by Joan Barfoot
A clean sweep, evidently, a full hundred per cent of her children achieving epiphanies from, it seems, just standing around looking at her. She may not have been an entirely good or wise mother, but she certainly seems to have turned, lately, into a useful one.
As with Alix abandoning Serenity, if not serenity, she says, “That’s very good news.” And “I’ll help you any way I can.” The opportunity may, after all, arise. And, once again, “I’m very proud of you, Jamie.”
“Thanks. I wanted you to know, anyway.” Just in case. “And I’m proud of you, too, Mum. I can’t even imagine how hard this is, but you hang in real good. Kind of an example, if that doesn’t sound stupid.”
“Not to me. I don’t mind at all.”
He frowns. “Can you stand a little bit more news?”
Oh dear. Maybe not.
“Because I don’t know if you want to hear this, but Dad asked me to tell you he’s thinking of you.”
Dad. Jesus Christ. Why wait for surgery when the heart can slam closed any moment, when your own child will first lull it, then take a hammer to it?
“Well,” he goes on apologetically — she must be staring with quite a noticeable ferocity — “he asked me to tell you. I promised I would. Anyway, I thought I should.”
Yes, what a shame, if she’d slipped off into her death-or-life-or-paralyzed-or-crippled-or-totally-healed tomorrow, without thinking of James. What an omission.
Then again — what exactly is shocking? Only, maybe, that this comes out of the blue. That Jamie is in touch with his father, for one thing. Then that he calls him Dad, as if he could just as easily toss him a beer, put a hand on his shoulder, give him a tie or barbecue tongs for father’s day, talk about prospects and women and jobs.
Like a normal son, with a normal father.
Other than that, his words sink slowly in and she finds her heart, having briefly leaped and thudded and banged — not her real heart, she has no idea what it’s doing, but the heart in her head, the one susceptible to shock — rising slowly to meet them, settling finally into a kind of wonder: James. That doesn’t feel so bad. The name doesn’t hurt that much.
Well, her concerns at the moment are rather larger than one long-lost, well-lost husband. Also it’s been a decade, for heaven’s sake, ten whole years of intervening events. Still, it seems as if there is as well some larger sort of release. Something similar to the way Alix described events in the courtroom, looking at that boy and feeling hatred and anger and vengeance lifting right out of her, through her skin, off her shoulders, drifting away.
Relief.
Jamie looks very anxious; no doubt afraid he’s made a godawful blunder.
“You talk to him?” That does amaze her, that they might be in touch; after everything, so much harm.
“Not really. Not very often. But, you know, he phones Grandma and Grandpa, and one day a few years ago I was over there when he called. Grandma just handed me the phone and there he was. So yeah, we said a few words then.” Isla’s ex-in-laws, yes, still holding out, as best they can, for their son’s essential innocence.
As Isla has held out for Jamie’s essential innocence.
“How are they? His parents?” What a swift and thorough amputation that long side of life underwent, once disaster started its roll. How brutally unsentimental she must have been.
Although they would not have welcomed her.
“Grandpa’s pretty deaf and his arthritis slows him down, but what’s really sad is his mind. He doesn’t even know who I am a lot of times any more. Grandma’s cool, though, except it’s hard for her to look after him. I go there sometimes to help out. Mow the lawn, have a coffee, keep her company for a little while. Try to cheer her up.”
Isla probably knew that. She often forgets her children have these other private lives and tasks, and larger attachments, bigger families, their own different loyalties. Alix’s Serenity Corps doesn’t count in the scheme of these things, and Jamie’s various crimes didn’t, either. Those have been her children’s addictions, but their loyalties and attachments have been more enduring.
“It would have been rude not to take the phone when she handed it over,” Jamie goes on explaining. “It’s not like I called him, or wanted to talk to him.”
“It’s all right. I know. How is he? What’s he doing?”
“I guess he’s okay. He sounds all right. I don’t know, how much do you want to hear?”
“Oh, some medium amount, I expect.” She tries smiling. “Enough for the basics, not so much it takes more time than I can spare.”
“Thanks, that really helps.” But he smiles back. “But if you’re sure — he’s living in a little town out in the Rockies now. He has a computer store, nothing like before, but he says he makes a living. He sounds, I don’t know, kind of settled in. Old. Remember how he always used to be so intense about the business, flying all over the place? Not like that any more.
“And then,” he pauses, “I don’t know if you want to hear this, either, or maybe you already know, but he got married again.”
Whoof, there goes that heart again. Although not banging so high or hard this time, and just for a moment. “No, I didn’t know. When did he do that?” As if when matters. Like where, it’s hardly one of a person’s key questions.
“A few years ago. Five, maybe.”
Five years ago, remarried Isla was still learning relaxation and trust in Lyle’s arms, Jamie was still tangled in his swamp of troubles, and Alix was soon to embark on her quest for serenity. Or Serenity. “Did you know?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry. I didn’t think you wanted to hear anything about him. Grandma even wanted me and Alix to go out west with them to the wedding, but we didn’t.”
What a family for secrets, what a family for lies. An inherited gift, perhaps, or only a need handed down, like heirloom silverware and the best furniture. “Alix knew, too?”
