by Lynne Hugo
“What about Wayne?” Madalaine says, surprised at her own maliciousness.
“Oh, well, you know, he’s at work, and they said it’s a good idea to have someone who doesn’t live with us, just in case.” Lydia brushed her hand across her forehead as if to tame a nonexistent unruly clump of hair, a dead giveaway to her sister.
“Really,” Madalaine answers. Again, she emphasizes the first syllable. It’s her new favorite word, she guesses. “Well…everything Ellie knows about machinery could be scratched on the head of a pin and still leave room for an encyclopedia. Any news about a transplant?”
“Oh, there’s really no machinery. Bags and clamps and an IV pole. Well, Wayne and I have been tested, but we don’t know yet. It’ll work out. Claire will get a kidney, won’t you, honey?”
More lies.
Claire is huddling—it is perceptible to Madalaine—into her pillows, trying to make herself smaller. Her mother is embarrassing her.
“I’d think the results would be back by now,” Madalaine says, a deliberate torment.
“I don’t know. These things take time. How is Jen doing? I’ve been thinking about her—people tend to forget siblings,” Lydia says.
That’s right, Lydie, change the subject. I guess you’re hoping that’ll work, Madalaine thinks, and in spite of a quick sear of shame that precedes the words, she says, “But you all must be pestering the doctor night and day. Waiting for these kinds of results is so hard. When does she say you’ll know?”
“I’m not sure. Listen, I’ve been fighting a headache all morning. I think a couple of aspirin and a shot of caffeine might work. You want to come to the coffee shop with me? Claire, honey, if the nurse comes, have me paged in the coffee shop. Is that okay?”
“Sure,” Claire answers, and picks up a fat paperback from the nightstand.
“You might think about catching up on some of your calculus instead of reading that,” Lydia says, keeping her disapproval mild but evident.
“Mom…” Claire gives an eye roll so familiar to Madalaine as a teenage gesture that it is like a blow to her solar plexus. Brian used to annoy her with that on a daily basis.
“Come on, Maddie, keep me company. Please.” Lydia stands at the door waiting.
Madalaine briefly considers pushing Lydia’s panic button by saying no, I’d rather not, I’ll stay here and talk with Claire. After all, she is Mother of the Dead Boy. She can pretty much defy anyone she wants. But she’s curious to see how Lydia will try to shut her up about the tests and what she’ll say about John and Wayne, so instead she sighs and gets up slowly, to enact the artifice of reluctance.
Their steps are not in unison so there is a strange tat…tat tat…tat syncopated rhythm to the sisters’ progress down the square tiles of the hallway. A black custodian in blue coveralls, like Wayne’s, swirls a rag mop wetly up one side, where a sign cautions them to be careful. Madalaine sidesteps the watery area by moving closer to Lydia, but as soon as the sisters have passed it, she moves back to her right, increasing the distance between them again. Madalaine expected her to talk as they walked, a breathy exhortation, but Lydia is silent and Madalaine follows suit.
In the coffee shop, which is virtually empty, Lydia orders iced tea and Madalaine refuses anything. Lydia waits for it to come by digging around in her purse for change, but as soon as it does, she takes a deep breath and forces herself off the diving board headfirst. “Maddie, I’m asking for your help.”
“Seems that’s the current trend.” Madalaine stares her straight in the eyes. She, for one, has nothing to be ashamed of.
“What?”
“Never mind. So what favor do you have in mind?”
“Maddie, what’s going on? What have I done? Please, I need to know.” Lydia leans over her iced tea, which has already formed condensation all over the outside of the glass.
“I thought you wanted a favor.” Madalaine leans her back against the booth, neutralizing Lydia’s lean forward.
“Well, I do, it’s just that the…vibes are terrible, as Claire would say. You’re angry at me. I know this is a nightmare time for you. I don’t want to…involve you, but I have to. First, though, I need to be able to talk with you.”
“Talk away.”
Lydia sighs, and her shoulders slump. “Maddie. Maddie. I’m so sorry…for however you find me guilty of contributing to Brian’s death. Please, you remember, you have to remember, I loved him, too. I’d have never done anything to hurt him.”
