by Lamb, Wally
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve;
To thee do we send up our sighs,
Mourning and weeping in this valley of tears . . .
Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God,
That we may be worthy of the promises of Christ.
Wait. What’s Jesus got to do with it? I’m praying to Gaia.
I work all night on the disturbing and evocative piece that, by week’s end, will become The Titan Brides of Gaia, the largest and most ambitious assemblage I have ever made. The day after it’s finished, Viveca will return from Greece, come up the stairs to my studio, and stand at the entrance, staring in at it. At first, I’ll not be able to read her face as she looks at the wedding dresses, stiff with starch and bloody from battle because I’ve turned them into art. Is she angry? Sad? But then she will walk toward me, in tears, and take me in her arms the way Winona Wignall did the day of my miscarriage. The way my mother used to. Viveca will pronounce this latest creation of mine “stunning,” “sensational,” “a tour de force.” Three weeks later, there will be a feverish auction among art patrons, and The Titan Brides of Gaia will sell for a hundred and seventeen thousand dollars, the highest price anyone has ever paid for one of my works. A venture capitalist will be outbid by some new singer named Lady Gaga who Marissa says she loves and dances to at the gay clubs she and her friends frequent. Viveca will invite Lady Gaga to our wedding, but she’ll send her regrets, much to Marissa’s disappointment.
But all that will happen in the days to come. Right now, exhausted and spent after having been up all night—having seen in my head and begun creating The Titan Brides of Gaia—I stumble out of my studio, down the stairs, and through the streets toward our building on Elizabeth Street. It’s early morning, a weekday not a weekend, and so Rocco is on duty at the front door and Hector is probably arriving at the 9/11 site for his day’s work there. Minnie must be en route to our apartment—on a bus or a ferry or a subway train. Hopefully, her babysitter has gotten himself out of bed and is helping Africa get ready for school. It’s a lovely late summer morning. The sky is blue, the air is crisp and dry. Mykonos is better than this?
Inside the apartment, I open four of Viveca’s expensive bottles of red, then grab the kitchen funnel and, one by one, pour each bottle into Minnie’s jug. I’d hate to have her realize I know her secret, and that I drank her wine.
Later that sunny morning, too agitated, still, to sleep but too exhausted to return to the studio, I decide to take one of my scavenging walks. I’m on Delancey when she passes me at a brisk pace, going the opposite way, a study in self-satisfaction. It’s her, all right: that Dr. Nancy woman from the Today show. Without really knowing why, I pivot and start following her. A few blocks later, she stops and reaches for the door handle of a Starbucks. At first I only feel like saying it, but then I do say it. Shout it, in fact. It’s as surprising and sudden as when I threw that wine at Viveca’s dress. “Hey, Dr. Nancy!”
She stops, turns to see who’s calling her. When she notices me, she smiles a patient smile in the name of fan recognition. Then she starts into that Starbucks. “You know what goes good with one of those overpriced chai lattés you’re probably going in to buy?” I yell. “A cigarette, that’s what! Live a little! Light up!” The smile drops off her face.
It’s a beautiful, blissful day. My two canvas bags are brimming with people’s sidewalk discards: faded yellow silk roses, a Pee-wee Herman doll that talks, a painting of Saint Martin de Porres with purple sequins glued to the frame, a dented bicycle fender, a skein of yellow yarn. My new finds have reenergized me, and those four bloodied brides—Gaia’s daughters, their dresses stiff with starch—are waiting for me. I turn and hurry toward my studio, walking as fast as I can. But that’s not fast enough. I break into a run.
Part II
Mercy
Chapter Ten
Ruth Fletcher
March 12, 1963
We buried my husband, Claude, today, finally. Me and Belinda Jean. His emphysema took him nine days ago, but the wake and funeral had to be put off because of the flood. McPadden’s Funeral Parlor was in the water’s path.
I cried when Mr. McPadden called to say they had to postpone things. The flood water had rose up to the windshield of his hearse, he said. He went on about sparkplugs and distributor caps, but car talk is Greek to me. He also said the wool rugs in the two rooms where they wake the dead got soaked and probably would take their sweet time drying out, even outside on the lawn in the warm sun. The weather’s been so strange lately. For three days, it rained like the dickens—a cold rain it was, just this side of snow. But the day after the dam broke, it got sunny and warm and it’s been that way since. Too warm, if you ask me. Seventy-seven degrees in the middle of March? The TV said yesterday’s temperature broke some record.
