Blessings

by Anna Quindlen

  “For God’s sake, Lydia,” Jess had said, her eyes dark. “Can’t you for once in your life stop thinking about what’s right and start considering what’s good?”

  She jerked upright in the chair, her hand still pressed to her head, thinking perhaps she had fallen asleep. The rain had stopped and, in the way of summer storms, had left an evening of delicately scented and colored beauty behind it. The beaten-down stems of the daisies and the coneflowers seemed to rise slowly back toward the sky, to be prepared to be warmed by the sun that had been drowned for so many days. The pounding of the sump pump had stopped, and the air was filled only with the clicking of bent-legged insects, cicadas and crickets.

  Across the room was the telephone, an old rotary dial phone she had never thought to replace, and with her hands shaking she dialed and waited. “Meredith,” she said, when she heard her daughter’s voice, “Meredith,” and in her voice was something of such unnatural unknowable shape and form that she had no idea what she would say, feared that she might be like the girl in one of her childhood fairy tales, who opens her mouth and spits out a frog.

  “Mother,” Meredith replied. “Are you all right? Mother? Is everything all right?”

  “We’ve had terrible rain. The pond overflowed, and the boat floated out. How was your trip home? How is it in Virginia? How are your hollyhocks?”

  “My hollyhocks?”

  “Did the rain hurt them?”

  “It’s beautiful here, Mother. We haven’t had any rain. My flowers are fine. Those pink hollyhocks I got from that catalog you sent me were a beautiful color. That true rich pink, not too pale and not too purply. Is that what you’re talking about? Are you certain you’re all right?”

  There was a silence and then she said, “Meredith. Send me seeds. When the season is over, when everything has died back, send me seeds.”

  What was it she had really meant to say? It was in her mind, her heart, everywhere in her, the notion that she must say something to lift the weight of those years of resenting her self-imposed exile. That was what it had been, after all. She could have gone at any time. But she had not. Once, she remembered, she had spent a week in Paris and could not wait to come home. The “Mona Lisa” had been so much smaller than she’d expected. “Come see me,” was all she said to Meredith. “Come see me soon.”

  The lights came on around the house, and she got out of the chair slowly, her back a little stiff. Nadine had left half a chicken on a plate in the oven, some sliced tomatoes and potato salad under plastic wrap on the counter. She pushed it all down the disposal with her fork. It was waste, but it was her waste. She walked slowly to the window that looked west. The lavender, gray, and pink striations of the sunset were mirrored in the crackle-glass surface of the pond, the fields of rye grass turned golden by the heat and shiny by the rain. As she watched, a string of lights appeared around the edge of the water. Her father had had them sunk into the banks of the pond, one every few feet, and the first time he threw the switch he had beamed like a boy, although his skin was already loose around the neck, gray and loose. Meredith had been a child then. Lyds my love had given way to Merry darling. Lydia had watched the lights come on from an Adirondack chair, her long plaid skirts eddying around her ankles. “It looks like a carnival ride,” she’d said. “Exactly,” Lydia’s father had said. “It’s brilliant, isn’t it, Merry darling? We love it, don’t we?” He had taken the little girl out in the boat, and the two of them had rowed from light to light—or he had rowed, and pretended she was doing so, too, as she dragged the little oar he’d had made for her through the water. At each light he told her to make a wish. A pony. A pink bicycle. A spaniel puppy. “That’s too many wishes,” Lydia had called across the darkening oval at the center of the ring of lights, and her father had called back, “Ah, Lyds my love, don’t ever say that.”

  One by one over the years the lights had burned themselves out. Her father had died the year after he’d illuminated the pond. Her mother had slept her last years away in the expensive nursing home in a valley thick with wild rhododendrons ten miles from Mount Mason. “I know you,” she said when Lydia drove over to see her. “I know who you are.” The night before she died she had told the nurses she needed to leave. “I don’t belong here,” she’d said. Those were her last words, they told Lydia. The old cherry bedroom suite that had been shipped from the city apartment to the nursing home was in one of the back bedrooms now. In the narrow top drawer of the bureau she had found faded pictures of a young man she didn’t recognize, a yellow baby sweater with buttons shaped like ducks, and a slim book of poetry by Sara Teasdale. “To Ethy, Forever Yours, Eddie,” it said inside in faded ink in her father’s beautiful handwriting.

