by Jane Langton
23
Patrick’s exhausted mother made her way to her child’s grave and stretched out beside it, pillowing her right cheek on the soft green moss, remembering what had been done to her. The chubby face of her lost child never left her consciousness. The passage of time had not blurred the memory of his cunning face, his bright eyes and yellow curls.
And he had been so bright, so quick. Oh, yes, he had been a handful—how he had screamed when he didn’t get his way! But how could she have refused such a darling, such a clever little boy, the precious child for whom she had waited so long, for whom she had suffered one miscarriage after another and been crushed by the keenest disappointment so many, many times? Until at last, thank God, little Patrick had been born into the world alive and well. He had laughed as soon as he saw the light! He had been talking in sentences at eleven months and at thirteen months he had been reading his little books.
But then that pitiful little hobgoblin had murdered him. She had destroyed the precious child who might have been the hope of the world.
Had they arrested her, had they tried her for murder and imprisoned her for the rest of her life? They had not. And then Edward, foolish, sentimental Edward, had insisted on taking her in.
It was because the brat had lost her parents the next day. Edward’s sister and brother-in-law had been killed the very next day in a spectacular aircraft disaster. The controversial investigation had been in the news for months. Three-hundred-and-sixty-two people had perished in a flaming plunge into the Atlantic.
“The poor kid,” Edward had said. “She’s so bereft. Why can’t she take Patrick’s place?”
As if a gawky teenage girl in the ghastliest stages of adolescence could ever take the place of her angel child! But then it had occurred to her that she could punish the girl in a thousand little ways, and she had agreed.
And vengeance was what she wanted. She had made a heartfelt vow—the little bitch would never have a child of her own.
Oh, but it was cold, it was suddenly so cold. Wrenching herself up from her mossy bed, Patrick’s mother struggled to her feet. For a moment she scrabbled in her pocketbook, then hurried away down the hill, limping and staggering at first, then walking easily along Linden Path.
That staircase is a rather sad, pessimistic subject, as well as being very profound and absurd.… Yes, yes, we climb up and up, we imagine we are ascending … and where does it get us?… How absurd it all is.…
M. C. Escher
24
The baby’s grave, when they found it at last, was one of a huddle of monuments enclosed within a granite curb. In the middle of the plot an angel stood on tiptoe above a tall stone inscribed with the word FELL.
“Here he is,” said Homer. “Look, Patrick Fell in person.”
They stood at the back of the plot looking down at the familiar little headstone—
PATRICK
1990–1991
There was a sound of purring engines. Beyond the trees a funeral procession moved slowly down Beech Avenue.
Homer shook his head in disapproval. “Why don’t they throw people’s ashes to the four winds?” He waved his hand at a row of gravestones marking the resting places of various members of the Story family. “Outworn tribal custom, cluttering up the landscape with a bunch of bones. All those people had their turn in the sun. Why clutter up the earth under our feet?”
Leonard said nothing. Mesmerized, he watched the last car disappear in the direction of the great Egyptian gate.
The hum of engines faded. The procession was gone. But then, to Leonard’s amazement, another took its place.
This time it wasn’t cars, it was people. They were approaching. A black-veiled woman tramped sternly in the lead, followed by four men carrying on their shoulders a small casket. The men too were all in black. Their heads were bowed, they made no sound.
“Look,” whispered Leonard, touching Homer’s arm.
“Ouch,” said Homer, tripping over something. He had been walking around Patrick’s little headstone, hoping to find an inscription on the back. Staggering, he looked down. “Hey, there’s something on the ground back here in this bush.”
Leonard was not listening. The walking procession had passed so close to him that the woman’s veil floated out and brushed his sleeve. Now she was climbing the steep slope behind the family plot, moving upward between the row of Storys and a steepled monument marking the grave of Nathan Appleton.
The pallbearers were climbing too, shouldering their burden. The procession mounted the steep little hill, climbing easily and silently, and disappeared among the trees.
