Guests on Earth: A Novel

by Lee Smith

  “Intermezzo,” I interrupted.

  “Yes,” Dr. Schwartz said, glancing at me. “An intermezzo. How can we ever expect to understand a whole life? Or to influence it in any way? How arrogant of us, really . . . This is an absurd enterprise.” Dr. Schwartz caught her breath sharply as she turned away.

  Bernard, one of the hospital workers, looked at the rolled bill that Frank had apparently slipped him, then grinned as he pocketed it again, saying, “Now that man, he somebody, ain’t he? And ain’t he got a great big car?”

  CHAPTER 11

  BY CHRISTMAS EVE, ANYONE who had anyplace else to go had already gone, including Freddy, who was driving his station wagon across the country—all those big, square, orderly states—to Indiana, where six little nieces and nephews eagerly awaited him, along with his mother and sisters and their husbands. Freddy and I had had dinner with the Overholsers and several others the night before he left—a huge roast cooked by Richard, much too rare for my own taste, though acclaimed by all the rest.

  “I guess you’d like my mother’s cooking, then,” Freddy told me. “She cooks everything all day long. If we had a big roast like this, she’d make pot roast out of it. In fact, we probably will have pot roast!” Beneath the tablecloth, his hand closed over mine. “I wish you were going with me,” he blurted out, sotto voce, in my ear.

  Amidst all the hubbub, I hoped that no one would notice, but Dr. Schwartz chose that moment to smile at me across the table, and I worried that perhaps she’d heard him after all. This bothered me on two counts. Not only was Freddy very close to breaking the rules for doctor/patient relationships, but also I knew—we all knew—that Dr. Schwartz’s marriage had just ended. This was not her choice; her husband, a therapist in private practice in Asheville, had “fallen in love with someone else,” as she’d put it delicately.

  Richard stood up, glass in hand, to offer a toast, “To Indiana and her fair-haired boy!” and everyone drank, myself included, though I never took more than a sip, instinctively wary of what might happen should I take too much. I didn’t like the tongue-in-cheek way Richard had said, “To Indiana and her fair-haired boy!” as if it were somehow a joke, as if he were almost but not quite making fun of Freddy. Richard was a bit hard to take in general, I had decided, so opinionated—though it was clear that Claudia adored him.

  Richard Overholser was the very opposite of straightforward Freddy, who stopped by the next morning to envelop me in a huge bear hug before he left. “This courtship will resume when I return!” he announced, his words floating out as white puffs in the chilly air. He looked ridiculous in that silly hat with the ear flaps. Yet tears came to my eyes as I watched him drive off on his long journey home, so far away.

  The next day was Christmas Eve. The hospital grounds looked empty and forlorn, though beautiful, as I hurried over to Highland Hall, where I would play for the traditional candlelight vespers service in the drawing room. This had always been my favorite event at Highland, though it would be different now, without Dr. Carroll’s long prayers, for he had fancied himself a preacher as well as an orator. Only the very sickest among the patients and those who had nowhere else to go, plus a skeleton staff (what a horrible expression! I realize as I write these words) remained at Highland now. The severely ill were housed as always on the top floors of the Central Building. I noticed the lights up there burning brightly—though there were lights in all the buildings, an attempt at cheer, I suppose, Christmas being an exceptionally emotional time for all.

  Though only late afternoon, it was already dark, or almost dark, that lovely gray twilight of French impressionist paintings, with the lightly falling snowflakes as dabs of white on the canvas. Pointillisme. Oddly dislocated by the snow, I felt a kinship with those painted ladies in Mrs. Fitzgerald’s cityscapes who had no ground at all beneath their dancing feet. But they didn’t seem to care. They were always gazing up, up, up, at something beyond the picture frame—what? When I looked up myself, the rushing snowflakes fell like soft, cold kisses on my face. As I crossed our beautiful campus, all the streetlights along Zillicoa Avenue came on at once, each globe casting a lovely round silver glow filled with falling flakes—for all the world as if the streetlights had been transformed into big snow globes, the sort that you turn upside down to make it snow upon the little scene within. Mrs. Carroll used to collect those, too.

