A Family Trust

by Ward Just

  “Not long enough!” she cried.

  Chastened, he pulled back from her. He said, “I know.”

  “Not long enough,” she said again, and looked away.

  “She hadn’t been sick?”

  “Yes,” she said. “She’s been ... not very well ... for years but there was no—idea ...”

  He moved close to her again, putting both arms around her shoulders. He did not know what to say. “It’s better that it’s quick,” he said.

  “Quick, yes,” she said after a moment.

  “She didn’t suffer.”

  Dana shook her head, silent. She was remembering her mother’s face, trying to recall what she had looked like as a young woman.

  “It’s something,” he said.

  “My uncle,” she said, “doesn’t know the score, never did.” She recognized that as a phrase of her father’s and bit her lip. Over the telephone her father had been confused and distant, almost abrupt. She said, “It was hard to tell what happened. My father was apparently visiting my mother, she had a stroke years ago—” She stopped, then continued. “My uncle kept talking about a cable. We didn’t get any cable, did we?” He shook his head. “Well, there was a cable. About my mother. Then when she died they tried to telephone and cable, both.” She brought the glass to her lips and drained it. “I’ll get drunk,” she said.

  Myles said, “You could do worse.”

  She handed him the empty glass. “Please?”

  He went into the kitchen and filled the glass again with whiskey, taking a long swallow himself. He lingered a moment, looking into the blackness from the window. Arrangements would have to be made. He would call tonight and try to get Dana on the same flight as McGee and Cathy. Then she could change planes in New York. Christ, he thought, what a thing to happen. It would have to happen while she was here, a continent away. He took another swallow of whiskey and brought the glass back to her. Dana was sitting next to the fire, the child’s blue coat in her lap.

  “I don’t know how happy she was,” she said. “In her life.” She accepted the glass but did not drink. “My father was so odd on the phone. He just said she was gone and that it was quick and painless and that he hoped I could get back ... right away ‘The first available aircraft,’ was the way he put it. Then he gave the phone to Tony.” She took a sip of the whiskey, gripping the glass with both hands. “The town I grew up in, where they lived. Dement.” She sighed. “Dement, I don’t understand you.”

  Myles said, “I’m going to try to get you seats tomorrow on McGee’s plane. I’ll try to book you through from here. You and Cathy. Do you want me to do that?” He spoke very deliberately. She listened and nodded.

  “Thank you, Myles.”

  “Are you all right for a minute?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “I’d better do it now.”

  “Yes, now.”

  He looked at her. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you, Myles.”

  “Really,” he said.

  She nodded. “I know.”

  “It’s a hell of a goddamned thing.”

  “Make the call and then come back to me here.”

  Twice the line was busy and finally he made a connection. There was a seat available on the Aer Lingus to New York and they would try to confirm connections through to the Midwest. Mrs. McGee would have to check that in the morning. But she was confirmed definitely to New York. He returned to the living room and gave her the information, the flight number and times of arrival and departure. He’d written them on a piece of notepaper. If she would give him the name and address of her uncle, he would cable him.

  “I’ll do that in New York,” she said. “Or tomorrow morning. I’ll cable my father then.” She added, with a slow smile, “Of all the times. Going on the same darned plane with McGee and Shirley and Cathy. Cripes,” she said. “That’s really the limit. Isn’t that the outer limit?”

  He smiled. “It’s the outer limit.”

  “Ah, shoot,” she said. “Poor mother. Poor lady.”

  He said, “I’ll go back with you, Dana. Let me do that, it’s a beast of a trip to take alone. I’d like to, really—”

  She shook her head. “I’ve paid for this place for a week more. You stay, enjoy it. Who knows?” She shrugged. “Maybe I’ll fly back myself, after the funeral. Spend the last few days here and then we could go back together.” He nodded in agreement, although he knew she would not be back. She said, “I haven’t been in Dement in a year. I haven’t been very good about visiting. Never have been very good about that. My father didn’t like it. We always quarrelled.” She looked at him suddenly. “You’ve never met my father, have One of his trips to New York?”

  He said, “No. I always wanted to.”

  “He hated McGee.”

