Such Good People

by Martha Whitmore Hickman

  “Oh, is there to be a wedding?” the woman asked archly. Silence. Then Paula, her voice bright with courage, said, “No. Not now.”

  Laura went and put her arm around Paula’s shoulder. “We’re so grateful to have Paula here,” she said.

  The summer began to cool. The days grew perceptibly shorter. In department store windows, mannequins of children wearing plaid dresses and chino slacks carried schoolbags in their hands. The rush-hour traffic thickened. The Community Symphony and Chorus began its weekly practice. The college readied itself for a new fall term.

  In the Randalls’ white house on Hinsdale Road, the members of the family proceeded through the days and nights of early fall, each moving as they were able through lives in which the strange and the familiar danced in a delicate pas de deux, the score unknown, even to the dancers. They talked often with one another, walked and ate and slept in a house and a world in which the loss of their daughter and their sister was a constant presence. If for a moment they forgot, as in sleep or some occasion of delight, some excursion into fantasy or absorbing work or the gaiety of friends, the reckoning awaited them on their return. For all of them, the task of learning the unacceptable absorbed much of the random energy of their lives as well as that which they offered in their search for her, their still-persistent habit of knowing her. Only now, it was in a mirror—glimmering, distant—they saw her: They reached up to touch her and saw their own hands.

  Gradually, Laura sorted through Annie’s clothes—the textures of her daughter’s life—sweaters, jeans, bikini underpants, blouses in prints of trellised flowers. Trace would take them to the collection center at the college, where they maintained boxes both for the area’s homeless and for overseas relief.

  “Here.” She showed him three large pasteboard boxes.

  “Did you save anything?” he asked, anguish plain on his face.

  “Yes. In the drawer.” She opened it and showed a pair of worn, faded jeans Annie had embroidered with flowers and a setting sun, a favorite robe, a khaki fatigue hat she had worn on camping expeditions with her brothers. “I thought we’d keep these for a while.”

  He nodded, said, “Good,” and then turned his attention to the boxes against the wall. “I’ll take them over some day next week.”

  “You could put them in the back of the station wagon,” she said.

  “No, I’ll wait.”

  She offered Paula the hand-knit mohair sweater. “I’d like you to have it, unless you’d rather not.”

  “It’s beautiful. I’d love it. You don’t mind if I don’t wear it for a while?”

  “Of course not.” Laura hesitated. “Would you want any of the furniture from her room? You and Bart? The dresser maybe? The water bed?”

  Paula shook her head. “I don’t think so. Thank you, though. I’ll ask Bart.” She went to ask him, came back. “He feels the same way. Thanks, anyway.”

  What to do with it, this symbol of Annie’s independence, her lunge into adult life?

  Philip, who had been leaning against the doorjamb during this exchange, suggested, “Maybe my friend Ziggy? He’s counterculture—and poor. And a nice person,” he added quickly.

  They smiled. “Good idea.”

  On Saturday, Philip drained the water, took the frame apart, and put it all on the station wagon and drove off. Laura and Trace, Paula and Bart, all stood at the doorway, watching until the car was out of sight. Back in the house, Laura ran the sweeper over the matted rectangle of carpet where the bed had been… “The first time—it was in my room….”

  “The first time” When would desire return to her life, and to Trace’s? Once, still in Colorado, she had moved toward him, unsure. He did not respond. Guiltily, she had reproved herself—How can you take pleasure in your body when she is dead?

  But she would want me to. I must be her skin, her body, since she has none.

  No. You are only your own.

  Since then, she had felt no desire. Had he? They had not spoken of it.

  One afternoon, she went to the recreation center to swim. She had not wanted to go until now. In the spring and early summer, Annie had often gone with her, sharing a locker—their one padlock. They’d swim for a while, then drag lounge chairs out and lie in the sun.

