Her mother explains how Dimici was transformed after his driver, Buddy, killed himself. “The man looked terrible. As if, well....”
“What?” Mag asks.
“Oh, the older I get, I…”
Mag waits.
“I’m afraid I want the world to be a bit more mysterious. A bit more interesting. Less ordinary, in any case.”
“Excuse me, mother, but what does this have to do with me?”
“You know Bill Hennessey. He’s here now and then.”
She knows Hennessey. Well-pulled together, a man of generous proportion. That was what drew her to Wald at that riot so long ago. Among all the drug-addled hippies in the street that day, he looked strong enough to carry her.
“I’ve seen him around,” Mag says.
“He straightened out Tony. After Bill Hennessey did whatever it was he did, Tony came back to life. That’s all I’m saying. He has a knack for…”
The waiter approaches but her mother motions him away. They sit silently for a moment. “I could call him for you,” her mother says.
“Wald would never put up with it.”
“Why would he have to know?”
“Well…” Mag says.
Her mother takes this to mean yes.
≈
I spent years trying not to think of her, he says.
Says being not quite the word, but I know who it is. And did it work? I ask.
Not for a minute. He stops. He sounds confused.
You’re new to this, I say.
Whatever this is. This thought hangs between us.
Indeed.
Tell me, he insists.
If only I could.
I was hoping… He stops.
Perhaps if you tell me the last thing you remember. That might give us a place to begin.
Clouds. Blue sky. A valley in the mountains.
Sounds lovely.
Then the screaming.
I wait him out.
After the engine died.
III.
Chapter Eighteen
“Is this a bad time?”
Hennessey cannot place the voice.
“No, no, of course not,” he says, hoping the name will come to him to him.
“You’re sure?”
Mary Marault, of course. She might have made a career in phone sex. She was still something to look at.
“Mary. Always a pleasure.”
“I have a favor to ask,” she says.
He remembers when it seemed like a type of game, to help the scatterbrained find what they had lost. Or, if what had been lost was gone forever, as was the case with the dead, to help the living find their way toward peace. His abilities had made him into a village shaman, respected but at a remove. For years he was gratified, flattered. Now he understands that his payment is to live alone in his mother’s house.
What had he ever done, except to tell people what they already knew? If only they could keep quiet long enough to let the fluff settle in their heads, they’d have no need of him. They all wanted to believe there was more to it than that.
Everyone wants to see around the corner of the humdrum world. He did himself. He needed his own Hennessey for his business with his mother.
He reminds himself to focus on Mary Marault. Babies on the brain, Mary was saying about her daughter.
“The trouble is the baby who died there. The Brimsley baby, back, oh, I don’t know. A million years ago. Mag has the pictures. She can’t get enough.”
“Audrey?” says Hennessey. “Audrey Brimsley?”
“I wouldn’t know. Her sons sold the house out from under her. She’s in a nursing home.”
“Audrey,” Hennessey says.
“You know her?”
“A bit.”
“That’s good. Isn’t it?”
“I suppose it might be.” He’s not so sure.
“Should I meet you at Mag’s house? I can set up a time.”
“I’m afraid you’d be too distracting.”
She isn’t sure what to say to that.
“We’ll talk afterward. I’ll tell you everything.”
“I’m sure you will,” she says.
≈
Why would Wald have to know?
Because Mag does not care to play Blondie to his Dagwood. Because her mother’s notions regarding her own husband had served her so poorly. Still, Mag had not been able to say no.
“He’s a psychic?” Wald asks, as if it were a contagious disease.
“Not exactly.” Mag is hard-pressed to explain the distinction. He has an odd gift, the way some people have a feel for mathematics, or others can draw. That was how her mother explained it. “I don’t think that’s so hard to believe,” Mag says.
Wald does not tell Mag that she is simply nervous with her first child. He does not observe that she has an active imagination. Nor that she spends too much time alone, wallowing in the Brimsley’s past. He does not mention the perfectly obvious progression. The photographs. Then the painting in the hallway. Talking to the paintings as she makes them. Now the so-called evidence, the baby’s toys strewn in their home.
He wonders if his patience must be boundless. He tries to imagine the alternatives.
“I think we should fix the windows. Paint the walls. Get on with our lives.” He says this as evenly as he is able.
“I don’t want to live like I’m blindfolded.”
He wonders what difference a blindfold makes in the dark. The dead are dead. Wald believes there is nothing more to know about us. He does not need a psychic’s opinion about that. “I don’t want him to make things worse,” he says.
“They’re already worse.”
Something has been stolen from him. He feels the loss in his bones. The girl who had dragged him to safety in the midst of a riot; the girl who dove heedlessly into black water below a rocky ledge; the woman who had painted for years on end, indifferent, so far as he could tell, to the world’s opinion; his stubborn, bold wife, seeking her comfort now in superstition and quackery. Unable to provide what she requires, he feels himself diminished as well. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”
Mag wants him to agree, not to give up. He leaves her to work on his windows. She goes back to her painting in the hall.
