Lifelines

by Caroline Leavitt

  Duse’s cleaning ritual began. It was something that pushed Isadora’s grief from her, parted it. She’d have to follow Duse around, making sure that she didn’t hurt herself, didn’t fall. The whole house was treacherous with floor wax, the dishes were glistening and slippery and damp. Duse kept taking down every dish and scouring it with a Brillo pad dusted with Bon Ami. She rearranged things so that if Isadora thirsted for a simple cup of tea, she would have to take down half the contents of the kitchen cabinets to dredge out a cup. Even at night, Isadora could hear Duse moving. She followed Duse until her eyes were heavy lidded, until she had to sink down into her old bed, exhausted. In the morning, she would find Duse up before her, cleaning, a red tattered rag loosely clutched in one hand.

  It took Isadora a week to really realize that her father was gone. She noticed it abruptly, and suddenly things became difficult for her. Everything in her had been so concentrated on making it easier for Duse that she had blocked out her own solid wall of grief. But Duse, as always, was a catalyst, and this time her function was to precipitate Isadora’s sorrow.

  Isadora’s mourning would begin with Martin’s things. She was trying to help Duse sort out all the paraphernalia of a life, boxing up clothing, jumbling up papers into the tin wastebaskets, all the time pushing Duse’s hands away from her. Duse couldn’t stop fingering Martin’s things, shutting her eyes until her skin wrinkled, all the time trying to sense him, to pick up any clues. Later, Isadora would see Duse cleaning with one of Martin’s socks tucked into a pocket, his favorite tie wrapped about her throat. Isadora couldn’t stand to see Duse like that, so she waited until Duse was in the bath, and then she planned to gather everything up and get it out of the house. Isadora was pulling out jackets from the closet, pressing them down so she could tape the box shut. Her fingers jittered over the fabric, along the pale blue lining, when suddenly she caught the faint trace of Martin’s aftershave riding on the cloth. She suddenly remembered how, when she was little, she used to waddle pajamaless into the bathroom to brush her teeth while Martin shaved, how she spit into the sink underneath his dripping razor. The memory made her crazy with longing. She stood up, she let the jacket fall, and then she was left with nothing but air and her own hands. She left the closet, left the house, and stood on the front walk, gulping down the air as if she were starving for it, as if her lungs needed nourishment. She walked, all the way to the Thrift-T-Mart, and then she fished out a dime from her back pocket and called Daniel, collect.

  He didn’t make her feel better. He wanted to comfort her, but somehow he was using the wrong words. He said it was too bad Duse couldn’t dream about Martin because that sort of thing would probably give her a lot of solace. He said it was like a religion for her. Isadora twisted the phone cord about her wrist. She could hear the animals yapping in the background, and then, an undertone, Allison’s laugh. “What’s Allison doing there?” Isadora said. Her whole life suddenly seemed so noisy. She wished that she could just stop all that sound, that she could fairly smother in silence.

  “What’s the matter, Isadora?” he said. “Allison is always here. You know that.” He paused. “Isadora,” he said, “should I be out there with you? Are you really all right?”

  “I have to go,” she said. “I left Duse by herself.” She started hanging up when she was flooded with yearning, with missing Daniel. She started lifting the receiver, hoping he was still there, normal, natural with life, but the line was severed.

  It became more difficult for her in that house. She would always hear Duse moving. Isadora fixed meals for them although neither did anything but tease at the food with the fork. Duse began salting everything, heavily, dusting the top of her meat white. Sometimes Duse gagged on the salt and wouldn’t be able to speak. She would lift one hand and clutch for the water. Isadora didn’t think it was healthy and she hid the salt, she dumped it from the shakers. “When did you pick up that habit?” Isadora demanded.

  “What habit? What are you talking about?” said Duse. “I just like salt, that’s all. Sometimes I feel a little nauseous and the salt takes care of it, the sick feeling just evaporates. I ate lots of salt when I was carrying you, more than I do now, and it didn’t hurt either one of us, now did it?”

  “You feel nauseous?” said Isadora.”

