by Minot, Susan
For a moment she felt an astonishing brilliance and heat and light and all of herself flared up and the vibration after sixty-five years was not weakened by time but more dense then suddenly it was as if the flame had caught the flimsiest piece of paper for it flickered up and flew into the air then quickly sank down withered into a thin cinder of ash which blew off, inconsequential. Her life had not been long enough for her to know the whole of herself, it had not been long enough or wide.
The lights were out in the big house. Everyone had gone to bed, everyone else had disappeared. They creaked along a hall which smelled of paint and knocked the table in the dining room jostling the glass on the candelabra. She held his hand as he led her along, they came out on the long porch with the black fog just past the steps and the cushions showing striped on the chairs. He pulled her onto a wicker couch. Come closer, he said. Come closer and he pulled her against him.
After swimming they would hang the towels over the railing here to dry. They brought out drinks and watched the sunset, they sat below the moon.
They were waiting in a transport, he told her, not sure if they’d make it out alive, they were waiting on the runway for the signal to take off. Shells exploded outside, the hull was full of wounded, packed in elbow to elbow. It was near dawn. The stretcher beside him had a man with half his face blown off so his bottom row of teeth were showing. The men were calling for their mothers, that’s what they did at the end, called for their mothers. It wasn’t the most danger he’d been in, but it was when he was most scared, that time. Somehow the wheels started moving and somehow they rumbled along the runway and lifted up and got out of there.
She watched the wall of fog and felt his heart against her shoulder. The fog got inside. She felt she would accomplish something in her life. She was not sure of the exact nature of what it was, but she was certain that when she came across it she would know it. There was something she was meant to do, something she was put here for. She’d not had the feeling quite like this before and having his arms around her was part of it, but not all. If she had never met him would she have felt this? She watched the curtain rise before her.
Kiss me, she said.
The man cleared his throat.
Kiss me?
Mother, it’s me, it’s Teddy.
Teddy, she said vaguely. Her eyes were dark buttons. Teddy. Where’s Paul?
Paul’s not here. It’s only me.
Only you. Paul … She closed her eyes. If they can make it off the runway they’ll bring him home in a box.
They lay together in the guest cottage.
How did you get to be so soft?
Is it because you’re a doctor you know how to do that? she said.
If you were mine this is how I’d hold you.
That’s nice.
And I wouldn’t let go.
They drifted in and out of sleep.
Sometimes it’s better not to do everything, he said.
It wouldn’t be right I guess.
But this is, he said. This is right. You are.
She dozed on his shoulder.
How will it be when we see each other? he murmured.
Tomorrow? It will be fine.
Will it? His face was terrible.
Harris, she said. Nothing could go too wrong, nothing could ever be too bad now that she knew him. She was sure of that. That was one true thing.
After a while she said, They’re flying in this morning?
He frowned in the blue light. I better be going, he said, and fell back asleep.
She saw him to the door with her nightgown wrapped around her like a sari.
It will be O.K., she said. It was the last time she felt it so absolutely, she’d yet to meet the other woman.
After he had gone she went back to bed where he’d been beside her and the place was now changed without him. She lay looking up.
There were changes in the arms which held her at night and in the profiles she made out in the dark beside her, there were different rooms and other beginnings in other beds and each time it happened there was something the same to be pressed against a new chest, to know the bright flash meeting up with the secret untapped person who appeared in kissing, who said come with me down this shadowy hall just you and I down this passage let me take you into this universe, just you and me, the face appearing up close surprising to be so near and giving her a jolt of animal fear, there was something dangerous in being so close something unnatural, but she would not run, soothed by the warmth of new hands and the swell of the new arm, not letting on kissing the new mouth which though it had familiar elements of other mouths was more new and different than familiar, would let herself be lulled, then would recognize in the eyes the drugged look of a man who thinks perhaps you are what he has been looking for and she’d think remember this look now because one day it will be gone never to appear again soon it will go and being stirred would be able to return the stare her body taken along her heart maybe a little behind while inside his head what were the mysterious thoughts his hand slipping under her sleeve sliding in and when he turned her it would be like being thrown onto a hill of soft sand her pulse speeding what else could she do now he pulled at her skirt he was removing her shoe saying what pretty feet she had his hands were trying to get in everywhere she was soft she was small she was lovely his hands were hard his breath quick on her neck what else could she do now that it had started his lips and his tongue wet and soft and wet inside it had started like a river and she would have to go the whole length of it now and who knew if it would be long or short or thick afterwards or how pale or how much pain would come it was a dark whirlpool pulling her along sweeping her she saw the secret in him the way he pulled her the way his mouth was impatient her hands were shaking her skin full of needles she felt his teeth the pool blurred around her it was past the time she might have stood apart and taken his measure now she would see him this way now he would be harder to make out she’d been swept to the other side where he came over her where he oh he had a way about him he did she went along she could only keep going could only hope as he hoisted her lifted her placed her there that he would not stop too soon that he would keep going that he would do this forever and never stop and when he did stop that they would have been carried far enough along with the water still coming beneath them and the water not stopping that it would not stop now that maybe this time there would be enough to keep carrying them enough to carry them along forever enough to make it last
She stood on a bluff above a cove of churning water. Grace Stackpole was beside her. You can’t dive in, it’s full of syringes, she said. Ann Lord looked down and saw they weren’t syringes but martini glasses clinking together.
