Local Souls

by Allan Gurganus

  • • •

  BLACKMATT WOULD COMMENCE our service with his heraldic trumpet voluntary, the call to attention. Cait had loved Wallace Stevens, whose poems she’d once called “interplanetary bric-a-brac, Mom.” (She had notebooks full of phrases this good.) So, BlondMatt would next recite a Stevens poem (after several more much-needed rehearsal-study-evenings with me).

  Then three five-minute eulogies (brevity to be strictly enforced, alas). These would be offered by her aged emotional kindergarten teacher then by two friends, one Cait’s age, the other a nine-year-old-girl idolater-admirer. Finally, Stanley K. Shelburne’s mixed choir-and-orchestra arrangement of my favorite Bishop poem, “The Monument.” That would serve as our cathartic handmade centerpiece. As specified, the Virginia Symphony’s favorite alto, commuting from Newport News, had already learned Stan’s leading role.

  Finally, through a million butterflies, last thing, I would stand. I’d quote from memory something handpicked out of the old prayer book. Cait’s father and his Tiffany, I guess, would be flying east for our service. Everything would shift into gear soon as the repatriated shipment arrived; Old Man Higgins stayed on the lookout, making various tricky international calls. As a Mason, he had three African “brothers” tracing her paperwork.

  Edward phoned the house but mostly to speak to our sons. “How do you think they’re dealing with it?” he asked when the boys finally placed a warmed phone again into my hand.

  We hit the day she would’ve actually been back among us. A Saturday, still starred in red on the fridge’s calendar. Her student-flight info was listed, “African Queen home!” I’d overheard one twin sigh to his brother, “No spears, either.” (At such a time, you are not supposed to laugh, so I just bit my lower lip.)

  Patrick and Nickie, my fellow survivors, were hosting yet another sleepover. Like many divorced moms living alone, I secretly enjoy catering my kids’ overnighters. An only child myself, I’ve stayed fascinated-consoled by the noise of a true houseful.

  Now, especially.

  TONIGHT A WORLD Cup finals match would come on cable. When we’d learned of Cait’s drowning, I asked the boys what, if anything, might soothe them. Both mentioned an extra sports-channel subscription. They recited its letters in unison. (What wouldn’t ten-year-old boys do for a few more sports networks?)

  As men in trouble will, my twins kept disappearing. They consoled themselves via Books of Common Sports Stats. Lately they fused with their pet text “Runs Batted In During the 1955 World Series.” That constituted a new liturgy for mourning ten-year-olds. Nickie would sit holding the list on one side of our great room; Patrick, twelve feet off, eyes shut, slumped mumbling Johnny Podres’s superhuman numbers. Incantation. That, I understood. Patrick’s blind chant seemed some kind of praying, numerically encoded enough to work for young males. My sons, like their dad, so quickly took agony straight to statistics regarding human physical feats. And was this different from my rushing pain toward becoming music, poetry, new friendship? Numbers numbed the male ache, offered some sort of splint. They spared men the slack wet press of full female Emotion. —I’ve come to believe most males are afraid of most women. Truth be told, there is a reason. How soon we gals learn to hide from guys the depth of our real hopes. We might accidentally show them the Grand Canyon scope of our emotional needs, waiting below. About those we learn to hush. We just accept from men whatever piddling runs they’re batting in to us.

  • • •

  I AWAITED ONLY repatriation. I sat on my best leather couch. If things could turn back to a time pre-African, I’d finally seize happiness with two hands. I longed to be filled or known, whichever came first. Filled not by food, however plentiful, not even by one man—a young pagan chieftain—but by some child, my whole girl-child, pressed back up in there safe.

  Stan had started taking me for short rides. Once we parked beside a farm lake. The sun set, a rubbery molten pink; but I mainly watched his dashboard clock. I should really be home for the boys. They would cope, of course. But, way out here, I could just not feel any real abandon or relief. He was married. I had once been. Besides, he only wanted to talk about someone age-inappropriate, someone named Caitlin.

  And, oh God, he cried again. Did it not seem strange to me? A wedded teacher of thirty-six being so soddenly in love with my child since she was freshly fifteen? No. Why? Because he needed me now. He had matured.

  Irregular French verb of week: Pouvoir: to be able to, “can,” or “may.”

