Thereafter

by Anthony Schmitz

  He cannot bear to enter the house alone.

  Snow piles up on the windshield, blocking the view.

  Hennessey remembers again the look his mother gave him the last time he lifted her into bed. He reminds himself of the truth he recited so often for others. The dead have all been wronged. It is the normal state of affairs. The dead, however, do not care. They have no further grievances.

  Poor Bill, I wish I could tell him. If you only knew. I hear from his mother inchoate noise, her emotion carrying her beyond words.

  He checks his watch. Not quite eleven. Too early for a drink.

  A cup of coffee, in that case. An early lunch amid the familiar comforts of The Mirage. He decides he could use some of that inscrutable patter from Thomas behind the bar.

  He turns on the wipers to bat away the snow. Then Hennessey pulls his car back into the storm. The snow, driven so hard by the wind, renders everything in shades of gray.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  My mother does not keep her pearls in the jewel box on top of her dresser. There is a difference between trust and stupidity. The jewel box is for baubles, bits of glass and plastic. With the aides and nurses constantly coming and going, she suspects that nothing of value in the jewel box will last. She keeps her pearls wrapped up inside a pair of support hose in her underwear drawer. She pulls them out now and fastens the clasp around her neck. Then, peering into the small tabletop mirror she keeps, she does her best to apply lipstick. She still takes pleasure in making the best of herself.

  She does not have much left to work with, she admits. The bodice of her dress simply hangs there. Her breasts — even if she has no choice but to say so herself, James no longer able to do the job for her — her breasts had been magnificent a half-century ago. She was a Venus, as James had exclaimed more than once. She was. She would stand naked before a mirror and marvel. Beneath the skin was real muscle. She could lift James off his feet and squeeze the breath from him. “Easy there, sweetheart,” he gasped the time she… Well, there is no point getting into that, though she can not help but smile as she remembers. Back then she could make the best of herself by shrugging her shoulders and allowing her slip to fall around her ankles. Now no amount of effort is enough. Yet she enjoys the fuss as she waits for Mr. Hennessey to arrive.

  She has ideas about his big secret. Valentine’s Day is coming up. He seems just sweet enough to humor an old lady, to take her out for a special meal. Certainly that would never occur to her boys. She shouldn’t get her hopes up. But neither has she recently felt it necessary to quash every hope. She is reclaiming her life, even if it is very nearly over. Her choice being between late and never, this will have to do.

  When she hears Hennessey’s knock upon her door she quickly runs a comb through her sparse hair and calls, “Come in, it’s open.” As though the door could be locked.

  Hennessey tells her she looks lovely, which she does not believe but does not dispute. She will not sneer at a well-intentioned lie. He has in his hand a package from a well-known women’s store. “For you,” he says. She unwraps a scarlet cashmere shawl.

  “Oh, Mr. Hennessey,” she says. She thinks that she might cry. The fabric is so soft, so warm against her skin. And red, the color of a Valentine. Oh, she is right to allow herself to hope. He wraps the shawl around her shoulders before setting her in the wheelchair. My mother glimpses herself in the mirror. She looks … festive. That is the word. She will not lapse into regret for all the years in which she squandered her beauty. In her bright new shawl she looks festive.

  “Mr. Hennessey,” she says, “perhaps now you can tell me where we’re going.”

  “First let’s get you out the door,” he replies.

  His car is spotless, as always. He sets her on the leather seat. She waits as he folds her wheelchair and stores it in the trunk. As they drive he puts his hand on hers. She is startled again by the warmth of his touch.

  “Mrs. Brimsley,” he says, “I have a favor to ask.”

  More about his mother, she supposes. She quickly tamps down the sense that this is an affront to her dignity. She cannot afford fine feelings, not at this age and in this position. But she is a person in her own right, not merely a conduit. In any event, she believes there is no door to open between the living and the dead. If her life has taught her anything, it is that. Bittersweet memory, of that there is no shortage. Nor does there exist a lack of blame and guilt. Tricks of mind and self-imposed torment come by the bucketful. Years can pass by — had passed by! — in which one may ask what if, or construct if/then fantasies. But in the end, she tells herself, I had lived on only in her mind. There is nothing more to it than that.

