Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 01 - Wild Nights

by Mary Ellen Courtney

  Ed had arrived a few days after the call and started right in cooking for us. Dede didn’t plan to be back. There really wasn’t any reason for her to return; her assistant was handling the shut down. Jon emailed that they’d gotten hung up in Honolulu but were on the road. Chana had an interview at Cal Poly in two days. I tried calling him; I didn’t bother to figure out the time. It went to voicemail. I left him a message that I was finally going to get some rest and that I’d try again in the next day. I asked him to tell Chana to break a leg in her interview.

  I had a block of six blissful uninterrupted hours of sleep in front of me while Amy took care of the preliminary work for one of our last days. It was late by the time I went upstairs to bed.

  I walked by Margaret and Ed’s room, I had planned to say good night, but he was singing. I’d never heard him sing. It wasn’t show quality, but it was one of the tenderest things I’d ever heard. He was singing “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” from the movie Play Misty For Me. They’d met at a screening. She used to play it over and over, like I played Adele’s version of “Lovesong” over and over since meeting Jon. Our lives have soundtracks.

  I didn’t know what to do with his singing in my mind. I sat on the bath floor and poured cup after cup of hot water over my head to wash away the last tears. I finally put on a cotton nightgown and got in bed.

  NINETEEN

  I awoke seven hours later to the sound of the conch shell next door, I felt almost normal.

  Someone knocked; I opened the door to Amy.

  “Morning” I said. I was whispering a 6:00 a.m. Indian household whisper.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Okay. Come in. What happened? Why are you crying?”

  “Margaret had a heart attack in the night.”

  “A heart attack?”

  “She died.” I hugged her, thinking wild thoughts; I shouldn’t have slept. I should have said good night.

  “Where’s Ed?” I asked.

  “He’s with her. He’s asking for you.”

  “Okay, let me get dressed.”

  I walked into their room. Ed was sitting on the bed next to Margaret holding her hand. She looked like she was asleep just like the other morning; but her skin had smoothed out.

  I hugged him, and then sat on the bed with them. I held his free hand, and took her other hand in mine. We were back on the plane waiting for it to crash. Her hand was cold, but it was soft, not like my father had felt. I rubbed the skin with my thumb like I could warm her up or comfort her. I could see Arthur’s fingers stroking my mother’s hand with mud jammed under her nails. We sat like that for long minutes; it was fine. She was peaceful, so was he, the plane had crashed without any tension.

  “How are you?” I asked. “I walked by on my way to bed at 11:00. I heard your voice.”

  “We talked all night.”

  “All night? Did the doctor come?”

  “No, she died at 8:00. It went quickly, we only had a few minutes.”

  I was worried that he might be in trouble himself; shock maybe. The whole time thing made no sense. He’d been singing.

  “What would you like me to do?” I asked. “Do you want me to call the kids?”

  “No, we’ll call them in a few days.”

  “Don’t you think they’d want to know?”

  “A few days before they know won’t matter. They were expecting it. It’s what she wanted. She wants to be cremated here.”

  “I know. I’ll call Dede. The production office will know what to do.”

  “Chahel has started making arrangements.”

  “Okay. What do you need me to do?”

  “She wants you to do the ceremony.”

  “Me? I don’t know anything about it.”

  “She said to just get it wherever you got the sun and the moon. But she doesn’t want you to actually draw on her unless you just can’t help yourself.”

  I burst out laughing. I’m sure anyone who was listening outside the door thought I was getting hysterical.

  Ed was smiling. “She trusted you to figure it out.”

  “Does she want some special set? She should have told me what she wants.”

  “No, she liked it just the way it is. She wants you to be the one to light the fire.”

  “Light the fire? I can’t do that.”

  I was shaking my head. I could see the son circling his shrouded mother. “I’m not even her daughter.”

  “You were more than that. She said you’re no ninny. That’s why it has to be you. I’ll be there.”

  “I have to think about this.”

  “It’s thought out; she’s ahead of you. She wrote something for you that she thinks will help. I’m supposed to give it to you right before the ceremony.”

  “How could she write something?”

  “We talked it over a few days ago. This is still what she wanted as of 8:00 last night. That’s as good as it gets.”

  I looked at her; she wasn’t giving me any signs. None of the nods or droll side-glances we’d used to communicate over the years when I was growing up under her wing.

  “I love you both. But that’s too much to ask.”

  He nodded. “Chahel will be back in a little while. He said it’s very unusual, he’s afraid of how it will look.”

  “I understand, poor man, stuck with us.”

  He smiled. “We’ll be fine. She liked the idea of being set free here, by you. I’ll be with you. This is something you have to do, Hannah. This is her final scene.”

  “I can’t, Ed. I’m sorry. We need to figure out something else. I’m going to change. Are you okay alone here?”

  “I’m not alone. We’re fine. Go change, I want you there with me.”

  “Of course I’ll be there. I just can’t be the one.”

  I went up to the roof. Amy and Claire were having tea. It was nice that Amy had such a good friend. They reminded me of Karin and me. There was no reason to make a big secret about what was going to happen. I asked Amy to buy me a sari for the ceremony, I thought turquoise, but I left it up to them.

