(1993) The Stone Diaries

by Carol Shields

  Everything she encounters feels lacking in weight. The hollow interior doors of her condo. The molded insubstantiality of the light switches. The dismaying lightness of her balcony furniture.

  The rattling loose-jointed cabs she sometimes takes when visiting Labina and her husband out at Birds’ Key. Even her white plastic shoulder bag with its neat roll of cough drops, its mini-pack of tissues, and slim little case of credit cards that have replaced the need for cash.

  In the foyer of Bayside Towers stands an artificial jade plant, and she is unable to walk by this abomination without reaching out and fingering its leaves, sometimes rather roughly, leaving the marks of her fingernails on the vinyl surfaces, finding sly pleasure in her contempt. In the late evenings she’s taken to watching Johnny Carson on television. She remains baffled by the mean hard outline of his mouth, a mouth that looks as though it were drawn on his face with pen and ink, but she likes his opening monologue, that quick run of jokes strung together with the wide familiar golf-swing and with Johnny’s repeated transitional phrase: "moving right along."

  "Moving right along" is what she murmurs to herself these days—on her way to Hairworks for her weekly shampoo and set, on her way to the post office or her doctor’s appointment or downstairs to the club room for her daily round of bridge. Moving right along, and along, and along. The way she’s done all her life.

  Numbly. Without thinking.

  I have said that Mrs. Flett recovered from the nervous torment she suffered some years ago, and yet a kind of rancor underlies her existence still: the recognition that she belongs to no one. Even her dreams release potent fumes of absence. She has her three grown children, it’s true, but she wonders if these three will look back on her with anything other than tender forbearance. And her eight grandchildren are so far away, so diminished by age and distance, so consecrated to the blur of the future. Perhaps that’s why she is forever "ruminating" about her past life, those two lost fathers of hers, and hurling herself at the emptiness she was handed at birth. In the void she finds connection, and in the connection another void—a pattern of infinite regress which is heartbreaking to think of—and yet it pushes her forward, it keeps her alive. She feeds the seagulls, doesn’t she? She telephones her grown children every Sunday without fail, Alice in London, Joan out there in the wilds of Oregon, and Warren in Pittsburgh (soon to be transferred to New York), and despite the sometimes insane lunges and loops of these electronic conversations she manages to simulate a steady chin-up cheerfulness and repress the least suggestion of despair. She cooks herself a proper dinner, doesn’t she?—a chop or a chicken breast, green vegetables. She doesn’t take pills; she doesn’t hear noises.

  She does lie on her bed, though, in the early morning, her eyes turned toward the window, staring at the hard Florida light that creeps in between the slats of her blinds, and feeling its unforgiving brilliance. Sometimes she bunches her fists; sometimes tears crowd her eyes as she lies there thinking: another day, another day, and attempting to position herself in the shifting scenes of her life. Her life thus far, I should say—for she sees years and years ahead for herself. That life "thus far" has meant accepting the doses of disabling information that have come her way, every drop, and stirring them with the spoon of her longing—she’s done this for so many years it’s become second nature. The real and the illusory whirl about her bedroom in smooth-dipping waltz-time—one, two, three; one, two, three. On and on she goes.

  The synapses collapse; well, let them. She enlarges on the available material, extends, shrinks, reshapes what’s offered; this mixed potion is her life. She swirls it one way or the other, depending on—who knows what it depends on?—the fulcrum of desire, or of necessity. She might drop in a ripe plum from a library book she’s reading or something out of a soap opera or a dream.

  Not often, but occasionally, she will make a bold subtraction, as when Fraidy Hoyt reported she had almost certainly glimpsed Maria Goodwill, widow of Cuyler Goodwill, in Indianapolis, walking down Ohio Street on the arm of an elderly gentleman—but this is impossible, laughable, since Maria has long since gone home to her Italian village and transformed herself into a black draped figure of mourning with a bowl of knitting in her lap.

  If you were to ask Victoria’s Great-aunt Daisy the story of her life she would purse her lips for a moment—that ruby-red efflorescence—and stutter out an edited hybrid version, handing it to you somewhat shyly, but without apology, without equivocation that is: this is what happened, she would say from the unreachable recesses of her seventy-two years, and this is what happened next.