“It’s a metal box,” said Homer. He stooped and picked it up. “Christ, there’s a letter inside.”
Leonard blinked. “A letter?”
They sat together on the granite curb and looked at the envelope. It was addressed to Patrick.
Homer slipped out the letter, but Leonard was distracted. The strange little procession was coming back, descending the hill as easily as they had climbed it only a moment before. Had they lost their way?
Homer read the letter aloud—
Darling boy,
It’s your twelfth birthday! I’m so proud of you! To be doing so well in school, and to be a hero on the soccer field as well! Your grandfather would be proud of you too!He’d say you’re a chip off the old block. You’re perpetuating the family name with distinction!
Your loving Mother
Homer looked at Leonard and said, “Sick, really sick.”
“Right,” said Leonard.
Homer folded the letter and put it back in the envelope. “Listen, Leonard, I’ve got the rest of the afternoon free. How about we take the Red Line and the Green Line to the Boston Public Library? Nothing to it. Then we could look up the kid’s obituary. How about it? We might learn something useful.”
“Well, okay,” mumbled Leonard, but his attention was wandering. The soundless parade of mourners had come back. The veiled woman was leading her little band up the hill for the second time.
They were ascending and descending and ascending again, going around and around without end, like the little men on Escher’s impossible staircase.
25
The noon hour was the best time to be alone with Barbara in the Aberdeen Street Nursing Home, because her roommate would not be there. Jenny always took her meals in the dining room.
Jenny was a whimsical old woman, amusing, affectionate and troublesome because she kept pushing open the outside door and setting off the alarm. Whenever Mary came to see Barbara, Jenny hugged her and patted her face and said, “You don’t like me, do you?” And then Mary would hug her back and say, “Yes, I do,” because it was true.
But today Mary had been caught in a faculty meeting until midafternoon. In the nursing home she found Barbara’s wheelchair parked among the rest across from the nurses’ station.
Mary had brought along her book of Escher prints.
“Oh, yes,” said Barbara, turning the pages. “I remember this one, the tower of Babel.”
Mary pointed to the little workmen at the top of the tower, gesturing and waving their arms. “Did you read what he said about it? They can’t build it any higher because they’re all talking different kinds of babble. They can’t understand each other any more.”
At once they both thought of the senile residents of the nursing home, men and women whose speech had been reduced to meaningless confusion.
Mary glanced at Jenny and Wilma. The two old ladies were sitting quietly in their wheelchairs gazing into space. They had been cast away, each on her own desert island, no ship on the horizon, no white sail, no band of sailors running up the beach to carry them back to active life.
Barbara turned the page.
As usual a few people were visiting their relatives. Shirley had a visitor, and so did Henrv. Fortunately none of the visitors had brought babies. There were no distressing scenes. At least not until Mary was about to leave.
Then, as she to
ld Homer afterwards, all hell broke loose.
There was a terrible noise, a shriek followed by a racket of thumping crashes like elephants falling downstairs.
It was not elephants, it was poor old Edward. He burst headlong through the door at the bottom of the stairs, his legs entangled in his wheelchair as it rattled across the floor on its side, bouncing and scraping, shoving him forward, smashing his head against the wall.
Mary jumped up. A chambermaid dropped her vacuum cleaner. Dorothy ran around the counter.
The crashing had stopped but not the noise. Edward’s niece came clattering down the stairs. Screaming, she stumbled across the floor, bent over her uncle and shrieked, “He’s dead, isn’t he? He’s dead!”
“What happened?” cried Dorothy, dropping to her knees. “What on earth happened?”
“I had my back turned,” gasped Edward’s niece. “Just for a second, because I was pushing the elevator button. Oh, my God.” She stared at her uncle’s open mouth and staring eyes. “Is he dead?”
Dorothy sat back on her knees. Her face was grim. “You mean he got through that heavy door to the stairway all by himself?”
“He must have,” whimpered the niece. “When I turned around, he was through the door and heading for the stairs. I couldn’t get to him in time.” She covered her face with her hands. “I couldn’t stop him.” Her shoulders shook with sobs. “I just couldn’t stop him.”
