by Janis Owens
I shook her again. “Dammit, Myra, I know he’s your husband,” I snapped. “Is this some kind of game to you?”
“No,” she said slowly, “it’s not a game.” Then, after another careful pause, “I love him.”
That’s when I did something that I have never been able to reconcile myself to. I mean, I am no saint. I have had my share of sins, both in the flesh and in the mind, but I’d never hit anyone without provocation, not even as a child, but I did then. Not a lethal blow of the Ira Sims caliber, but a whip of a vicious backhand that snapped her head back, splitting her lip with a shock of blood so sudden and red that I had not even swung through before I was apologizing, trying to take it back.
“No, baby, I’m sorry, damn, I’m sorry, Myra—”
But she wouldn’t listen, pulling away frantically and backing to the couch, her face full of emotion for the first time since I’d been back in Florida. And that emotion was terror. I tried to catch her, to hold her and tell her I was sorry, but she escaped me till the couch stopped her and she fell back on it, still in movement, almost crawling over the back, till I caught and pinned her against the cushions.
“I love you,” I said desperately to her face. “I’m sorry, Myra. I never hit anybody in my life. Are you all right?”
But her face never lost its terror till finally, she began to cry. Noiselessly, the tears rolling down her face unchecked, and I hugged her in relief, for to me, tears were a sign of forgiveness, of surrender. On and on she cried, pulling her face to her chest, covering it with her fists, and after a while, I tried to calm her.
“Hush, baby,” I whispered. “It’s all right. We’ll talk to Michael. Tell him we love him but we love each other, too. It’ll be all right. These things happen, they work out, Myra, hush—”
But it was no use; she was engulfed in the crying in a way I’d never seen before. Noiseless, racking sobs that didn’t seem to be dispersing anything, but only gaining momentum, and when words failed to calm her, I shook her, I shouted in her face, I finally even reached back and slapped her again, not in anger, but panic, for Simon had heard us and was standing at the top of the stairs, calling, “Mama? Mama?”
“Your mother’s fine, Sim,” I answered. “Go back to bed—”
“But we ain’t had supper,” he said.
I called desperately, “Well, go on to bed. I’ll bring you something.”
He padded back down the hall obediently, but still, Myra cried, rocking herself back and forth in a strange rhythmic tic that scared me so bad I tried to call Mama, but got no answer, and with nothing else to do, dialed Sanger. After about twelve rings, Michael himself answered, and I screamed into the receiver, “Myra’s having some kind a fit. I don’t know, Michael, she’s crying, she won’t stop, Simon’s here—”
“Go upstairs,” he said evenly, “and look in the top of our closet. There’s a shoebox up there and a baggie full of medicine. Get out the Thorazine and give her one if you can get it down. Then stay with her. I’ll call the ambulance. Just stay with her. For God’s sake, don’t leave her alone with the children. I’m calling Dr. Williams now—”
He hung up in mid-breath, and I ran up the stairs two at a time and told Simon his supper would be ready in a minute, I had to fix it, then went to their closet where I found the shoebox all right, but not the baggie full of medicine, and had a sudden memory of slamming it on the oily dirt of the Fina station while I told her she didn’t need that shit, not as long as she had me.
I didn’t even bother to curse, but went back to Myra, trying to lift her face so I could apologize again, but she was as rigid as glass in her strange, mad position. I was wrestling with her, trying to wipe the blood from her chin, when the knock sounded at the front door and I ran to answer it, flinging it wide for the ambulance attendants and their wide, high gurney.
“Here! Here!” I cried, leading them down the hall, almost as wired as Myra. They tried to strap her in on her back, but even their combined weights couldn’t unbend her, and they were struggling on both ends, telling her to settle down, when suddenly, there was another voice in the room, Michael’s, and he was slapping them away.
“Let her alone, you idiots. She’s catatonic, can’t you see that? Lay her on her side—”
They obeyed him, strapping her in curled to her side, and he followed the gurney to the ambulance and climbed in without a glance in my direction. When they were gone, the siren fading into the hush of the still country night, I closed the front door and went back to the couch, sitting there in a strange, bloodless void till Simon called again, and I fixed him something eat—I can’t remember what—and that’s all I remember.
