I fainted, and your grandfather ran for John Sterne, the new doctor in town, to come tend me. In the days after that, he came around often to see that I and you were well. Even after you were born, he kept coming around, and his kindness lingered with me so much that when he asked me if he could be a father to you, I told him I was about to ask him the same question.
“In the spring, he was at my side when you came into this world. He might not have given me to you, but he was there from the moment you saw daylight.”
Lavinny took a half a step back from Ma. “But why didn’t anyone tell me about this sooner? Why did you keep this from me?”
Ma gave her a worried look, but her eyes softened like she understood. “There wasn’t any ill will, if that’s what has you cross. I had hoped the past could live in the past and stay there, and we all could go forward as a family. And for the greater portion, we have. But sometimes the past doesn’t stay there. Sometimes it calls out to you and creates echoes. Maybe that’s how ghosts happen, because the past has something to tell you.”
Lavinny leaned closer to Ma. “Maybe it wasn’t just my decisions that took me to the sea, maybe he was calling to me to assure me that I’d chosen the right course.”
Ma reached up to smooth back Lavinny’s hair, as she’d done so many times over the years. “I always said you had sea water in your blood.”
“And now I know I have it from both streams,” she said.
* * *
At the end of the following March, when the worst winter storm had passed and the waves had lost their wintry fury, with Father soon to return home from Virginia, Lavinny rowed her dory out from the Sunny Green as it rode Frenchman’s Bay on the first day of the season. As the dory passed Finch Island, and when she thought Teague couldn’t see, she raised her oars and reached inside her oilskin, taking out a handkerchief wound around a bundle of snowdrops and fir twigs she had gathered from the woods behind her family’s home. With a word to the heavens to look kindly on her father’s shade and a word to the depths that his bones would lie in peace, she cast the nosegay onto the water. It sank, then bobbed back to the surface, riding the ripples.
Teague caught her movement and raising his oars for a moment bowed his head, slow and respectful.
Looking away from the posy floating on the water, Lavinny leaned into the oars. “Come on, Teague, let’s see if the first halibut of the season are running.”
As they pulled away, she thought she heard a second set of oars creaking in another pair of oarlocks, but when she glanced about, she saw no other boats besides the rest of her crew, too far away to sound that close.
Triumph of the Spirit
GD Dearborn
1.
She stands in the doorway, my angel of death.
I am laying on my death bed. My angel is weeping.
My angel… my daughter.
“Daddy? I’m here.”
With great effort, I move my chest. In. Out. In.
Get a good lungful.
Ow! It hurts to breathe.
I summon her with a wave. She comes close. The mask, positive pressure, O2. I claw it off. Her face ignites in shock.
“No, Daddy! You need to breathe!”
“Hush! I need… to say something to you. Can’t… with mask on. Don’t…”
Fast beeping. O2 sat 85. Here comes the nurse.
“Doctor, you need to keep that mask on!”
I try to remove it, but practiced hands force the mask back on my face. She cinches the straps tighter than before. Involuntarily, I gasp in more oxygen. Just breathing is excruciating.
“Doctor, are you in pain?”
My head feebly nods before I can stop it.
I can’t have morphine now, it will arrest my breathing. I think my diaphragm has torn.
“Okay, I have standing orders from Dr. Hayata. This will take the pain away.”
No! Stupid bitch! Quack bastard! You need to image me, stat!
The drug works rapidly. I am wrapped in a cocoon of black cotton. The room goes dark.
The last thing I ever see is my precious angel sobbing, sobbing because her heart is breaking, because she knows that this is the end.
#
I am swaddled in darkness.
I hear muffled voices. My angel is screaming. The nurse is shouting.
“Code Blue!”
Rapid beeping. An alarm screeches.
“Start chest compressions!”
And then the voices stop.
2.
Am I dead? I can still remember…
I remember the car. I loved that car. Triumph Spitfire ‘77 convertible, British Racing Green. I bought it on a whim on eBay with some of the net profit after I sold the big house and bought the condo in Florida; after Gracie left me, after she died.
My angel came down to visit after the auction. She grieved her mother, of course, but it was okay. They hadn’t seen eye to eye on anything in years. She was Daddy’s girl. She wanted me to stay in the Granite State, said I would miss the snow. Well, fuck that Yankee bullshit. Florida is pleasantly warm when it should be, and the condo has AC and a pool for the rest of the year. It’s not like I’d never go back, I told her. But of course, I never did.
Gracie’s cancer used up a chunk of the nest egg, but I still was doing okay with my IRA. I could afford a small indulgence. The guy I bought it from let it go for just a few thou, but it needed work, and his brother just happened to own the only import parts shop in the city. Convenient.
I didn’t care. I didn’t care that I couldn’t afford anything better, nor that I paid three times what the car cost me to restore her. I didn’t care that I had become a walking cliché. Stereotypes happen for a reason, after all. It kept my mind off things and gave me an excuse to not make friends with the neighbors. And the timing was just about perfect.
