“Maybe you get less on the resale,” Cora says, and they all laugh, a little awkwardly.
“But why?” Scarlet asks. “It’s not like it’s going to be used.”
“Right.” Cora laughs. “It won’t even be dug yet. Just an untouched piece of land.”
“But of course, nicely mowed and watered and fertilized,” Tom adds.
“Do they fertilize cemeteries?” Scarlet asks, incredulous. “I mean, do they really need to?”
“Do you think a corpse shot full of embalming fluid, vacuum-packed in an armor-plated coffin, is going to add a single nutrient to the soil?” Tom asks.
And then Scarlet isn’t laughing anymore. Clearly Tom and Addie had been discussing this, she thinks, for who knows how long. Perhaps this isn’t one of Addie’s typically outrageous plans. Could Tom have been in on it all along? He’s the one, after all, who’s been insisting for the last year that he spotted a cerulean warbler—and keeping mum while Addie contended that she’d seen a long-extinct or even made-up bird—on the ridge above their home. He’s also been writing endless letters designed, presumably, to shame Burnham College into refusing Bert Schafer’s offer and thus prevent development of the land surrounding Nisky and Kleine Creeks. “What kind of institution of higher learning would fail to give sanctuary to an unbelievably rare species of bird, would sacrifice this real possibility for one more strip mall and a hundred new McMansions?” began his letter to the editor, published in the Philadelphia Inquirer last fall—a publication that didn’t exactly endear him to members of the college administration, or, for that matter, to the significant number of faculty members who support the sale.
But despite all this, despite his efforts on behalf of two birds, one of which most people are certain Addie didn’t actually see, and the surely irreparable doubt this has thrown on all of his work, even among many of his longtime fans and supporters—still, Tom has always been the sensible one. Sensible and practical, in the midst of all Addie’s excesses. Surely that’s who he’ll be now, Scarlet tells herself, deciding to ask no more questions. She leans back in her chair and smiles back at her mysteriously smiling father. It does feel good simply to laugh about it all, this quandary of the proper resting place for Addie’s restless body, to imagine that Tom has come up with a perfect solution, and that Scarlet can just relax and go along with her father’s careful handling of it all. Which surely means, she thinks, that they’ll be arranging for cremation. Despite Addie’s contention that that’s nearly as unsound, environmentally, as a traditional burial.
“That isn’t true, you know,” Tom said to Scarlet two weeks ago, after Addie had made her request and then fallen asleep, and Tom and Scarlet had stepped out of her room.
“What isn’t?” Scarlet was still reeling from the conversation they’d just had, from hearing Addie speak, barely above a whisper now that she was so weak, so matter-of-factly about the finer points of her death.
“What Addie said about cremation. I’m sure some toxins do get released, but it’s not actually that bad. I think she has other reasons for this.”
At that point, Scarlet felt overcome with exhaustion, and also very sick. It was late in the afternoon, the worst time of the day for her; she seemed to have afternoon, not morning, sickness. “I can’t talk about this anymore,” she said, and fled to the upstairs bathroom.
Now, remembering what Tom said, she wants to ask him more about this, about Addie’s—and his—views on cremation. Why, for instance, couldn’t they simply scatter Addie’s ashes on the ridge between the creeks? But she can’t ask this now, not with Cora and Lou in the room. So she stews in her own thoughts for a while, worrying, again, about how they’ll resolve this. Obviously, they can’t actually honor Addie’s wishes. Can they? How could they possibly bury her illegally—and not just that, not just bury her somewhere other than a cemetery, but on land that she and Tom don’t even own?
But if Addie truly had strong objections to cremation, what else could they do? Bury her in the cemetery in Scranton, maybe—where, presumably, she’d have to be embalmed. Scarlet’s stomach pitches, sending something sour and dangerous toward her throat, at the memory of Addie’s description of embalming. She closes her eyes and swallows hard, willing the memory away.
Tom and Cora are laughing again, at some other memory of Addie presumably; Scarlet has stopped listening. But Lou, she notices, isn’t joining in the general merriment anymore. She’s become noticeably restless, shifting in her chair, fiddling with her sweater.