  “No, I told you the salt took care of it.”

  At night, Isadora listened to Duse weep. Isadora lay flat on her sweaty rumpled sheets, feeling all that grief pushing up against her. She got up and padded barefooted into her mother’s room. Duse was cocooned in her sheet, her back to Isadora, her shoulders moving. Isadora sat on the edge of the bed where Duse could reach out and touch her, where Duse could know Isadora was there just by the slope of the bed. Isadora sat very still for a long while, and when Duse stopped weeping, when her breathing calmed, Isadora stretched her body out beside Duse and slept as well.

  In the night, she felt hands on her, fingers probing her flesh. She tried to blink herself awake and then she saw Duse pressed beside her, heard Duse whispering Martin’s name, over and over, slurring each sound. Duse’s eyes were shut, but Isadora saw how her mother’s hands were touching her, were trying to caress her flesh right into Martin’s. She froze; she didn’t know what to do, and in the end, it was that lack of movement, that silence, that woke Duse, that tumbled revelation into Duse’s sleep-drained face. As soon as Duse saw her hands wrapped about Isadora’s waist, she tugged herself up. She shoved back a wild hank of hair from her face and braced her body against the headboard. Her face was terrible. “Sit,” said Isadora, frightened. “I’ll make some tea.” She raced with that kettle, she made the flame so high and hot that it scorched the kettle blue. Isadora brought the tea in with a pitcher of milk, and she served it to Duse. Duse was halfway through the cup when she looked warily at Isadora. She apologized. “For what?” said Isadora. “There’s nothing to apologize for, least of all to me.”

  Duse shook her head. “I forgot who you were,” she said simply.

  Isadora stared at her, but Duse had dipped her head down to her cup. She was blowing on the top layer of tea and wouldn’t look up. Isadora waited and then she took the tea back into the kitchen and carefully washed her cup, letting the water spiral down onto her hands, across her palms. When she passed Duse’s room, the light was off and she could hear Duse’s even breathing. When Isadora went back to her own bed, she kept her hands wrapped about her own body. She pinched and knuckled her own flesh until she felt sure of it being hers, until she had somehow marked it.

  They were careful around each other in the morning, but neither one of them would mention the night before. By afternoon, things had cycled back, and Duse was pacing again, was asking Isadora, over and over, why it was that she couldn’t sense Martin, why in God’s name he didn’t give her a sign.

  “Nothing’s any good,” said Duse. “Nothing.”

  She wept a great deal, and refused to speak with any of her clients. In a way, Isadora almost thought that Duse was blaming them. It didn’t seem fair, Duse said, the way the clients could just ease their answers right out of her, dig it from her marrow as if it were their right. “They think I know everything,” she said. “Sometimes, it’s funny, I thought that, too.” She did take a few calls, a few visits, but from none of them did she get genuine sympathy; all of those voices carried need, and every face was a mouth, asking, asking. “No more,” Duse said. “You tell everyone that I’ve gone to the Bahamas.”

  It was easy with the phones. Isadora left them in drawers, muffling the rings with toweling and napkins. When the doorbell rang, she didn’t answer, she pretended she didn’t hear. Sometimes she’d walk right by the window because it made her giddy with her own daring.

  Duse destroyed all her death files on a Friday. Isadora came into the kitchen and found her ripping all those cards, flinging them into the trash, sometimes missing the mouth of the can. Duse looked up at Isadora, her eyes hard. “Go ahead and help,” she said. “They’re just cards.” When Isadora j
ust stood there, Duse said that she should have done this a long time ago, that she should have stopped a lot of things. “Those stupid rituals,” she said. “Creaming my hands when they should have been attending to Martin. All those expensive lotions.” She said she was going to let all of her lines just crawl into her palm wherever they wanted. “Maybe I’ll use a little lotion. Just to keep age back a bit.” She stopped tearing the cards for a moment. “I don’t want to fight age. What am I talking about. I don’t want to do anything. I wish I were ninety years old. I wish I were dead.”

  She let all the cards flap down onto the door. “I’ll get them,” said Isadora, but neither one of them moved.