  • • •

  A DOZEN BOYS the twins’ age kept piling in for World Cup TV soccer. Two Kips, a Christopher, several outlier Jasons. Safe as yet from puberty, they wore outsized athletic jerseys intended for mammoth adolescent linebackers.

  Eager to distract my sons from their sister’s un-return, I greeted each incoming waif. Kids’ hair was then moussed out spiky. (Ten-year-olds believe such “product” makes them look sixteen. Their hair instead resembles infants’ cowlicks crying out for blue satin hair-bows.)

  These string bean hard-guys knew my house so well they’d long since ceased to knock. Sometimes, skateboarding past, one would just pop in and use my front-hall bathroom, even when the twins weren’t home. “Okay if I . . . ?” The kid wouldn’t even finish asking, just point toward the hall toilet with one hand, the other on his zipper. Call me derango but, being an only child and daughter, I felt honored by a bathroom door left ajar. Such careless naturalness. I felt almost . . . male myself. Trusted as one boy trusts another. —Water Music.

  Every boy arriving greeted me with a word or joke and, as a man’s woman, I felt maybe too pleased, today especially. I would need the bustle. Kids carried soccer balls they would soon sit holding during tonight’s Brazil-vs.-U.S. match. They brought boom boxes and a few dragged sleeping bags. I’d left a plate of my fresh-baked oatmeal-raisin cookies on our front-hall table. Soothed by building boy-noises upstairs, I stood making their requested dinner, “mac and cheese.”

  This gathering was just my latest try at helping twins slip past the shock of losing Cait. Their stillness scared me most of all. Naturally they pined for her. Hadn’t she taught them each to dance to Motown hits? Her patience with them seemed, looking back, unbelievable. Cait put up with offering lessons in separate rooms on separate nights because the twins were too ashamed to let each other see how bad they really were at it.

  • • •

  SLEEPOVER BOYS HOOT up the stairwell. On our second-floor landing, they’re already tussling. One kid keeps blowing air against his wrist to make bathroom sounds. He finds this so hilarious his giggling spoils certain explosive effects he seeks. I shake my head and, grating sharpest cheddar, stand here half-grinning. I see a new hand grab cookies. I see another backpack heave into our foyer. This one, pink canvas, looks caked with mud. “Home, everybody!”

  Here stands a white girl age 13–20.

  Daylight burns around her.

  The girl is quail-sized. Shockingly sickeningly pretty, she steps barefoot out of nasty flip-flops. Blue light and yellow shoots beyond her as an edging blur. Tile floor in here suddenly seems especially flat and ballroom-huge, making me feel half-faint.

  She has left our front door wide open. Why is that familiar? I stare past her. Outside, the Blanchards’ chocolate Lab trots past. Our FedEx truck goes 25 mph. She might be any child returning from any overnighter one block away.

  • • •

  I SET DOWN my grater. Beside it I place the damp hunk of orange cheddar. I wipe one hand directly onto my new black linen slacks. Four fingertips clutching cool granite countertop, I shift to face our visitor.

  I close my eyes. I clear my throat.

  I open one eye, then its mate. She still seems visible. My white blouse’s whole left front goes pounding nearly audible. Boys, somehow sensing a shift, grow immediately louder. This vision of one ghost-girl seems very nearly real. It could almost be she, still with us, bursting through the usual open door she herself left ajar.

  Chewing a cookie
, my visitor, blinking expectant, lets all weight pivot to her right hip. Daylight framing her seems broken to separate colors, firing past her in short softened spikes. She’s as suntanned as our daughter was at three (when Eddie bought that first jungle gym we couldn’t pull her off of). She is more beautiful than our actual girl, half an inch taller, six pounds lighter. The browned midsection exposed looks ceramic-colored, its muscle tone half-knotted.

  Light shows her legs slightly apart, one centimeter more bowed. And I know, don’t ask how: she is Cait, our Cait now unvirginal, no longer “intact.” No illusion, a body. Caitlin Mulray’s back.

  The hair’s been hennaed a bruisey purple-black. Already its roots show platinum. Native beaded earrings dangle mitten-sized. Talk about blue eyes!

