by Mary Gordon
Stephen had died at twenty-eight, miserable, a failure. Yet Jane at seventy-eight was magnificent. The heat of Caroline Watson had come close to both of them, warming one of them, leaving the other ashes. Dead at twenty-eight, Stephen had left nothing. No, she thought, that wasn’t true. He’d left his wife and mother to themselves.
She had promised the children a walk in the woods. The morning flared, quick, solid, there was no gradualness to the sun’s progress. The sky was flame-blue after dawn, the light, hard-edged at seven, was at nine a sheet of pure and potent color. It was not possible to linger over breakfast, although it was Saturday and that was an established family luxury. Only action could satisfy; Anne no less than the children yearned to move through the exciting air.
Everyone but Laura had a knapsack. The children packed sandwiches and fruit in theirs, convinced of the seriousness of their charge as if they were bringing serum to a plague-infested town. Anne worried about Laura’s shoes. She had only sandals, and even with thick socks, they would not be protection enough for the walk with its muddy spots, jumping from stone to stone if the brook was high, tracking through the undergrowth. All through breakfast, Anne worried about Laura’s feet. She could see her sandals, her wool socks caked with mud, twigs and cockleburs sticking to them, poking through the cloth into the flesh. By the time she backed the car into the driveway she was convinced that they would have to stop and buy Laura a pair of hiking boots—she would need them for the winter anyway. And since the boots were a need that Anne perceived, a concern that Laura would not share (she was curiously impervious to her own physical comfort), Anne saw that she would have to pay for them.
She knew it would be frustrating to the children to delay, however briefly, beginning their walk, and so she told them they could have a dollar each to buy nuts at the health food store three doors down from the shoe shop. She, too, resented the delay, and she knew she would have to work particularly hard not to convey her resentment, not to rush Laura, or to make her feel in any way deficient. It was, after all, admirable to be as unencumbered as Laura was. Hadn’t Anne often lamented in herself her terrible attachment to things, her almost superstitious need to place herself in the world with heavy objects as if, without them, she might fly off into some unknown, identityless sky? Every year in the springtime, she tried to make herself give things away. Michael laughed at her agonies, her pitiful show of goods, culled after enormous labor, to give to the Salvation Army. She should admire this girl who was, after all, quite brave in the way she lived her life.
But Anne felt herself grow irritated as Laura tried on pair after pair of boots, unable to make a decision, not out of fastidiousness but because she was incapable of finding a basis upon which to choose one over the other. The children had fallen to fighting: they had spilled a bag of sunflower seeds on the floor amid the empty boxes and sheets of tissue paper that lay at Laura’s feet; the harassed clerk shot Anne a look of pure hatred, which Anne could only accept as just. Laura simply sat there smiling, taking shoes off, putting them on, as if someone had ordered her to kill as much time as possible so as not to arrive too early at a party. Anne felt she had to do something or they would be there all day.
“Don’t you think these are the best?” she said to Laura, pointing to a pair of boots that Laura had tried on more than some of the others.
“If that’s what you want, Anne,” said Laura, smiling a smile that Anne found, in the circumstances, incomprehensible.
Anger was an emotion Anne had rarely; when it came, she felt it in the way she felt a headache, a sensation unusual but not entirely unfamiliar, reported on enough by others so as not to be a shock. She picked the boots up quickly and walked with the clerk to the checkout counter. She had to get away from Laura quickly, so that she wouldn’t say what she wanted to say, “This is a favor to you. I am doing you a kindness. I get nothing out of this. I’m giving you my time, my money, for your comfort. How dare you suggest that you’re accommodating me.” She rubbed her forehead, as if she could rid herself of these thoughts by massage. Blindly, she signed the charge slip, not taking in the amount on the bottom line.
