When Madeline Was Young

by Jane Hamilton

  The day before the service, Louise and Diana, with help from Madeline, went through the photographs and assembled the obligatory picture boards of Mother's life for the church viewing. They sat in the dining room all afternoon, sorting through the piles on the table, the years and subjects all mixed up. There was a book from my first few months of life, but otherwise my mother had not found a moment to arrange the photos into albums. "She had no organizational skills!" Diana exclaimed in amazement. There were quite a few pictures from the Mikey O'Day years, Mikey on the boat at Moose Lake, Mikey at the DariDip, Mikey and Madeline sitting on the front porch, Mikey at our kitchen table, Mikey sitting in a kiddie pool in the Van Normans'

  yard, taking up the whole thing, with, as they say, a shit-eating grin on his face.

  "He was fun, wasn't he?" Diana said to Madeline. "I've heard about how much fun he was."

  Madeline nodded without glancing away.

  "Shall we have some of Mikey?" Louise asked. "This one, with Mom, at your birthday party? And here, look, you and Mikey toasting marshmallows."

  Madeline ran her fingers over the three photos Louise had chosen. It was as if she hated to let them go, hated to hand them over, even though she wanted them on the board.

  There was a large turnout for the memorial service at the Congregational church, the community my mother had finally settled on while she waited for that day when she'd return to Quaker Meeting. The Reverend Hollister, a jackpot minister, half black, half Asian, and lesbian, had taken to the streets with Julia to try to defeat an Illinois judge who was in favor of capital punishment, to elect Bill Clinton, and to oust a school-board member, the anti-taxation zealot who wanted to cut the music program. The old friends and neighbors came to church, the relatives, the fellow volunteers and activists, my father's colleagues from the museum, a handful of Diana's people, classmates of Louise 's and mine from high school, most of whom we hadn't spoken to since graduation. The Sunshine Club brought in a busload, and they sat together, dignified in their lopsided ways.

  Russia, who was ninety as well as we could figure, took her place between Madeline and my father, holding tight to them.

  She'd still been coming to the house every Wednesday. One of the Pathway to Victory Baptist Church boys brought her--

  Charles, who did what she said even while he regarded her with suppressed amusement. She'd settle herself in the chair in the kitchen and start her commands. "Do the sinks first, you hear?" My mother always offered him breakfast, and he always declined. "The boss, she don't let me," he'd say, shaking his head with exaggerated woe. For two hours the boss sat over her meal, taking her time with each bite, commenting on the neighbors, although there wasn't nearly the activity there had once been, the women off to work, the children at preschool. "What'd you stop that vacuum for?" she'd cry, leaning out of her chair to try to see around the corner to the living room, to Charles looping up the chord.

  "I'm all finished, ma'am, unless you tell me I'm not."

  "You go over it once more, one more time."

  After she'd scraped the last crumb of toast, the last bit of hard cold yolk from her plate, Charles helped her into her coat. My mother slipped him an extra few dollars, went to her bed, and took up her book; there she fell asleep, her duty done, no more Russia to tend for a few hours, until she phoned with a complaint about Osella or her hip or her new glasses or her achy tooth.

  When my father told Russia about Julia, she could only say, "Bless her heart, bless her heart," about as close to being speechless as she could come.

  At the service, just before the minister came to the pulpit for the invocation, who should sweep into the church but the voodoo economics Republican, the mortal enemy? Down the side aisle she flew, sliding into the front pew, her lipstick fresh, her perfume wafting to us even on the far end. Russia saw or sniffed her first and leaned over to poke me. "Miz Figgy," she said, her eyes widening.

