by Sue Miller
“Oh,” John said. “That’s good then. So you won’t be alone.”
“No. Well, I think Lucas is coming just for the day. And he’ll . . . be mostly with Frieda, I suspect. But Sarah will stay over until Monday. With me.”
“Well, good.” He nodded, many times. Then, in a rush, “One of the things we talked about was you, Annie. Was how much he loved you.”
Annie smiled back at him.
“No, I mean it. He did. He said you were his first and last love.” John dipped his head then, and almost smiled himself. “And then he corrected himself and said maybe actually not the first, but yes, the last.”
“A stickler for accuracy. Upon occasion.”
John nodded again. He pushed his chair back. “I’m going to go now, Annie.” He stood up.
“You don’t have to. Honestly.”
“No, but you don’t need to . . . entertain me, either. I’m sure you’d planned on having this evening to yourself.”
“I had, actually. And I am tired.”
“Of course you are.”
She walked behind him to the front door. After they’d said good night, after she said she’d let him know about a service, either way, he paused for a moment. Then he said, “He really did say that about you. And I know that’s how he felt.” His eyes were steady on her. “So remember that, no matter what.”
“Of course I will. Thank you. Thank you, John.”
As she shut the door behind him and locked it, Annie was thinking, What a funny thing to say, really. “No matter what.” How could anything more happen, beyond what had? Still, he was kind to have told her. And she could imagine Graham saying it, saying it in his wonderful, rumbling voice.
She went back through the house, back to the kitchen. She sat again for a while at the table. She was calling up those seconds when she had thought the footsteps on the porch were Graham, when she thought she’d been mistaken somehow about his death. When he was alive for her for just those suspended seconds more. Then the knowledge—again!—that he wasn’t. That he was gone. That there was no way to reach across to him.
She had the thought that this would surely happen again, more than once. That she’d wake up some mornings, having forgotten he was dead, or having dreamed him alive, and have to face that loss again. She moaned, a soft sound.
She picked up her wineglass and went outside. It was fully dark. She sat in one of the old chairs on the brick patio, which was ringed by the small piles of weeds she hadn’t picked up this afternoon—little dark blobs just visible in the light coming from Karen’s house.
She turned to look over there. The lights were all still on, though that didn’t mean a thing. Sometimes they blazed all night in every room because she’d forgotten to turn them off.
Would this be her fate? Annie wondered. Alone, drinking too much, the messy backyard, the dishes left on the table or sitting in the sink, the lights left on all night?
A wave of such bottomless self-pity took her that her throat hurt, as though something sharp were stuck in it. She stood up. She went inside. She turned the lights on and started to pick up the wineglasses, the bottle, the cartons of food, the plates. The flowers John had brought for the party were still lying on the counter in their paper, tied with a pretty green satin bow. She went to the cupboard by the door to the back hall and got out a clear glass vase for the bouquet. When she’d settled the flowers in it, she set it on the big table, next to Graham’s flowers.
That was how she’d seen him, she realized. When she heard John’s footsteps, when she thought Graham was alive again, she’d seen him coming up the steps onto the porch, carrying the bouquet that he’d bought for her.
13
Annie had a white scar just above her forehead, hidden by the way she parted her hair. It dated from a time when Sarah was about two and a half, a time when Sarah had hit her, possibly with a kind of intent to kill.
They had been in a toy store, shopping, the three of them—Annie, Graham, and Sarah. Sarah was picking up one thing after another, wanting them all, whining. They’d negotiated and finally bought a small stuffed mouse for her, brown with little black beads for eyes and short, stiff whiskers. They’d paid for it and were ready to go, but on the way to the door, Sarah spotted an antique doll’s house at child’s-eye level and reached in to grab something from one of its rooms. Annie, who was directly behind her, squatted down next to the little girl and spoke to her. “I want you to put that back, Sarah.” Annie saw that it was a stove from the doll’s-house kitchen, a little cast-iron stove, an almost exact replica of the kind of stove Annie’s mother had had in their kitchen in Chicago until late in Annie’s childhood.
