No one heard me, or so I assumed. Not my neighbors across yards and through walls, nor you. My letters to you this week have no destination, the words stay in my head. You will not hear from me, because according to William in church yesterday (at the ceremony intended to honor you and comfort us) you do not exist and what I mistook for you is a replica in my imagination. Only Freud in this household hears me, and when I screamed he ran away. Up into the attic, I think, and he’s not come down yet.
I can’t talk to empty space. I can only scream there. You are dead, you are dead, you are dead. The song repeats, the old husky voice once so smart, now dead, falling in love again, what am I to do? I stopped screaming so as to hear the song again, repeating the two lines of words I knew all through.
Falling in love again
What am I to do?
What am I to do?
What am I to do?
It brought back the complete history of my life. I remembered everything, but what I remembered most were picnics. The history of my life concentrated in picnics. I remembered picnics in the Michigan woods with my father and mother and brother, a blanket spread on a piney floor, deviled egg sandwiches, wax paper, ants. Picnics on college weekends, my brother Fred and his glamorous shy friend Thomas on the point off Chicago sticking into Lake Michigan, peanut butter and jelly, beer cans. Pregnant on a picnic in the Forest Preserve with two babies in the sandbox and my friend Leila Jones now dead and her baby twins, hot dogs and mustard. Picnic on a scraggy mountain top in Maine with a lazy view, five children ranging two to fourteen and a family of friends (the Goldsteins later divorced whose address I have lost), Ruby Goldstein’s magic tricks, more deviled eggs and ripe plums and lemonade in a cooler. River City where picnics ceased, but we had catered luncheons under a tent for alumni and new graduates and century donors to the Fund, large noodle casseroles and barbecued chicken wings. Here on the Island lunch outdoors in the backyard with a card table, you and me and Abel Jeffcoat and the Grummonds with soup in a crock and ham sandwiches.
Marlene’s hoarse old song turned all the picnics into feasts of love, which I hadn’t realized at the time, with death following like a vacuum sweeper cleaning up the mess. And I without realizing was an executioner assisting in the process. I saw my life in stages, one stage after another, each one killing off the one before. Spaced among the picnics were the griefs, mostly forgotten, a funeral here, a memorial there. When I realized the cleaner had finally reached you and was hot after me, and that my protests would not be heard and even the singer who had expressed this woe without understanding it was dead, it seemed like such a crime I just howled again with the misery of it, and howled and howled, I don’t know how long.
When I felt the touch on my shoulder, I thought I was in another world. The voice said, It’s all right, Mother, I’m here.
It scared me, who had invaded my house as if it were an open field, and brought me back to myself embarrassed to be caught so wild, and then I saw him and wondered if I was wrong not to believe in ghosts.
His mild voice, I finally got here, he said.
I could forgive anything.
I was crying, I said.
I noticed.
I wanted to explain why but when I tried the waves came up, for the hurricane was still on, and I couldn’t. He put his arm around me, and his sympathy renewed it all, and I said, Why isn’t everybody howling and screaming?
He said, You’re right. I’ll scream with you.
So he did. I watched. First a small tentative shout in a rough male voice, then a curse and then a lion roar splitting his vocal cords, at which point I joined in, accustomed to screaming now, and we roared together side by side. It was competitive, each trying to be louder and more desperately angry and hopeless than the other. I noticed his eyes glinting at me as we roared, and suddenly realized his had turned into laughter and mine too had imperceptibly changed from sorrow to show to laughter with little change in sound, and finally we laughed and laughed together until we were exhausted.
I said, Where did you come from?
Snuck in on the last ferry, missed everyone.
What an unexpected joy, deferring the shade a moment longer.
I asked why we hadn’t heard from him, and we had a long sweet conversation. I’d tell you if I thought you could hear me, but I don’t, and besides, it’s a secret.
PART ELEVEN
SEPTEMBER
MELANIE CAIRO: To Patricia
We took your suggestion and went to see her. She does not look like a forlorn widow.
She knows all about P and wonders when you are going to tell her. She’s distressed you thought she should be shielded. What is there to be shielded from? She regards herself as open-minded and is waiting to hear from you.
The rumor is true. W is staying in the house. He had the back guest room, we the front. He’s doing a project. He writes all day, which makes me wonder what happened to the ACLU? With all the encroachments in the world today, it seems to me there are more important uses for his talents than sitting upstairs writing, but I suppose that depends on what he’s writing about. She said he wanted a retreat, so she let him stay. He ate with us but otherwise out of sight. He and she have been reading Thomas’s papers together.
Sorry, Patty, I didn’t know how to ask. She said she still regarded him as a son and it wasn’t she who divorced him. I didn’t hear any stealthy movements at night. Where did you get the idea? I don’t know what the neighbors are thinking. She doesn’t seem to realize that neighbors think.
I wasn’t going to tell you this but a young woman last spring—I won’t say who—told me he made a pass at her after the funeral. She was shocked, though flattered. Don’t know what she means by a pass, a remark or a touch or an outright proposition? She wondered what she had done to incite him and decided it was because she’s so young and pretty and exotic. I’m quoting the lady herself. She was surprised because she thought his reputation ruled him out, but apparently either the reputation is wrong or she’s so overpoweringly young and pretty and exotic she mows down all reputations. Or he’s simply omnivorous. Is that the word I mean? What do I mean? Voracious? Ambidextrous? Heterogeneous? Multinatural? You know him better than I. He always seemed normal to me in the vulgar sense of the word, so I can’t imagine where the reputation came from. All I really know is, if anything’s going on, they’re behaving respectably for us, and I guess the neighbors don’t matter.
She’s worried about George again. Hasn’t heard since he left with no idea where he went. We advised her to forget him, remember the child he used to be, ignore the rest.
HARRISON GLADE, JR.: To Lucy Westerly
Thank you for the letter to my mother. Unfortunately it came too late. After a long illness she died last month.
It is interesting that your husband wrote a memoir about her. I didn’t know they knew each other that well, for she never mentioned him until we saw the death notice in the paper. I must pass up the opportunity to read his paper since I am busy taking care of the estate, though I might have enjoyed it in other circumstances. As for disposing of it, I presume it depends upon whether yours is a family that keeps old papers. Since we do not, I’m afraid I can’t advise you.
About the Author
Austin Wright was born in New York in 1922. He was a novelist, an academic and, for many years, Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. He lived with his wife and daughters in Cincinnati, and died in 2003 at the age of eighty.
First published in the United States in 1993 by Baskerville Publishers Ltd.
Originally published in Great Britain in 1994 by Touchstone,
an imprint of Simon & Schuster Ltd.
Reissued in Great Britain in hardback and export
and airside trade paperback in 2010 by Atlantic Books,
an imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd.
Copyright © Austin Wright, 1993
The moral right of Austin Wright to be identified as the author of this work has been as
serted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Hardback ISBN: 978 1 84887 020 8
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978 1 84887 021 5
eISBN 978 1 78649 214 2
Printed in Great Britain
Atlantic Books
An imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd
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26–27 Boswell Street
London WC1N 3JZ
www.atlantic-books.co.uk
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