Tightrope Walker

by Dorothy Gilman

  Nurse Jordan touched my arm, and as I followed her out of the room, Leonora Harrington called after us spitefully, “Tell Robin to come himself next time, damn him, I’m not insane, you know.”

  “She’ll cry now and fall asleep,” Nurse Jordan said as we walked into the elevator and she pressed the L button. “No harm done. She’s not always this way. Tomorrow she’ll be sitting out on the rear lawn knitting in the sun with all the other patients.”

  I said, “But if she’s so poor, how on earth can she afford to stay here at Greenacres?”

  “Oh, a friend of the family pays her bills,” explained the nurse. “He’s the only one who comes to see her, which is why you surprised me. He comes once a month, regular as clockwork.”

  The doors slid open and there was Mrs. Dawes waiting for us like a vulture. “Very good,” she said, nodding to Nurse Jordan. “Five minutes to the second.” Her eyes rested on me dismissingly. “Good day, Miss Jones.”

  I walked alone up the hall to the lobby, and being alone now I suddenly saw what I should have noticed before, except that it would have been meaningless ten minutes earlier. There was a bronze plaque set into the wall in the lobby. It read:

  GREENACRES PRIVATE HOSPITAL

  Given in memory

  OF

  JASON M. MEERLO

  BY

  HANNAH G. MEERLOO

  I walked thoughtfully back to the van, and to Joe, who looked at me questioningly and put aside his book. “That didn’t take long. Amelia, you look funny.”

  I said slowly, “I seem to have found Hannah. Of course not really, but Leonora Harrington is Nora—she has to be—because she called Robert Lamandale Robin, and the hurdy-gurdy belonged to their Aunt Hannah, whose last name was Meerloo, and this hospital is the gift of Hannah Meerloo.”

  “Wow—paydirt,” Joe said, and whistled. “And so?”

  “I don’t know, except that Hannah lived in Carleton, Maine.”

  “You look scared,” he said, looking me over with a professional eye.

  I nodded. “Suddenly I know her name now and I don’t—don’t know what to do with or about it.”

  Joe grinned. “Then it’s a darn good thing I came along because I know exactly what to do. Climb in and I’ll drive. We’ll look up Carleton on the map and while we drive there you can tell me word for word what happened. What you’re suffering from is shock but you’ll get over it.”

  “Joe, you’re nice.”

  “Of course,” he said blithely. “Uncannily intelligent as well, and suddenly intrigued by this damnfool hunt of yours, I don’t know why.”

  “I’m not,” I said in a small dismayed voice. “I suddenly want to go home.”

  “That’s because you’re afraid of success,” he said forgivingly. “Lack of confidence and all that. A temporary aberration.”

  “She doesn’t sound like—I didn’t realize she’d be rich.”

  “The rich are human, too, and the rich get murdered, Amelia. Most murders are done for love, money, or revenge. The important thing is to remember her note.”

  He was right, of course. I was forgetting Hannah’s note, I was feeling betrayed by superficialities and facts and unpleasant people and—I had to confess—a meeting with reality. But in her note Hannah had spoken to me, don’t ask me why I felt this so deeply because I was only just learning to trust my instincts, but her note was real, and Hannah was real, and it was this I had to hang onto, forgetting petulant nieces and plaques in lobbies.

  I looked up Carleton on the road map and found it to the north, on one of the bays or harbors that scallop the Maine coast. “It looks a long way from Portland,” I said doubtfully. “Maybe a hundred miles up Route 1, and then out on a peninsula.” I turned to the back of the map and read aloud, “Its population is 463.”

  “Then someone will certainly remember a woman named Hannah Meerloo,” pointed out Joe. “What’s the nearest decent-sized town?”

  “There’s only one—goodness what a strange state Maine is! Angleworth’s the nearest city and its population is only 4,687.”

  Joe turned onto Route 1 and glanced at his watch. “We’ll head for Angleworth, it’s nearly half-past two already.”