  And if I could show her that I exist in this form, would I do it? Would that be an act of kindness or a further cruelty? I am an idea rather than a person. I will never lift a spoon to her mouth, or tuck her into her bed.

  She waits for Hennessey to continue, even as she hopes that he will not. The car seems to float over the freshly-plowed streets. Snow left from the blizzard forms a white wall along the curb. Overnight the world has been remade, its rough edges smoothed over, its filth concealed, everything covered now in shattering white light. Temporary, of course, and painful to the eye, but lovely nonetheless. Were they simply to drive and say not another word, she thinks she could be happy. But the silence hangs between them too long. At last she feels obliged to ask, “A favor, Mr. Hennessey? You were about to ask me for a favor.”

  “I am in need of a business partner,” he says after a moment’s hesitation. “A fellow consultant, if you will. Though there’s no money in it for either of us. A labor of love, I’m afraid.”

  What is the man talking about now? “Perhaps if you told me more,” she says.

  “Of course, Mrs. Brimsley, of course.” The car glides almost silently down the street.

  She realizes suddenly where they are.

  “I hope you won’t mind returning to your home,” Hennessey says as he pats her hands again.

  ≈

  The powerful emotions having been so few, so far between, for so many years, my mother can hardly be sure what she feels now. Bitterness, surely, she has known that. When she realized the boys had duped her out of her home she felt bitter. But bitterness comes as no surprise. You anticipate you will receive little or nothing of what you deserve and you get exactly that. Bitterness is a simmer, not a boil.

  As she watched Mrs. Hennessey die she had been shaken. Fear, that was part of it. Fear of her own end. Helplessness in the face of death. But then, finally, came that sense of surrender, of profound tranquility, for my mother if not for poor Bea Hennessey herself. There was nothing, really, that my mother could have done. She could have rung for the nurses. They might have pulled Mrs. Hennessey back from the lip of death, only so she could be swallowed some other night. A delay, not a choice. That night the blood did not pound in her ears as it did now.

  Longing: now there was an old companion. She had wished for so many years that she could return to the days when she was beautiful, loved and in love, together with James and me in our tidy home. She knew everything there was to know of longing.

  But anger. No, she had not felt this for so very long. She has trouble managing her breath, which comes now in uneven bursts. Her skin feels aflame.

  “Return to my home?” she says to Hennessey.

  “I wouldn’t ask,” he says, his hand still on hers. “Except that I think you could prevent so much needless misery.”

  “One point on which I am certain, Mr. Hennessey. I shall be far less miserable myself if I never set foot in that house again.”

  Her boys had unintentionally done her a favor. They had accomplished what she never managed to do for herself. She had been stuck in a slice of time, like one of James’ damaged seventy-eights that would have hiccuped forever on the turntable had he not nudged the needle. For all there is to abhor within the Sheltering Arms, at least she has been liberated from her home, from the constant press of memory
there.

  “The lady of the house is pregnant,” Hennessey continues.

  “I don’t see what that has to do with me.”

  “They’re fixing the place up. You might enjoy the change. Something new made from the old.”

  “These people seem to have thought of everything. A home, a baby, each other. What do they need from me?” She fingers the pearls strung around her neck. A ridiculous gesture, she realizes now. Primping to return to her old cell. The scarlet shawl was doubly absurd.

  “There’s a slight problem,” Hennessey says. “The woman…”

  “She must have a name, I should think.”

  “Of course. Ms. Marault. Mag Marault. Ms. Marault discovered the albums you left behind.”

  “Allow me to correct you, Mr. Hennessey. I did not leave anything behind. At the time I was unaware that I was leaving. My sons left those albums.”