≈
Wald, poor boy: so wrong and yet I sympathize. That he should know nothing of me, and I should know everything about him, seems … Well, it’s not just life that is unfair.
If the living felt us hovering over their shoulders, would their lives be better?
I wish I could.
It’s him again.
Could what?
If I could let her know.
I wouldn’t get my hopes up.
You know? You’re sure?
I’m not sure of anything. Yet it seems…
There’s nothing we can do?
In my experience.
Nothing?
Except understand. Or make the attempt. Or so I assume.
That’s all?
For now. Until…
There’s more then? Later?
Well.
I wait for his next thought. What I hear is like static, a cacophony of conflicting thoughts, half-beliefs, justifications, images. A flaming plane, green canopy, bodies on a jungle floor.
You had years to return, I say at last.
I was certain I would. I always had plans.
Didn’t we all.
I wait for a reply that does not come.
Chapter Nineteen
Hennessey parks his Cadillac outside my mother’s former home. In a glance he registers its hopeless condition: the bare siding, the cock-eyed shutters, the trees sprouting beside the foundation. Clearly she intended that the place would just barely outlast her. She might as well have propped her coffin on the porch. The aged know how to wear out their welcome, Hennessey reminds himself.
Hennessey did not allow his mother’s house to sink into decline. The place rarely went a month without some work
man taking up residence. He replaced the crumbling bathroom walls and the clogged, galvanized pipes. He had the old electrical wire, its cloth insulation in tatters, yanked out of the walls and upgraded. A tree surgeon spent the better part of a week doctoring to the massive pines.
“You could just leave it be,” his mother said. She worried about dust on the piano but would not begin to think about the rotting eaves.
“If you want to stay here you can’t just leave it.”
“Sure I could.”
“Well I can’t.”
She stared at him, as if trying to remember who he was. “Suit yourself,” she said at last.
When the moment came to take her to the Sheltering Arms, she couldn’t bear to leave the home for which she apparently cared so little. She grabbed the banister near the door. He was forced to pry her hand loose.
And so she had died with Mrs. Brimsley. Most likely they spent their evenings comparing notes on how their sons had abandoned them, Hennessey imagines.
He throws open the car door and makes his way up the walk to Mrs. Brimsely’s former home.
The brick stairway is cracked. It will have to be replaced. The same for the porch floor. The old planks are rounded at the edges, worn down by decades of use. He assumes the doorbell will not work. He knocks and listens to the glass rattle in its frame.
The lace curtains part. He sees a younger version of Mary Marault. He would pay for that smile. She opens the door. “Mr. Hennessey,” she says.
“Hold on,” he says, unleashing an old joke. “I’m the psychic.”
“Then you know that we’ve been waiting for you.”
Mag takes his coat. Hennessey is stopped short by the paintings in the hall. “You’re the artist?” he asks.
“The painter, anyway.”
“Artist, I would say. Who are…” He stops. He knows. Audrey Brimsley. “You are indeed an artist,” Hennessey says. She has caught something of Mrs. Brimsley, something in her eye, in the cock of her hip and the line of her lips, something he has not previously imagined but that seems suddenly obvious. Something beyond simple beauty, which is a trifle compared to what he sees in her expression here.
Hennessey takes another few steps down the hall. He stops at the painting of my mother and me. My eyes hold him. He feels a presence. Babies on the brain, as Mag’s mother had put it
“You have found your subject, my dear,” Hennessey says.
“For better or worse,” Mag replies.
“For better, certainly. It’s a matter of finding the definition that makes it so. That’s why I’m here.”
“I’ll take your word.”
“An excellent start,” he says.
Wald crouches at the hearth, poking at the fire. As if by ignoring Hennessey he could make him disappear.
“Wald,” Mag calls. “Say hello to Mr. Hennessey.”
Wald leans the poker against the hearth. Hennessey waits, watching, unsurprised by what he sees. Wald resists meeting his eye. He concentrates on returning the poker exactly to its place, as if nothing in the world could be more important. Hennessey takes note of his workman’s strength, the muscles covered by the first ten pounds of extra weight.
“So,” Hennessey says, winking at Wald, as if they were to be partners in mischief. “What have we gotten ourselves into here?”
“Less than we think, I hope,” Wald replies.
“Then I doubt you’ll be disappointed,” says Hennessey. He has dealt with suspicious husbands before.
Hennessey takes a seat beside Mag on the sofa. Wald sits in a straight-backed chair.
“Suppose you tell me what seems important,” Hennessey announces.
Mag hands him a photo album. “This is how it started. These pictures, left behind.”
Hennessey doubts it is so simple. He does not bother to argue.
She opens the album and turns the pages. Hennessey recognizes Mrs. Brimsley, who has suffered the curse of beauty. Having received such a gift she was then forced to watch, helpless, as the years took it away. With every passing minute she was robbed.
Mag tells him about the noises from the attic, their falls, the rattle that appeared and disappeared. Hennessey listens without comment.
When she is finished he sits quietly. “What do you want?” he asks.
