Thereafter

by Anthony Schmitz

  “Can you do it over long distance?” Dimici asked, not quite jokingly. “Or do we have to fly you back?”

  “You may have to figure it out for yourself. Sorry to say.”

  “Ha, ha, ha,” Dimici brayed, while Judy gave Hennessey an appraising look.

  “Where you’re going, Billy, maybe you’ll keep all that under your hat.”

  “You could be right,” he replied, as though he may have thought otherwise.

  On his way out of town a few days later he stopped at the Sheltering Arms, to say good-bye to my mother. She sat at the window that looked out over the parking lot. As she saw him walk toward the door she felt a familiar jab of excitement. The engaging Mr. Hennnessey, once again come to call.

  He had been a gentleman as he drove her back to the Sheltering Arms the afternoon of the fire. Covered with soot and stinking of smoke, both of them. But no questions from him, no accusations, even though he must have known she was to blame. Back in her room, he drew the scarlet shawl from her shoulders, shook it out, and draped it over the chair beside the window. Then he turned to her, staring as if seeing her for the first time, and said, “Mrs. Brimsley, you have given me exactly what I deserve.”

  Before she could ask what he meant, he kissed her on the forehead and slipped out the door.

  “I wondered if I would see you again,” my mother said as he walked through her door for a final visit.

  “For the last time.”

  She shrugged, not entirely surprised. “To where?”

  “Atlanta.”

  “I see,” she replied, not knowing what to add. She had only vague ideas about the place. Peaches, they had peaches there. And kudzu, she had read. A vine that grew over everything, softening the sharp edges, obscuring them. If time had done as much to her memory, her house might still be standing. Then again, the same would be true had Mr. Hennessey not obliged her to return.

  “You’ve sold your house then?” she managed at last.

  “Given it away. To that couple we…” He could not decide how to end that sentence.

  “I,” she said. “Not we. You needn’t share the…” What was the word? Not blame. She felt certain of that. Not if the girl had any sense at all. It was a gift, to free her from that accumulation of memory and heartache, from that trap. It was a liberation. Provided she managed not to find a new set of shackles.

  “I was hoping to claim just the smallest bit of credit, Mrs. Brimsley. And that only for bringing you there. I would never have dared the rest.”

  He held her hand as they talked. She had trouble paying attention. His touch put her in mind of James and me. It would not do to break into tears, not while the charming Mr. Hennessey said whatever it was that was on his mind. The effort, however, cost her dearly. For once she could not wait for him to leave.

  ≈

  Having no greater occupation than to eat her meals, to take her laps with her walker, and to meet the obligations imposed by the occasional visitor, my mother spends her time at the window, watching as the snow slowly melts and the chickadees and sparrows are rejoined by robins, doves, and finches. After her lunch she studies the haze of green buds that appear on the trees. For reasons I do not understand, I remain here with her. She is startled by a knock at her door.

  “Are you busy?” says a tentative voice.

  “Busy?” my mother replies. “Now there’s a thought.”

  She turns to see who is there.

  “What a pleasant surprise,” she says, hoping this might be true. “Come in. Come in and sit down.”

  She has thought of Mag often enough. There has been so much to think about. Bea Hennessey and her son, the girl and her husband, the bittersweet satisfaction of watching her old house burn. My mother wonders if the girl has found the wit to understand what she has been given.

  Mag moves awkwardly, splay-footed with the effort to accommodate a baby within the reed of her body. Unable to bend easily at the waist, she falls into the chair with a sigh.

  My mother waits for whatever will come next.

  She is struck again by the sense of recognition the girl stirs in her. She has seen Mag before, seen a version of her, in her dreams of the woman I might have become. The solemn eyes, the delicate turn of the lips, the fineness of her skin; all that and more. Her neediness, that was what softened my mother — her neediness and her trust that Audrey Brimsley not only possessed whatever she required, but was obliged to give it freely. Like any child, I had expected the same so many years ago. A child pulls your heart from your breast without a thought. Hold back any part and it is not worth saving. My mother looked at Mag and felt herself falling back into that old embrace.

  The silence hangs between them, allowing my mother’s thoughts too much room to play. “So tell me,” she says, slightly desperately, “when are you due?”

  “Less than two months, if I can wait that long.”

  “I don’t know that you have a choice.”

  Mag has no idea what she will say next. Or, rather, she makes no effort, for small talk does not concern her. She has come for more than that. Like Hennessey, she is prepared to wait. She has opened her mind to the possibilities.

  Mag makes an inventory of the room’s scant contents. The bed and its still-unoccupied mate. The dresser, which holds a hairbrush, a bottle of cologne, and a jewelry box. An old mirror that hangs from the wall. The small table and lace curtains. Fifteen minutes of cleaning and any trace of my mother’s earthly presence will be gone. That woman from those now-burned albums, so bursting with life, so loved and loving, will pass all but unnoticed.