Dorothy jumped to her feet and ran to call the resident doctor. The chambermaid backed away. The old women lined up along the wall were waving their arms and crying. Barbara sat with bowed head. Mary took her hand.
Edward’s niece was still sniffling and talking to herself, but above her boohooing they could hear the urgency in Dorothy’s voice as she spoke into the phone. “No, not that Edward, Doctor Quince. You remember our Edward, here in Unit Three, the old man who—yes, that’s the one. Edward Fell.”
Mary kissed Barbara and said goodbye, then joined the other departing visitors, who were all in a state of shock. Together they walked out of the Aberdeen Street Nursing Home, leaving it to recover from the latest of its endless sorrows.
26
It was easy enough to find the obituary for Patrick Fell. Easy, that is, for Leonard, who was an old pro with electronic equipment. Homer was all thumbs. Leonard sat at a terminal in the spacious grandeur of Philip Johnson’s enormous addition to the Boston Public Library, trying to call up the index to the Boston Globe for the year 1991.
“My God,” said Homer, looking around. “There used to be a room full of wooden file cabinets in this library, row upon row. Dozens of them. Hundreds of file drawers. Millions and billions of file cards. Oh, well, what the hell, it’s like this at Harvard too. That marvelous old catalog room in Widener, remember? With its high ceiling and marble columns and all those old wooden file cabinets?”
“No,” said Leonard. “I don’t remember.”
He didn’t remember? Leonard was too young to remember? At once Homer was aware of his own superannuation. Involuntarily he put up one arm to ward off the looming shove of a future that was cramming everything into the funnel of the past, thrusting into a narrow hole all the years when he had been one of the lords of creation—well, not exactly one of the tiptop lords, but maybe one of the lesser ones—well, no, not even a lesser lord but at least a hanger-on—in that happy time when the entire world had not been choked with plump young faces, healthy and pink, with clever bright eyes that knew him not.
Homer stared angrily at the shifting images on the monitor and shrugged. Well, after all, how could those kids possibly know an old feller named Homer Kelly? He could feel himself becoming invisible. Before long he would disappear completely. “Sad,” he said, shaking his head, profoundly depressed. His self-esteem, that fragile urn in the front hall of his being, was beginning to crack.
“Okay, here we are,” said Leonard, hunched over the keyboard. “Look at this.”
Pulling himself together, Homer leaned over Leonard’s shoulder. The obituary was brief—
PATRICK O. FELL
ACCIDENT VICTIM
Patrick Fell, 18 months old, was killed by a hit-and-run driver Monday evening after wandering into the street from an open door. Reportedly, the baby had been left alone by his cousin, who was babysitting.
Patrick was the only child of Mr. and Mr. Edward Fell of Cambridge. The funeral will be private.
Leonard printed it out, Homer pulled up a chair and they looked at it together.
“Hmmmm,” said Homer, “it reminds me of that grisly video-cassette.”
Leonard nodded solemnly, and whispered, “It’s another accusation—left alone by his cousin. You don’t see that kind of thing in obituaries usually, do you? I mean, isn’t it mostly just the bare facts?”
“And only child of—it underscores the accusation. I feel sorry for the babysitter. The poor kid was probably scarred for life.”
Together they took the Green Line back to Park Street and then the Red Line to Harvard Square. During the tiresome double journey, Leonard sat hunched and silent, saying little in response to Homer’s impulsive bursts of conversation. When the train stopped at Harvard Square, they said goodbye and Homer watched Leonard shuffle out of the car onto the platform. Before the doors closed Homer jumped up and shouted, “Hey, Leonard, are you all right?”
Leonard looked back in surprise and nodded, and Homer had to jump back in a hurry to avoid the closing slap of the doors.
Slowly climbing the stairs to Church Street, clinging to the railing, Leonard thought about little Patrick Fell, who was coiled in the dark depths of the spiral, the remotest cave in the mirror. Surely the child was the key to everything.
