Constance

by Patrick Mcgrath

  —Your daughter.

  She didn’t know I was in the corridor, listening.

  —You mean Iris, he said.

  —Yes, Iris.

  —She looks after me very well.

  We both knew he was clinging to a very few certainties now and that in his mind there was light enough for one daughter only, and she was Iris. I’d find him in Iris’s room with no idea how he’d got there or why. Gently I’d lead him back to his own room.

  Sidney knew I hated Daddy and he didn’t understand why I was doing this. I’d told him someone had to and it was the truth. But it wasn’t the whole truth. The whole truth was, I had to get away from him. After he found out about Eddie he watched me like a hawk, he asked me questions, he thought about what I said and what I did, always trying to make sense of me, always dissecting me. Trying to figure out what I was and failing to see I was nothing. In the early days it had been so much easier. Then he let me be. Not anymore. I needed him but I couldn’t take the constant surveillance. I remember one day we were discussing the Wordsworth lines about the murdering intellect. Nothing exceeds knowledge, he said, and I said, Oh yes it does. But he didn’t get it. I felt I was locked in perpetual conflict with him. I’d once felt that way about Daddy but then he’d started having strokes and grew weaker. That’s what I needed Sidney to do, grow weaker. But as it stood he wouldn’t let this happen and I was exhausted and that’s the reason I went back to Ravenswood. I said it was to look after Daddy but I didn’t give a damn about Daddy, him I wanted to die. But now I was too much alone with him.

  —Constance, said Mildred one day, do you want me to move back into the house?

  —Mildred, I said, I do.

  I’d hoped she’d ask. It was the first expression of the bond that developed between us over this period. Later she told me it was only when Iris died that she realized I’d been persecuted all my life for no fault of my own. Too little, I thought, too late, but at least someone understands. So she moved back in. She appeared at the front door with her suitcase. I welcomed her as though she were a relative in need of a long vacation. Daddy insisted on taking her suitcase. He went off up the stairs with it. We followed him. He went directly to Iris’s room. He set down the suitcase at the end of the bed. There were no sheets on the mattress and I’d already removed the few possessions she’d left there. Some items of clothing and makeup, a doll with no eyes called Amanda Jane.

  —You’ll be comfortable here, he said.

  I’d meanwhile made up Mildred’s old bed in the tower.

  —This was my daughter’s room, he then said to our astonishment. She slept here the night before she died. It was haunted by her presence for a time but she’s gone now. You won’t be disturbed.

  Then with some gravity, his eyes downcast, he left us there. I sat down on the mattress and stared at Mildred. What did it mean? It meant nothing. It was just one of those rare moments when for no apparent reason a stray shaft of light broke through the darkness and briefly gave him a little clarity. Something similar had occurred a few days earlier. It was an afternoon in the early spring when I walked with him through the high grass on the south front of the house to look at the river. There was a cool breeze coming up through the trees. We stood in silence and then he spoke.

  —I hope to die soon, he said.

  —Don’t talk like that.

  —It’s not a life, what I have. Better off dead.

  He fell silent. Sometimes he touched my heart, despite everything. An hour later we were having coffee on the verandah.

  —Daddy, you remember that thing you said a while ago?

  But he didn’t remember.

  The weather grew warmer and I knew we must make repairs to the house before the next winter. But I had so little money now. I’d taken an indefinite leave from Cooper Wilder and there was nothing coming in. We knew the dementia would kill him in the end but it might not happen for seven years. The house was old and in poor repair. The roof had to be fixed. When it rained it leaked and emptying buckets was at times a daily task. I took on the mowing of the grass near the south front but when the mower broke down I abandoned it and the grass grew high and wild. I sat at the kitchen table and wept. I’d done the right thing to get away from Sidney but I was paying a high price for my freedom. I’d forgotten how dependent on him I’d become during our short marriage. I sold some furniture that had been in the family since colonial times. It didn’t fetch much. There was no market for American antiquities then.