  There was a collective gasp from the family, and those close to her reached out to touch the hem of her jacket. She and my mother hadn't seen each other in years and didn't really speak. On the occasions she called, Julia would ask a cursory question or two before she handed over the phone to my father. There was no pretense of friendship in that civility. Figgy had gone further right as the years passed, a staunch Reaganite, an acquaintance, naturally, of the Gipper and Nancy. My mother voted for the mainstream Democrats, but she cried foul if they crossed the line, if they became too moderate. Despite her faith in acts of generosity and exculpation, despite her ability to reason, she half believed that Figgy was personally responsible for the rise of conservatism--that if Figgy had gone down that road, there was no hope. And so it was Figgy who was going to bring debt, environmental ruin, and general cultural barbarism down upon us all.

  I did not pay strict attention through the service. I thought about how Diana had once said that my parents hadn't had a real marriage because they didn't fight. That meant that I didn't know to fight, having had no role model for battle, a significant deficit in a husband. I suppose it was quite a bit to live up to, the Macivers' union. Through the poems and readings we had chosen for Reverend Hollister, I tried to count the arguments I'd witnessed between Julia and Aaron, those conversations that were different from heated discussions. I could recall one spat that had been personal; I would go so far as to say it was violent. I remember it because my mother swore. Over coffee after dinner, Julia had been complaining about Mrs. O'Day's opposition to Madeline and Mikey's wedding. My father listened as he usually did, nodding and making standard guttural noises to indicate he was paying attention. When he remarked that Joan O'Day had made a life of caring for Mikey and that it wasn't such an easy thing to give up, Julia said, "Nothing is going to change! That's what is ridiculous about her protest.

  Nothing is going to change."

  "They'll be married," my father pointed out.

  "Are you saying you think the wedding is a bad idea?"

  "I can understand why she'd be against it."

  "Goddamn her."

  "Julia."

  "I said goddamn her."

  "A wedding, a marriage, is a weighty action. It's not just a party. We can't really know what it would mean for Madeline, how she would understand it."

  "Then we'll have a party, a tent in the backyard, a band. We'll have a party to honor them."

  "That could be confusing to her. She wants a wedding." "It's you who don't want a celebration!"

  "I think it's more complicated than you're acknowledging, Julia. I don't think you've thought it through."

  My mother appeared to consider as she sipped her coffee. "You and Joan are taking it too seriously," she said after a minute.

  "Madeline wants to dress up and be a bride. She wants to have photos to look at."

  "There's only one thing for you to do," my father said, trying as he spoke not to smile at his forthcoming joke.

  "What's that?"

  "You and Mikey and Madeline will just have to elope."

  "Goddamn Joan," Julia said, getting up from her chair. Downgrading her curse on her husband, she said, "And damn you, too."

  She stormed into the kitchen like a wife well versed in the rules of combat.

  AFTER THE SERVICE, Madeline stood with me in the church parlor to greet the friends and neighbors. Louise had helped her choose an ensemble, a light-pink sweater and a long gray skirt, low-heeled pumps, and silver earrings. It was her new stylish hairdo, very short, that made her look like an ultra-cultured, with-it, liberal old lady. When one of the longtime neighbors, Mrs.

  Gregory, came through the line, she stopped in front of the easel right next to us, zeroing in on a picture of Julia setting a cake at Madeline's place for her birthday. It's a great photo of Mikey, his big face level with the confection, the rims of his glasses glancing the frosting. Mrs. Gregory tilted her head back, wrinkled her nose, let her mouth fall open, her upper lip lifting toward her nostrils, in the effort to study the picture through her bifocals. "That's you!
" she said to Madeline. "And he, he must be your boyfriend."

  Madeline stepped close to see who Mrs. Gregory meant. "Where's your boyfriend? Everyone should have a boyfriend, eh? Go find your boyfriend!"

  Madeline turned around, as if he might be right there waiting for her after all the years. She was tired and confused enough without Mrs. Gregory's excitement.

  "Mrs. Gregory, hello," I said, taking our demented neighbor's hand. Her daughter was with her, also keen to push her through the line. Madeline right then wandered away from us. She sat on the sofa, rocking back and forth, done with the greeting. I don't know if Figgy had witnessed that moment with Mrs. Gregory, but she, too, went and sat down. "Come here, darlin'," she said to Madeline in Russia-ese. She put her arm around her and kissed her cheek, going so far as to try to nuzzle her. "You are a great big girl, aren't you?"