She turns to Tom. “So what did you talk about with Addie during these last few days?”
There’s a sudden silence in the room; it’s well past noon now, and the air is still—no birds calling or singing anymore, and even the waves seem to have quieted. Scarlet feels herself start to sweat again. When Tom turns to Lou and says, “We didn’t dwell on the past, Lou,” Scarlet looks to Cora, whose smile has faded. And there it is again: the uncomfortable, unnamed something that was in the room before.
Scarlet decides to leave the porch again. In the kitchen she pours a tall glass of water; as she drinks it, slowly, she can hear Lou sniffling in the silence.
“But dwelling on the past—on all the silly little details of the past—that’s all we’ve been doing for three days,” Lou suddenly says, her voice rising to an unfamiliar pitch. “There was so much I wanted to say, I should have said, but there was never time. And do you know why? Because we spent all our time doing this, just this very thing—laughing and joking and reminiscing, like we always did, carrying on like nothing was wrong, like we were just here having a little reunion on the beach. And my God—she was dying. And there were things I should have said to her . . .” She chokes on a sob. “And now I’ll never have a chance to talk to her again.”
Scarlet moves to the doorway, watching as Cora tries to hand Lou a napkin. But Lou, rocking back and forth with her eyes closed, doesn’t see it. There are tears on Cora’s cheeks as well. Maybe, Scarlet thinks, she should be crying too.
But she doesn’t feel like crying now. She is staring at Tom, who is staring at the floor. Probably she has always known this, Scarlet realizes—known that something happened with Lou. It was just there, after Addie came home from Washington. Somehow she could tell that something had changed between her parents. There was a strange quality, something in the air, it seemed—a heaviness, something that made it momentarily hard to breathe—when they were together in a room after that. It was that, that fleeting but insistent gasping for air, as much as Addie’s various exploits, that had made Scarlet decide not to return to Burnham after Christmas that year she stayed in Cider Cove.
Of course, there had also been this other thing between her parents then—the first lump Addie’d discovered, the scare over her health. But they’d kept that from Scarlet; she hadn’t learned about it until three years later, when Addie’s cancer was full-blown. That may have been the first time—that time of the horrible gathering in the oncologist’s office, followed, a month or so later, by their family trip to New York, to the Kollwitz show at a gallery on 57th Street—that it dawned on Scarlet: There were things about her mother and father that she didn’t know.
Lou goes on, still rocking, her eyes still closed. “Do you know why I think it’s really tragic, the way we laughed and joked and acted like nothing was wrong these last few days? It’s this feeling I have now, that I’d known Addie for over thirty years by the time I sat with her last night, and now today, the day after she died, I feel like I know no more about her—about who she really was, what really went on inside that beautiful, stubborn, maddening head, than I did when we were twenty!”
They are quiet for a moment then. When Scarlet looks at Tom again, she sees that he looks peaceful, almost detached. It startles her when Cora speaks.
“Would knowing all that really make a difference, Lou?” she asks, staring at the table in front of her, fingering a pile of crumbs.
To her surprise Scarlet finds that she wants to defend h
er mother—her stubbornness, the ways in which she seemed unknowable. “When you tried to ask her things like that,” she says—“you know, ‘What’s this really all about, Addie? What is it that makes you want to spend your time with lonely teenagers, fighting these battles with some local land developer?’—you could pretty much count on just getting another one of her lectures. Maybe about the dangers of too much pop psychology, too much energy wasted on trying to understand ‘the self.’ ”
Tom smiles. “Often a lecture complete with recent scientific and pseudoscientific references,” he says, looking at Cora, then signaling Scarlet to sit next to him again.
“It’s why I liked the laughing and reminiscing,” Cora says, finally dusting the crumbs she’s been stacking in front of her into her palm and dropping them onto a plate. “I wouldn’t change a thing about my last hours with Addie.” She shrugs. “Call me a Pollyanna.”
When she says this, Scarlet realizes, with a rush of relief that feels like an ocean breeze, that she also wouldn’t change a thing about her last moments with Addie. Unlike Lou, she said what she wanted to say. And unlike Lou, she doesn’t feel bothered by the mystery of Addie. Not now.