  “I should have paid more attention to him than to his lines,” Duse said. “I should have maybe watched how he moved, how he held his fork when he ate, how he sang in the shower or let the soap slop right in the dish. You know, I never ever wanted to be married. I thought that marriage was just like splitting yourself down the middle, exchanging one half of you for someone else’s half, and what good was that? I didn’t even want to marry Martin. Why should I have? I didn’t love him, not then, and all that man loved at first was my picture.” She looked down at her hands, unfurled them like flowers, and then looked back at Isadora. “What good is it?” she said. “I couldn’t tell he was going to die, and I can’t get him back, not in any form. I can’t even sense one thing about it. What good is it?” She slammed her hands down on the table. “Hocus-pocus,” she said, “presto chango,” and then she put her head on the table, she let her hair fall over the edge, and when Isadora touched her, Duse was heaving with grief.

  Isadora would always feel guilty about her relief. She really thought that Duse would stop everything, that she’d never see another client, never unpeel another hand, never tell Isadora how her very life was a sin of identity because of the way Isadora was living it.

  Duse was in the kitchen scrubbing the counter when a woman came to the back door, slapped it right open and said Duse’s name.

  “Kitty,” said Duse. “Kitty Wells.”

  “I couldn’t be at the funeral,” said Kitty. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t even call you. But this visit, this is about Martin and I have to tell you myself.”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” said Duse.

  “Yes, there is,” said Kitty. “He’s come through me. In a dream. He told me to come and tell you that he couldn’t get to you so he used me because I was receptive.”

  Duse jerked herself straight, let her hands fall to her sides.

  “Please,” said Isadora. “I can’t listen to this. I can’t hear it.”

  “He’s really fine,” said Kitty, reaching across the kitchen and touching Duse, holding onto the fabric of Duse’s sleeve even as Duse flinched back from her. “Listen to me,” said Kitty, insistent. “He said to tell you that he loves you, but he can’t come through again. He said you’d understand, that you more than anyone knew how these things worked, and now he did, too.”

  “What things—what are you talking about?” said Isadora. She could feel how both women were turning away from her, pivoting toward each other, making her lose contact.

  “He looked just fine,” Kitty said. “I wouldn’t lie about that. It was so funny the way he came. I was dreaming about flying—I started taking lessons because you had said it was in my lines, remember, that I should fly?—and I was up in the air when the dream just stopped. It hurt. I knew I wasn’t awake, but I knew that I wasn’t dreaming, either. I was too aware. Then I saw Martin and he told me what to tell you.”

  Isadora could feel her body tightening, could feel the way even her own skin was becoming a tourniquet, cutting off her blood, making her dizzy and light. “Why you?” said Isadora. “Why would he pop into your dream instead of my mother’s, instead of mine?” She shook her head, she made her hair flop down over one shoulder. “A dream,” she said. “Why are you making everything worse, everything more painful?”

  “I believe her,” Duse said quietly. “And it’s not more painful, not for me.”

  “You want to believe. You haven’t slept,” said Isadora. “You’ve done nothing but clean this house and pace, and all you’ve eaten is salt. It’s no wonder you haven’t heard voices yourself.” She rubbed one hand across her eyes so that she blurred the two of them. “Don’t you remember the first client you had,” she pleaded “the one who thought spirits played practical jokes on her?”

  “Why are you so frantic?” said Duse, her voice calm. “I can feel it in the air, everything’s charged.” She put her hand on Isadora.

  Duse took Kitty to the door, and Isadora could hear the two of them speaking very low, swallowing their words. Isadora didn’t move. For a moment she hated herself. What was the matter with her? She could have agreed with Kitty; what did she care what Duse believed if it helped to lift up some of that killing grief? What was wrong in believing anything if it protected you? Isadora slumped along the wall. She strained to sense something, anything, anything in that house that reminded her of her father. She arched her back, she pressed her body upward, but all she heard was the ticking of the clock, the way the floorboards creaked when she put weight on them.

