Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 01 - Wild Nights

by Mary Ellen Courtney

  Hope is the thing with feathers

  That perches in the soul

  And sings the tune without the words

  And never stops at all

  And sweetest in the Gale is heard

  And sore must be the storm

  That could abash the little Bird

  That kept so many warm

  I’ve heard it in the chillest land

  And on the strangest Sea

  Yet never in Extremity,

  It asked a crumb of me.

  As I read my mind was panicky with the realization that hope had nothing to do with the situation. It was the wrong poem. My voice kept faltering as my brain tried to run on two tracks. No one said anything. I doubt they were listening. Binky wasn’t there to roll her eyes at me.

  They lowered them into the ground. We each threw a handful of dirt and a flower on their boxes before turning away to the cars. The raggedy burial boys who had been standing back in the trees started up the coughing backhoe. Diesel fumes drifted our way. Eric looked back at them and they shut it off.

  We were halfway to the cars when my mother started making a low growling sound. It reminded me so much of the sound I’d made during the procedure it made my gut spasm, like I was back on the table trying to fight off the scraping. She started keening and sobbing. Arthur tried to take her arm but she wrenched it away and threw herself with pounding fists on Ted. He stood like a statue and took the beating.

  She was screaming at him, “Why didn’t you do something, why didn’t you do something? You just let her die. You let them die. You killed your own daughter.”

  Eric and Arthur together couldn’t get her off him; she lashed out at both of them when they tried. She scratched Ted’s face. Somehow he stayed on his feet and took it. The children were horrified. Anna and I were saying “Mom Mom Mom,” over and over and trying to reach her. She kept twisting away. She finally ran out of strength and dropped to her knees on the grass.

  She was sobbing and chanting, “My baby, my baby, my first baby.” She clawed at the grass.

  Anna and I were crying. We murmured at her as we tried to lift her to her feet, but she was dead weight, heavier than dead weight. Eric looked stricken. His eyes were full of tears, his nostrils were flaring; he was trying to keep it together. Ted put his arms around his children and walked them to the car. Adam and Grace were frozen in place to see their grandmother like that. Arthur watched quietly.

  We finally got her to her feet; her stockings at the knees were smashed in with mud and grass. She allowed us to lead her back to the car but she kept looking back at the holes in the ground. The burial crew had started to remove the flower sprays from the caskets, but thought better of that too.

  We got her to the car. Ted had left with the kids. Mom and Arthur had come with them, so we had to all squeeze into one car. Eric sat in front with the driver. Arthur was rubbing the top of Mother’s hand with his thumb. She was looking out the window. I doubted she could see. Tears were running down her face, her nose was running unchecked, her muscles looked slack. She daubed at her face with a saturated and dirt smudged linen handkerchief. There was an “S” embroidered on it; it was one of my father’s. She had dirt under her bare nails. She looked twenty years older and yet somehow like an angel. There was nothing to say.

  We arrived back at the funeral home. We had planned to eat together at Eric and Anna’s, but Mother asked Arthur to just take her home. We drove home in silence, unlocked the door and walked in dropping our purses as Eric dropped his clattering keys on the kitchen counter. He said he was going for a run; he was good at pounding it out of his system. The kids disappeared together into Grace’s room. Anna and I made tea and sat in our burial suits in the living room. Our stocking feet touched on the ottoman we shared.

  “Do you think she’ll start drinking again?” I asked.

  “She already has.”

  “Have you talked to Arthur?”

  “Eric talked to him this morning. It’s under consideration.”

  “What’s to consider?”

  “Whether Arthur is big enough in her life to outweigh what losing Binky and Amber means to her right now. It’s not something any of us can know at this point.”

  “That’s up to Mom,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. “We figure she has it under consideration. Arthur won’t stay; he’s made that clear. But he loves her, they’ve been very good together.”

  “What’s his timeline?”

  “He’s debating. Pretty quick I think. He understands how it works.”

  “I was so hopeful for her.”

  “We all were, and for Arthur. It seems like they’ve been together a long time, but it’s only been a little over a month.”

  “I was so happy she’d found someone. Judith told me that Grandma referred to me as a gangly cat after Daddy died. That she told Mom no one would want a woman with a cat instead of a cute kitten. Have you ever heard that?”

  “She didn’t say you were a cat. She said Mom should find someone while you were still a kitten.”

  “That makes me sick. Why would she talk about me like that?”

  “She was worried about you both. She couldn’t admit Mom drank. She dragged out what she had.”

  “I thought she loved me,” I said.

  “She did. She used to brag about you to everyone in the family. She always said you were the most like her. Such a strong little girl.”

  “She never said that to me.”

  “They never do.”

  “This family is exhausting,” I said.

  “Well you know mine, they’re the same way,” she said. “We’re always the last to know.”

  I was feeling so raw, I grabbed onto that little shred. The idea that my grandmother thought I was strong. I was leaving in the morning; I was now down to three weeks. I’d had a few inquiries about subletting my place and I needed to get that settled so I could pack up. I knew losing Binky and Amber would come in waves. There was just no way to rush it; it had to be lived through. We’d all discover in time what it meant to us. If my father’s death had taught us anything, it’s that we’d keep discovering what it meant, for the rest of our lives.