  I could guess what he was thinking: last night we’d stayed at a modest inn and had quite casually and naturally taken rooms at opposite ends of the building: Miss A. Jones, Mr. J. Osbourne. But that was New Hampshire. Nothing much was open at this season in Maine, and the smaller the towns, the more limited the accommodations. Soon we would have to become self-conscious about what lay between us, which was something that had not occurred to me until we’d crossed the Tappan Zee Bridge in New York State yesterday: was Joe expecting me to sleep with him?

  Oddly enough for a virgin it was the word expect that terrified me. Amelia, my mother used to say sternly, courtesy means doing the right thing, courtesy is performing graciously what is expected of one. It sounded like a transaction … courtesy for courtesy, and Joe had certainly been kind to come with me to Maine. I did not labor under the illusion that my mother had intended extending one’s largesse in this sort of situation but the words were nevertheless engraved on my psyche; expectations had always been heaped upon me and were always my downfall. I realized with a sinking heart that if Joe expected this of me then I would probably sacrifice myself like one of those Mayan or Aztec maidens who leaped off cliffs to appease the gods, or had they immolated themselves instead? I couldn’t even remember which it was, having been a dismal student, which was one more expectation I’d botched. I knew I’d botch this, too, if the occasion arose.

  “Actually,” said Joe, pointing to still another motel with a CLOSED UNTIL MEMORIAL DAY sign, “we haven’t any idea what we’ll be getting into, Amelia. I think we should stop at L. L. Bean’s in Freeport and pick up some camping gear just in case. I brought a sleeping bag but you didn’t, and we may have to use the van.” His voice was so impersonal—like Peary planning a trip to the North Pole—that I couldn’t help but relax.

  “Good idea,” I said briskly.

  They were having a parade in Freeport on this Sunday afternoon, with a high school band that marched along briskly, playing “Strike Up the Band” a little off-key, and a procession of men and women carrying placards that read VOTE FOR ANGUS TUTTLE FOR U.S. SENATOR. A small, amiable group followed the parade on the sidewalk bearing signs reading SILAS WHITNEY FOR U.S. SENATOR. There were a few balloons and friendly shouts but the only excitement seemed to be caused by the traffic jam, until the band disappeared down a side street and we were able to park and walk into L. L. Bean’s. Whereupon I proceeded to acquire my first sleeping bag, as well as a pair of hiking boots, a flashlight, thermos, and collapsible drinking cup. I literally had to be dragged out of the store by Joe.

  Hours later we stopped in Anglesworth for a quick dinner, had the thermos filled with hot cocoa, and headed immediately for Carleton so that we would reach it before the general store closed. That, Joe said, was the place to learn anything in the country, and he was right. There were two gas pumps and a faded sign saying PRITCHETT’S GENERAL STORE, Simon Pritchett, Proprietor. Featured in the left-hand window was a placard reading VOTE FOR SILAS WHITNEY, in the right-hand window a sign reading VOTE FOR ANGUS TUTTLE: evenly distributed among these were hand-lettered signs of Grange dinners, bookmobile dates, and town-hall meetings. We walked inside and found Simon Pritchett, proprietor, reading a newspaper behind the counter and the store otherwise deserted. He put aside his newspaper and walked toward us: we met at the pot-bellied stove in the middle of the room, which was engulfed by trade goods of the most incredible variety: boxes of towels and washcloths, snow boots and sleds hanging from the ceiling, blankets and shirts and sou’westers piled high, all of this crowded around a soda cooler, a penny candy counter, and a meat locker. Joe gave the man a pleasant smile and said, “Good evening.”

  “ ’Evening,” said the man, “can I help you folks?”

  “We’re hoping you can,” Joe told him. “My
friend here, Amelia Jones, is looking for the place where Mrs. Hannah Meerloo used to live.”

  “A very dear friend of my family’s at one time,” I added, seeing him look at me with a sharpened, warier glance.

  He was silent, mulling us over thoughtfully for a long minute. He must have decided at last that we were trustworthy because he finally nodded and said, “That’d be the place up for sale again by the summer folks who bought it three years ago. The Keppel place.”

  “Keppel,” I repeated.

  He nodded. “Down the road a piece, far as the fork. Bear to the right—that’d be Tuttle Road—and you’ll find it on your left, near the river. Big place, can’t miss the for sale sign on the white brick wall.” Having spewed this out he looked at me expectantly, obviously waiting to learn what I was going to do with a closed-up house behind a white brick wall. I asked instead with a smile, “Did you know Hannah Meerloo?”

