by Mary Gordon
Still, she felt Laura needed her. She couldn’t bear to think of the girl alone among the dead. So cold, so unaccompanied. She would not leave her to the dead. She would mourn her. She would fill her heart with grief. She would say, Poor child, life was cruel to you. At least she could do that.
When she walked into her kitchen, she found a note on the table in Jane’s handwriting. Please call your mother if you’re home before ten, it said. She looked at her watch. It was nine-fifteen. She didn’t hear Jane; she supposed she was sleeping. She would call her mother now.
It wasn’t something she wanted to do. Her mother was no good at comforting, at being a support. Yet she felt that, as a mother herself, she had to make the formal gesture. She didn’t think she’d gone to her mother with a grief for twenty years. Grief was something to be kept from parents, she’d thought. In her father’s case, her pain caused him so much pain that she ended up comforting him. And yet, she thought, these memories are old; they may be obsolete. She had not gone to them with griefs because in twenty years she had not had many. Some arm had always sheltered her, some wing provided shade. Now the arm was gone; the sun beat down on her bare head. But why not? Her grief was overdue.
“Michael phoned from France,” Anne’s mother said. “He thought that we should know. You must be very upset.”
Anne could hear the anxiety in her mother’s voice. She didn’t know what to say to her daughter, and in her dreams, mothers and daughters swam an easy channel of buoyant water back and forth into each other’s lives. But it had never been that way with them; their congress had been partial, balked, confused. They loved each other. There was that pull of flesh, of childhood. But they had never talked. Anne saw her mother always behind a screen, running back and forth, vague, apologetic or else febrile in her joys. And Anne frightened her mother, she always had, by her looks, her good fortune, her ability to please the father, her mother’s husband, who was a stranger to her still.
“I won’t come to you, if you don’t mind. It’s midterm time and I’m awfully busy. Besides, I’m sure you don’t need me. You’ve always had so many friends.”
“Everyone’s been wonderful,” Anne said, realizing how disappointed she was. She wanted her mother to come.
“And I won’t tell Daddy. He’s awfully busy, too, and he’ll drop everything and come to you. And you know how anything wrong with you upsets him. The only reason he likes life at all is because he thinks it’s on your side.”
So her mother would never forgive her, and perhaps she was right. Her father preferred her, he always had. She hadn’t meant to do it, but it had happened: she had won her father away from her mother. He had told Anne over and over, “You are my favorite person in the world.” She had taken so much from her mother, it was only fair that her mother should keep her husband back now, when her daughter really wanted him, at the one moment when not having him would hurt.
“No, don’t tell Daddy. We’ll come for a visit in a week or two. We’ll tell him then.”
“How are the children?”
“It’s complicated. I don’t know.”
“All right, dear. Call if you need us.”
I won’t, she thought. That is the one thing I won’t do. I will not call to you, I will not call because I need you. Laura called, and no one came. And so I will not call.
She leaned her head against a window. It was infantile to cry like this, at thirty-eight, because she wanted her parents and they wouldn’t come. There was no hand to hold, you learned that when you grew up. Perhaps she was an adult now. Perhaps that was what made the difference between adults and children. Adults knew they were alone; their solitude was final, and there was no rescue. Children’s terror, children’s sorrow, was all based on disappointment; adults took their grief from certainty and loss.
She walked into the living room. She was surprised to see Jane reading by a dim light. Jane raised her hand to Anne in greeting. There was something monumental in her gesture, in her posture, in her sitting in the semidarkness; and it made Anne angry. Something in the way Jane looked reminded her of the rage she felt, for Jane, too, worshipped what Laura in worshipping had died of.
Anne approached her directly; there were things she wanted Jane to hear.
“She looked to God for love,” Anne said. “And she got death. I thought that when you asked for bread you weren’t given stones.”
Jane was silent.
“I suppose it’s easier for you. You believe in God.”
“No, it’s much harder for me. As I believe in a loving God, it is much more difficult to understand.”
“How can you love a God that lets this happen?”
“I don’t. This is the God I fear. The dark cruel face I cannot understand that looks on while His children suffer.”
“She did this because she wanted to bring me to God.”
“No, she did it because she was desperate, and angry. And quite proud. And of course, she got what she wanted. You will never forget her.”
Anne looked at Jane, whose face was sorrowful and yet composed. The planes of her face were beautiful. At her center was a supple and tense cord that kept her back beautifully straight, that let her hold her arms now, resting lightly on the chair.
“What is sadder than anything,” said Jane, “is that she missed the whole point of the Gospels. She read them over and over, and she never got the point.”
“The point?”
“That she was greatly beloved.”
Anne didn’t know what to say.
“Of course it is never enough, the love of God. It is always insufficient for the human heart. It can’t keep us from despair as well as the most ordinary kindness from a stranger. The love of God means nothing to a heart that is starved of human love.”
Jane’s words made Anne sleepy. Love, she thought, feeling sleep come over her. I have always been beloved. I have never been alone.
“Michael is upstairs, asleep,” Jane said.
Anne stared at her a second, then left. She passed the children’s room and heard them breathing.