  But I had some possessions still in New York. There was the Jerome Brook Franklin view of the Hudson in oils Sidney gave me for a wedding present. I wrote asking him to take it to a dealer. Three days later a letter arrived. I at once tore it open. A single folded sheet of paper, and in it a check. He’d been generous. The letter wasn’t long. He said that Howard missed me. I’d heard about his mother’s death and I’d sent a letter of condolence, a short one. Poor Howard. I knew what it was like for a child to lose his mother. I saw Iris go through it. Later I learned she’d died in the hospital. It was kidney disease. Sidney told me Howard never spoke of her again and never shed a tear, at least not in his presence. This impressed me. Howard knew the proper way to behave. I’d seen Iris grieving for Harriet, and what a piece of theater that was.

  Later I thought Howard should have wept. He should have grieved. I hoped to god he wasn’t catching my disease.

  I thought about Iris at times but not often, because whatever remained of her I’d absorbed into myself. The thing now was to attend to the living. To let the dead be, and attend to the living. I put Sidney’s letter away and returned to the kitchen, where I got down on my hands and knees. I was cleaning the oven. It hadn’t been done in years. It was like a charcoal pit in there. It was a job that called for scouring powder, buckets of hot water, scrubbing brushes, and what Harriet used to call elbow grease.

  A few days later Mildred went upstairs to wake Daddy from his nap and found him sitting in the bathtub. It was a deep old tub with tarnished brass taps and clawed feet. If there was enough hot water in the tank it made for a blissful lingering immersion. Mildred came to the top of the stairs and shouted for me. When I got upstairs she was disinfecting the old man’s wrist. He sat in a few inches of tepid water with strings and spools of blood floating around him. The bloody razor lay in a bucket under the sink. It was an inept attempt and he was unsure what had happened. But he grew excited as Mildred worked with brisk efficiency. She murmured to him, comforting him. There were no recriminations. He was skinny and slack-skinned now, white-bearded, and excited by what Mildred was doing, although he must have bandaged a cut a thousand times himself. He had an erection.

  —Do we need Hugo Friedrich? I said.

  Mildred, on her knees beside the tub, paused.

  —I don’t think so, do you?

  —I don’t think so either.

  He didn’t require stitches. We got him out of the tub and into his pajamas and settled him in bed. Did he want a cup of tea? No. In a few seconds he was asleep.

  —It’ll be sore when he wakes up, I said.

  —He won’t know why.

  We took the razor downstairs and emptied out all the drugs in his bathroom cabinet. It was a new source of concern. We sat in the kitchen with the back door open.

  —Mildred, I said, that day Daddy found Walter and Harriet in the boathouse.

  I wanted to let the dead alone but it wasn’t easy. Earlier that day I’d been to Tillman’s Landing. I often went there by myself to lay flowers on the rails. I was grieving for my father. But I didn’t feel his loss as acutely as I once had. Always a ghostly figure in my mind, he was now more insubstantial than ever. I was losing him.

  —Yes.

  —How did he know they were in there?

  Mildred reached for my hand. She was gazing at me with compassion, more than compassion, sorrow. Remorse. She said she’d seen them from the tower. She fell silent. She continued to gaze at me. I remembered the long talk we’d had in the
truck in the winter. Was she telling me Daddy didn’t see them go into the boathouse, but she did? And she’d betrayed them, she’d told Daddy where they were?

  —Did you? I said.

  She covered her mouth with her hand. She nodded her head. We sat in silence as I took in this news. I turned to her at one point, I remember, and mouthed the word Why? She shook her head. I didn’t pursue it. I understood why. The situation had become unbearable to her and she wanted it to just fall apart.

  —Shall we have a small one? I said at last.

  —I think we deserve it, said Mildred, a small one.

  Later I realized it wasn’t Walter she wanted to destroy, it was Daddy’s frail marriage. But she failed. She didn’t move back into the house until Harriet was dead. She told me about the deal they made, Harriet and Daddy. He’d raise me as his own but only if Walter’s name was never mentioned in Ravenswood again.

  —And was it ever mentioned? I said.

