by Lee Smith
Candy put her mother’s glasses back on her just as Lacy, all trembly, came in. Candy touched up Mother’s lipstick. She was crying.
“There,” she said. She stood back. She felt good, but she was crying. “Isn’t she pretty?” Candy said.
Elizabeth is dead and Nettie has got to go to the funeral. You have to dress up for a trip to town, you have to dress up for a funeral. But you stay here. Elizabeth has died of heart failure which comes to us all in the end except for a few like Cary Grant who is more in demand than ever or Douglas Fairbanks Jr. still suave and handsome he hits the big seventy-five mark on December ninth he has been on Love Boat a couple of times recently. He said we would take a trip, well why not go on the Love Boat? I just want a good time girl, he used to tell me that. Lively Ann-Margret grew up in a funeral parlor which is where Elizabeth is now. Imagine that. He used to pick up the mandolin and sing. You have to walk that lonesome valley you have to walk it by yourself, nobody else will walk it for you, you have to walk it by yourself. That midget’s sick he’s got an incurable disease he can’t walk he’s not long for this world he’ll have to walk it by himself. It’s a long valley between here and town. Before that of course he’d like to set the story straight about his painful divorce and his departure from Fantasy Island, now that’s a trip. It’s important to have insurance which Ed McMahon will give you if you will respond before March twelfth. Of course you can’t buy insurance for failure of heart. Jackie Onassis will not marry again. Instead, she’ll travel. She’s had it! Ha ha and me too! I’m getting out of this one-horse town he said honey, I’ll take you too. We’ll take us a big long trip, we’ll go to Florida you’ll like it there you can get you a suntan, honey, there’s flowers blooming all the time. A lady from California drove through and told Nettie they get All My Children faster out there, a month ahead of us, and Erica has already died in a wreck. Which must not be true as she’s not even planning a trip although currently she is estranged from all. Erica’s such a bitch. The Wacky Way I Met My Mate was that my next-door neighbor asked me to take care of his dog while he went to Reno, Nevada, for a divorce. I could tell he was a nice man since he fed his dog chicken livers, a high liver, ha ha! Well the dog bit me! And he came back and took me out to dinner we fell in love by candlelight. It’s a heart-shaped scar and now every time I see it, I think about the Wacky Way I Met My Man. Love leaves scars. Love hurts, and love is blind. In Ogdensburg, New York, they’ve got a state order to keep Dr. L. D. Bogdanovitch from operating on patients because he’s blind. I do it by touch, he says. But doctors can’t save Elizabeth now she has to walk it by herself. At Daytona Beach the sand is so wide you can walk for hours you can see for miles I’ll take you there, you’ll have to wear dark glasses.
Illuminated by rosy light from Jesus’s robe, they stood together to recite the anthem. Afternoon sun fell through the stained-glass window onto the printed program in Lacy’s hands. Jesus himself stood holding his shepherd’s crook amid a circle of fluffy white lambs and little children. The children, wildly out of proportion, came up to about his knees. In the middle window, he was kicking the moneylenders out of the temple; sun came in through the shimmering gold as it spilled down the left-hand side of the window, out of the moneylenders’ grasp. Saint Catherine stood in the last window on Lacy’s side, head bowed, against a royal-blue background. The golden spokes of her wheel formed a shining halo about her head.
This, too, had been Lacy’s ambition: to be a saint. She used to fast—at least she skipped meals—and pray. Odd that she never noticed how weird the children look in the first window, like Munchkins. The Shepherd of Oz. Her mother lay in her coffin, banked by flowers, at the front of the church. The smell of the flowers was heady, almost overpowering up at the front where the family had to sit. Like the junior prom, which Lacy attended with Louie Scuggs. Like the scent in Millard Cline’s florist shop, all those years ago; she can barely remember. If only she could sit at the back.