  It’s hard to say whether she’s comfortable with her blend of distortion and omission, its willfulness, in fact; but she is accustomed to it. And it’s occurred to her that there are millions, billions, of other men and women in the world who wake up early in their separate beds, greedy for the substance of their own lives, but obliged every day to reinvent themselves.

  In June of 1977, just two months after their Easter lunch at the Ringling Hotel, her grandniece, Victoria Flett, phoned from Toronto and said, "Hey, guess what?—I’m going to the Orkney Islands on a research project. Next week. Why don’t you come with me. It would be a terrific holiday, and we can"—for some reason Victoria’s voice carried a ribbon of laughter—"we can go put some flowers on Magnus Flett’s grave."

  "The Orkney Islands!" her daughter Joan said during their customary Sunday telephone call. "But I thought you said you were going to come up to Portland this year, you said you’d stay with the girls so Ross and I could get away for a couple of days, they were looking forward to seeing Grandma. It’s always Grandma this and Grandma that, and now you’re talking about the Orkneys."

  "Have you looked this place up on a map?" her son Warren said.

  "Do you even know where the Orkney Islands are?"

  "Why the hell not?" Alice said in her acquired English accent.

  "About time you crossed the pond. As long as you stay with me and the kids for a few days coming and going."

  "Of course you’ll go," Fraidy said. "I’ll do your volunteer afternoon for you, and we’ll cancel bridge for once."

  "Leave your passport to me," Labina’s husband, Bud, said. "Just get your photos done, fill out the form, and I’ll drop it off at the federal building in Tampa where I just happen to have a few connections—a fellow there who owes me a favor. The whole thing’ll be over and out in ten minutes flat, take my word for it."

  "What you need," Labina (Beans) said, "is a proper wool suit.

  These Florida blends won’t do in that unholy climate, not at all. I almost froze my behind off that time I was in Scotland, and that was only Edinburgh, not way up north where you’re heading. A wool suit, a Perma-press blouse and a couple of very, very fine sweaters to switch off with, you won’t need another thing."

  "Walking shoes," Victoria said on the telephone. "Never mind what they look like."

  "And an umbrella." Fraidy said. "The folding kind."

  "Cancel the umbrella," Victoria said. "See if you can get one of those plastic ponchos with a hood."

  "Sorry we can’t get you the package deal," the travel agent in Bradenton said, "but the fact is, we need at least three weeks’ notice for that, and besides, we don’t have all that much information on the Orkney Islands."

  "Frankly," said Marian McHenry, who lives in the condo across the hall, "I’d rather see my own country first instead of traipsing around over there. Have you seen Washington D.C.? I mean, really seen it?"

  "No one needs inoculations any more for Europe," Dr. Neerly told her, "But I’m going to write you a prescription for travelers’ trots. Also one for constipation. And you’ll want to take along your own anti-allergy pillow, they probably still use chicken feathers over there, or straw."

  "I hope to heaven you’ve made firm hotel reservations."

  "Personally, we wouldn’t dream of booking ahead, it takes all the fun out of it, we like to play it by ear, you know what I mean?

&
nbsp; Will o’ the wisp, that’s us."

  "You honestly haven’t been to Europe since 1927? Honest? Oh boy, are you in for a surprise."

  "I didn’t know you’d been to Europe before." (Joan, phoning from Portland on a Tuesday night.) "I mean, you never once mentioned it."

  "For God’s sake, don’t stay in hotels over there. Because, listen, they’ve got these darling little bed and breakfast thingies all over the place, they’re much more homey, and you get a real feel for the day-to-day life as it’s really lived kind-of-thing."

  "Take my advice and avoid two things. First, bed and breakfast establishments. Some of them actually stick you between those godawful nylon sheets, yech, and serve you mushy hot tomatoes for breakfast, I kid you not. Two, don’t drink the water out of the faucet. Haven’t you ever wondered why they drink all that tea over there? Because tea requires boiled water—boiled, get it?"

  "Travelers’ checks."

  "Money belt."

  "Two small suitcases are better than one big one, that’s the smartest thing I’ve ever been told."

  "When we were in Canterbury—"

  "The time I went up to the Lake District—"

  "—fish and chips, wrapped in newspaper."

  "—a little plastic case with your own soap because—"

  "My great-great grandmother came from the Isle of Wight. Is that anywhere near where—?"

  "If you could just pick me up one of those cute little Wedgwood ashtrays, the green color though, not the blue."