“No, of course not. You’d just live your life in careless ways, draw other people into your carelessness and get away with it, while people who play by the rules get everything taken away from them.” Madalaine hadn’t intended for any of that to spill out, nor the tears that came so quickly she couldn’t fumble in her purse for tissue before they were rolling down her face. “Damn,” she says, and takes the napkin Lydia hands to her.
“I understand,” Lydia says. “You’re right. What can I say? You’re right. What do you want me to do? It’s not Claire’s fault. Do you want me to stick a sign on my chest?”
“I really don’t care what you do,” Madalaine says, even though she’s ignoring what Wayne’s sent her for. Lydia will get to that soon enough, she figures.
“You’re my sister. I need your help. Can’t we—”
“I doubt it,” Madalaine says, cutting her off.
Now Lydia’s eyes become teary. “Maddie, please. Wayne didn’t come home last night…he’s furious because I…I called John.”
“Really.” That wonderful little emphasis on the first syllable when the word is said slowly, so that it comes out as if she’s said, Oh, tell me more. Too bad she only just learned how to do it; it would have been useful when Bill was cheating on her with Melody and lying about it like a member of the Olympic Prevarication Team. Too late, she remembers that Lydia coined that phrase, taught her the word prevarication. Well, of course, Lydia would know about prevarication.
“Look. You were right all along. I’m sorry I tried to lie to you. I did tell Wayne the truth, though, I mean back then, that John is Claire’s father. I can’t really say it’s why I lied to you after…that day. I did it…well, I just did it, and after that, after I told Wayne, he was adamant that no one ever know and of course, I agreed. I mean, he wanted the baby. But now, everything’s different. The thing is, the test results are back. I can’t give Claire a kidney because of antibodies in my blood. Of course Wayne’s not a match—there was no reason to think he would be, but we had him tested anyway. Can you see what I’m saying? What would you do?”
Madalaine is somewhat disarmed. She’s not expected this nakedness from Lydia, the brittle bones of her life exposed this way. She gestures at Lydia’s tea, and Lydia nods. Madalaine picks it up and takes a sip, mainly to buy herself a moment.
“What does Wayne want you to do?”
“Wait for a cadaver, I guess. The discussion didn’t…get that far.”
“How far did it get?”
“Nowhere. I couldn’t wait. No, it’s not that, it’s…no matter what Wayne thinks, I can’t listen to that. Can you understand? That’s why I called John.”
“Why is that?” Madalaine says, knowing perfectly well.
“To ask him to be tested. He’s a parent, a parent or a sibling, that’s the best chance for a match usually.”
“And?”
“He needed time to think. There are…ramifications, but frankly, I can’t see how any of them have the least importance compared to Claire.”
Lydia’s elbows are on the table, her fingertips closed and pressing together as if in an unconscious posture of prayer.
Madalaine idly looks at her own hands. Her fingers are woven together but there’s a big gap between her palms. They might be the arches of her ribs, sheltering the empty place where her heart should be.
“You think you have the right to do this to Wayne?” Madalaine can’t quite hold her eyes to Lydia’s. She hates that she does know how Lydia feels.
“No. But I think that nothing is as important as Claire and I’ll do whatever…anything.” Lydia’s voice doesn’t even waver.
Lydia’s so damn sure of herself. Madalaine would almost like to see Lydia up against something as immovable as death. A degree of shame expands in Madalaine, the way darkness soaks the land at night, slowly. She switches on the light of justice, that notion that tells her who deserves what.
“I’ve got to get going,” she says.
“Maddie, please. Just…can you understand?” Lydia is almost pleading for some sort of absolution. “I don’t know what Wayne’s going to do, I don’t even know where he is. I need someone…just on my side.”
“No. You’ll probably do exactly what you want. You always do, but I guess you’ll have to live with it this time.” Madalaine slides out of the booth as abruptly as that movement can be accomplished, dragging her purse alongside her. “I’ll see you sometime,” she says. “Tell Claire I’m sorry I couldn’t stay.”
