by M. J. Cates
All of this rushed by as in a dream, Quentin and their friendship completely familiar and yet vastly different. Imogen felt the approaching date of his departure as a kind of doom. Neither of them mentioned it. Soon they would have to; there was only one weekend left. Quentin asked if she would like to see An Enemy of the People on Broadway. She said yes, but the next morning, just as she was leaving her building to walk the children to school, a Western Union messenger appeared on the stoop and said, “You wouldn’t by any chance be Imogen Lang?”
“I would.”
“Telegram for you.”
Imogen opened it and read, FATHER DEAD STOP. FUNERAL SUNDAY MORNING 11:30 STOP. END MESSAGE.
24
As she was living through it, Imogen’s sojourn in Chicago for her father’s funeral was the slowest, most leaden passage in her entire life. Each event, each interaction, seemed so heavy and elongated that time itself turned mucilaginous. A storm of contradictory emotions seemed to wipe from memory everything that happened so that, later, in trying to recall that gloomy weekend in late October 1928, Imogen could bring to mind only glimpses—moody impressions interspersed with the occasional murky photograph.
There was the train trip, eighteen lonely hours (the children stayed with Donna) that dragged endlessly at the time but constituted a mere flash in the remembering. Although she had made the trip more often in the past few years, a ball of dread formed in her stomach as the taxi bore her home to Emerald Street. Then her mother, arrayed in black—pale, drawn, and looking ever so much older—rose from a chair to greet her and thank her for coming, as if Imogen were a business associate not often in these parts. And Alice—tall, manly Alice sombre in charcoal velvet—a serious woman of forty-four now and, in the model of the modern businesswoman, correct and closed-mouthed, giving nothing away, inviting nothing in return. And her younger sister Caroline, erotically prim in a purple dress, drop-waisted in the flapper style, hair bobbed and clinging to her skull like a dark helmet, the severity so out of character it made Imogen smile. Her other sister, Victoria, lived in California now, and had not made the trip.
Imogen had grown up in an agnostic family where Jewish tradition was rarely mentioned, let alone observed, but her mother, aged in sorrow like a sherry in oak, had drawn closer to her heritage over the years. “It’s the tradition,” she would say, when adjusting the black drapery covering a mirror, or ordering from the florist a single—and small—floral tribute for the casket. Imogen had arrived too late to assist in the selection of a casket, but overheard her mother informing someone that it was constructed of solid plank walnut with no metal parts, “in keeping with tradition.”
When Imogen had unpacked, her mother rapped on the door and entered bearing a single black ribbon that she attached to Imogen’s left sleeve—the correct sleeve for a daughter. “You’re supposed to wear it for thirty days but I don’t expect you will,” she said. “It’s symbolic of rending the garments, as in Scripture.”
“You’ve become religious,” Imogen commented.
“Observant, dear. Not religious. Not religious per se.”
“Is it comforting?”
“Go ahead and make fun if you want. You’re above it all, I’m sure.”
“There’s actually very little I consider myself above, Mother. And why would I make fun of anything that brings you comfort?”
“You were always a cold one.”
This observation was so unjust that Imogen had no reply to it. Over the next few days she did not revise her view that the household had veered Godward, what with the rabbi coming and going and relatives she’d never heard of appearing at the door in wigs and yarmulkes. She found them alien and annoying, but was not pleased with herself for this reaction. Over her ten years in Baltimore, Imogen had all but forgotten her Jewishness, although lately she had sensed it would be no disadvantage in New York psychoanalytic circles.
In an effort to bridge the gulf between herself and Caroline she asked what she thought of all the tradition.
“I have no feelings about it whatsoever. And I don’t want any.”
“Personally, I find it alien.”
“Well, you’re an alienist, aren’t you?”
Imogen laughed. “Yes, I suppose I am.”
She felt a spark of kinship with her younger sister until she realized by the hard set of Caroline’s features that she had not intended a joke.
Her uncle Mason came by. He was older, frailer, a widower now, but still—to Imogen—the perfect example of the upright businessman, even if he did have to use a cane.
“You know,” Imogen said, “I think you may be the single kindest person I’ve ever met, but I’m very glad I don’t owe you money anymore.”
“I made money off ya,” he said. “Perfectly sound little investment.”
“Well, it meant the world to me.”
He looked around to make sure no one could hear them.
“Listen, I know you had a difficult time with your pappy. I had a difficult time with my own—terrible man, in many ways—but then they die on you and you just crash face-first into the fact that they were human after all. Just human—as in prone to make mistakes.”
“Well, yes, I—”
“Completely obvious, I know. But it tends to hit harder than you expect.”
The funeral itself was mercifully short, the coffin mercifully closed. The Psalms and Scripture readings were moving, but the eulogy, given by a white-haired gnome who had apparently worked with her father, seemed written for a man who bore no resemblance to Josiah Lang. The gnome took as his opening “Blessed is the Judge of Truth,” and went on to praise her father’s devotion to family, to justice, and to telling a good story.
