Bereavements

by Richard Lortz

  Slightly bewildered, Angel took a small step back. She reached for his shoulders, then didn’t touch him—as if she wasn’t allowed or didn’t dare. So strange! Because she had just now kissed him.

  “If only I had laurel for your head,” she next said, whispering again, “and a robe sewn with pearls, trailing yards behind you, like a prince . . . and rings by the dozens to cover your fingers . . .”

  Dori cleared his throat uncomfortably, shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Angel glanced up at him quickly, virtually asking for help, not knowing what to do or say.

  “Rings,” Mrs. Evans repeated, reaching for his left hand, stroking it.

  And in the next moment she had fallen from her kneeling position, full-length on the floor where she breathed with effort and kept tossing her head.

  All three servants came forward instantly, Delia with a cry, but it was Dori who lifted her and carried her up the arc of one of the winding stairs to her bedroom.

  He paused midway, to look back at Angel, who hadn’t moved, who seemed petrified with guilt and concern.

  “It’s all right. It’s no one’s fault. It’s just . . .” He didn’t finish.

  There was no need to. Angel hadn’t heard Dori speak at all. The moment Mrs. Evans stroked his hand, fixed him with her loving eyes, dizzied him with her strange sweetness, he had, as he later vaguely remembered “blacked out,” sustained a sufficient distortion of sense and self to lose his surroundings—at least give them such a warped and fluid queerness that he and the world seemed to drop a league beneath the sea.

  The next thing he saw was Mrs. Evans in Dori’s arms at the top of the stairs.

  “She fainted,” Delia said, and not without a peculiar censorial expression, adding, “again.” She loved her employer dearly, but had long ago lost patience with what she considered never-ending and self-indulgent theatrics.

  “But—why?” Angel asked.

  The woman looked at the boy severely, quite as if she were scolding.

  “There’s only one answer to that. It’s him! Out there!”—with an angry, jerking gesture to the south windows and outdoors, “—always him!”

  Him. Forever Jamie, Angel thought. She was ill because she was near him once more, probably having even already visited his tomb. Mourning him again, dressed in her misty black silk or lace, whatever it was floating behind her like a drift of clouds.

  Maybe too, what happened in New York after midnight mass, was part of it—though he hadn’t quite understood all of that, nor had anyone explained: the frozen blood on the sidewalk, and that dead dwarf, like he’d come from some freakshow or circus, having killed himself there, on the steps, the razor still in his hand. Angel remembered the razor clearly because he had leaned close to see, and it had been so painful to look at—the blade end gripped in a fist closed so tight it had cut, bone and all, through two fingers.

  And Mrs. evans sobbing, calling those strange words, over and over: “My Little Crocodile . . . My Little Crocodile . . .”

  But her dead Little Crocodile had been far from his once Divine Lady’s thoughts. Of course she had behaved as she had, falling to the floor in a near faint, because again, as in the car, the hand she was stroking wasn’t Angel’s.

  That she could have borne, as she had the first time, with sophisticated ease, with all the eclat one can possibly bring to an event so extraordinary. Even with as much, perhaps, as the ridiculous Mrs. Luz, whose business card had printed on it in italic under the psychic’s name: Direct Voice Medium — In Daily Communication With The Dead.

  No. The ring, which was there, the cool hardness of it, the warm aliveness of Jamie’s fingers curling over hers with their message of trust and patience and love—all this was no shock at all.

  What had dropped her breathless, voiceless, almost senseless to the floor, was Angel’s face; or rather, not his face. Pentimento—or those accidents of the camera that create double images, merging one face into another, in this case Jamie’s over Angel’s, Jamie’s through Angel’s: emergent, unmistakably living, alive, smiling and clear. Dawn after night, dark eyes turned blue, black tight-spun hair the color of the silk of corn, only the faintest distortion shimmering over all of this: the tremble of the gold coin one sees at the bottom of a fountain.

  Was the dead haunting the living, or the living the dead? Was Jamie resurrected, resurrecting, or had her raving, starstruck, resolute passion corrupted the order of things, changing I see it because it’s real into It’s real because I see it?

