Telling Time
Page 10
PAPER WATCH. Forget Killdog while trailing dead Wyoming naive old times (trains land BShave: Jake/hairbrush) romance West vs dull geol West symb what? Kid TW love VLeigh. Hard read deathday invis people. Cry damn.
TOMORROW. > Boston ex crowds here: > Europe. New life. No funeral. Grieve solo. Cry damn2.
PART SIX
TUESDAY
LUCY WESTERLY: Letter folded in another
Lingering in bed, fiddling Freud’s ears, pretending I’m good, while others take care of things. Pretending I’m a bird. Song sparrow in the pecking dirt. Garden birds that fly no more than they have to. Up from the dirt to a low branch of the nearest tree, then another tree, one tree to the next, flap flap, hard on my arms. How is such a creature capable of the sustained effort necessary to cross the sea from mainland to island? How does he know when he sets out with no land in sight that trees and a hospitable garden with cherries and worms are on the other side of that fog?
Meanwhile all that thumping upstairs. So maybe it’s Ann I’m writing to instead,
Dear Ann,
who’ll be setting out in a plane opposite to the birds later this morning. Up packing already. Making me think how much time to get up and eat and go to the airport with you, meanwhile writing to tell you not to feel guilty for not staying to the end. Of course you’re right to carry out plans made without knowledge of unforeseen events. The important thing is you came. Be thankful he died while you were here. To stay on and bury him is another matter. So don’t blame yourself. Blame rather the husband (I am not talking about Frank) who would not allow his wife a few days’ extra leeway to be with her dying father. It’s hard to understand a daughter who would put the mundane concerns of her daily life above the unique and terrible crisis of a father’s death. Just as it’s hard to understand the feelings of a daughter who can abandon her native land to settle across an ocean, cutting off friends, brothers, sisters, old parents, as if it didn’t matter never to see them again. It’s hard to express (which I never have) my blank when you announced your London plan, nor your father’s so adroitly concealed behind his generous good wishes, so don’t listen to me. Cruel though it may be, you have a right to choose what’s best for you and no one else has any rights at all. Good parents let their children go. You’ve been a loyal daughter, until now, if that will soothe your conscience such as it is. Thomas too. My problem is whether to go to the airport, which I’ll be happy to do if there is no crisis elsewhere.
It’s not Ann it’s Thomas leaving me empty. How could I forget? I can’t express the
express, reminded by his sweater, the heavy checked Indian one, on the back of his chair—not only tangible but still bearing a faint smell though they say he no longer exists, distinctive mild usually unnoticed not unpleasant, leaving his things around as if he didn’t care about me, express whatever that is
MELANIE CAIRO: Dialogue
Leaving the bathroom, she goes downstairs, knocks on the sun-porch door at the bottom of the stairs.
Melanie: All yours.
Patty (behind the door): Thank yoo-hoo.
Through the hall she sees Ann and Philip at the breakfast table. Lucy’s door is shut.
The telephone rings as she passes. She hesitates, unaccustomed to picking up other people’s phones, but Ann looks at her.
Melanie: Hello.
Male voice: Miz Westerly?
Melanie: Wait, a moment please. (To Ann, covering phone: Where’s Lucy? Ann: Not up.) She can’t come to the phone, can I take a message?
Male voice: Excuse me, this is Mister Osborne, Gregory Morticulture. If you would be so kind as to tell her he’s ready.
Melanie: What?
Osborne: Professor Westerly, he’s ready.
Melanie: Ready?
Osborne: Excuse me, ready for viewing. If you would be so good as to tell the lady, she can visit him any time now.
Melanie: Now, already? I thought the viewing was Thursday.
Osborne: Excuse me, isn’t the lady going away today? We worked ahead of schedule to get him ready for the lady who’s going away so she can say her last goodbye.
Melanie: Oh you mean Ann.
Osborne: Thank you. If you will tell her, when I heard she was leaving so soon I made a special effort. I thought she would appreciate having her last goodbye. Thank you.