  “Know everyone in Carleton,” he said cautiously. “One time or ’nother.”

  “She—uh—died … I mean, of course she’s dead but—?”

  I stopped doubtfully.

  “Buried in the town cemetery,” he said flatly. “Can’t be deader than that.”

  So that was that.

  Joe, seeing the expression on my face, stepped into the breach to ask casually, “And for how long did she happen to live in Carleton, do you recall?”

  “Fifteen, maybe eighteen years. She warn’t no summer resident,” he said with the contempt of a native in his voice for those who came only during the golden months. With a curious glance he added, “You one of these people tracing roots I hear about?”

  “Something like that,” Joe said easily. “How much would half a dozen of these all-day suckers cost? And perhaps you could also direct us to the town cemetery?”

  “Fifty cents plus tax, and the cemetery’s just across the road behind the Methodist church,” he said, leaving me awed by Joe’s clear thinking. No need to ask how long ago she’d died; the cemetery would tell us.

  And so at dusk on a warm May evening we wandered through the Carleton cemetery in search of Hannah’s grave. It was a good cemetery, well-kept, with carefully weeded mounds punctuated by modest upright granite slabs, dozens of them in neat rows reaching back centuries. The sun was low and turned the grass a brilliant emerald green as it slanted through the huge old trees. Woven into the hushed silence were a few bird calls and the steady snip-snip of grass shears wielded by a boy at the far end of the cemetery. We strolled over to ask him if he could tell us where the Meerloo plot was, and after a moment’s thought he pointed.

  And there it was, except there were two stones, very simple ones, side by side. The stone on the left read:

  JASON M. MEERLOO

  b. January 23, 1920—killed in France

  December, 1945

  “Good grief,” I said, “he was only twenty-five, do you suppose he was husband or brother?”

  Joe pointed wordlessly to the bottom words, nearly covered by the ivy trailing over the stone. They read, BELOVED HUSBAND OF HANNAH.

  “Husband,” I said automatically. The sun had withdrawn now and it was nearly dark among the trees. As I knelt beside the companion gravestone I switched on my flashlight.

  “HANNAH G. MEERLOO,” I read softly. “Born May 27, 1925, died July 25, 1965 …” So long ago, I thought, startled, and then I subtracted one date from another and said, “Joe, she was only forty.”

  Joe was doing sums in his head, too. “It also means,” he said, “that when she was widowed in 1945 she was twenty-one years old. Younger than you are now, Amelia.”

  But I was staring at the inscription below the dates and the name. Puzzled, I leaned closer with my flashlight and pushed aside a tendril of ivy to make certain I was reading the inscription correctly, for below the date of her death were the words … and so she went beyond the horizon into the country of the dawn …

  Strange words … strange and poetic and somehow familiar to me. “That’s surely a quotation,” I told Joe, concentrating the beam of light on the words and frowning over them. “Is it familiar to you?”

  He shook his head. “I like it, though. I think it means—” He hesitated and then he said very quietly, “I think it means there was someone left behind who loved her.”

  It was at that moment, hearing him say that, and in that kind of voice, that I believe I fell in love with Joe. And so she went beyond the horizon into the country of the dawn … Puzzling. Puzzling and somehow very personal and loving, exactly as Joe pointed out.

  “Come on,” Joe said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “It’s dark and getting cold and it’s nearly eight o’clock. I think it’s time we find a place to park the van, have some cocoa and turn in. I’m beat, myself.”

  I turned and looked up at him and I said urgently, “But there’ll be records, won’t there, Joe? Newspapers keep records, don’t they? And a death certificate somewhere?”

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “Tomorrow, Amelia.” And he helped me to my feet and firmly led me away from the grave.