  The guys from the kitchen brought up plates of light food and we snacked in silence as the new day came on in full. Amy and Claire left. Chahel came up on the terrace and gave me a pranam bow; he raised his hands to his forehead this time. I had no idea what that meant.

  “I’m sorry to put you through this, Chahel,” I said. “But you knew Margaret. This is what she wanted. She’ll make us all pay if we don’t do it.”

  His eyes opened wide.

  “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry. I just meant that this is how she wants to leave.”

  “It’s arranged. It will begin before sunset.”

  “That’s fine. When?”

  “Today.” He head bobbled like it was obvious.

  He said it should be today. He had arranged for women to come and prepare Margaret; we’d leave for the ghat at 3:00 p.m. I went downstairs and called Dede.

  “Namaste, Hannah.”

  “Namaste, Dede. I’m calling with bad news.”

  “Oh? Did Amy run off the rails?”

  “No, she’s doing fine. I don’t know how to make this easier. Margaret died.”

  “What?”

  “She died of a heart attack last night. Ed was with her.”

  She was quiet for a few minutes; I could feel her through the silence that pinged and ponged back and forth in deep space.

  “I was hoping she’d come home,” she said. “I thought it was just an India thing.”

  “We all did.”

  She said she’d go into the office and look at their instructions and call me back. I told her there was no need; arrangements were being made. She asked how Ed was doing. I told her he said they’d talked all night, but that Margaret had died at 8:00 p.m

  “Talked all night?” she said.

  “To her body, her spirit really I guess. He said there was some time when they both realized what was happening and they had a chance to say good
-bye. He said he doesn’t feel alone.”

  “Why didn’t they call someone?”

  “I don’t know. We’re not in Los Angeles, they knew that.”

  I was keeping family secrets, telling lies.

  “No,” she said. “She really wanted to stay. I thought it was a bad idea. But you know Margaret.”

  “I do.”

  I told her the plan but left out Margaret’s request that I light the fire.

  “Is it okay with the Indians?” she asked. “It sounds a little out of their comfort zone.”

  “Chahel is worried about how it will look. I think he worries that it will look like we’re crazy Westerners playing at Hindu, disrespecting their ritual.”

  “I don’t blame him.”

  I said Amy would call her later. I tried calling Jon but it went to voicemail. I left him a message filling him in. I called Eric and Anna; Anna was up studying.

  “I’m sorry, Hannah. This has been a terrible year.”

  “You’d think I’d be really upset,” I said. “But it is easier than the other way. I know it will hit me before too long. But she was so sure, so ready. I thought sitting with someone who was dying would be like darkness, but it wasn’t dark at all. It felt light really. She was reading in the sun.”

  “How’s Ed?”

  “He seems fine. But we’re just at the start. You know how that goes.”

  “Yes.”

  “How’s Mom?”

  “She’s getting along. She’s still with Arthur; she looks better.”

  “Eric?”

  “He’s in Phoenix running one of those races with rock and roll bands. He got the watch fixed. He wears it now. It looks right on him. He even laughed at your casserole remark.”

  “Good. I better go. I’ll see you all in a few weeks. Will you call Karin and let her know. Her number’s on the contact sheet I gave you.”

  “I will,” she said. “Take care.”

  I locked myself in my room and lay down on the bed. I don’t know how long I was there, a few hours maybe. Scenes of the years Margaret and I had worked together ran through my mind. Her smiling at me across a set as some crazy thing we had rigged up worked perfectly.

  Burying her head in her hands as an artful drape fell down over an actress who just kept speaking her lines through the fabric. The fabric puffed out with each word and the actor cat started tugging at the corner. The director was laughing too hard to say ‘cut’. The day the red and yellow Chinese candles I used in a romantic dinner scene turned into fireworks and set the table setting on fire. She’d nonchalantly poured her coffee on it. Apparently they’d been made in the same factory as firecrackers.

  Walking down a deserted street in New York City, late at night, headed toward a tapas place we had heard was great, living dangerously for quality snacks. Dinners, breakfasts; tiredness and triumph. A smiling Ed coming out of a kitchen somewhere with one of his endless plates of food. As he would say, we’d had a good run.

  Amy knocked on the door. They had decided on a white sari, but Amy had added a turquoise over scarf. Claire was standing by to help me dress.

  “Claire talked to her boss about appropriate colors under the circumstances,” she said. “She checked with the Director. White shows respect.”

  “White is fine.”

  “It’s almost time to get dressed. The women have washed Margaret and are wrapping her now.”

  “Where’s Ed?”

  “He’s on the roof drinking chai. The men will carry her to the car and then down to the ghat.”

  “Who’s going to do that?”

  “Ed, Dilip, Chahel and one of the other guys from downstairs,” she said.

  “I need to take a bath. Why don’t you come back in half an hour?”

  “Okay. The Director is here. She wants to see you before you leave.”

  “Okay. And, Amy. Thank you. You’re a wonderful young woman.”

