A Song for Issy Bradley

by Carys Bray

  The front door closes and Claire remains under the cover in case one of them comes back for something. When the quiet has settled she climbs out of bed and inches down the stairs like an old woman, one hand on the banister, the other braced against the wall, dragging the ugly lump of her grief behind her.

  The kitchen smells of toast and decomposing flowers: roses, delphiniums, chrysanthemums, carnations, and lilies; they’ve been stuffed into vases, jam jars, and plastic beakers, two especially large arrangements languish in buckets. The stink of the lilies turns her stomach; something sour and rancid lurks under their sweet pungency. She ought to throw the flowers away, they are long past their best, but to remove them would be to admit something, to mark a conclusion. She sits at the table trying to ignore the incongruous optimism of the homespun crafts and knickknacks. “No Other Success Can Compensate for Failure in the Home”—the laminated jumble of cutesy letters is particularly inapt.

  There have been so many failures. When the children were younger they were all hers—impatience, disorganization, boredom, tiredness—but as the children have grown older, the tent of Failure in the Home has marqueed to also include their inadequacies—untidiness, disobedience, irreverence, breaking the Sabbath, and a multitude of other discouraged behaviors and sins of omission—all evidence of her spectacular Failure in the Home. She shuffles over to the sign, pulls it off the wall, and drops it in the trash, wondering what to get rid of next.

  So far this year, the sisters have made felt flowers, sugar-cube Temple sculptures, Daughter of God fridge magnets, Temple marriage clocks—♥ For Time & Eternity ♥—oatmeal-bath sachets, and wooden wall signs. She’d been looking forward to the wooden wall signs, she’d been thinking about painting her sign with something kitschy and self-deprecating like “God Bless This Mess.” But when she arrived at the chapel, Sister Stevens had already stenciled a quote onto each rectangle of wood.

  Claire hates her sign. She brought it home from the Relief Society meeting and hid it in the musty cupboard under the sink, punishing it with darkness and a top note of shoe polish and bleach. Ian found it; perhaps he inexplicably decided to clean his own shoes and saw it lying there purposelessly. She followed the racket one Saturday morning and discovered him kneeling astride the sink pushing a gyrating drill bit into the window lintel.

  “Pride of place.” He grinned and blew her a kiss.

  Because Sister Stevens stenciled the letters, the sign is the neatest of Claire’s homemade efforts. The characters sweep and loop in even calligraphic curls:

  “Home is where women have the most power and influence; therefore, Latter-day Saint women should be the BEST homemakers in the world.”

  Sometimes Claire sneers at the sign, occasionally it makes her feel like crying; she is definitely not one of the best homemakers in the world—there is evidence of this all over her kitchen, all over her life. The BEST homemakers in the world buy supplies for their children’s birthday parties ahead of time, they check on their children and notice when they are seriously ill. She pushes the chair to the sink, climbs up, and reaches for the sign. It is solid and heavier than she remembers. She steps down and puts it on the table. She would like to deface it, to replace BEST with a word like “stressed” or “depressed.” If she was clever she’d be able to think of something funny, a way of changing the words around to make it say something entirely different, then she could hang it back up and take pleasure in everyone’s obliviousness. Instead, she unlocks the back door, takes the sign outside, and stuffs it in the trash can.

  As she comes back indoors, she notices Issy’s goldfish and can’t remember when she last fed him. She hunts for the little pot of food and discovers it behind a jar of flowers. After she’s fed the fish she thinks about feeding herself. The fridge is littered with foreign casserole dishes, plastic-wrapped and crusted with leftovers.

  They must be passing a sheet around in Relief Society—“Sign here to make a meal for the Bradleys.” The sisters choose recipes rich in calories and comfort and leave them on the doorstep alongside Tupperware tubs of treats: chocolate brownies, cookies, cupcakes. They don’t ring the bell. Claire imagines them tiptoeing up the driveway, arranging their offerings, then dashing away before she can assault them with her sadness on the doorstep. There’s nothing she’d like to eat so she closes the fridge and sits down.

