the back of my neck in a fiery shot. I wanted to be out of that room, away from that aggressive, offensive woman, out in the world again. All I wanted was to be out on the street.

  “We also have the results of your pregnancy test and sonogram, Ms. Romanac. They were positive.”

  My back to her, I tried to turn my head but the pain said no. I turned completely around to face
her. There was nothing to say. I already knew it and had taken the hospital test as an afterthought. The day Hugh died I knew I was pregnant but never had the chance to tell him. That was the worst. The absolute worst part.

  “You could talk to our counselor about that as well.”

  I didn’t understand what she meant. She saw the question on my face and tightened her lips.

  “The child. If your partner is gone then perhaps you might want to consider terminations…”

  I caught the gist of what she was saying more from her tone of voice than from the actual words.

  “I’m having this baby, Doctor. Can I go now?”

  “Would you like to know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

  I started for the door. “It’s a boy. I already know.”

  Her voice was haughty and dismissive. “No, actually it’s a girl.”

  My lover made the best sandwiches. He loved to cook, but sandwiches were his specialty. He made pilgrimages to special bakeries around Manhattan to buy the perfect California sourdough bread, Austrian dreikornbrot, Italian focaccia. He experimented with exotic ingredients and condiments like piri piri, wasabi, mango chutney. He poured thin trickles of specially prepared kurbiskernol onto bread and warmed it before he did anything else. He owned the most beautiful and ominous set of Japanese cooking knives I’d ever seen. I think he enjoyed sharpening and caring for them as much as he liked using them.

  All of these things went through my mind as I opened the refrigerator door to look for something to eat an hour after returning from the hospital. One day he was dead. Four days later he was buried. Three days later I saw him standing in our backyard with a child who had never been born. One week. Exactly one week to the day ago I discovered I was pregnant and Hugh died.

  On a shelf was a large slice of fontina, his favorite cheese. He would cut a piece and hold it in an open palm, telling me to look—look at this masterpiece of kдsekunst. Some of his “cheese art” and an apple. I would be able to eat those small things without getting sick, wouldn’t I? Dinner. I had not eaten for a long time. I wasn’t hungry, but I had to eat regularly now. For the child. For the girl inside me. Girl or boy, it was Hugh’s child and I would care for it with every cell in my body.