CHAPTER 19
The Ohio River unfurls itself in slow dancer’s curves along the northern edge of Maysfield, dividing Kentucky from its northern relative with whom it differs in the insistent, vociferous way of siblings who generally resemble each other as much as not. It’s an ordinary, good-sized town, much like the ones across the river if you ignore the silly and sad rantings of longtime residents who need to call themselves Confederates and pop “the South will rise again,” into conversation whether it fits or not. Even as a child, I wanted to be in some different, exotic place—not just “across the river” to Cincinnati’s outer reaches, or even into that real city itself, the biggest move most Maysfield people made. The river was a knowing, secret friend, one whose back I could climb on to hitch a free ride all the way to the sea someday when I had to.
Of course, like my other fantasies, and sooner rather than later, I confided it to John. He took the notion, and blew his own breath into it like a life preserver big enough for two. We talked about it, not seriously at first, but, with time, the idea of our simply running away together gathering momentum. We told each other, we really didn’t have to deal with my husband, his wife, even his children, sad as it would be for him to leave them. The children would…well, of course, he’d eventually make contact and they would forgive him and understand. They would someday get to know and love me, and would tell us that it had all been for the best after all.
In good weather, John and I used to meet in a spot just above the riverbank. It wasn’t one of the parks, naturally, we were more circumspect than that. One day we’d just gone looking for a private place with enough space that we could park not far from the water, and sit on the sandy, pebbled and wood-strewn edge to talk, and, yes, to kiss and hold each other without fear of someone coming upon us.
Ironically, that’s where someone did come upon us, and it was Maddie.
She had gone to Dr. Hays’s office at noon, her own bologna sandwich bag in hand, under the impression that I still brought my lunch and ate in the staff room, intending to eat with me—which we’d not done for quite a while—and remind me that I’d said I’d get off work early that day to take Charles to the dentist. Dr. Hays certainly never minded if she came, and she knew the other office help well enough. Donna, I came later to understand, told her that I’d been eating at Kathy’s usually, but that day, she knew I’d brought my lunch. “She said she had a headache and wanted some fresh air and a walk,” Donna had filled Maddie in. “She’s done it a couple of times since the weather’s been so pretty. I think she goes along the river because last week her shoes were a mess and she said that was why. She had to take them off and practically wash them with a paper towel.”
I wondered if it was some inborn instinct, a blood knowledge of me, that made Maddie decide to go on down to the river area and take her own walk. She said she’d thought to surprise me by joining my picnic, and, she pointed out, she wanted to make sure I was planning to take Charles. But it wasn’t like her, not Maddie, who would practically drive to her next-door neighbor’s house to avoid a two-minute walk to borrow an egg. I just never believed that she didn’t know there was more to it, and was determined to get something on me.
But I don’t think she reckoned to get what she did. I never did know exactly how much she saw, how long she’d been standing up on the weedy ridge above the river, where I’d pulled off the dead-end pavement and parked next to John’s car. She could have driven up any number of blocks to stop and scan for my car, or me, for that matter, and I have no idea whether she looked long and meticulously, a secret determination, grim and bitter, impelling her from block to block, or whether she simply got lucky fast. I never could talk to her about it. Never. The judgment on her face, not shock, mind you, judgment, closed the subject thoroughly. Maddie’s face was chiseled granite, staring, and then she turned her back and walked away without a word. I called her name, but she would not answer. I heard the door of her car slam and the sound of the engine, the wheels on the pavement, all too fast and churning their own message. When I frantically called her later from the office, she said, her voice without a single loophole through which I might have crawled, “If it’s what you’re worried about, I don’t plan to broadcast this.”
“I’d like to explain,” I remember I said.
“Oh goodness me, Lydie, it’s quite self-explanatory.”
“Please,” I began, but she hung up.
