Such Good People

by Martha Whitmore Hickman

  “Mother!” It was Laura’s turn to be startled. “That’s very fine of you. I’m proud of you!”

  “Well”—Rachel looked a bit nonplussed—“I try to keep up with the times. I guess I’m a little surprised at myself.” She raised her chin. “I do know things change.” Then, as though she might have gone too far and be thought a transgressor, she added, “Of course, you do understand I’d rather…”

  Laura’s laugh was light. “Yes, I understand.” But it was a blessing, a burden put down, and suddenly she was talking with Rachel about things that had been lying waiting—only it had seemed as though their time might not come and she would go back to Woodbridge with the words unspoken. About Paula, and Annie, about the memorial service and her talk with Matt. When she had finished all that, she said to Rachel the last thing—the most dearly needed, the most hoped for: “I believe we shall be with her again,” and she cried, because such a thing is not lightly said. In a while, she asked, “Do you?”

  “These last years,” Rachel said, “I’ve thought that’s almost too good to be true.” She was quiet, and the trees in the backyard blew, crossed branches with one another, straightened again. “But my father believed it,” she said. “And my mother… Did I ever tell you about my mother, dying, calling her sisters’ names?”

  “Tell me,” she said. She had heard it before. It always moved her, and she needed it now more than ever.

  “Well,” Rachel said, and she told how her mother had called out the names of her two sisters, who had preceded her in death. “Rebecca had died years ago, but Lilly”—and here Rachel always paused, her voice thinning out, as though the story demanded the utmost reverence; otherwise one did not deserve such a gift—“Lilly had died only a few days before and they hadn’t told her, sick as she was. ‘And Lilly, too!’ she said. ‘Aren’t they beautiful!’”

  Her voice broke and she reached for Laura’s hand. They sat in the presence of the story while the afternoon light came in through the window and fell on the dining room table, illuminating everything—sugar bowl, place mats, scratches, spilled grains of salt.

  “If there’s anything to it,” Rachel said, “I like to think, There was Will, waiting for her.”

  *

  Laura did see Fred again. In the morning, Virginia called. A client was coming through and needed to see her. “I’m so sorry, Laura. I was counting on it. Tom is tied up, too. Would it be all right if Fred…”

  “Is he back? I can get someone else.”

  “He came in this morning. He wants to do it. He’ll be there at ten.”

  *

  Fred came. She kissed her mother and Carlena good-bye and left the house. Then they set out for the airport.

  They talked about her visit home and about where he’d be going next. “I’ll send you that material,” he said.

  At the airport, she insisted he drop her off, not wait. She got out and he helped her with her bags. They stood on the sidewalk. In the distance, the trees were still gold, but already some were turning to a burnished brown, and at the tops of the hills the horizon line was dark and sere.

  “Thank you, Fred.” She held out her hand. “I’m awfully glad I saw you.” She smiled. “Apart from possible work, I mean.”

  “Me, too.” He took the proffered hand in both of his. “Take care of yourself, dear. Tell your husband hello. I hope he knows how fortunate he is.”

  The look in his eyes—wistful, tender—startled her, and she leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Thank you, Fred. You take care, too,” she said, and picked up her bags and went on into the airport, nearly missing the door.

  Bart and Paula invited them to dinner and to see the apartment. “The furnishings are Early Attic,” Bart warned over the phone. “Supplemented with a few choice pieces from the Salvation Army.”

  The apartment was on the second floor of a frame house near the college, in an area of once-resplendent mansions now largely converted to apartments and university rooming houses. Bart led them up the partitioned stairwell.

  “It smells wonderful,” Laura said, inhaling the fragrance of garlic and thyme.

  “It’s Paula’s clam sauce,” Bart said as they emerged into a light, airy space of large rooms; the windows had low sills and reached nearly to the ceiling. In the living room, a couch covered with an Indian paisley bedspread faced a fireplace with gas logs and above it a wide cream-colored mantel on which they had set a piece of driftwood, a cobalt vase, a small sculpture of hikers on a mountain, a few photos. A Georgia O’Keeffe poster—an adobe church on a sandy plain, mountains in the distance—hung over the mantel.

