“What sort of person was your sister?” Kevin Fletcher is saying. “A sociable person?”
Mary Uth makes a noise in her throat.
“Kind?” he suggests. Is he really a minister? He doesn’t look that much older than me. “Friendly? Those are just suggestions, Em. Tell me anything you want.”
A smile fixes itself on my face. “She was Pamela,” I say. My back itches mercilessly. I look down the road, searching for the hearse from the funeral home. “My sister.”
“Yes, yes,” he encourages, as if I have delivered tidbits of fascinating information.
I lean against a tree and, like a dog, rub against it, appeasing the itch. “We lived together.” I can’t seem to control the fake smile. Pamela’s smile was real, made your heart jump when it appeared. The surprise of it. The relief. The second surprise of her teeth: small, like baby teeth, and white, very white. It must have been in her genes. She never brushed, she said it was a waste of time, but her teeth were beautiful.
“She was an older sister?” he says.
“Yes.”
“A sister is someone to lean on.” He steeples his hands under his chin. “It will be difficult for you now. You’ll need to be brave.”
Mary Uth pats my arm. “Yes, she will.”
My nod is as false as my smile. I’m not brave. I don’t know how to be brave. I’m scared all the time. Could someone tell me how to do it? There’s a secret to it, something that other people know and I don’t. There are secrets to everything and no one has told them to me.
“What did she do in her spare time, Em?”
I try to answer, but get stuck on the concept of “spare time.” Wasn’t all Pamela’s time spare time? “She liked to sit,” I say at last.
His expression slips; he frowns as if I’m being sly. In fact, I’m just being accurate. They must have had to stuff her into the coffin. This last year she had become fatter than ever. Fat was on her everywhere, pillows of fat on her arms and neck and around her waist and ankles. She liked being fat. She liked having massive arms and legs. She liked eating and sitting and doing nothing. She had one chair in front of the TV and one by the window, where she could watch the parking lot. When I cleaned, I had to lift the chairs, a leg at a time, so as not to jar them from their appointed places.
Her favorite chair was the one in front of the TV; and when she left it to sit in the other chair, she had a special joke. “Em!” she’d call. “I’m taking my exercise now.”
“What were her hobbies? Did she dance, sing?”
“Sing, sometimes.”
“Good, good! How about the arts of, you know, uh, say, embroidery?”
“She didn’t do that.” I feel sorry for him. With each question, he looks freshly hopeful.
“Is there anything else you can think of?”
“She liked to watch TV. She followed all the shows.”
He taps his fingers on the car, smiles weakly. “Good, good,” he says again. “And what about you?”
“Me?”
“You must have some hobbies. Did your sister share your hobbies with you?”
“I have no hobbies.”
“Well, then. All right, we’ll say something.” He pats my shoulder. “It’ll be good, Em.”
And it is. Good enough anyway. “Pamela was a sister among sisters,” he says at some point, then he says it again. He seems to like this phrase, and throws it in at least once more. Mary Uth stands next to me and occasionally squeezes my arm. The man and woman I saw getting out of the car are here also. I wonder why. Do they just like funerals? I wonder how many funerals they attend, and how often. Once a week? Every day? The woman holds up her red umbrella steadily, as if in a downpour.
Kevin Fletcher says other things that also sound good. “Pamela and Em shared a home…. It was a special life they led…. Two sisters together.” No lies here. This is skill. I find myself wishing Pamela could hear him. “A sister is missed and mourned in a special way,” he says. “Gone, but never forgotten.” A flock of birds streaks over our heads, uttering soft hissy calls. Everyone looks up, and Kevin Fletcher seizes the moment. “God’s creatures come to say good-bye to Pamela,” he cries, and he lifts his clasped hands. “Good-bye, sweet sister, good-bye.”
That’s a little too much, I think, but Mary Uth shakes my arm and I bow my head, and make an effort at prayer. God, keep my sister’s soul, make her not suffer in hell. Hypocrite, Pamela hisses in my ear. For once she’s right.
