by Shem, Samuel
Yet there was no way that Miranda would have volunteered to Orville that she had heard about him from Selma, or even that she had known his mother. Miranda had a love affair with secrets. From the time she was a girl, keeping secrets was at the core of her being. It began in earnest on the day when she was almost seven, as she was walking from the living room into the lanai of her parents’ house in Boca Grande, Florida, and she fell down. She got up, surprised, but when she tried to walk, again she fell down. Poliomyelitis had entered her life, and it would never leave. Like a tree growing around a spike, the girl grew around the crippled part, taller and stronger, and more muscular for the paralysis.
But she grew differently. In the face of the other children’s small cruelties about her limp and her steel brace, she grew a will of iron. She learned to keep her rage secret, ironclad. After the war, her father, a postal clerk, and her mother, a junior high schoolteacher, had migrated from Minnesota to the Gulf Coast. Their cool northern reticence melted into a southern courtesy; in her family, anger was transformed to politeness, hurt to feigned interest. She learned to keep her steel brace secret under her pant legs, her leg secret under dashboards and desks and tables and counters. Only occasionally did it come to frank attention, such as when someone could not get past her in the aisle of a darkened theater and she had to say out loud the humiliating, “I’m sorry, I’m disabled. You’ll have to go around.” The iron spike inside even prevented her from getting a car sticker for handicapped parking.
Miranda came to think that, in a world she saw as often unkind, secrecy worked. To be open, to tell the truth, meant being vulnerable. And to be vulnerable was to be powerless. It was out of the question. Secrecy for her became a virtual daring.
Her husband, Cray’s father, was an actual daredevil. He was a young engineer on a series of oil-drilling platforms in the Gulf. They had met when he was vacationing for a week at the Gasparilla Inn in Boca Grande, where she was waitressing, earning money for history graduate school in Tallahassee—she had always loved history, first going with her parents to the sites, then the study. He overwhelmed her with his passion for action, and for her. He was always pushing the edge, from fast cars to fast boats to fast planes to, finally, in those planes used for stunts in the movies, aerobatics.
Soon after Cray turned two, her husband dared too much. At an air show in Clearwater, which she refused to attend, in front of hundreds of people in a viewing stand, he took off and did a daring flip too close to the ground and crashed. Both of Miranda’s parents were dead by then, so she was left with no one but her two-year-old son and a spinster aunt in Grand Forks, North Dakota. So three years ago she and Cray had moved up to a piece of property left her by an uncle, a house on the banks of the Hudson River north of Columbia. She had spent parts of her summers there as a girl and loved it. Cray and she were poor, but okay.
Miranda grew around the tragedy of her husband’s sudden death, but again grew differently. Except when Cray or someone else asked, she never talked about it. It went up into her attic of secrets. Over the four years since his death she came to realize that, in a sense, secrets are lies told to the world, and each has a price. But for her the price was acceptable. Her virtual daring was now overlaid with a certain fear. She had opened herself up to the world and had fallen down, opened herself up to loving a man and had lost him.
So when Orville called that Monday morning and asked to see her again, she was thrilled and scared. She feared being thrilled. Hadn’t he said, about working with Bill Starbuck, that he was only there “temporarily”? Much as she had opened up to him at that first moment, she could not afford a temporary man. Her fear was not only for her being left. The life in her life was her son.
Then there was Selma. The two women met about a year before Selma’s death, in the Columbia Area Library. Miranda was working in the archives, researching her thesis. Selma was volunteering at the main desk. Seeing Selma’s facial disfigurement, Miranda’s heart opened to her. They talked. It turned out that Selma was involved in many civic projects in Columbia and out in Kinderhook County. She said Miranda would be perfect to join the committee planning the faithful restoration of the library. Miranda agreed.
After one of the meetings, Selma invited Miranda back to her house for tea. Driving up Washington in the Chrysler, Selma took a detour at Second Street, before going back across Fourth to the Courthouse Square. Miranda asked why.
“I’m superstitious,” Selma said. “I never drive by the Worth Hotel. It’s the one project I won’t get involved in.”