That her father was devoted to his work, yes, that was true but you could say the same of many professional men; it seemed a modest claim on admiration. Then again, what could she—what could anybody—claim? When her mother told her he had died at Chicago’s Grace Hotel, Imogen had immediately thought it must have involved some illicit liaison but it was not so. Alice had also been staying at the hotel because negotiations for the teachers’ federation had stretched later and later into the nights. In the end, the intensity proved too much for her father and he died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-three.
Imogen looked around at the gathering. Perhaps thirty people. Those who were not relatives all looked to be business people. There was one young woman off to one side, dressed in a black suit with a grey silk shirt. Not a lover, she hoped, dear God, not a lover. She glanced over at her mother, who appeared too lost in grief to notice. And then she realized who it was.
After the funeral, the long ride out to Oak Woods Cemetery. The rabbi said a few words, and then one by one the women who had loved Josiah Lang, and suffered because of him, used a small spade to toss a handful of earth into the grave, the noise of it hitting the wood rattling Imogen’s nerves. When two cemetery employees had finished filling the grave, the rabbi said the Kaddish. Imogen discovered that her uncle Mason was right: anger at her father did not preclude tears. She cried copiously into her handkerchief, her mother weeping beside her.
Some confusion ensued as mourners formed a short gauntlet for the family to pass through. Imogen caught sight of the young woman again, standing diffidently at the edge of the crowd, evidently uncertain where she belonged. Yes, her expression was too sad for her to be a mere colleague, and Imogen recalled, with a cramp of sorrow and loss, the little girl who had come running out of a stranger’s house so many years ago, arms wide open, crying, “Daddy!”
She looked again, a few moments later, but the woman was gone.
Imogen remained in Chicago for another two days as her mother sat shiva but she could not stay the whole seven.
“Of course not,” her mother said. “You have more important things to do. You have your life.”
“I just have to get back to the children.”
“Perhaps you should quit your job, then. Being a mother is a full-time b
usiness.”
“Quitting my job is the last thing I should do.”
“Are you sure you gave your marriage the attention it was due? Was your husband getting everything from you that a husband needs?”
“It was never within my power to please Carl, no matter how much effort I devoted to it.”
“How could that be, my dear, with you so infinitely clever? Yes, aren’t you always telling us you are.”
“Carl doesn’t like me, that’s the truth of it. And if someone simply doesn’t like you…”
“If that person is a husband, you must adapt your personality until he does like you. Anything less is a vocation of misery.”
“Is that what you did?”
“In my case, it was not required.”
“You just naturally went along with Father’s having a second wife and second family? You didn’t have to adjust your personality so that it was free of, say, pride?”
“Pride is a useless emotion for a woman. I learned to put my own feelings aside. You can do it too, Imogen, I’m sure it’s not too late. Do it for your children’s sake. Children need a father.”
“I saw her daughter at the cemetery.”
Her mother’s weary eyes looked her up and down. “Did you. And how would you recognize her?”
“I saw her once—many years ago—by accident. I was out riding my bike and saw Father.”
“Did you.”
“She called him Daddy.”
“Did she.”
“Daddy,” Imogen repeated. “It made my blood run cold.”
“She was actually his mistress’s daughter by a previous marriage, not your father’s biological child. Her mother died eight years ago. Josiah was inconsolable.”
“That must have been painful for you.”
“Not really. He turned to me for comfort, you see. I was needed.”
“But to see him mourning the loss of another woman—that wasn’t painful for you?”
“Well, dear, I never wanted to see Josiah upset about anything, did I?” Her mother let out a deep sigh, closing her eyes a moment. When she opened them again, she said, “I loved him and honoured him, you see. It’s what one does. If you think about it in the cold light of day you’ll see that’s really all that’s required.”
* * *
—
“And now you have another ghost,” Laura said on the train back to New York. “There was a time when I was the only one.”
“That woman’s daughter is not a ghost,” Imogen said, “she’s a living person. And I have no wish to keep her in my life the way I’ve always wanted to keep you. I don’t even know her name.”
“Olivia.”
How could Laura, a figment of Imogen’s imagination, know what she herself did not? Mother must have told me, she decided, or I must have overheard it. Either that, or it’s a complete trick of my imagination. God knows, I’ve seen enough patients absolutely certain that I’ve told them something (You can be discharged on Tuesday; Your sister is under the control of Thomas Edison; Yes, I see the angels too) when in fact I have said nothing of the kind.
“Father is now ghost number two.”
“He’s been a ghost my whole life. I think perhaps he’ll be less of one now. And you’re forgetting something rather important aren’t you?”
“Quentin, you mean?”
“He’s no longer a ghost. He was never even dead.”
“No, but he was banished.”
“I have never forgotten Quentin,” Imogen replied silently, “and never will.”
“You’d better. The Sylvania departs New York in twenty minutes.”
There hadn’t been time to see him before she caught the train to Chicago. She had sent a note by messenger. It tore at her that she hadn’t found the words to put on paper that would tell him she couldn’t bear the thought of his vanishing again. Aside from imparting the news about her father, all she had said was that she wished him a wonderful time in Europe and that she hoped he would be back soon—and to please write.