  • • •

  “FORGOT TO PICK me up, hunh, Ma? If I weren’t so tired I would’ve minded less. But return jet lag’s the worst. They say it’s the coming back that kills. Know how I’m never tired? well, I’m getting there. Our copilot was somewhat of a hottie, though over thirty. Lives out past Benson. He took pity on me waiting for you guys at baggage claim for-eve-er. I’ll need at least ten hours’ sleep. But what a growth surge this summer’s been. Hey, you guys okay? Feels like ages. Sorry bout my li’l media blackout. That phone you got me was weird. Even the replacement, once you put a person on your no-call list, there was no reversing that. Thing was, by the end, I got so involved with my boys. Besides, before, whenever we talked, you kept freakin’ out on me. But whoa, you look changed. What? Extra . . . focused, I’d say. Linen pants. More a career-woman-type outlook, right? Something’s . . . going on for you, hunh, Mom? And a real haircut. I swear you look younger. —Mind if I catch some Z’s till supper? I’ve never known what ‘bone-tired’ means, but this feels close. —The place is rearranged, too, more like a kind of . . . lobby. Study-group circles. Always thinking, hunh, Mom? —Nice touch. God, I’ve missed this place.”

  • • •

  I CAN BREATHE. Not speak. Not yet. Hearing—even over soccer—a certain alto voice, sensing it the nanosecond she re-enters home, Cait’s brothers stumble halfway down our stairs. Their hands are on each other.

  Halted, twins gape into our kitchen. They appear dead-white, their lips half-moving. Skinny friends bunch before and behind my boys, as if to protect them from the young woman with a new inch of hips.

  Pat and Nick wear matching World Cup pajamas. Their eyes shine full of tears. They keep clutching one another’s upper arms. She stares up at them. She finally acts spooked. They’ve refused to smile back, to move within twelve feet of her. “What? I’m back, and not one local soul’s glad to see me?”

  It is my job to tell her she is dead. Was.

  “CAITLIN? CAITLIN, LISTEN.” She flinches, fearful of my noise and siblings’ shock. Nick hides his mouth behind one hand. I note a big tear’s gloss. I shout at her as from some great distance:

  “We were told you had drowned. A man called. Claimed he had your backpack. The boy swam better. I sent money to have you—shipped. I’ve planned the whole service. It’s going to be beautiful. BlondMatt, BlackMatt, your Mr. Shelburne wrote a choral piece specially—wonderful attractive man, you were right. Such talent. We somehow interested the Virginia Symphony . . . playing next Thursday when you . . . The whole high school already held . . . candlelight vigil last Monday, and a scholarship in your name has sixty thousand . . . —Caitlin!”

  I run for her so hard, I knock her backward. We’re both soon almost beating each other, pressing against the wall.

  Within my grip she feels so good. She smells like lanolin, airport, mud, wildflower. She’s warm-to-hot mashed here against cool plaster. I kiss her neck and ear, again again. I want to kiss her so hard. I long to shake then kiss her, shake hard then kiss hard. Want to hold her safe, to press my girl right here, wedged back in safe with us forever.

  Now the twins pile on. Their friends trail shy downstairs. Certain pals start freaking out: “No way. Whoooa! Do-overs.”

  The smartest Jason says, “Yeah, what? Is this like a—sequel?”

  WE ALL LAUGH. It seems a scream. Now our pain is over. I do start screaming, “Hooray, alive. Boys, is this not weird, boys, er, what? Alivehoorayalivehooray!” But you see, I cannot stop. Screaming. I hop around. Then try and make a joke of not controlling it.

  I can hardly cease moving. I get a coughing fit. It’s that: I’ve had no time to grieve. So few weeks ago, came that 3 a.m. call. Think what-all I’ve put together since. And now, the payoff release, our saving art, cannot arrive. It is still trapped, like shrapnel ripening in its bomb.

  To the pantry I run, hiding there, liking such forgiving darkness. I fall onto what must be a Costco Toilet Paper 40-Pak. Bent, I find I am gasping. The shock, I guess. The sight of my dead child, returned, unmet at airport, half-known even as she stood chewing my home-baked cookie. I squat. I throw up, but just a little, like a dog.

  You were wrong; your kid’s alive. Your girl might love you yet. But you yourself must now die sooner. If only from shock. And thanks to its simply being your turn now. You got your wish. Well, pay for it. Lord, can anybody take such stress become such joy? Grand Opera for Dummies. Is this a test, and might an IQ of 171 actually ace it?