  In the locker room, ready to swim, she put her clothes in the locker, reached for the padlock attached to her gym bag. The combination—what was the combination? If she forgot, Annie always remembered. She couldn’t recall the combination. What was it? Sweat broke out on her hands. She began to turn the knob slowly. Would her fingers remember? To the right first—was it 32? No, 23, then left to 15, ahead to 27. She pulled on the lock. The shank slid down and the lock fell open. She leaned against the door, her heart racing. She threaded the lock through the handle and went to swim.

  The water was cold. Then the heat of her body warmed her. She swam a few lengths, lay back on the water, and floated. She swam again, slowly at first, then faster, her arms cutting through water, pulling her forward, her head turning, reaching for air.

  In the shower, she turned the water on full. It stung her shoulders. The water sluiced over her, the cluster of shampoo foam slid over her hipbone, down her thigh. She raised her arms up into water, felt it spray against her underarm, run down the side of her breast. She lifted her face to it, opened her mouth, felt the water against her tongue, and swallowed.

  When Trace came home, she met him at the door. “I went swimming today”—she put her arms up for his hug—“for the first time.”

  At night, she climbed into bed beside him, moved close. She ran her hand over his hair, her finger over his eyebrow, down his nose, along his chin, slowly circled his ear. His arms were around her; his hand ran down the side of her rib cage, over the rise and fall of her hip, moved back to cup her breast in his hand, his eyes watching her. He raised himself on one arm and reached over and put his mouth on her nipple. She made a small outcry. He looked up.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Do you want me to stop?”

  “No.”

  They continued, slowly. When he entered her, she sucked in her breath and felt her eyes fill with tears. If I were younger, I could have another baby. If 1 were younger, 1 could begin all over again.

  She is at the back of the church, ready to take her father’s arm. The music is playing. She is wearing her mother’s wedding dress. They have remodeled it for her—standing before the long mirror in the front hall, she fingered the seed pearls edging the pointed sleeve, the handmade lace collar. Her mother sat on the floor beside her, one hand holding the cloth in place; with the other, she wove pins in and out, securing the gathers of satin. “There—how is that?” Laura turned. In the mirror, she was slender, beautiful, the cloth lying folded against her hips, the panels falling away to the floor. “It looks fine. I like it.” Her mother sat back. “I was a lovely bride, too.” Rachel smiled, remembering. After the fitting, she helped Laura take off the dress. “Be careful taking it off. It’s old silk; it could tear.”

  Now Howard has seated her mother in the front pew. He is coming back up the aisle. Laura turns to her father. His profile is incredibly dear. He is looking ahead, soberly, like a child at a recitation. At the front of the church, Trace has come in, Theo with him. Lillian passes her the bouquet—white stephanotis, clusters of gardenias, star points of baby’s breath. Beneath the flowers, the bouquet handle is solid, a single column wrapped in tape. Her fingers close around it. It is thick and firm. Will it feel like this—his shaft in my hand? The flowers tilt forward. She moves her hand along the shaft, straightening the bouquet. She looks at her father. “Ready?” They move together along the aisle. Trace is waiting. She is beside him. Their arms touch.

  Now she is changing to go away. Her mother comes into the room to help her take off the dress. As they raise it over her head, the cloth tears at the seam. Her mothers gasps. “What if it had torn sooner?”

  “It didn’t. It lasted.”

  Downstairs,
Trace is waiting. As she comes down the stairs, his eyes consume her—the blue velveteen suit, the fine blouse of china silk.

  They tell everyone good-bye and drive away. Halfway to the hotel, they stop to shake confetti from their clothes.

  At the hotel, the elevator operator says, “Congratulations.” They are embarrassed. How did he know? She has slipped the corsage, detached from her wedding bouquet, into her handbag so it will not give them away.

  In the bathroom, she puts on her white gown, the flowing peignoir. As she comes from the bathroom, he is sitting on the edge of the bed and he stands to meet her, his arms outstretched.

  In the attic, she has saved her wedding dress—its seam torn. Still, she had saved it, for Annie. The lovely lace collar, the seed pearls, could be used on another dress, the ring of orange blossoms circling another veil.

