by Nancy Jensen
Mabel had always liked Ed Bradley, who spoke with the warm rhythm of a man who loved music. He’d come to Indianapolis to interview her, and when he leaned across her own kitchen table and fixed her with those sad, earnest eyes of his—eyes that had known suffering and cherished joy—the cameras she had dreaded melted away. “What did you learn from these men, the veterans?” he asked.
“That for them, that war won’t ever be over,” she said. “I don’t think any real war ever is—large, small, between countries, between people. Even the wars inside ourselves. Something always remains.”
“Feeling better now, Mama?” Daisy knelt before her on the marble floor and whispered, “If you don’t think you can do it, you don’t have to.”
“It’s okay,” Mabel said. “I’m okay.”
“Barry’s gone off somewhere with the priest,” Daisy said, “and I have to go check on Jenny, but Nick’s here. He’ll take you in.”
She looked up to see Nick in an elegant dove gray suit, offering her his hand with a flourish. “May-belle,” he said, “may I have the pleasure of escorting you to your seat?”
Mabel placed her hand in his. “If you had a top hat, you’d look just like Louis Jourdan.”
Nick smiled, bowed to her slightly, and wound her arm in his. A halfdozen bearded old men in robes, the sun lighting their faces with the ferocity of heaven, glared at Mabel and her friend as they made their progress up the aisle. She could identify only Moses, who carried the stone tablets. “I suppose they’re all prophets,” she said.
Nick nodded toward the windows that encircled the altar. “Looks like they put all the angels up front with the priest—too good for the ordinary sinner.”
The figures in the altar windows were clearly angels, with their heads ringed by halos and the hint of white wings rising up behind them. Strange how they were all portrayed as young men—beautiful young men, pretty as girls. Like the surly old prophets, the angels were draped in robes, but of lighter colors—saffron and rose instead of mud brown and purple—all except one, who wore bright blue armor. He looked like Nick, nearly forty years ago, when he played George Gibbs to Daisy’s Emily Webb in Our Town.
At times like these, when someone else would have prodded Mabel to explain her trembling, Nick held her hand, as her Paul would have done. They shared the gift, these two, of understanding without the need to ask questions. Mabel looked again at the blue-armored angel. Was it a blessing or merely luck that she’d had two such rare friends?
Mabel slid sideways into the pew, the second from the front, and sat down. “Where’s Teddy?” she asked, pulling Nick down beside her.
“He’ll be along later—said something about decorating the getaway car.”
“Oh, no!” Mabel clapped a hand over her mouth to keep her laugh from echoing through the sanctuary.
“Don’t worry, Belle. Nothing too wild. He promised to stick to the conservative hetero theme—cans and old shoes. Boring!”
Mabel glanced over her shoulder toward the entrance. “Think this crowd will be able to handle seeing you two together?”
“Nary a worry. The priest told me it’s been a whole ten years since the Episcopalians voted us children of God. Isn’t that good news?” He picked up a hymnal and thumbed through it. “But just in case, Jenny’s been feeding the troublesome in-laws a story about Ted and me as bachelor roomies.”
“Like in The Odd Couple?” Mabel let her laugh go this time. “All ex-wives and stewardesses? Who will ever believe that?”
Nick leaned his head against hers. “Just the ones that have to if they’re going to get through the day without a coronary. People believe what they want to believe.”
Mabel started to get up. “I’m going to have a talk with Jenny. Right now.”
“Geez, Belle, your timing needs work.” With a tug on her hand, he drew her back down to her seat. “It’s okay, really. Let’s not have our Stonewall today. We’re here to celebrate. Jenny’s still at that age where she’s afraid of what people will think of her. And anyway, these are just the special-occasion relatives—all the everyday ones know.” Nick squeezed her hand playfully and grinned. “Besides, Ted’s determined to get them at Thanksgiving—the familiest of holidays.” He fanned the pages of the hymnal. “So many songs about a guy nobody can see.”
