Mallie knew that getting up so early in the morning would have been nearly impossible for her mother, who was not a morning person. She stayed up late reading and often slept until ten or eleven. For a time, years ago, when she had live-in help, she had her breakfast served to her on a tray in bed.
“How’s Mom? She sounded so sort of strange, not herself, on the phone.”
“Hard to tell,” Anne said. “You know Mom. She’s got that steel thing.” Anne shrugged her shoulders, as if exasperated. “Sometimes I want to shake her. She’s got to be terrified and she won’t talk about it. Nothing. We sat across from each other in the cafeteria for lunch, and she never said a word.”
That sounded just like her mother, Mallie thought.
“God, Mallie, you must be exhausted,” Anne said. She ushered her sister toward the plastic bucket seats beside the only window in the ICU Family Waiting Room.
“Beyond exhaustion,” Mallie said. “Feels like the trip was a dream, a figment of my imagination.” Snippets of the dream came back to her. “You want to hear about it?”
Anne nodded. “Of course.”
Mallie briefly sketched the highlights of Elizabeth’s house in West Sussex and the “doggies.” She knew that her sister had always loved dogs. Anne raised Springer Spaniels at one time. There was no point in telling her about her experience at St. James. It would take too long to explain, she was too tired, and she wasn’t sure Anne would be interested anyway. The experience at St. James was, first of all, hers. After this crisis with her father was over, she would take her time reading Summons to Life: The Search for Identity Through the Spiritual and decide for herself what it meant to her. But without reading a single page of the book, she knew from her time with Father Jon that Martin Israel was an extraordinary writer—an extraordinary priest—and she could hardly wait to discuss his ideas and her day at St. James with Tom Matthews.
“Jenny and I had planned to go to the theater in London next week,” Mallie said. “‘The Threepenny Opera.’ Looks like we might be writing our own opera right here in this hospital.”
Anne abruptly stood up. “Here comes Mom.”
Walking into the family waiting room, Joan Malcolm did not look like the mother Mallie remembered from only a week ago. Her shoulders, normally as straight and rigid as a hotel coat hanger, were bent forward and loose. Kye’s arm was around her, both of them walking slowly, methodically. Mallie stood and went toward them. Her mother looked up to see her oldest daughter. In an instant her downward expression became animated.
“You’re here,” she said. “Thank God.” She reached out for Mallie.
Kye let go, and as Mallie held her mother, she watched her two younger sisters exchange a silent message. She wondered how they really felt about the obviously touching moment between her and her mother—or if there were some old sibling jealousy rising toward her. It wasn’t just that Mallie was the oldest child. She knew that. It was also that she was the only one who lived in Memphis and had spent inordinately more time with both of her parents than either of her sisters. The closeness to her mother was inevitable.
“They asked us to leave,” Kye said to Anne in a tremulous voice. “Daddy’s taken a turn.”
“He’s not going to make it,” Joan Malcolm said, as if no one, not even the doctors, knew her husband the way she did. “I know it.”
“You don’t know it, Mom,” Mallie quickly corrected her mother. She walked with her over to a chair and both of them collapsed. “You’ve told me all my life to think positively. Now you have to think positively.” Even as she said it, she didn’t believe it. She knew her mother was psychic. Her mother would know.
Joan Malcolm sighed and said nothing. She was true to form, true to the mother that all three of the girls knew best. When she knew something and pronounced her knowing, that was the end of the subject. Victorian, intelligent, stubborn—clairvoyant—all of those things. There was nothing more for them to ask or to say to their mother.
Mallie desperately wanted to see her father. She walked to the doors of the intensive care unit. When she found a nurse, she asked if it were possible to see Sam Malcolm. She had just arrived from England, she added, hoping that would give her an advantage.
The nurse went down the hallway and returned quickly. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m afraid it’s not possible at this time.”
“What does that mean?” Mallie asked.