  Light-headed, I had to stop and catch my breath, which made me nearly late. Everyone was already seated when I slipped into the drawing room to take my place at the spinet piano, starting off with “Deck the Halls,” for we were to keep this service upbeat, short, and “not religious,” according to Dr. Bennett, who had decked himself out in a red plaid vest with a green tie for the occasion. His wife looked like an enormous cream puff in ruffled beige lace. Phoebe Dean, large herself, could have been a Wise Man in her long purple frock, which buttoned up the front, like a robe. She led them vigorously in singing “Jingle Bells,” and then we all listened to old Mr. Pugh’s vigorous recitation of “T’was the Night Before Christmas.”

  Everyone who could come had been encouraged to do so, I believe, for all the regular chairs had been pulled forward and were now filled, as well as a number of additional folding chairs. Most people had dressed up a bit, too, as much as they were able, with varying results. Another thing about being crazy is that you are not self-conscious, but totally unaware of how you look or how you might appear to others. Old Mr. Crowninshield, sitting on the front row, wore a blue velvet smoking jacket with his red-striped pajama pants and monogrammed bedroom slippers. A more recently arrived lady was the very picture of elegance in a long pink satin evening dress that Cinderella herself might have worn to the ball. It made me sad to note that four of the men had chosen to wear their military uniform jackets—medals, too—honoring that which had harmed them so badly.

  Phoebe handed out song sheets that I had mimeographed earlier, and we started in upon “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

  As they sang lustily through the turtle doves, French hens, and calling birds, I looked around the beautiful drawing room, transformed by the glowing candles, the red poinsettias we had grown, and the greenery we had gathered in the woods. Mrs. Carroll’s collection of manger scenes covered every available surface. Some of them I remembered, such as the primitive stone Inuit group from Alaska, nestled into their own stone cave; the colorful Russian egg set; those bright tin Haitian figures; and the minimal Swedish stick people. I remembered Mrs. Carroll showing me the small painted terra-cotta set from Provence called a santon, with its various characters from village life—the scissors grinder, the fishmonger, the chestnut seller, everyday people. It had always been my favorite. They used to roast chestnuts on the street in Paris; Joey Nero and I ate them right there, out in the bitter cold, wearing our overcoats. There was also a menorah on the sideboard, and an Islamic star and crescent display.

  No doubt about it: Mrs. Carroll had broadened my world, as well as determined the course of my life. It is a complicated thing to be broadened and determined, of course—not to mention saved and abandoned! But as I sat playing the piano in that beautiful room on Christmas Eve, I was able to thank her for all of it.

  I smiled to recognize the crude little nativity made with popsicle sticks, a recent Christmas project for staff children that I had helped Miss Malone conduct in the Art Room. There sat Miss Malone and Karen Quinn now, shoulder to shoulder in the front row, Karen wearing one of those Scandinavian knit hats that made her look like she had pigtails. In fact, she could have been Miss Malone’s daughter. Mrs. Hodges was there, too, having coaxed her own reluctant-looking daughter Ruthie into bringing her over. Mrs. Hodges always said she wouldn’t miss this service for the world.

  Dr. Schwartz looked like one of the Murano glass figurines, thin and almost transparent, yet singing beautifully on the “five golden rings,” her small, perfect soprano quivering above the rest. They all sang out on “five golden rings,” holding the notes as long as they could while I ra
n arpeggios up and down the keys. Mrs. Fitzgerald, seated with the Morrises, looked the best I had seen her in years, laughing as she tried to keep up the pace on the repeated verses, which grew speedier and speedier as the “days of Christmas” progressed. I knew that Mrs. Fitzgerald was expecting another grandchild soon, to be produced by her beloved daughter Scottie Lanahan, the real “Patricia Pie-Face,” now living in New York with her husband and little son Tim.

  The Morrises had brought several young people and two small children (grandchildren?) along with them, a fact that I somehow resented—it seemed so odd for Mrs. Morris to have grown children I did not even know, for her to have an entire life away from the greenhouse, away from us. Huge Carl Renz hovered in the back of the drawing room, standing, pacing, turning his hat in his hands—he never sat down. We were all used to it. But where was Pan? I wondered. Down in his mountain lair, beneath the falling snow that must be accumulating seriously by now? Or out playing music somewhere, perhaps in an Asheville tavern? But I didn’t really know, did I? I didn’t have any idea of where he went or what his life was like, any more than I knew what the Morrises’ life was like. Or the Overholsers’. Or anybody’s, really . . . all of us a collection of snow globes.

