“The flowers look nice,” Mae lies. They don’t, they’re depressing. Too many lilies, which she knows her grandmother hated because of the overpowering funereal smell. But people probably just assumed, because of her name, that lilies would be nice. People inevitably do the wrong thing in situations like this. But is there a right thing? You can’t bring a person back when they’re gone.
Reverend Judith is wearing a robe and a necklace with a wooden cross. “God has a plan for us all,” she says to George, and Mae finds herself abruptly baffled. God’s plan was that Lilly would fall and hit her head, hard, on a frozen river, that without her family to help her it would be too late by the time they got her to the hospital? God’s plan was that she would hide the truth from them, in so many ways, and then leave them before they could make peace with her, and with one another? God’s plan was that Mae would regret, for the rest of her life, running off down that driveway instead of staying home and talking to Lilly, telling her that no matter what she did, she loved her anyway? Because it’s true now: she loves her anyway, and so she should have loved her anyway when she was alive, no matter what revelations she brought forth. She lost a child; she lost her daughter. What Lilly had done was wrong, but she had suffered and never said anything about it to Mae. All these years, Mae had assumed she was the one who suffered most from the loss of her parents. Not true.
Reverend Judith is saying something to Mae, but Mae is looking at her grandfather. Did you love her anyway? she wants to ask him. How could you have left her alone like that?
“Mae?”
“Pardon me, can you repeat that?” Mae says to the reverend.
“I said, you’ll speak first. Are you all right with that, delivering your eulogy first? And then we’ll do another hymn, and I’ve prepared a short homily, and one of the women from the Ladies’ Society wants to say something.”
“Oh. That’s fine. Could you excuse me? I just need to . . .”
Outside the sanctuary, she hears the side door of the church open, hears heels clicking across the floor. It’s Viv. “Darling, how are you holding up?” Viv smells, as always, of rosewater and Yardley talcum powder and rouge from a pot. “Where is your grandfather?”
“In there.” Mae indicates the sanctuary. People are starting to file in and this panics her. “I’ll meet you in there, I just need a second.”
Viv nods and says, “Of course you do, of course. Poor baby. Do you want me to . . . ?”
“No, thanks. I just need to be alone.” She opens the first door she sees, and finds herself in the nursery.
She still doesn’t know what to say. She had thought it would come to her as the days passed, but nothing has. All of Lilly and George’s friends will be disappointed when she speaks. She will be a letdown to everyone.
She wants more tea, maybe some ginger ale. She has a tissue in her hand, crumpled, and she presses it against her face. It doesn’t help.
The door to the room opens. She looks up.
Gabe. He’d been in town, at a meeting he couldn’t cancel, something about his father’s affairs, but had promised he’d be there in time for the start of the funeral. “Sorry I’m late.”
“You’re not.” Gabe is holding a box of tissues. An entire box. Mae imagines that Lilly would say something like “Bless you” to him. She doesn’t say that. He sits down beside her.
“So, why are you hiding in here?”
She blows her nose. “Because I didn’t write the eulogy. I’m such an idiot.”
“It’s a tough thing to have to do. Just tell them you can’t.”
“My name is already in the order of service.”
“I’m sure everyone will understand.”
“Lilly won’t,” Mae says. She’s been making a point of speaking of Lilly in the past tense but it feels better not to. “What am I supposed to say about her, if I didn’t really know her?”
“Of course you knew her. You just didn’t know everything about her. Say what you feel.”
“That would be disastrous. Hi, everyone, I feel horrible. I’m the worst granddaughter and person in the world. The end.”
“You’re not a bad person. You’re a great person.” He puts his arm around her shoulders and pulls her to him for a second, but it feels like a friendly gesture. Since that night on the train platform, there hasn’t been any more kissing. He held her hand a lot as they sat by Lilly’s bedside, as they made their decisions and waited, but it’s all a blur to Mae.
“Do you remember when I was a kid, and sometimes I would just start to cry for no reason? And Lilly would take me upstairs if the crying got really bad?”