  She was smiling and crying as she closed the door. I lit a stick of incense I’d brought from Udaipur. Then I filled my ten-gallon bucket with hot water and squatted on the floor of the small bathing space while I washed myself all over twice using the measuring cup. I washed my hair and dried it as much as possible; it was long enough now, so I pulled it into a bun.

  Amy and Claire helped me dress. Margaret would love the look—white silk with a sweep of turquoise over my head and shoulders. I wore my pearls. I smiled at the memory of my brother walking up to all of us at our cousin’s wedding; he said that when the Spring women show up in their pearls, they mean business. He’d bought Anna a string as an engagement gift and she’d worn them on their wedding day. Amy went to get the Director.

  I was sitting on my bed when she came in with her huge eyes. She took me in and nodded. She sat in the chair by the desk.

  “I am sorry about Margaret,” she said.

  “Yes. This is a shock in so many ways.”

  “Do you know what is going to happen now?” she asked.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “She is ready. The women have washed and wrapped her. They were Hindu women, which is better. The men will carry her to the ghat. First they will dip her in the river, then they will place her on the pyre. Ed has bought beautiful wood.”

  “She deserves beautiful wood. He loves her.”

  “And he is rich,” she had the slightest smile. “You should just follow the men to the pyre. You do not need to worry about circling her, carrying fire, any of the other formalities. Everyone knows you’re not Hindu. The men will leave you and go sit on the steps to watch. When you are ready, light the straw under the wood. Light it at her feet.”

  “I’m not going to light the fire.”

  “She wrote something for you to read first.”

  “I know, Ed told me. I can do that. But I can’t light the fire.”

  “It’s for you to read to yourself, before you light the fire.”

  “I can’t do it.”

  “You’re just going to light a fire. It will be very easy.”

  “No, it won’t be easy. I’ll be burning up my own mother.”

  “Do you think those sons think they are burning their mother?”

  “They’re Hindu. It’s different for them; they’re setting their mother free. I’m not Hindu.”

  “Margaret said you would be like this.”

  “You talked to Margaret about this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Does Dede know?”

  “There was nothing for Dede to know. Margaret didn’t want you to worry.”

  “Well I’m beyond worried now. I can’t believe she wanted me to do this.”

  “This is a beautiful day for Margaret. She is continuing her journey.”

  “A new adventure,” I said.

  We sat looking at each other. She was just like she’d been for almost nine months, still. She was waiting for me to do my work.

  “By you,” she said. “You will send her with love and joy.”

  “What about the pole part?”

  “It isn’t always necessary, many times it opens in the fire. But she needs to be freed.”

  “How will I know?”

  “It will take three or four hours for the body to burn. Just sit and wait. The attendants will indicate what’s necessary to Chahel. It’s arranged.”

  “And if I need to do that?”

  “You’ve seen it, they’ll hand you a pole,” she said. “The fire will make the skull as dry and fragile as thin pottery. One firm strike is all you’ll need. You can go back and sit with Ed while the attendants give her to the river.”

  She got up and pulled me to my feet. She daubed a smear of red between my eyebrows, then started to leave but turned back. “No tears.” She left.

  The silk sari swirled like spirits around me as I walked up to the roof. This had not been how I envisioned wearing a sari for the first time. I could feel the red paste drying and shrinking between my brows.

  The men were wa
iting. I’d seen the fourth man many times over the last months; I should have gotten to know him. The Director was gone. Amy and Claire were quiet. I went down to the dirt courtyard alone to wait. The men carried Margaret down on a woven wood mat. She was wrapped in orange cotton fabric, like a mummy. She looked like my grandmother’s bird. The women had used strings of marigolds on red thread, wound round and round in a crisscross pattern to bind the fabric to her. I was relieved that I couldn’t see her face. We drove in two cars. Margaret was in the back of one with Ed in the front seat. The rest of us went in the other. I sat in front. Margaret and Ed might still be talking, but no one said anything in our car.

  We arrived at the top of the stairs. Curious faces turned our way, not all of them pleased. The men carried Margaret down and we wound our way past three or four pyres in different stages of burning. We walked around bodies on litters propped up on the stairs. I imagined the souls, trapped like birds behind glass windows, restless for their freedom. We reached a fresh pile of wood.

  Shiva’s world is a muffled rift in the space we inhabit. It’s where the illusion of form is set afire and liberated. My mind drifted in the rift; I thought of Amy needing to be all one. I thought of the sugar cube. I thought of the baby I had lost. I thought about Jon, how we sometimes traveled in the rift when we made love. It’s all an endless and edgeless meeting of the soul, I thought, standing by the pyre while they dipped Margaret in the river and placed her on the wood. The orange fabric went dark.

  Ed looked like his back might hurt, but he looked peaceful and purposeful. He handed me the folded note from Margaret. The men climbed the stairs about halfway up, like a high school football stadium, and sat. It felt like I should say something of my own to her, but my mind was skittering over words. I couldn’t put together any Emily. The only string that came to mind was wild nights hope has feather pleasure first; even I knew that wasn’t right.