  On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying . . . There was the pretty receptionist Sharon Green, and Dr. Pine with his flowing moustaches and his cheerful elfin wife. And he looked like Einstein, as everybody said. On we marched, through maids and pipers, though the pink lady cried out, “How many goddamn verses are there, anyhow? I’ve had about enough of this!” prompting general amusement. And finally we were done, with the last resounding major chords of “a partridge in a pear tree!” They all shouted it out, then collapsed in laughter.

  Having achieved, I imagine, the mood he’d been aiming for, Dr. Bennett was adjourning us all to the dining room when old Mr. Crowninshield, wild-haired and white-bearded, jumped up and croaked, “Sir! Sir! I beg you! at least, a prayer, a blessing—for it is Christmas, after all!” his voice breaking. It was a voice that bespoke culture, refinement, an entire life of public speaking—perhaps he was a minister himself, in his real life outside these hospital grounds.

  I thought Dr. Bennett might cut him off, but he, with a courtly gesture, said, “Please, Sir—proceed!” and bowed his head. Most bowed their heads but I did not, looking around the lovely room as the old man prayed, calling for peace in the world as in our troubled hearts, and asking God to “bless us every one.”

  I continued to play a soft little Christmas medley of my own devising as everybody headed to the dining hall for a cold meal left by the kitchen staff, who had been given this night and most of tomorrow off for the holiday. Christmas Eve supper always featured picnic fare and forbidden sweets: thick ham sandwiches, deviled eggs, potato salad, red and green jello salad, fudge, and pecan pie, with bowls of hard candy and tangerines for treats. Suddenly it crossed my mind to wonder if Flossie had had a hand in any of this—a chilling thought, for some reason, though surely she had.

  “Merry Christmas, Evalina!” Claudia called out to me. “We’re heading on home now, while we can still get home!”

  “Oh! I didn’t even realize you were here,” I called back, very surprised to see the Overholsers present, as Richard was a self-proclaimed atheist, and they were not churchgoers—unlike Freddy, a Lutheran. But the Overholsers wanted to give their daughter Ellen a religious sense, Claudia came up and whispered to me, a sense of drama and mystery, and this service was just perfect, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it perfect?

  It was.

  In fact, it had been so perfect that I couldn’t bear to leave the drawing room, even after Mrs. Hodges had said “Merry Christmas” and hugged me good-bye and the Overholsers had wrapped themselves up and left. I played “Silent Night” as the room cleared out, then “Ave Maria” once all were gone, losing myself in the rippling, emotional music, imagining Lillian Field’s voice as she might have sung it.

  “Evalina, this is beautiful, but you’d better come along and have some supper now before it’s all gone,” Mr. Pugh remarked, startling me. I don’t know how long he had been standing behind me.

  “Oh, I’m not very hungry,” I announced, to my own surprise. “I’ll just stay here a minute, if you don’t mind, and finish this piece, and then I’ll come along. Don’t worry, I’ll blow out the candles,” I assured him.

  “It’s time to go, honey,” Mr. Pugh said. “Come on, go over to the dining hall and grab a sandwich, and I’ll close up here. I always do.”

  “I just hate to leave all these little pietàs,” I said, still playing. I really didn’t mean to be obstinate, I just couldn’t stand to leave.

  “Pietàs? What do you mean, pietàs?” Mr. Pugh sat down next to me on the piano bench, and I moved over to accommodate him.

  “The santon from France,” I said, “and that painted tin one from Haiti, I remember those from when I was a child. All these little pietàs. She got them out every Christmas. “

  We both knew who “she” was.

  “Evalina,” Mr. Pugh said in what I knew to be his “instructive” tone, “You have confused your terms, my dear. These are not pietàs. They are crèches, manger scenes, nativities. “

  I was confused. “”Well, what’s a pietà, then?”

  Ever the pedant, Mr. Pugh did not hesitate. “A pietà is a depiction of the Virgin Mary cradling the body of the crucified Christ, the dead Christ. Such as Michelangelo’s famous sculpture at St. Peter’s, or Titian’s last painting, or El Greco’s famous depiction . . .” Dr. Pugh always went on longer than he needed to.

  “Robert would have known that, wouldn’t he?” I mused. “The difference between a pietà and a crèche.”

  “Yes, I expect he would.” Mr. Pugh patted my shoulder awkwardly. “And we still miss him, don’t we? I expect we always shall. ”

  “Yes.” I slid into “Silent Night” and went on playing—I could not have stopped if my life depended upon it.