Sarah looked steadily at her mother. Annie could watch the idea alter Sarah’s face, though she didn’t know what the idea was until Sarah raised her hand with the stove and brought it down quickly, as hard as she was able to, hitting Annie’s head.
Annie cried out, and almost simultaneously felt the warm blood start down her forehead.
In a swift motion, Graham, who had been standing behind Sarah, grabbed her hand, yanking her up slightly, up and backward. Sarah’s face registered her astonishment. Now Graham crouched next to her, his angry face close to hers as he said, in a voice full of controlled rage, “You don’t ever, ever hit Mumma!”
Sarah had wept then, so desperately, for so long, at what must have felt like an unexpected betrayal, a terrible loss—her father! who always, always loved her best!—that they both wound up holding her, trying to reassure her, Annie in particular speaking of her love for Sarah, of Graham’s love, explaining it all away: his anger, her blood—all of it nothing, of no importance.
But Sarah was inconsolable. She wept all the way home in the car, she wept as they laid her in her bed, she wept even as she finally fell asleep, shuddering, her eyelashes sticky with tears.
At the time, Annie thought it must have been like a death for Sarah—her first experience of real loss, and loss of the person she held dearest in life.
That grieving little girl was the second thing Annie thought of as she woke on Saturday to the cold coming in from the open window, to the sound of the heavy rain.
The first being Graham.
Sarah arrived in a cab. Annie was still in her kimono and pajama bottoms when she heard her at the front door and came around from the kitchen.
She opened her arms to embrace her daughter, but Sarah shied back. “Ah! No, no! Don’t, Mom. I’m soaking. Look.” She’d set her suitcase down just inside the door, and now she held her arms out, away from her body, presenting herself. Her jacket was darkened with rain, her hair wet, bedraggled, just from the walk up the driveway. She looked tired too, and drawn, but who wouldn’t after taking the red-eye? Annie leaned forward and kissed her cheek carefully, then put her hand on her daughter’s chilly, wet face. Sarah closed her eyes for a moment and leaned her head against her mother’s warm hand.
After a moment Annie stepped back and said, “Do you want coffee? Or maybe a hot shower first?”
“Coffee. God, yes. And a towel. But I’ll get it, I’ll get it!” she said, as Annie started toward the stairs.
When she came down, she’d taken her coat off and she had a towel draped on her shoulders, like a cape. Her hair was roughed around her face.
They sat together at the table, each with a fresh cup of coffee. The rain was streaking down the big windows. It was as dark as evening outside. Annie had turned on the lamp that sat on the kitchen counter, and it felt warm and cavelike in this part of the room.
They talked about inconsequential things at first—Sarah’s flight, frighteningly bumpy as it landed in the wind and the rain. How good the coffee was. The glamour of the new coffee machine. About Lucas, when he would arrive. About how little Annie had slept.
They set their cups in almost perfect synchrony into their saucers. Sarah looked for a minute at the gray, gray view outside the windows. Gray, and then the deep green of the wet shrubbery.
Her voice was
different when she asked, “Where is Daddy now?”
The big question. Annie suddenly felt the full weight of everything. She was unable to answer for a moment.
Sarah reached across and covered Annie’s hands with hers. Annie’s hands were warm, Sarah’s cool. Annie turned hers up to hold Sarah’s for a moment.
“You mean his body,” Annie said.
Sarah nodded.
“Actually, I’m not sure,” Annie said at last. “He wanted to be cremated, so that’s what will happen. But I don’t think it’s happened yet—they have to wait a certain number of hours, I forget how long. I suppose it’s some kind of legal thing.”
Sarah’s voice was almost inaudible when she said, “Oh.” She sat back in her chair, drawing her hands away from Annie’s.