Claude’s wake was last night, from seven to nine o’clock. Sixteen people showed up to pay their respects, not counting Belinda Jean and me. I know because when we were the only ones left, I counted the names in the signing book. Claude’s sister Verna come over from Rockville, which I appreciated because she’s wheelchair-bound from her diabetes. Her daughter Carol brought her. My second cousin Wanda Brautigan came, too—her and her husband, Clifford. And a few of the men Claude worked with at the icehouse. Not that foreman, though; there was never any love lost between Claude and him. Oh, and our neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Skloot: they came. I thought it was kind of them to pay their respects, especially since Claude had made that big stink about Mr. Skloot letting those colored brothers, the Joneses, live out back on his property. I never liked it that Claude was a member of the Connecticut Ku Klux, and that he was a part of the window-smashing that night out back on the Skloots’ property. My feeling when it comes to the coloreds is: if they don’t bother me, I won’t bother them. That’s not to say that I approve of whites and coloreds marrying each other, which was what Claude and the others were so hot under the collar about: when Rufus Jones, the older brother, was living with that white wife of his from Germany or wherever she came from and drove her all around town in his flashy convertible. Gerta van Hofwegen: that name sounds fancy, but she was cheap goods. Still is, I guess. She was in the arrest report a few months back on a morals charge—something about performing immoral acts on the men at Electric Boat during their lunch break. Well, that’s what she gets for marrying out of her race, I suppose. Her husband come to a bad end, too, of course. Got hit by the flood water and drowned in the river behind the movie theater. Divine justice, I guess. I don’t think the Good Lord ever intended for coloreds to mix with whites, because if He did, why would He make us so different? Our noses and hair and such, and the fact that Negroes rut like animals from being oversexed? Back when I was twelve years old and bled for the first time, my mama, with her shy ways, couldn’t bring herself to explain the birds and the bees to me, so she had her sister Bitty take me aside and explain the particulars. And that was the first thing Aunt Bitty told me: now that I had reached womanhood, I wasn’t to look a colored man or a colored boy in the eye because if I did, it would stoke their fire and I’d get raped. When she told me what rape was, it was all I could do not to put my hands over my ears and run from the room. Then she told me about what husbands did to their wives in private, which was how babies got made, and that for some women this felt natural and pleasurable and for other women it was something they had to do out of duty. I asked her what the difference was between that and rape, and she said the difference was that the one was natural and decent, the way God designed things so that His people would populate the earth, and the other was unnatural and indecent. . . . I don’t call them niggers anymore, like I used to; I’ve made an effort to stop doing that after I learned that it was disrespectful and ungodly to use that word. And I don’t contend, like some do, that them and us are two different species, or that we have souls and they don’t. We can interbreed, I know that, but I don’t believe it’s what the Good Lord ever intended. We’re different is all I’m sa
ying, the coloreds and us. Maybe that’s why Rufus Jones drowned that night. The Good Lord works in mysterious ways, so maybe it was divine justice.
But jeepers, that flood was a terrible thing—seven lives lost and half the downtown stores ruined. All the next day, there were helicopters flying overhead, and Walter Cronkite talked about Three Rivers on the news that night. Governor Dempsey traveled over from Hartford to look at the damage and talk to the families. I thought that was a merciful thing for him to do. I didn’t vote for him last election because he’s a Catholic and a Democrat. We got one of them living in the White House, and one’s enough for me, whether what they say is true or not: that if it come down to it, a Catholic would be loyal to the pope in Rome rather than to the Constitution. But I did appreciate the effort the governor made. They closed the high school for three days in a row so that the students could go downtown and help with the cleanup. The radio’s been saying those boys should all make sure their shots are in order, though, because the water might have bacteria in it. I’m not sure what the danger is. Typhoid, maybe.
