by Mary Gordon
But she sat silent and was prudent. She said nothing to Anne, although at night she burned with fear for her, with fear for the sin she planned. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep. But she could see them, man and woman, beast and beast, locked in each other’s bodies. She knew what it was like, for she had done it. She knew what was meant by flesh and why the prophets sickened when they spoke of it and why the wrath of God came down because of it. Of course the wrath of God came down because of it. How could it not? She could see the bodies lock and tear and afterwards the eyes with nothing in them but the blackness which is sin, is death. So she prayed, with the sight of them behind her eyes that this sight would not come into the world, into fulfillment. And her prayers had worked. The man had gone away. The darkness left the house. She waited for the Spirit. But the Spirit did not come. The darkness of the flesh had moved away, but the light of the Spirit did not replace it. Only stone and hardness. Only the heart turned to stone.
But why had she lost heart? The hand of the Lord was in everything. The path she followed had been wrong, the path of prudence and of counsel. She had been frightened; she had feared that she had failed. That was why she had the thought of cleaning everything. Because the house had been defiled.
Just as her mother’s house had been. She thought now of her mother’s house. The house of her birth, the tubes, the red jars, caked black sticks of makeup, the brushes left around, left out, black on the towels, on the sheets, the stains of lipstick left on cups, on glasses, on the cigarettes that multiplied like dead things in gray ashes that flowed onto the tables, on the rugs, the floor. The cigarettes thrown in the toilet, floating with the red scar up, scar of the mother’s mouth, the black ring on the tub, scar of the mother’s filth. Her mother was a filthy woman. She had always known it. She had known it as a child. As a child she had to see the bloody napkins pinned in their harness dropped on the bathroom floor, the bedroom floor. Red blood, brown blood, blood on soft sticks, cotton stubs in garbage cans because the septic system would not take them. Cover them up, cover yourself, hide it from me. As a child she cried in the bed she kept clean herself. Why do you let me see, why must you keep showing me? I am small, I am your child, and there are things you should hide from me. Lovely mother, mother beautiful in clothes, smelling of perfume, of shampoo, keep me from this body life, oh keep it from me. Show me only your light dashing arms, your quick feet in their pointed shoes, the turn of your skirt as you dance somewhere. Keep me from the body life of curses, groans, the blows you deal me. Keep from me your naked body, the black triangle of hair. Hide from me the man who comes in the mornings when you think I sleep, the man I have to find, the door I have to open, and the curses you then have to rain on me for finding what I have to find. I am your daughter; I am a child. Keep things from me.
I will keep the house clean for you, Mother. I will follow you and hide the things you ought to hide, will wash away the foul smells and the food gone bad, will clear away the evidence. Oh, beautiful, quick mother, mother like a shining bird, I will do this for you, do everything, if you will say that you will love me.
Why could they never see, the mothers, that their houses were their sanctuaries? For the children to be safe in, to be happy. So they must be pure as snow; nothing must be permitted of corruption. For the children. It must all be beautiful for them. If defilement entered, then the Lord would curse. Curse everyone, the mothers and the children. The Lord had told Ezekiel: “Wherefore, as I live … because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable things and with all your abominations, therefore I will cut you down; my eye will not spare, and I will have no pity.”
They did not know, they had forgotten because the Lord had kept His wrath disguised, had covered up His face, had kept His dark voice silent. Only a few saw. The rest were as if dead. It said in Revelations: “I know your works; you have the name of being alive, and you are dead.” The Lord gave warnings in those days, but even then the people did not hear. They did not know; they thought the Lord was far away and could not see them, could not hear them. But He was coming; He was coming. And they were unready. Anne, her children, were unready. They saw nothing, heard nothing. Only Laura knew. The Lord would come at night, a thief. And they would not be ready. The Lord’s curse would come on them. They would perish, they would burn alive, they would be swallowed in the cloud of night, they would be blotted out forever from the book of life. All this would happen if she could not make them hear. And yet sometimes the Lord had mercy. Sometimes He kept his chosen ones to shine a light before them. “Yet you have still a few names…, people who have not soiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy. He who conquers shall be in white garments, and I will not blot his name out of the book of life.”
She saw the garments, shining, stiff with majesty. She saw how she would walk in them, her head high in the light of God’s own countenance. For she would conquer. But the others would not conquer if they did not listen to the chosen of the Lord. They must listen. She had been afraid that she would fail to conquer. She had been afraid that the darkness was too strong for her. That Anne’s heart had hardened against her as her mother’s heart had hardened against her. Her mother would have her name forever blotted from the book of life. Since the Spirit came to her, she knew that. But she was afraid for Anne.