  “That makes him a man of good judgment,” Myles said.

  “He thought McGee was always trying to put him down.”

  “Was he?”

  “I don’t think so. It was just—McGee. His ambassadorial manner.” She said, “I wonder what he’ll do now.” It was not a question to which Dana expected an answer. “Poor man.” Then she smiled wistfully. “You remind me a little of him.”

  He looked at her, amazed. He could not imagine what she meant. “I do?”

  “A little,” she said softly. “In some ways.” Then she laughed. “You and my father are totally. Utterly. Completely different in every way, absolutely.”

  “But I remind you of him.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Well—” She was looking at him and then he understood. “Ah,” he said. “It’s because I’m a very-fine-man, right?”

  “Yeah,” she said, with a little lilt to her voice.

  He looked at her red face and her shining eyes and he thought for a moment that he would weep himself. But he forced a smile. “I knew it was something like that.”

  She said seriously, “My father did not sound well.”

  “Dana, that’s shock.”

  “Um,” she said. “I suppose. Certainly that’s it.” She rose, and put out her hand to help him up. “Come on,” she said. They went upstairs hand in hand to the big bedroom on the second floor. It was dark and she peeked into Cathy’s room to see that she was all right, then went on to their room and began to undress. He turned off the electric heater and flung open the window to the night air and piled comforters on the bed. Gently guiding her beneath the sheets, he turned off the lights. They lay facing each other, burrowed into the bed and themselves. She did not want to talk and they lay there, facing, arms around each other, until sleep finally came.

  IT WAS ALMOST dawn when Dana woke and slipped out of bed. Myles stirred and rolled over, muttering indistinctly. His eyes opened and he stared at her, seeing nothing. He frowned, closed his eyes, and was asleep again. She stood looking at him a moment, smiling, and reached down to touch him but at the last moment withdrew her hand. His face was slack and childlike in sleep, only his tangled hair, gray at the temples, and the thick white bristles on his chin betraying his age. She stood quite still a moment longer, shivering in the cold, torn by indecision. She moved closer to the bed, wanting him to waken—dear Myles, there was no one like him. Her hand fluttered above his forehead, then dropped again to her side. No. We are alone, she thought. Alone at the beginning and alone at the end, alone at all the times of darkness. How comforting now to be held by Myles, loved by him, warmed by him, to feel his heavy arms around her back, holding her close, to hear the rumble in his chest when he spoke to her, always in solace and reassurance. But there would come a time when Myles would leave again, chasing a fresh chimera; and she and Cathy would remain. Not cripples, she thought. She touched the pillow, then turned away and began to dress. Cold: the floorboards were like ice under her feet and the chill swept through the house, around her shoulders and belly and legs, pushed by the breeze from the sea. Dressed, she looked at Myles snug in bed; a ship in a safe harbor. She smiled to herself. Why was it th
at Risings always believed the hardest way to be the best way? For better or worse, she acted in the traditions of the family, inside a narrative that seemed to have been written long ago.

  Downstairs, she watched the northern dawn, the starless night change from black to slate gray. Familiar things became visible, the stone walls first, then the dark green of the grass, finally the sea itself, black-green, flecked with white. The sea was lifeless then; she could not imagine life in it. The kitchen brightened, and she turned off the lamp. The tart smell of coffee filled her head and she relaxed, watching the dawn, looking far out to sea, her mind clearing as the definitions changed and became sharper; the soft rise and fall, the light and shade, all of it cold. She pulled on a heavy sweater and a windbreaker for the rain, certain to come at some point in the day, probably before noon. She laced the big shoes, filled the thermos with coffee, and fetched an apple from the dish on the sideboard. She scribbled a note for Myles, then left the house.

  Her route was this. Down the road to the town one mile, then through the fields south thirty minutes. That put her within an hour’s walk of the summit of Gilles’s Mountain. She intended to climb the mountain and with luck make the summit by nine. She would be back at eleven, in plenty of time to catch the airplane at three. Not a difficult climb, Gilles’s; it was a rather simple Irish hill, and it was nearby. A winding trail led to the summit and an enormous view. That was the reason she was climbing it, for the view from the summit; for that, and for the exercise it gave her and the chance to breathe fresh air, alone.