Two of the flood victims were waked at McPadden’s last night, same as Claude. It was that young mother and her baby. Claude’s coffin was laid out in the smaller room, theirs in the bigger one across the hall. Belinda Jean and I got to calling hours early, and when I looked in the other room and saw that baby’s casket next to her mother’s, it nearly broke my heart. Myrna O’Day, the woman’s name was, but the paper said everyone called her Sunny because she had a sunny disposition. The baby’s name was Grace. They found that poor doomed child’s body tangled up in a tree that got knocked over. And this was a strange thing: they found the mother floating in the basement of McPadden’s of all places, where Claude’s corpse was waiting to be waked and buried. It said in the paper that the printing company down the street from McPadden’s had a lot of flood damage, too, and that the water was so powerful, it moved two heavy printing presses from one side of the floor to the other. I suspect Claude got moved around some, too. I could see it in my mind: his coffin floating around down there like a boat with him in it. I didn’t ask if that was the case, though, and Mr. McPadden didn’t say. But at least Claude was in his coffin, or so I choose to believe.
The paper said that, after the dam broke and all the water in Wequonnoc Pond went racing toward the downtown, the ice on top of the pond cracked and broke into big chunks that traveled along with the rushing water. It’s been a cold winter and the paper said those blocks of ice were a foot thick and as long and wide as cars, some of them. That’s what caused a lot of the damage in town, I guess: all that ice smashing into things, storefronts and such. I read that one of those ice chunks stove in the double doors at McPadden’s where they bring the bodies in. What I figure is that the water must have carried poor Sunny O’Day through those open doors, and that’s why they found her in McPadden’s basement. It’s hard to understand a peculiarity like that—a drowned woman coming to rest inside a funeral parlor. It’s like Reverend Frickee always says: The Good Lord moves in strange and mysterious ways that aren’t ours to understand.
Sunny O’Day: it just don’t seem like a name you’d associate with tragedy. Her surviving children had their picture on the front page of the newspaper the day after it happened. Those two, plus a nephew who lives with the family. The photo was taken at the hospital after they got rescued from that tree they were in and had to be examined by the doctor. The boys—the son and the nephew—looked gloomy, and the little girl looked like she was in a daze. That poor child: five or six years old and now she’s got to grow up without a mother to guide her. That would have been Belinda Jean’s fate, too, if Claude hadn’t married me soon after his first wife died. He never said as much, but I know that was why Claude asked me for my hand: not because he loved me and couldn’t live without me, but so that I could mother Belinda Jean. I’ve done right by her, too; that’s not pride, it’s fact. I was thinking about something on the ride to the cemetery this morning: that Claude was a widower when he married me, and now I’m his widow.
Those wool rugs at McPadden’s last night weren’t what you’d call wet, but they were still damp. At one point during Claude’s wake, when nobody new was showing up, I slipped off my shoes and felt the moisture on the bottoms of my stockings. They had a bit of a smell about them, too, and wet wool’s not the pleasantest of odors. But I suppose that couldn’t be helped. Maybe if I’d bought both the spray of carnations and the casket blanket like the florist wanted me to, the smell of the flowers might have cut down on the smell of the wet wool. Carnations have such a nice fragrance to them. Sometimes on my birthday, Claude would give me a few extra dollars so that I could go downtown and buy myself a present. I’d almost always buy carnations and that pretty smell would fill up the house. He’d come home from work, bend and smell them, and say, “Mm-mmm. These sure stink pretty. Happy birthday, Ruthie Pie.”
They’re Catholics, I guess, the O’Days. A priest come by and said a rosary with everyone. I could hear them all murmuring their Hail Marys across the hall. I recognized the priest. It was that Father Fontanella who was over at the collapsed mill the night of the flood, helping the firemen dig for survivors. Four people got buried alive in the wreckage, and the radio said a fifth is hanging on by a thread. Paper said that if the mill had given way during the day, twenty people or more could have lost their lives, but the night crew’s smaller. Thank the Lord for that. . . . The O’Days’ side had a line of people paying their respects that went all the way down the hall and out the door. Hundreds of mourners, it looked like, when I got up to use the restroom. Compared to that, the number that came to Claude’s wake was puny, but it’s like I told Belinda Jean: the circumstances were so different. Sunny O’Day died unexpectedly, still in her twenties, and the flood took one of her children, too. Claude died from his emphysema, and truth be told, nobody ever said he had a sunny disposition. But he had his good points, too. He wasn’t a drinking man or a womanizer; I thank my lucky stars for that. Our bedroom’s so quiet now. Too quiet. It’s odd; I never in a thousand years would have figured I’d miss the sound of his wheezing in the next bed over. Two packs a day: that was what claimed him is what the doctor told me. Sunny drowned and Claude smoked himself to death.
