by Annabel Lyon
Inside the house was silent. The soles of her feet began to prickle but she forced herself to stay in the character she had worn all day. I don’t suppose I would call out, she thought. I would leave the door unlocked behind me because Mr. Peretti is coming and I would go to the kitchen and put the kettle on because Mr. Peretti is coming.
What’s this? What’s this?
I have seen the kitchen drawers ajar, I have seen the broken pottery on the floor, I have seen the chair pushed away from the other chairs and the door to the basement wide open. Jesus, why open? What am I doing? I am crying out but no sound comes. I am running to the basement door, crunching and kicking the shards a little more, I am hesitating, the darkness is utter, the silence, I am taking a first step down, swatting the void like a kitten for the string to the bulb, I am taking a second step but there is no string, it is caught around the bulb, or some hand has clipped it off, what hand, what hand? What am I doing? I am panicking, I am bravely panicking and pawing for the light string because this house is not as I left it yesterday, because there has been a robbery (oh!), because my husband’s car is outside and the doors were open, doors that should have been closed were open to the world, and because my fear is great. Then her fingers found the string and she seized it and pulled and there was light.
What had been her husband lay as though sleeping, curled around the drain, mouth slightly open, hands – one behind him, one before – slightly darkened. With what a delicate brush had he been painted! The familiar caressed face, the line of the jaw, the chest so close to life, to breath! What a work of art!
What am I doing? she asked herself. I am seeing my husband apparently unconscious, caught unawares by a robber. I would approach, I am approaching, I am trying to say his name but my mouth would be dry, my mouth is dry, and no sound is coming. (Above her head she sensed Peretti on his way, the way a chess player senses time running out on the clock – a tiny figure growing slowly larger as he navigated the city, this taxi, that street, until he stood life-size before her, sprung from imagination to life, and she must act for him too.) For the first time she saw a faint glimmer on the floor around him, veins and droplets of silver moisture, thickish and still as mercury, and realized he had soiled himself (smell it), and vomited (his lips were silver); also that he was lying in glass, juice, and blood; for some of the glimmering substances she saw were moon-white mounds of pear. He must have found his feet briefly and flailed in the dark, her Don Quixote, at his mother’s sweet summer preserves.
As she stood transfixed a single bright thread of liquid detached itself from the pool by his mouth and ran down into the drain and disappeared. She heard it dripping.
What am I doing? she asked herself. What have I done? But there was nothing more to do. It was a finished work.
Up the few stairs, across the kitchen a last time, down the dark hall, out the front door and into the light of the world, where with Swiss perfection Michael Peretti was stepping from a cab, the cab was pulling away, wheels speeding up and then slowing as, in his mirror, the driver saw a pretty little curly-haired bit of a thing run screaming from a house and collapse in his American fare’s arms in a perfectly timed, exquisitely executed, and absolutely genuine dead faint.
She wrote:
This is, for me, the loveliest and saddest landscape in the world. It’s here that the little prince appeared on earth, then disappeared.
Look closely at this landscape in order to be sure of recognizing it, if you travel one day in Africa, in the desert. And, if you happen to pass by there, I beg you, do not hurry, wait a little just under the star! If then a child comes to you, if he laughs, if he has golden hair, if he does not answer when you question him, you will guess who it is. Then be nice! Don’t leave me so sad: quick, write me that he is returned …
Her mother looked in and read over her shoulder and said, Oh, the lamb, and hurried out, biting her lip.
She worked in her old bedroom at books her mother gave her – children’s books, her own and some newer, like this, that her mother had clearly been stocking in the expectation of a grandchild. The curtains were drawn; she worked at her old table by fringed lamplight, filling a schoolgirl’s ruled notebook with her rounded, softly pencilled hand. Now and then her mother brought soft foods on a tray, coddled eggs, bread-and-milk, and she ate. When her hand tired she lay down on the high narrow girl’s bed, where sleep came easily and often. Her body seemed to suck unconsciousness from the air like oxygen.