“Why not?”
“It reminds me of when I was still beautiful. When we first came here in ’46, there was only one place where all the gala events were held—the Worth. It was a grand hotel then. I volunteered in anything that would have me, and when I was in charge—president of the Hospital Auxiliary, the library, even the Junior League (first Jew, imagine!)—I had all my affairs there. It and I were beautiful. After, I never went back.”
That afternoon and into the evening, the two women had a heart-to-heart. Their handicaps drew them together. Not only the sagging face and withered leg but the mutual understanding of a life-tree trying to grow around that spike pounded in. The younger woman had many more years to grow around her insult. She would not talk about it, but she listened to the older woman with understanding.
Selma, having lived through conflicts with her own daughter and the increasingly long flights of her only son, and having felt the stirrings of new love for her only granddaughter, reassured Miranda about the ability of the life force to compel endurance in the face of losing a loved one. Miranda saw Selma as so blunt that she dared reveal a core of truth. Selma saw Miranda as so shy that she could be trusted. Both were daughters and mothers. Both had lost men. Lost men were in the air.
Selma told Miranda about Orville’s kindness after her operation and about the terms of her will—his getting the money and house and car if he lived there continuously for a year and thirteen days. Why thirteen days? Selma smiled mischievously but didn’t say.
Hearing this, at first Miranda was startled. It seemed controlling and weird. But as she listened further to Selma, listened to how two years ago her son had gone “gallivanting around the world” and how “every day I think of him and it’s like the worst heartburn on earth,” it resonated with how she herself was starting to feel about her own son, Cray, now six. He had started moving away from her. She saw in Selma’s pain where her lesser pain was pointing. She identified with her as a mother of a son. She admired Selma’s spunk; the lady was gutsy.
Miranda could see how badly Selma wanted to give her son a chance to come home to his family and how, as weird as they seemed, the terms of her will might just work. After all, those times when Cray didn’t want to be with her or didn’t want her around was like death, was it not?
When Orville walked in, Miranda was sitting behind the desk staring at an oversized facsimile volume of Ellis’s 1848 History of Kinderhook County. Usually she read it with such fascination that she lost sight of time, finding herself awake at 3 A.M. when she thought it was only about eleven or, like a few weeks ago, almost forgetting to pick up Cray from his play date at his friend Steffie’s house, over in Ghent. But that afternoon she couldn’t make the words make sense. She kept reading the same passage over and over. She was worried about her son. In particular, she was worried about how for the last four years he hadn’t had a father, or any other man, consistently in his life. She felt she was failing him. Lately she felt him spiraling out.
Earlier that afternoon Cray had his sixth birthday party, which she held at her house. Nine boys and Steffie. Cray and his friend Maxie Schooner, who had recently broken his wrist and was in a cast, had been playing baseball cards when Cray traded one to Maxie and then decided he wanted it back. Maxie didn’t want to give it back. They argued. Theo Geiger, of the junkyard Geigers, and Cray’s best friend, tried to intervene, but suddenly C
ray hit Maxie as hard as he could on the cast. Miranda was stunned. He’d never done anything like that before. Maxie was more surprised than hurt. Cray was the one who started to cry. Shaken, she made it through the end of the party, the cake and the favors.
When Maxie’s mom, Nelda Jo, learned about it, she was angry. “I’ve been meaning to tell you this, Miranda,” she said at the door before she took him home, “you need to do something about your son—he’s impulsive. That boy needs a man around to straighten him out.”
Miranda had always felt fairly good about how she’d raised Cray since his father’s death, but she always had doubts. Suddenly all she had were doubts. Her whole mothering world seemed to be collapsing around her. What mother wants her son to be cruel?
After the party, Cray and some of the other boys were supposed to go to their soccer game in Stuyvesant Landing.
“Do you still want to go, Cray?” she had asked.
“Yeah, but I don’t want you to come.”
Swallowing her pain, she said, “Fine,” dropped him and his friends off, and, fearing the thought of being alone, called Mrs. Tarr and arranged to volunteer with her that afternoon at the Ichabod Crane Schoolhouse.
