"My husband used to say that girls with flower names fade fast."
It was Myrtle who said this one day, out of the blue, and for some reason it made them all go weak with laughter. Now, when asked how the Flowers are blooming, one of them will be sure to call back, cheerfully: "Fading fast," and one of the others will add, with a calypso bounce, "but holding firm." It’s part of their ritual, one of many. They have a joke, for instance, about a beige cardigan Glad’s been knitting for the last ten years. And another joke about Mr. Jellicoe on the sixth floor who cradles his crotch when he thinks no one’s looking. And about Mrs. Bolt who looks after the library corner and hoards the new large-print books for herself.
And Marian McHenry and her everlasting nieces and nephews up in Cleveland. And about the inevitability and sinfulness of the pecan pie at The Shellseekers. They celebrate each other’s birthdays—with a bakery cake and a glass of California wine—and on these occasions one or other of the Flowers will be sure to say:
"Well, here’s to another year and let’s hope it’s above ground."
This, to tell the truth, is the joke they relish above all others, a joke that shocks their visiting families, but that rolls off their own tongues with invigorating freshness, with a fine trill of mockery—a joke, when you come right down to it, about their own deaths.
Their laughter at these moments wizens into a cackle. It’s already been decided that when one of them "hangs up her hat" or "kicks the bucket" or "goes over the wall" or "trades in her ashes" or "hops the twig" or "joins the choir invisible"—that then, given a decent week or two for mourning, the surviving three will invite the unspeakable Iris Jackman (third floor, west wing) to fill in at the round table, even though Iris has the worst case of B.O. in captivity and is so dumb she can’t tell a one-club hand from a grand slam.
A secret rises up in Grandma Flett’s body, gathering neatly at her wrist bone where the light strikes the white plastic of the hospital bracelet, which reads: Daisy Goodwill.
That’s all—just Daisy Goodwill. Someone in Admissions bungled, abbreviating her name, cutting off the Flett and leaving the old name—her maiden name—hanging in space, naked as a tulip.
Fortunately this error does not appear on her hospital chart and has so far gone undiscovered by the staff and by Mrs. Flett’s many visitors. A secret known only to her.
She cherishes it. More and more she thinks of it as the outward sign of her soul.
Not that she’s ever paid much attention to her soul; in her long life she’s been far too preoccupied for metaphysics—her husband, her children, the many things a woman has to do—and shyly embarrassed about the carpenter from Nazareth, unwilling to look him in the eye or call him by his first name, knowing she would be powerless to draw him into an interesting conversation, worrying how in two minutes flat he would be on to the cramping poverty of her mind. Mrs. Flett, who attended Sunday School as a child and later church, has never been able to shake the notion that these activities are a kind of children’s slide show, wholesome and uplifting, but not to be taken seriously—though you did have to put on a hat and fix your face in a serious gaze for the required hour or so as you drifted off into little reveries about whether or not you had enough leftover roast beef to make a nice hash for supper, which you could serve with that chili sauce you’d made last fall, there were still two or three jars left on the pantry shelf, at least there were last time you looked. Committees and bazaars, weddings and baptisms, yes, yes, but never for Mrs. Flett the queasy hills and valleys of guilt and salvation. The literal-minded Mrs. Flett has never thought deeply about such matters, and why should she? The Czechoslovakian crèche she sets up at Christmas does not for her represent the Holy Family, it is the Holy Family—miniature wooden figures, nicely carved in a stiff folkloric way and brightly painted, though the baby in the manger is little more than a polished clothes peg. Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. It was all rather baffling, but not in the least troubling.
Do people speak of such things? She isn’t sure.
But then Reverend Rick commenced his visits in the early days after her surgery and began to mention, cautiously at first, then with amplified feeling, the existence of her soul, the state of her soul, the radiance of her soul, et cetera, et cetera, and now, in her eighty-first year, the rebirth of her soul through the grace of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Needless to say, Mrs. Flett doesn’t mention to Reverend Rick the fact that her soul’s compacted essence is embraced by those two words on her hospital bracelet:
Daisy Goodwill.
And behind that name, but closely attached to it, lies something else, something nameless. Something whose form she sees only when she turns her head quickly to the side or perceives in the rhythm of her outgoing breath. These glimpses arrive usually in the early morning hours, taking her by surprise. She has almost forgotten the small primal piece of herself that came unshaped into the world, innocent of the least thought, on whose surface, in fact, no thought had ever shone. Nevertheless (it can’t be helped) whatever comes later, even the richest of our experiences, we put before the judgment of that little squeaking bit of original matter.
Or maybe it’s not matter at all, but something else. Something holy. Torn from God’s great forehead.
"I’m still in here," she thinks, rocking herself to consciousness in the lonely, air-conditioned, rubber-smelling discomfort of the hospital, "still here."
"She’s a real honey," Jubilee says to anyone who happens to be around. "Not like some on this floor I could mention."