Mabel took the hymnal from him. “I don’t think I know any of these,” she said, stopping suddenly on an open page. “There’s this one: ‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.’”
“Well, that’s no surprise,” Nick said. “Look at all the battle images around here. An angel in armor.” He pointed to the marble font. “Shields all over that thing.”
“Did I ever tell you? One of my veterans—Charlie Brock—told me his platoon used to sing ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ whenever they got an order to strike a village. Part of the black humor that kept them going: ‘Like a mighty army moves the Church of God; / Brothers, we are treading where the saints have trod.’” Mabel pressed a tear from her eye. “Charlie said he never cared about whether it was true—the story going around that a peace symbol was a broken cross. That’s why he wore one, he told me. Said there wasn’t any way to move forward without breaking the cross.”
A rapping sound at the back of the sanctuary caused them both to turn. Barry was waving for Nick.
“My cue,” Nick said, kissing Mabel on the cheek. “One of the ushers didn’t show, so I’ve been elected as understudy.”
Alone in the pew, she stared down at the open page of the hymnal, trying to remember the tune, but it eluded her, one phrase seeming right while the next slipped away into some odd key. Behind her, she could feel the ancient prophets judging her with their burning eyes. Moses was considering crashing one of the stone tablets over her head.
If she went to the priest to confess—did Episcopal priests hear confessions?—if she told him that in saving Bertie she had lost her, if she told him that even now there were times she could barely lift her head from the weight of guilt she bore over Wallace’s death, would he quote the words of this hymn to her?
Did we in our strength confide,
Our striving would be losing—
Were not the right Man on our side,
The Man of God’s own choosing.
Bertie and Wallace were gone. In her striving, she had lost them, to herself and to each other. And for all Mabel knew, no matter how much she might hope otherwise—that somehow Bertie had survived to have a family of her own—she herself might be the last there would ever be of the Fischer girls, singly responsible for ending the line.
Yes, if she faced the priest, she would have to admit how much her actions had cost those she loved best—and the priest again would nod and chastise her for having relied on her own mind, her own strength.
But what of Daisy? she would ask. What of Paul and Daisy and Barry and Jenny and Nick and Ted—the family that had risen from the ashes? Could she then, would she, look into the priest’s black eyes and quote from the same hymn?
And though this world, with devils filled,
Should threaten to undo us;
We will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us.
One day, probably not so very long off, she would know the answer to Jenny’s question—whether there indeed was someone or something beyond this world that would hold her to account. And whether what she had done would be judged as right or ruin.
She turned to look at Moses, raising her eyes to meet his glare—an ancient assured that every human choice was reducible to ten imperatives. Didn’t he know that time eroded even stone? Behind her she could feel the gaze, less angry, of the angel in blue armor. Like Moses, he felt equally assured of truth, but he wasn’t talking.
From overhead, bright warmth fell on her head, pouring over her hair and down her shoulders like fiery water, drawing out the cold. She lifted her face to it. Above her, in the dome, was a skylight, blazing now like the bright wheel of the sun, surrounded by stars.
She hadn’t noticed it before.
NINETEEN
Words
April 1992
Newman, Indiana
BERTIE
Tuesday, 11:17 A.M.
THE VACUUM HOSE WAS CLOGGED again. Bertie gave it an angry shake, even though she knew that would accomplish nothing. She’d have to get down on the floor to get the hose off and then use a bent hanger to push the clog through. Rainey would fuss when she got home, saying like she always did, “Mother, I’ve told you to leave those things to me,” but if she left it to Rainey, it wouldn’t get done for who knows how long and all that time the floor would still need sweeping.