Michael sat up when she opened the door. The sight of him made her know how important it was that he was there. There were things that she could tell him only, must tell him, as the father of their children. What she had learned was dreadful in itself and dreadful in what it had opened up about life, the life they had brought two others into, the life of which they had said to two weak vulnerable creatures: This is yours, you must live. In giving them life they had opened them up to terrible things. And they had done it together. Michael opened his arms to her; for the first time she could weep. And he knew what it was she wept for, for he said, “Weep for all of us.”
And that was why she was weeping. For Laura, for herself, her parents and her children. For Laura’s parents who could not love, for her own heart that had closed down and hardened over at the cry for love. She wept and wept. People were so weak, and life would raise its whip and bring it down again and again on the bare tender flesh of the most vulnerable. Love was what they needed, and most often it was not there. It was abundant, love, but it could not be called. It was won by chance; it was a monstrous game of luck. Fate was too honorable a name for it. You were born, and you were laid open to the world. And the world raised its whip against the child, or sheltered it with its soft wing, and waited, always waited, to bring down the whip.
“Her parents didn’t love her,” Anne said, raising up her head. “They didn’t want anything to do with her. They didn’t want her body. The mother said she wouldn’t have hired her to clean her toilets. The father said he’d pay for everything.”
“Poor child.”
“They didn’t love her. They never did. No one did. I didn’t love her either. I didn’t even like her. In the end, I hated her just as her mother did.”
“She wasn’t likable.”
“But it wasn’t her fault. No one had ever loved her.”
“No, it wasn’t her fault. But its not being her fault di
dn’t make her more likable. She was starved.”
She was starved, and she had died of it. And Anne let her husband’s love feed her. Let the shade of its wing shelter her, cover her over. But no wing had ever covered Laura. The harsh light had exhausted her until she could only go mad. And then the whip had fallen. And Anne knew that she had helped the whip descend.
When Anne told Jane that she thought there should be some kind of funeral, Jane said she would see to it. She had learned, through Adrian, that Frank Pointer in the Classics Department had staying with him a priest, a former classmate who had been a missionary in the Philippines. “Probably a whiskey problem,” Jane said. “He has that bruised look, as if he’s afraid he’s going to be rusticated to the West of Ireland. Still, he’s a type I like,” Jane said, “shy, melancholy, convinced that he’s a failure. Much better than the gung-ho breed.” He had agreed to say some prayers for Laura.
Jane spoke to Harold Cusher, the undertaker, and arranged for Laura’s body to be cremated. “Was there any place that Laura liked particularly? Mr. Cusher wants to know,” Jane asked.
She couldn’t say. She would never be able to say if anything had made Laura happy. She had seemed happy the day they all went on a picnic in the woods near Emerald Creek, when they had planned her birthday party. For the birthday that was not her birthday, but a made-up day, Anne had discovered, finding Laura’s driver’s license. She had lied about her birthday to get a party. Anne was glad she had. She had done something for her that she could be fairly sure Laura had liked.
It was a cold morning in late March. The mild week’s weather just before had been betrayed; the sky was crystal-blue and wintry. No clouds gathered, and the ground was hard. Three cars had come to the place where Anne and Laura and the children had had their picnic. Fourteen people were there: Anne and Jane and Ben, who had come up to be with Jane, the Greenspans, Adrian, Ianthe, the Garrisons, whom Anne had invited at the last minute, Hélène, Frank Pointer and his friend the priest. And Michael and the children.
The poor boy, Anne thought, looking at the priest, but he was not a boy. His underjaw was slung like a bulldog’s; his face was covered with a purplish rash, which could have been caused by anguish. She had never seen anybody look so unhappy; he wore his unhappiness like a suit passed down from an older brother.
“It was good of you to come,” Anne said to him, realizing she sounded fatuous, an official hostess.
“Not at all, the poor soul. She needs our prayers,” he said. She almost laughed; he was so nearly the stage Irish priest. But who could laugh at him, he was so kind, and so unhappy?
He gathered them into a circle. The children stood next to Anne, formal, straight-backed in their good clothes, with Michael on the other side. Peter looked at his shoes; Sarah looked up at the sky.
“We’ll just begin, then,” said the priest.
He prayed for Laura’s rest, that light perpetual should shine upon her. He read two psalms: “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord,” and the One Hundred and Twenty-first Psalm, which Jane had suggested. “We read it at Caroline’s funeral,” she said.
Anne thought of Caroline as the priest read. What could be more different than her death and Laura’s. So different, they were hardly the same category of event. In the end, Jane had told her, Caroline died peacefully. The terror, the despair, she had expressed in her last journal entry had disappeared. She died painlessly, holding Jane’s hand. And she’d left, in her will, elaborate plans for her own funeral. It was to be a party; she’d planned the menu, selected the music. There was to be dancing. And everyone, Jane said, had danced. She’d died an old woman; her life had been a success; her work had been admired; she had been beloved.
Had Caroline not lived, Laura would not be dead, Anne told herself. Each time now that she thought of her work on Caroline, she would have to wonder if Laura had been its sacrifice. Her death would touch even that. Had she not met me, she might not have died, Anne thought, listening to the priest. Had I not ignored her distress trying to finish my work. The work I did for Caroline, she thought, listening to the psalm that had been read for her as well.