“His signs are not good. The doctor’s with him now.”
Her tone was kind but firm, starched like her white uniform, Mallie thought.
“It’s best you wait outside—at least, for now.”
Mallie walked slowly back to the waiting room. Kye jumped up and embraced her. Mallie realized that in her concern for her mother, she had not even spoken to Kye. She adored her youngest sister, had loved her since she had been brought home from the hospital when Mallie was ten years old. Kye had been her live baby doll to dress up and push around the block in a baby carriage. They had lost touch when Kye was away at college and Mallie was occupied with Larry and raising the boys. As a working girl in New York, Kye looked so chic in her very short skirt and high heels. Mallie realized that she hardly knew her.
“Oh, Kye,” she said, “What’s going on in there? What do you think?”
Kye seemed unable to speak. She held Mallie tight like a frightened child, all her New York sophistication out the window. Mallie wanted to console her, but the fear began creeping over her too. She closed her eyes and continued to hold her younger sister.
“Mrs. Malcolm?”
Mallie heard a strong male voice behind her. She broke away from Kye to see a doctor, dressed in green, his mask hanging down below his chin, walking toward her mother.
“I am Mrs. Malcolm,” her mother said. She did not stand. She sat upright in her plastic seat, waiting for the doctor to approach her. Anne stood next to her mother.
“I need to speak with you,” the young doctor said. He sat down beside her.
From where she stood with Kye, Mallie could only see her mother out of the corner of her eye. She dared not move. She could hear the doctor’s voice, low but firm. “Mrs. Malcolm, I’m sorry to tell you that we’ve lost him.” He hesitated when she did not change her expression. As if, perhaps, she did not understand what he was saying, he leaned toward her and very quietly said again: “Mr. Malcolm has passed away.”
“Yes,” Joan Malcolm said, “I know.”
Chapter Thirty-two
Through the night, Mallie watched the illuminated numbers on the clock next to her bed. Not since before her boys were born had she ever spent a night completely alone in her house. She had recurring visions of her mother alone in her bed after nearly forty-two years of marriage to her father. Maybe her mother could shed tears when no one was around to see her. At least, her mother had Anne and Kye sleeping down the hall in her guestroom. They would be there for her in the morning. No one would be in Mallie’s house, not even dear old Bingo, who was boarding in the kennel.
With the additional problem of the six-hour time change from England to Memphis, Mallie was not able to sleep. She continually forced her eyes shut, trying to evoke happy memories of her father. All she could picture in her mind’s eye was the image of him in the hospital bed after he had been pronounced dead and the family had been allowed to see him.
She had hardly been able to look at him when she walked behind her mother into the windowless room, and yet she could not take her eyes off him. He was covered to his neck in a white sheet, his head on a white pillow, all the tubes gone, his eyes closed as if he were asleep—a lifeless statue of her father in a hospital bed. He did look peaceful, not a wrinkle in his face. She could not cry. Her body felt stony cold as if she had become a statue too. She pressed against her mother. The four of them stood touching each other next to her father’s bed while her Mother began softly saying the twenty-third psalm. Mallie had been surprised, knowing that her mother was not religious and probably did not belie
ve in life after death. She was not absolutely sure what her mother believed, but she and her sisters followed her lead and said the words along with her. “I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me.” When they finished, Joan Malcolm stepped toward the top of the bed and leaned over to kiss her husband goodbye. Each of the sisters followed and kissed his forehead. Only after Mallie’s lips touched her father’s cold, bloodless skin did the implication of his death become real. He was not there.