  “Well, what do you think?” Paula emerged from the kitchen. She was wearing jeans, an oversized white shirt, and a denim apron covered with stenciled shapes of cooking spoons. She hugged Laura and Trace. “Welcome to our abode. You see we’re expecting you.” A wave of her hand took in the dining table covered with a blue cloth, places set for four, salad bowls and wineglasses in place, a cluster of candles in the center of the table.

  A timer dinged. “Scuse me. Time to drain the pasta.” Paula returned to the stove, lifted the pot, drained it into the sink.

  “It’s lovely,” Laura said. “It takes me back. Remember our first apartment?” she asked Trace.

  He was examining books in the bookcase. “Whose is the Letters of E. B. White?”

  “Mine,” Paula said. “Dinner’s ready.”

  During dinner—linguine with clam sauce, salad, garlic bread, cabernet—Laura reported on the visit with Rachel. “I saw my old friend Ginny, too—and her brother.” She laughed. “I used to have something of a crush on Fred. I hadn’t seen either one of them in years. He may throw some business my way.”

  “Art business?” Paula asked.

  “He has a travel agency. I might design some travel brochures.”

  “Great, Mom,” Bart said. “Maybe you and Dad could get some free trips.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said, and thought, Maybe me? By myself?

  *

  They were finishing the cherry cobbler when she said, “I told Grandma about your living together. I hadn’t told her before.” She recounted the conversation, her delight at Rachel’s response. “I didn’t know how she’d take it. I was really proud of her.”

  There was a moment of portentous silence. Then Paula said, “That’s great,” but her voice was flat.

  “If my grandmother can hack it”—Bart was looking at Paula, his face grim—“then surely your mother…”

  They were glaring at each other. Laura looked at Trace, who returned her glance, passed his fork over his already-empty plate.

  Paula flushed. “My mother doesn’t know we’re living together,” she said. “She’s coming to visit next month.”

  “Paula wants me to move out,” Bart snapped.

  “Just for those few days,” Paula said.

  Bart said, “Good God, Paula! Doesn’t she read the papers? Doesn’t she look around? We’re old enough to know what we’re doing.”

  “And I’m old enough not to hurt my mother unnecessarily. I’ll tell her when I’m ready.” Paula’s hand came down flat against the blue cloth. “For one thing, I want her to know you better first.”

  Bart sighed. “Paula, it’s not going to make any difference. From what you say, she wouldn’t approve of your sleeping with Mahatma Gandhi, unless you were married.”

  “Ugh,” Paula said. “No competition, sweetheart.”

  Bart was not amused. He leaned forward, looked intently at Paula. “Let me tell you something. If I leave, I’m gone.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Paula’s gaze was steely. “Think about it.” He pushed back his chair, turned to his parents. “Want to see the rest of the apartment?”

  They toured the apartment, the tension easing as they moved from room to room, laughing at the old-fashioned plumbing, enthusing about the back porch, even though it overlooked garages and the alley, an overflowing Dumpster at the bott
om of the outside staircase. “They pick up tomorrow,” Bart said. “It usually looks better than this.” Back inside, he proudly pointed to the smoke alarm. “I put that in right away,” he said. “These old wooden buildings are pretty close together.” In the bedroom, a spring and mattress were stacked on the floor and covered with a puffy quilt in an abstract design of bronzes and gold. A photo of Annie and Bart and Philip stood on Bart’s dresser. Laura lingered before it a moment, felt Bart’s arm around her shoulder, reached for his hand.

  *

  She had been home a week when a large envelope came from Fred. It was postmarked Dennis, so she knew he was back on the Cape. Several travel folders fell out when she opened the envelope, along with a yellow packet labeled “Iceland”—photos of dark mountains and running brooks, long stretches of seacoast edged with beaches of black sand, pictures of steam rising from the earth, of a stylized Norse figure in front of a long, low greenhouse. The accompanying note was cryptic. “Anything here for a cover picture? It’s not everybody’s cup of tea—or stein of grog. Great seeing you. When are you going back to Hadley? Love, Fred.”