"A fighter," Mrs. Dorre, the head nurse says. "A fighter, but not a complainer, thank God."
"A sweetheart, a pet," says Dr. Scott.
"A real lady," says the physiotherapist, Russell Latterby, "of the old-fashioned school."
Which is why Mrs. Flett forgets about the existence of Daisy Goodwill from moment to moment, even from day to day, and about that even earlier tuber-like state that preceded Daisy Goodwill; she’s kept so busy during her hospital stay being an old sweetie-pie, a fighter, a real lady, a non-complainer, brave about the urinary infections that beset her, stoic on the telephone with her children, taking an interest in young Jubilee’s love affairs, going coquettish with Mr. Latterby, and being endlessly, valiantly protective of Reverend Rick’s sensibilities, which, to tell the truth, are disturbingly ambivalent. "She’s a wonder," says her daughter, Alice, arriving from England in time to help her mother move out of Sarasota Memorial and into the Canary Palms Convalescent Home, "she’s a real inspiration."
Inspiration, Alice says, but she doesn’t mean it. She means more like the opposite of inspiration.
Alice is a strong, handsome woman in her mid-forties who has thought very little about life’s diminution—not until a moment ago, in fact, when she happened to look into the drawer of her mother’s bedside table at Canary Palms and saw, jumbled there, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb, a notebook, a ring of keys, some hand cream, a box of Kleenex, a small velvet jewelry box—all Mrs.
Barker Flett’s possessions accommodated now by the modest dimensions of a little steel drawer. That three-story house in Ottawa has been emptied out, and so has the commodious Florida condo.
How is it possible, so much shrinkage? Alice feels her heart squeeze at the thought and gives an involuntary cry.
"What is it, Alice?"
"Nothing, Mother, nothing."
"I thought I heard—"
"Shhhhh. Try to get a little rest."
"All I’ve been doing is resting."
"That’s what convalescence is—rest. Isn’t that what the doctor said?"
"Him!"
"He’s very highly thought of. Dr. Scott says he’s the best there is."
"Did you tell the nurse about the apple juice?"
"I told her you thought it had gone off, but she said it was fine.
It’s just a different brand than the hospital uses."
"It tastes like concentrate."
"It probably is concentrate."
"It’s not even cold. It’s been left out."
"I’ll talk to her again."
"And the gravy."
"What about the gravy."
"There isn’t any, that’s what’s the matter. The meat comes dry on the plate."
"People don’t make gravy any more, Mother. Gravy was over in 1974."
"What did you say?"
"Nothing. Just a joke."
" ‘Yolk, yolk,’ you used to say. You and Joanie, clucking like chickens."
"Did we?"
"There’s nothing to see from this window."
"Those trees? That lovely garden?"
"I liked the hospital better."
"I know."
"I miss Jubilee."
"Oh, God, yes."
"And the Flowers. Glad, Lily—"
"It’s so far for them to come."
"I’m not myself here."
"You will be. You’ll adjust in a few days."
"I’m not myself."
"You and me both."
"What’s that? I can’t hear with all that racket in the hall, that woman screaming."
"I said, I’m not myself either."
Alice has officially adopted her mother’s maiden name; it appears now on her passport: Alice Goodwill. Her ex-husband’s name, Downing, was buried some years ago in a solicitor’s office in London, although their three grown children, Benjamin, Judy, and Rachel, retain it. And for Alice the name Flett was symbolically buried two years ago with the publication of her fifth book which received unfavorable reviews everywhere: "Alice Flett’s first novel should be a warning to all academics who aspire toward literary creativity." "Posturing." "Donnish." "Didactic." "Cold porridge on a paper plate."
What was she to do? What could she do? She went to court and changed her name. Even as a girl Alice had complained about the name Flett, which suffered, she felt, from severe brevity; Flett was a dust mote, a speck on the wall, standing for nothing, while Goodwill rang rhythmically on the ear and sent out agreeable metaphoric waves, though her mother swears she has never thought of the name as being allusive. Alice is discouraged at the moment (that damned novel), but hopeful about the future. Or she was until she arrived in Florida and saw how changed her mother was. Thin, pale. Crumpled.
On the plane coming over she had invented rich, thrilling dialogues for the two of them.
"Have you been happy in your life?" she’d planned to ask her mother. She pictured herself seated by the bedside, the sheet folded back in a neat fan, her mother’s hand in hers, the light from the window dim, churchy. "Have you found fulfillment?"—whatever the hell fulfillment is. "Have you had moments of genuine ecstasy? Has it been worth it? Have you ever looked at, say, a picture or a great building or read a paragraph in a book and felt the world suddenly expand and, at the same instant, contract and harden into a kernel of perfect purity? Do you know what I mean?
Everything suddenly fits, everything’s in its place. Like in our Ottawa garden, that kind of thing. Has it been enough, your life, I mean? Are you ready for—? Are you frightened? Are you in there?
