Pew

by Catherine Lacey

  But then came the diagnosis and this was … well … almost twenty years ago now? Could it have been that long ago? We didn’t have many options about what to do. Now it seems they have all sorts of treatments—but then, well, there just weren’t so many. The doctors said he didn’t have long, that we should get everything in order, to make arrangements and such. He talked to his lawyer about his last testament, I remember, and pretty soon word got around that he was dying, so the house filled with flowers and people—white people and black people and even that one Indian, or maybe they were a Mexican family, the one out on that county road that Charles had helped years ago with something—lots of people called on us, to him and me, bringing pies and such, and just so many flowers. So very many flowers. Then one night I was sitting up just looking at all those flowers in the front parlor, when the nurse came in and said to me—she said, I’m afraid this is it. He’s going to God.

  Mrs. Gladstone stopped here, her mouth hanging open, holding on to each word, blinking at them.

  I can still see that nurse’s face, and how she wasn’t afraid of death, it being her profession and all, but of course I was afraid, just terrified. This whole life I had with him—just those ten short years after waiting for so long to have a husband, and now it was about to end and I really did believe it was God’s will, but even so, that didn’t seem to make it easy to accept. Maybe it should have, but it didn’t. I knew I had to be strong and accept that God was taking him back now, but I have always had such a wicked heart—I just didn’t want to be alone. I want to have my own way, always have been so selfish and wicked. I’ve deserved every bad thing that’s ever happened to me, and I was so selfish that I hated God for it all—and I wanted to keep having a life with him. I loved him so much. I really did. He was such a good man.

  She stopped again. Something in her face reminded me of a loose horse I’d found in some woods once, peace and terror tangled together.

  I sat by his side, and his breathing went real slow and deep. The nurse left to give us privacy in those last moments, and just after she left the room Charles looked up at me and said, Darlin’, he said this all so slow and I remember his every word, he said, Darlin’. Here I am. Just a man on my deathbed and now I must tell you that when I was a boy, such a long time ago, I was dared to hold a little black boy underwater in a creek down near the county line and I did it. Everyone said it was an accident, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t. I’ve thought about it every day of my life since then. He spoke so very slow. He said, I begged forgiveness from the Lord. I wasn’t a very bright child—they even thought there was something really wrong with me—and it took me many years before I could think for myself, so when they dared me, I just went along with it. I went along with lots of things. We all go along with so much—you understand, don’t you? And then he said, I repent, my Lord, and I thought those were his last words—my Lord. I thought he was for certain going to die now. And I was so frightened by his confession, but I was also frightened to see him die, and I cried and prayed, but he didn’t die, and all night he didn’t die and we made it to the morning and he was still alive, just barely alive. The very next night the nurse told me that actually now he was dying this time, she was sure of it. And she did the same thing, left me in the room with him, gave us some privacy, and after some quiet hours Charles leaned toward me and said, Paulina, dear, what I told you last night … and I thought he was going to tell me it was somehow a lie, some kind of death dream, a hallucination of some sort, because how else could a person ever do such a thing? He was not a violent man, not at all, and I felt so sure it couldn’t have been true. But then Charles said—

  Mrs. Gladstone stopped again. She was not crying. I don’t know why I thought she would be.

  He said to me, What I told you last night wasn’t all of it. I was part of a group that hung those four men—do you remember? We thought one of them had raped someone’s sister or someone’s girl—I don’t recall the details now—and we weren’t sure which one. We hung all four. They were guilty of something, even though we didn’t know what. We were angry, you have to understand. It wasn’t easy, but we did it, about twenty or thirty of us. We had to. Even the sheriff was there. And I did remember. It was four men from the other side of town, black men. There was a lot of disagreement between our side and their side. It was a painful time. A lot of folks moved away over it.

  That second night, he didn’t say he repented or that he knew it was wrong … But again, he didn’t die. He somehow lived to the next night, and he confessed to other things he did or secrets he kept for other men, worse things and things that didn’t seem that bad, and I won’t ever know if any of it was true, and there’s a chance, maybe even a good chance, that all of it was some kind of brain problem that happens to people toward the end, you know. He watched a lot of movies, and he liked the violent ones—I don’t know why.

  But I still can’t help but wonder if what he’d said had really happened, if he had been one sort of man when he was younger and another sort of man by the time I had met him. The man I knew, he was gentle and kind, kind to everyone, everyone, never had a sour word about anybody. Never even laid a hand on me. But if it was true—well, something of that first man must have remained in the man I knew, only I couldn’t see it. And since then I keep thinking about how you can’t be sure of who someone really is, or really was, before you knew them … or even after, sometimes. I just—

  She turned to look straight at me, and only then could I see that one of her eyes was glass, still and empty and shining. A little gold cross hung around her neck.

  You know … What Hilda told me about you on the phone don’t really line up with what I’m seeing here. She studied me for a moment, one eye intent on me and the other empty, peaceful. I suppose it don’t matter. It don’t matter to me, not me, not one bit. At least I know a little about what it’s like to stay silent. I don’t know much, but I know at least that one thing.