Annie’s face changed. “Did you want to see him?” she cried. “Oh Sarah, I didn’t think of that. I didn’t think of it. I’m so sorry.” And then she did think about it, everything that had happened around Graham’s body, around what had seemed the necessity of its being taken away from her. And of course from Sarah, too.
And Lucas? Would Lucas have wanted to see him? She said, “I’m not . . . I don’t think it would have been possible, really.”
“Oh,” Sarah said. Then, “I don’t think I really did anyway. Want to see him.” She was frowning, thoughtful. “It probably would have been . . . I don’t know really.” She shrugged. “Strange, I suppose.”
“It was strange,” Annie said. The memory of those moments when she was with Graham’s body without feeling his presence came back to her, dulled her again. She struggled to think of a way to speak of it. She said, “I felt so much that he wasn’t there, that the body . . .” She lifted her hands. “It almost didn’t matter to me.”
Sarah nodded, frowning—her open, plain face so full of sympathy that Annie felt herself tearing up again. Wrong, she thought. Wrong. You should be comforting her.
But then the tears started, she felt herself giving over to them, and Sarah pushed her chair back and came around the table.
This was the way it held through that day—Annie, often abruptly tearful, Sarah, steady and maternal. Annie was surprised, surprised by herself and a little ashamed; but surprised more by Sarah, who seemed changed. Changed by Graham’s death, of course. But perhaps slowly changed too in ways Annie hadn’t really taken in before, in spite of seeing her as recently as Christmas. It must have been much longer than that since she’d really looked at her daughter. She watched her now as she moved around, as she got more coffee, as she carried the dishes to the sink. She was the same, but different. Even her body seemed different. She was still big, but now she looked athletic, strong, rather than slow and heavy.
She could stay only through midday Monday, she said, so she wanted to do what she could to help. She began to take charge of things that Annie hadn’t even thought of doing—calling Graham’s living siblings, and then Annie’s. Starting to write an obituary to send to The Globe, she said, and the Cambridge Chronicle. Answering the door on and off through the morning, as a few of Graham and Annie’s friends began to appear on the porch with casseroles or fruit baskets or wine and more bunches of flowers. Annie stayed back in the kitchen, where she couldn’t see who was at the door. She could hear her daughter, her rich, velvety voice always the dominant one, sounding gracious and poised. It occurred to her that Sarah had learned this way of being among others, probably from her work at the radio station.
At one point Annie recognized Felicity Rogers’s voice on the porch, heard her say to Sarah, “Don’t you think it’s better that he died before your mother? I mean, honestly.”
If she’d been the one at the door, she would just have stared back at Felicity, dumbfounded. But now she heard Sarah say, in a perfectly friendly tone, “I don’t quite understand what you mean.”
“Oh! Well, I mean, just, he would have been so lost without her, whereas she’s so much more . . . self-sufficient, I suppose.”
“Of course: Mom. Yeah, I’m sure you’re right.”
“Thank you for managing that one,” Annie said when Sarah came back to the kitchen, carrying Felicity’s offering, a wrapped box of what might have been chocolates.
“Oh, sure.”
“You handled it so much better than I would have,” Annie said.
“I’m a smoothie by now, handling people is so much of what I do.” Sarah sat down.
Annie said, “What a funny phrase—‘handling people.’”
“I suppose.” Sarah shrugged. “It is what I do, though.”
After a moment, Annie said, “I’m just awful at it, myself.”
The rain had stopped by now, the sky was lighter, and Sarah suggested they sit outside.
“We’d have to wipe everything down,” Annie said.
“Well, let’s,” Sarah said. She went up the back stairs and came down with two clean, folded towels. Annie took one, and they both went outside. They swiped down the chairs in the backyard. They sat for a while, mostly not talking. The air was even cooler after the rain.
Maybe fifteen minutes after they’d taken their seats, Karen appeared at her own back door. Together, Annie and Sarah watched the old woman come slowly down the stairs and over to their yard. She bared her teeth at them in the rictus that passed for a sociable smile with her. She was wearing a man’s raincoat over what seemed like not much else. At any rate, her feet were bare, as were her long, bruised-looking shanks. Her hair was rumpled and wild, as though she’d come to them directly from her bed.
