Remembering the Bones

by Frances Itani

  The ward staff knew about me standing at the back of the building after work, and no one tried to stop me. Every two or three weeks, I went inside and ventured down the hall as far as the nurses’ station to ask about his progress. But in the late afternoon, I was at my post outside the window again. If it rained, I stood under an umbrella.

  Harry and I stared at each other across the pane and I told him the story of our wedding. I recounted the bus trip to Syracuse and our wedding night when he slept in his suit. I described the Thousand Islands Bridge, which I had seen twice and he had not seen at all. I told him about the stained-glass windows in the dining room of the hotel, about the waiter’s black vest and his buckled nose, and the disbelief on his face when we got up and left two full plates of food. I told him it still made me hungry to think of my uneaten steak. I told him how I’d chewed and chewed that huge mouthful in the elevator and how good it had tasted. I told him he had lain on the grass beside Wilna Creek’s bus terminal, and I saw a quiver in his face. I stood outside the window that divided us, and told him I was his wife and that I loved him. If he answered, I did not hear his voice.

  Some days, Ally came and stood beside me on the patch of grass, her arm linked through mine. She was pregnant with her daughter, Kathleen, and her belly stuck out so wantonly, she carried a folded raincoat in front of her whenever she left her apartment. If the town thought we were the two demented sisters, we didn’t care.

  Much of the time, though, I was alone. I looked through the partitioning window and remembered the way Harry had stared at me the morning after we were married.

  “Who are you?”

  I tried not to believe that I had married a stranger.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  And that, Lilibet, is the real story of my marriage. Can I help it if the celebration part was short-lived? Is it my fault that sorrow lurks around every corner?

  Mr. Ring had already heard the news of Harry’s polio. There were two other cases in town, diagnosed before we returned from Syracuse. Everyone knew who they were. When I went to see him, he promised that Harry could return to the jewellery store when he was better. “Your husband is the learner by nature, Mrs. Witley,” he said. “Also, he has the eye for design, for intricate work, and I will welcome him back. But only when he is better. Mrs. Ring and I will manage until then.” He took my left hand, eyed the wedding ring, nodded approvingly and patted me on the shoulder.

  Ira had given me a week off for my honeymoon. As Harry and I had already paid a month’s rent, I moved into our rented house alone so that I could be close to both store and hospital. I had only my own salary, but told myself that I would find a way to manage. Part of me was afraid. I’d never lived by myself before; I wasn’t used to the noises of the house, the fall winds blowing through the eaves. At night, I pulled the covers over my head and tried to block the sound. In the daytime, I was fine. The house wasn’t that far from Ally and Trick’s place, and I saw them frequently. They were in the upstairs apartment of a house only two streets away.

  When I returned to work, part of my job, as well as helping customers and ordering supplies, was to restock counters and displays. To get a few moments to myself, I sometimes went downstairs and walked between ceiling-high shelves in the stockroom, a windowless basement room where I stared up at rows of look-alike boxes, trying to familiarize myself with new products Ira kept adding to the stock. I tugged edges of torn brown paper over fabric ends to protect them from dust. I daydreamed down there, and thought about the husband I was not permitted to visit. I wondered about my future, which had shrunk from being an open space stretching before me, and had turned into a bottomless pit. I was still going round to the back of the hospital every day after work, and I was still concerned about the lasting effects of the disease on Harry’s health.

  After what I now thought of as my “polio honeymoon,” I’d begun to notice that Ira had a new way of looking at me that I did not like. One day, he followed me down to the stockroom. I had my back to him and did not hear him on the stairs. He came up behind me and placed both hands on my waist and squeezed, sliding his hands upward. I let out a yelp and whipped around, elbowing him sharply in the ribs. I could see individual bristles on his cheeks. Because of his shape, he had curled around me like a spoon. I startled myself and him, and we both pulled back in surprise. He cursed and, holding his side, climbed back up the stairs and never sneaked up on me again. Even so, the feel of his ribs was stuck to my elbow and, for the rest of the day, I had the sensation that something rotten was attached to my skin.