“Yeah. I didn’t give a particular shit, but she did for some reason.” Perhaps James’s newish wife was only Alix’s age? Since those were his tastes, after all: young, untried, budding flesh.
“Do they have children?”
“Gosh, no, she already has grown-up kids.” And so Isla sees that some part of her was hoping James was prey right to his bones of his own foolish desires. And she sees that some part of herself is disappointed, and strangely, stupidly hurt, that this is not the case.
It makes what happened to them more personal, she supposes; more to do with her, or the two of them together, than she has come to believe.
Neither her fault nor her responsibility, but still personal.
Also that her children have been so terrorized by her and her fury that they have kept every morsel of news about him all this time to themselves. And that even now, even at this last minute, Alix still does.
“How did he hear about me?”
“Grandma read about it in the papers, and then I told her, anyway. And she told him, I guess. He called Lyle’s, I talked to him there. And he said to say hi, and he’s thinking of you and wishes you well, and,” Jamie shrugs, “that’s about it.”
Sure is.
“Did I upset you? Should I have kept quiet about him?”
“No. No, I don’t think so. You did the right thing. When you’re talking to him again, tell him hello for me.”
“Really?” Jamie looks astonished, as well he might.
“Really. You might tell him I’m thinking now that at least we both had a run at second chances. Sometimes it must get too late for that, but it wasn’t for either of us.” And she can hope the girls he assaulted feel as benevolently about the opportunities he offered them. Thrust upon them. This is all very well and detached and long-viewed for her — learning serenity at this late date, is she? — but he’s the one who did something terrible. “Is he sorry, do you think?
”
“I don’t know. We haven’t talked much about any of that. It’s hard, on the phone. But you’d think he’d have to be, wouldn’t you?”
Yes, you would. “Perhaps you could ask. You can say things, you know, you have a right to ask questions.”
Don’t ask anything you don’t want the answer to. There’s that about it, too.
“Maybe, but I’m not real interested. He really fucked up, and I don’t think I’m much into forgiveness.”
“Me neither, probably.” And this is also more or less true. A successful lift-off of anger, packed, formed, and real, hurtling up through the atmosphere to explode far enough away it can cause no more great harm here below — that’s not the same thing at all as forgiveness. Like hatred, forgiveness requires investment, it needs constant tending.
Even indifference sounds easy and light, insignificant, but it is not.
Sighing seems the appropriate gesture, the right sound for indifference. Jamie naturally misunderstands. He frowns. “You tired, Mum? I don’t mean to wear you out. I know you’re supposed to be keeping your strength up.”
“No, I’m fine. I’m happy you’re here.”
“Should I have told you before?”
“Probably not. This was a good time. I’m more in the mood now than I might have been.”
That blank dark wall comes closer by the second, and what happens in the event of collision? Alix packs up her Serenity dresses and attends jail visiting hours, Isla supposes, and Jamie heads off to school. Madeleine clings to Bert, Lyle mourns and moves on. More weathered, perhaps, and certainly wearier, but he’s done it before.
While James leans back in his Rocky-mountain recliner and nips at his Scotch and says, “That’s too bad. That’s a shame.” And maybe thinks, “She should have believed, she should have been loyal, she should have stood by me, no matter what.”
If she had, everything would be different. For one thing, she wouldn’t have been buying ice cream with Lyle, and her sighs would have had a much different quality, not to mention intent. She could have become quite a martyr to contempt and loathing by now.
Instead she has had another life: caressing and arguing with Lyle, picking up and putting down books, flowers, towels, doing laundries and dishes, cooking meals and eating them across the kitchen table from each other, curling on sofas and beds and in front of the fireplace, apart or together, weeding gardens, mowing lawns, bringing in wood, taking out trash, all of that, on and on.
And then she stepped lightly, unwarned, off that porch. She was even laughing, so was Lyle, as she climbed into the truck. Why didn’t they consider what a treat it would be to sit on their own sweeping porch, feet propped side by side on their own spindled railing, looking out over their own shadowed land, eating their own ice cream in the dusk and congratulating themselves on being able to hope for much the same for the next thirty years?
That’s the moment that needs rewinding, right there. Not an earlier one.
“Thank you,” she tells Jamie, so emphatically that he looks slightly puzzled by the cause for large gratitude.
“I’m kind of relieved it’s okay.”
“I know. But it is.”
“Then,” and he stands, “I’m going to take off too now. Maybe by the next time I see you, I’ll have some courses lined up. Or exams. Something figured out, anyway.” He bends, like Madeleine, like Alix, presses his lips briefly to her forehead. Eyes closed, she tries to memorize the impression. “It’s going to go fine, Mum. You be well, and don’t worry.” And he is gone.
People bring their own gifts. Like a birthday: big surprises, and a few bright things of value.
Not least of them, hope that her children’s lives have been saved. They will fail now and then, their hearts may get broken by one thing or another, but they should be immunized against their own worst, deepest illnesses. Having gotten the most dangerous out of the way, they can now be more alert than most people to the true, bone-deep confusions and threshings they’re capable of. No small knowledge, that.