  Sympathy cards are stacked in a zigzag pile on the table; the mantelpiece and windowsills are full. The postman slides fat bundles of commiseration through the letter box every day: heartfelt wishes and bad poems in muted, floral pastels. People write little notes inside the cards. She is longing for a note saying “I’m so sorry”; she is sick of explanations and justifications.

  “You must be a very special family to have been given such a challenge.”

  “Bless Issy for coming into your family and giving you a heavenly destination to work for.”

  “Heavenly Father knows there are important lessons for you to learn from this experience.”

  What is she meant to learn from this experience? Ian would answer the question with a list of virtues like the ones written on the Sunday-school chalkboard each week, irrespective of the lesson topic: patience, faith, long-suffering, endurance … It’s easy for him, his thoughts traverse a one-way system, there’s no room for roundabouts of doubt or recalculations; once he settles on something it’s true and she mostly likes this about him, it’s what makes him so steadfast and loyal. When he decided he loved her she knew he wouldn’t ever change his mind; loving her became a fact of his existence, as veritable and infallible as scripture. He’s a man who sticks to the road of his experience, he doesn’t look left or right or back; he never rubbernecks or pulls over to glory in the wreckage of other people’s lives, he never gossips or points fingers; he calls encouragement as he passes those who’ve broken down, he throws a towrope to people in difficulty, but he always keeps to his designated route. There’s one truth, one way, and Ian is following it. It’s true she has caught him once or twice staring into the distance, hands clenched, blinking back tears, but, with the exception of that first night, each time she has reached out to touch the hem of his unhappiness he has wiped the feelings from his face and pulled away. She wishes he’d come to a halt. Pause. Just for a while. Why can’t everyone just stop? Even the children adhere to their routines in a way that suggests their feelings are superficial. She has wondered if Zipporah is hiding her grief in her bedroom, whether Jacob’s tiptoeing and whispers to no one in particular are a symptom of cheerlessness or conciliation, and as for Alma, he has dressed whatever unhappiness he feels in a coat of jokes.

  “It’s no wonder Sister Valentine is so fat,” he said as they tackled one of her monster meals, last week, before Claire retreated upstairs.

  “That’s unkind,” Ian chided. “Perhaps she can’t help it. You don’t know, it might run in her family.”

  “No one runs in her family.” He looked around, waiting for someone to laugh; when they didn’t, he carried on.

  “The best thing about this is the food. What? I didn’t mean I was glad or anything. Wow, that went over like a fart in church.”

  Ian told him not to say “fart” at the table, so he got up and went into the kitchen and said it there. Ian told him to sit down, but he was incorrigible.

  “If a rat catcher is called a ratter, what’s a bug catcher called?” he asked Jacob.

  Sadness that’s so easily disguised can’t run deep. None of them are sad like she is, no one else’s grief is immobilizing. The way they are carrying on—going to school and work, pretending everything’s OK—sickens her. They are allowing the momentum of routine to push them onward, ever onward, as if they are marching to the chorus of a relentless hymn.

  There is a smack as another bundle of sympathy lands on the mat in the hallway. She gets up, retrieves a handful of envelopes and a small package, and shambles back to the table. She opens several cards, the verses are absurd and twee.

  “God’s garde
n is full of beautiful flowers,

  Sometimes he plucks the best ones for himself

  And puts them where he can enjoy them, always.”

  “No longer here

  But ever dear

  And always near.”

  “Although today is full of sorrow,

  God will make things right tomorrow.”

  She dumps the cards in the pile with the others. There are two envelopes left. One looks like a letter and the other is the small package. She opens the package first. It contains a book and a note from Sister Stevens.