  She smiled, reread the note several times, lifted through the pictures, put it all on the table in her workroom. She would go back soon, surely, to see Rachel. Would she let Fred know?

  With Philip gone and Bart and Paula moved to their own apartment, the house seemed empty and still. In the mornings, after Trace had gone, she often wandered aimlessly, drifting from room to room. She had work to do—Fred’s, and she’d finished only three of the pictures for Walter Stone, but the central figure was a young girl. She’d used her memory of Annie as a starting point for the girl, but after a few minutes of stroking with pen or brush, her hand would start to shake, and she’d quit.

  Except for Trace, and her weekly trips to church and the grocery store, she saw few people. He best friend, Julia Prentiss, had been in Scotland on sabbatical with her husband since midsummer. Sometimes she met a friend for lunch, or talked on the phone, but she shrank from group gatherings, and if she went to lectures or other events at the college, she left as soon as the main event was over. “I feel everyone is watching me,” she told Trace after one such return. “They’re feeling sorry for me, waiting for me to break down—which I will, as soon as anyone says anything sympathetic and kind.”

  “Is that so bad?” he said. “People want to be helpful. They’d understand.”

  “I feel like such a spectacle,” she said.

  “You can’t drop out forever,” he said one evening after a lecture on Southeast Asia. “Why don’t we stay for the reception?”

  “You can stay,” she snapped, casting her eyes downward as they left the row of auditorium seats. “I’ll even come back for you if you give me a call.”

  “I could get a ride with someone, I’m sure,” he retorted as they wove against the crowd that surged toward them. Once outside, he pulled at her arm. “You could at least be civil,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Light from the streetlight shone on his face, the anger in his eyes.

  “People spoke to us. My department chair, Ben Stoddard, was trying to say hello. You just charged on out.”

  “Sorry.” But she wasn’t. She was in a panic to get away from the crowd, to get to the safety of home.

  *

  One morning, in her wanderings after Trace left, as she passed the door of Annie’s room, her eyes fell on the desk. She went in and stood before it—the slanting front, the three drawers below, on top an incense holder and a framed photo taken on a family vacation. They were all sitting in a rowboat, smiling. But the photographer had held the camera at a slant, so it looked as though they were about to be dumped into the water.

  She lowered the writing surface, dropping it down on its hinge. In the cubbyholes were old letters, notepads, a ceramic candle holder in the shape of a frog, the velvet box containing Annie’s high school ring. Beneath the cubbyholes were folders of school papers, spiral-bound notebooks, a sketch pad with Anne Randall drawn in dark, heavily ornamented script, some journals and diaries. Some of these Laura had looked through before, putting aside an initial scruple—was this invading Annie’s privacy? She and Trace had talked about it, agreed it was a needless concern: Their need to know anything they could of Annie—fill out their picture of her brief life to whatever fullness they could—far exceeded any need to protect the privacy of one who was beyond any need of protection.

  She picked up the sketch pad and turned through the pages—to watercolor washes of pastoral scenes, a sketch of a caterpillar undulating over spikes of grass, a sailboat riding on stylized waves. On one page, Annie had drawn a sketch of a girl’s face, the outline of her head the hook of a question mark and in a puff beside her, in quavering letters, the word HELP! “Help”? What was that about? She closed the sketchbook, took out one of the diaries.

  Riffling through the pages, she stopped at the word Mom. The entry was dated—it was four summers ago; Annie had been twelve. “Today Mom and I went shopping for a bathing suit. I want a bikini. Mom is skeptical.” Laura remembered the afternoon—standing outside the curtain of the dressing room until Annie called. “Okay. Come in.” Annie was newly modest then, her body already a series of turning curves. She’d gone from child to young woman in the space of months, without an awkward twitch or clatter. The entry continued: “I tried on one I loved—purple, with three pink roses—two on the bra and one on the pants. Mom thought it was too suggestive. I thought it was pretty. Anyway, what’s so bad about”—and here she’d misspelled it—“suggestive?” There followed a cartoon face, eyebrows drawn together, a downturned mouth. Then: “I still love her, though,” and her name, “Annie,” and a P.S.—“I got one that’s pretty cute—navy blue with yellow flowers. In fact, I love it.”