If, if, if she gets her body back, that possibility which is too dazzling to dwell on, so bright she can’t open her eyes to it, but if — she must try to remember this sharpness, compression, vitality of impression. Like Alix’s lips, Jamie’s lips, Madeleine’s hand. Because it’s easy to forget; in much the way she forgets how a floor felt under her feet, or how her wrists could turn in the simple, taken-for-granted moment of writing a list, pulling a weed from the garden, touching a hand, or a thigh — all of that vague and theoretical now.
Also remarkable. Imagine being able to do those things!
Imagine skin. The state of organs, bones, muscles, nerves, may be more perilous and probably should be more worrisome, but it’s skin that seems to her most miraculous, and therefore most lost. What can she do if she cannot touch and cannot be touched?
Now here is Lyle’s skin, rough and stubbled and anxious, here are his palms and fingertips on her hair, tender comfort, there is that narrow mouth, and also behind it the hidden, solacing tongue. But she cannot remember exactly his skin. She has lost and forgotten the nerve-ends and deep ragged breaths of desire.
“Hi,” he says. “Pretty soon, huh? You scared?”
The others come with their various answers, assurances, pledges, assessments, promises; Lyle brings the question. This is part of his skin, knowing that this good question has to be put into the air.
Scared? Oh yes: fireworks of terror, landmines of fear, chaotic suspense. Is suspense too mild, does it apply only to bad thrillers and pulse-racing flicks? No, suspense is the pure dry ice of not knowing. Heart-stopping. “I am terrified. And I don’t even know what to hope for.”
“Oh, but that’s obvious, don’t you think? Because we can work with life. As long as you’re alive, we can always figure out ways to do that.”
Not only the good question, the good answer, as well. Is he not frightened now of vast promises, though?
“How about you?”
“Am I scared? Jesus yes, I’ve been petrified since the second I heard that shot. I don’t think there’s been a moment since then I haven’t been scared. Even in my sleep. Even my dreams are scary.” They’ve had so little time to themselves, just the two of them, and perhaps too much of it has been spent being more brave than honest. He is a man whose inclination is to act, to fix, to do something or other that changes any impossible circumstance. “Also, very fucking angry. You?”
“I was. I may be again, but right now it seems dangerous. More likely to harm me than anyone else.”
“You talked to Alix.”
“Yes. She startled me.”
“What did you think?”
“Of her plans? I couldn’t be happier she’s leaving that wretched cult. I don’t know how to feel about what she thinks she sees in that boy. Except I guess,” and she grins up at Lyle, “one of us should be researching forgiveness, and she’s certainly the most promising candidate.” He smiles too, and reaches out to stroke her hair again. No flinch this time. “What do you dream?” she asks. She has not been dreaming, herself, as far as she knows; although it’s possible that with the drugs, she may have hallucinated now and again.
“You really want to know? A lot of times I dream about being paralyzed. Is that tasteless? Does it offend you? I dream about trying to move, run, fight, escape, all that. Then I wake up drenched. I think that’s because of the helplessness. And then I wonder how you can bear it.”
“I can’t.”
She could not, she thinks, have said just that to anyone else.
“Not much longer. Hang in a little bit longer.”
Yes. But then what? “You know, if you didn’t hang in yourself, I wouldn’t blame you. If it all got too hard.”
How startling, shocking, the sudden sound of full, head-back laughter, a great gorgeous, j
oyous Lyle-whoop she hasn’t heard for quite a while now. “What, you mean if I did a bolt, you wouldn’t blame me? Oh, Isla, that is such bullshit. You shouldn’t even try to bullshit me that way.”
She laughs, too; at least makes her small gaspy sound of amusement.
“Okay, no bullshit: eight blessed years. Thank you.”
“Me, too. But also nicely flawed, those years, don’t you think? We don’t want rosy glows.”
“Certainly not. No rosy glows.”
“So no bullshit, no rosy glows, I want to tell you, I want you to know, I can’t imagine my life without you. I’m so goddamn glad I met you. Just that. And I didn’t expect it, so it’s even more of a miracle.”
Exactly. Her, too. That stupid, careless kid. Taking potshots at miracles, blowing holes right through love.
“So now you know I’m not bolting, you know what I’d like?”
“What?”
“I’d like to stay here. Just talk through the night. Maybe fall asleep in the chair. Hold your hand — I know, I know, you can’t feel it, but I can — and just talk. And not talk. Till the cows come home.”
“Or the orderlies come.”
“Same thing.”
“A last night together?”
“No, just a night. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my dreams, and I don’t feel like one of those godawful wide-awake dark nights of the soul. I just want to hang out with you. But if you want to be on your own, just tell me, no bullshit.”
Well, he’s right, she might have wanted to be alone, to get her own house in order; but it’s unlikely there’s any tidy packing up and neat preparing for the unimaginable and ungovernable.
Who knew it would come down to hours, then minutes, then — what?
“I’d like that.” She looks up into his wounded, anxious, kind eyes. “I don’t know what would have become of me without you, and I can’t think of a better companion for any night, but this night in particular.”