  Hennessey ignores that. “Ms. Marault was interested in the history of the house,” he says. “She began to study your albums.”

  “It didn’t occur to her to return them?” My mother is uncertain what upsets her more: that those clods, her sons, couldn’t be bothered to clean up properly, or that this stranger should paw through her things. What ever happened to respect for the privacy of others? What happened to common decency?

  “Your boys told Ms. Marault and her husband that they could keep whatever remained in the house. I’m sure she had no idea you wanted the albums returned.”

  She doesn’t want the albums back. That isn’t it. She feels as if strangers have been invited to poke at her soiled clothing. They have no right.

  “She came to a photo that made a particular impression, Mrs. Brimsley. A picture of you and your daughter.”

  “Clarissa,” she says.

  “Perhaps you remember. The child held a toy. A rattle.”

  As though she could forget. She and James had walked past a toy store downtown. “Let’s get her something,” James said, nodding toward the child she held tight to her breast.

  “She doesn’t need a thing.”

  “That’s the point then. It’s not something she needs.” He grabbed her elbow and steered her into the little store. He saw the rattle on a counter and handed it to me. I looked at it with my usual curiosity, grabbing it with both hands. James put his hand over mine and gave the rattle a shake. The noise startled me. My lip trembled. “Look, now she’s going to cry,” my mother scolded.

  “No. Watch.” James gave the rattle another small shake. For my mother and father it was like watching the clouds part to reveal the morning sun. I laughed. I pointed the rattle at them, as if it were my own magic wand. I shook it and laughed so hard that my cheeks turned red. “That’s it then,” said James to the clerk. “What do we owe?”

  The answer being more than my mother had truly been able to bear.

  For weeks she felt like she heard nothing but that rattle. I fell asleep with it in my hand. If I dropped it, I cried until my mother picked it up for me. “I wish you were here to listen to that thing all day,” she told James.

  “Honey, I wish I were, too,” he replied honestly.

  Why did Mr. Hennessy not simply drive a pick into her heart? Why should she be reminded of that stupid toy now, having finally shut herself of it?

  After my death she found the rattle tucked between the sofa cushions, another bit of flotsam left in my wake. She wondered what to do with it. She could not throw it away. Nor could she keep it where it would serve as a reminder. She threw it on top of the china cabinet, thinking she would allow it to be buried there in dust. But the idea of it gnawed at her so that finally she dug a hole in the back yard and buried it. Or tried to anyway. It had all been so long ago.

  Hennessey turns the car around the corner, to the street where my mother had lived. “The child held a rattle.”

  “You said that.”

  “Ms. Marault is pregnant. I mentioned that, didn’t I? Her first child. She’s a bit anxious. You can imagine.”

  “I don’t see what any of this has to do with me.”

  “The rattle in the picture,” says Hennessey. “She believes she’s seen it in the house.”

  “Well she hasn’t. It’s gone. Gone long ago.”

  “I don’t doubt you.”

  “Is this a ghost story, Mr. Hennessey?”

  “I don’t know that I’d say that.” He thinks of his mother’s fur. He suspects that everyone has a ghost story of one sort or another.

  “What are you to this girl? Why did she call you? What do you want with me?”

  “As I mentioned, I have a certain reputation,” Hennessey says — sadly, it seems to my mother.

  “I would imagine you do,” she replies.

  It occurs to Hennessey that he is tired of the dead. But then that’s just one more thing the dead don’t care about, he tells himself. The traffic with us is all one way; we are beyond negotiation and pleading. We are the original tough customers, he decides.

  He is wrong and right. My days are made of spooking the living. Nothing is too small for my consideration. I doubt I could resist the urge to advise, to plead, to intervene. The curse of my quasi-existence is that I lack the means to do so. If I felt that a toddler could be guilty of anything, I would regard this as my punishment.

  “There are people who find comfort in believing that I smooth their relationship with those who have passed on,” Hennessey says.