  Was Angel becoming Jamie? Would he, because she could make it happen, or had she finally become the quintessential Jamie of her thoughts and memories, sick and wild with a madness that sought to objectify itself in another being, transpose, transplant, as one does a heart, casting away, like refuse, the old, the used, the weak, the dead . . .

  Either way, Angel was dying before her eyes, losing the boundaries of self, and she was doing it . . .

  I’ll find a way!

  Had she? Could she now cleanse the lepers, wither the fig tree, still the tempest? Could she pour water from a vessel and turn it into wine?

  Would she call Lazarus from his grave?

  “Lord, he stinketh.” One sister had been doubtful, sly, her dark, lazy eyes teasingly cynical . . .

  The first time he tried them, the skiis that is, Mrs. Evans went with him. There were hills to be pointed out, some good, some bad, the object being to find those gently sloping, best for beginners.

  She helped him stand, balancing him when he would fall, like a first-time-boy on a bicycle, pushing him, pulling him a little, this way, that, but through it all, to Angel’s heart-sunk dismay, she was joyless, not noticing at all when, her back turned, he dared try a hill that was much too steep. He wound up at its bottom in an explosion of snow, boy and flying skiis.

  Breathless, pleased that he had made it at all, he looked up, expecting, hoping for a wagging, scolding finger, even angry words or gestures because he had risked breaking a bone; or laughter—good-natured ridicule to celebrate his having made such a fool of himself.

  None of these. Up there, framed against the grey of a sunless sky, was a tall motionless silhouette, the face invisible, dark with wind-whipped veils.

  A sudden gust whirled from behind her, dusting him with powdery snow, and with it came her achingly-sweet, now utterly familiar scent: an odor of fevered dreams, night-mare journeys, transitions; sensations in which he floated, smothered, drowned.

  Who was she? Not the adored Mrs. Evans he knew; and why did she always change so? First one mask, now the other? Panic welled up so strongly within him he almost wished he was back, agonized, in the naked crush of his father’s arms.

  What did she want?—this second, this “other” Mrs. Evans?

  He felt like an animal shot; and she—afire with the black smoke of her undulant veils—was the hunter, standing there, merciless, rifle in hand, watching him die.

  He didn’t see her for three days.

  Dori was there, so she hadn’t left, gone back to New York, or anywhere else that he knew of, because the car had remained idle in the garage.

  Recovered from his fright, idle, wandering, lonely, longing to see her, he asked Jodi, who shrugged and went on reading his newspaper, and Delia, who paused, thoughful and perplexed, to dry her hands on her apron, then didn’t really answer at all, except to say that all the trays she’d left “outside Madam’s bedroom” had barely been touched; “—but she’s ‘that way’ sometimes; I don’t even know if she’s there. There are 42 room in this house, you know. I can’t be expected to go knocking on every door.”

  That settled to her satisfaction, she looked at Angel curiously. “Your face is pinched. Why are you so pale? Really you must have a fever. Your eyes are queer. Come upstairs with me; let’s find out . . .”

  But no, he wouldn’t, and twisted out of her grasp, offending her, and was off to find Dori, who seemed to be the only one also concerned about Mrs. Evans. But the man was as helples
s and useless as the others, “There’s nothing anyone can do. Just wait. Though I’ll tell you this—she’s busy on the phone quite a bit—mornings.”

  “Then she is here—sometimes.”

  Dori looked puzzled. “Where is ‘here?’ ”

  “I mean—in the house.”

  “Oh.” The delay was just a bit too long. “Yes. I’m sure she must be.”

  Dori’s pause had been the information Angel sought. She probably wasn’t in the house at all. Or hardly ever. And there was only one other place she could go. He had seen her footprints in the snow.

  But what could she do there?—except sit, and more sitting. And maybe prayers if she prayed. And crying and more crying, if she cried. And candles to light, if she lit them. Surely . . . Surely she didn’t look. Look at what? What was there to see after more than a year?