Melanie: All right, I will, thank you.
Osborne: Thank you so much.
Melanie: I’ll tell her, thank you.
Osborne: Thank you so much again.
Ann (in the kitchen): What? He got him ready for me?
PHILIP WESTERLY: Scheduling
The Present Moment: 8:37 a.m.
Scheduled Time of Ann’s Flight: 10:05
Advised time to be in airport: 9:45
Time needed to get to airport: 20 minutes
Last safe time to leave house: 9:25
Time between Now and Last Safe Time: 47 minutes.
Time to get to Gregory: 6 minutes walk
Time to get ready to go: ask first, will other people want to go with Ann? If so, will they eat breakfast before they go?
Breakfast time minimum: 30 minutes. For seven people, expand to 45 minutes.
Henry, Patty, William, Lucy will also need time to get dressed. Dressing will occur simultaneously, not consecutively, but time elapsed will be that of the slowest dresser, not the average. Slowest dresser time: 25 minutes?
Time needed to view corpse with dignity: 10 minutes?
Time back to house: 6 minutes.
Time needed for Ann to pack: Ask her.
Time needed for Ann to pack: 15 minutes.
Wash? Bathroom? Add a little more.
If Ann goes by herself:
Time needed to finish her breakfast: 8 minutes (coffee to cool). Leave house 8:48 (already ten minutes have passed just talking and figuring this out).
Arrive Gregory’s: 8:54. Add 5 for confusions.
Visit Dad: 8:59-9:09.
Get back to house: 9:20.
Pack, bathroom, goodbye. Leave for airport 9:25, last safe minute, and that’s rushing things.
The only way for Ann to view Father is to go by herself, unless I run over there with her.
Question: If Ann sees him first and I see him with her, will others also want a privileged preview before the official display? Will feelings be hurt? Decide later.
One alternative would be to cancel her flight. Then she’d have to call Frank and cancel London.
Additional problem: Ann’s not sure she can finish packing and do all that has to be done in fifteen minutes.
The telephone rings again.
Female: Mr. Glassman’s office at the Island National Bank, can we move Mr. Philip Westerly’s appointment up to ten this morning, Mr. Glassman has to go to the mainland and won’t be back until Friday?
Time now: 8:50 a.m.
Scheduled time of Ann’s flight: 10:05.
Time of Glassman’s new appointment: 10:00.
Conflict.
Alternative: Glassman Friday 10 a.m. Conflict funeral morning. Alternative: Friday 3:00 p.m. Conflict funeral.
Okay Glassman today, let others take Ann to the airport.
Time passes. Ann is in her room. What’s taking her so long? Time now: 8:54. Give warning, You won’t have time.
Ann comes out, not ready. Can I take this manuscript of Daddy’s? I want to see how it comes out.
What’s that?
His Wyoming story.
Damn. Send it back when you’re done.
William comes in. I’ll drive you to the airport.
Somebody please apologize to Mr. Gregory.
Not Mr. Gregory, Mr. Osborne at Gregory’s. Gregory Morticulture.
Time now: 9:25. Hurry hurry it’s time to go.
Nobody’s had breakfast yet. Some of us did.
Lucy doesn’t want to go to the airport. Henry is still in his bathrobe and Patty hasn’t finished eating. Melanie wanted to stay in the background. I have to see Glassman at ten.
After she left, we found Dad’s Wyoming folder that she had wanted to take on the kitchen table.
HENRY WESTERLY: To God
Let me remind you of the facts. By midnight of the night in question I was asleep. You can verify that with Melanie. He got out of bed in direct defiance of explicit instructions. He slipped out of the hospital, past the nurses’ station, the security guards, into the street: were you leading him on? And then he went back to the Truro house. Do you intend to tell me why he went there, of all places, and not to his own home family and bed? I’m sure you remember also that it was the Truro house where he was first stricken. Where the bullet didn’t hit him but he was stricken anyway, so what the bullet couldn’t do, you did. Is it your plan to let me know why Truro so drew him like fatality, what he was looking for that made him go back or how he knew that’s where he would find it—or do you intend to make me figure it out for myself? As for me, please remember when you go around accusing people that the first time he went was before I came, I wasn’t even here and had never heard of Truro. And when he went back to that house in the middle of the night before last that’s his responsibility or yours, for I was asleep in bed afflicted by this depression they say I have.