  We sat quietly together for several minutes and listened to a grandfather clock ticking.

  Charlie finally passed after about a week of almost getting there, then all the flowers in the house didn’t smell quite so good. The house cleaner asked me if she could throw out the wilted ones but I told her to just leave them be. Some time later I took them out to the backyard myself, let them rot in a pile.

  WHEN THE KNOCK CAME, Mrs. Gladstone looked at me then back to the empty television. I went to the door, opened it. Someone was there.

  I’m Roger, the person said, offering me an open hand. You must be … You must be who I’m here for. Mrs. Gladstone can get tired easily, so they told me to come get you—Steven and Hilda—they told me to come get you about now. I thought maybe we could take a walk before it gets too hot?

  Roger wore a short-sleeved white shirt and a thin black tie. He had a dog with him, pale fur, a dense animal that muscled along, kept his leash taut. We walked along a street shaded with heavy oak trees and large houses set back on wide green yards. Sprinklers spun water across the grass.

  You know, it’s odd for us to have a visitor. We don’t get many visitors. People don’t really pass through town so much. We don’t even have an interstate.

  I was watching our feet on the sidewalk—our pace had matched exactly, as if we were each walking beside a mirror.

  When I was about your age, I guess, I started going to Quaker services. I lived up north at the time, in a big city, and the noise bothered me, the people bothered me, and I wanted to go be quiet, to go be with quiet people. I don’t know if you know this, but the Quakers, in their services they don’t have a preacher or anything because they believe that everyone should just sit in a room together and not say anything at all unless they’re really moved to do so in that exact moment. So, I suppose this particular congregation was moved all the time—someone or another was constantly getting up to speak. Some days it felt like there was barely a minute of silence.

  The dog with us began barking at another dog on a porch far beh
ind a fence we passed. The other dog was yellow and lean, ill or asleep, his paws limp and hanging at the top of the porch’s stairs. The yard in front of this house was mostly dead grass and rocks and a tricycle pushed over on its side.

  Roscoe! the man said. I don’t know what’s gotten into him. He’s not usually like this.

  Roscoe went on barking and growling, but the yellow dog hardly lifted its head. Eventually Roscoe gave up and resumed walking.

  He’s not usually like this, Roger said again, shaking his head.

  Anyway—the Quaker services. I remember sitting there one day and this young woman got up to speak and she was sitting at just the right angle to me that I could see that there were tears in her eyes and she looked sort of weak, like she was about to faint. And as she began to speak, I sensed the room was really listening to her, which was a little unusual—most people who spoke up did it too often, so no one ever really listened to anyone, but this woman—well, I felt I had never even seen her before, much less heard her speak. She seemed uncomfortable—and she took a while to start. I don’t think I had ever felt as moved by just the sight of a person as I was moved by the sight of her—though I was quite young, maybe your age, I’m not sure. It’s not that she was very beautiful or something—she was quite plain, if I remember correctly, but she had some kind of elegance—it’s hard to explain. It seemed she’d been hurt very badly and was surviving it in a way I was only beginning to be able to recognize. When she finally did begin to speak, she did so very slowly, almost as if she’d practiced—which would have defeated the whole purpose of a Quaker service, if you ask me, you know, practicing at home so you can get it perfect—but anyway, I’m not saying she had rehearsed it or something, but there was something so complete and final in what she said. It was just—well, she was actually—she really had something to say. It was only a few sentences, but I remember how when she was done and had sat down again, I tried to force myself to remember exactly what she’d said. I kept repeating it in my head, because it had seemed so useful and true—so I was trying to hold on to those words, and I was repeating and repeating them, but already they were falling apart … I was already forgetting it.

  Then a few minutes later, a man got up to speak, and as soon as he began, I forgot all of what the woman had said—even the most basic idea of it. And that’s part of the problem with the Quakers, at least to me, because in the end no matter what a person says in that room, it will always be misunderstood, then forgotten.

  Roger and I were quiet for a while after this. We kept walking. I could see that his white shirt had gone translucent with sweat at the armpits and the center of his back. The dog panted and occasionally growled at nothing in particular as he led us down the sidewalk, his feet moving quickly on and off the hot pavement. Sometimes I felt we were all breathing in unison, other times it seemed we had no relationship to one another, that he was walking and I was walking and neither of us was even aware that the other was there, that even if I hadn’t been there, he would have told this story to the dog or to the lawns or the trees or the air.

  What I’m trying to say is that I understand why a person might want to be quiet for a while. And you don’t have to say anything, if you’re not ready. You don’t have to say anything at all to me, if you don’t want to.

  We went on. I looked forward, down the long sidewalk. Somehow the streets had that feeling, that holiday feeling—and I wasn’t sure how I knew this feeling but I did know it—a vague sense that everyone is gathered somewhere else and they don’t plan to come out until it’s over, until whatever it is that is happening is over. No cars were moving. No people walking. Only sprinklers spinning water in great, dissolving arcs and me and this dog and this person making our way through the heat, walking toward what I did not know.