My angel finished the last of her executrix duties a few days after I finished sprucing up the Triumph. She and the kiddo flew down a week after that. I promised them we could go to Disney and all those other attractions, but to be honest, my heart wasn’t in it. With the car done, I had nothing left to do except drive it, and when I drove, I thought of Gracie. And thinking of Gracie hurt.
I’d drive for hours with no one but the voice of the GPS for company, going nowhere and getting there fast. Some days I’d leave at dawn and get home at dusk, and I couldn’t remember anything I saw that day. I couldn’t remember what I had for lunch, or anything about whatever greasy spoon I ate it in. All my memories were of Gracie.
When Angel & Kiddo showed up on my door stoop, there wasn’t a thing to eat in the house. She dumped her bags in the spare bedroom and asked me for my keys. I balked, offered to spring for delivery, but she insisted. So Kiddo and I watched Cartoon Network for a while and waited for her to come home. It seemed like ages before I heard my key turn in the door.
As soon as I looked at her, I knew that I was screwed. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and before she handed back my key ring, she opened it up and took two keys off.
“I got a spare made, Dad. You don’t mind?”
She snapped the two loose keys onto her own ring. That girl loved convertibles, all right.
“Dad, could you help me get the groceries in? You’re a pal!”
I don’t know why she even bothered to make a spare set of keys. I never got to drive my car again.
#
black
no sound no light no sense of being
just nothing
just peace
.
#
I… exist!
Excruciating pain!
Agony!
Light.
Where am I?
Lying on my back. Looking up at a cheap chandelier.
How did I get here?
Sounds. People, talking. Low tones. Whispers. Crying… who is crying?
Angel?
A rush of colors and suddenly I can see through her eyes.
I am loo
king at myself.
I am in a casket.
I look like shit.
What the hell? I thought I made myself clear! After we saw what those bastards did to her mom, I specifically told that girl I wanted to be cremated. “No embalming. No makeup. No coffin, no wake, no funeral. If you want, you can say a few words before you spread my ashes. Then go get drunk on my dime with your friends.”
This is bullshit!
She’s talking to people. Sometimes they hug her. She is numb. Like a robot she says, “Thank you,” over and over again.
She’s leaving. She’s with her boyfriend. Not the a-hole, the new one. She’s going back to his place.
Oh, hell! Like a father needs to see this…
#
nothing
nothing is okay
.
#
Pain. Light. Sun.
Too bright! Hurts.
I am back in Florida. I am lying back in my chaise lounge. I’ve got a G&T in one hand and a good cigar in the other. I can hear myself thinking….
Life is good.
She’s sitting in the chair next to me, big straw hat, sunglasses, black one-piece cut low in the back. I can hear her thoughts, too. She doesn’t like to show her stretch marks, but she still turns heads. She reminds me so much of Gracie, it hurts. Her memories are like a movie. So are mine.
Am I watching this movie or am I acting in it? Can it be both?
We watch Kiddo playing in the pool with the neighbor’s kids. The older one is nearly seventeen and not unattractive herself. I feel ashamed for noticing. Gracie always said that men are pigs. Tomorrow the girl is going to sit for Kiddo while his mom and I drive across the state.
This morning my daughter told me the final figures on Gracie’s estate, including the auction. I’m a bit more flush than I thought.
Maybe I can afford a boat after all!
There is a nice one I saw online, 35-footer, berthed in Tampa. My plan was drive out there, take a look at her, eat a pressed Cuban with bacon, buy some more of these fine cigars, and be back home before Agents of Shield comes on. Kiddo and I don’t have a lot to talk about yet, but superheroes and baseball are enough for now.
I probably won’t get that boat anyway. Kiddo needs a better school.
“Dad, no! Mark’s school is fine. And after that, the public high school will be fine, too. He doesn’t need to go to Phillips.”
“Honey, you know I had always hoped to do better for you. Let me do this for him. He’s bright enough.”
“Well, how about my old Catholic school? I liked it okay. Some of my teachers are still there.”
“That’s your idea? Let me tell you why it sucks.”
She sighs, rolls her eyes. I ignore it.
“First of all, you are a liar. You bitched and moaned every day you were in that place. Second, you only went there because your mother thought it was the right thing to do, so you would be a good Catholic. A devout churchgoer, your mom. But I happen to know you’ve never stepped inside a church since the day we dropped you off at college.”
She winces.
“Oh, honey, no, I’m sorry!”
Idiot. I forgot about the funeral mass.
“It’s all right, Dad. I’m all right. But I was thinking that maybe it would be okay if Mark started going to church. He needs something to believe in…”
It’s my turn to wince. She knows how I feel about this. Particularly after what Gracie went through. The years she spent, suffering, dying by inches. Right up until the end, she had faith. Faith in her god. Faith in her man. She was wrong on both accounts. A doctor’s wife is not exempt from the ravages of an incurable disease. Medicine failed her. All the prayers from her church friends didn’t do any better. The final score was God 0, Medicine 0, game called after eleven excruciating innings.
I never was a believer. My parents were nominally Methodist; we almost never went to church. I became an agnostic when I went off to college, and then an atheist after my first cadaver dissection in med school. People are just meat.