  —Not until you found out.

  So that was the family secret and I was supposed never to know it. I wouldn’t have known it if Daddy hadn’t started having little strokes and forgetting what the arrangements were. But in a way I’d always known. I’d known there was a secret and it made me ill. It haunted me all my life. But now the crypt was opened, now I knew the truth. Had it set me free? Was I liberated? Ha. Was I hell.

  One day soon after this I was sweeping the hallway downstairs. The front door was propped wide open. I heard a car in the driveway and went out onto the porch. It was Sidney’s hearse. The black Jaguar. I stood leaning on my broom as he parked by the barn. I saw him reach across and open the passenger door. Howard stepped down onto the gravel. His arms spread wide, he was clutching a flat square object wrapped in newspaper and tied with string. Carefully, slowly, he walked over to the house and climbed up the steps to the porch. He held out the wrapped object.

  —Constance, this is a present from me.

  The sun had come out from behind a cloud and with the glare off the windshield I couldn’t see Sidney’s face. I knew of course the gift was from him. I asked Howard if it was really for me, and he said yes, and I thanked him. Then I peered at the parcel. I lifted it to my ear, and shook it, frowning. I loved to tease that child. His impatience was easy to read. Open it now!

  So I opened it. It was my painting, the Jerome Brook Franklin, the Hudson at dawn. I dropped to my knees and put my arms around the boy. It was a thoughtful gesture on Sidney’s part. I think he wanted me to believe it was more than that. Howard went back to the car. Sidney got out and we gazed at each other across the driveway. He didn’t approach me and I didn’t leave the porch but I guess it was an important encounter. Howard was simply happy that he’d seen me. That was enough. That was what mattered. But it wasn’t the only thing that mattered. Sidney was coming around. He was weakening. I was encouraged by this. Every time I looked at the Jerome Brook Franklin I felt it again. Not triumphal, no triumphalism yet. But encouraged.

  The old man’s wrist was healing but our vigilance never slept now. We kept tools and sharp knives under lock and key. Talk of death grew more frequent. I remembered a time when Iris and I had been amused by him saying, on being asked if he’d had a good sleep, that no, he hadn’t: He’d woken up. It wasn’t funny anymore. At times anxiety overwhelmed him after even a few moments alone. To him it must have felt like blackest night. He was a child. He lived in the present moment and suffered his horror unmediated by reason or experience. Without any insight he might have endured his condition, and unable to reflect on it, never desired an end to it.

  But he did desire an end to it. One day he realized that if he couldn’t do it then I must.

  —Iris, why won’t you kill me?

  I don’t remember my answer. I do remember glimpsing a ghastly ironic symmetry at work here, that the man who killed my father now asked me to kill him. I asked Mildred if he’d asked her the same question.

  —He asked me what I thought I was saving him for. I didn’t know what to tell him. What should I have said?

  I said I didn’t know what she could have said that wasn’t a platitude or some other kind of lie.

  —Should I talk to Dr. Friedrich? said Mildred.

  —He won’t help us.

  —No.

  We came to dread his moments of lucidity because now he was interested in that single topic alone, his inability to die. We decided simply to refuse to discuss it with him. This infuriated him further.

  —You think I haven’t done it? I’ve killed my patients!

  His tirades could last for minutes. I’d have to leave the room.

  —Iris, come back here! Listen to what I’m telling you!

  I’d stand in the hallway and count to sixty.

  —What are you yelling about? I’d say when I went back into the room.

  —What?

  But he’d have forgotten. Darkness had descended until the next time. I told Mildred I couldn’t take much more of it.

  —You have to, you have no choice. Nor do I, said Mildred.

  It was summer but the pleasure I might otherwise have felt in seeing the trees in full leaf and the wild flowers blooming, and the butterflies and the birds, the long warm evenings and the sun sinking behind the mountains as the river caught fire in the last of the day, it was all lost in the shadows of the old man in his fury and despair, when he wasn’t adrift in a terrible gloom of unknowing. I didn’t hate him now. He was Daddy, yes, but not the Daddy that had done me so much harm. He was unable to harm me anymore. But it was like living with death, for nothing issued from Daddy that was any kind of a manifestation of life. I’d be out at the back of the house pinning bed-sheets to the washing line when I heard him.