  And Angel, with venom and glee, drying his face, choking back the mucus and tears that crowded his throat, pictured hollow cheeks, sunken eyes . . . ! Skin darkened, discolored, shriveled and cracked . . . ! Teeth bared and baring more each day, every hour as the ravaged mouth withered, shrank away to a gruesome grin . . .

  Finally? Nothing: cobwebs, dust, dried, flesh-webbed bones, a frail white birdcage where the ribs should be. And a skull, with the hair aroun’ it so rotted and fine it would float away if you so much as breathed a breath.

  Who would want to see that!?

  Who could love it?!

  A morning later, Mrs. Evans emerged from her seclusion: thinner, paler, tired, shadowed under the eyes, hungry, and (after she’d eaten) with a few serious things she wanted to discuss with Angel.

  There was a peculiar calmness in her manner now, a sureness Angel hadn’t seen before, like a person with problems who’d thought things through and made decisions.

  She didn’t say where she’d been, behaving initially quite as if she’d never been gone at all, with the usual fond small-talk. How was he? Had he been having fun? Did he like the country? What had he been up to?

  Well . . . Skiing with Dori, for one thing—who’d taught him how. At least he was pretty good. He didn’t fall all the time. He could ride the small hills, even jump a little.

  The sled? Oh, the sled was great, super: he was an expert at that, but, of course, he always had been. His father (a flash of sobriety on his face) had taught him years ago in Morningside Park. He paused, the mention of his father making him forget entirely what they had been talking about. Oh, yes—!

  Anyways, he’d found a few neat hills, one a mountain, “a real mountain! with a drop like a gigantic roller coaster, an’ a twist at the end that goes right aroun’ the . . .”

  He stopped, the sentence unfinished because the twist at the end went right around the tomb, a word no one seemed to use.

  But Mrs. Evans had seen the sled tracks. And his footprints, too, which meant he had seen hers—the reason he hadn’t asked where she’d been. He knew.

  With the word tomb, unspoken but palpable between them, the small-talk, the preamble was over, and during what followed, Mrs. Evans kept seeking his eyes, which were endlessly roving and restless.

  “My first thought” (she said) “—it seems so long ago!—was that we’d go away together, the two of us; spend a year in Rio. After that—” (a slight shrug) “—I like to break the monotony of one place, so maybe a second year in Spain. There are a few towns on the coast that I like. Then, the third year—well, Paris perhaps. With only a few months left before your eighteenth birthday, we could finish our journey in Rome. Then—then!—” (smiling, throwing up her hands) “—we’d come home—you! a young man, even more handsome than the boy—grown up, grown strong; ready to be and do as he pleased. No father—” she hesitated “who would dare abuse him.”

  She desired to rush on, but it seemed necessary to ask precisely the right questions and have them truthfully answered.

  “Angel—Do you want to go back to your father?”

  No reply: tight mouth, downcast eyes, but then a rapid emphatic shaking “no” of his head that would have merged into a spasmed tic if she hadn’t stopped it.

  “If you go back . . .” She paused, started wordlessly again, paused—seeking what?—euphemisms?—at least strong, clear words, not offensive or vulgur, that would define things properly and leave no doubt.

  “If you go back . . .”

  But before she could continue, the storm broke: he, sprawled on his knees, head in her lap, passionate words so muffled and choked she missed some, and others could barely make out.

  “He stops me from dyin’ . . . he stops me from being dead . . . you gotta know that. . . he wants me, an’ loves me. . . he ‘predates me a lot . . . he’d never hurt me . . . only teasing and in fun . . . he wouldn’t throw me out like . . . like some . . . like my mother would’ve and tried to all the time . . . screamin’ at me. . . lockin’ the door . . . like I was nobody, nothin’ . . . like some . . . some scrawny alley-cat y’brought home that died . . . an’ y’had to get rid of . . . takin’ it out at night, in the dark, mixed with the garbage, wrapped up . . . so’s the neighbors wouldn’t see what you’ve got . . . !”

  These things said, she nevertheless knew, and he knew as well, that that kind of love, if he returned to his father and stayed, would finally kill the boy that he was, and the kind of man he could but would not become.