  It was awful to watch, a performance that wanted to be heartfelt but didn't quite achieve the mark. And yet it seemed enough of a gesture. I forgave Figgy on behalf of my mother, for all the slights through the years as well as the brazen remarks. It was good of her to pay Madeline a bit of attention, to consider that Madeline was perhaps the most bereft of us. For several minutes they sat quietly together, Madeline holding her arms around her ribs and rocking, Figgy drinking her coffee. Some compensation, then, for losing Julia: having Figgy back in our midst. Later, at the house, she blew in the door, threw off her heels, and yanked her quarter-sized pearl earrings from her lobes, tossing them on the chest in the hall before she collapsed in the wing chair. I'd forgotten how much she could eat, and how beautifully loud she was, calling out across the room to Tessa, making her come and give a report on her life to date, ordering Lyddie to play the piano, demanding that Diana put on a few pounds.

  Much later, long after my father and Madeline had gone to bed, and Diana and the girls had driven to Wisconsin, and Lu's family had retired to the hotel, I sat in the kitchen talking to my aunt. She didn't seem tired, and in fact it wasn't until two in the morning that she took herself to the sofa and, like a teenager, curled up there with a blanket. She had a room at the downtown Hilton, she said, but she didn't feel like getting a cab and checking in at such an hour. She refused in no uncertain terms to take my boyhood bed, saying that one of her few talents was being able to drop into a profound sleep in any circumstance.

  Louise's room had been turned into my mother's office and was piled high with newspaper clippings and books, and underneath the mess, somewhere, the Olivetti manual typewriter she'd always used. Through the evening, Figgy had told me the news: how Buddy had trained a support unit that had performed well in Desert Storm, Arthur was writing a book about how liberalism had been unraveling as the Great Society was being made, and as for herself, she was doing consulting work for museums and spending as much time as she could with her grandchildren. A model grandmother, Figgy. "Buddy's children,"

  she said, "are masterpieces, each one."

  I couldn't help myself, couldn't keep from asking the question just as my mother would have. I asked knowing the answer; I asked only out of a sense of ritual. "What's the general feeling in Washington about Operation Desert Storm now?" I said.

  "Among those in the know?" The first Gulf War had been over in 1991; it had seemed, in the few months it took to secure victory, a nearly bloodless enterprise. I was sure that Figgy would have nothing but respect for General Schwarzkopf and for her president, George Herbert Walker Bush, a foreign-policy realist in the tradition of Nixon and Kissinger. I was sure she wouldn't mention the dismay among some Washington pols that the war had left Saddam Hussein in power.

  She was going to oblige, but first she had to refresh her drink. She had requested brandy, and when the dark-golden liquid was full to the brim she said, "Over all there is still the sense that Desert Storm was a success. I don't think that's going to go away. Certainly, as President Bush said, 'We've licked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.' We've shown that America still has the power and the brains to achieve our goals militarily. And we defanged Saddam Hussein, no mistaking that. Saddam as a threat to peace in the Middle East is finished. Not that we still don't have to keep eternal vigilance over him, but he's not going to be a threat in the same way he was before the war. We accomplished what we meant to do with minimal losses of life on our side."

  Although Diana had gone home, she would, if she were present, send me signals across the table to let the dull old arguments go. Especially at this hour. So I said, "That's great, Figgy." And I said-without thinking, without knowing if it was true-I said, "I've always felt safer knowing that Buddy is on our side."

  Figgy raised her glass to me, in honor of her son, and we drank to the lees. "I do have to give your mother credit," she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, "where credit is due."

  "Oh?"

  "All that quarreling we did in the old days about the war. She was right to see the Vietnamese struggle as one of nationalism.