  When Sunny died, over the rise and down the hill and in the barn, she could not even bear to go through his things. The Fosters had packed up what was in his room at Blessings, and she had allowed his landlord to turn over the contents of his apartment to the Salvation Army. Jess had left her a starburst brooch and her leatherbound collection of Edith Wharton and a needlepoint bench with a floral design that she used at the piano. All around her were the possessions of the dead. The boat had floated from the center of the pond and lay at the foot of one of the willow trees, wedged into its roots so that it would be easy to get ashore in the morning. How had it happened that only it, and she, remained in this place? How had it happened that Blessings was slowly being resurrected and she with it? Charles had restored the lights around the pond without asking, and when she had first seen them lit she had felt a love for her father that she thought had been long burned out.

  She cried once, briefly, two sobs that wrenched her thin chest. Then she went upstairs and slept deeply, without dreams.

  Lydia Blessing had not seen Paul Benjamin for several years, since he had visited her in the hospital when she had her stroke, and she was surprised at how old he looked. His chest was concave so that his old rep tie, frayed at the edges, made a fishhook from chin to belt. She had always found him a useful doctor, a believer in the old remedies that she had never abandoned: camphor on the chest, tea with lemon and honey, salts and enemas, hot whiskey when absolutely necessary. At one time they had known each other well, and when, at age forty, he had married a younger woman, a nurse he met at the hospital, Lydia had from time to time invited them as dinner guests when she had people come for the weekends. One May evening, she remembered, he had had too much to drink and recited “Casey at the Bat” on the end of the diving board, then fallen into the pond. He had come up spouting water like a whale, and everyone had cheered except for his young wife, who turned red and pushed him into the car to go home, dripping wet. She had overdressed for the party and been out of sorts all night because of it.

  “Hello, Lydia,” he said as he edged himself slowly out of his car, the same sort of car she had, a Cadillac that looked as though it had been frozen in amber since the day, some years ago, when it had been manufactured. “You seem in fine fettle.”

  “I’m eighty, Paul. Which I believe makes you ninety.”

  “Ninety-one last month. I have gout. It’s a ridiculous thing. Henry the Eighth had it. No wonder he killed his wives.”

  “My father had a classmate from Princeton who had it. I was told it was because he drank so much.”

  “That’s an old wives’ tale,” Paul Benjamin said, reaching for the old black bag he’d once told her his parents gave him when he graduated from medical school. “That’s what all these doctors say about everything. Anything you like is bad for you. It’s a miracle we’ve lived this long, according to their lights. Although this young man who took over for me isn’t bad. You should have had him for this, Lydia. I haven’t looked at a baby in Lord knows how long.”

  Faith was in the living room lying on a receiving blanket on the brocade couch. Jennifer Foster bent over her while Skip sat in the wing chair in the dark corner shadowed by the awning and the porch overhang. Paul Benjamin peered down at the moon face with its fuzz of blond hair.
The baby was doing what Skip loved to watch her do, coming alive bit by bit, taking in the world by inches, curling her toes around the air, moving her fingers against one another and the side of her own face, staring at the light and moving her tongue thoughtfully between her lips, tasting the air. She blew pensively through her lips. A bubble formed, then broke, and she sneezed suddenly and went still.

  “Is this your baby, young lady?” the doctor said, narrowing his eyes.

  “Of course it isn’t her baby, Paul. Look at her. That’s the Foster girl. This child is the grandchild of an old friend of mine who’s visiting from the Vineyard. The baby is staying with her for several weeks while her daughter and son-in-law are in Europe, and they realized she needed her shots.” Mrs. Blessing was surprised at how fluently she lied, much better than she’d done it years before, when it had been so much more important, at least to her. She realized that lying was easier than telling the truth because it had such nice smooth edges, not jagged with impossibility and inconvenience the way the truth so often was. If she were to tell Paul Benjamin the truth about Faith, he would say “What?” with a deep and solemn air of disbelief. The lie went down like honey.