Kevin Fletcher nods for me to pick up the shovel. “Hold on, girl,” Mary Uth says. Does she mean hold on to the shovel or hold on in general? She works in an old people’s home. Maybe this is what she says to keep them from dying too fast. Hold on. I didn’t say that to Pamela when she fell off the chair. I didn’t say anything. I stood above her and watched her mouth open and close soundlessly.
The dirt I shake off the shovel rattles like rain on the coffin, and the woman with the red umbrella jerks her shoulders as if offended by the sound. Kevin Fletcher nods for me to throw in another shovelful, and I bend over, digging into the pile, wondering if Pamela’s mouth is still open, the way it was that day. Opening and closing, and for the first time in her life nothing coming out. Not a word, not a curse, not a cry, not a sound. But they wouldn’t leave her mouth open, I’m sure of that, I’ve read that they tie the jaws of the dead shut, I’ve seen pictures of it too: there was one of a man in a coffin, it was in Ireland I think, with a white scarf tied around his head and knotted on top. It gave him a jaunty look.
A backhoe parked nearby rumbles to life and then begins to shake and grind slowly toward us. A huge rusted yellow machine with enormous muddy tires. A man in a red shirt negotiates the levers with a satisfied look on his face.
Kevin Fletcher walks me away. “There,” he says. “Do you feel closure, Em?” I remember the money I’m supposed to give him. I hand it to him and say thank you. “My pleas —” he begins, then reddens and tucks the bills into his pocket. The woman with the red umbrella passes. She hasn’t once looked at me.
“Good-bye,” I call suddenly to her and the man with her. “Good-bye! Good-bye, Hansel and Gretel!”
They don’t look at me then, either, and no one says anything, and maybe I didn’t call in quite that way after all. Maybe I only wanted to. There have been so many things I’ve wanted to do and not done. This is probably just one more.
I sit on the edge of my bed and stare at the floor. I woke as tired as when I went to sleep; it was from thinking of things all night long. All night my dreams were thought-dreams, and I woke up feeling almost nauseous from so many thoughts. They rise in my mind like fireworks, sparkling and exploding, scattering bits of light and then dark into my mind.
I make myself get up, shower, dress. Now I should eat, then go outside. I have to tell myself what to do. I’ve done everything I had to, got Pamela buried and sent her clothes to the Salvation Army and scrubbed and cleaned the apartment. Now what? Nearly two weeks have passed. A long time, or is it a short time? Should I be happy by now? Yesterday, on the radio, a woman said, Be kind to yourself. I should have called her up and asked, How do you do that? Do I have to go to Vermont again? That’s where I was kind to myself. One week of kindness.
If only there was something I had to do. Always before, I had to think of Pamela: it kept me from thinking of other things. Always there was Pamela, and now there is no Pamela. What can it mean? It is too strange. I was born into a world of Pamela. Pamela’s screams, her laughter and curses. She was the mean queen of my world. The reign of Pamela was established, unquestionable. Like any queen she was extra large, took up more space, made rooms rattle with her clamor, and dictated to one and all. Somewhere along the line, though, she became more dog than queen, seized my life between her teeth and held on as if it were nothing but a meaty bone intended for her.
For an instant, I seem to understand everything.
But what’s the point of all this? What’s the point of thinking so much? You think about som
ething and you get nowhere and nothing changes, and then you feel even worse than when you started. Take my name. Em. Me. Me without the e. M. M. M. What does it mean that my name can be whittled down to a single letter? What does it signify? What if that letter were obliterated? What does it mean, in fact, that things like this go through my mind? I don’t suppose I’m crazy, although she said I was. Crazy, she said, fool, idiot, moron. She said all that, she said she protected me, she said no one else understood me and that when she hit me it was my fault, I drove her to it with my stupidity and nagging. She said so many things, and I remember them all.