  After that, I stopped daydreaming in the stockroom, and kept Ira at a distance. But I often stared at his receding mandible and remembered Miss Grinfeld’s warnings in our one-room school about the connection between chinless families and bad behaviour. I regretted that I had not foreseen the danger.

  Harry was discharged from hospital November 20, 1947, the day Elizabeth married her handsome Philip of Greece, who was slender, like Harry, and rumoured to have been born on a tabletop in Corfu, which was not easy to imagine. Philip was a distant cousin to Elizabeth, also descended from Victoria, their great-great, as most of Europe’s Royal Houses seemed to be. I read every magazine and newspaper I could find, every detail of the forthcoming marriage, the family tree, the expected guests.

  I believed the coincidence of dates—Harry’s discharge and the Royal Wedding—to be a positive sign. I thought of Harry collapsing to the grass, and was reminded of the small boy who’d had stick legs and was carried around on an English pillow. I understood that Harry’s bones had been too weak to hold him up as a child, and I was forced to abandon, for all time, my fantasy picture of satin, tassels, prince.

  All week, I’d been watching the stores in town tack up bunting and streamers in display windows. Ira ordered a huge, rectangular cake iced in the colours of the flag, and it was my job when the doors opened on Royal Wedding Day to serve one slice each to the first hundred customers who walked into the store. It seemed that everyone in the County had come to town; the sales from that single day were the largest ever recorded in the ledgers. I thought Mr. Holmes would have approved, and wished he’d thought of something similar when he’d been running things during the Depression.

  Lilibet’s ring was made from a nugget of Welsh gold, and she was bedecked with seed pearls and flowers. The silk in her veil came from Chinese silkworms, thousands of spinning caterpillars fulfilling their destinies. When I saw pictures of her gown and veil later, I threw away my porkpie hat. After I served the flag cake to the lineup of customers—which included Phil, Grand Dan, and Ally, who pushed Kathleen in her brand new carriage—and after I’d stood at the cash register ringing in sales, Ira, flushed with his own success, permitted me to leave early.

  I walked to the hospital, collected Harry, and we took a taxi directly to our house, which I had done my best to fix up. Because it was a bungalow, there were no stairs for Harry to negotiate, not even cellar stairs. His body had been weakened, but the doctor said he could return to work. He was not crippled, but the muscles of his left leg had atrophied, and he limped, a small price to pay. That night, for the first time, we slept in each other’s arms in the same bed. Our parts were complementary. I understood that at a time of reunion, there is nothing important to say until all the loving is out of the way.

  STERNUM

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Harry remembered nothing of the trip except boarding the bus in his wedding suit after the Dixons drove us to the terminal. For a while, he joked that he’d never been to the States, but I was not amused. He remembered one other detail, and that was the flower I wore with my blue suit. He was right about that; Grand Dan snipped a yellow rose from her wagon-wheel garden before we left the Danforth house for the church. She pinned it to my lapel with two tiny gold safety pins taken from the emergency heap that was still on the windowsill beside the back door.

  Now, my right eye is clouding. Dark spots dart in and out and around, and that is a worry. I’ve made pr
ogress; I’ve inched along. But when I move, the car moves, too. Or does it only seem that way because night is closing in? How many nights? I have no way of knowing.

  Nothing is certain, Lilibet, though I wish you would rally your faithful guards and send them out to search for me. Have I dreamed my life, invented it as I lie here? Have I invented you? Now that I’m away from it, I see that the half-dead tree leans more heavily than I first thought. It could fall in the forest, but surely not without warning. This old monument will groan and stretch and yawn and cry before it topples. But my eye gives me grief; black spots swim before me; part of me runs ragged-edged into panic. I need my eyes; I need my vision. Let me not go out in darkness, Lord.