  Very few people at the start understood it that way, but of course she's proved herself right. It was a complicated situation, and I'm not sure, ideologically, that we were wrong to give aid, but she was right about that particular point. Pour me a little more of that, and let's drink to her."

  We clinked glasses once more. Julia, Julia, a small thing maybe, but do you hear what Figgy just admitted? "Isn't it ironic," my aunt said, "or fitting, that here we are back to the original Mr. and Mrs. Maciver? Just the two of them, both, in a way, widowed?"

  I had been thinking of my father in the role of parent, left with Madeline, the grieving child. I laughed out loud at the weirdness of her idea, the Macivers restored to one another. Since the service, I'd been mulling over the remark the minister had made about Madeline. We had left the eulogy in the Reverend Hollister's hands, and she'd struck the right tone, telling the tried-and-true anecdotes about Julia's irreverence, her stubbornness, her optimism. "It has been said that nothing is simple," the Reverend declared near the end, "that if you look into any relationship its complexity is revealed. But I think the life that Aaron and Julia had with their children, and with Madeline, their commitment to family, was simple, that there is sometimes nothing elaborate in the living out of caritas--of charity. Charity, devotion--those gifts that cannot be explained, those gifts from God, that are part of His grace."

  I had on occasion wondered past the simplicity of my parents' goodness, wondered how much or if any of their dedication to Madeline had to do with the fact that they owed her their life together. Was their care a kind of payment? Would they have taken any handicapped young woman into their home, into their arms? I would have liked to know how much impurity goodness can have and still be considered goodness. "What," I said to Figgy, "did you think of the eulogy?"

  My aged aunt clattered a fork inside her empty glass and sighed. "Lovely, very nice." She sighed again, her signature bosom rising and falling heavily. "I'm just sorry her caritas didn't extend to me. Your mother tried to believe that we all need each other, the dummy and the scholar, the king and the serf, the left and the right, but she couldn't really pull it off. Those of us who were wrong--wrong!--made her so angry. Maybe the afterlife will even her out. Maybe death is like taking a hit of Prozac."

  Surely it was safe to say that Julia Maciver in the box in the closet was about as evened out as a person could get.

  "Oh well," Figgy said, closing that subject. "Do you think we can talk your father into setting Madeline up in some kind of place?

  I'm sure he doesn't have a clue how much your mother took care of Miss Schiller. He still works every day, doesn't he?"

  I had no idea how he was going to cope. Although he had retired, he continued to drive to the museum several times a week for his research on migrating populations through Chicago. Every morning for twenty years, spring and fall, he or one of his workers had picked up the dead birds that smacked into the glass structure of McCormick Place, cataloguing them, charting the species on the move across that part of Lake Michigan. Si
nce my mother's death, we hadn't had time to discuss Madeline 's future in any detail. She had cried herself to sleep most nights, and in the mornings she'd come to any of us who were near for consolation, sitting beside us, her large blue eyes beseeching, as if she thought we might somehow help, as if we might be able to stitch our mother back into herself merely because Madeline was sad. Her grief was unalloyed with regret, pure in her every gesture.

  Over the years she had grown to like my father well enough, to accept him fully as part of the family. On the day after the service, Lu and I again tried halfheartedly to talk him into placing Madeline into assisted living. "We'll assist each other's living!"

  he said. "We'll manage. We've always managed."

  We knew better than to remind him that it was Julia who had taken care of the home front. We didn't press him to sell the house, to pack up all the relics of our childhood that were still in the attic and our rooms, to sell everything that wouldn't fit in a five-hundredsquare-foot condominium. "Madeline and I," he said, "will be fine."

  FOR SOME TIME AFTER JULIA'S DEATH, Louise and I were braced for a domestic disaster in the old household, one of them falling or having a stroke, or growing too lonely to carry on. It was Russia who helped Madeline find a new place for herself. On her first Wednesday after the service, after she'd set Charles in motion with the mop and pail, after she had dismissed my father, telling him what to buy at the grocery store, she laid out what Madeline must do in order to deserve her rest at night.