Being in historical sites always made her feel safer, even safe. She had been sitting in the one-room schoolhouse feeling a little more safe, but her heart felt raw—raw about her failure as a mother and about celebrating a son’s day of birth that echoed down the hollow where his dead father lay, raw about the losses and failures in her life—and then Orville walked in. He thought he was alone. It was one of those times, she thought, when you see a person absolutely the way they are. When he noticed her, his tears touched her deeply. His eyes were so open. A few minutes later, when she realized who he was, her heart went out to him—he was a son crying for his mother.
By the time she’d driven back out to the soccer field, there was no one there. The rain must have started sooner up in Stuyvesant. She stared at the soggy field, at a single soaked orange jersey left behind. Mike Fredrickson, Zeke’s dad, must have driven Cray home. Nice going, lady, she thought. Yet another shred of evidence of your being a Bad Single Mom. She got out, put up her umbrella, walked carefully out onto the battered grass, picked up the orphaned jersey, and sloshed back to the car.
She drove home through the downpour to find Mike’s pickup in the driveway. He and Zeke were sitting in the cab. She waved a thanks, and they took off. A light was on in Cray’s room upstairs.
Miranda went in and called up the steep, narrow old stairs. “Cray?”
Nothing. Then, “Yeah?”
As gaily as possible, she called up, “I’m home, dear.”
“’Kay, Mom.” A little space of time. She barely breathed. “Look on the table.”
“’Kay.” On the kitchen table was a letter, sealed, addressed to “My Mom.” She opened it. On a piece of porous lavender construction paper, in block capital letters done in black Magic Marker that had run fuzzy at the edges, was “Plez See My Hart.”
Now, a week later, as she pulled up in front of the Worth Hotel, she still felt the glow from that affirmation, from his just plain resilience—and hers, too. Our resilience, she thought. I’ve jiggled the red thread stretched between me and my son. He’d felt it and jiggled his end in return.
Mrs. Tarr of the DAR, her white hair in what, with each passing month of their picketing, seemed to Miranda an evermore eternal bun, was already wearing her sandwich board that declared either her or the hotel WORTH SAVING. The pail for donations was carefully positioned on the pavement, blaring plastic yellow into the crisp, sunny, and windy November day. Even though Miranda was fifteen minutes late, Orville and Amy were not there.
Miranda had never met Amy or spent any real time with Penny or Milt. After that heart-to-heart talk, Selma and Miranda had served together on committees and projects and occasionally had tea together, but they never again reached the same level of intimacy. It was as if they’d said enough, or maybe too much. Miranda lived several miles outside Columbia, and her circle of friends was up in Kinderhook, so she and Selma didn’t see each other socially. And so their brief deep connection remained their secret.
This made Selma’s sudden death hard for Miranda. At the surprisingly large funeral, standing on the fringe, she felt like an outsider. She searched the family members for Orville and was amazed that, given his closeness to his mother, he hadn’t come. Eavesdropping as the mourners walked from the cemetery, Miranda heard that Orville was away somewhere in Europe, unreachable. Driving home alone from Selma’s funeral, she was surprised at how sad she felt.
The day after Selma’s funeral, Selma’s maid, Hayley, showed up at Miranda’s door. A short, plump, cocoa-skinned woman wearing thick-lensed glasses, a neat plaid dress, and a stylish red straw hat. She stood there with a large cardboard box in her arms from Scomparza Moving and Funeral. Hayley explained that she was on a secret mission from Selma. Sometime before her death, Selma had shown Hayley the sealed Scomparza box with a note “For Hayley” taped to it. If Selma died, Hayley was to take the box at once to Miranda, address enclosed. Selma made Hayley promise not to tell anyone, ever, that she had done so. Hayley had been the one to find Selma dead in the kitchen. Keeping her wits about her, Hayley had put the box in the trunk of her car and then had gone back into the house to call Bill Starbuck.