  In high school, I was required to learn the cranial nerves for biology, and I went home to check out Gray’s. Olfactory, Optic, Oculomotor…Of the twelve, Optic is the one whose diagram I know best. The eyeball, a round balloon, drifted up the height of the page, a single disc-like blip on its surface. It rose to the right and lifted off a two-pronged stem, like ice held by a pair of tongs. On Old Olympus Tiny Tops, A Finn And German Viewed Some Hops.

  The devices of learning. Do they never leave the brain? Maybe they’re the last to go.

  Despondency presses on my soul. I have to fight it off. It’s humiliating to lie here like this, to be helpless.

  There’s always God to lift the spirits.

  Did He listen before, when my spirits were down? Was He there to hear?

  Is this the time for greater questions?

  Maybe it is. I have all the time in the world.

  Time might be running out.

  Well God might be there, and He might not. The truth of the matter is I used to welcome the hope of having a faith as strong as Grand Dan’s.

  Doubts crept in?

  Not when I was a child, but after that. When loss was too great to ponder. I turned away.

  Don’t depress yourself, Georgie.

  I’ll sing. Singing lifts my spirits. I’ll sing to God, whether He’s there or not—just in case. I still know all the hymns. Belt one out, then.

  Ezekiel saw two wheels a’rollin

  Way in the middle of the air

  Ezekiel saw two wheels a’rollin

  Way in the middle of the air

  Oh, the big wheel ran by steam

  And the little wheel ran by the grace of God

  Ezekiel saw two wheels a’rollin

  Way in the middle of the air

  I learned that in school. And now I know that it requires more spit than “Onward Christian Soldiers.” Some hymns are drier than others.

  Thirst, oh thirst. The body craves.

  “Water,” said Miss Grinfeld, “is the necessity of life,” and commanded us to create a poster of its sources, on a Friday afternoon.

  I thought of Uncle Fred, and drew a pump.

  Pure water, pure air, pure joy, pure hope. Youth promises hope. The word future portends hope.

  But I’m dying.

  Don’t talk nonsense.

  I’ve lived my life and that’s that. And what was the point of it? What have I done? Has anyone paid attention? I’m from a time that is dismissed, deemed unimportant. Women my age are invisible. When we reach our sixties, we’re discounted, sidelined. Even before that. But it’s our world, too. We live in it and we are many. I’ve lived in it every day for eighty years.

  You’re ranting like a defeatist.

  Sometimes I feel as if I’m still the child walking on crusted snow with arms outstretched, hoping with each step that I won’t break through. But for some time now, people have looked through me. When Case directed Death of a Salesman and the salesman’s wife declared from the stage that attention must be paid, I wanted to stand up and shout agreement.

  I can already hear the voices when my body is found: “It was a blessing, really.”

  For heaven’s sake, Georgie, get a grip.

  That’s the way I feel. It happens sometimes, and that’s the truth. Highs and lows. I’m in a low.

  You’ve pulled out of low points before.

  Nadirs. But I’ve never been this far down. If only the mind would rest. At least I finished War and Peace.

  If the mind rests, you’re dead. It’s that cut and dried.

  That was blunt enough. But what have I ever done to merit attention being paid?

  Pick up a thread. Think of other things.

  New life gives hope. Did Lilibet and her Duke laugh aloud when little Charles was born? A Royal Salute marked the event in Ottawa in November ‘48, and I imagined I could hear the guns more than a hundred miles away. One month later, Case was born and, like the biblical Sarah, I laughed for joy to see her. Her eyes were puffy, her ears flattened, her fingers long and slender like Harry’s, her feet blue. One side of her lip curled upward in a smile. She was so tiny, she fit between elbow and palm along the inside of Harry’s arm. He could scarcely believe he could hold her in one hand. Her tininess didn’t last; she ended up as long-legged as Grand Dan, taller than I am—or was, before I began to shrink. She also inherited Grand Dan’s hair; a black mop of it reached down almost to her eyebrows. I was awed, overawed. For weeks, I managed to convince myself that I was the only mother in the world. From the moment Case took her first breath, she and I became something new, something never before known.