Two nights ago she’d held her mother’s hand and looked into her eyes, which were remarkably clear, despite her obvious pain; she had declined the medication the hospice workers offered for as long as she could, saying she wanted to stay as clear-headed as possible. As she gazed into those remarkable, impenetrable eyes, Scarlet said, “You’ve taught me so much.” It seemed that the words came, unaccountably, from her chest, which ached with a very real pain.
Because Addie had taught her a great deal, and at that moment she could see it, and she longed for her mother to teach her more. Who else, after all, had given her permission to be a poet? Who else, besides Addie, and also Tom of course, had let her search for, and find, a voice for all those years—and use it, without apologies or regrets? Who had let her fly from home to the shore that year, with no cajoling, no arguing, no burdening with guilt?
And now, on the verge of being this whole new thing, a mother (something far more mysterious to Scarlet than being a poet), she longed desperately for Addie’s brand of certainty, her angry wisdom, her hard-won knowledge. No matter how maddening she had found it through the years.
It’s true that you can feel your heart breaking, she found herself thinking, astonished. And despite herself, she was suddenly envisioning a poem.
Addie read her mind. “Don’t waste precious ink writing poems about me,” she said. Her voice, though so quiet Scarlet had to put her head next to hers to hear her, was as clear as her eyes. “Write about your child, write about all you learn and feel as a mother. . . .” Her voice trailed off, and Scarlet could see her retreat into the pain. It was clear this was exhausting her, and Scarlet tried to tell her to stop. Be quiet now, Addie, she tried to say with her eyes.
And then Addie smiled, the most heartbreaking, beatific smile. “You’ll be a wonderful mother, Scarlet,” she said. She looked gloriously beautiful, even as wasted and gaunt as she’d become. Scarlet had forgotten, she realized as she stared at her hungrily, just how beautiful her mother was. “Whatever you feel through it all,” Addie went on in her breathy but clear whisper, “whatever ridiculous things people say to you, hold on to this: You will love your child as deeply as I’ve loved you, and that will be enough.”
That will be enough. Scarlet closes her eyes now, smiling as she remembers Addie’s words.
“That’s what I said to Addie last night too,” Cora goes on. “ ‘I know you think I’ve always been a hopeless Pollyanna,’ I said. And she said, ‘No, Cora, you’re an artist. And it’s the artists who are the optimists, not the scientists, no matter what Tom always says.’ ”
Lou has gone over to sit next to Cora now, squeezing into her wicker chair with her, reaching her arms around her, leaning on her shoulder. “Do you know what Addie told me?” she says. “She said, ‘If I had half your money and half your confidence, think what I could have done to that bastard Bert Schafer.’ ”
They are all crying and laughing then, except for Tom. Whatever happened with him, alone with Addie when she died, it is clear—from his quiet smile, his dry eyes, his Buddhalike composure—that all was well, for Tom and Addie, when she died. Tom is clearly at peace. At peace and, it seems, harboring no need to share anything about his last moments with Addie.
So his voice, when he finally speaks, surprises everyone. “A few weeks ago she told me something similar to what she said to you, Cora. ‘You were wrong, you know,’ she said. ‘I’m more of an optimist than you’ve ever been.’ ” He is still smiling, though there is clearly pain, now, behind his smile. “I said to her, ‘You’re right, my love.’ ” His voice catches, and he pauses for a moment before he goes on. “ ‘You are now, and you always have been.’ ”
At that moment, Scarlet sees it. Of course, she thinks. Of course they are going to honor Addie’s wishes. How could she have thought otherwise? She can’t quite imagine how they will do it, but it’s clear to her, looking at Tom, that they will. Already they’ve begun following her instructions. Addie’s body is safely resting on dry ice, and Dustin is at work on a simple, homemade coffin. What’s next Scarlet can’t quite imagine, but clearly Tom knows. She will simply need to rely on her father, Addie’s one great love. On him, and on their strange, unknowable bond.
Thinking of it, suddenly Scarlet feels bold. Now, while they are all sharing everything, revealing what they said, or wish they’d said, to Addie: Maybe this is the time for her to reveal her own bit of news. The last thing Addie told me was that I’ll be a fine mother, she could say, surprising Lou. And then, when Lou inevitably asks, immediately, about the baby’s father, she could take this opportunity, this strange, still moment of remembering her mother, to break that other news too.
