Local Souls

by Allan Gurganus

  I tell where he must ship her—have you a pencil, sir? just Higgins’ Mortuary, Church Street, and use the same town and zip code. “You wrote that, sir? When will she? how long does it usually take to . . . shipping-wise, is ice? are refrigerated cars involved? . . . I just don’t know much about . . .”

  Part of me wants to catch the next plane then escort it—her—home. Another portion is about to scream, Bury her there. You people killed her, you and your savage rivers keep her. But I know that is insane; it is just shock, just the being concussed awake.

  I somehow know I knew already.

  • • •

  HE IS ASKING if I have friends to whom I can turn at this time. He grows very gentle. Says he has two young daughters of his own. Says he cannot quite imagine but still feels for me, and apologizes, thanks me as I thank him far far more.

  I hang up.

  • • •

  HER KID BROTHERS could sleep through a World War Three. I am not about to wake them. I will not force anyone to know one minute sooner than another soul on earth must. I slump forward in too wide a bed. (Eddie couldn’t not buy a “king.”) Here I conceived, with that pretty Boy Scout’s regularized hydraulic engineering, my one Cait and two darling boys.

  Slowed, I drag myself to the vertical but dare not step toward her room the way they do in movies. I wouldn’t trust myself there, not with the boys bunk-bedded next door.

  Putting on—for the first time—a cushy Christmas-present terry robe I’ve hid from her Goodwill marauding, I barefoot it downstairs. I slowly heat then stir some milk. Calming, I pour it into my favorite old mug, next sprinkle nutmeg and a dash of cinnamon on top.

  Addled, leaving it—perfect and cooling on the granite counter—I return to bed and ring my former husband, her present father.

  EDDIE LIVES ON a cliff near some white-sand beach in La Jolla. Three hours earlier, it’s only midnight there. Edward Westfall Mulray IV was the local boy my parents sent me to finishing school to snag. I got a poem into print, got Eddie, got pregnant on my honeymoon. Lucky girl, everyone said. He was the society doctor’s son, lived in a neocolonial along The River Road, an early Eagle Scout, the believingest jut-jawed clear-eyed boy in town. Like his daughter, everybody’s favorite, even mine.

  He contributed sixty-five percent of Cait’s blond-blue beauty and one hundred of her perfect PSAT math score. Fact is, I outgrew him. Vice versa, according to Ed. Every inch the civil engineer, he thinks like one, makes love like one; every Friday night: erotic-problem-solving 101, efficient, a job to do and limited time to do it in. Speed, applied force, failure not an option. Eureka. For him.

  Six years back, Ed claimed he needed some adult education, a little brain stimulation. Given my 163 IQ, I felt accused. His ethics teacher proved to be a divorced girl just months past her own PhD coursework in philosophy: Spinoza, etc. Stuck on her dissertation. Her name is Tiffany Goldblatt. (Her parents played into my hands there.) I think people named after jewelry stores, even good ones, should be outlawed from teaching anything important as philosophy (even at community colleges).

  But there Tif was, offering night school Plato to immigrants and restless people of middle age lost halfway through their journeys along a dim path, etc. She’d only got that far into her own career rut when she identified my Edward as her pet new Socratic dialogue.

  Handsome fellow, superior mind, engineering degree from Cornell, unhappy at home with his fattening artistically-flustrated bitch-wife—plus, a guy exactly as briskly distanced as was Tif herself. (I never said she wasn’t somewhat physically attractive, did I?) The first time he slept with her, I sensed it the way Caitie has X-ray eyes for any hurt crow’s total health picture. Ed came home late at about this same fatal 3 a.m., tipsy. Claimed he had been out celebrating having aced an ethics exam. “But not the written part,” I played my hunch. “No. The orals, right? You aced the orals on your lady-teacher. —Been quite a while since we’ve seen that big a push for extra credit around here, Ed.”

  He said, “You’re scary, Jean.”

  I went, “You have no fuckin’ earthly idea yet, honey.”

  I promised Eddie that. And here he had sent my prime joy and only claim to fame off far from me, unsupervised. Her semifinal summer under my roof and—from a beach chair in San Diego—he urges Cait to go single-handedly save Africa.