George Llewellyn, the pale young rector, looked splendid in all those robes. Those vestments—that purple cloak. No wonder she wanted to be a saint. Yet he was nervous, too; perspiration, in spite of the air conditioning, beaded his upper lip. No wonder: right before the service, outside the church, Arthur addressed him as “Your Honor.” Arthur said, “Your Honor, I know you’ll pardon me if I just stay out here, I have a bad heart. I’ll be with you in spirit, Your Honor.” Sybill had been furious. Now Lacy envisioned Arthur outside in his car, hand over his heart. It won’t do to get tickled now. Arthur’s car was long, yellow, dented, and made a terrible noise. If only she could sit at the back—not seeing them, she could feel even more somehow the weight of all the people they had grown up with, the full weight of the past, behind her in these pews, pressing her up against all the flowers. Lacy has never really liked hothouse flowers. She wanted, desperately, to be a saint. But now the anthem:
I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord;
he that believeth in me though he were dead, yet shall he live;
and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.
I know that my Redeemer liveth,
and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth;
and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God;
whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold,
and not as a stranger.
For none of us liveth to himself,
and no man dieth to himself.
For if we live, we live unto the Lord;
and if we die, we die unto the Lord,
Whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.
Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord;
even so saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labors.
Lacy sank back gratefully onto the cushioned pew. There was some comfort to be found in language, after all. Her mother was right about that. Miss Elizabeth had left the Methodist church of her youth to become an Episcopalian because she found the service more lovely, she said. She said it was “sheer poetry,” and adamantly opposed the new Book of Common Prayer. She signed petitions, which came in the mail. And the language was still lovely. She was still right. But it seemed strange to Lacy, after so long, to feel the phrases rolling on her tongue, to taste their familiarity. The thin gold cross on the altar was the same gold cross. Lacy felt sure that she was the only one who had come to church with Mother out of desire. Sybill came because she thought it was her duty, which seemed to be why she did everything. Verner Hess came on Easter because she made him. A country man, he was uncomfortable with exactly what she loved, this ritual, what he called “all the whoop-dee-doo.” Arthur wouldn’t come, nor would Candy, after a time. Myrtle switched to the Methodist church because it had a more active youth group—the Episcopal church, at that time, being attended mostly by old ladies and Lacy, the congregation numbering under thirty on any given morning. Myrtle’s MYF used to have Sweetheart Dinners, and make field trips to Myrtle Beach. There was a way in which Lacy wanted to go to the MYF, like Myrtle. She wanted to go to Myrtle Beach. But she was afraid she wouldn’t have anybody except Louie Scuggs to ask to the Sweetheart Dinner, and besides, she loved to kneel on the velvet kneepads, and see the candles glowing on Christmas Eve. Kneeling, and standing, and sitting: it was a comfort having something to do, in a church. Knowing that no one would have a chance to say anything out of order, or—as Mother would say—anything in bad taste. Lacy could see how she felt, kneeling and standing, and sitting, and kneeling, making the right responses that in the end we shall all ascend into light.
When was it, how was it, that Lacy ceased to believe? She remembers the way it was, believing, the rush of emotion, the way her head felt light. It seems that one moment she was a saint, and then she was a student, and then somehow she was married. All with a fearful intensity, with a total disregard for the facts. She makes no excuses. That’s how it was. She transferred all that b
elief straight from God straight to her professors straight to Jack. Who was also one of her professors. Unfair to everybody concerned, including herself. But she can still remember the way she felt. I sing a song of the saints of God, patient and brave and true, who lived and fought and loved and died for the Lord they loved and knew. And one was a doctor and one was a queen, and one was a shepherdess on the green, they were all of them saints of God and I mean, God helping, to be one, too. The service continues. Lacy is a whiz at the right responses. Her mother is dead. This is what she hates, this coldness she sees in herself. She wonders if it’s new, or if she’s always had it. She could kill Jack. They had such good intentions, she and Jack. She loved him. But when a man leaves you, you hate him, too. Lacy hated her mother sometimes, too, in a way. It strikes her how the two are similar, death and divorce. In divorce, one person dies to another just as surely as if a physical death has occurred. Only it’s a lot harder because the corpse is still there to be dealt with, still up and walking around. Still talking. Impossible, then, any coming to terms: she will never come to terms with her mother either, of course.