Sometime later, maybe hours, maybe minutes, I heard a car in the drive and fled without thought, out the French doors and up the steep stairs to my room, not bothering to turn on the light, but lying in the darkness with a certain foreboding that for all the violence of this day, the worst blow had not been struck, not yet. That it was still being drawn back and would come from the hand of my brother Michael.
So I waited, waited quietly in the belly of the pitch night, sweat rolling down my face, chilling me, and when he came, it was much like that first afternoon with Myra, when I’d waited in the darkness for the inevitable to overtake me. First, there was the pause, then the feet on the stairs, then the voice at the open door.
“Gabe?” he called, and when I didn’t answer, he crossed the room just as she had, but instead of coming to the bed, he went to the lamp and turned it on.
When he saw me in the light, he blinked. “Ira?”
I didn’t bother to nod, and he pressed. “You all right?”
“Fine,” I breathed, and he accepted it with a lift of his face, looking around the room at my maps and battles, then going to the window where the marble pool glittered under the new stars, and after a moment, he said very quietly in a calm, matter-of-fact voice, “Myra’s schizophrenic.”
Chapter
9
I closed my eyes when he said it,
feeling this final blow fall much as Ira’s had, quick and cruel, but oddly nonviolent: the slash of a surgeon’s knife on a thin blue vein. Michael didn’t pause to let me react, though, but continued, his eyes on the pool, his voice level and controlled, the same voice he’d used to describe busting the union.
“D’you know, Gabe, I only flew one time in my life. Thirty-two years old and never on a plane, but I had to go to Dallas, so I flew. Had this layover in New Orleans, and on a whim, rented a car and drove the rest of the way.” He turned. “You know why?”
I shook my head, for the day’s impact had left me as voiceless as a slaughtered sheep, and Michael made his way across the room, hands in his pockets, making a story of it.
“’Cause there’s this town, this little Louisiana town right outside Slidell, where Myra’s from, where her father’s people are all buried. Well, I went there and spent about an hour finding the cemetery, and another hour figuring out which Sims was Myra’s daddy. Then I spent about twenty seconds pissing on his grave, and then I turned around and come home.”
He had taken a seat at my little table, still cluttered with books and battles and legal pads, and sat there mildly, his legs crossed, his wrists folded on top of one another as if he was in church. “’Cause that bastard’s hand is still on my house. Twenty years and still reaching out, and I hate it, Gabe. I hate it. God knows I hate it.”
“How is she?” I finally managed, and his voice grew calm again.
“All right. Right as could be expected. Doctor got her down with one shot and that ain’t nothing to complain about. Had her tied to the bed, restrained, when I left, but she was sleeping.” He lifted his face in a wry smile. “Kind of hated to leave her, she looks so good when she’s asleep, kinda favors my wife. Not that skinny woman who keeps my children, and cooks and cleans and lays still when I want her to, but never offers much more. Can’t very well, not with the drugs she’s on.”
His smile faded to a brace o
f set, bitter lines around his mouth, but he lifted his hand to make a quiet, understated point. “But I never let it get to me, Gabe. I never do. I don’t forget that somewhere beneath that idiot smile there’s the woman I married. This woman who use to iron my shirts ever’ night ‘cause I made her—I didn’t want to be no factory worker all my life; who use to make me take her to the river to make love to her ‘cause she didn’t like Daddy and Mama hearing the bed creak.” He rubbed his eyes and smiled at this, and the sheer normalcy of the memory was such a contrast to the dull, relentless evil of the day that I was taken out of myself a bit and carried along with his gentle, rolling words.
“Use to talk to me in bed at night, Myra did, back when I was so tired, so damn tired, all I could do was lay there and listen. But she’d lay there beside me, or if something really got to her, she’d sit up against the footboard, and her eyes would be so alive, so full of what she was saying. Telling me about people on the Hill, or church gossip and her opinion of it, or about books she was reading.”
His hand came up again, pointing at me, trying to impress on me that this was a serious thing. “’And I don’t mean little books, either, Gabe. I mean big books. Books she got from the libary. She’d readem while I was working, and at night, she’d tell me about ‘em.”