The point was moot once I met Gracie. She was a staunch Catholic from a line of staunch Catholics. Her mother almost became a nun. So long as I promised to let Gracie raise our kids as Catholics, we could get married in the Church. She wouldn’t marry me anywhere else. I was never evangelical about my atheism anyway.
The parochial schools that my wife sent our daughter to tried to fill Angela’s head with nonsense, but I figured time was on my side. I didn’t have a long wait. She hung up her faith along with her Catholic school uniform on graduation day.
I can’t believe that she now wants to subject her own child to what she had been through. It would be less ridiculous if she was telling me she and the boy donned capes and masks and fought crime by moonlight. This is seriously pissing me off.
“Dad, don’t you have any hope that you’ll see Mom again? That it could at least be a possibility? She hoped for your salvation, said prayers for you, right up until the end.”
“Dammit! Shut up, honey, won’t you? Just shut the hell up! I can’t believe what I’m hearing coming out of your mouth. You are the one she used to pray for. Sure, I was happy when you gave up that pie-in-the-sky nonsense. I’ve always told you to think critically and believe in the truth of your own experience. But I also taught you about tact and respect for people’s feelings. When you quit the Church, you didn’t have to rub your mom’s nose in it so… viciously! She was a good woman, why did you have to antagonize her?”
Tears roll down my angel’s cheeks.
Aw shit, I stepped in it again. Who’s the mean one now, asshole?
“Dad, maybe I was being a bitch. But maybe I was also wrong. I wish I hadn’t said those mean things to her. And if she was right about heaven, maybe it’s not too late to tell her so. I’ve been praying, Dad. Just like the nuns taught me to. And it makes me feel better. Death is not the end, Daddy. It is just the beginning.”
I take a sip of my G&T. Then I knock it back until it is just rocks. I puff on my cigar for the long count.
“Sweetie. I love you and Mark, and I loved your mother. But dead is dead. There is no afterlife. This is all we’ve got. In my career, I signed over two thousand death certificates. I know what ‘dead’ means. I never once saw anything that made me believe in a soul that persists after death. When I am gone, I’m gone. So, mourn your mom. Grieve her. But then let her go. Live your own life. Be there for your son. Let the dead be dead…”
And then, instantaneously, it’s not noon anymore. It is dusk. It’s as if I’ve woken suddenly from a dream, into another dream. My angel is standing by the pool, alone, but it is cool out. Chilly. She’s not in her bathing suit. She’s wearing a dress and a light sweater. This can’t be August. It feels like November. The pool chairs have been stacked neatly in their racks. The surface of the pool is scattered with dead leaves. They mustn’t be cleaning it every day.
My angel is crying.
“Dad. Daddy? Can you hear me? I hope you were wrong, you sour old bastard. I hope you are with Mom now. Because you were a good man, Daddy. You deserve to be with her, in Heaven.”
But I’m not in Heaven. I’m here with you. You keep calling me back. And that pain you’re feeling, some of it is mine.
She walks on the white-pebbled path back to the condo. Her condo, now.
She turns off the television. The boy has fallen asleep with the TV on, again. He’s too big to carry anymore. She marches him to his bed without waking him. It’s like she’s a master puppeteer making a marionette sleepwalk.
He looks an inch taller.
They grow so fast!
Then she sits on the couch and clicks the remote. Imaginary people live only seconds as the channels flick by. She pours herself a drink, and then another one. And another. Until at last darkness claims her, and she falls asleep on the couch herself.
#
void nothingness oblivion
i do not think therefore i am not
i am no
t
an endless, waveless ocean of black
peace
.
#
I see my picture on the mantelpiece. It’s dusty. It makes her cry. She picks up the picture.
It hurts to be here… Stop it! Let me go!
The picture slips from her fingers. It falls on the hearthstones. Crash! Broken glass goes everywhere.
#
black
.
#
Oh. This again. I am in the Triumph. She’s in the driver’s seat, not saying much. She’s trying to hold on to her grudge from yesterday, but we always make up. We will be laughing together before we get to Tampa.
She’s Daddy’s Girl. She knows that I was teasing this morning when I called her “showoff bitch,” as she raced me to the car and leapt into the driver’s seat without opening the door. I can’t do that anymore. I’m not out of shape, but sixty is sixty. Can’t do everything I could do when I was twenty, but I am not dead, not yet…
No, I am. But not when she remembers me.
In fact, maybe I retired too early. I should go back into medical practice. I could get a second condo, in New Hampshire. I’d take a locum tenens job in Orlando every winter, see snowbird patients. Then I could migrate back north with the snowbirds in the spring and work at my old job for the summer. Everyone wants to take three weeks off when it’s warm, but we can’t get coverage for that. They can’t. Well, I could cover everyone’s vacations for them.
I will tell her my plans while we are eating Cubans in Tampa today. She will be pleased, I know. And I can watch the boy play in Little League. Maybe take him to Fenway to see the Sox sometimes. Movies, too. There is a Marvel movie every summer, I think. Those are his favorite.
Wicked Haunted: An Anthology of the New England Horror Writers Page 21