She had awoken a few moments later, still – had not the action moved forward? apparently not – in the street. She had lain on the cabbie’s coat, head and shoulders propped in the lap of a neighbour lady. The commotion had ferreted her out, as it had women in housedresses and curlers up and down the street. Now then, the woman had called sharply when she saw Anna’s eyelids moving, and suddenly a rude finger had been inserted between her lips, prising them open, and she was gagging on eau de vie. About that time Peretti had returned.
Where do you live? he had asked one of the women.
She had pointed at a house.
Go the hell home.
He had ignored the abuse that followed and knelt down. Mrs. Pass, he had said. Anna.
But the women wouldn’t have it.
Leave her alone.
Who is he?
Can’t you see she’s ill?
Don’t let him touch her.
Cabbie, Peretti called.
The two men between them got her into the cab, where she sat with her hands in her lap. She could smell the liquor spilt on her dress. Far away she heard sirens. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes.
Has one of you got a blanket? she heard Peretti say. She’s in shock.
I suppose you would know? someone said.
Stay away from there, Peretti called sharply. You, away from the house.
Hey, who are you, anyway? someone said. I’ve never seen you around here. Where do you get off giving people orders?
That’s Cora’s daughter-in-law, someone said.
Buddy’s wife.
Who’s he?
Anna, Peretti said again. She opened her eyes. He was leaning into the taxi, pressing a woollen blanket around her. The police are coming, he said in a low voice. I called from inside.
Yes.
Their eyes met briefly.
That wasn’t necessary, he said.
Later she had given a statement at the police station. Such kindnesses she had received there, scalding sugary tea and a new blanket and condolences all round. She would turn her face away to cry very quietly and they would pause, waiting with their questions until she was able to continue. When it was over they led her back to the public rooms, where her apprised and pompously expressionless father was waiting to reclaim her.
Now, in the evenings, after her books and her little tray meals, she came downstairs and sat with him while he played the gramophone, the operas he loved. Her mother had been forbidden these sessions, it seemed, for she stayed in the kitchen, knitting. Perhaps her father thought he was inflicting a cure. He sat under the single lit lamp reading the papers, purposefully ignoring her, but if she rose he would say, Sit down, and she would have to sit. Long ago he had trained her not to interrupt his music. So she sat while a woman’s voice like a searchlight pierced the room, lamenting this or that corkscrewing of fate. She would admit it was a beautiful voice, high and husked as a child’s.
At the funeral white flocks of pollen funnelled in the air, adding to the usual mourning sounds the occasional discreet sneeze. Such a crowd! They had to a man followed to the graveside, curiosity unslaked by the church service. No, that was unfair; there was scarcely a dry eye. She stood between her parents, tractably dressed that morning in her weeds, a black suit of her mother’s that had a faint, unlaundered sweetness, and itched. A hat was found. Her mother wept modestly. Her father played army, remote and stoic. There were the sisters and cousins, unfamiliar without their earmuffs, bawling; there too was the rogue uncle, hai
r a shade blacker than she remembered from the ski trip, face a pudding. There were the Tanners, lean and flawless, curried by grooms, probably; there were his newspaper colleagues, the typesetters and photographers, oil and vinegar from the look of them. There was Peretti. Around the graveyard rose pigeons with stuttering wings. The sun was high, thin, and fine.
I have wrenched the world off its tracks, she thought, looking around the scene, as the breeze pushed at the black lace of her veil. As the service dragged on she made a game of shifting her chin this way and that, ever so slightly, enough to blot out various faces with the larger knots in the lace. Thinking: I made this, and this, and this.
Victory bunting still hung from the windows of the sanatorium, weather-stained and limp in the pale June sun. In the hospital grounds it seemed more like sere August, the grass cooked crisp and colourless under the piling heat. Probably, Anna thought, it would always feel more like the end of something here than the beginning. Keys were thrown away, sometimes; grass was not obliged to grow. Patients, nurses, doctors, visitors were nowhere in evidence, unless they had metamorphosed into the fat black flies that picked over the property, droning and hand-wringing, obsessives.