“Well, I know who you are!” she said to Sarah as she entered the yard.
“We’re even then, ’cause I know who you are too,” Sarah said, smiling back.
“Will you sit with us?” Annie gestured at one of the empty chairs.
Karen didn’t look at Annie, but she sat down. “You’re the girl. What’s your name, now?”
“Sarah.”
“That’s right,” Karen said, as though praising a bright child for her cleverness. They all smiled at each other.
Now that she’d settled in her chair, the old woman’s knees fell away from each other, and from her vantage, Annie saw that yes indeed, she was naked under the coat, her thin thatch of grayish hair in shadow between her legs, the rest in deeper shadow. She was glad Sarah was next to Karen and didn’t have this vista.
“But you don’t live here anymore,” Karen said. Her tone was almost accusatory.
“No, I’m in San Francisco now.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
“I was there once,” Karen said. “You know what Mark Twain said about it.” Before Sarah had time to respond, she turned her piercing gaze on Annie. “And where’s your jolly husband?”
“Graham,” Annie said.
“Yes, that nice fat man.”
Annie laughed once, helplessly, and let a little silence accrue.
“He died,” Sarah said, after the long moment.
Karen swung her head to Sarah. “Oh, come now. That’s ridiculous!” she said, her tone haughty. “He’s a young man.”
Neither Annie nor Sarah spoke for a moment. Then Sarah said, “I thought so too.” Her voice was a child’s suddenly, and it seemed she might cry. “I thought it was ridiculous too.” She inhaled raggedly, a few sharp breaths.
“Oh now, dear, stop that,” Karen said. “He’ll be back, you’ll see. Momentarily.”
Annie felt swept by a sudden rage. She stood up. “You know what?” she said to the old woman. Her voice was sharp. “I think I’m going to take you back home so you can get dressed. You’re not wearing much of anything under your raincoat, and it would be better if you did.”
“Oh!” Karen said. She was surprised, audibly. Perhaps angry too.
“No, let’s go,” Annie said. She wasn’t sure where her own anger came from. Maybe it had to do with Graham. Why should he be dead, when this old woman so uselessly, so carelessly, went on and on?
Or Sarah, she thought. Why should Sarah have to
indulge Karen? Karen was their responsibility. Hers and Graham’s.
Hers, now. Only hers.
Karen stood up, obediently. Annie stepped forward and would have taken her arm, but the old woman moved ahead of her. One after the other, they walked past the dripping lilac bush and mounted the stairs into Karen’s house.
When Annie returned (the messy house, the faint smell of cat, the bare, stained mattress, the old woman’s flesh, sagging everywhere—dugs the word that leapt to Annie’s mind when Karen took her coat off and she saw the long, drooping breasts), she told Sarah she thought she’d lie down for a little while.
She did—she went up to the bedroom and lay down and almost instantly fell into a deep sleep. When she woke, she saw that the clouds outside the window had lightened again. She heard voices downstairs, Sarah’s, and then a man’s.
Lucas, of course. Lucas with Sarah.
She stood up. She went to the bathroom and brushed her teeth. When she came out into the upstairs hallway, she stood and listened to them talking for a moment or two. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, just the easy, familiar alternation of their voices. Siblings, after all. She’d never understood it, how they’d become such friends. Or when. Clearly out in the wider world, away from home. She remembered the first time that Lucas had reported back on Sarah, after he’d visited her in college. How interesting it was, how strange, to hear the way he thought of her, so different from the way she saw her daughter. Completely without the sense of the solitary, unhappy little girl she’d once been, the girl who still haunted Annie.
When Annie appeared in the kitchen, Lucas stood up and stepped toward her. He held her fiercely for a moment. When he let her go and stepped back, she said, “I didn’t hear you arrive. I didn’t hear the doorbell.”