In the kitchen, Bertie rooted through the junk drawer to find the screwdriver, the Phillips. As soon as her hand closed around it, she felt a sharp cold pain, then a tingle, shoot down her arm and into her fingers. She could see the screwdriver in her hand but couldn’t feel it, and though it looked like she had a good grip on it, the tool tumbled back into the drawer. Then the room started shifting this way and that, and everything around her—the stove, the refrigerator, all the cabinets—seemed suddenly larger, then smaller, then changing places, with the stove now behind her and the refrigerator on her left, the cabinets sailing near the ceiling.
Another pain sliced through her head and she staggered to where she thought the table was. A faint sense of hard metal touched her palms. With what felt like all her strength, she pulled that metal down and toward her until, very distantly, she heard what might be the scrape of chair legs across the linoleum.
Sitting in a chair now, or at least believing she was, Bertie patted all around the table with her nearly senseless hands to find the thing she needed, the thing she suddenly couldn’t name. When she found it, somehow she knew that part of the thing had to come near her face, and that, whether she could feel it or not, she had to press the glowing button that was first in line. From out of a deep hole came words, but she didn’t know what they meant. “Accounting. Rainey Brandt.”
“Rai-ee,” Bertie said. “Rrr ai.”
“Hello? Hello?”
Bertie tried again, but though she could feel her mouth working, no words came, only some thin, strained growl, like a dying animal. “Rrrry.”
“Mother?”
Was that her name? Her name? Someone calling her name?
“Mother, what is it? Mother, can you hear me?”
“Rry … ey.”
“I’m calling an ambulance,” the voice said. “Mother, I’m on my way.”
Tuesday, 5:45 P.M.
She could hear fine, so why was everyone around her yelling and banging pots together?
No, not pots. Not the echoing ring of pots that Lynn and Grace made on New Year’s Eve when they ran out to the porch to pretend they were in the ballroom where Guy Lombardo’s orchestra was playing “Auld Lang Syne.”
No, not pots. But loud banging—so loud it made her nervous.
Until she opened her eyes, Bertie hadn’t realized they’d been closed. She looked around as best she could, but it was too dim to see what things were, and she couldn’t quite work out how to turn her head. It was like one side of it was gone. Like one whole side of her body was gone. Maybe it was. Maybe she’d been in some crazy accident that would make the news, some accident that had cut her right in two. But that didn’t make sense. She’d be dead.
Some of the noise was voices. Bertie closed her eyes to concentrate on them, to pick out what they were saying. The harder she tried to listen to the voices, the weaker they got and the stronger smells seemed. Nasty smells, like cloth soaked in old pee. Like flowery and fruity alcohol poured all around to cover the pee. There were other smells, too, but fainter, like rusty blood and rubber dusted with baby powder.
She knew those smells. Those and the odor of feet and damp armpits and green beans boiled in tin—the same smells that used to smack into her every day when Hans was dying, those months when Rainey would drop her off in the morning at the main door of the hospital.
To one side of her, the side that was still there, Bertie felt a warm grip on her arm and a soft, pleasant kiss on her forehead.
“Mother, can you hear me?”
Bertie opened her eyes again and looked for the voice. Rainey’s face came into focus—tired, smudged with mascara, just a fleck of lipstick in one corner.
“Mother, you’re in the hospital. In the emergency room. We’re taking you up to your room as soon as it’s ready.”
Rainey—Rainey was her daughter. Rainey looked away, somewhere past where Bertie’s feet should be. “You’ve had a stroke, Mother.”
A stroke, Bertie said. Did you come after me? Did you fix the sweeper? Bertie said all this, but the only sound she heard come out of her twisted, half-dead mouth was “Toh.”
Rainey’s hand tightened on Bertie’s arm. It hurt. “Mother, can you hear me?” Rainey said again. “Can you at least look at me?”
I am looking at you, Bertie said with irritation. Stop squeezing my arm so hard.
From the missing side of her, Bertie heard another voice—a woman’s, loud, confident, flat. “It’s too early still to tell if her speech will come back. Or any of the lost feeling. We’ll know more tomorrow.”
“Can she hear me?” Rainey asked the voice. “Her eyes are open.”