  SO I RING him with the news. 3:28 a.m., my time. I can tell he’s been asleep. I’d begged him not to sign those releases. I guess I truly am a hateful person. That’s what I’ve been hearing for a long long time.

  “Eddie, it’s Jean. Listen, truly sorry to wake you. But I just got the call from Africa.”

  I would lie if I told you I did not actually somewhat savor this. Not the news, its impact on him. This is awful, isn’t it? But I’d hated his ease in leaving me; he packed, booked his flight before explaining why. I hated how Ed had slipped Caitie a secret thousand for her Dark Continent summer pin money. Even with funding, she still hitched everywhere and went swimming around naked. Eddie had told our girl that Africa would be the making of her, certainly would beef up her conversation for a lifetime of parties. He assured Cait: Paris? Everybody your age does Paree. But being so far out into scrub jungle, teaching literacy, not bloody typical. Look great on applications, too—school, job, whatever.

  “THE CALL FROM Africa? —Jean, for once, no tricks. Spare me competitive word games tonight. Please. I’m beat, Jean, even here it’s late.”

  “Yes, the call. The one I told you and Caitlin would be coming. You both laughed, remember, Eddie? Caitlin just drowned trying to swim some damn jungle river. I had to pay to have them ship her home.”

  I am not proud of doing this. Nor do I think it would pass any ethics-exam vetting. But I felt stunned. People in pain yell first at those they love. It cannot just be me, can it? Am I alone in this, too? But yes, I let my fury at the both of them get in the way. It took over. I was weakened and it stepped right in.

  I explained about the current. I knew the water must have been brown and very foamy from its undertow. The boy had got across. Was he the ambassador’s son? Guards at this outpost had cheered him on to keep him focused, a strong swimmer. But Caitie had drifted into whirlpools or something. (Swimming was her single phys. ed. weakness, we both knew.) She had been found downriver a day or so later. They had her now. One decent station guard discovered her ID, traced me by phone. He said he liked her braids. The man had two daughters himself. Cait’s body got retrieved and they were now sending it back home to Falls.

  I HEARD THE concerned voice of his new wife very nearby. I heard Eddie tell her then cry against her and I choked on it then. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Honey, I’m so sorry. It’s just that I’m alone here. —I should’ve, I shouldn’t’ve . . .” But it was a strong woman’s voice taking over: “Jean? Tif here. Can Edward call you right back? Oh this is awful for him. And you, of course. But he thought she . . .”

  I knew his wife was going to say, Thought Caitlin hung the moon, so I hung up first.

  • • •

  WHAT CAN YOU say as the mother of someone unique, eighteen, deceased? That: You keep moving because her living brothers’ sandwiches must be made come morning. Because only you know that Patrick likes super-crunch peanut butter whereas Nicholas will only touch the smooth. I was like those people you hear about who’ve been in motorcycle accidents and get up off the tarmac and walk along the side of the road but are actually dead and still moving only out of habitual motor impulse. One step, two. Nerves take over for the off-line brain. Sandwich? two pieces of bread, place contents between. Roasted chicken feet, a white body among dark ones, the water sepia from filth, and her acting Eden out again and again, but now dead. No Radcliffe-Harvard, not even finishing school, no nothing. But, no problem, I will only have to live until the twins get into college. Then I’ll be done. Period, over-out. My sentence served.

  I kept finding my throat dry, and why? because all that first day my mouth hung open from such constant
panting. The whole morning I would come to a standstill in certain corners of our home, impasses, hallway spots-one-quarter-between-places where I’d never really stopped before but now pressed into, for the comfort of containment, their small safety. “Go stand in the corner, for talking, Jean.”

  Today, only voluntary punishment gave me a few seconds’ concentrated ease.

  • • •

  THE MONDAY AFTER the Friday night we heard, I phoned the Quaker Relief Fund in Philly. They’d arranged her teaching placement. I wanted details. However gory, I needed those for recovery. Objecting as I did, I hadn’t even bothered reading the fine print of her legal paperwork; her dad is supposed to be the civil engineer. Now I jotted a list of questions. In advance I wrote out a simple speech. I would not threaten a lawsuit per se, but mentioning that might get us some much-needed belated attention. I could tell: the girl who answered was another student volunteer. “Listen, please?” I started, “Caitlin Mulray, my daughter, was sent by your organization to Africa and we have reason to believe something bad has just . . .” “Yes, lots of our parents feel that way, at times. Like the other ten I have on hold right now. And, though I honestly sympathize with your concern?—you will also be answered in the order in which you—”

  I don’t know if my phone receiver was placed in its cradle first or if my beating dents with it into the side of our new fridge actually broke the connection.