  ELEVEN

  I got home at noon the next day and started the coming home process again. I washed or threw away my moldy clothes from Hawaii, then settled back in with work. I’d lost so many mental threads along the way and I couldn’t pick them up. I needed boxes. My mind wanted to talk about the last two weeks; my heart just wanted to hear Jon’s voice. I’d left him another message telling him I’d be home. He hadn’t called. I wondered how long it would be before I was released from wanting him.

  Karin and I met for lunch. She looked wan. I caught my reflection in the restaurant window; I did too. The whole thing, especially Amber, horrified her. It hit too close to home with Callie the same age. I told her about the miscarriage. She was glad I hadn’t had to grapple with Steve over an abortion; he wouldn’t have wanted it.

  “I thought it was love, Karin,” I said. “With Jon.”

  “I know, you sounded so happy,” she said. “I’m sorry it had to all come crashing down like this.”

  “I think the worst part of the whole thing is this feeling that I got caught out again not having any idea what was really going on. It felt so right. It was so easy. I imagined that I knew him from some other time. It was like we understood each other. He hasn’t even called me. I feel like the whole world knows something that I don’t, like there’s some big secret to all this. I’d really like it to slow down long enough for me to figure it out. I’m beginning to think arranged marriages are the way to go. I really don’t trust myself.”

  “I don’t know if there’s a big secret. If there is I obviously don’t know it. Your mother would have arranged for you to marry Steve. I don’t think you’d be happy with that. It can’t have been easy for Jon to go through that with you. Especially if he loves you.”

  “He doesn’t love me, Karin. Th
at last night, before it happened, I told him I loved him and he said we’d see what it means.”

  “See what it means?”

  “Yeah, that was just one of his dodges. He said it the first night and I ignored it. I guess I just didn’t want to know. I told myself we were just friends. I shouldn’t act so shocked. The warning signs were flashing at me.”

  “Maybe. It’s hard to see when we’re under the ether.”

  “Did you have any inkling about Oscar? I remember you saying you just thought he was having an affair.”

  “I already knew. I was like you, trying to not know. And we were past the ether stage. According to him he’s surprised he did it.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “Not really. So far he hasn’t said why. He hasn’t blamed it on me though; he’s been good about that part. That alone might save us. Remember when Melissa’s husband said it was because she needed to lose weight and have a facelift? She’s only forty.”

  “That guy was an asshole from day one. We could have all told her that was coming. Did you know when you were pregnant? That early.”

  “Not the first time. I was tired, but the way we were going at it every second we weren’t at work anybody would have been tired. With Richard, Oscar knew it before I did. He kept saying I was pregnant, that I tasted pregnant. I thought he was crazy.”

  “I thought I was just tired,” I said. “Tired and happy. What am I going to do?”

  “There’s nothing to do, it just takes time. It’s really good that you’re going to India.”

  “My heart won’t let him go.”

  “I know. I have the same thing going on with Oscar. I think it might be easier if he was in Hawaii and I didn’t have to be around him. See him with the kids and all that.”

  “I have no reason to hang on. You have two good reasons and a life together. I hope you guys survive this.”

  “We’ll see.”

  We parted company. I had arranged to meet with a couple of guys interested in subletting my house. Their project synched up almost perfectly with mine. They loved the idea that the place was a party house with a pool. I didn’t even need to pack up; I could just store my stuff in the closet. That sealed the deal. I ran out for boxes. If I couldn’t focus on work, I could start clearing out and storing.

  I spent a few days doing that. Tears kept making the emulsion gooey as I sorted old photographs. Binky helping me ride a bike. There was a picture of her shaking her hairbrush at someone; she did that a lot. I hoped she had found some peace at the end of her struggle trying to be Bettina and still be the Binky that our mother loved. Anna and I talked almost everyday. Eric was better. He had turned his focus to Mother; it wasn’t going well. Arthur had stopped seeing her. It was showdown time. I hadn’t gotten any calls from her yet; I dreaded that.

  Jon called.

  “Hi Jon.”

  “I didn’t expect you to leave, Hannah.”

  “You left. It was time for me to get back to reality.”

  “What’s reality?”

  “So glib, Jon. Reality is me here, work, India. My sister and niece were killed in a car accident.”

  “Why didn’t you call me? I would have come back.”

  “I’ve been calling. I was in the air, I didn’t find out until I got home.”

  He was quiet on the end of the line. Hearing his voice had unleashed a tsunami that swept along fragments and splinters of broken up lives. I got hoarse trying to not cry. I did not want to cry anymore.