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help?
My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.
Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord himself is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.
The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.
The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.
The Lord shall preserve thy going out and they coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.
It was so beautiful, and it was such a lie. From what had Laura been preserved? Hatred, madness, death had all struck her undefended. Yet she was glad the priest had read those words. Perhaps it was true for Laura now. Perhaps now Laura was protected. Perhaps now someone preserved her going out, her coming in. Or perhaps not.
As if obeying the psalm’s first line, Anne looked at the mountains. The morning sun shone clear and shadowless. From whence cometh my help? She had never noticed it before, but the way the priest read it made it clear that the words were a question. From whence cometh my help? She looked at her children. They were waiting for her to say something. She wondered if she should ask everyone home for something to eat. But she decided against it. You came together after a funeral only to talk about the dead. And no one had anything they wanted to say about Laura. None of them mourned her; they were not really mourners of the dead, they were here out of politeness to a friend, to Anne. Nobody was bereaved. So they should not sit together eating, talking. They should separate and go on with their lives.
The priest asked to speak to her alone. “These are the ashes,” he said, handing her a parcel done up in newspaper. “The funeral director said you were to have them.”
“Yes, that’s right,” she said, smiling at him with pity. Never had she seen anyone look so unhappy. “Thank you, Father, you’ve been very kind.”
She had told Michael what she knew she must do. She signaled to him, and he took the children away.
She walked into the woods. She walked in an envelope of greenish light; the sun slanted between the branches, coins of shadow lay upon the forest floor. What she was doing was itself a crime. The funeral director had told her it was against the law to scatter the ashes of the dead. But what I don’t know, he said shrugging, won’t hurt anybody. So rarely had she done an illegal thing that she couldn’t stop herself looking over her shoulder to make sure no one followed.
She came to the spot near the brook where she had sat with Laura and the children. She undid the parcel. Inside the newspaper wrapping was what looked like a silver coffee can. She opened the lid. She had promised herself that she would look. Ash and bone. Nothing that could come to life. The spirit could breathe and breathe over it, but there would be no quickening.
This was what was left of the girl who died because she could not love her. With a quiet motion she emptied the can onto the ground. A mound of ash with tiny bone splinters lay in a hillock on the earth. Quickly, the wind took them.
I did not love you, she said, not to the ashes that the wind took but to the girl, whose going out and coming in she had been told was blessed now. But I brought your ashes here because here at least I knew I wished you well. That was something. There was something in me at that moment at least that was not of death. I did not love you. But I mourn you. I will always mourn you. I can give you that.
She waited till the wind had taken the last of the ashes. A few bone splinters still remained upon the ground. Anne brushed them into the creek, carefully, with the side of her hand. Then she walked back to her husband and her children, waiting for her in the car.
Epilogue
PETER HAD BEEN HAVING bad dreams every night in the mont
h since Laura’s death. They happened shortly before dawn. Anne would hear him scream, and then he would appear next to her bed, shaken, ghostly, in the gray, translucent light. At first, after Michael had gone back to France, she had let him get into the bed with her, but then there was a fight with Sarah in the mornings. Sarah claimed that Peter was being rewarded for not sleeping through the night while she was being cheated and cut off. There was something to what she said. Anne didn’t want to reward her son for being troubled. And she knew it wasn’t good: a mother and a son to share a bed, however briefly, in the early morning. It had to stop. Yet she could not leave him comfortless. He looked so alone in his thin pajamas, so frail, like a bird whose ardent heart seems nearly visible. Without saying anything to Peter, she moved the rocking chair from the living room and placed it by her bedroom window. It looked over the white lilac bush, over the lilies of the valley.
How much, she wondered, was her son having bad dreams for her? She didn’t mind the interruption of her sleep, she suffered for her son’s distress, for all that he had suffered, but she was happy there with her boy in her arms, rocking as if they were suspended in the insubstantial light. The light kept the white lilac leaves in a deep shadow, only gradually did they reveal themselves. Solid, bluish, somber, they held up the white flowers which absorbed light for an hour before they took on brightness. Below, the lilies of the valley opened up like paper stars unfolding from their cone of darkness. White and green and blue-gray tones abounded: before her eyes a landscape for the wounded eye, the invalid’s view, the palette of consolation. A cool sobriety was in the air those hours of the morning, a sweetness, a regret, a stillness, as if life happened under water. It was the only time that she could think of what had happened.
She covered her son with a blanket. He was sweaty after his night terrors, and his hair was damp, as if he had been in a fight or a fever; his hair smelled acrid, overripe, like stored grain; she put her lips to it and got a yeasty taste. They never spoke about the dreams; he didn’t remember them, he said, only that he was frightened, too afraid to be alone. She held him to her, both of them knowing there was something a bit ridiculous in the posture. He was too big to be held so; his legs dangled and his arms had no place comfortable to go. In this chair she had nursed him, but he was in no way her baby anymore. His long legs hummed with an animal life in his sleep. Soon he would leave her.