  Dear Claire,

  I ordered this from Salt Lake as soon as I heard the news. It finally arrived. Hope it helps,

  Ashlee x

  The book is small and slender. It’s called Angel Children and Jesus is pictured on the cover, holding a small boy, his right hand outstretched. He looks like the Child Catcher. She flicks through the pages, glancing at the chapter headings: “Faith and a Time to Die,” “Faith Sufficient to Heal is a Gift,” “Overcoming the Challenge.” Her eyes are drawn to a quotation near the end of the book: “And the prayer of faith shall save the sick.” She cracks the narrow spine and begins to read about King Hezekiah. Isaiah tells the king to set his house in order as he is about to die, but when Hezekiah prays the prayer of faith, God allows him to live for an additional fifteen years. Claire remembers not praying in the hospital, not believing her words would work: “the prayer of faith”—was it so simple? She keeps reading. Hezekiah’s story is followed by that of an ordinary man whose son is sick. The man prays for his boy’s recovery, he absolutely refuses to give him up to death, and Claire wonders about the apparatus of such a refusal—how does one go about refusing God? The boy’s life is saved, but when he grows up he becomes a great sorrow to his parents and they decide it would have been better if he had died when he was a child. She slaps the book against the table.

  The remaining envelope contains a letter.

  Dear Sister Bradley,

  I went to the Temple yesterday. I was sitting in the Celestial Room, contemplating Eternity, and I saw something out of the corner of my eye. When I looked, there was nothing, but then I saw it again, flickering, and I knew it was a spirit. The Holy Ghost whispered to me that it was Issy. I know she is nearby, watching over you all at this time, and if you stay faithful you will see her again.

  Gospel love,

  Sister Anderson

  Claire tears the letter in two. Perhaps someone might have noticed how ill Issy was if Ian hadn’t disappeared to coax Brother Anderson to the hospital. Why would Issy appear to Sister Anderson and not to her own mother? Clearly she wouldn’t, she just wouldn’t. She wads each half of the letter into a ball and stares at the empty space above the sink.

  AT FIRST SHE tried to carry on. She walked Jacob to school and survived the playground, feeling like a member of the royal family as she greeted people and collected flowers. Things quieted down in a matter of days—once people had expressed sympathy they didn’t have much else to say. Grief enclosed her like an invisibility cloak, and with no one to talk to, she thought about the empty chair in Issy’s classroom and wondered whether her teacher had removed her name badge from her desk and unpeeled the little sign above her coat peg.

  On the walk home, she meandered around the park scuffing through piles of fallen leaves, thinking about where she was in relation to memories of Issy, which were everywhere, poking her from all directions—she couldn’t stop them, it felt wrong to try. At home, she couldn’t pass Issy and Jacob’s room without entering it. She opened drawers, searched for Issy’s scent on things, and her sadness fastened itself to ordinary objects: unfilled slippers, abandoned toys, and empty clothes hanging in the wardrobe, waiting. It began to feel as if these objects ought to leave of their own accord, disappear quietly in order to save her feelings. She hovered in the bedroom, haunting the vestiges of Issy’s life, and watched from the window as the hedge sobbed leaves and the breeze huffed them into every corner of the garden.

  Things changed after General Conference weekend. She experienced the newly familiar horror on waking that Monday morning, but it also felt as if there was something heavy in her chest, pressing her into the mattress, and she longed to fall back into the oblivion of sleep. Her legs ached as she stepped into her clothes and she could hardly lift her arms as she hung out the washing. When she dropped Jacob off at school the Reception teacher stepped into the playground holding Issy’s PE uniform.

  “Mrs. Bradley, I—this—I didn’t know—do you want it?”

  Claire took the bag and walked home with it pressed to her chest. She carried it straight upstairs and hung it on the hook on the back of Issy and Jacob’s bedroom door. Then she stood at the window and looked out at the garden as she thought about the story the prophet had told at Conference.

  The prophet usually tells stories about himself. The stories are heartening and refreshingly straightforward, replete with uncomplicated goodness: hospital visits, Christmas presents for the needy, small acts of kindness—the things Claire values, the things she believes are at the heart of religion. But the story he told this time was different. When the prophet was just a boy he left a five-dollar bill in his pocket. He realized his mistake only after his clothes had been sent to the laundry. He was worried about losing the money so he prayed and pleaded with Heavenly Father for its safe return. The clothes came back and the five-dollar bill was miraculously intact; the prophet’s prayers had been answered. When the broadcast ended and the chapel lights were switched on, Claire looked around at people she considered to be friends, hoping one of them might whisper, “It must be hard for you to hear about the miraculous rescue of a five-dollar bill,” or even dare to murmur, “Maybe the prophet was mistaken and it was just good luck that saved the money.” But no one said a thing, she didn’t encounter so much as a sympathetic eye roll, and although she thought the story might bother Ian too, she was wrong. “You’re not criticizing the prophet, are you?” he asked.