Of course it didn’t stay that way, not entirely. Maddie slowly seemed to come around. The line between us kept, from that moment on, a honed edge, even if it was more or less wrapped in padding at any given time. It was never really the same, although I don’t believe anyone but she or I would have known it. I knew she carried a concealed weapon; for her part, I believe she thought she knew the truth about me, and because of that, she was already the winner of any present or future comparison of us, of our lives.
Much later, I dropped over to her house one afternoon after work and told her that Dr. Hays had done a test for me, and that Wayne and I were finally, really, actually going to have a baby.
“Right,” she said. “Sure you are.” We were at Maddie and Bill’s first tiny apartment. The television flickered and droned like a swarm of insects stirred by Bill as he provoked it from channel to channel. “Tell it to Wayne.”
“Well I already did, of course. He’s thrilled. So am I, Maddie. We’ve wanted this for so long.”
“Strange it took so long, isn’t it, after all those tests you had and all.” Maddie’s hair was long then, and she lifted it off her neck and piled it on top of her head before shaking it out again, and I remember that shaking of her head, as though to say no, no, no, no.
“It’s not what you think.”
“What is his name?”
“Who?”
“The man.”
“I’m not seeing him anymore.” A pause while I considered. “His name was John.”
“Does Wayne know about your…John?” The pause she put before his name was replete with ironic suggestion.
“Please, it’s over, it’s been over for a long time. There was nothing to it.”
“You are such a liar,” Maddie said, disgusted and unapproachable. “Such a liar.”
“I know I was wrong,” I said. “I know it. I just hope you’ll find a way to…”
“Not in this lifetime,” my sister interrupted, her final word on the subject until she erupted at Brian’s funeral, and then yesterday, in the hospital coffee shop, where she toyed with me as if I were a monkey in a cage.
John asked me to meet him at the river, to, as he put it, discuss the options about Claire. I wonder if he’s done this deliberately, to pull up the file of the terrible time Maddie saw us here, and then I think, no, that didn’t have the impact on him that it did on me. Once he knew she wasn’t going to tell anyone, he exhaled, went on and told me to do the same. Still, I don’t know. Could it be to evoke what was between us, and to signal to me that he won’t let me—us—down again? Lately, I�
�ve done nothing but this: search everyone’s every word, every gesture, every nuance of expression, even the weather, even the silly horoscopes printed in the Maysfield Citizen for a sign. Perhaps I really believe God will tell me something; perhaps I really am pacing on the slippery peel that underlines sanity.
I have dressed several times for this, alternating between trying to look sexy, impressive, anything to make him want to please me, and then that seeming absurd, going to the other extreme, to look as pathetic and wrung-out as I feel, to push the guilt button, if he has one. There’s that slippery peel again. Finally, I shake my head, not in decision but because I can’t think what to do, and put on a khaki skirt and a scoop-necked white cotton shirt. I brush my hair, which I washed when I was going to try to look good, and slip a sheen of lipstick across my mouth. Then, something occurs to me and I do get manipulative after all, though not enough to paint my nails with Revlon’s Rose Julep, which he used to say made my hands look like I was a highborn lady of the old South, before work and worry left their map. I open my jewelry box and take out the two real pearls surrounded by circles of real gold, set into earrings that John gave me, before it all happened, before I knew that what I had given all my faith to wasn’t what I’d believed it would be. But I remember what he said when he gave them to me. Since it can’t be a ring quite yet, these are for the meantime. Wear them as a token of my constant faith, abiding love. Actually that was a line of the ring ceremony from the Episcopal wedding service he’d read to me, the one he wanted us to use. Then he said that the next time he said those words, it would be as he slid a gold band onto my left hand.
A man would think that this kind of failure could only happen because I’d been manipulated into bed; a man would think I’m a naive, delusional woman if he heard that I still believe John meant it. Only a woman might understand how I can think that maybe John loved me exactly as he said he did, the most deeply and truly he had loved anything or anyone in his life. He simply did not have the character to be true to the self he’d found with me. He did not have the courage. All the strength I’d thought I saw in him, like that trait of issuing loving orders— “Tell me now.”—well, the strength was the illusion, not the love. He wanted to be more than he was.