  “It’s a well-known fact that the infant Jesus is frequently stolen from crèches,” Mr. Pugh went on, sounding like Robert himself. “Many of them can be purchased with two or three Jesuses, in fact, for that very reason.”

  “Jesus triplets!” I had to laugh.

  Mr. Pugh cleared his throat as if to speak again, and then did not. He stood up. “You take your time, then, Evalina,” he said. “I’ll just have a cup of coffee and another piece of that pie, and check back here later.” He squeezed my shoulder and lumbered off, an old man, a good man. I was alone in the beautiful room with the glowing candles, the poinsettias, the piney scent of evergreen, and all the little crèches, each with its baby Jesus. Or not.

  MY OWN BABY was born in the middle of one of the worst thunderstorms anybody had ever seen in New Orleans, that city of afternoon thunderstorms, an unusual September storm that produced fallen trees, flooding streets, and accidents. In fact it was only by accident, the sheerest chance, that I went back outside at all that afternoon.

  My own school day over, I had taken off my shoes and put my swollen feet up on a pillow as I rested upon my bed at Temps Perdu. My room was stuffy and humid, even with all the shutters open. Not a breath of air was moving, outside or in. I felt as if I could scarcely catch my breath, though that was the way I had been feeling for several weeks now. But of course I had forgotten to turn on the overhead fan. I had just decided to make the effort to get up and do it when Sasha, the sword-swallower’s daughter, came running in with a note written in a spidery hand I well knew. Sister Anna Louise, the sweet, small nun with the buck teeth, asked if I might return to play for the five-fifteen mass this afternoon at St. Catherine’s, the ancient little chapel connected to our school. Sister Eugenie, the organist, had been taken ill after eating a redfish. Somehow that redfish made me smile. Of course I would do it, for it was Sister Anna Louise who had interceded for me when I began to “show,” convincing the others that it would be an act of mercy to keep me
on. And certainly I needed all the money I could make. No—we needed all the money I could make.

  I was already eight months pregnant, by my own reckoning, though I had not yet visited a doctor, only Auntie Tonton, the old gris-gris lady on LeMaire Street. But I planned to take a taxicab to the charity hospital when the time came. I was determined that my baby should be born in a hospital, that all the official papers would be signed, and that she should have a birth certificate, and know when her birthday was. I already had the money saved and placed in my new petit-point overnight bag over there on the chifforobe, a gift from the fortune-teller Madame Romanetsky and her son, along with a new gown and robe and baby layette donated to me by the Sisters. More baby clothes, free from the Mercy Mission, filled the bottom drawers. She had a whole wardrobe waiting for her! So I was ready, but not ready—though the baby was dropping, I could tell. And Sasha was waiting for my answer, a narrow ribbon of a girl. I had seen her hang by her teeth from a leather strap, whirling around and around and around, with one toe pointed and the other leg bent at the knee, just so.

  I sat up and swung my legs off the bed. “Tell her I’ll be right there,” I said. I was struck by the sight of my own face in the big gilt mirror of the rather grand bathroom I shared with several other residents—my cheeks round and glowing, utterly unlike myself in those last months: happy. Everybody at Temps Perdu had taken a fancy to it—to me. They felt I brought them luck, and they were people who needed luck, they lived by luck; they were always touching my stomach, and bringing me gifts and food. I think they felt that my baby would be their baby, too. I pushed my hair back into a knot suitable for church, snapping the barrette in place, then got my shoes back on, with difficulty.

  When I opened the front door, something about the atmosphere outside gave me pause, and at the last minute I grabbed an old gray raincoat off the coat tree in the hall, a coat I had previously liberated from the “lost and found box” at school. As I left our densely shaded yard and stepped into the lane, I was struck by the light—yellow, turning the lush vegetation a sickly iridescent green. Though no breeze had yet arisen, all the plane trees along the sidewalk were rustling mysteriously, the leaves showing their silver sides, which I had never seen. It was spooky. Once I rounded the corner and entered the square, I could see that the day’s bright sun had disappeared into a hazy, sultry sky, clouded over yet glowing. People were looking up, remarking it. Trash appeared from nowhere to swirl about my feet. As I walked the two long blocks above the river, I saw that the Mississippi was gunmetal gray, swelling and agitated. I could hear water crashing against the revetments. And there was not a boat or barge to be seen—strangely, as it was not yet four in the afternoon. The boatmen knew how to watch the river; perhaps they knew something we didn’t.