She heard the shouts of children in the next cove over. A stone skipped out over the flat surface.
The dull thud of stakes being hammered echoed in the still air.
It just hurts so much, she said, and immediately regretted it. Who had heard? Was it Grace or one of the children or Ollie in again? At the end of a warped lens she saw the face of Nora Brown and felt more understood by this figure in white than she had been by people she’d known all her life.
9. REPORT FROM NURSE BROWN
Her eyes stared ahead with pupils small dots from morphine. Nurse Brown set the tray quietly down without rattling and sat and waited. She spooned some rice and brought it to Ann Lords lips. The lips parted but the mouth didn’t open, the front teeth were set together in concentration. Nurse Brown did not like to give in to them when they refused to eat. She prodded with the spoon. Just a taste, she said. She took back the spoon and held it above her lap.
Hush, Ann Lord said.
Her face seemed to Nurse Brown as if a light had been thrown from beneath it and she saw in Ann Lord the young face she’d seen in some of the photographs around the house. There was one of Ann Lord as a young woman with her hair blowing and her teeth white in profile. Nurse Brown picked up the tray and left the room.
She sat n
ext door in the room with the pilgrim wallpaper. In the corner was a small grey TV which she sometimes turned on without the sound while she did the crossword or looked through a magazine. The ceiling had waterstains, it was true of the best houses. She sat with the door ajar and listened as she’d listened in hundreds of other rooms with glasses gathered on bedside tables and boxes of plastic needles and checkerboard squares for pills and cotton balls and cards propped up, rooms of yellow stains and dressing gowns draped over chairs and piles of unread books. She knew that downstairs by the back door there were seamed vases from the florist empty with dry foam cubes and knew how the air in the room grew close from sleeping. A change of sheets swept hope through the room. She no longer needed to see the visitors, their voices were familiar. She knew the coats spotted with rain and umbrellas dripping in the hall and the presents tied with bows. There were silent visitors with furrowed brows, ones who didn’t stop chattering, ones who whispered to her conspiratorially and ones who looked through her, she was just the nurse. Smiles might be expressions of fright. Some people with cheerful natures remained unintimidated by pain, other compassionate ones were undone. Restless people made short visits. One could only imagine how many were too uneasy to come at all. Some people were stunned and seemed oddly unmoved. The older ones were familiar with this business and their hands sat resigned in their laps and they spoke little. Children skipped in on the rug or burst into tears. Sometimes they were made to kiss the sick person which they did with trembling arms. And always there were the ones who flocked to sickbeds, regardless of their relation, the ones who brought casseroles and knocked on the door at the wrong time.
Nurse Brown saw her patient watch all this for the first time. The face propped against the pillows grew more still and watchful as the days went by till it stopped turning and soon only the eyes moved, going from one visitor to the next, watching with trepidation a cup approach.
And in the early hours of the morning Nurse Brown saw another face in the lamplight, the face wild with pain, pleading for this not to be true, a face incredulous and lost.
A nurse’s first obligation was to bring comfort to the patient and there was no reason in this day and age for pain to be overwhelming. When consciousness was not engaged a patient was more susceptible to pain, so night was a critical time. Sometimes patients refused medication saying their minds were too confused. It wasn’t usual but she’d seen it, some preferring pain to confusion.
Ann Lord reached for her hand. Make it go away, she said. Her hand was small and dry.
Nurse Brown bent down for a fresh needle.
No, Ann Lord said. It’s over there. She pointed over Nurse Brown’s shoulder. Tell it to go away.
Nurse Brown glanced behind her. It will go away when it’s ready, she said.
She felt the thickness of the morphine surrounding her. Beneath it were thieves with knives ready to jab her if she dropped down so she lay very still trying not to fall through the hammock of mist holding her up and searched through herself to locate the point … the point was … but she’d lost the point. She was dissolving, only her heart was left. The world was vast and off people went and were engulfed in it and some came back and some never did. Thirty, forty, fifty years went by, at her age she could say that—fifty years. An old face might reappear, the eyes softer, the skin slack, but one could always see the earlier face. She thought of all the faces which never returned and the last times of seeing them, her mother’s face twisted after the stroke, Kingie Montgomery still smoking with the tube in her throat. Some went quickly, her father, Ted, there one day then gone, and Paul … But she could not think of Paul …
She would have none of that clean break. She had not supposed the end would come for some time, she could have lived on another twenty-five years without it being remarkable. Twenty-five years more, as old as Nina. With Oscar gone she had thought glancingly of the end. She imagined it would be like standing on a plateau from which one looked down and reviewed the various roads one had traveled and saw the territory one had covered. But it was not like that. She lay looking up not down. And instead of long meandering roads and their destinations she saw a snowfall of images—faces she’d known and rooms she’d lived in and tables sat at and oceans swum in and clothes worn and streets turned onto and other beds she’d slept or lain awake in.