She had seen Anne turn against her. She had seen her body stiffen; heard her voice go hard. Your voice is a knife of stone, she wanted to say to Anne, put it away, turn it from me. Anne was saying all the time: “Don’t look, don’t listen, don’t be near me.” When she said, “Thank you,” she meant, If only you were not here. It was her mother’s voice, the knife of stone. Every word her mother said was really saying, If only you were not here. The knife of stone had fallen on her heart until the Lord had sent his word, and she learned that she was the Chosen One. Now her mother’s voice could never hurt her. But when she heard Anne’s voice, the new voice that was always saying, If only you were not here, she felt again the knife of stone. The Lord took his shield from her and exposed her heart. But she had not given in. She had prayed. She had worked to cleanse the house of its defilement. And the Lord had spoken to her now. He had told her the answer. The answer was of blood.
She could do it now. The final thing, the violent thing. No more must she be wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. Now she was the Angel of the Lord. The word of God came in a blazing light, in fire and sword. The Word of Love. She had cleansed the house with water; she would cleanse it now in blood.
First she would write the letter. She would take the paper from her notebook, where she wrote the special messages of God.
Dear Anne:
I am doing this because I love you. The Lord will come as a thief, and you must now repent of your defilement. You hardened your heart to me; now I must speak to you in blood. I am always with you. No one will ever love you as I love you. I will never leave you; you will never be alone. I am the chosen of the Lord. You never knew this for your heart was hard and it was hidden. But now the time has come and it must not be hidden. I am the chosen of the Lord, and I have loved you as the Lord has loved you. I will show you his face in my hands.
She would read Isaiah’s words. She would write them down for Anne.
Can a woman forget her sucking child,
that she should have no compassion on the child of her womb?
Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.
Behold, I have graven you on the palms of my hands.
She would take the razor. She would cut her hands just at the wrists. The cut would be in the name of Anne. She would lie down in water and be thinking of her glory. Of her snow-white garments and the radiance of her face. Shining before the mountains of the Lord. She would shed every drop of blood she had for Anne, so Anne would see how much she loved her.
Twelve
THEIR MOOD WAS HIGH as they drove home from the movies. Jane had done it; she had made them feel courageous, das
hing, bold. They hadn’t mentioned Laura, but as soon as they were seated in the diner Jane had said, “There’s only one thing for it. I must be asked to move in and care for these dreadful creatures till the project is complete.”
The children jumped up and down in the red booth, knocking over water glasses, salt and pepper shakers, in their joy. Together, Anne and Jane mopped up the mess with napkins, laughing, handing the sodden paper to the waitress who had sullenly come to take their order. It was such an enchanting idea, so unlikely, so extravagant. It easily replaced the somber news of Laura’s leaving, which the children had listened to in silence, stony-faced. Anne exchanged the bruise of guilt, remorse and anger, the unhealed fear of her children’s danger, for the dry, well-formed white bone of justice. She had been just; her anger had been justified. She had been extreme, but the situation had been extreme. For once in her life she had been clear and forthright. She had seen what needed to be done and done it. Justice: what a small part it had played in her life. Like most women, she feared it. Justice to her had conjured up the implacable God of Moses, depriving his servant of the promised land because of a rock struck twice. She had believed like Hamlet: “Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping?” But Hamlet wasn’t a very good model. He had certainly muddled things. It was better, much better, to act as she had acted with Laura, as she had acted for the first time in her life. The girl had been negligent. She had placed the children in grave danger. They could no longer be left in her charge. She was troubled, that was obvious; Anne supposed that really it had been so from the beginning. But when Laura’s troubles became a danger to the children, she had to be got rid of. It was as simple as that. Anne knew Laura would be upset, was, perhaps at that very moment, in pain. But she had endangered the children. Whatever moral consideration Anne owed to the rest of humankind was dwarfed by her first duty: to keep her children safe. People who didn’t have children could take in people like Laura. She could go to Hélène. That was the perfect place for her to go. She could imagine Laura and Hélène telling each other what a monster she was. She could imagine them sitting on Hélène’s couch, Laura whispering her suspicions about Anne and Ed. Saying that she had kept them apart only through constant vigilance. And then Hélène would feel she had to tell Michael. Well, let her. And if he said anything to her, she could deny it in good conscience. She was innocent. Nothing had happened at all.
The thought of Ed left her once again exposed and bruised. But she would bury it. For tonight, she wanted to feel triumphant, a great judge carried on the shoulders of a reverent crowd.
On the way home, Jane and the children sang “Over There.” Jane told them about the First World War, which America had entered when she was nine years old. She told them about her brother who had driven an ambulance in France. How splendid it would be for them to be with Jane, Anne thought. How wonderfully everything was working out.
When they turned the corner, Anne could see that all the lights on the second floor were lit.
“Damn it,” she said, in an undertone to Jane, “either she’s not gone yet or she’s left the lights on just to be annoying. That would be typical of that girl. Annoying to the end.”
“Do you want me to go ahead and speak to her if she’s there?” asked Jane.
“Of course not,” said Anne. “I’m not afraid to confront her.”
The children ran into the house first; they were incapable of not racing each other to the kitchen table. Anne walked behind them. They stopped racing when they got into the living room.