As for last night, I dropped in at the Ahab ’n Abigail because I heard voices, and a man talking about Truro. One thing led to another, but I was never out of your sight. Afterwards, I walked for an hour, for my health, to circulate my blood, dissolve the oily chunks and clear my soul of people. I did nothing but walk. You saw me. I walked through the village and out the beach road by the harbor light. I swung back past the power plant and the tennis courts. I met William Key on my way back, walking by himself too. It’s all right for him to walk alone at night, why not me? Because it’s impossible to stay in this house. A point is reached when everybody merges into a single personality like a pot of stew, a steam bath of personality, and you simply have to escape. We went out independently, met accidentally, passed the hospital together; then came home. If you are uncertain about this, ask William. At home, Melanie had gone to bed.
As for this morning, I did say goodbye to Ann before William took her to the airport. No one waked me, it was not my fault I didn’t get up in time to go with her, if someone had waked me I would have gone—if she had wanted me to. Yes it is my fault, I know. It’s my fault to oversleep, but it was not deliberate, not selfish or callous or hostile. Selfish, yes I admit that. But not intended. The last time I saw my father conscious was Sunday, he did not speak to me. He did not speak to me. Of course I could have. I did not try to make him speak because I thought he didn’t want to. I could have tried but I didn’t because I thought that. You understand that, you can’t accuse me for it. If they accuse me, they should out and so say, they should tell me to my face. They shouldn’t tell you without telling me, so I can explain it.
I wept when my father died, you saw that. I point that out, if you didn’t notice it, though of course you did, being who you are. Who else did? I never never never wished my father to die. The only time I wished my father to die was for his sake, the last day or two to terminate his suffering. He would have wished it himself, if he could have wished. I was reinforcing him. The only other times I wished him dead, if I wished him dead in years past, which I never did, but it was not literal. You can understand it was a manner of speaking, a metaphor for certain frustrations on my part, not to wish him dead, even if that’s what the words of my thought seemed—seemed—to say, but to wish him, not to be silent, but to change his mind, this or that, I forget the issues. If I wished him dead for any other reason at any other time it was not a true wish but an idle thought, a curiosity about how things change, a mere question, like what would things be like if he died, like action in a movie. All life is change, surely you know that, you know it better than anybody, it’s the way you set the universe up.
WILLIAM KEY: What to tell
At the Island airport this breezy morning after death, William Key’s point of view pauses in the car that does not belong to him to watch the plane go. In a flash of sun it rises steeply and turns toward the sea carrying the chunky woman away. He watches from the car after the other visitors have gone, at the fence by the restricted area and the little private planes, while flags flap, weather vanes spin, the radar arm circles.
Alone again, he pauses outside the restricted area, not ready to return yet. The empty airport takes shape. There’s a flat cinder-block terminal with tiles of opaque blue glass. A runway rising into the liquid distance. A line of scrubby growth on the monotonous edge. A blue sky with cotton puffs extending over where the sea must be. The cool air quivers from the released weight of the past half hour. The baggage-centered, ticket-oriented conversation recedes into a memory of politeness. The chunky woman’s hearty civility, brisk and blunt, and his own kindness. Mutual courtesy, full of implications. He discovers the implications in retrospect. His sympathy and condolence for more than her bereavement, for the necessity of her sudden flight and exile. Her sensitivity, which he reconstructs from a momentary look in her gray eyes, to his intelligence and his difference, which she will never mention. Off to Boston she goes, on her way to London, full of brain and good sense and a knowledge he knows she has, shrinking into nothing in the sky.