Her shoulders could just fit into the narrow opening but if she came off the ladder to crawl further into the shaftway she thought she wouldn’t make it around the bend where it grew more narrow. She should try to go around the other way, but was there another way?
Take this off.
The music played in the afternoon, a foghorn sounded, no she was getting ahead of herself, rocks were clicking on a beach, a glass chandelier clicked in the dark, an old floor creaked. She rolled herself back so she wouldn’t leave anything out. Sometimes time spread out like ink in water but it also had an order and one thing could not come without the other coming first.
You have a visitor.
A young woman held a yellow plant.
It’s Can, said a high voice. Then in a normal voice, I don’t know if she can hear me. Then the high voice: Hi Aunt Ann.
Lila?
It’s Can. She whispered to the nurse. Can I take her hand?
Certainly.
It’s good to see you, said the yellow flower.
Have you got Lila with you?
No, Mummy sends her love. They’re still in Maine. She can’t get around very well with the brace on, but she wants to come visit soon. She wanted me to give this to you.
We’re all falling apart, said Ann Lord, smiling. Your mother carried white and blue flowers.
She did?
You’re looking very tan like your uncle Buddy. He used to get black.
Yes Mummy said that too.
I hear you’re getting divorced.
I am.
I guess its what they do now.
I don’t really have a choice, said Can Cutler. He left me.
A man doesn’t want to hear a woman complain, said Ann. They do not want to hear your problems.
No, Can said.
I don’t know if Margie learned that.
Seth had problems too I think.
They all have problems. But Constance, she learned to support herself. That’s the important thing. That’s the only way to be free.
Nurse Brown listened to the conversation with the door ajar.
Does she like Paris? Can said.
Ann Lord waved the subject away. So you brought in the summer with you.
Mummy said you liked begonias.
I like things hard to keep, said Ann Lord. I’ll look after it for a while. She was beginning to fall asleep again.
I thought the yellow was nice.
Yellow is for heroics, she murmured. I’ll give it to Constance, she’s my hero.
Nurse Brown repeated this conversation to Mrs. Lord’s daughter.
Constance looked wistful. Must be the drugs, she said softly.
Nora Brown was thirteen when her father got cancer. In the two years he battled it he never once complained and she took a lesson from him believing that complaining like criticizing put cracks in the world and there were enough cracks already without her adding to them. She’d chosen a profession which mended cracks. In her patients she always saw her father’s face.
She entered into people’s lives at the end and watched them change. Some grew more stiff, others broke apart, some spread like spilled syrup. Nurse Brown heard things brought up which had never been said before and saw new relations formed in the final hour and nearly always she made a few new ties herself.
She was a large woman with round shoulders and often wore a light blue sweater which flapped above her lower back. Her mouth slanted in and her features looked as if they were melting or shaped from melting wax. For each patient she kept a daily record in a blue notebook with a spiral binder, the sort one could always find at a drugstore.
7:15 am Patient
alert Temp 98.6 7:30 Patient alert Bathe neck, face, back 8:05 ¼ cup apple juice 8:25 son TS in to visit 9:00 Morphine sulfate ½ cc as directed 9:35 ½ cup stewed prunes 10:00 change gown, care to skin 10:20 daughters Constance and Margaret 10:45 Voiding 11:00 Mr. Eastman in to visit 11:45 bowl chicken and rice soup 12 noon Morphine sulfate as directed 1:10 change position, comb hair Temp 99 2:00 apple juice
She watched people go. She once looked after a woman who was comatose for a week who opened her eyes and said, I’m coming Charlie, and that was it. Some said they really did hear beautiful music or angels singing or saw birds with swirling colors. Mostly they weren’t awake at the last, they were unconscious. If they did speak it was confused. The faces were mostly resigned by then, not that they had much choice. A few might struggle against it but it was unusual to see a face in its final repose looking tortured. One saw a tortured look more often in life, one saw it on the faces of those left behind.
Patients came back. When she’d worked in the emergency room they’d bring patients back and it wasn’t always the best thing. More times than not there was too much damage done. Patients said they came back after they heard people calling. Don’t leave me, Stew, don’t leave me. They said it had been pleasant in a sort of soft blackness and they would have been content to stay. But someone needed them. Floating up on the ceiling they saw themselves below on the bed being slapped and pounded on the chest while they felt calm and serene. Suddenly they’d be zapped back into their bodies and pain. They didn’t know what had made them come back. They could hardly say. There was that person calling them, a child or a wife, and they felt a duty to return. They never said they came back because they wanted to live.