The living room floor was covered by a pool of water a quarter-inch deep. Water was splashing down the stairwell. Between the newel posts a steady stream spilled to the wall below, down the spines of the books on the shelves above the piano. Water splashed on the piano. From a spot in the ceiling underneath the bathroom a globe of water hung, dripping a puddle onto the rug.
“Oh, boy,” said Peter. “Someone must have left the bathtub running for a really long time. I’d better check it out.”
Only when he was halfway up the stairs did Anne notice that the water was not clear. A light raspberry stain had spread over the walls, settled at the bottom of the dripping globe of water on the ceiling. She tried to understand what had happened. What was this thing that seeped and dripped and colored all the walls? Not water, or not just water. Water with something passed through it.
Instantly, she knew. The word lodged in her brain, a small dark pebble, then softened and exploded in her mind. Blood. Blood had passed through the water. She knew Peter was looking at blood.
He stood unmoving at the bathroom door. From the set of his back, she knew that he was terrified. Quickly she ran to him. She stood beside him in the doorway. For a second, two seconds, she stood still beside him, unable to grasp or to believe what she saw: a dead girl lying in a tub of red water, one hand, the left, grazing the white tile floor.
Every organ in Anne’s body enlivened, tightened and then hardened and grew cold. At the same time she was riven, a torrent split her, top to bottom, with a violent slice. Blood, death. The words, almost absurd in their simplicity, drove through her body like a blow. This is the end of our life, she heard a voice inside her skull say. Life as we will know it will be different. We are looking at the dead.
But it was not the nameless dead they looked on. It was Laura, whom they knew, whom she had hated, whom she had sent away. And who had killed herself most horribly. The horror took her over. A scream bloomed in her throat, then choked her like the taste of blood. I cannot go on, I cannot go on, she heard inside her skull. Someone must help me now. I cannot do a thing.
But there was no one; it was she who had to act. Laura had spilled her blood there in the house. In the house that she had imagined she would keep her children safe in. She knew she must put aside the horror now, the grief, the terror, whatever she felt that would transfix her so she could not act. For now she must protect her children. She felt Peter looking up at her; she felt alive beside her his desire for her, as his mother, to speak or to move. He needed her to do something, to round things off or tie them off, to stop them shading into the rest of his life. She walked to the tub and turned off the water. Then she walked back to Peter’s side. Beside him once again, she made herself look as he had looked.
There was Laura. She was dead, but death had not made her unrecognizable. The pale flesh against the heavy hair, the white limbs: it was the body of someone Anne had known. Laura’s eyes still looked; their gaze stretched upward at the ceiling. She seemed to smile. It was hypnotic, the similitude between the living body and the dead. Anne felt herself entranced. How young Laura looked, even in death. What had made her do this dreadful thing, to make herself, so young, into one of the dead? All her relations with Laura swam before her eyes. Did she do this, Anne had to ask herself, because I sent her away? What did I do to her, what was I in her mind? Peter took her hand. Sharply, she willed herself to move. She could not think about Laura any longer. She must take her son away. The image must not burn into his mind a second longer. She put her arms around him and led him down the stairs.
“We’ll have to tell Jane and Sarah now,” she said, holding his hand as they walked down. “But we must make sure that Sarah doesn’t see, so I’ll ask you to stay with her at the Greenspans until I have things taken care of.”
“No, Sarah mustn’t see.”
“It’s important. I’ll depend on you for that.”
Walking down the stairs, she felt the pressure of having to put into words what she had seen. To take from the event its carapace of silence seemed to brutalize it yet again. But she had no choice. For what she must do, above all, she told herself, was remove the physical evidence. As far as she could, she must render it impossible that anyone should see again what she and Peter had seen. She took Sarah into her arms. How did you bring the news of horror to a child? “Laura is dead,” she said, holding Sarah to her.
Sarah began to cry. It was such a relief that someone had a
natural reaction that Anne felt them all turn a corner. She held her daughter’s solid body, lively in its grief. She looked over at Peter. He was away from them, sitting on the couch, his hands folded in his lap, his eyes dry and brilliant.
Never had she felt her position as a mother so impossible and so false. She had no idea what the right thing to do for him was. He had taken himself away from them. Should she let him be alone? He had seen a terrible thing. More than that, he had been the first to see it. Of all of them, he was closest to the event; of all of them, he must feel the least innocent. Yet he was still a child. He was the same child who had sat at the diner half an hour ago and blown, for the amusement of the company, bubbles in his milk. He would never be quite her child again, for seeing what he had seen, his childhood was no longer intact, and he would never again need her in the simple way he once had. She began to embrace him and felt him stiffen away from her. She would let him do that; she would let him be by himself. His moving away from her made her see how everybody waited for her action. And suddenly, action seemed the only chance. She saw herself as a machine, bicameral: one part could function and the other, where the cold gears seized, could be closed off. She could act; she did not have to feel or think. She could be like a clock that went on keeping time although it could no longer sound the hours. She must not feel or think. The problem had its physical dimensions; now those would save her.