  She was crying again; she couldn’t unclench her fists long enough to sluice some of that moisture away, to rub it into her skin and have it evaporate and be nothing. All she heard now, all that she was sure of was Duse, singing, lulling a melody as she made her way back to her daughter, to Isadora.

  Isadora made plans to go back to Ann Arbor. Duse gradually opened up the house to her clients again, and now it was Duse who did the following, who trailed Isadora and who worried. As soon as she saw Isadora fisting her hands, pushing them on the table, Duse would want to sit right down beside her and explain why her death files worked and why she had been too upset to see it. There were reasons for everything, said Duse, and she had let grief blind her. She tried unpeeling Isadora’s tensed fingers, one by one. “It makes sense,” Duse said. “Look at that star there, it takes up a quarter of your hand.”

  She left Isadora at the table, and as soon as she was gone, Isadora took that hand with the star and lay it across her face. She sighed into it. She felt alone, hopeless.

  She began taking showers three times a day, weeping under the water, letting her whole face take on color from the steam. She stayed in her room whenever she heard one of Duse’s clients coming in. She couldn’t bear hearing Duse tell the story over and over again how Martin had come through Kitty, how he had said that Duse would understand how things worked. She made a heroine out of Kitty, who in turn, seemed to worship her, seemed to never be able to do enough. Kitty brought over pies and cakes and more clients, and Duse stopped searching for Martin because he had said he wouldn’t be back. It was only Isadora who strained and strained to sense him, who felt herself smothering with her need.

  She made plane reservations. Before she left, she picked out a few photographs that she wanted to take back to Ann Arbor with her. She had a fuzzy snapshot of Martin that Duse had taken when they were first married, and she had three shots of Martin and herself. She must have been only eight or nine in one of those photos, but when she turned the picture over, there was no date at all. Her hair was very long in the pictures, braided and ribboned, and she mugged into the camera, she twisted her face into funny shapes. Martin, though, was very serious, his whole body focused on Isadora. His hands wrapped about her, his heels seemed to be dragging into the earth, as if he were swaying her right off her feet.

  Duse took her to the airport. Everything about Duse was back to the way it was except for her salt habit. She kept digging her hand into a jar of salted nuts as she drove and she licked the salt from her fingers. “You’d better stop that,” Isadora said, but Duse just shrugged. “I like salt,” she said.

  Duse watched Isadora get on her plane. As Isadora climbed the steps, she turned around once to look back at her mother. Duse was shouting something, forming her words carefully, enunciating as dramatically as she coul
d, and Isadora couldn’t make out one single word. She squinted. There was no sound. She could hear the people behind her complaining about the dampish air, she could hear the stewardess parroting some pleasantry, but Duse was like a silent film character. Her face was exaggerated. Isadora held one hand across her forehead like a visor. It cut some of the glare and now she could vaguely make out a few words from the shapes Duse’s mouth formed. She saw it then: Duse’s credo for her, almost an order. Stop fighting, Duse said. Accept.

  15

  Isadora couldn’t talk about her father. She stopped up her grief by shrouding it in silence. She kept a distance between herself and Daniel. He was patient at first, he let her be, but gradually he kept at her to talk to him, to let him share the hurt.

  “It’s my hurt,” she said, “my father.”

  She woke one night sobbing, and Daniel sat up beside her and tried to hold her, but she sprang out of bed, she wrapped her own two arms about her and started to pace.

  “What is it with you, Isadora?” he said. “How come I can’t even touch you? Why won’t you even talk to me?”

  “I just need a little room,” she said.

  He looked at her for a second. He held out his hand. “Isadora, please,” he said. “Come on.” And when she didn’t take it, he got out of the bed, he tried to touch her.

  “I said I needed room,” she said.

  “Fine,” he said, his voice hardening. “I’ll sleep in the living room with the dogs then. They don’t mind an arm about them.”

  “Daniel—” she called, but he wouldn’t look back at her. He was jerking his robe over him, dragging a blanket from the bed. She got back into the bed and piled the blankets around her. She sat up and was lonely for him, but she didn’t call. She wouldn’t give voice to his name.