It said in the paper that Sunny O’Day’s husband is a U.S. Navy veteran and a barber. And it wasn’t till the middle of yesterday that I put two and two together and realized he was the same barber who cuts hair at the place Claude goes to. Used to go to, I mean. It’s on Franklin Avenue: the Shamrock Barbershop on one side of the building and Cirillo’s Grinders on the other. It’s the uncle who owns the barbershop, but Claude was always talking about how that nephew who had the second chair was such a cutup. How he kept all the customers entertained while they were waiting for their haircuts. He’d be sweeping hair off the floor, Claude said, and then, in the middle of it, turn up the radio and start dancing with the broom. Claude said the uncle and him each have a sign above their mirror. The uncle’s says HEAD BARBER and the nephew’s says HEAD SCREWBALL. They keep a mynah bird in the shop, Claude told me, and the nephew trained it so that, after he says “Shave and a haircut,” the bird will say “Two bits.” On the Saturdays that Claude went down there to the Shamrock, he’d come back with his hair all neat and trimmed and smelling good, and he’d have bought himself a meatball grinder for his lunch. He’d sit there at our kitchen table, eating his grinder and telling me what crazy thing the nephew did or said that day. Claude wasn’t usually partial to those show-offy types that call attention to themselves, but he sure got a kick out of that guy.
Charles “Chick” O’Day. Chick and Sunny. He’s so young to be a widower, that poor man. Twenty-nine, the newspaper said. I got a glimpse of him last night at the funeral home. The poor fellow looked like he’d gotten the wind knocked out of him, which I guess he has. He’d best find some nice girl to marry so those kids can have a mother. And maybe he can send the nephew back to where he come from. He looked like trouble to me
with that Elvis Presley haircomb and the Elvis Presley sneer to go with it. Back when I worked in the high school cafeteria, I could always pick out the troublemakers when they come through the line—the ones who’d try and swipe an extra pudding or apple goodie. Hide it under their napkin or some such. I’m not saying I caught all of them, but I caught a fair amount. I had an eye for spotting the troublemakers. . . .
The other boy—the son—looked like a nice young man, though: dark suit, shirt and tie, his hair in a crew cut like his father. But the child I keep picturing in my mind today is the little girl, the way I seen her at the wake last night. While they were saying the rosary over there, she come wandering across the hall to our room, looking so lost and sad, her eyes moving back and forth between Claude’s open casket and us. But then Belinda Jean smiled at her and gave her a wave and she gave Belinda a wave right back. “I got peppermint candies in my pocketbook,” I said. “Would you like one?” She nodded and started walking toward us. But then that cousin come in and said, kind of cross like, “What are you doing over here? Get back where you belong.”
I told him I was just about to give her a peppermint. Could she have one? “Maybe later,” he said. He come over to me and held out his hand. I dropped three peppermints onto it, one for her, one for her brother in the other room, and one for him.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?” I asked the little girl.
He answered for her. “Her name’s Annie.”
“Well, that’s a pretty name. And what’s yours?”
“Kent,” he said. He closed his hand tight around the candy and pointed his chin over at Claude. “Who’s in the box?”
“My late husband,” I said. I touched Belinda Jean’s arm. “Her father.”
“Oh,” was all he said. He took the little one’s hand in his.
“My daughter and I are very sorry for your losses, Kent,” I told him. I turned to the little one and smiled. “And you, too, Annie.” I reached out to touch my hand to her cheek, to comfort her a little, but he yanked her away from me. Then he walked her out of the room, with her looking back over her shoulder at us. I don’t know. I could be wrong. I hope I am. But to me, that Kent seems like trouble.