“Yeah. And I’d sit in the lobby, worrying. Waiting.”
“Worrying about what?”
He’s silent for a moment. Then he says, “It was worse when it rained. On rainy days, you were always more likely to be like that. I would try to distract you.”
The organ music begins to play in the sanctuary. It vibrates through the soles of her feet on the floor and moves up through her body. She stands, but she doesn’t go anywhere.
“I’m angry,” she says. “I’m really, really angry.”
“She’s not here now. There’s no point in being angry at her.”
“I’m not angry at her, I’m angry at my grandfather. I can hardly look at him.”
Gabe stands, too. He takes both her hands in his. “Don’t be,” he says. “It won’t do you any good. It was no one’s fault, what happened to Lilly. You have to let it go.”
She pulls her hands away, afraid that soon her aimless anger will be directed at him. “I should really get in there.” She makes her way with Gabe into the sanctuary, where everyone has gathered. She sits beside George, and before she can say anything, Gabe files into another pew nearby. She wishes she could tell him she wanted him to sit beside her. She tips the tissue box toward George but he shakes his head as the organ music reaches a crescendo, then stops. When Reverend Judith says it’s time to pray, Mae bows her head, closes her eyes, sees bright lights and spots and darkness.
Amen.
It’s her turn to speak. She stands, approaches the podium, clears her throat. “Um,” she says into the microphone. It echoes. “My grandmother was . . .”
She was what? She was a good person? She took in a boy who wasn’t her own, and treated him like a son, then kicked him out and pretended he stole money? And all because she never got over losing her daughter? She used to look you all in the face and pretend she was fine, but all this time, she was suffering and you didn’t know.
“My grandmother and my grandfather were . . .”
They were what? They were married for almost seventy years, but then had a fight that ripped them apart. I have no idea what it was about.
“I’m sorry,” she says, too close to the microphone; this time the feedback makes the congregation wince as a collective. Hands reach up to adjust hearing aids. “I can’t. I can’t do this. I didn’t know her, really. I didn’t know them. I thought I did, but I didn’t, and I just—you didn’t either.” She looks at her grandfather again, but George isn’t looking at her. He’s staring up at a spot behind her, at Christ on the cross. She tries again. “I loved her. But I don’t know what else to say. I’m sorry.” She steps down from the podium and walks out of the sanctuary.
Talk to someone. A stranger, a friend, a loved one. And when they talk to you, really listen.
First, silence. Then noise moves through the room like a gentle wave. Throats clear. There are whispers. Rustling papers. Reverend Judith approaches the podium Mae has just abandoned and begins to speak about loss and recovery, about being supportive of our brothers and our sisters as they move through their grief. Gabe remembers how he always hated church. “Let’s sing,” she says. “This was one of Lilly’s favorites. Hymn number 186 in the red book.” Hands reach for hymnals, the organ music begins, Gabe hears the woman behind him start to sing loudly: “ ‘On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, / the emblem of suffering and s
hame . . .’ ”
He stands and strides down the center aisle with his eyes on the door. Later, over sandwiches in the church basement, people will say, “Did you see how he took the hymnal with him? Who would steal a hymnal?” He tosses the hymnal on a back pew, he didn’t mean to take it. He hates this town, he really does—and yet, when he’s outside on the steps of the church and he sees Mae shake her head, when flakes of snow fall out of her hair and they’re lit up by the sun so it looks like she’s shaking out fragments of sunlight, he doesn’t hate anything anymore.
The door he has opened spills the singing out into the afternoon. “ ‘So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross, / till my trophies at last I lay down . . .’ ”
“What did she like about this hymn?” Mae says. “She wasn’t all that religious, was she? We didn’t pray before meals, didn’t talk about God. But she went to church, and she made my mom go, and she made me go, and you had to go sometimes, too. And she loved this particular hymn, but now I’ll never know why.”