“You’ll be miserable if you don’t forget him.”
“I’ve told you, I never shall.”
“So there you are—another ghost,” Laura said. “Quite a collector, really: Quentin, me, Father…”
We’re all ghost collectors, Imogen reflected. Friends, fathers, mothers, lovers—anyone dead, anyone lost to distance or a change of heart—those who affect us stay with us always, no matter where they are, and continue to nourish and frustrate us. Freud restricts himself to mothers and fathers, but really it’s everyone.
She found she had no wish to remain angry at her father; his death had released her not just from her anger but from the need to keep that anger burning. Why, she wondered, would one want to stay angry in the first place? Anger is so uncomfortable—why would one cling to it? An attempt to keep the loved one close? To obliterate the abyss opened up by whatever injury, real or imagined, they had committed?
She allowed her mind to wander over the happy times she had enjoyed with her father as a child—the times she was rendered breathless and giddy by his tossing her up in the air and catching her, the times he tickled her into paroxysms of laughter, unbearable yet ecstatic; his solemn patience while teaching her long division; his evocative reading aloud of Dickens and Carroll—Carroll in particular having become a lifelong love. He was so adept at dramatic reading that for the longest time Imogen assumed her father was a colleague of the authors and that he must see them often. She recalled her shock and disbelief, followed by resignation, on the evening when he had disabused her of this notion.
“Papa, where does Mr. Dickens live?”
“What do you mean, Imogen?”
“Where does he live? You see him, don’t you? You see him and Mr. Carroll sometimes—at night? When we’re sleeping?”
“No, my dear. Mr. Dickens and Mr. Carroll are dead—long dead. No one sees them now. They live only in their books.”
“Oh.”
“Did you imagine they were alive?”
“I thought you knew them.”
“I know their work pretty well. I admire them tremendously. I suppose that’s like knowing them.”
She recalled the tone of his voice, the bemused look on his face—the look, she recognized now, of a parent who knows he has disillusioned his child in some way he can do nothing about.
If only that had been the limit of her disappointment in him—but no, she refused to dwell on that now, with the hills of Pennsylvania soaking in a grey autumn rain. She chose to recall instead a day at the beach—one of many, since her father was fond of swimming—Papa in his striped bathers tossing Imogen and her younger sisters around in the chilly waves of Lake Michigan. She remembered his teeth gleaming white in the blackness of his beard, the dark curls gemmed with droplets. Perhaps if Imogen had never ridden her bicycle so far from home, if she had never learned what she learned, the good times might never have stopped.
* * *
—
When she got home again the Tenth Street apartment was dark and stale and horribly quiet. She opened some windows and put the radio on softly. Smells of autumn rain and leaves wafted into the front room as she sank into an armchair. She got up again and went to the kitchen where she dialed Donna Artemis.
“Oh, you answered. I was afraid you’d be with a patient.”
“I will be in two minutes. How’d it go with the funeral?”
“It was all right. I really just wanted to thank you for looking after the kids.”
“Oh, you’re welcome. We had fun—but they are really, really looking forward to seeing Mummy again. They’re expecting you to pick them up at school.”
“I will—I missed them.”
“And your famous friend—has he departed for England and—France did you say?”
“His ship put out this morning. I marked the occasion by staring out the train window at the rain.”
“This is a hard one, darling. Two, I should say. Two major losses. You mak
e sure you go easy on yourself over the next few weeks.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“I know you will. I’m just saying prepare yourself for sudden onslaughts of emotion. And you might want to consider a bromide, or even chloral, if you have trouble sleeping.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Listen, it’s exactly smart people like you who underestimate what the death of a parent may stir up—especially a parent who caused them grief. Am I annoying you? I’m annoying you.”
“Actually it’s good to know someone cares.”
“I have to go, sweetheart. Let’s have tea one day this week.”
“I’d like that.”
School would not be out for another couple of hours. She went into her bedroom and unpacked and changed out of her travel clothes. She went into the bathroom and had a thorough wash to vanquish the smell and feel of the train. Through all these things she was thinking of Quentin. Imogen had no real sense of how fast an ocean liner might travel, never having been on one. She pictured him standing by the rail looking out at the sea, which, judging by New York weather, would be grey and choppy. Would he still have a view of North America? Halifax? St. John’s? In her mind’s eye she saw elegant young women eyeing him, sidling into his range of notice, even without knowing he was Jeremy West; he was just too adorable to ignore. “Ache” wasn’t quite the word for the pain in her heart, and she recognized it for the kind of pain that doesn’t fade, a pain entwined with thorns of anxiety and jealousy as well as loss.
“Quentin,” she said, and sat down heavily on the bed. “Quentin.” Feeling the onset of tears she stood up and said, “No.”
It would have been easier if she were at work—interviewing juveniles, writing reports. But school would be out soon; there wasn’t enough time to make a journey to the courthouse. She had completed her outstanding reports on the train; they only needed to be typed up. Her next appointment with her single, obnoxious patient wasn’t until the next day. There was nothing to do.