  “My mother started growling at the burial,” I said. “It sounded just like me when I tried to fight off Patricia; they had to hold my legs. Have you ever been held down while someone hurts you? She beat my sister’s husband; she said he’d killed his own daughter. She was talking about herself; we knew that. I don’t want to end up clawing at the earth to give me back my baby. Binky saved me from a bad man. I was only nine. Binky told. She never stopped blabbing. My father did something. I had to live thirty-two years before I could know he’d throw him out of the plane. She saved me and I couldn’t help her. I should have done something. I just stood by. They buried them with a backhoe like they dig in trash at the dump. They threw their flowers on the ground. There was no viewing; they were crushed. Crushed. Samantha is wearing her pearls; Binky’s skin is spun around the silk cord. They’re her color. Pearls become the color of us. I didn’t even want it. I just kept thinking I could do enough to make it work out okay, to be what he wanted, to fill it all in; to fill the hole. That somehow it would work out. I didn’t even know you. Then all I wanted was you.”

  I sounded like I was being strangled from the effort to say it all; it was tumbling out so hard. The phone was covered with tears and snot, but I had stopped crying.

  He was saying, “Sh, sh, sh, it’s okay, it’ll be okay.”

  “Don’t shush me! Oh my god, don’t do that. That’s just what you do. You say it’s okay. My sister and her baby are dead and you’re saying it’s okay. Nothing is okay! This is real. This is what it is and it’s not even remotely okay, it will never be okay. How can you even say that?”

  “I didn’t mean them dying, Hannah. I meant what happened to you, between us. There are no words for what happened to them. I know it will never be okay.”

  “I can’t stand this right now, Jon. It seems so unimportant. Maybe if we’d talked about it then, when it still mattered. But you just accused me of hiding, then walked away when I told you the truth. I know it wasn’t pretty; I didn’t want to talk about it. I know you didn’t love me. But for some reason I didn’t expect you to be careless with me. I didn’t see that coming, the just walking away. It feels like everyone leaves without saying good-bye. But it really doesn’t matter any more. Thanks for calling.”

  I hung up on him. I hated that I did that. But I was afraid he’d keep talking and I’d somehow get sucked into feeling hopeful. Or worse, that he’d say good-bye. I couldn’t do that right now. He called back. I ignored it.

  The next morning I packed for a while and then met Karin. Lunch was quiet in each other’s reassuring field. My hair had grown out enough to try to make some sense of it. She called and hounded our guy into fitting me in. Then she went along while he did his best to even it up and get rid of the chunks of color that were growing out and leaving crazy-quilt patches all over the top of my head.

  We drank espressos and paged without seeing through People. We had enough self-respect to talk about everything but what was on our minds. It was a struggle, but we both understood the futility of running around in words that would get us nowhere. We’d say a lot of meaningless things that we didn’t believe. We were two people at a no answers place in our lives.

  The pink-stick pedicurist bounced over and said hello. I envied her what seemed like her oblivious state. My hair ended up shorter, but it was smooth. I looked like a blonde version of Aunt Judith when she was young. I wondered if I’d end up just like her, a bitter woman making excuses.

  I talked to Anna at the end of the day. Arthur had taken Mom to an AA meeting and everyone was holding their breath. Adam and Grace had taken Sam and Sam to the latest comedy movie; they’d laughed. Anna had aced her entrance exam. I knew she would. We’d have a lawyer in the family. Eric was running miles and miles; he was training for a yearlong schedule of 10Ks.

  We covered the checklist; Binky and Amber were not on it. There were empty lines. We didn’t poke at “the Binky problem”, we didn’t shake our heads over Amber’s tantrums. The hope for them had come to an end.

  Jon left messages asking me to call him. I wasn’t ready for that. I might never be. I couldn’t just be friends with him, not while I loved him. I’d read somewhere that love passes in eighteen months. I needed time to pass. I hoped it passed more quickly when only one person was involved. I hoped nine months in India would be enough. I wanted to just go away.

  I was done packing away my things. After giving away the clothes that I never liked, dropping books at the Goodwill and sorting old file
s, it all fit in a row of boxes along the top shelf in the closet. I was leaving everything else in place; the guys were just bringing clothes.

  I made neat stacks of all the old photos and put them in my father’s box, the overflow I put in Grandma’s box. I folded my father’s tee shirt full of holes on top of the boxes. I threw away Stroud’s card. I’d found that and more in Jon, and lost it.

  I hadn’t even thought of Steve in the last week. All the pain and energy and it was as though he had never happened. I’d felt the same way after kicking out my husband. How did I do that? Keep tricking myself into thinking I knew what I was doing. Investing so much energy trying to make nothing seem like something.

  Margaret emailed the location of our offices on the lot and said she’d see me there when I felt up to it. I decided to move everything down the next day and get back to work.

  I called Mother early the next morning. According to Anna, the meeting had stuck; she was back in AA and Arthur was back in her life.

  “How are you doing, Mom?”

  “It does help. The one-day at a time.”

  “We were so worried about you.”

  “I know, but there’s no salvation in going backwards, that’s what someone told me at a meeting. I can’t change the past; I’ve already lived there. It’s hard to understand that sometimes. I know we have a lot to do. How are you doing?”

  I told her about the miscarriage that had slammed me back to earth with a mouth full of wet sand. I wasn’t worried anymore about her telling Binky and having Binky blab to the universe. Binky was probably doing that anyway, but at least it was out of earshot. She was sorry, but sounded almost philosophical when she said I was probably right about not having children just for the sake of having children.