  And so began the raising of my daughter, the child who had to have the last word, the last sound, the last hmmph through her teeth, the last noisy huff blown through her nostrils while she trotted to her room—where she was sometimes sent.

  Did it harm anything? She got the last word. I didn’t worry.

  I had stopped working for Ira, but my days were full. And I so loved my child, I was not at all put out to learn, when she was two, that I was pregnant again. “We have room in our hearts,” I told her confident little self. “We have plenty of love left over for the baby who’s coming.”

  And so we did, the three of us, when our son was born. I had to stay in hospital for a week before I was allowed to bring him home, and that is when Case first met him. We named him Matthias, after my grandfather, and Grand Dan held him at his christening. Unlike the rest of the family, unlike any of us, his hair was blond and his skin fair. Harry, with no memory of his parents, did not know who our son resembled.

  What went wrong? There is always buzzing, humming in my head when I re-enter the baby’s room in the late afternoon, for I have entered it behind my eyes a thousand thousand times. It was late fall and there had been an unusually early but light snowfall. Case had been taken to Ally’s to play outside with her cousin, Kathleen, for the afternoon. It was chilly in the house and I had wrapped Matt in a soft blanket before putting him down for his nap. He was five months and two days old. His eyes were large and round and when he looked up at me before I laid him in the crib, he smiled as if a joke had passed between us. He had a perfect little body and I hugged him close and hummed into the folds of his neck. I planted a kiss on his cheek and tucked him on his side, with a bolster behind his back. He slept longer than usual, so I went into the darkened room to wake him before Harry came home and before Case was dropped off by Ally. It was the time of blue light, just before dusk—my favourite part of the afternoon. I raised the blind carefully so I wouldn’t startle the baby, and went to stand beside his crib. There was complete silence. I did not put on the light. The blanket was close to his face, and I pulled it back. I touched his shoulder and my arm seized as if it were paralyzed. I knew the instant I touched him that something was wrong. There was no slight stirring, no baby yawn, no groggy smile as he woke. I turned him onto his back and picked him up and held him close so that I could see his face. His eyes did not open. His beautiful skin was cold. His precious life gone. He had been dead for some time, I don’t know how long. There had been no sound. I had been close by, all afternoon.

  Did I wrap him too tightly? Did he pull in his little sternum, trying to get air? Was the blanket too close to his face? Did he smother? Did I smother my own c
hild? Am I responsible for my beloved baby’s death?

  I sank to the floor, to the braided rug we had laid on the floorboards beside his crib. I wrapped myself around my son. I tried to breathe life back into him. When I knew I had to give up, I stayed there on the floor, and pressed his cold and perfect body into mine. I tried to warm him. And that is how Harry found us, in the dark.

  It is terrible to be alone here, in the dark. I can’t pretend it is not. I am getting colder and colder, though I continue to move my arm, my leg, drag myself a little, even in the night. The aloneness makes the space around me unfillable, vast.

  I would like to sleep.

  I have never stopped, can never stop asking why. Why give my baby life only to take it away? I can’t stop asking because I have thought of him every day since that day, every day of my life. I came to understand that I could not get through even one day without pictures flashing through memory: his fair skin, the light in his hair, his trusting baby self, his fat tummy jiggling in the bathwater, his eyes exchanging a joke with me. I understood—but it took a long time to gain this knowledge—that in order to get through any day, rather than fighting off the images I held in my head, it was better to set aside a time each morning to remember. It did not take away the despair or the anger, the loss or the guilt. It did not take away the love. But it helped me to get out of bed in the morning.

  Where did hope go? It was swallowed by a dark pit that I had not seen lurking.

  I had my family. I had Grand Dan, Ally, Trick, Phil, Aunt and Uncle Fred, all of whom rallied around. Harry, like me, was angry. We could not understand; we never did. And we had Case, whose life had to carry on in the midst of grief, and who became more precious to us both.

  We buried our baby in the cemetery in the Danforth plot. The service was held in our country church. Once more, I sat in the front pew with my family and held hands. This time, Harry was beside me.