“I bet she liked it because it was firm, because it stood for something. That was her, don’t you think? Rugged, in her way. In the ways that she could be. Strong.”
“She suffered.”
“Everyone does.”
“She suffered more than most people.”
“She’s gone. She’s not suffering anymore.”
“She’s gone,” Mae repeats. She looks so sad; he wants to fix it. Why did he say that, that Lilly is gone? She knows that. She feels bad enough about it.
“I love you.” What? He’s blurted it out; now he tries not to panic. But it makes her smile; he gets his reward.
“Thank you,” she says, stepping closer to him, putting her arms around his waist and her head on his chest, as if this were something she does all the time.
He laughs quietly. “Okay. Sure. You’re welcome.” He waits for that familiar feeling to steal its way in. That sensation of inadequacy, the urge to run. It doesn’t come. He’s exactly where he wants to be.
There’s organ music inside again. He holds her until the church bells begin their lonely, singular chime, staccato reminders of the shortness of life, the fact of endings. But Mae here in his arms, it feels like a beginning. Is it right to feel such joy in the midst of so much pain? He’s never felt hope like this before, never in his life, or at least not in the one he had after she was gone. He’s not sure what to do with it, but he sure as hell isn’t going to run away from it. He holds her tighter.
The church door opens. George is there, blinking in the sunlight like a newborn. He’s carrying the urn. Lilly. Mae pulls away from Gabe, and Gabe says, “I’m sorry,” to George because that’s what you say to people at funerals, isn’t it? Mae doesn’t say anything.
“I had to leave,” George says. “There’s supposed to be a reception, sandwiches, more tea, and we’re supposed to . . . talk to people. But I can’t.” His voice is like a gravel road when it used to be a smooth comfort. “The ladies will come out looking for us soon. We’d better go.”
Gabe takes a step back from Mae and prepares to say good-bye to them, because this is not his place, this is their loss, not his—but George reaches for him. “Gabe, could you please drive?” He tucks the urn under one arm for a moment while he hands Gabe the car keys.
Mae has her hand on his arm, too. They’re flanking him, leading him away from the church. “Let’s go home,” she says.
The reflex feeling has arrived, and it’s almost a relief. Gabe’s heart rate accelerates and he finds himself starting to think of excuses. I can’t take care of people. I can’t do this. But maybe he can. Maybe he has to. Because he loves these people. And he loved Lilly, even though she hurt him. He loved her because he understood what it meant to be wounded, and to inflict wounds in return.
He takes George’s elbow so he can hold him steady over a patch of ice. He opens the car door for Mae. He drives George’s old Buick slowly, as if the two people he is transporting are ill and must be handled with extreme care. George holds the urn in his lap and Mae stares out the window the whole way home, keeping her eyes on the river. Who knows what she sees out there? Ghosts, from the look on her face. Ghosts, everywhere. He’ll save her from them, and George, too. New York feels very far away. Once he thought he’d never go back to Alexandria Bay. Now he can’t imagine ever leaving.
Build something. There are tools and scrap wood in the shed. And, yes, bandages and ice in the kitchen, in case you accidentally hammer your finger.
George is getting a mug from the cupboard when the door, which has been hanging askew for some time, falls off altogether, crashes to the floor and misses his foot by an inch.
Mae runs into the kitchen in a robe, a towel wrapped around her head. Her face is shiny, scrubbed clean; she looks like her mother. “Shhh,” Mae says to the dog, who is barking idiotically at the fallen cupboard door. Then, “Oh. I’ve been meaning to fix that. Did you get hurt?” But she doesn’t look at him, not directly. Mae won’t look at him anymore, George has noticed.
“I’m fine, don’t worry, go get dressed.”
He takes the empty mug and sits at the table, stares at the wall obstinately. He’s an old man, but he can play at her game, too. She’s not the only one suffering.
He hears Mae sigh. It’s not just the physical resemblance: she’s like Virginia in so many ways, though she doesn’t seem to know it. He should tell her. He should tell her a lot of things. He should not be acting this way, he should apologize. But he hears her leave the kitchen. Too late.