I remember how she tore up my notebook. How sometimes, after that, words would come into my mind that I couldn’t forget. Words like the scraps of paper she’d flushed away, tiny jagged bits of things. How I wrote them down, took them out of my mind and put them on paper. Not in a notebook, oh no, a scrap of paper only, which I would keep for a while, hiding in my pocket, then tear up and flush away myself. She never knew about this. For once I put it over on her, and I thought this was wonderful. A victory. I thought it was wonderful that I could tear up and throw away my things myself. Then, gradually, I saw that it wasn’t wonderful, that it was awful. And so I stopped altogether, and I didn’t see that this was even more awful. I stopped. I thought I didn’t have to write anything anymore. It was useless anyway. Mother was dead; it was all a mess.
Then it happened again — words appearing — and she caught me at it. We’d left Father and Killenhorn Road by then. We were here in our apartment and I was making a shopping list, writing on the back of an envelope. We never bought paper, always used the backs of things, advertisements and junk mail. MILK, I wrote, EGGS, BOLOGNA. Then the other words came, spilling from the soft black mouth of the pencil. Heart you are eating me like a piece of meat. Strange words, but I recognized them, as you do someone who has been sitting quietly in the back of a room and then rises and comes toward you. These words had been in my mind for days, unmoving, waiting. What are you doing? she said. What are you writing?
I slid my arm across the paper, a mistake. She rose from her chair, like a mountain rising. It made my heart beat like crazy to see her explode out of her chair. She snatched the paper and read it. She read the words out loud. She was outraged. “What is this?” The craziness of it, the weirdness, offended her. Her big hand whipping through the air. Right cheek. Left cheek. The symmetry of it. She could never stop once she began. I was on the floor, hearing her wails of grief. Why? Why? Why did you make me do it?
And later, lying in bed, ice pressed against my face, listening to music, the music Mother liked — old music, Art Garfunkel singing in his achingly sweet voice, “… when darkness comes and pain is all around …” Cymbals, piano. And for a moment, believing it, believing that someone might lay himself down for me like a bridge over troubled water.
It wasn’t always that way. There were the other times, too, the not-so-bad times, and the good times, and even the really good times. There were the mornings when I woke and saw the silvery early light sliding under the shade and couldn’t resist its pull. Come out, the light said. Come out! And I would push the covers aside, quietly, so quietly, like a mouse, with barely a rustle. One foot touching the floor, waiting, watching her in the other bed, then the second foot sliding down. Quiet, quiet. Sometimes I made it. I got out of the apartment and walked up the hill to the cemetery to watch the sunrise.
But mostly, even in her sleep, she was watching me, and as I stood up, her eyes would open. “What’re you doing?”
“Nothing. I thought I’d just go out for a bit. For a walk. To see the sun rise.”
“What’s so fascinating about the sun? It does the same damn thing every day. It comes up and it goes down.”
“It’s not just the sun, Pamela. It’s the morning, it’s the light.”
“The liiight.” She mimicked my voice. “What about the liiight? What do you do out there in your precious liiight?”
How could I say that I didn’t do anything when I went out? Looked at the sky. Smelled the air. How could I say that in the morning, my heart beat differently? That there was nothing to say, no way to put into words how it felt to walk into the coolness of the morning alone.
One morning, though, she got up and put on her shoes and said since I was always talking about the sunrise, she would see it for her own self. “See what the big damn fuss is all about.” It was cold that morning, she wound scarves around her face, wore two hats and mittens. She panted as we climbed the hill toward the cemetery.
I pointed to show her where the sun was going to come up, and as I stretched out my arm, the red rim slid up from the earth.
“Hey!” Pamela said. “Hey!” I held my hand steady, finger pointing, claiming the magic, and the sun obediently slid up and up and up. “Hey,” she breathed again, and tucked her arm around my waist. We stood that way, until the sun was fully up, and then we turned and went back.
At the Corners, when I get off the bus, I’m thirsty. I buy a soda in the store, drink it there, and then start walking. I stay to the side of the road and don’t look at the cars passing. Sometimes a head turns clear around to stare at me. Am I being recognized? Oh, that’s the Thurkill girl, the younger one, the one who ran away with her crazy sister. We never came back after we left. It’s been a long time, four years, and I’m different now, aren’t I?