In her bed that night, in the dark of her room, the reality that he was gone finally came through to her and allowed her to cry. Her father was dead. Not just passed away, as the doctor had said, a term that sounded to her as if he might be down the street or out of town and he might come back someday. He was dead, gone from her life forever. She heard her father’s voice from those special times when he held her shoulders with his large, freckled hands and told her how proud he was of her, what a good mother she was turning out to be. Her father had a way of making her feel important and loved—and he was gone. He was only sixty-six years old. Too young. Why couldn’t it have been someone else’s father? She needed her father. She was going through a divorce and he had supported her—told her not to worry, that he would take care of her and the boys. Now he was gone. Larry was gone. She was a forty-year-old woman alone in the world. She tried to envision herself in Tom’s study at St. Michael’s. His study was her place to be safe and loved. He would always be there for her, Tom had said. She desperately wanted to be with him, to be held by him. Surely he must have returned from his vacation. She would call St. Michael’s in the morning and leave a message on his answering machine.
There was so much to do, Mallie thought, as she turned her attention toward the day ahead. She would not bother to unpack. As soon as it was light, she would take a bath and dress in something cool. It would be a hot August day in Memphis. Her first job was to call Larry. She should have called the night before, but she didn’t have the strength to tell the boys about their grandfather. They adored Sam Malcolm. He had taken them duck hunting every winter since they were old enough to hold a gun, and he had promised them that someday he would take them to Africa and shoot a rhinoceros. All promises were off.
They would have to come home for the funeral, cutting their time in Watch Hill short. She could not imagine how Larry would feel. He had loved her father too, at least before things went sour at Malcolm Brothers. Perhaps her father’s death would change everything for Larry. Maybe he would be promoted—or maybe he would be fired. Maybe he would choose to leave the company. Maybe he would leave Memphis—go back to Providence or somewhere in the East where most of his friends still lived. No, he would never leave the boys. Totally spent from crying and speculating on the unknown and frightening future, Mallie fell asleep until the alarm roused her at eight.
Mallie’s refrigerator was empty except for the orange juice and a small carton of cream that she had bought on the way back from the hospital. She made coffee and took the mug out on her terrace. The grass was brown from the intense southern sun and lack of rain. Her flowers, so profuse and colorful in the early summer were dry, faded sticks, standing bent and broken, or lying dead on the ground. She had not been away a full week and yet the whole back yard looked like an abandoned battlefield. Her garden had suffered a summer of neglect. She would have to start a routine of watering in the late afternoon and deadheading a patch of the withered flowers every day. As if it had not been her responsibility to maintain all along, she knew that when the divorce was final, the house and the garden would be solely hers to care for. She checked her watch. Nine o’clock. It was time to go to her mother’s and put her mind to the funeral arrangements.
Chapter Thirty-three
The phone’s for you,” Kye said in a soft voice, nodding to Mallie. She stood in the doorway to the sunroom in their mother’s house. Mallie and Anne were meeting with the Reverend Carl Menefee from Holy Trinity—their mother’s choice for their father’s funeral. “It’s someone named Terry from St. Michael’s Chapel.”
“Thanks, Kye,” Mallie said, jumping up and closing her Book of Common Prayer in her lap. “Excuse me, Father Menefee, I’ll be right back.”
It was mid-afternoon. Mallie and her sisters had spent the morning taking turns calling various relatives and friends who needed to be informed of their father’s death, all those they had not called the night before.
Mallie had recovered, more or less, from the trauma of calling Watch Hill and giving the news to Larry and her boys. Larry had tried to be consoling. “I’m so sorry, Mallie,” he said. “I’ll do anything you need me to do to help.” He told her that he would make the arrangements and bring the boys home as soon as possible. David had immediately burst into tears when he heard his mother’s voice. Ever her sensitive, youngest child, he needed his mother. She wished she could have been there to hold him.
“Hi, Terry,” Mallie said, nearly breathless, as she walked into the kitchen and picked up the receiver. “I’m so glad you called back.”
“Sorry to have taken so long,” Terry said. “I got your message this morning—I’m so sorry about your father. I finally reached Tom to tell him. He got home late last night from his vacation and wasn’t planning to come into the office today.”
Mallie’s heart sank. She had counted on seeing him before the day was over. “He’s not coming in at all?”