The dog is nosing his leg. It makes him uncomfortable, so angry at the unwanted touch he feels it prickling his skin like an itch. He pets the dog because otherwise he thinks he might hit it. He stops, to test himself, and his hand curls into a fist as if it has a will of its own.
Gabe comes in just in time. George resumes his patting of the dog. He scratches behind his ears, even murmurs, “Good boy.” Very convincing. He tries to smile at Gabe. He’s trying to get used to having him around, but it’s not like it used to be, when the boy lived here. George took care of Gabe, once; now it’s the other way around. And so much has changed. Gabe is a man now, and George is a very old one. Looking at Gabe reminds George of the passage of time. He has almost nothing left. He has lost it all. The smile, which was unsuccessful in the first place, fades.
“Oops.” Gabe has seen the cupboard door. “I’ll go get the drill. You okay? Did anyone get hurt?”
“Just leave it.”
“It won’t take much.” Gabe feels around on the ground for the screws, finds them and puts them on the counter. “I’ll do it in a minute. Let me just get this stuff into the fridge. I’m no chef, but I make a mean grilled cheese. I have a secret ingredient. A tiny bit of sugar. It caramelizes things.” George thinks he’s supposed to try to smile again, because Gabe has told him this as if sharing an important confidence. He doesn’t. But Gabe refuses to be deterred from his quest to cheer up George. He’s been at it for days. “Or”—he holds up a frozen-food box, the kind Lilly said they should never buy because the salt content would give them hypertension—“there’s lasagna. Which do you feel like?”
“Anything is fine. Thank you.” George stands. “I think I’ll go upstairs and lie down.”
“Sure. I’ll let you know when dinner’s ready. How about lasagna, then? Comfort food?”
“Whatever you think.”
George is keeping the urn on the top shelf of his closet, but when he reaches for it to put it back on the bed, he feels cold metal instead of smooth ceramic: his old ditty box. He leaves Lilly where she is, takes the box down, puts it on the bed.
When he opens it, right there is the photograph. He holds it and looks into her eyes. “What if he hadn’t died? What then, Lilly?” The shirts and sweaters hanging there in the closet look like dead, defeated things. “But he did die,” George says. “I remember every minute of it, and every moment after. Our life—sometimes it passed by us so fast, hundreds of days blurred into o
ne. Did you feel that way? But then there are some days that still feel like yesterday. The bad days and the best days, especially. Don’t you agree?” He sits down on the bed, still holding the photograph. There’s one day that’s so vivid he’s in it now, just recalling it. His bad day and his best day, all rolled into one.
* * *
George moved as quickly as he could down the side streets of Alexandria Bay with his limp—a wound from the depth charges that had gone off as the boat went down, a wound that would heal and had not even required hospitalization, which was why he had been given the terrible task of delivering the news of Everett’s death to his friend’s parents.
They were waiting on the front porch of the inn, as if they had known he was coming. They stood together and came to meet him. They leaned on one another, a triangle of support.
He talked with Everett’s parents for a while, tried to be as gentle as he could with the details. Then Everett’s father went inside to get Vivian. That was the worst part, telling Viv her brother was gone. She beat her fists against George’s chest and said, “Why didn’t you stop him, why didn’t you do something?” Just when George thought he couldn’t take it anymore, she dropped to the steps and folded in upon herself.
Eventually, there was silence as the afternoon started to turn golden. The four of them sat and watched the light and thought about Everett. Probably, they thought about how he would never again see the light change like this. For his part, George remembered the afternoon his mother died of cancer, when he was ten. Everett came over to his house and knocked on the door. He had two fishing poles with him. He said, like he always did, “Wanna go try ’n’ catch a big one?” His eyes were sad but his voice was bright, a lifeline for George in the darkness of this unutterably sad childhood moment.
“Someone needs to tell Lilly,” said Catharine, Everett’s mother, when the light was almost gone.
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