His face began to lighten again as he remembered something, and he shared it with me. “One night, she was telling me this story about this woman who’d married this rich man who’d been married before. His first wife was dead, she’d drowned, and this second wife kept being reminded of her—”
“Rebecca?” I murmured and he smiled.
“You read it?”
When I shook my head, he laughed. “Well, Myra sure did. Read it about a hundred times. She loved that damn book. She told it to me, one page at a time, it took forever, and when she come to the place they find Rebecca’s boat, this voice cut through the wall: ‘Did he kill ‘er?’“
Michael laughed aloud. “And it was Daddy. He’d started listening to her at night and couldn’t hep himself. It was so funny. He was so embarrassed, he kept apologizing. But he couldn’t read. He’d never heard a such a thing in his life. That’s when she made me start taking her to the river, figured if the walls were that thin, her running her mouth wasn’t the only thing they were hearing out of her at night.” His smile gradually eased. “But I didn’t care, hell, she was my wife, and it was so good. It was like she was keeping me alive at night, taking me somewhere outside Sanger, beyond Magnolia Hill—those were the sweetest days of my life, sweeter than kissing her, just laying there and listening to her talk.”
He sat there a moment, his face distant, caught up in his own story, then stood abruptly and began pacing the room, examining the maps on the walls, restless, a little frustrated that he had not found more fitting words to describe the incredible relief that comes when a desperate heart hooks up with a dreamer. But it was just as well; I knew all about it, and could see her so clearly, just beyond the pig iron fence, her arms crossed close for warmth, her eyes distant, intense, devouring every word, that for a moment, I lost the thread of his story.
“—found this house,” he was saying. “Old, nasty I didn’t want no part of it. Wanted something in town, but Myra loved it. Loved it the minute she laid eyes on it, and they weren’t asking nothing for it. It’d stood empty twenty years, the windows broken, the floor painted, the pool—dang, I thought it was a septic tank—full of all kinds of stuff, snakes and mud and algae. It took four trucks to haul it off.
“So it was rough at first, me working all the time and Myra making this place livable, then I got foreman, and it was like we turned the corner. Had us a house and a little money, and Sim, then Missy came,” he paused in front of Shiloh, his face tired and curiously hurt. “And when she was, oh, maybe six months old, I woke up one night, and where was Myra? The bed was empty, the house cold. I found her downstairs in her nightgown, stripping floors. Told her it was late, to come to bed, but she was so excited, showing me the wood underneath, telling me whatall she had to do, with the floors and the windows. She was so happy, I just left her to it, didn’t think much of it. And for a while, everything was still all right. The children happy, the house looking good a lot faster than I thought it would. The only thing was Myra—she was skinny all of a sudden. Her clothes starting hanging off her, and I could feel the bones under her skin when I touched her. Even Mama noticed it, took me aside one Sunday, told me to put carpet down on these fool floors, that Myra was working herself to death over them.”
He moved down the wall to Gettysburg, reaching up to straighten a pin, his voice even. “That’s how it went, all summer, I guess, five or six months, till one day—or night, I guess. Yeah, it was night, it was at supper, Simon looked up and right out of the blue, asked me—”
I sat up. “No—no, listen, Michael, don’t—Ira already told me. I can’t stand—”
“Yes, Gabe.” He turned. “Yes, you can. I mean, you stood her very well, didn’t you, when she was laughing and laying still? And you can stand this.”
He faced me off evenly, and I was in too much pain to withstand him, lying back and closing my eyes, and after a moment, his voice calmed, reclaiming its even tread.
“Simon, he asked me why Tommy—this boy I’d hired to get the yard back in shape—why he’d lay on top of Mama every day while they swam.” His eyes were still on the wall, but his voice grew very quiet, trying to make me understand. “And you know, Gabe, when he said it, Myra was sitting right there across the table, feeding Missy, and she didn’t say a thing. She just sat there, stirring the baby food, her eyes real distant, like she was trying to remember something. And the longer she sat there, the scareder they got. Then, suddenly, she looked up and met my eye, and I knew, I knew it wasn’t a lie, that Simon wasn’t making something up, but before I could say a word, she jumped up and tore off upstairs.