  By eight the clouds cleared and patches of blue were visible above. She had passed through the town and the fields and was moving upward, the mountain rising in a gentle swell, its slopes green and thick. She vaulted stone walls, following the rise. She had a good stick for support and kept her eyes on the mountain’s mass before her, growing as she approached it, and finally dominating her vision. The sea was far behind her now, hidden as she moved into narrow dates, and emerging again when she came onto the heights. The closer she got the more forbidding the mountain: gray and angular, mist draped like a cassock over its shoulders. Halfway up she stumbled on an oratory, its stones tumbled down but still recognizable; a place of worship from the twelfth century or before. She and Myles had climbed Giues’s the week before and he had brought with him a book from the house, and quoted from it. Da Derga’s Hostel The women: “White as the snow of one night were her hands... dark as the back of a stag-beetle the two eyebrows. Like a shower of pearls were the teeth in. her head. Blue as a hyacinth were the eyes. Red as rowanberries the lips. Very high, smooth and soft-white the shoulders. Clear-white and lengthy the fingers. Long were the hands. White as the foam of a wave was the flank, slender, long, tender, smooth, soft as wool. Polished and warm, sleek and white were the two thighs. Round and small, hard and white the two knees...” With a roar and crazed laughter Myles had chased her up the mountain and caught her and they had made love on the. soft grass beside the path. And remained there for the af ternoon. She laughed out loud, remembering it.

  The sunlight was hazy but the day was warm. She heard the sound of crickets in the grass, and of wind. It filled her with wonder, sitting alone in all oratory on the side of a mountain in western Ireland, no living thing close at hand, the mass of the mountain spreading out below her like a woman’s skirts. She glazed at the hills below her, and the sea beyond that, the water darker than the land, but both of them green and fertile. She saw the village and the road cutting through it, and her own house almost hidden from view, tucked away inside. this miniature world. Shading her eyes, she stared at the summit and the way up seemed less forbidding, It was not enormous or menacing, this life-sized hill. The climb was worth it, even if she surrendered where she was. She could forget about the rest of it and go home and still it was worth it. Her shoes with their thick soles made her believe that she was taller than she was and standing on the stones of the oratory she felt huge, a giant. God, Gulliver, looking down at the world.

  She was breathing hard and the trail steepened. Often she had to move down the hill in order to get around the outcrops, rocks as big as houses stuck out of the side of the mountain. It unsettled her to look down now; she had never been good with heights. She began to understand what climbers meant when they talked of handling a mountain, working with it rather than against it. The mass became animate and personal, an intimate thing. She was below a large overhanging rock now, slipping sideways to maneuver around it in order to climb again. A quick glance down showed her the mistake: she’d taken a wrong turning at the oratory No way of knowing that at the time; looking up altered the perspective and therefore the nature of the terrain. Now the oratory seemed very small and oddly positioned; marvelous thing, hindsight. She kept her head into the mountain, working with it, moving sideways until she could move no more. The ledge bumped into a new outcropping: she was at a dead end. If she could get to the next ledge she could get to the summit. But she could barely reach it with her fingertips. Then she saw herself from a distance, from the eyes of the hawks above, and felt the absurdity of it. She was not dangling from ropes or belayed to pitons, swinging on an Alp, she was standing beneath a ledge with sweat dribbling down her back, looking at her bruised palms and puffing like a steam engine.

  Two hawks crisscrossed above her, riding wind currents, silent as the mountain itself. She looked straight ahead at the green-veined stone, staring at it the way a fortune-teller stares at the lines in a human palm. She watched the birds from the corners of her eyes, the birds silhouetted blackly against the sky. She thought then that she was beyond her reach and was suddenly frightened.