  The ring of orange blossoms. The gold wedding ring on her mother’s finger, and on her own. The broken circle of farewell, the ring of the womb broken open. The circle they moved toward in their grief—“I am sorry to tell you that Anne has already died”—their arms around one another’s shoulders. The empty zero and the rim of the well.

  If I were younger. I would have wanted him. I would have wanted them. 1 would have wanted her. But not this. Not to have it turn out like this.

  She fell asleep, an old nursery rhyme playing through her head…

  Ring around the rosey,

  Pocket full of posey

  Ashes, ashes

  All fall down.

  In her sleep, she moved closer to Trace.

  Trace set the three cartons down on top of a low bookcase at one side of the college common room and scanned the room—clusters of easy chairs, tables with reading lamps and an occasional tattered journal or student newspaper, in one corner a grand piano, on the walls the huge archetypal portraits of past presidents and deans, their features lost under the glaze of varnish. It was before 8:30 and he’d come early so he could deposit the contents of the boxes before the room got crowded. At the moment, there was no one else in there, but he could hear the buzz of voices—the returning students registering for classes in the Great Hall. They’d be through here soon, on their way to check out mailboxes, bulletin boards, all the announcements of start-up events.

  But where were the repositories for used clothing? They were supposed to be in here somewhere. Strange how things could escape your notice until they became part of your agenda. When his family had had used clothing to dispose of before, they’d just put it on a shelf until the next time the Retarded Citizens’ Association or the Disabled American Veterans called saying their truck would be around and would they please put anything they had in a clearly marked bag on the front porch. But this time, having sorted through the things, Laura didn’t want to delay passing them on, getting them out of the house, and he could understand that.

  Then in one corner of the room, behind a couch, he saw a couple of large brown barrels, plastic liners hanging over their rims. He slid his boxes back as far as they would go against the wall—they were balanced a bit precariously—and walked over to see if, indeed, those were the barrels for used clothing. By now, the first stream of students was coming into the room, but he threaded his way through them and had arrived at his destination and ascertained that, yes, these were what he was looking for—one marked LOCAL and one marked OVERSEAS—when, above the low buzz of conversation of the passing students, he heard a thud and a definite, “Oh shit!” He turned and, through the spaces in the moving parade, saw a young man with scraggly long hair and wearing tattered jeans stooping over a pile of clothing on the floor and shoving it into a box.

  For a moment, Trace stood, frozen—Annie’s clothes!—and then pushed his way through the now-swollen line. “Here, I’ll get that. My fault.” He forced a laugh. “I didn’t set that very securely, did I?”

  “Not very. Sorry, I just bumped against it.” The boy looked up—on his face the stubble of a day-old beard.

  “Please, let me get them.” Trace stooped to help. “I was looking for the used-clothing barrels. I shouldn’t have left these here.”

  “Wow!” In his hand, the boy held a blouse of crinkly multicolored knit. “These are nice duds. I should send my girlfriend over.”

  Trace smiled lamely. “Please, let me finish. I’m sure you were on your way to somewhere.”

  “Okay.” The boy dropped the handful he was holding into the box, straightened up, and joined the trail of students moving into the corridor.

  Trace’s heart raced. He had wanted to transact this particular piece of business quickly and with as little notice as possible. Furthermore, he had this feeling he had almost lost Annie’s clothes—lost them to some casual student who would put them on some lovely young woman and they would carry on their life as though nothing terrible had happened. He might even, sometime, see this young woman in one of his classes or at some college event and she might be wearing Annie’s clothes.

  The surge of students had passed and the room was all but empty now. He repiled his boxes and took them over to where the two barrels stood, each partially filled with mounding multicolored fabric—a rough khaki blanket, a bright green sweater, a crumpled pair of men’s pants. He stood back to be sure of the labels again, then upended his boxes, one by one, into the barrel marked OVERSEAS, nested his boxes as best he could—he would take them back home at the end of the day and put them in the attic—and went on to his office.