“We thought you’d tell us what we could expect,” Wald says.
“There may be a difference. A difference between what you want and what I can do.”
Wald wants whatever ghosts Mag has created to vanish. He wants her restored.
Both Wald and Hennessey turn to Mag and wait for her to speak.
She says, “I want to be sure our baby is safe.”
“How would you know?”
“That’s what I ask her,” Wald says.
Mag closes the album. Her hand rests on the cover.
Hennessey takes Mag’s hand and closes his eyes. He sits silently for so long that Wald wonders if their psychic has fallen asleep.
At last Hennessey blinks, seemingly surprised to find himself on their sofa. “I believe I know how we should proceed,” he declares.
This is not exactly true. He is willing to set out on the faint path he imagines and hope that it will lead to an acceptable destination. He can only trust his feelings.
“How?” Wald asks.
“This is one of those instances where it is better not to say too much,” says Hennessey. “Trust me.”
≈
Should they?
His presence this time surprises me less. His thoughts remain a commotion. Moments of calm fractured by a blur of trees, smoke, the shriek of metal shorn. His life is too fresh.
Should they trust him?
I suppose it depends.
On…
On what they expect.
Trust! Trust! That you feel entitled to the word…?!
Mrs. Hennessey’s thoughts land like a vault dropped from a window. Twenty years you spend ignoring your daughter! Twenty years you spend running away! And you remember the word trust? Congratulations!
What the…? Who…? He’s like a radio stuck between stations. The words won’t come.
Though it is not strictly necessary, I fill the space with an introduction. Jack Marault, Bea Hennessey. That’s her son you see walking out the door.
The audacity, Mrs. Hennessey sputters, albeit to no one in particular, since Jack Marault has once again disappeared.
Chapter Twenty
Mr. Hennessey is mysteriously vague when he calls to ask if my mother has time for a visit. Time: she has too much and not much at all. Besides waiting to die, which seems to stand as her primary obligation, she has just a few other small tasks. Her physical therapist requires that she makes two laps daily around the floor, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. “Use it or lose it,” the therapist warns. All of us are losing it, my mother thinks, though she keeps that to herself. The girl is just trying to do her job. My mother grabs her walker and takes her spin.
Spin is not quite the word, since it seems to describe a lark, a thoughtless little drive, not her own potentially fatal grind. She thinks sometimes of those auto races she glimpses on the dayroom television. One mindless revolution after another until someone slams into a wall. The hallways of the Sheltering Arms are a slow-motion version of a different type of race. Clutching their walkers, my mother and her fellows clatter down the straightaway past the nurses’ station, round the next wing and back again. Sometimes there are pile-ups. One walker gets tangled in another, or hooked on a chair leg. Next comes the rattle of aluminum against linoleum, the awful slap of flesh on the floor. A whimper or a scream, the nurses’ hurried footsteps, the hum of gurney wheels. The Sheltering Arms 500. Except that it isn’t really five hundred laps, or a thousand, or ten thousand. There is no telling how long this race will last. Instead of a checkered flag, there is a casket at the finish line.
Isn’t that a little dreary, dear? my mother asks herself.
Oh, the truth so often
is, she replies.
There is nothing for it but to take another lap.
Anyway, she was thinking of something quite pleasant. But what?
Mr. Hennessey, that was it. The mysterious Mr. Hennessey. His visit is something to anticipate. That was what got her started. Anticipation.
The Buddhists had it wrong, from what little she knew of that. Living in the moment was a lukewarm broth compared to a life in which one could look forward to the next hour, the next day, the next year. What was life if you did not lick your lips with the pleasures to come? She had felt that way in those months — too few! — during which she and James had set their minds toward having a baby. She would squirm in her chair, waiting for him to come home from work. She spent the day cleaning their house, doing their laundry, walking to the grocery and putting together a meal. A full day’s work and then some, this being before the modern conveniences. She finished in time to run a bath and change into something becoming.
As if she needed to put out bait for James.
They raced through their meal. He helped with the dishes. Sometimes they made it to the bedroom and sometimes they didn’t. The kitchen table served. As did the sofa, and the rocker they got for their wedding. They had rocked themselves straight onto the floor, landing with a horrible clatter. A wonder the chair ever rocked again. She remembered so clearly the sepia light that came in through the thick shades, the feel of James’ hands against her skin. Those days might have stretched out for a few more months. She would not have complained. Too soon she was pregnant.
That was anticipation of a different sort, written in bright lights and capital letters, underlined by the change of her body from day to day. Her breasts larger, her belly swelled, her cheeks flushed, even her hair grown thicker. At last the fluttering movements inside her, like a whisper at first, then so emphatic that she gasped with the surprise. Clarissa. She never doubted I was a girl.
Once I was born she could never get enough sleep. When she was asleep she dreamed of sleeping. Even so she could hardly wait for me to awake, to begin another day of cooing and gurgling just inches from my face, of grinning like a lunatic in hope of provoking my first smile. When it came, she felt that her life had been a funnel directed toward just that moment.
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