  "—keep your valuables on your person at all times—"

  "—these itty-bitty earplug thingamajigs, you can buy them at Winn Dixie."

  "The Orkney Islands? Never heard of them."

  Young Victoria, meeting her great-aunt at Mirabelle Airport in Montreal, was in a knot of nerves. "I’d like you to meet Lewis.

  Lewis Roy. Lew, this is my Aunt Daisy." Tonguing each word.

  "How do you do, Mrs. Flett."

  "Lew’s going to the Orkneys too," Victoria said, her voice rising. Her face as she said this was awful. So was her hair, lank, unevenly cut.

  "Oh."

  "He’s kind of, you know, in charge of the project. He’s"—she performed a grotesque rolling shrug of nonchalance, "he’s my prof, sort of."

  "Really just a post-doc, Mrs. Flett. Victoria and I came up with this proposal together. It was mostly her idea." His face appeared strong, his mouth eager, ready to be amused.

  On the plane the three of them were seated side by side, Lewis Roy on the aisle, Victoria in the middle, her aunt by the window.

  They drank some champagne and ate a dinner of chicken and sliced carrots, and in the daze and rumble of airline ritual became easy with each other. Then Lewis plunged into a long, complex account of a previous flight to Europe, and as the story progressed he fell, egregiously, into the present tense. "So the pilot makes an announcement. Hey, one of the motors is kaput. Right. We turn back.

  We’re like all shook up. But we sit there spooning up our grub like it’s just a real fun time we’re having, and the next thing you know we’re sitting on an airstrip somewhere in Labrador, an army base or something, and we’re like stuck there for twelve whole hours, the toilet malfunctioning, and then—"

  "Aunt Daisy’s tired, I think," Victoria hummed.

  He fell instantly silent. Gnawed on his knuckle bones, yawned hugely, glanced about.

  Victoria burned with shame. She knew how her aunt must feel about this young man, his hair flowing around his shoulders like a cape of fur, his boyish narrative masking his brilliance, his extraordinary tenderness transformed to male insouciance. The stewardess, at last, brought around blankets and pillows and dimmed the lights, and they all three pretended to sleep. Victoria could hear her aunt’s jagged breathing, almost a sob, and understood that this elderly person beside her longed with all her soul to be home in her Florida condo, to be anywhere but where she was, riding the night Atlantic with the little nightlight gleaming on the window frame and across her eyelids.

  Victoria, the whole of her terrible radar on duty, could sense, too, the waves of sadness, of failure, emanating from Lewis Roy’s stiff body. Under the secrecy of her woolen blanket she reached sideways for his hand, found it trembling, and held it tight. She had never touched him before; he really was her instructor and she his student; they were not, then, on a footing of intimacy.

  After a while she reached out her other hand and placed it on her elderly aunt’s tense wrist, saying with the pressure of her fingertips: everything’s going to be all right, trust me.

  In this way, joined together by the dolorous stretched arms of Victoria Flett, the three of them exchanged one continent for another. They may have slept a few winks during the night. Each of them believed they lived on a fragile planet. Not one of them knew what the world was coming to.

  The Orkney Islands are low-lying, green, cultivated, covered with winding roads and with sheep who picturesquely graze on sloping meadows, forming a tableau that could have been painted by a watercolorist two hundred years ago, three hundred years ago. Behind and beneath this pastoral scenery lie prehistoric ruins—villages, forts, cairns, burial chambers, and standing stones which might, or might not, be astronomical observatories. There are Iron Age remains, too, another layer. And the Norse monuments, ninth century. Also the medieval, the feudal, the monastic.

  And other more contemporary additions—for superimposed upon the ancient and the bucolic are today’s small humming Orcadian factories modestly producing such specialties as Orkney cakes (delicious) or Orkney cheeses; then there are the craft enterprises, knitting for the most part (but this is sadly in decline), the tourist thrust (booming), and the always present background buzz of daily commerce and professional necessity—grocers, stationers, lawyers, clergymen, what have you.

  None of this is what Victoria’s Great-aunt Daisy had expected.