The children tumbled out of the car like colorful birds. They had forgotten their bad temper; they ran ahead of Anne and Laura, looking for a spot where they could have their lunch. Seeing them ahead of her, Peter slowing himself down so Sarah could keep up, she felt love rise in her like mercury. What nice children she had! She could take no credit; they were born with their natures, and their natures were fortunate. That Peter might find life arduous, that Sarah might grow stubborn or vague with age, did nothing to disturb a truth that was lovely: her children were people that she liked. She thought of Stephen Watson, whose existence was a reminder to his mother of the cheat of her sex.
Walking beside Laura, she watched her looking up at the sky as if she had been told she ought to see something there. Perhaps it was part of her religious life; perhaps she thought of the sky as the home of God. Clearly, the girl had no home. She carried her homelessness about with her, an almost ignorable congenital disease, a slight deformation of the spine. That was why she had so much trouble buying the shoes: no one had asked her preference, given her the leisure of her own taste, her own choice. Guiltily, Anne put her hand on Laura’s shoulder.
“It’s a beautiful day for a walk,” she said.
“Here come the children,” Laura said, as if Anne had just been foolish and she wanted to change the subject to protect her.
Peter and Sarah hopped with excitement. A tree had fallen down by the creek; it made a natural bench for the four of them. Peter started a fantasy about all of them taking a camping trip to the Grand Canyon. They would get a trailer, he said—some kids in his class lived in a trailer, and it was terrific. It had everything—a television, a bathtub—and you could just drive anywhere you wanted with your whole house with you.
Sarah began to cry. “I miss Daddy,” she said. “If we go on a camping trip to the Grand Canyon and move out of our house into a trailer, will we ever see Daddy again?”
Peter jumped off the log and sat beside his sister, putting his arm around her as if they were the only living people on a ruined ship. Frightened that the vividness of his storytelling had so disturbed her, he offered her one of his cupcakes. She took it without humility or gratitude, as if it were her due. Anne watched the two of them, who seemed not to need her.
“Daddy will be home before your birthday,” Peter said. “Why don’t you think about your birthday. What kind of cake do you want Mommy to make this year?”
“I want a cake in the shape of a ballerina with pink icing on the skirt.”
“I want a cake in the shape of a crocodile. With green icing, and white for the teeth.”
“I want a geranium,” Anne said. “Orange icing for the flowers, green for the leaves, and chocolate for the pot.”
“What do you want for yours, Laura?” Peter asked, turning suddenly.
“I don’t know,” Laura said, smiling.
“You see,” Anne said quickly, wanting to temper their exclusion of Laura, “I make cakes in the shape of things for their birthdays. Very crudely, of course.”
“I see,” said Laura.
“When’s your birthday, Laura?” Sarah asked.
Laura hesitated a moment. “In ten days,” she said.
“That’s November twenty-sixth,” Peter said. “The Monday after Thanksgiving. We’ll have a party. Our mom will make you a cake. What kind do you want?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter. Maybe some kind of flower.”
“How about a daisy?” Peter said. “Our mother can do that, can’t you?”
“Sure I can,” said Anne. “I’m glad this came up. We wouldn’t have known if you hadn’t told us.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” Laura said.
“Of course it does,” said Anne. “It’s terrible not to have your birthday celebrated.”
Anne wondered how long it had been since anyone had celebrated Laura’s
birthday. November thirtieth. That would be the day after they got back from Jane’s. She would have an enormous amount to do; she would want to write her first impressions of the paintings. She saw her workday lost to making a cake in the shape of a daisy. The children were asking Laura what she wanted for her birthday.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “Anything you want.”
“We’ll surprise you,” said Peter, pulling Sarah ahead to whisper something to her.
Laura sat on the bench, her eyes straight ahead of her, fixed on nothing. Anne wondered if she was trying to keep from crying. She felt terrible about her own resentment. She could give up a day’s work, of course she could. It would mean so much to this girl who had so little. Once more, Anne felt the clear sensation of her own good luck.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’ll take you to lunch on your birthday. Just the two of us.”
Laura looked up at her. “The two of us? Alone?”