Those questions which she never asked in real life will continue endless in her head: Why did she go, why did she leave me? Why did she let Sybill be the mother, so often, to me? Sybill, almost ten years old when Lacy was born, took care of her until she was eight, until Sybill went off to school. They never write letters, now. Lacy buys Sybill a nice sweater every Christmas. Was Mother just tired of it, of raising children, by then? Were Candy and Arthur too much for her? Or was it some particular thing, or the lack of something, in Lacy? Especially since she tried so hard, she was so good—Candy, for instance, was bad. Bad when she flunked Spanish, when she got kicked out of band, when she ran away from home, when she got pregnant, when she got married. Candy took up attention, and tears, and time. Mother lay on the fleur-de-lis loveseat before the bay window and wept: “Why does she do this to me?” And somehow, everybody seemed to feel, you couldn’t expect much from a boy. Boys will be boys, especially Arthur. Sybill made straight A’s, and did the laundry. Myrtle was Miss Everything. Perhaps by the time Lacy came along, everyone was simply exhausted, except for Verner Hess. A sweet and limited man. It felt so good to cry. Lacy loved him, she did. How has she grown angry, and old, and cold? She did have good intentions. Now she will not be a saint, even though she kneels, after so many years, in prayer.
O God, whose mercies cannot be numbered: accept our prayers on behalf of your servant Elizabeth, and grant her an entrance into the land of light and joy, in the fellowship of your saints, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Amen. Into the land of light and joy. At Cape Canaveral this morning the shuttle Challenger took off at 7:30 a.m. and rocketed Sally Ride into space. “Sally, have a ball,” her husband said. Somehow Lacy always knew she’d never have a ball. But maybe she’s coming to some glimmer of understanding. At this age, growing up—or is that ever possible? Her niece Theresa, at the funeral home last night, reminded Lacy of herself as they all stood together greeting those who came, and everyone came, discussing gardens and baseball and how many babies they or their children had had and where everyone went to school. Theresa, pale and confused, asked, “Is the conversation at something like this always so trivial?” That’s Theresa, who used to be a cheerleader and now wants to be a writer and says “shit” a lot, and sees everything as ironic. Which is only partially true in Lacy’s opinion and has long been grasped by her own tough Kate. In the newspaper photograph this morning, for instance, the shuttle’s launch was pictured from across a lake, so that its ascent, that phallic thrust, those clouds of smoke, also appeared in reverse, as it seemed to be burrowing into the depths of the lake, into the lake’s reflection. Trick photography: up or down? That’s the problem with irony, someone should tell Theresa. It can go either way. The lake reminded Lacy of the silent tarn in the beginning paragraph of “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Her head is so full of ridiculous things. Small wonder that she couldn’t finish, didn’t want to teach: Lacy feels she has nothing to say, and a lot to learn. Still there came that glimmer, in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly, how ironic. Yet why not, why not there as well as anywhere else, as well as here? Lacy finds it ironic that her mother and Sally Ride have ascended into light together. While the rest of the world bats around in the dark—
“Let go,” Lacy said, and they stood, Sybill clutching at her sleeve. Even now, Lacy realized, even now Sybill thinks I have to mind her. Of course she’s crazy, hysterical. Maybe she’s always been crazy. “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” said Don. In a clear still lake in Florida, the missile roared, descending. Lacy wants to get to the bottom of this, too. She wants to know. Is it because they are the two outsiders, Lacy and Sybill, that they need to know? Is it because they are cold? Even when Sybill first explained it there at the hospital, Lacy had a chill, a premonition, a notion. There might be something to this, after all. She could kill Jack. And in some terrible, ancient, resentful part of her brain, she began to feel, irrationally, that Sybill may be somehow right. Except Lacy has also begun to feel that it is her own body under discussion, her own body there at the bottom of the well. Lacy is terrified.