  In the calm that followed the storm, Mrs. Evans continued to say what she’d planned. After all, the boy’s problems were his, and hers her own. They had both tried to help each other, and in some ways succeeded and in other ways failed.

  “Life is so uncertain.” She winced because at important moments words were often boring, redundant and frail. “One can never . . . quite tell what one will do, or what will happen next. Isn’t is so, my darling. And that’s because—decisions, the real ones, those vital to our hearts, those that make us do what we do do, finally, you and I, and everyone—a kiss, or a knife in the heart—those decisions are beyond our control. They happen. We act, and then know why, not the other way around. So—what will I do—tomorrow, Angel? What will you do? A kiss? Or a knife in the heart.”

  She waited, almost as if she expected an answer, but of course there was none, nor could there be. “In potentia,” she concluded, not explaining the strange word; “today is tomorrow: the sun that will rise, the thought we will think, the thing we will do . . .

  “So—!” back from her moment’s reverie “—about going away, you and I. For reasons that don’t concern you, and which I can’t possibly explain, I had to change my mind. But there’s an alternative. I mean—about your father. Look at me, Angel. Please. And no more tears. We have cried enough as it is, both you and I. Hear me. You’re not to go back to him—ever. I’ve arranged it. Believe me.” And she joked: “Arranged it better than God, I assure you—who is not to be trusted at all.”

  She kissed both his cheeks, looked for a long moment, then rose and moved to the door. “But no matter what happens, I promise you’ll have someone to look after you—besides Dori I mean, who adores you of course—someone to be with in a far better way than with your father; a doctor and a dear friend of mine whom you’ll meet in a few days, because I’m going to send for him. He’ll be here soon.”

  She opened the door, then turned back to him with a strange stare, adding ambiguously: “You’ll have the law on your side. And power. And money. More money than you could possibly dream. Angel—” she smiled now, her eyes filled with longing, bright with tears “—you’ll be astonished at what money can do. Everything. Anything. In all my long life, I’ve found out there is only one thing money can’t buy: the one thing I wanted most. For that —” she paused “—I had to find another way.”

  And with that she left him, quietly closing the door.

  If she had written a note in black ink, letters capitalized and two inches high, reading, “I’m going to kill myself,” it couldn’t have been as clear to Angel as what she’d just said.

  They’d traveled awhile after J
amie’s death, and Mrs. Evans developed a penchant for high places: tourist stops on mountains overlooking cliffs with rivers a ribbon below, or a mile’s drop to the sea, and always her ecstatic “Oh Dori! Look! What a glorious view! Do stop; I want to get out.”

  “And did you?” Angel asked.

  “Did I what?”

  “Stop.”

  “But of course. I’m employed.”

  “But . . . I mean . . . ” It was hard to say. “Was she always ready to . . . Could you see she wanted to?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “And you stopped her?”

  “Well . . .” Dori laughed. “No one stops Mrs. Evans. Only by being there. She has something in abundance known as good taste.” He thought about that. “On the other hand, I remember she and Rose had a wrestling match one night over a handful of pills. She’d already taken a dozen or so.”

  “What happened?”

  “A doctor lives across the street; in Manhattan, that is. He came over, in an overcoat and pajamas I remember. He gave her an emetic.”

  “What’s that?”

  “To make her vomit.”

  “Oh.”

  Dori smiled, touched the boy’s cheek fondly. “And that was it; she was fine.”

  In the pause, Angel asked: “And those were the only times?”

  “Probably not. But as far as I know. After the first month, she let all the servants go. There had been twenty of us, believe it or not—for two people! But, of course, three houses. The few of us who are left—we’ve learned to live with it, Rose and Cook, Jodi, Delia, I. I mean the threat of it, the possibility. In the beginning, we all simply waited for it to happen—not an if but a when. Now . . . Well, after more than a year . . .”

  “What.”

  He seemed to digress. “Death distorts and magnifies things. And glorifies them. I was married once, you know.”

  There seemed no connection. Angel waited for Dori to make sense, put things together.