  “She looks healthy enough. It is a she, isn’t it. Pretty little girl but her mother will need to mind the sun. She’s as fair as a Swede. Take her clothes off, young lady.”

  All the old familiar instruments came out of the black bag, all the things that had seemed so sinister when she was a child. The pointed things for the eyes and nose. The cold and glittery stethoscope. The doctor from whom Paul Benjamin had bought his practice had let Lydia listen to her own heart once, when she was eight or nine, and she was amazed at how inexorable it sounded, like the engine of some considerable machine. Without realizing it she put her hand over her heart: still there working all these years later.

  That other doctor had been named Brown, she remembered, and her father had delighted in kidding him about a patent medicine for indigestion called Dr. Brown’s. Ed Blessing had loved that about Mount Mason: the simple country doctor, the simple country lawyer. It made no difference to him that Dr. Brown had been at Exeter and Yale; simple country was what he wanted, and it was what he was certain he had gotten.

  “A very healthy child,” said Paul Benjamin, folding his stethoscope. “I can’t imagine what you thought was the matter.”

  “Nothing’s the matter. She needed to be looked at. And the shots, too, the ones for measles and all the rest. I can’t recall exactly. The shots they all get now.”

  “German measles, too. They used to have to send the children away when mother was expecting because the German measles were terrible for the baby in womb. Horrible things we saw—deaf, blind, retarded babies that went right to the state hospital.” He nodded. “All over now, of course. I’ll need the grandmother’s signature on something. The state makes a martyr of us medical people now with all the forms and so forth.”

  “I’ll send it on,” said Mrs. Blessing. “She’s visiting friends in the city right now. I’ll be happy to sign in her stead. I have some questions she wanted answered.” Mrs. Blessing put on her glasses and took a piece of paper from the top of the piano. “When should she begin solid food?”

  “Four months or so. Will the grannie be keeping her that long?”

  “I’m not sure. What sort of food to begin?”

  “Some kind of cereal mixed with formula. Not rice. That will constipate her. How are her stools?”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake, they’re fine. How should they be? Should she be sitting up yet?”

  Dr. Benjamin put out his hands and Faith curled her fingers around his. He tugged gently and she rose into a sitting position. “Voilà,” he said.

  “Ah,” said Mrs. Blessing. She used a finger to find the next question on the list Skip had prepared. “Vitamins?”

  “Not yet. Her mother can ask for them at about a year.”

  “All right.” Mrs. Blessing looked down the list and rolled her eyes. “Overall, how does she look to you?”

  “Grand. A very nice baby, healthy and well cared for. Now, may I inoculate her so she’ll stay that way?”

  “Should I leave her clothes off?” said Jennifer softly.

  “I just need a leg free. But I’m not sure this is right, Lydia. I could pop over when her grannie’s here. I need to fill in this form with the name and so forth, date of birth, all the vitals.”

  “I’ll send it on to you.”

  Paul Benjamin sighed heavily, his bowed chest rising and falling. His hands were a mess of liver spots and they shook slightly as he filled the syringe. Lydia knew they were thinking of the same thing, the night she called him after she had found Sunny in the barn.

  “I cannot give a certificate that says ‘natural causes,’ Lydia. I cannot and I will not,” he had said.

  “Accident, then. Accidental death.”

  He had sighed then, too, she remembered, and his hands were shaking, but shaking then because of the sight of Sunny, his luminous golden hair atop the hole where his face had been, the shotgun shining atop his chest.

  Paul Benjamin pinched a roll of mottled baby fat between his thumb and forefinger and plunged the needle in. Faith had been staring vacantly at the ceiling, and for just a moment her eyes were puzzled and her brow knit. Then her face went red and she screamed, gasped and lost her breath, screamed again. Without a word Skip left his chair, lifted her off the couch half-naked, and carried her away.