  —Iris! Where are you?

  I’d go in to see what he wanted.

  —Where have you been? I didn’t know where you were!

  I’d sit with him, thinking of the basket of damp bedsheets waiting to go on the line before nightfall.

  —Are you free? he said one evening.

  We were accustomed now to the vagaries of his crumbling mind. Sudden statements or questions like this that might be loaded with meaning or mean nothing at all. It was a question he’d asked before.

  —Yes, Daddy, I am, I said. Are you free?

  —Don’t be so damned stupid.

  He thought of the house as a prison and the two of us as his jailers. He no longer got angry about it. It seemed he’d become resigned to his situation.

  But as the days passed, a change in the household occurred. The old man’s insistence that he must die had aroused in each of us, separately, a question. It wasn’t an easy thing for us to talk about. We’d underestimated his determination to end his life. Now we began—independently, until the night the question was finally voiced—to entertain doubt. I brought it up first. I expected Mildred to reject the idea at once. I only spoke of it because it had become a habit of our intimacy to say what was on our minds. I wanted Mildred to tell me that what I was thinking was abominable. But Mildred didn’t say that.

  —I know, she said. But how?

  We sat a long time in silence. The next step in this conversation would have to wait for another night. What mattered was that a possibility had been articulated. We left it alone, not because it shocked or frightened us but because we had to consider it.

  We moved around the house thinking thoughts of death. I didn’t know if the old man understood what was happening. If before he’d been unfree, a prisoner in his own house, there now hung over him a sentence of death. I could feel it in every room in the house. I felt it in Iris’s room most of all, that’s where I slept now. It gathered in the corners and hung like a mist beneath the ceiling. The air was thick with it. At times it was suffocating. It was almost impossible to breathe. It had an effect on Daddy. It made him quieter, also more childlike: The old man’s fire was at last extinguished. There were times we thought he was consciously preparing himself, but this was illusory. Nothing occurred conscious
ly now. He was empty of thought, although Mildred still didn’t believe that.

  —He knows what’s going to happen. He’s at peace now.

  —How does he know?

  —Can’t you feel it?

  Sometimes I could. Other times I saw only a demented old man shuffling through the house in his pajamas with his penis hanging out like a piece of old elephant flesh. He hadn’t a thought in his head until he realized he was alone. Then he panicked. I sometimes thought our decision was premature but Mildred never wavered. And as if to confirm that she was right and I was wrong, Daddy again asked the question he’d asked so many times before: When will you let me die?

  We decided to do it late one night at the end of the month. There was no moon. We’d had heavy rainfall earlier in the day. I don’t know why we chose that night, perhaps because it was so dark. But we both realized it was time. We had that kind of understanding now. We were the sisters of mercy now. We gave him a watery whiskey with a sleeping pill crumbled into it. We sat in the kitchen for an hour and drank whiskey ourselves, not so watery either. It was all oddly solemn.

  The two women ascended the back stairs. The world was very still. When they got to his bedroom Mildred opened the door and allowed Constance to enter first. She was carrying the pillow. The drapes were closed. The room was full of shadows. The glow from the bulb at the end of the corridor was all the light they had. The old man’s breathing was slow and heavy. It was punctuated by snorts. Mildred stood by the door as Constance approached the bed. He was sleeping on his back. Spittle glistened in his beard. His mouth was open and his lips were damp.

  She put the pillow on the bed. Then she climbed onto the bed. Carefully she straddled him, placing one knee either side of his chest. She turned toward Mildred where she stood in the shadows by the door. Mildred nodded her head. She lifted the pillow—

  Then he opened his eyes.

  I couldn’t do it.

  The next day I had to go into Rhinecliff. On my return I was parking the truck by the barn when Mildred came running down the porch steps and across the driveway.

  —What is it? What’s happened?