But as she opens her mouth to speak, they all turn at the sound of someone opening the screen door. It’s Dustin, who steps quietly into the porch, still clutching his saw.
“The coffin’s finished,” he says. “What should we do now?”
Tom rises from his chair and walks over to pat Dustin on the back. “That was quick work, Dustin,” he says. “Thank you. And now you should get a tall glass of water, and we should all eat some lunch.” He looks to Cora then. “Did you say your friend the fisherman could also provide us with a refrigerated truck for the next day or so?” he asks her.
“Until Monday morning he said, yes,” she answers. She looks puzzled, but it’s clear she won’t question anything Tom says, or asks for.
Lou, on the other hand, scoots to the front of the chair and looks over at Tom. “But Tom,” she says, “you know you don’t need a refrigerated truck. Whether you decide to cremate or not, whoever you call will transport Addie’s body now.”
He takes Scarlet’s hand and pulls her from her chair. “We won’t be calling anyone,” he says, smiling at his daughter. And then he turns to Lou and Cora. “From now on I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave things to Scarlet and me. It’s what Addie wanted. We’ll be fine,” he says, nodding in Dustin’s direction, “with Dustin’s help.”
Looking at this thin, angular boy, with his sweat-stained T-shirt, sawdust and wood shavings coating his arms, and his long brown hair, Scarlet is shocked by how much her feelings have changed. Suddenly she is filled with gratitude. To Dustin the idealistic young environmentalist coffin-maker, and to Tom, as always her strong and smart—if not always sensible—father. Of course they will take care of Addie’s body now. How could they possibly let anyone else do it?
Standing, Scarlet realizes how exhausted she is. And she decides, with relief, that her own news can wait until another visit.
Tom walks with her to the foot of the stairs. “Go and lie down now,” he says, stroking her hair. “I’ll bring a sandwich up to you.”
She has never been this tired, Scarlet thinks as she climbs the stairs to her room. With each step she remembers another time, a lifeti
me ago, climbing these steps as a bewildered teenager, meeting a sullen Richard or, later, a stoned Bobby—each seemingly oblivious to her presence—on his way down the stairs and out the door.
Below her she hears the three of them, Lou, Cora, and her father, banging pans, laughing and chattering, putting together some lunch. Dustin turns on the shower in the bathroom next to her room. As she drifts to sleep she thinks of Addie’s face, more peaceful in repose, there on the cot in the restaurant cooler where Scarlet and Tom laid her at dawn, than Scarlet could ever recall seeing her when she was alive.
“That’s how she looked when I first knew her,” Tom said as they positioned the bags of dry ice and tucked the sheet around her. An odd thing to say, considering that Addie had wasted away to dry, ashen skin shrunk over sharp bones, her long blond hair now gone completely gray, cut to just above her shoulders. And yet Scarlet understood what he meant; there was an innocence in her face, a kind of youthfulness in its stark lines. They lingered for a while before covering her fully, reluctant to leave her.
Remembering this, on the edge of sleep now, Scarlet thinks of Addie as a fevered twenty-one-year-old, floating free of everything she’d known before, deeply in love with Tom, with birds, with art. And then, only two years later, sailing home from Europe, and pregnant.
And finally, she lets the full flood of all that she lost last night wash over her.
fifteen
THE LUMP ADDIE DISCOVERED that time, in the fall of 1985 at Lou’s, turned out to be benign. But the others that eventually followed were not. This time, though, Addie felt ready for them. It energized her, this feeling that the battle—against the cancer, yes, but also against what was, she was sure, its source: the ruining of the land—was suddenly more personal than ever.
Around the same time, Bert Schafer began cozying up to high-level administrators at Burnham College, a hopelessly cash-poor school whose founders had found it distasteful, not to mention morally suspect, to make ambitious investments with what little funds they had. Unfortunately for Burnham, several subsequent generations of administrators had shared this reluctance, and by the early 1980s, the school was teetering on the brink of insolvency.
In Hovering Flight Page 18