  In our unlit pantry, steadying myself by broom-handles, I fall more against the hassock of our future’s toilet paper, go down onto my hands and knees. Next I say to the implied whiteness-blackness of our tile floor, “I will never doubt Your existence ever again, God. But why did You make me such a wretched person, only to give me this reward? I have failed in everything, as You know best. Nobody-whatever, I became the handmaid to a somebody by accident. Then this prize-surprise rebound. But why such bitchery? why try me so, only to reverse things? If, of course, You’re even half-there, Player. ’Cause, hey, if You knew this had to happen, only to undo it at my expense, well, there’s no excuse for You, You Tease. There’s no excuse for You, Lord.”

  I sob. Amen. And sob.

  ONCE WE’VE FINALLY settled onto furniture, we are all crying all over each other. It’s wonderful. How Stan Shelburne will swoon! Twins’ friends fail to even act embarrassed. Still ten, they don’t know yet to be ashamed of unencrypted male emotions. Pals keep climbing over us like monkeys. All across Cait especially. A few feels get copped. Who’s counting?

  • • •

  I HAVEN’T LAUGHED so much since our best dorm nights at St. Cecilia’s. Cait’s being home seems the Afterlife come early. This is giving birth once more, without the pain. I make her phone her father and, from clear across the room, I can hear Eddie, again his darling boyish self, shrilling like a girl. Then he asks if he can put Tiffany on. Tif will just die! His excited voice forces me to “tune up” all over again. But, in the excitement, Cait hangs up. She hangs up and her father never asks to speak to me. Wouldn’t you think . . . ?

  • • •

  AMID THE RUCKUS, I head-signal Patrick nearer our staircase. “Hon, I know we said you could start moving some of your stuff into her room. But I need to ask you, hard as it’ll be, to rush right up, clear that out real quick? Imagine you were getting back . . . Caitkins mustn’t guess we even hoped she could be in any way replaced . . .”

  I brace for selfishness. From someone only ten. I tell myself no one could blame him for resenting an overnight return to bunking below his brother ever-after. But, what does Patrick whisper? “You’re smart to remember before she even gets upstairs, Mom.”

  Trotting, the kid disappears upstairs on tiptoe. Alone in our hall, I gather myself, hearing little bumps as Pat evacuates his gear at top speed. Six minutes later, my son thumps back to our first floor, smiling. Patrick flashes me one shy butch thumbs-up. She never knew.

  For that I will love this boy always. Imagine an identical twin, surrendering his very first chance at ever being on his own. Without a whimper, to reverse it silently. That’s love, right?

  —What amazing children! Three, again!

  • • •

  FINALLY,
AFTER CHEESE-ORANGED macaroni in great amounts, she turns my way. “Can’t believe they put you through this, Momma Jean. Can only feel for you. You know, I did lose my international student ID. It has a color picture and your address and phone. Must be how he came up with such specifics like the braids, which I guess is what they do. He must’ve counted on its being some awful hour when he knows he’ll wake you. Part of their scheme to shake you down. God, what you went through. You poor thing, is all. Just thinking how we might’ve handled it—to save you all the grief, I mean.”

  I sit here silent. “Handled” it? Hmmm.

  “Handled” an adored daughter’s death announced via a bad phone connection by some African confidence-wizard? “Handled” arranging a fellowship in her name? “Handled” a vigil and the childhood-picture slide show? “Handled” the upcoming musical production elaborate as something Schuberty-Sondheimy? “Handled” commissioning a work of memorial art and paying out-of-pocket for enough cash-up-front skeleton musicians to come and lushly play it? Listen, baby . . . all right, I stand corrected. As usual. But half-guess what it felt like, child, losing you, of all children. And then my keeping going for your twin brothers? And with your own father not budging to bother coming east to help me for even one second? And no friends here, except now . . . your friends?

  I LONG TO yell, Honey, you know who the real saints are? Not so-called candidates like you. As my college favorite Reinhold Niebuhr once explained: “True saints are the wives and parents of saints.”

  Saint Somebody’s mom: the old one left at home to pick up socks, screen others’ calls, bake casseroles during the unbearable aftermath. Of impulsive pint-sized saints like you.