  The silence, the most uncomfortable silence, again becomes too much for my mother to bear. If there must be an unpleasant scene, she prefers to have it over and done. “At my age,” she declares, “one cannot postpone much of anything for too very long. Tell me, dear, what brings you here?”

  “Well,” Mag says, as though she knows what she will say.

  After the fire she had been distracted for weeks. She poked amid the scorched rubble for salvageable scraps. She saved some pots and pans, pieces of flatware, a few plates and glasses that survived the heat. She did not quite admit to herself that she was searching for the baby’s toy, or for whatever might be left of her diamond necklace. They were gone. Finally the charred remains were loaded in a dumpster. A small crew with a dump truck filled the cellar with dirt.

  Mag and Wald tiptoed around the question of how the fire started. Wald chose to accept Worth’s theory: “One of those God damn squirrels sunk a tooth into a wire and toasted your fucking house, pal.” Mag neither lied nor told the truth. She said only that she and Audrey had sat for a while in the nursery and talked about her child. She didn’t mention the trip to the attic. Wald had the sense not to ask.

  Then came the startling offer from Hennessey and the move to his quickly vacated home. Poking in the closets and shelves, Wald felt as if he had won the lottery. Linens, luxurious towels, the well-stocked liquor cabinet, a pantry stuffed with the finest food. The suspicions Wald had about the fire’s cause were suddenly beside the point. All he had aspired to was delivered, with no more effort that it took to sign the papers presented by Hennessey’s lawyer.

  Wald had his house. Hennessey had his escape. Audrey Brimsley had removed the last reminder of her past from the Earth. They all had what they wanted. Mag alone had nothing to show. She had created her guardian angels in paint on a plaster wall. She had worked herself toward charming the future. Now she cursed Gloria Taberna, that devil of realty in her prim red suit, for ever suggesting that a stack of lumber might speak to her. It was gone, all of it, even her trunk of photos, everything burned, hauled away or buried. If her new home had anything to say, she could not hear it.

  She tried to explain her accounting to Wald. He observed the obvious. “The baby, you’ve got that. We’ve got this house. You’ve got me.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Of course I do.” Her hand instinctively went to her bulging stomach. The baby. The baby wit
h all its twisting and churning. The baby who had stretched her this way and that, who had taken her over so completely. The baby who would threaten with every moment to break her heart, as Audrey’s heart had been broken.

  Mag looks appraisingly now at my mother. She is shrunken into herself, as if boiled down and set out to dry. Mag has come to the nursing home wondering if there is something, still, that my mother can offer to her. A word that might change everything. Advice, a suggestion, anything to put her mind to rest. Looking at the old woman now, her desire seems absurd. Audrey has nothing left except the memory of what she once was.

  Mag wept over the trunk of photographs that were destroyed in the fire. She could have saved the green album, had my mother not snatched it from her hand and thrown in back to be burned. But the truth was that she hardly needed the pictures anymore. She had looked at them so often that they were stamped into her memory.

  Mag imagines herself now standing in my mother’s place outside that old farmhouse, posing for the camera. She feels the Dakota wind in her hair and the sun on her face. Coneflowers and bluestem shimmy in the breeze. The simple cotton dress shifts against her legs. The eye behind the camera is blind with love. Her life stretches ahead, hers for the making.

  A painter’s trick, this imagining, a tool to move toward art. Another version of those conversations she had with Audrey as she painted, a willful dissolution of the boundary between her imagination and everything else. Mag feels herself growing to fill her daydreamed surroundings; the overwhelming sky, the prairie that stretches to the horizon. She plants her hands solidly on her slim hips and waits for the click of the camera shutter. She leans back on her heels and laughs with the joy of her realization. She can let herself loose to fill the vastness. Swept up in her emotion, Mag grabs my mother’s hand with both of hers.

  “Move into our house,” she says.

  “What?” my mother replies. She doubts she has heard correctly.

  “Live with us.”

  A moment before Mag had no such thought, and now she has no doubt.

  “Leave this place.”

  “You can’t possibly mean that.”

  “I do.”

  My mother breathes deeply to quiet her heart. Her last days might be spent in a comfortable home, listening to the sound of a baby. A blessing, perhaps. Possibly a curse. Mag stares at her so intently that my mother wonders if she dares say no.

  Like the living, I am attached to what I know and fearful of what comes next. I see the work that may be laid out for me. Like Mag, I await my mother’s reply.

  Thanks for finishing Thereafter. You can find out about my other novels at anthonyschmitz.com.