What can I do?"
Instead they speak of apple juice, gravy, screams in the corridor, the doctor, who is Jamaican—this Jamaican business they don’t actually mention.
When Alice reaches for her mother’s hand she is appalled by its translucence. She can’t help staring. Knuckles of pearl. Already dead. Mineralized. She reminds herself that what falls into most people’s lives becomes a duty they imagine: to be good, to be faithful to the idea of being good. A good daughter. A good mother.
Endlessly, heroically patient. These enlargements of the self can be terrifying.
"Just tell me how I’m supposed to live my life."
"What did you say, Alice?"
"Nothing. Go to sleep."
"It’s only nine o’clock."
"The light’s fading."
"It’s the curtains, you’ve closed the curtains."
"No, look. The curtains are open. Look."
Grandma Flett has good days, of course. Days when she puts on her glasses and reads the newspaper straight through. Days when she is praised by the staff for her extraordinary alertness. A nurse describes her, in her hearing, as being "feisty," a word Mrs. Flett doesn’t recognize. "It means tough," Alice tells her. "At least, I think so."
"I’ve never thought of myself as being tough."
"It’s meant as praise."
"I’m not really tough."
"You’re an old softie."
"No."
"No?"
"Don’t call me that. It reminds me of those soft-centered chocolates your father used to bring home from his trips. I could never bear them, biting into them."
"I’m sorry." Alice has heard about the soft-centered chocolates before. Many times before.
"Nougat. Butter creams. And those other ones."
"Turkish delight."
"They make me feel sick. Just thinking of them."
"Don’t think of them." Alice shuts her eyes, feeling sick herself: love’s faked ever-afterness.
"He traveled a lot. I don’t know if you remember, you were so young. Always going off. Montreal, Toronto."
"I know. I do remember."
"I could never understand what those trips were for."
"Meetings."
"Never understood just why they were necessary. I asked, of course, I took an interest, or at least I tried to. Women back then were encouraged to take an interest in their husbands’ careers—but it was never clear to me. Not clear. Just what those meetings were about, what they were for."
"Administrative blather probably."
"It worried me. Bothered me, I should say."
"Don’t think about it now."
"He’d bring a two-pound box sometimes. Oh, dear. Not that I ever let on I didn’t like them. I used to give them to Mr. Mannerly.
You remember Mr. Mannerly, Alice. He helped out in the garden.
With the heavy work."
"Of course I remember Mr. Mannerly." Alice knows that now her mother is about to remind her how Mr. Mannerly’s wife died of diabetes, how their son, Angus, went into politics.
"His poor wife died young. It was sugar diabetes, they couldn’t do much about it in those days." Whispering. "I don’t suppose she ever ate any of the chocolates, at least I hope she didn’t. Their son Angus, he couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen when his mother went. Sixteen, I think. And he’s done so well. Serving his third term, if I’m not mistaken. I used to see him mentioned in the papers. Angus Mannerly, a wonderful name for a politician, I always thought."
"It’s a lovely name." Living so long in England has given Alice the right to use the word "lovely," and she uses it a lot.
"I’m glad you’re here, Alice. I appreciate you being here. I don’t mean to sound so out of sorts."
"You’re not. You’re—"
"It’s all right, you don’t have to say anything."
"I just meant—"
"Really, dear, I mean it, you don’t have to say anything."
"All right."
"What was that word again? What the nurse said?"
"Feisty."
"It sounds like slang. Is it in the dictionary?"
"I don’t think so. It could be."
"It sounds so terribly—I can’t think of the word, it’s on the tip of my tongue, it sounds—"
"Nasty?"
"No. More like superior."
"Condescending?"
"Yes. That’s it. Condescending."
"You’re right, you know. It is condescending. It’s reductive. Insolent, as a matter of fact."
"Yes."
"We pretend to admire feistiness in others," Alice muses, "but we’d hate like hell to be feisty ourselves. To have someone call us that."
"It’s got a bad smell."
"A bad what?"
"Overripe. Like strawberries past their prime."
"Exactly."
"He had a very
long back, your father. I think that’s why he never learned to dance."
"Dancing’s not for everyone."
"I’m glad you’re here, Alice."
"I’m glad to be here."
"What did you say?"
"I said, I’m glad to be here."
"Forgive me, darling Alice, if I don’t believe you."
(Does Grandma Flett actually say this last aloud? She’s not sure.
She’s lost track of what’s real and what isn’t, and so, at this age, have I.)
When we say a thing or an event is real, never mind how suspect it sounds, we honor it. But when a thing is made up—regardless of how true and just it seems—we turn up our noses. That’s the age we live in. The documentary age. As if we can never, never get enough facts. We put on the television set and what we hear is the life cycles of birds. The replaying of wars. Interviews with mass murderers. And the newspapers know nothing else.
(1993) The Stone Diaries Page 28