“No kiddos,” Anne said, laughing.
“Oh, Anne, that would be wonderful.”
She looked up at Anne with a smile that Anne could find no fault with. For the first time since she’d known her, Laura seemed genuinely happy.
Five
SHE HAD MADE THAT up about the birthday, but it was all right. Because she had been wise as serpents. Had said nothing of the Spirit humming in her like a radio. She was powerful; her body vibrated like a radio with the sound turned off. The lie was as wise as a serpent. And she was happy.
That day in the woods with the children after Anne was angry with her, it had come to her that she must lie. She had been afraid of what to do about the hiking boots. Anne wanted something from her, but she did not know what. Did not know what to choose or do or say. The heavy shoes lay in their paper, in their boxes, all the same. Which should she choose, and why should she want them? Anne knew, but it was a test. Anne knew things like that, like Laura’s mother: the right shoes, the right dresses. With her mother there were always tests. Choose. Now you have chosen, you are wrong. You have chosen that dress, those shoes, and now I do not love you. How could she choose? So much depended on it. Then Anne chose for her. And Anne was angry, angry just like Laura’s mother.
The water covered her. She walked through water, falling. She could hear the children talking, see the bright colors of their clothes. Send help, she had prayed, for everything I have is going from me. She was walking in the woods behind Anne. Anne was tall, taller than she, but beautiful. Her hair shone in the sun like the bright colors of the children. Her back was straight. She was a beautiful tree. Laura wanted to touch her, to lean her head on her like a tree, to say, “Please tell me what you want, and I will do it.”
The danger of Anne was that she made Laura forget the truth. The truth that it was Laura who was powerful and Anne who needed her. That day she had forgotten she was powerful. Dropped down in the dark water, she had lost herself. Then she had prayed. And had been rescued. Because the lie came from the Spirit and brought forth a sign.
Her birthday was not in November. It was in July. But the children were talking about birthdays. She could hear them through her miserable dark water. First they were saying that their mother made them beautiful cakes, pink, green, and white. She could see the colors clearly. She could see the table, the white paper tablecloth, the candles, the children, the colorful boxes piled in front of the child of honor. So when Sarah, her favorite, asked, “When’s your birthday?” she could see herself at the table, which, even behind the dark water, shone with beauty. She said, “In ten days.”
At first she was frightened. She had not lied much in her life. Even her mother said, “Laura tells the truth because she isn’t quick enough to lie.” But it had come to her then that she should lie. And Anne said, “We’ll go out to lunch.”
Which was her sign. Which parted the dark waters, lifted her out shining. Anne loved her. Anne wanted her company. Anne wanted them to be together, by themselves, to talk.
Anne was her friend. Who wanted to do things to make her happy. Who wanted to take her to restaurants, to bake a cake. She had not had a friend like that. When girls sat in the booths of diners, eating hamburgers together, giggling behind their hands, when girls walked into stores and said to one another, “Oh, buy that, buy that, it’s perfect for you,” she had been the one who looked, who was not with another, who walked up and down the aisles of stores, pressed down, made stupid, made slow with unhappiness. But now Anne was her friend. The kind of friend that she had wanted. Whose looks said, Be with me. You are the one I want to be with. Although she did not need it now. Now that she had the Spirit. Still, she knew Anne loved her.
She had won Anne’s love through wisdom. The mistake that she had made with the people in the churches was that she had not been wise.
First it was the Reverend Carr, the minister of the church she had always gone to, the First Methodist, at home in Meridian. She had thought he was a nice man. She was sure he had liked her, or pretty sure, for that was the time, the terrible time before the Spirit was revealed to her, when she thought no one liked her. But he had praised her for her work for the youth group, praised the embroidered dresser scarves she made for the bazaar, the cakes she made for the bake sale. He had even told her mother how lucky she was to have a daughter who was so helpful. (Her mother snorted, “At that age I was too interested in boys to be cooking and sewing. Which is why I’m in the mess I’m in right now.”) She had flicked her head at Reverend Carr, and he smiled. She had charmed him. He was no longer thinking about Laura, but about her mother and her small, tanned arms. Laura had gone to him to tell him of the coming of the Spirit, thinking he was a kind man, knowing the Spirit was of God.