  She watched through the bedroom window as the breeze buffeted the clothes she’d pegged on the line and stared at the fallen apples, unfazed by the waste. She imagined the prophet as a little boy, panicking about the money, praying that everything would be all right. It was easy to feel sorry for him, to understand his need, but it wasn’t an answer to prayer or a miracle—God would never exercise His power to save money, even for a child. He wouldn’t.

  She was weary, utterly tired of trying to get everything straight in her mind: faith, miracles, prayers, blessings … She turned away from the window and crossed the room to lift Issy’s covers, and for a moment she could smell Issy’s skin and hair. That was when she decided.

  She popped downstairs briefly to fetch Issy’s glasses from her handbag. As she passed the telephone, she bent down and unplugged the cord. When she got back upstairs she changed out of her clothes and into her nightie. Then she climbed into the bottom bunk where she lay, holding the glasses. She unfastened them and ran her fingers along the arms where they’d hugged Issy’s head from temple to ear. The vacant round lenses gaped “Oh” at her, as if they were aching to be animated by the arcs of ears and the underscore of a smile. She positioned them on the pillow next to her. Then she closed her eyes and fell asleep.

  When the front door burst open, she jumped. She heard footsteps racing down the corridor, followed by the fling of the living-room, dining-room, and kitchen doors. The feet attacked the stairs and dashed along the landing to her bedroom, then up the second flight to Zipporah’s room before pounding back down to open Alma’s door, the bathroom door, and finally the door to Jacob and Issy’s room.

  “You’re here!” Ian was out of breath. His hands braced the door frame. “You’re here! I was so worried. What’s going on? Are you all right? I had a call asking why no one had picked Jacob up. I tried to get through, but the phone just rang and rang. I thought—”

  “I unplugged it.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to t
alk to anyone.”

  “You can’t just unplug the phone! Jacob was waiting. He didn’t know where you were. I had to leave work. What are you doing?”

  “Resting.”

  “In here? Why? Are you ill?”

  “No.”

  “Come on, you’d better get up.”

  “No.”

  “Come on.” He stepped into the room, slipped his hand under the blankets and searched for her arm. His fingers squeezed hard. “Stop being silly.”

  “Get off. You’re hurting me.”

  “You shouldn’t be here.” He grasped her and tugged until she was half hanging out of the bed. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to go limp. He’d never touched her like that before, never. He yanked her farther until her head and back touched the floor, then he leaned in to move her legs out of the bunk. The covers slid away, Issy’s glasses must have slipped onto the carpet, and when Ian tried to grab her ankles there was a crack as the glasses shattered under the sole of one of his sensible shoes.

  Upturned and frightened, Claire kept her eyes closed while he determined the source of the noise. She heard his intake of breath when he realized and the creak of the floorboards as he knelt down to pick up the pieces, but she didn’t open her eyes because she knew if she watched she would feel sorry for him and she wasn’t ready to forfeit her anger.

  “I’ve broken Issy’s glasses,” he said. “We can get some new ones, can’t we? They’d let us, wouldn’t they? In the shop, they’d let us buy some without her … They’re in pieces. Look what you made me do.”

  She didn’t move, she lay perfectly still with her back on the floor and her legs in the bed. He waited for a moment and then she heard his feet on the stairs.

  She kept her eyes closed as she maneuvered her legs out of the bed and onto the floor. She knew she’d done something terrible by not collecting Jacob and by refusing to get up when Ian asked. She felt ashamed, but not enough to go downstairs and apologize. It was something of a revelation to realize that her daily life was fueled by expectation and its structures were fragile and easily transgressed. She scrambled onto all fours and climbed back into the bed.