27
When Homer rolled his car carefully down the steep descent beside the river, Mary was there ahead of him, just back from the harrowing scene in the nursing home. Homer waited behind the wheel while she swooped her car around, zoomed into reverse, and parked at the edge of the woods. Then Homer swooped around too and parked beside her.
They popped out simultaneously. Each was full of news. Their revelations meshed.
They were both exhausted. “I need this,” said Homer, snatching a bottle of wine from the pantry. They sat down with brimming glasses, and Mary gaped at Homer’s printout of the 1991 obituary for little Patrick Fell.
“Oh, my God, Homer, the father’s name was Edward Fell?” She batted the printout and looked up in agitation. “Could he possibly be the same Edward Fell?”
“What do you mean, the same Edward Fell?”
“The one in Barbara’s nursing home. Remember, I told you about that senile old man and his niece? Homer, I’ll bet it’s the same Edward Fell. He made that awful scene when somebody brought in a baby, I told you about that, remember? Well, today his wheelchair fell down the stairs and he was killed. I saw it. I was there.”
Homer couldn’t believe it. “Patrick’s father? You mean he was in the same nursing home with Barbara? You saw what?”
“Oh, it was god-awful. Homer, I think his niece pushed the wheelchair down the stairs. I think she killed him on purpose.”
“Oh, come on.”
“No, really. It’s what she said. She claimed he got away from her when she was taking him to the elevator on the second floor. But Dorothy—she’s the head nurse—she didn’t see how he could have opened the heavy door by himself. There’s a door between the elevator and the stairs. Edward would have had to pull it inward first, then hold it open while he maneuvered the wheelchair through—pretty hard for a weak old man.”
“So she might have pushed him down the stairs? His niece, you say? She was the one who pushed him?”
It dawned on them both simultaneously. “The cousin,” said Mary, “she must be the cousin.”
“Right.” Homer slapped the table. “Edward Fell’s niece was Patrick Fell’s cousin. She must be the babysitter who left him alone.”
“And now maybe she’s killed again,” said Mary. “And maybe it w
as on purpose this time, not an accident. Maybe she was tired of carrying around the guilt for the death of her baby cousin, twelve years ago, and now she was alarmed by the way the baby’s senile old father was blabbing about it, making scenes about babies. I told you about that, Homer, the way he yelled at her about babies. Maybe she wasn’t just embarrassed, maybe she was afraid the whole miserable story would come out again.”
“Aren’t you making a good many leaps in the dark?” said Homer, who had been known to make a few crazy leaps in the dark himself. “If the man called Edward Fell in the nursing home was old and senile, how could he have been the father of a baby only twelve years ago?”
“Oh, I know, I said he was old and senile, but it depends on what you call old. Barbara knows the histories of some of the people in the nursing home—Jenny and Bob, Wilma and Shirley. She told me Edward was sixty-eight. So twelve years ago he would have been only fifty-six. That’s not too old to become the father of a baby, as long as his wife was still capable of conceiving. Barbara said his dementia was the result of a stroke in his middle sixties. And, listen, Homer, there’s something else.” Mary jumped up, knocking over her empty wine glass. “Oh, hell, wait a minute.”
Homer got down on his knees and helped her pick up the pieces. “You know, Mary dear, you’re showing your age. Nobody says oh hell any more. Ask the kids in your classes. You know what they say.”
“Oh, I know perfectly well what they say.” A shard of glass stabbed Mary’s thumb. “They say shit. Oh, Homer, I can’t say shit. To me oh hell is perfectly adequate. It means total frustration and fury and despair. Ouch.” She sucked her thumb.
“Well, I’m rather fond of it myself,” said Homer. “Hold still. I’ll get the antiseptic.” He disappeared into the bathroom and came back. “Damn is nice too in its adorable gentle way.” He sprayed Mary’s thumb and struggled with a Band Aid. “And sometimes, of course, goddamn it to hell has a sweetly old-fashioned ring.”