  When he reached the office, Ben Stoddard and Dave Ignatius were standing talking by Lutie’s desk—she hadn’t come in yet—engaged in conversation. They looked up as he approached. “Hi, Trace,” Ben said, then, taking in the nested boxes, added, “You’re not moving out on us, are you?” His jovial face settled into a smile, his chin sinking over his bow tie.

  “I sure hope not,” Dave said. “The idea of working with Trace Randall was one reason I came.”

  The remark startled Trace, took him off guard. He was touched. He liked Dave Ignatius well enough, had welcomed him to the department, but he’d gone away so soon on their trip, and since he’d come back he’d had little heart—or time—for getting to know a new colleague. All of the department people had come to Annie’s memorial service. He’d have expected the others, but he was grateful that Dave and his wife had come, never even having met Annie, or knowing the family well at all. In the flurry of exchanges of sympathy after the service, each of his colleagues had proffered their sympathy. “Let me know if there’s something I can do.” He’d nodded, grateful. What could anyone do? But it was nice of them to offer. Since then none of them had spoken of his loss. Nor had he. It had become the omnipresent giant of which no one dared speak. Once he had seen Lutie wiping her eyes after they’d had some exchange about changing a classroom location or some minor administrative matter. She didn’t say why she was crying, but he knew. Their silence was to spare him. Or so they thought.

  He hesitated. “As a matter of fact, I just took some of my daughter’s clothes to the used-clothing barrels in the Common,” he said.

  And knew he shouldn’t have. Silence—no more than a few seconds, but enough to make them all uncomfortable. He should have said he’d had trouble parking, that he’d forgotten where he was going, made some joke about leaving. But not this—plunged them into this awkward moment, shock registered on both of their faces.

  Ben Stoddard reached up to straighten his red bow tie. Finally, he blurted out, “You like to know things are being put to good use.”

  Dave Ignatius adjusted the sheaf of papers in his hand. He moved toward his office door, his arms in his tan linen jacket clutched tightly to his sides. His lips worked, as though struggling for what to say. “Guess I better get to work,” he muttered, and slipped through the door of his office.

  Trace stood there a moment, alone, then escaped into his office and quickly, before he could sink into a morass of gloom, began to go over his student lists for the fall term. But the names marched in columns down the page an
d he kept seeing in his mind’s eye the pile of Annie’s clothes spilled out on the floor of the common room and he and that young man bending over them, stumbling over each other, trying to amend the disarray.

  He picked up an issue of Parabola, but he had no heart for that, either, and was about to give up and head for home when there was a knock at the door. He wouldn’t have answered it except that his light was on—his presence a giveaway.

  He splayed his hand out over the computer sheets and magazine and started to stand but then said, “Come in,” and sat back down.

  “Dr. Randall?” A young woman stood there, satchel in hand, a long, knubby pink sweater hanging over jeans, on her feet those clumsy-looking running shoes everyone wore. Blue eyes, short brown hair. “Kate! You had your hair cut over the summer!”

  “Yes, I did,” she said. She appeared shaken; her blue eyes glistened. In one hand, she held some yellow registration forms. “I was bringing these by to have you approve my class choices.” She swallowed, took another breath. “And maybe talk about my thesis project a little… But…” Her voice trailed off and she stood there, tears brimming in her eyes. “Oh, Dr. Randall, I just heard about your daughter. I can’t tell you… I can’t tell you how sorry I am, how terrible that is!” Her voice, sharp, rising in outrage.

  “Sit down, Kate.” He gestured toward the chair and she sat, perched on the edge, leaning forward and spreading the palms of both hands, and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Oh, I don’t know what to say,” she murmured, and wiped her face again. “Excuse me, but it’s just so awful.”

  He sat, too, and waited while she composed herself, his heart aching with an unfamiliar gratitude and yearning toward this young woman who had been bold to speak of his heart’s pain.

  “It is awful, Kate,” he said, “but bad things happen to people. We’ll get through it. We have a lot of support from family and friends.”