  But at some point you have to ask yourself, Roger said, whether remaining silent is something that is having a positive effect or a negative one on your life. You have to ask yourself whether it’s something you’re doing or something that’s being done to you, from the inside, from something else.

  We walked for a while longer. I stopped paying attention to the sidewalk or trees or heat. Eventually I heard Roger unlatch a gate. We went up a gray stone path to a gray stone house. The front door was unlocked. The air inside felt like that of a cave. Light blue walls and the furniture, too, was all upholstered in blue variations—navy sofa, teal rug, and water-colored curtains.

  I’ve worked with cases like yours before, he said. Or, well, not exactly like yours, but very similar. There’s a family at the church who adopted a refugee child, an orphan from someplace having a war, and even though they had been told the kid was fluent in English, he had a pretty bad case of nerves when he arrived, wasn’t speaking at all. Actually, I believe you’re going to visit them, Hilda mentioned that they’ll take you to dinner at their house tonight. Anyway, Nelson—that was the name they gave him for some reason—after I worked with Nelson for only a few weeks, he was fine. He had seen such terrible things, his whole family killed, his neighborhood bombed, but there’s really nothing a person can’t overcome, you know—and for me, I think that’s because God really is looking out for each of us. I’m not saying you have to believe that if it’s not right for you—I’m not that sort of Christian that thinks everyone has to believe the exact same things for this to work—but I do believe that I can use what I know and feel to help you.

  Roger pulled out a large binder and opened it on the table in between the chairs where we sat. It was full of simple drawings in plastic sleeves, all the lines unsteady. He flipped through a few of them before stopping at a page covered in thin lines. A small purple form was lying at the bottom of the drawing and above it were various human-looking shapes, red scrawl spewing from them. The forms were intricate but inexact—a hole not clearly an eye or a mouth, a long gray shape either a gun or sword.

  This is one of Nelson’s drawings of a dream he has had since he was very young. He kept having the dream after he moved here, but after we worked together for some months, he stopped having the dream.

  Roger smiled and looked at the drawing awhile longer before closing the binder and putting it away.

  You see, what sometimes happens is that a person is witness to terrible things or sometimes those terrible things happen directly to a person and even though that person will usually stop consciously thinking about those unhappy memories in order to move on and function in society, sometimes a part of a person’s mind won’t stop thinking about those terrible things until we find a way to express it, until we find a way to get it out of our head. For Nelson, expressing these things in words was just not possible, but drawing helped him stop thinking about the past and start thinking about the present. The family that took him in—I mean, his new family, his legal family—they have been very fortunate so they can provide everything that he needs. Nelson doesn’t have to worry about anything, so he doesn’t. It’s very simple—you can’t allow yourself to be troubled by trouble that’s not there. Now Nelson is a very easygoing guy, and I’m proud of him, for overcoming everything. When you meet him, you’ll see—he’s still quiet, but he’s calm. You’ll see.

  WE STOOD ON THE DOORSTEP of a house so large you couldn’t even see much of it from the street—half of it hidden behind trees and sculpted hedges. Hilda rang a doorbell, and the more I thought about entering the house, the less it seemed possible that I could be let into such a house—that I was somehow not large enough to be inside this house, that it was simply not for me to know. Could someone call this a house? Could a person really walk up to this thing and believe it to be the person’s home, larger than a school, larger than most churches?

  A woman answered the door saying so much and so quickly—Welcome, welcome, it’s so good to see you, come on in, it’s so nice to have everyone over like this! Come on in and get out of that heat. Her hands moved around wildly, waving us in, grabbing the boys by the face and kissing them, wrapping her arms around Hilda and Steven and
finally landing on me—

  Aren’t you just a doll? Aren’t you though? Isn’t this one just the sweetest, have you ever met a sweeter doll than this one? Have you?

  No one answered her. The woman clutched me for a moment—My name’s Kim, but everyone calls me Kitty, so you can go ahead and call me Kitty—then waved her hands around, conducting us down a wide hallway.

  Everyone’s in the den having cheese and crackers and I hope you’re hungry because I told our girl we were having special company and she just about pulled out all the stops. I went back there to check on her this afternoon and she was making things I hadn’t even imagined about! And listen, y’all, if you need the restroom, it is just down this hallway here, down there and over to the right—of course I’d give you the full tour but it would just about take all night, and anyway I don’t think any of the kids made their beds and I guess they hardly ever do so I don’t know why I ask! Why do I even ask!

  She stopped and picked up a bowl of white flowers from their spot on a marble pedestal.

  Holly Henry did all these florals and didn’t she do so good? She is so gifted. I have her come out here for all the holidays and the Forgiveness Festival, parties, things like that—and isn’t this one nice here? I don’t even know where she gets magnolia this time of year, she must be flying it in from somewhere. China? Imagine that, flying in magnolias from China! But they do smell nice, don’t they? I do wish the magnolias bloomed around the festival—wouldn’t that be nice? Have a good smell of them, go on—