“It was so quiet, so quiet when she left, Sim started crying; he knew he’d started something. But I cleaned up Missy and set them down in front of the TV, and the whole time I knew; I knew Old Man Sims was reaching out, out of the grave, putting his hand on my house. I could smell it, I swear to God I could. When I got upstairs, Myra was laying all curled up in bed, staring at the wall. I sat down beside her, and as soon as I said her name, she just flew up at me and grabbed the front of my shirt, grabbed it so tight the buttons went everywhere, and she was crying—
‘My mind is going, Michael, it’s leaving me, I know it is, I cain’t remember Mama’s name. I tried all day. I cain’t remember how old Simon is, Tommy asked me, he’s my little boy, Michael, why cain’t I remember?’
“That’s the way it was. No guilt, no excuses, just this wild, crazy talk. I got her to a psychiatrist—well, he’s really an M.D., but one of his degrees is psychiatry, and come to find out, she hadn’t slept in six months. Not a wink. Been keeping the children all day, working on the house all night. He said it was postpartum depression at first, then changed it to schizophrenia, but I don’t know if I can buy that ‘cause he says it ain’t related to her past at all. Says it’s just something that happens to people, like cancer or diabetes, but I know, I know her life. I remember her face when she was little, when she used to play out back. I know it’s part of that and if I can just break it, break its back, my wife’ll come back to me one day.
“Do you think she will, Gabe?” he asked suddenly, turning and looking at me on the bed. “Do you think I’m doing right by her? I mean, I could put her away, hospitalize her. Insurance would pay for it, and it’d be safer for the children. But damn, I just can’t stand the thought of them seeing her once a week, sitting on some bench with that stupid smile on her face while they try to remember who she is.”
“I don’t know, Michael. I don’t know” I whispered, for it was simply overwhelming. I couldn’t pretend to understand.
He looked a little hurt I could not reassure him in this thing, then turned back to the maps. “Well, anyway, Dr. Williams put her in a we
ek to stabilize her, said she was about to—I cain’t remember the word—blow apart is what he meant. So we took her there and signed her in and she kissed Sim and Missy goodbye and told me she loved me, that she wanted me to remember that, no matter what, and you know, Gabe, that’s the last time I ever saw my wife, standing there at the counter at Jackson Memorial, checking herself in with her little suitcase in her hand, looking scared and skinny, like a cancer patient going in for cobalt. The last time I seen her, I swear to God—”
He began crying then, possibly the first time in my life I’d ever seen my brother cry, for he was the stoic, and I was the one who got hysterical and had to leave the theater when Bonnie Blue broke her neck. But this time we were quite reversed: him crying, me lying there racked by chills as my fever rose higher, but numb, so numb I could only close my eyes, and like Mama all those years ago on the porch, wonder why God allowed such things to happen.
“Come home like she is now,” he said, getting the better of his tears, and resuming his inspection of the maps. “Smiling. Calm. Lights are on, but nobody’s home. We tried everything, Dr. Williams and I, all kinds of medicine, enough to fill a room, and counseling and therapy, but nothing worked, and after a while I started getting desperate, thinking the longer she went this way, the bigger chance it’d be she’d never return. So when I heard about this preacher—”
“No,” I said, sitting up. No, Michael, it’s enough, by God, I don’t—”
“No!” he whipped around furiously. “No, it’s not! You listen to me. I need to tell you, tell someone who loves her, who won’t ask me why I didn’t kill her. Someone who’ll know she wasn’t some bored housewife playing the whore—Now listen.” He paused, his face worried but determined, speaking quickly “A preacher. Who specialized in demonic possession. Now I know it just sounds ignorant, Gabe, but you remember Old Man Sims. There was just something so evil about him—not crazy—evil, that I decided to give it a try. She was seeing him a few months, doing a little better, I thought, when,” he finally took a breath, “one night his wife called, pitching a fit. Said she’d found some clothes, panties or something, in his office, and she was on the warpath. I was afraid she’d come out here and kill her, had to get Sam to stay here when I went to see her husband, went out to his church, caught him in his office after the evening service, and as soon as I laid eyes on him, I knew it was true, that his wife was right. And all I said was: ‘Why have you done this thing to me?’