  Moorland, bog, heather was more what she’d had in mind. The Orkney houses lay strewn about in a dozen straggling villages or in the two main towns, Kirkwall and Stromness. Even Victoria was surprised to see the hundreds of townish houses, so solidly built, so plain. She looked at the unrevealing facades of these houses and imagined women inside, standing in front of mirrors, considering themselves, or men pulling sweaters over their heads, flattening down their hair. Hardly anyone seemed to be out and about. Of course it was early in the day. Of course there was a fierce wind blowing off the sea. Rain pelted down. Despite this, Victoria and her aunt and Lewis Roy were standing in the churchyard at Stromness reading tombstones. It was Victoria, shouting, who discovered:

  A holy lyf a hapie end

  The Soul to Christ doth send

  Where its best To be at rest

  Magnus Flett, born 1584, died 1616

  For some reason this inscription made all three of them double over with laughter; it seemed Flett was a common Orkney name; Fletts came popping up everywhere, not only Magnus but Thomas Flett, Cecil Flett, Jamesina Flett, Donaldina Flett; the Flett family were the undisputed kings and queens of the cemetery.

  The rain showed no sign of abating, and after a minute Lew took the two women by the arm and led them across the street to a tea shop where they sat out the storm, keenly aware of each other.

  "What kind of man was your father-in-law, Mrs. Flett?" Lewis posed this question in a social voice, while spreading butter on a floury scone.

  "Well, I’m not quite sure."

  "But you must have some kind of impression."

  "An unhappy man. Aggrieved. His wife left him, you see."

  "Aha!" Teasing. "One of those old-fashioned happy families."

  "His three sons took their mother’s part. They refused to see their father. They would have nothing to do with him."

  "And this made him bitter?"

  "It drove him back here." She swept a hand toward the window, taking in the drenched dark street, the black rain clouds. "When he was sixty-five years old. I can only think he must have been bitter."

/>   "But you don’t know for sure."

  "Actually—"

  "Yes?"

  "Actually, I never met my father-in-law."

  "I see." Clearly he was taken aback.

  "We never met, no. And I’ve always felt sorry about that. That we never met in his lifetime. I’ve always thought, well—"

  "What?"

  "That we might have things"—she paused—"to say to each other."

  "Not many women feel that way about their fathers-in-law."

  "No, I suppose not."

  "Magnus Flett was my great-grandfather," Victoria put in, wanting perhaps to share responsibility for the brokenness of families.

  They drank their tea in silence. Then Lewis, determinedly bright, raised a celebratory tea cup and said, "Here’s to the bones of the real Magnus Flett! We’ll find him yet."

  "You made a rhyme," said Victoria, who liked to see eagerness in others.

  "Oh, well," Victoria’s aunt said, her mouth smiling now, her chest full of heartbeats.

  The next day the wind died down. The sun came on surprisingly strong, and tourists in shorts and T-shirts and summer dresses poured off the ferry and thronged the narrow streets of Stromness, eating ice-cream, buying postcards.

  It was evening and the light still bright. Lewis and Victoria lingered over their shepherd’s pie at the Grey Stones Hotel dining room and explained to Victoria’s Aunt Daisy their reason for coming to Orkney. Lew pulled out a pencil and made a little sketch on his paper napkin, hastily executed, yet beautiful—or so it seemed to Victoria, who later folded the napkin carefully in two and pressed it in the back lining of her suitcase. The islands, Lew said, abounded with the fossil remains of small sea animals. But evidence of early plant life has been destroyed. The temperature of the earth was wrong, the plant structures too fragile. But back in Toronto, working with a set of computer-enhanced maps, the latest thing, he and Victoria had been investigating fossil patterns found in the north of Scotland, tracing a broad arc through the west of that country and up into Scandinavia—this arc, with just a little bending, passed through the outlying tip of Orkney’s Mainland, persuading them that certain rock formations at Yesanby, a few miles north of Stromness, held promise. The rock was different here, harder, so much so that islanders had traditionally gone to this remote point of land in search of millstones, the rest of the Orkney rock being too soft to serve. Lewis mentioned the Rhynie chert, he mentioned Middle Old Red sandstone. He explained how he had applied to the Science Council of Canada for a travel grant, and how he had assembled his equipment and his research team, a team that consisted of himself and Victoria Flett. The two of them had twenty-one days to poke around and write up their notes before the funds ran out. Both of them brimmed with optimism; biology, Lewis argued, will always frustrate the attempt of specialists to systematize and regulate; the variables are too many; the earth is sometimes withholding, yes, but more frequently generous.