  “Now, who was that boy, Lydia? Does he know what he’s doing? Young lady, give that baby a bottle now, and tell her grandmother that she may have a fever in a day or two. You take care of her until her grannie’s back. She’ll be fine. This lady here is too far along in years to be saddled with an infant.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Lydia said.

  “That is not to denigrate her. She’s the fittest specimen you’d want to see. When’s the last time you swam the pond, Lydia?”

  “Not in years.”

  “Is that pond still full of snapping turtles? It was then. What do you think she said when I would remind her of that?”

  “I can’t imagine,” Jennifer Foster said, smiling.

  “She said, ‘No snapping turtle would come near me.’ And she was right. Of course, there was that one man from someplace, Boston was it, when we were younger.”

  “That was entirely his own fault,” Mrs. Blessing said. “A mucky-bottomed pond is not designed for standing up.”

  “My predecessor took care of him,” Dr. Benjamin said, packing up his bag. “Not much he could do back then. Maybe today they’d put the toe on ice, send him along to the big medical center in Bessemer. Back then there was nothing.”

  “A snapper bit off his toe?” said Jennifer.

  “It was completely his own fault,” Mrs. Blessing said.

  “Now, here’s something that was Lydia’s fault. One day she comes home from the club and she’s in a temper because she’d lost in a doubles round.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake, Paul, this old story.”

  “You don’t like hearing that one, do you? Who were you playing with, Jessie?”

  “I always played doubles with Jess, and she always played deplorably. And laughed about it.”

  “That was a girl, Jessie. In any event, Lydia here comes home in a temper, hops out of the car, strips down, and jumps in the pond. And what do you think is waiting for her in the water by the dock when she swims back?”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake.”

  “Her Cadillac! In four feet of water! She’d been in such a temper she left the engine running and didn’t engage the parking brake. Oh, that was a pretty feat of engineering Foster had getting that car to run again. And the upholstery smelled like fish for a year.”

  “Nonsense,” Mrs. Blessing said.

  “Put that baby down for a nap after her bottle,” the doctor added. “She’ll sleep awhile after this. I didn’t truly hurt her. She was just aggravated at the pinch. But she may have a fever in a day or tw
o.” He looked at Jennifer. “You tell that young man. She may have a slight fever and some crankiness. It’s perfectly normal.”

  Mrs. Blessing walked him out to his car, taking his arm as the two of them came down the steps. “Who’s holding up who?” he said. “Or whom.”

  “Thank you, Paul. I’ll send that paper by return mail when it arrives. I’d prefer it if you didn’t mention this visit to anyone.” He shrugged and sighed and she wondered whether he believed what she had told him after all.

  “You’ve always been a terror, it’s true,” he said. “And I’m too old now to lose my license, whatever you’re up to.” They stood together at the car and he looked out over the pond to the line of cedar trees along the creek, and his big sad eyes, which had always reminded her of the eyes of one of the hunting dogs, filled slightly.

  “This is a beautiful spot, Lydia. I remember the first time I ever came out here. I was a teenaged boy and Dr. Brown brought me along for the ride. Do you remember? It almost did me out of being a doctor for good.” And suddenly she did. It was the day she and Sunny and Benny had gone along the creek on a picnic. Mrs. Foster had made them bacon sandwiches and peanut butter cookies and packed the food in a basket with a big Ball jar of lemonade. The two boys had walked across the fields swinging the basket between them, and she had walked behind. They were all wearing Wellington boots over their bare feet, and Lydia had snuck out of the house in an old pair of Sunny’s shorts. The three of them were wearing cast-off shirts with Ed Blessing’s monogram on the cuffs, shirts that had gotten shabby or stained or torn at the elbow or neck. Sunny’s hair shone in the light and the back of Benny’s neck was sunburned. They had set out lunch at a little grassy knob that sat above the creek just around the turn from a big natural pool in which brown trout sometimes darted from beneath the dark banks to the glittering center. It was funny to her that things like this were so real and so detailed, when the things done as adults were reduced to a few gestures, a laying down of the fork here, a winning hand of bridge there.