  “For a fee, I assume. You didn’t mention that.”

  “No. Never for money.”

  “Nonetheless, you say you connect the living with the dead.”

  “I wouldn’t say that exactly.”

  “What would you say then?”

  “I put them in touch with their feelings about the dead. Which is somewhat different.”

  “This girl,” my mother says. “What does she want?”

  “She feels your daughter… ”

  “On second thought, Mr. Hennessey, I don’t know that I care to hear this.”

  Hennessey ignores her. “She has certain feelings. She says things have… appeared. That toy, for instance.”

  “What do you expect me to do about that?”

  “I’m not sure, Mrs. Brimsley. To be honest. I simply had a feeling…”

  “A feeling?”

  Audrey notices the door of her house swing open. A young woman waves. Or, a girl with a woman’s face. She is a scrawny thing in my mother’s estimation, hardly fit for serious work. Then again, there is hardly any work left to be done in a home. The machines seem to do it all, the washing and scrubbing and dusting. Anyway, they are caught. Hennessey taps the horn in greeting. An instant later he holds open the car door for her.

  “I’ll get your wheelchair,” he says.

  “I’m perfectly capable of walking these few steps,” my mother replies. She takes it as a point of pride to return to her home on her own two feet.

  ≈

  Hennessey guides her up the crumbling concrete stairs. “Careful now,” he warns.

  “I’m quite aware.”

  In the Sheltering Arms she can pretend she is healthy. And she is, compared to all those who will never again manage an unassisted step, or who enjoyed their last cogent thought decades prior. But here, with Hennessey by her side and the girl watching from the open door, my mother feels her weakness exposed.

  So much angers her now. Mr. Hennessey’s deception, her own futile hopes, her feebleness, the fact that this old house, this old trap, still stands. It will be repaired, remade, even as she turns to dust.

  The girl in the doorway starts on an apology before Hennessey can introduce them. “Mrs. Brimsley, I hope you’ll …”

  She is close enough, finally, to get a look at her. My mother’s anger softens slightly. She has spent so many years constructing the life that I might have had. She has pictured me in a graduation cap, a wedding gown. Here before her is a version of the girl she imagined, barely larger than a child herself.

  My mother begins t
o wonder if there is a way for her to help.

  She has not been of much use in her life, she is forced to admit. She allowed herself to wallow. Raising her boys was no particular gift to the world. The love she gave James had a hollow ring for years and years after my death.

  She went through the motions, an actress in a long performance. James was no fool. He knew. Sometimes he glanced at her with a look of appraisal, an awareness that he struggled to repress. He knew. He might have moved on. She never could.

  There was a sort of pigheadedness in his resolve, in his constant cheer, his unwillingness to give up on her. Everyone does what he or she must. We all walk down the rutted track of our personality, of our history, my mother tells herself. James, at least, would be relieved to see someone trying to put his house to right again.

  James’ house: that was how she thought of it. He had been so house-proud. As long as he lived he was painting, scraping, patching, replacing. His friends were the same. They were men bred with the idea of maintenance, stewardship. It was their way of leaving a mark on the world, though James’ efforts left no mark on her. She let the house settle into ruin once it became hers alone.

  The girl takes her by the elbow and leads her across the threshold. “We wouldn’t have disturbed you except…”

  “I’m happy enough to get out,” she replies brusquely. “Don’t worry about me.”

  Mag seizes both of my mother’s hands. Mag’s eyes are blue, as clear and blue as mine once were. But then most babies have blue eyes. My mother knows she should not surrender to… What is it? Superstition? Sentimentality? Wishful thinking? To mumbo jumbo, she decides. To a slouch into undisciplined thought.

  My mother stops as she notices the painting in the hall. Her heart seems suddenly to freeze.

  “I should have thought to mention this,” Hennessey says.

  My mother has no choice but to turn away. This painting of her, in her youth, in this house, with me. Is it mockery? What can the intention possibly be?