  • • •

  TO COMPENSATE FOR my own lost life, how beautiful and gifted would my children have to be? Paying me back for the poet I’d just begun becoming? Offering me company equal to that of my own possible admiring readers and fellow artists?

  When Plath was one of several college guest editors at Mademoiselle, her idol-genius Dylan Thomas appeared at the magazine office to meet with top editorial brass. And when the college temp was not invited, she protested. How? By taking a butcher knife to her own legs. Look it up: “First serious attempt.” My own deferrals and disappointment I’ve kept far quieter. Whatever chance at brilliancy I’d given up early? Caitlin, by age three, already justified.

  She launched as precisely the person bright enough, whole and poetic and famously gorgeous enough, to make me and the rest of the world know Jean had done well to bow out herself. The best of me went right into getting Cait to bloom as exactly such a non-knife-wielding somebody. And the romance of my summoning her forward, teaching her to read? That romance will be forever recalled by me alone.

  The sacrifice of just one Jean? surely worth it. No countermanding petitions begged to have that stage-one rocket launcher spared. No, all agreed Cait was the actual prize and worth it. Even Jean herself concurred.

  Now even that was lost. That “me,” too . . .

  FIRST I SAT blaming only myself. Finally I just threw my whole bruised being into planning Cait’s service. That became everything. The second she, her body, got in, Higgins’ Mortuary would phone with news of her “repatriation.” (Old Man Higgins had already schooled me: that was the official term for shipping a corpse home from abroad.)

  I bought an appointment book. Needed one more detailed than our fridge’s big calendar listing all the twins’ drum lessons, home games. On our old one I had jotted her student-charter return-flight details. Starred, the date of our lead actress’s homecoming. Now I considered blacking all that out, but the boys sometimes actually checked their schedules. I knew a redacting blot might upset them even more. Too late for censorship.

  Despite my having few-to-no local friends, word about her death spread quick. The twins’ many buddies took their own shock home. Father Tim, our kindly if banal young rector from All Saints Episcopal, popped in unannounced then mercilessly overstayed. It’s not his fault being who he is. I always see that afterwards.

  Timothy is shrimp-pink and has albino eyelashes and surely expected Princeton would make him at least look readier for the real world.

  Then Father Tim sat actually saying, trying to reach for my hand, “Have you ever thought that maybe something good might come of this, Jean?”

  “Like your finally going home?” I actually said that.

  “You’re tired, Jean. God bless you. I hear you, though. I did care deeply for Caitlin. As who did not? But I could possibly leave now if you really think that best.”

  “Yeah, well, do. And thank Him for me. For all the goodness waiting to come my way from His having drowned a girl so promising in the Malaria River. Don’t you ever get embarrassed, Padre Tim? I mean, my own job is super-sad right now, okay. I’ve faced that. But Cait was just one person. And yet you go from death house to death house mindlessly repeating these duds they trained you boys to palm off on real adults with actual griefs? You didn’t have a coat and nobody’s blocking your car.”

  “You’re tired, Jean.”

  “Wow, quite the voodoo mind-reader, Padre!”

  Then I heard BlackMatt at the front door calling my name. Come to mourn with me. We’d have a salad, after.

  I rose. Tim finally left. As Matt stepped in.

  VI

  REPORTERS CALLED AT ONCE. THEY ALREADY KNEW HER. I somehow talked to them all, even offered Diet Cokes. (I soon learned: journalism and motherhood are two fields jet-fueled by frequent triage caffeine blasts.) Despite everything, I managed to bake my best chocolate layer cake, ever. I saw others think me brave. I showed the press her silver-blond baby pictures. I mentioned her wizardry in sensing how to help our spaniel Cookie when once so sick. Once I observed reporters not writing this part down, I knew it was probably too nasty to fit into most family papers. I soon learned from my every gaffe about Cait. I tried keeping things “light” about the worst thing that can happen. That was all that most people could really stand to hear.