  She had always thought of herself as traveling alone. Now her attendants were two silent hawks, riding the wind. The valuable objettive was a ledge, and beyond that an exhilarating view; nothing more. A view from the top of a small hill at the end of a short climb. Hugging the mountain she thought that if she were ten years younger or older she could see the situation in symbols; she’d always dealt harshly with symbols, It would help now to see all this in symbol, mystery or rhyme. She wondered if possibly somewhere her mother was witnessing all this: She saw her, left hand to her mouth in a characteristic gesture. Don’t forget your coat and hat. A breeze drifted down the mourntain slope and dried the sweat on her head. She unstrung her belt and fashioned it into a loop, and belayed the loop on the point of an overhanging rock. But it slipped and kept slipping when she tested, it for strength. She reexamined the ledge, rubbing her hands over her thighs, and decided it was serious after all. There was one possible way: If she jumped high she could hope that her hands and forearms caught on the overhang, and then she could haul herself up. She thought about that and glowered at the hawks. She said to them, “Fuck off.”

  It would be a tragedy to have to go down the way she’d come up, with a long walk ahead of her and nothing to show for it; no reward. The Risings were not like that. What they sought they found, and never looked back. Except her father had spent a lifetime looking back and her own amateur standing in that field was secure. She stood slapping the belt against the side of the mountain, frustrate, The frustrated climber, defeated by gentle Gilles’s Mountain. Cousteau frightened by a cod. All those symbols to be overcome, those metaphors and destinies to fulfill. There was something of an Irish saga in it, as related by Myles, fabulous suggestions and overtones of the supernatural. Struggles among heavies. Where was the warrior with seven pupils in one eye, and the eye in the middle of his forehead? The sorceress with thirty-two names (Samon, Sinand, Seisclend, Sodb), Da Derga’s hostel with thirty-seven rooms (the room of the Picts, the room of the pipers, the room of Conaire’s majordomo). the final bloodletting, dead following dead, “a man for every stone that is now in Carn Lecca,” So it was not simply a short walk up a simple hill; it had a magic of its own.

  She gathered her nerve and jumped. It was more a dignified hop and in one clumsy motion she was hanging from the ledge, her feet scrambling for a purchase on the stone fa
ce of the mountain. She heard the rasp of her shoes and the sound of falling stones, and for one instant she thought she’d fall, had fallen and was even then lying limp and broken six feet below; but she pulled and hauled herself up and over the ledge and once there, on top, lay heaving and gasping, stretched out.

  There had to be a reward. She carefully refused to look down, although her eyes told her to, to see where she’d come from, just one quick glance over the edge for verification. But she struggled to her feet and kept moving on. The slope was easier now and she kept her eyes in front of her. She’d save the view for the summit, with nothing more beyond. Then she’d look down and savor the triumph. It was a ten-minute walk and she moved slowly and deliberately around the rocks, her passage suggesting a very old woman climbing a steep flight of stairs, gripping the balustrade with a heavy hand, head low, pausing every few steps. She made her way thus to the heights and stood there motionless a moment. Then with an actorish swing of her arm she turned and looked over the land, a three-hundred-sixty-degree prospect. Ireland gleamed below her, a dazzling green land, peaceful. She traced the route from the town, noting the places where she’d jumped a fence or crossed a road. The stone fences were like veins, lightly lacing the land together. She could not make out the oratory at all; all the stone piles looked alike. Perhaps it was hidden altogether. She searched for it a minute, then sat down on a boulder, exhausted. The land fell away from her, then dipped sharply at the place the ledge was. With no strength to take in all there was to see and feel, she simply sat. Then she dozed, awhile, slumped on the boulder, letting her mind go numb. Her head wilted between her knees. It was not so much, but it was something. She had done what she intended to do. She had risked, and been true to her life. She had wanted to get the facts straight in her head, and had done that, She had wanted to prove herself—capable. Again capable. Prove somehow that there were no strings on her, that she was chained to no particular destiny; except the one she wanted for herself. And she had not crawled back into bed with Myles. Her poor mother. How much of this had she ever known or wanted to know or needed to know? Dana looked aloft into the milky sky and imagined the dead waiting there, a sky crowded with dead, dead following dead, one dead “for every stone that is now in Carn Lecca.” Her brother and her grandfather and now her mother, and back somewhere the love between her and McGee. All dead. The Dement she had known, dead. Now there was just she and her father, the last of the Risings. Her father with his broken voice and suppressed rage and sorrow. She would go to him now.