Please, the doctor said, indicating with the sweep of a hand that she was to precede him up the stairs.
How lovely! her mother-in-law said. Is Buddy here, too?
Cora, Anna said, taking a hesitant step into the sun-washed room.
Come in! I’m quite the princess in my tower up here all alone, aren’t I, Doctor? I can’t remember when I last had a visitor. Well, of course Buddy’s not here, he’s working, isn’t he? I’m forgetting it’s a weekday. But I’m so pleased you came to see me, dear.
She is better, Anna thought, seeing the quick glance take in the fact of her son’s absence, check, and respond simply by boosting the wattage of her smile. The social graces had returned, flowing again with the juices of health. By the window she sat tatting, of all things – insects again, Anna thought, though spiders were not insects strictly, they had lungs and nervous systems. Horrible thought. But Cora had laid her shuttle aside and now they were pulling up chairs. The older woman clearly thought she knew what it was about: colouring faintly, she glanced at the doctor, at the floor, at Anna, smiling, and said, I owe you an apology, I believe, dear.
Oh, no. No.
My God they have had Talks, was what she was thinking.
I don’t remember everything from – when I arrived, Cora said. But I know there was some strain between us and truly I regret it, truly I do. We’re family, we have to stick together now. You’re a lovely girl really. I don’t know what came over me, though the doctor has explained –
She hesitated. The doctor nodded encouragingly. No doubt, Anna thought, he had rewritten the script for her, given her a version of herself she could even feel proud of, cant as ointment – a blossom of Greek myth here, a prickly thicket of medical jargon there – recasting her hatred as grief and letting her feel a little proud of herself, even, for what the depths of her love for her husband had driven her to. Here surely was a great-hearted love, one for the bards!
One thinks these things though one must not, Anna thought. Indeed, are they even lies? Is she not loving and repentant? I may dislike her, I do of course dislike her – the voice, the vinegary courtesies – but, poor Cora, she has woven her health up around herself like a bamboo pagoda, and here I come scything, again.
From down the hall came the sound of a wail, almost inhuman, or almost human. I will judge less, Anna thought, I will be more kind. Forecast by the sound of trotting footsteps, a nurse appeared in the doorway and said rather sharply, Doctor, for a moment, if you please.
Left alone, the two widows smiled tender, unfathomable smiles. Anna looked around the big room. The second bed was stripped and the other woman’s personal effects were not in evidence.
She’s gone, Cora said, following her gaze. The police came.
Anna saw the memory of it confused her, was part of that time she couldn’t clearly remember. A sweet cloud troubled her eyes.
I heard the nurses say it was because of the baby. Do you suppose that’s right?
I shouldn’t think so, Anna said reassuringly, but with a quickening of the senses, remembering her suspicion that the woman must have killed it, thinking, So she was caught. You’re looking wonderful, she added. Very rested.
I want to tell you the truth, Cora said, leaning forward slightly. I’m ashamed. I’ve heard so many stories in my weeks here, shocking hardships. I’ve even been volunteering a little in the kitchens, the doctor said it would be good for me and it has, but I see some of those boys who’ve come back from the war, I’ve talked to them a little, I sit with them sometimes and hold their hands, oh, it’s been wonderful but terrible too, and I tell you I’ve learned shame. My troubles are nothing to what those boys have been through. I don’t belong here.
The wailing ceased abruptly.
I’m quite ready to leave, she said. She was holding Anna’s hand now, looking at her face.
Now then, the doctor said, returning.
I was just telling Anna, Cora said. I was even wondering. Is today my day?
The doctor glanced at Anna.
To leave, I mean.
The smile, the society manner, were gone. She had not – how could she have? – rehearsed this moment. Raw dignity this was. Dignity itself a scab on raw need. The thought pleased Anna, though not the expression of it. She tried to translate it into French, to see if it would sound more at home there. La dignité est une croûte –
Unfortunately, Mrs. Pass, the doctor said, taking charge when Anna didn’t respond. Mrs. Pass, there’s been an accident.