But when I turn onto Killenhorn Road, I see that even if I have changed, nothing else has. The road is still not a real road, only two sandy tire tracks. The same weeds press in on both sides. The same gray aspens and skinny pines straggle away into the distance, and the same scrubby bushes push stubbornly up from their bit of soil. Even the sounds are the same, a red squirrel clattering at me as I pass, and then a squad of blue jays squawking overhead. For a moment it’s as if I had never left, as if I’m still twelve or thirteen and walking home after school.
I walk slowly, and the closer I get to the trailer, the slower I walk. The sun is dropping behind the trees. I keep looking at my watch, wondering if Father will be home. It’s a workday, but what if this morning he woke up with a feeling that he should stay home? Just a feeling, he’d say to Sally. She’d go to work, though; she wouldn’t want to lose the money. So when I knock on the door, it’s going to be Father who’ll answer. When he sees me, what will he say? Will he shout out my name? Em! Will he be amazed at how much I’ve grown, how I’ve changed? I’ll remind him of the years that have passed. I’ll say, Father, I’ve done so many things since I saw you last.
One day when I was a tiny girl, I looked up at Father and noted in astonishment how big he was. Huge! I was sure he was the tallest man with the smoothest, barest, shiniest head in the world. “My daddy,” I thought, and I knew this feeling in me was love. His name was Ray Thurkill. My name was Em Thurkill. Our family was me, and Mother, whose name was Veronica Thurkill, and Father, and my sister, Pamela Thurkill. She went to school. Mother and Father went to work. Mother worked in a paper-box factory. Father worked in the gravel pits and sometimes on construction. I drew a picture of my big tall father, and another of our trailer, which was even bigger than Father.
Now I see the trailer again, and it’s silly, I suppose, but I’m surprised by how small it is. Did it always list to one side that way? Looks like a pile of shit, Pamela used to say, but I never thought so. It perches on the edge of a deep ravine, like a boat waiting to sail away. Years before, the land below had been a dump, and every spring when the snow melted, ancient garbage would rise from the earth, tin cans, shards of glass, and rusted hunks of metal. I used to play down there and find pretty little pieces of pottery and try to put them together.
I walk to the front door and knock. The air is still and warm. “Hello?” I call. “Hello? Father?” I knock again, then push at the door. It swings open. And right away I see that nobody lives here anymore.
I stand in the doorway, my legs shaking, then I go in. Wads of dried leaves rustle in the corners. Porcupine pellets roll under my fee
t. In the room I’d shared with Pamela, mice have chewed holes in the mattress. I used to wake up bruised from Pamela’s arms and legs thrashing and kicking all night long. I learned to sleep in a tiny space. Like Mother, I think.
A backless chair lies on the floor. I pick it up and open a window and poke my head out. I had made up such a nice little scene — Father at the door, crying out my name. Em! Maybe even hugging me. Then the two of us, talking about all the things that had happened in these four years. But when had we ever talked together that way?
I’d lived here for fourteen years. Here, I began to become whatever it is that makes me the person called Em. I stare down the familiar road. I’d walked that road every day for those fourteen years. I think of Mother, sad and always chilled, even in summer, and Father with his shining head, his distant eyes, and I think of Pamela, and my head begins to ache, and I lean my face against the cool window.
When I leave, the ravine is in shadow, and the sun is gone.
In the library downtown, I have chosen a leather chair, and I sit in it like a lady, like someone used to good things, to leather chairs and leisure. I have a magazine open in my lap, a thick magazine with smooth thick pages and every page smells good, and there are pictures of beautiful girls and boys in beautiful clothes, all of them smiling.
The leather chair has broad friendly arms, and sitting in it is like having someone else with you; it’s like something alive. I can hear it breathe, and I want to pat it and say nice things to it. It creaks and breathes every time I move. It sounds like someone murmuring. I love the sound. It’s the sound of being rich, of being happy and never worried. Leather is something rich people have: leather jackets and shoes, leather couches, purses, and chairs. Snakeskin and alligator leather and baby calf leather. They skin the animals and make things. Some are just babies, that’s sad, but I still like this leather chair and wish I had one myself.
When She Was Good (9780545361910) Page 3