“Probably not,” the other voice said. “Maybe. It’s impossible to say. But keep talking to her. You never know.”
Wednesday, 1:25 P.M.
“Grandma?”
Bertie woke to a light pressure on her cheek that might have been a kiss. How strange it was, this feeling that was both faint and heavy, the way she imagined it must be for those lions she’d seen on television, after they’d been shot with tranquilizer darts—minds awake, bodies asleep.
Grace was leaning over the bed, wearing one of those funny necklaces she made back in the woods, where she lived with that good-for-nothing gray-headed man that wouldn’t marry her. Bertie had thought the necklaces were pretty once, before she got up close. From across the room, they looked like crocheted gold. When she got closer, she saw they were nothing but tiny metal rings—each one no bigger around than a peppercorn, linked together.
“How you doing, Grandma?”
Such an easy way about her Grace always had, able to talk to her just the way she might if she’d come in for Sunday lunch.
Bertie knew now what had happened, or at least what the doctors were saying. She’d had a stroke. She’d lost feeling on one side—but that was coming back. She’d lost her ability to speak, but so far that wasn’t coming back. Nobody seemed to know if it would.
Rainey was about to drive her out of her mind, the way she talked really loud and slow—even though Bertie’s hearing was fine. And the way Rainey talked to visitors, answering for her, so that after a minute whoever had come to see Bertie was visiting with Rainey. Rainey talked about her like she wasn’t there, her voice high and nervous, the sound of tears way down in her throat, all the time pacing like a cat.
Grace’s eyes were a little red around the rims, and when she turned just so, Bertie could see the last bit of a tear on one eyelash, but Grace smiled and talked on like Bertie was still Bertie, still Grandma.
“Now if you had to go and do this,” Grace teased, “I sure appreciate your waiting until after that big storm that came through. The roads up my way were so icy, I would have had to come in on skates.” Grace had pulled a chair all the way up and was resting her elbows on the bed. Nobody else would even have thought about bringing the chair so close. “And it’s too early to get my garden in, so there’s no worry there—well, the cabbage, the beets, and the carrots are already planted, but Ken can look after those all right. I’ll bring you half a dozen jars of pickled beets when I get them put up. You like sauerkraut, don’t you, Grandma? I’ve never tried making it, but I will if you like it.”
Blech! Bertie said in her head.
Grace rocked back in her chair and laughed. “Well, I guess you told me!”
Barely,
just barely, Bertie could feel her face sliding out of an expression of disgust and into a smile.
“It’s Mom that likes sauerkraut, isn’t it?” Grace leaned in again and stroked Bertie’s cheek with one finger. “I don’t suppose I could make it anyway. I can’t stand the taste of it, so how would I ever know if it had turned out?”
“Yohg,” Bertie said, feeling her face scrunch up again. How a person could eat that old sour stuff was beyond her. No way to tell when it went bad.
Grace gave Bertie’s shoulder a playful shove. “You and yogurt.”
“Is she talking to you?” Rainey appeared at the foot of the bed, a twisted Kleenex tight in one fist.
“We’re doing okay,” Grace said.
“So no talking yet.”
“Has Lynn been in to see you, Grandma?” While Grace watched Bertie for sign of an answer, Rainey snapped, “She has not.”
“She’s got an awful lot to do,” Grace said. “Maybe she had to be in court today.”
Her granddaughter’s voice was calm, but tired. This was an old story—the trouble between Lynn and Rainey—going on since Lynn was in college. No, before that—since the trial, at least. More times than she could count, Bertie had said to Grace, “I wish there was some way to make your mother see she’s the one who has to give up the fighting. She has to stop letting what’s done and gone upset her so.” Rainey would tell her, “I want loyalty. Just a little loyalty from my daughter. Is that too much to ask?” But Bertie knew it was. Loyalty, to Rainey, meant that Lynn would have to go back and unwalk roads she’d already walked.