“Now that she’s passed,” Hayley said to Miranda that August afternoon, getting up to go, “my mission done. Don’t know what all’s in it, but it’s meant only for you.” At the door she hesitated. “Miz Rose was a little strange, but very strong.”
“Very. Strong and zany, yes.”
“Amen.”
Miranda opened the box. On top was a letter to her from Selma.
Dear Miranda,
Hi there! I’m dead now. I hope you are well. I hope I am well, too. Is “well” relevant in the Afterlife? Our rabbi knew nothing—couldn’t even tell me if there’s a Heaven or not. Nice man, but fat.
In a separate sealed shoebox is $5,000 in twenties—my secret bequest to you. Things with Sol were always tense, and just in case we decided to divorce I kept my own cash. Count it. I trust Hayley, but you know, you never know, with money.
In the big box are wrapped-up framed photographs, and a series of letters, from me to my son Orville. They are addressed to him at my house on the Courthouse Square. Each is sealed and stamped double (just in case the U.S. Postal Service raises the rates—nice group, but Irish). On each letter is a yellow Post-It note with a number—they are numbered in order—and with the number of weeks after Orvy arrives back in town at which time each letter is to be mailed. The first says, “To Be Mailed the Day before He Arrives.” The second, “To Be Mailed Three Weeks after He Arrives,” and so forth. They are to be mailed every two or three weeks for the year and thirteen days. At the end of that time, the remaining contents of the nice box are to be mailed to Orville. You must never reveal that you are the one mailing the letters!
Miranda was shocked. Bizarre! Why me? We’d had a heart-to-heart, a few other talks, served together on the library committee, but that was it. Why me? Strange.
I know this may seem strange to you, dear, but it is the most important wish I leave you with. Even though we didn’t spend much time together, I know I can trust you. That night we talked was so special! We both deserve a pat on the back—if I still have a back. If you are touched right now the way I am touched by writing this, dear, please mail these letters and never tell anyone.
This is my dying wish.
You are a mother. You have a son. We talked about our sons. Mine stayed and cared for me, and to pay him back I let him go, let him fly from the nest. But he flew too far and couldn’t get back. My will, and these letters—love letters, really, with all the things I never got to tell him—are to help him see what he flew away from, and maybe help him find his way back.
Now I’ll ask you
one more thing. Walk outside. Look up in the sky and imagine me and put your hand on a rock or a Bible or cute little Cray’s red hair and say, “I promise.” I might not hear you—do the dead still have ears?—but I’ll know. Or, God forbid, I’ll know you didn’t. Do it now. Feel good about it. Spend!
Love Your Selma
P.S. Do not open and read the letters. Love letters between a mother and a son are sacred and sound a little mushy and mawky to outsiders. Think of a similar correspondence between that beautiful Cray and you.
Miranda put down the letter. Unbelievable! She unsealed the shoebox (Mouse Schmerz Shoes). As she counted down through the bills she noticed they went from crisper newer ones to raggedy older ones—some seemed once-crumpled, hidden in a pocket or a change purse maybe. Five thousand exactly. It would go a long way for Cray and her. She thought it over. It was masterful, in a way. The whole thing had a certain logic of the heart. And how could she refuse Selma’s dying wish?
She closed the Scomparza box and hauled it up to the attic, hiding it behind the big steamer trunk with the relics of her girlhood in Boca Grande and the mementos of her marriage. Then, feeling foolish, she went out to the river and sat on a boulder and put her hand on it and looked up at the hazy August sky and thought back to her girlish notion of Heaven—the feathered wings and golden halos and white choir robes—and said: “Okay, Selma, I promise.”
Two weeks later, while she was doing research at the library, one of the volunteer librarians happened to mention that Selma’s son, Orville, was due back the next day. That afternoon Miranda drove into Columbia and mailed the first letter.
“Sorry I’m late,” Orville said now, as he and Amy stepped out of the Chrysler in front of the Worth Hotel. “Bill’s on call and he’s already swamped—I had to stay and help out.” Miranda wore a white fisherman’s sweater and knit cap, which set off her bright-red hair. To him, she looked stunning. “But here we are.”