He frowned. He put the white tips of his fingers together. He looked at her sadly. “Laura, dear,” he said. He had never called her dear before. She thought for a minute that he was about to praise the Spirit in her, that he knew. But he knew nothing. He looked at her, concern in his stupid eyes. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a long time. I’ve thought for some time that you perhaps were lonely. That you’ve kept to yourself too much. And that your mother, wonderful as she is”—he was thinking of her small, tanned arms, she knew, her dark hair, thick and shining—“doesn’t understand you. Sometimes parents, even meaning well…”
She looked at him, smiling. It was a smile she felt come on her when she could see blindness, when she could see people stumbling against truth, when they refused to light the candle that she held for them.
“I see that you don’t understand,” she said. “It has nothing to do with my mother.”
She got up to leave.
“Laura, dear,” said Reverend Mr. Carr, now standing, “stay and talk awhile.”
“No, thank you,” she said. She was proud that she was always polite, in the face of misunderstanding. It was wonderful how, since the Spirit had revealed itself to her, she was never angry. Before, she had been angry so often, at her mother, her sister, her father, the teachers who had been impatient with her thoroughness, her carefulness, who called it slowness, who said she was falling behind. But since the Spirit, she was never angry. When people misunderstood her and she once would have been angry, she could feel herself begin to smile. For the Spirit of Darkness had no strength; evil had no power over her. She was the chosen of the Lord. Nothing could harm her. “And these signs shall follow them that believe,” the Lord had said. “They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.”
Still, for a while, she thought she needed someone else. Not knowing that the Spirit was sufficient for all things, not knowing that she needed no one, that people needed her. She went from church to church, talking to strangers of the Spirit. They suggested she was overwrought, that she needed a psychiatrist, a rest, a change of diet. She had gone to six churches before she ran into Father Delaney.
At first she had been happy, thinking that he understood her. But even he, believing he was shot through w
ith the Spirit, that the power of the Spirit rushed through his veins like his own blood, reached to the tips of his fingers for healing, for the blind to see, the lame to walk (he had made some rise from their wheelchairs), even he was choking on his own flesh, drowning in it.
At first he had been kind to her. At first, not knowing, she was pleased with his indiscriminate embraces. He was a large man, a handsome man, and she had been deceived into finding the warmth of his body a comfort, a solace. Forgetting that all solace was the Spirit’s. Cool and without body.
She had seen him at his Healing Masses (it had upset her mother to see her going to a Catholic church), had seen him lift his strong arms, lay his large hands with the reddish-gold hairs (he called her Red; he said she was like him) on the heads of the sick. They raised their arms, they prayed; some fell down with exhaustion; some rose up, walked, knelt before him. (“Not before me,” he would say. “It’s Jesus.”) A woman she had known from the post office declared she had been cured of cancer. She pitied these people now. The Spirit of Darkness, too, could cure, to lead the righteous man astray.
She began spending all her evenings at Saint Bartholomew’s rectory. She asked Father Delaney if she could have a moment with him. He took her into his office. She admired that room. There was nothing in it but a metal desk, a metal filing cabinet, a crucifix, a telephone, six metal chairs, boxes of index cards of written testimonies of the people who believed they had been helped. He kept them, he said, as proof, for many doubted him. He would not say that he had enemies, but many were against his work. In the next room, she could hear people who were his friends tallying the collection from the Healing Mass, putting coins into wrappers, separating bills. He insisted that the tally from his Mass be kept separately from the other Masses. It was one way, he said, of making friends with the Mammon of Wickedness. Then he threw his head back and laughed, and all his friends laughed with him.