For a moment Anna saw Buddy clearly in his mother’s innocent, perplexed face. The man looked out of the woman. Then the ghost vanished as Cora realized what was coming and resumed, quite desperately, her smile.
Her father it was who had arranged the funeral, who met with the lawyers and pulled Cora’s house off the market until the police investigation was concluded, who went through Buddy’s bills and files and papers, seated grandly at the dead man’s desk and frowning at various shoeboxes she brought down from the bedroom cupboard, filled with receipts and notes and possibly important papers.
I suppose you knew about this, he said, extracting a portfolio of papers from one particular manila envelope.
What’s that?
Insurance.
That’s to do with the house, she said. I think.
He frowned at what he must have supposed was her ignorance, but said nothing. It was as though, in her widowhood, she had become an infant again, helpless and in need of protection, unworthy of even the gentlest reprimand. When the police came to the house to ask more questions, as they did more often now that she was past the first debilitating shock of her husband’s death, he treated them with suspicion and minimal courtesy. He was affronted that they would not leave her alone. This, she saw, was both a rare manifestation of his love for her and a concern for his own name and honour now that she was, again, in his possession. When one young officer, fed up with his bullying, said he would prefer to interview Anna alone, her father threatened to call a lawyer.
Certainly, the officer said.
Still, she could not bring herself to worry. Stephen was the one they needed, and Stephen she felt sure of, though she could not have said exactly why. Her certainty came down to a few remembered images: his hands, trembling on the table in the café; the poem he had felt compelled to read to her, ears pinking predictably, from his school textbook. Also he had learned so much from the movies about chivalry in a fallen world. Once, after they made love, he had wept. What were the police, what was a parent, after that? He was her Alan Ladd, her John Garfield, her cynic with a cigarette, and underneath her Knight of the Rose.
We shall have to pay a visit to this insurer, her father was saying, as he turned the pages of the policy with a deliberately licked finger. I suppose you will have to accompany me, as t
he beneficiary.
She watched as he worked his way through Buddy’s papers, touching finger to tongue to page, again and again, as though compelled to leave his own faint spoor on all that had been kept from him, until now.
Her strongest urge to confess came in the elevator on the way up to the insurance agency as her father pulled the wroughtiron cage door closed. The cage was a pattern of spear-like fleurs-de-lys. She wanted to tell him about the repairman, about the image of the stalled elevator car and what she had seen in it, the gilt and the abyss.
Mr. Pass, the tall secretary said before she had a chance to introduce him. Mrs. Pass. She nodded to them both, though her glance returned to Anna. A flickering of interest, appraisal. I’ll just let Mr. Foster know you’re here.
A boy who had been sitting in one corner of the waiting room reading a magazine glanced up at the name. Something about him snagged at her memory. Dark-eyed, pale, with a fine skin and legs like shoots. A private school boy, tie and briefcase and all. Did private school boys need insurance? They had many needs, obviously. He might have been fourteen but already his shoes, for instance, were enormous. Their eyes met briefly, but Anna turned away to fold back the veil pinned to her hat. She still wore her mother’s good black wool suit.
Mrs. Pass? the secretary said, at the same moment as her father’s impatient, Anna.
Ben Foster, the agent said, shaking hands with her father. Turning to her: My condolences for your loss, Mrs. Pass.
She recognized the boy then, in the desk photograph that was so clearly this good, dull man’s cynosure and pride.
There were forms to fill out, a few questions. Her father answered everything. Anna was aware of a formality, a guardedness even, between the two men that had not been there the time she came alone, but her father pulled greyness from the gayest of men, she had seen it often enough. Still, while her father was engaged with the forms – reading every word, in his mulish way, before he would touch the proffered pen – the agent caught her eye and shook his head and said, I know it must be very hard.