What a family. Whatever instinct it was that brought normal families together, that bound them to one another, we lacked entirely. We only came together in times of crisis, and even then we couldn’t get it right. We didn’t even know where Malinda was, and she didn’t know you were dying. She was out there somewhere, probably alone, probably struggling. You hardly mentioned her, except to say that you knew she was safe, that God was looking after her. Everything’s going to be just fine, you kept saying. You still spoke of being saved, of the miracle that would be visited upon you. All you had to do, you said, was wait for it, all you had to do was believe. I wanted to shake you. Your faith seemed to me like a way of letting go of whatever brutalities you didn’t wish to think about. I wanted a glimpse of the mother I’d always known—savvy, sarcastic, brutal—instead of the regal, beatific creature you’d become since joining the church. The ways in which we’d lived, and failed each other—I wanted to face them. But you only faced me, as you faced everything those days, with a calm, vacuous smile.
In the last days you grew weaker, you had trouble breathing. The cancer had spread to your spine and even the smallest movement was painful. Your doctor ordered a morphine drip. You and Les stopped talking as if you were going to survive—you talked instead of meeting in the hereafter, of God’s plan, which was mysterious at the moment but which you had no choice but to believe in.
You slept much of the time. When you woke it was always from a vivid dream, a memory from your life which you felt compelled to relate. You believed that certain long-lost memories were returning to you for a reason, that God was speaking to you.
On one of your last lucid days you told me a story about myself I’d never heard before. You were born on a spring day, you said. It was sunny and warm, I went to the hospital in a sundress, two days later when it’s time to take you home there’s a snowstorm, and Pop has to put chains on the tires. Nana and Pop are in the front seat with Malinda, I’m in the back holding you, we’re making our way home, the car’s sliding around. We’re almost home, we’re stopped at a red light, and suddenly the back door of the car opens and some lunatic gets in—he’s escaped from the mental hospital in his pajamas, you can tell right away his mind isn’t right. His feet are wrapped in white trash bags. He has this long, ugly face, he’s missing his front teeth, his hair is all over the place.
And the crazy man says he wants to go to New York, he needs to get back there to finish a painting, he has a paying client waiting for it, millions of dollars. He starts telling us all about this conspiracy against him, these demons underground are trying to suck his talent out through his feet, the hospital is run by them and they’re trying to trap him and make him powerless, they took away his pencils and paper and the only way he could draw was to scratch on the walls with his nails. He says he’s the most talented artist in the world. Pop, he just turns around and acts perfectly normal. I guess he was used to this kind of thing from driving a bus all those years. “We’ll get you to New York right away,” he says. We drive around for a while and I’m holding on to you for dear life. Then Pop pulls over in the parking lot of a grocery store and says, “Here we are, New York City.” And the crazy man looks out the window and nods. Before he gets out he leans over and takes a long look at you. He takes his finger—this skinny finger with a long, dirty fingernail—and he strokes your forehead with it, back and forth, back and forth, and I start crying, I thought he was going to take you, or hurt you. He could have hurt you very easily. But he didn’t. He just got out of the car and shut the door. He waved to us as we pulled away. I can still see him standing there in his pajamas, in the snow.
These were the kinds of things that happened, you said, when you grew up across the street from a mental hospital. It wasn’t that unusual. In the old days, they used to let the patients out on weekend furloughs, and they’d walk the streets all day. Sometimes the doorbell would ring and one of them would be standing there with a broom, asking if they could sweep the steps or the driveway. It was just a part of life. What was unusual, you said, wasn’t the episode itself, but the ways in which it now reminded you of your own misfortune with the crazy lady. I see now that he put a mark on you, the same way a mark was put on me. I used to think it was a curse, you said. But now I know it means something good. God’s trying to give me comfort about you. He wants me to know that our souls are joined, we’ll always be together.
The last coherent thing you ever said had to do with time. You woke one morning and said that time was nothing like we thought it was. There’s no past, you said, and no future. Everything’s happening all at once, it’s like everybody’s life is this hallway with a million rooms, white rooms, and in every room something is happening, it’s all happening at once. You said that the past felt very distant to us, but this wasn’t really the case. We were young and old at the same time, all the scenes of our lives were unfolding all around us in a sort of perpetual present. If we looked carefully—if we really looked—we could see the past and the future, all around us. If we tried, we could feel it.
When we die, you said, it’s not really the end, because all the moments you ever lived you just keep on living. And so we’ll never be apart.
Whenever you spoke of these visions Les closed his eyes, he took your hand in his and raised it in the air, he trembled. “Dear God,” he said, “thank you for giving us your wisdom. Thank you for bringing us peace.” Tears ran down his face. I sat staring at him, at you. How certain you both were in your faith. How easy it was for you to believe. Everything made sense to you. Every trial had its purpose, every mistake was redeemed, every wound was justified.
I wanted to believe, too. I wanted to reconcile with you in some way. But I was too distant from you. In raising Michael I’d come to believe that what joined two people wasn’t blood, or fate, or signals granted from on high—what joined people together were the small actions they performed for each other each day. I made Michael breakfast, I took him to school, I picked him up and took him to the park, we had dinner together, did his homework, played a game, I read him a story and put him to bed. What joined two people together wasn’t always exciting. The cooking, the cleaning, the laundry, the maintenance of the home and car, all the mundane things you never wanted to be bothered with—this, I believed, was what bound people together. At the end I gave you my hand, I nodded as if I agreed, because this was what people did when they loved each other. But as far as our souls were concerned—whether they were joined together for all eternity—I couldn’t quite feel it.
Still, I missed you when you were gone. After you died I thought about you more than I ever had before. I spent long hours conjuring you, trying to remember everything that had ever happened between us—every gesture, every word, every color and shape and texture and sound and scent. I wrote down every scene that came to mind. As if by doing so I could bring you back to life. If what you said was true, then the dead were still with us, the dead weren’t really gone. Every moment that had ever passed between us was still alive in rooms all around me, and if I tried hard enough, I could break into them. I supposed that, sitting there putting words on a page, this was what I was trying to do. I thought of Uncle Mike, of the friends I’d known and lost, I thought of you. Somewhere unseen, but very close, you were young again, and I was newly born. You sat holding me in the backseat of Pop’s car, the snow fell, the tires slipped on the road, a door opened and a stranger got in, he rode with us for a time, he leaned toward us, he extended his finger and moved to touch my forehead, you held me tight, there was no distance between us, nothing had gone wrong yet, we hadn’t yet lost each other. Even now the stranger was touching his finger to my forehead, he was moving it back and forth, he was leaving his mark, his blessing, and if I believed, if I only believed, I could feel it, I could be with you again, I could almost feel it.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the following people for their friendship: Grace Patenaude (your loveliness increases…), Bart Patenaude, John
and Doreen Hodgen, Janice and John Lucena, Lillian St. Onge, Michael Holko, Jenni Frangos, Marly Swick, Michelle Boisseau, Kim Palmer, Leslie Koffler, Clancy and Rebecca Martin, Christine Sneed, Aisha Ginwalla, John Hildebidle, Tony Ardizzone, and Jenny Greene.
I would also like to thank the people who encouraged this book in its early stages: Jill Meyers and Stacey Swann at American Short Fiction, Jeanne Leiby at The Southern Review, Kit Ward, and all at W. W. Norton & Company, especially my editor, Amy Cherry, Denise Scarfi, and the incomparable Carol Houck Smith.
Elegies for the Brokenhearted Page 24