And the only person she wanted to talk to was Jack. Dressed for the funeral home last night, she stared at the old black phone in Mother’s house for the longest time; she nearly dialed. She imagined Jack and Susan having dinner, coq au vin. Jack is a pretty good cook. It was pathetic. Jack was the only person Lacy wanted to talk to about this, about how scared it made her. Susan has long black hair. She is very young. Lacy was pathetic. Reminding herself of one of Pavlov’s dogs—or that horrible thing she read in the paper about abused children, who always want to return to the abusive parent, it seems, always, if given a choice. Jack said, “Lacy, I don’t love you. I’m sorry, but there it is. I am in love with someone else. I’m telling you this to avoid misunderstanding and false hopes. I will always think very highly of you, of course.” Of course. She’s so scared. Now she thinks she stopped being a saint because it was too scary. Now she feels open, bloody, exposed—like a wound. Not a pretty image. And the image ladies are all here at the funeral: the Poetry Society. Slim pastel volumes privately printed. Chicken-salad sandwiches and sonnets, on summer afternoons. This strikes Lacy as lovely. And Miss Elva Pope herself was to read “ ’Tis the Last Rose of Summer” beside the grave, at Mother’s request. God knows what else Mother requested, in those letters left in the safety deposit box, inscribed with her spidery hand. “Concerning My Last Rites.” “Concerning My Worldly Possessions.” “My Last Will and Testament.” They hadn’t opened the other two. God knows what else she wanted, what any one of us really wants. Not to die. The Poetry Society had appeared in force, and the Garden Club. At the end of the Rites for the Burial of the Dead, printed on the program, Lacy found:
Flower in the Crannied Wall
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
The sun, reflected through Jesus’s robe, glowed crimson on the page. It was lovely. Almost in a trance, Lacy knelt, and prayed, and rose, and sang. Mrs. Luther Crouse, who used to teach all of them piano, was pounding the organ to death. “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth”: not an irony, a lie. They filed out, one by one. Candy, sobbing loudly and leaning against her grown son Tony whom Lacy hasn’t seen for years and wouldn’t have recognized; Myrtle, also crying, but more tastefully, supported on one side by Dr. Don and on the other by Sean, glowering, all dressed up; Theresa, pale and ethereal, trying to give the impression of having nothing to do with Don’s sister Louise, the down-to-earth Louise who walks out beside her; Sybill, perfectly in co
ntrol; and Kate, and Nettie, and Lacy. Nettie wore a shiny black dress which buttoned up the front, the buttons made of something like mica, catching the light. Kate, who had nothing but jeans, wore the navy-blue skirt Lacy had bought her this morning at J. C. Penney. Lacy wondered what Nettie thought of all this, Nettie who went to the primitive log church in the old days, when they were girls, and then not at all. Nettie wore a man’s black workshoes. Lacy kept noticing details she’d point out to Jack. Candy and Myrtle were both crying. Lacy felt closer to them than she had in years. She remembers Mother planting daffodils in autumn, she remembers holding the little basket with the bulbs. It was hard to imagine then that spring would come. Everything in childhood took such a long time.
The sun was enormously hot, they had to shake hands with the rector. Arthur’s car was gone and there was no sign of Arthur, either, he was probably drunk by now, or dead too. It was just so hot. So hot, and all the blazing light. So many people, and where is Kate? Myrtle said, “Lacy, I tried to catch you. Jack called just before we left the house. He said to tell you he’s coming, he’ll be here tomorrow.” Myrtle’s mascara was running, her pretty blue eyes were red. “I don’t want to see him,” Lacy said, whispered, but Myrtle was gone. Nobody heard. The stones of the church burn her arm, her shoulder, but she’s all right. Shit. She was doing just fine, let’s get to the bottom of this. Lacy leaned against the stone wall of the church with her heart doing some absurd little two-step as if she were twenty again and Jack were coming courting, as if they were still in love; for a minute she couldn’t even move, oppressed by the weight of the sun.