Though he has never discussed anything important with her, he feels surprisingly abandoned, as if she had incorporated his intelligence into her own and taken it with her. He thinks admiringly of the fullness of her writing, with its analytical and finicky attention to detail, while she talks impatiently about what to leave behind in a move overseas. With cryptic meaning that eludes him, she says, Don’t let Thomas’s papers out. Then she’s gone, leaving this empty point of view behind. It puts this viewpoint temporarily in a gap, open like a glimpse into hell, though the guessed horrors may be deferred and possibly deferrable for life or maybe even nonexistent, who knows? For twenty minutes he lingers in the gap, car parked by the fence after the other cars have gone, between the woman vanished in the sky and the strangers mourning in the house.
Patricia’s hated sister, she never meant anything to him before, and she never will again. Only this once, when they found themselves mutually helping each other into exile, she became for him in retrospect the one true link to Patricia’s alien family. He imagines in her and in the dead father together the family’s integrity, though he never paid attention to her, and she had no importance. But in her departure he finds authorization for his.
When he gets back to the house, what’s left will be only peripheral in a family to which he has only temporarily, it now seems, belonged. Seventeen years temporary, flown off into nothing. He confronts them again in their new strangeness. The white mother with the bird nose projecting from the shocked blue eyes, the skin like a veil with light shining through, hooked to a trembling machine powering the shake of her voice. The ugly fat man with the limp promoting depression like a law suit, mistaking for sensitivity the monomania that has made him simple, coarse, and crude. His wife whose yearning guilty eyes will give away the secret between them even when there is no secret.
And the man with the beard who fancies himself good. The steady one, who makes a profession of looking into the eyes of others. As if eyes could see, though blind to whatever the man’s reasonable goodness protects: something scared behind the practiced modesty and ingratiating manner. William Key’s view-point, expert in concealment, thinks the man in the beard believes he is hiding a guilty secret, like a Puritan minister with a veil, though no one but the man cares and the world would laugh if it knew.
When at last he drives back to town he resents the car. Lucy’s car, which won’t mind. It’s big and draf
ty, a powerful old machine in need of a muffler. The steering wheel is higher than he likes, the brake pedal too loose, there’s a vibration at high speed. The maps in the back fly around.
At the house, the family is dispersed, remnants sit idly at the breakfast table. That irritates him, he doesn’t want to sit with them, so he’ll take another walk. Where to? Having no plan, he finds himself on Main Street where suddenly he sees Henry again, ahead, coming in his direction. He looks around to escape but then sees that Henry has disappeared. Hiding from him too? William advances cautiously. There’s the shoe repair shop and the silk imports store. Between them the office of the Island News. He glances through the plate glass window just when Henry, standing by the desk, is looking out. Their eyes meet, there’s no escape. Wave, nod, go on. It’s the kind of encounter that will oblige William to ask later what he was doing there, before he realizes from Henry’s startled look that he’d better not.
PATRICIA KEY: What to tell Pete Arena
It leaves me wondering what will become of this family now. My prediction, it will split, never be a family again. My older brother and sister’ll say we’re too warm and close for that. And when it has happened, they’ll pretend it has not. But if it gets too obvious, they’ll blame us. By us I mean Henry and me, the malcontents. Henry they’ll blame for not being cheerful and me for being me.
My father was too busy being university president and when he wasn’t he was alone in his head, staring at the world on his computer screen, even when he was retired and supposed to be living life. My mother, you’re a good American, you believe in mothers, but mine never approved of me. She was afraid I would fall into disgrace, pregnancy or worse. Because of where I stand on the ladder of roles. Third child, second daughter. She worries how things look and now I’ll have justified all her fears by taking up with an African-American garage man. She’d reconcile easier if she thought you were middle class, but since you’re not she’ll judge by what you are doing to pull yourself up. Are you taking courses at night? She’ll expect you to improve your social standing. She’ll approve if she thinks you’re trying to do that, because it means you know what your standing is. Better for her, therefore, more instructive, if you don’t tell her about night school.