  She held the book against her chest. Memories so sharp, so fresh. Such a dear daughter.

  Next she picked up a large manila envelope marked “Photos.” She recognized the envelope. This would be harder. It was a group of nude photos of Annie that a girl in her photography class had taken last spring. The girl had come to the house, taken the pictures in Annie’s room. Annie had shown Laura the contact sheet—small photos of Annie, sitting, lying on her side, standing spread-eagled, arms over her head, her smile exhilarated and unabashed.

  They’d talked about the pictures. “What will Jennie do with them?” Laura had asked.

  “Develop the best ones and submit them to the teacher.”

  “Will they be exhibited in the class?”

  “Sure, I suppose so.’

  “Is that all right with you?”

  Annie laughed. “Sure—why not?”

  She opened the envelope and took out one of the enlargements—a side view of Annie sitting on the bed, one knee raised, an arm encircling the knee, the beginning curve of her breast visible under the bend of her arm.

  She pored over it a long time, her hunger for her daughter lingering on the lines of Annie’s body, the textures of her skin, the dark hair fanning out over her shoulders. She put it back in the envelope. She’d look at the others later. Not now.

  She turned to the leather notebook—Annie’s last journal—and opened it on an entry from last spring. “Sad times,” she read. “Everything seems hopeless. Gordon’s in a down mood. I feel tense and trapped. So many things I want to do but can’t.”

  Perhaps she should quit. She’d like to find a happier place first. She jumped ahead a number of pages.

  The entry began pleasantly. “Gordon thinks I’m lucky. He thinks Mom is neat. He thinks Dad is STRANGE but okay.” She winced—how would Trace feel?—and went on. “I guess I should be glad they care about me. But damn it, I”—it was at the bottom of the page. She turned to the next. “I want out. Bart and Philip are lucky, getting out of this prison. Dad is a zombie and Mom is so emotionally all over the place, I want to run for cover. I’m sick of parents who want to be friends. Fuck off, will you! Get off my back! Both of you. Pleez.”

  He
r throat tightened. She closed the book and stood up, her body stiff. How could Annie!

  She walked from the room, went and sat on the couch in the living room, closed her eyes, and read the words again and again, in burning bright letters, in the darkness of her head.

  *

  When Trace came home, she greeted him. “Trace.”

  “Hi.” He kissed her lightly, brushed past her into the house.

  She followed him into the den. He was putting things in the drawers of his desk. Then he started looking through the day’s pile of mail.

  “Trace,” she began again, “I read something in Annie’s journal today….”

  “Oh?” He continued to flip through the envelopes.

  “Trace, I read some disturbing stuff in Annie’s journal—from last spring….”

  “Uh-huh.” He was slipping his finger under the flap of an envelope. Order forms fell out on the desk. He scooped them up and put them in the wastebasket.

  He didn’t look up when she left the room.

  In the bedroom, she slammed the door shut. “Damn!” She paced to the window and back. “Damn!”

  She looked at her watch. Almost six. Surely Bart and Paula would be home by now. She went to the phone and dialed their number.

  Since they’d moved, she’d avoided calling them much. Sometimes, lonesome for them, she’d suggest calling—“just to see how they are?”

  “I wouldn’t,” Trace would say. “They need their independence.”

  But this time…

  Bart answered, “Hello?”

  “Bart, can I come down for a few minutes? I need to talk to somebody.”

  “Sure, Mom—come ahead.”

  When she went through the living room, Trace was sitting in a chair reading.

  “I’m going out.”

  “Oh?” He looked up. “Now?”

  “Yes, now. Give you some peace to read the damn mail!”

  “Laura, what on earth?” He was on his feet, the paper on the floor.

  “I’ll tell you when I come back—if I come back!” Her voice shook.