“Actually, they’re painting the front steps of the chapel this afternoon—I’m leaving the building now. Tom said to tell you he wants to see you, if you’d call him—I’ll give you the number—he’ll meet you at a convenient place late this afternoon.”
Mallie felt a sweep of relief. Thank God. She remembered Father Jon telling her—enigmatically, she had thought at the time—that she had been blessed by Tom. This was certainly a blessing. She wrote Tom’s number down and thanked Terry again. Before going back to the sunroom where she and Anne were planning the service for her father, she took a deep breath and dialed the number.
“Tom,” she said, speaking his name with a sweep of relief. As if the call had reached heaven and she was speaking directly to God, she could not say another word.
“I’m sorry about your father, Mallie,” Tom said, filling the void. “I know what this means to you.”
Mallie felt a surge of emotion, the relief that Tom was there for her.
“Would you like to get together this afternoon?” he asked. “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
To see him—be with him—would mean everything in the world to her. She ran through options of where they might meet. She didn’t want him to come to her mother’s house. She certainly couldn’t imagine meeting in a public place, a restaurant, or even a park bench. She thought of her empty house. She dreaded going back there alone.
“Tom, is there any chance you would come to my house? The boys are still away.”
“Of course,” he said. “It must have been terrible for you to come into your house alone last night.”
She felt gratified and thankful for him. He understood her so well; he always said exactly what she needed to hear. “I could be home around five thirty,” she said. “Would that suit you?”
He confirmed that he would be there at five thirty.
Mallie felt a leap of exhilaration. It was nearly three o’clock. Two and a half hours until she would see him. Her heart began to race. The thought of Tom Matthews in her house—he had never been there before—felt strange and thrilling. She had often daydreamed of having him in her house, being a part of her life. She hung up the phone and walked with a sprightly step back to the sunroom.
“We think that the Gospel reading from John 14 would be the best,” Anne said.
“Which one is that?” Mallie asked. Relieved that she would be with Tom later, she brought her full attention to the planning of the service.
“It begins here,” Father Menefee said, holding his Bible up for Mallie to see. “Let not your hearts be troubled.’”
“And then the part about ‘
in my father’s house there are many mansions,’” Anne added.
“Oh, yes, of course. It’s definitely the right one for Daddy.” Mallie nodded her approval. “Did you decide on an Old Testament lesson?”
“Anne likes Ecclesiastes,” the priest said. “Is that okay with you?”
Mallie thought back to her last conversation with her father about religion. The ardent, forced Catholicism of his childhood had all but obliterated his interest in any form of the church. Whereas Mallie had loved going to Mass on Sundays with her grandparents, her father had grown up with priests dominating his family dinners and requiring attendance at Mass every day. One of the brothers in his Catholic high school had been sadistic. Her father, along with his friends, had been routinely beaten with a rod. Factoring all his negative religious experiences, along with his academic awakenings in college, he had become an agnostic. “I believe there’s a God—or some sort of divine order, somewhere, somehow—but he or it is not in the church, at least not for me,” her father had said.
She thought of the Ecclesiastes verse: “For everything there is a season, for every activity under heaven, its time.” Yes, she thought, Ecclesiastes was the right lesson to speak for her father—for her, too, and her whole family. She wanted the boys to hear those words: “a time to be born and a time to die, a time to weep and a time to laugh.” Surely that was what a funeral was for—to honor the person who died and to console the family with timeless words and music. They had already chosen “Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past” as the opening hymn. Mallie loved the line: “A thousand ages in thy sight are like an evening gone.”
Anne agreed to go immediately to the printer to work out the program. Father Menefee asked if the sisters would like to pray with him before he left them. The three of them moved their chairs closer together and held hands, their heads bowed. Mallie tried to concentrate on his prayer of comfort for each of them, but her mind was removed, already skipping through all the possibilities of what might happen with Tom in her house later.
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