  We found a deserted wood road, drank our cocoa and curled up in our sleeping bags inside the van, Joe on one side, and I on the other. I fell asleep at once, tired from two days of driving, waiting, and tension. I must have been asleep for several hours when it began again.… I was wandering through long empty cold halls, calling “Mother?” and looking into cold empty rooms, and then I was slowly climbing the attic stairs—slowly, slowly, as one does in a dream—and there she was at the top of the stairs, hanging from a rafter, turning, gently turning and swaying, my mother and yet not my mother, her face swollen and suffused, her eyes—

  I screamed, and screamed again, and—waking—opened my eyes to find the flashlight switched on and Joe struggling out of his sleeping bag. “My God, Amelia,” he said. “What is it?”

  I had long ago stopped crying following this nightmare but as usual I was shaking all over. “My God, Amelia,” Joe repeated, staring at me, and he put his arms around me and held me.

  When I’d stopped shaking I said, “I had a nightmare.”

  “So I gathered,” he said dryly. “Talk it out. It helps, you know.”

  Through clenched teeth I said, “When I was eleven my mother didn’t just die, as I told you. She hung herself. And always—always when I have these nightmares—I see her. See her hanging there, her neck broken and—”

  He said incredulously, “She hung herself and you found her?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were eleven years old?”

  I nodded.

  “My God,” he said with a shudder. “And you’ve had to live with this ever since?”

  “I’m all right now,” I told him. “I think you can go to sleep again now, I’m feeling better. It’s over.”

  “What do you mean it’s ‘over’?” he demanded. “Don’t be polite, Amelia. Have some cocoa. It won’t be warm but there’s some left in the bottom of the thermos.” He began rummaging about for the cup, the flashlight sending long cavernous shadows caroming up and down the walls of the van. He said, “Have you ever learned why your mother committed suicide?”

  I said politely, “Well—she gave up, of course. On living, I mean.”

  “Yes, but she had an eleven-year-old daughter and a husband, didn’t she? What kind of woman would be so careless about them?” he asked, bringing me the cocoa in a cup.

  I said dryly, “A woman with an infinite lack of capacity for living.”

  “Were you close to her?”

  I thought about this while I sipped the cocoa. “Of course I wanted to be close to her but there always seemed such a high price to pay. Dr. Merivale said she looked on me as an extension of herself. Myself, I think when I was born she thought, ‘Ah—at last someone to give me unqualified and total love.’ ”

  “Quite a lot to ask of a just-born infant,” snorted Joe.

  “I know,” I said sadly. “As it turned out, nothing I did was right because nothing I could do was en
ough.”

  “Then what she wanted—surely—was total possession?”

  “Perhaps,” I admitted. “There was—apparently,” I added loyally, “some tragedy in her life.”

  “There’s tragedy in everyone’s life, Amelia,” he said sternly.

  “Because,” I continued, “just before the funeral I heard my father and my aunt Stacey talking in the living room. I wasn’t supposed to hear, I was sitting on the stairs listening to them. I heard my father tell my aunt Stacey that my mother had never loved him, that he’d given up years ago trying to reach her, that she’d never stopped loving someone named Charles who rejected her and married someone else. She never stopped mourning him.”

  “Did she try?” asked Joe savagely.

  I laughed in a hollow sort of way. “Not very hard, no. I think now, looking back, she had been in love with death for a long time. She liked graveyards, you see. I remember when I was very young, before I went to school, we used to visit them often. Not for stone-rubbing or collecting epitaphs but just to walk through them, and she’d stop and say to me in a special dreamy sort of voice, ‘Just think, Amelia, all the people here were once alive, just like you and me, and one day we, too—.’ She’d never finish the sentence but she made her point. Life, she would say with a sigh, was so very brief. And I guess she found it very pointless.”

  Joe said harshly, “It sounds to me as if she suffered from an orgy of Victorian melancholia. Didn’t your father know or care what she was doing to you?”

  “He was away a lot.”

  “Was he away the day she hung herself?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “So your mother knew you’d find her?”

  I looked at him sharply. “Why do you say that?” I asked angrily.

  “Because,” he pointed out simply, “if she knew you would be the one to find her, it was the ultimate rejection for you. The ultimate abandonment.”

  The ultimate rejection … no one had ever put it in that way before, so bluntly, so honestly, with such a knife-edge clarity, but of course that was it, that was what had always mattered far more to me than finding her dead.