  Three strong Robin Hood knocks at my front door. And here stood her school’s choral director—a young married guy Cait’d said should lead the New York Philharmonic, he was so “genius-y.” He’d conducted Sweeney Todd. Sweated out every note. Not a seat in the house.

  TALL IF WILTING, Stanley Shelburne held out a CD: Caitie’s two recent alto solos he’d burned without her even knowing. He spoke what he had come prepared to say: “In our school of sharps and flats, she was everyone’s middle C. C for Caitlin.” His voice ran deep as that chocolate dark enough to oxidize you.

  This big swart half-pretty man looked wet across the eyes; he had a large jaw, a bluish five o’clock shadow. Though broad-shouldered he hunched, a hangdog appeal. I said, “Well, well, it’s the famously-gifted Mr. Shelburne Cait kept praising as our nation’s next Lenny Bernstein.” I feared I sounded cynical; but when he slumped against me, choking, it was wonderful. His hot hand against my face, I got an almost carnal twinge. Then, recalling Father Tim’s predicting something “good” coming, I felt nauseous.

  Mr. Shelburne’s warm tears, gushers, soon literally wet my blouse’s front. I myself had not yet cried, not one polyp-neutron of real water. Everybody except me (the mailman included) seemed waterworks.

  • • •

  I LET MY twins stay home from school a full six days. They played their pimp-war-Afghani-ghetto video game (hideous gift from Eddie). Twins drifted into her room, listening to several of her Belle & Sebastians, sitting on Cait’s futon, whatever my boys needed. They truly suffered but—whispering while in constant physical contact—they helped each other through this in a way I almost envied. My twins said nothing. They’d rest whole hours side-by-side on a couch. Boys faced our white-wreathed front door, now bolted closed, spared its former natural openness. Twins seemed to find safety only in being identical, unanimous, luckily male. But my ten-year-olds now acted eighty. Their silence I found terrifying.

  Familiar.

  I HAD NOT set foot inside her cleanly Amish-y bedroom. Last spring, she glazed its walls a transparent azure she said was her favorite new shade. Cait never guessed why she loved this color. And I would never tell her. It was the exact cornflower-blue of her own eyes.

  I knew my simply stepping in that space, the co
lor, might trigger everything. Once in there, all my old attempts on her behalf would look bungled, malformed. I remembered Mom enrolling me in lessons; I got a:

  B− in “Solo Piano.”

  C+ at “Interpretive Dance”: is willing but stumbles.

  At “Adulthood’? an “Incomplete.”

  “Start-up Motherhood”, at best a D−.

  MAYBE WE JUST shouldn’t even get to have children, narcissists like Mom and moi. Why my lifelong thing about Cait’s attending Radcliffe? —Because I’d deserved that. Or so I thought during my two unpregnant years at Sweet Briar. I’d asked to apply to Cambridge but Mother said that’d mean too long a drive for her. I was now a forty-three-year-old dropout, unworthy, selfish, keyed-up, unsatisfied both personally and sexually. And I, being a born stage-mother, had taken all that out on Cait. Now at least I admitted it. If a bit tardily.

  I laughed, I was such a total horror; I’d been dumped by my handsome Cornell husband. My own mother, Ice, had been right about me all along: “Your problem, Jean dear, is, like me, you have Madame Curie ambition but, child, your planning skills run right at I Love Lucy level.”

  • • •

  AND NOW MY evil ways and sharp tongue had helped me lose my firstborn somebody. The effect this had on me was substandard, shaming: the day I heard? I admit driving straight to our town’s best bakery. Parked before the shop called By Bread Alone, waxed paper and powdered sugar soon littered my lap as I fantasized about big tall goatlike Stanley Shelburne. His skin was Foreign Legion dark. He’d dampened my white cotton blouse with spots of tear-transparency. I imagined him now flooding me in tears, drowning me with his virile lower liquids. I would wade hip-deep into the headstream of Stan’s jetted leavings. Me, pulling some boat, a slightly thicker Kate Hepburn, braver than any shoeless African Queen. —Horrid, eating éclairs while having sex thoughts, and NOW.