The Book of Marie

by Terry Kay

  And that was what Ebony Neismith talked about—that line. If she had been a real, pulpit, seminary-trained preacher, it would have been her scripture selection. Isn’t that strange, Cole? Isn’t it?

  Her message? Wake up, people! The world’s lit by lightning!

  I think that line was written for you, Cole Bishop.

  I look at the photograph of you holding Etta Hemsley and I can almost see the sky behind you streaked with lightning.

  Do you know how that makes me feel?

  It makes me want to be with you again—back then, I mean, back when we were the talk of the town, the main players in that sorry little melodrama of our youth, back before the lightning came flashing out of nowhere.

  Blow out your candles, Cole.

  For nowadays—well, you know, don’t you? You’ve been struck by it.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  On Sunday morning, Jake volunteered to cook breakfast, a Southern feast, he boasted. Spend time with your sister, he said to Cole. Tell her about last night. If you don’t and you get away from here, she’ll drive me crazy.

  Cole’s description of the evening was guarded. A good time, he said, keeping the details that Amy wanted to himself—particularly his time with Alyse Pendleton. It was enough to name names of people who had attended and to tell stories of innocence that had a hint of gossip about them. He did not say anything about Hugh Cooper’s appearance, knowing Amy and Jake would learn of it soon enough.

  The breakfast was as Jake had promised—French toast, eggs, bacon, sausage biscuits, milk gravy, orange juice, strong coffee. Artery-clogging, Jake declared proudly. Everything you don’t need, but your soul begs for.

  After breakfast, he put his belongings into his car with Jake’s help, and he gave the handgun under his front seat back to Jake, saying, Glad I didn’t need it.

  Me, too, Jake told him. That son-of-a-bitch is walking trouble.

  I hated to see him that way, Cole said. I remember him in a different light. In high school, he was a good friend, well-liked by everybody.

  Things go sour for some people, I guess, Jake said. You can feel sorry for them, but that doesn’t change the way they are. After a while, pity gets old.

  It was, as Cole expected, a tearful leaving, the tears being Amy’s. She again begged him to consider retirement and a move back to Georgia.

  I’ll think about it, he promised, knowing it was only a placating comment. In the poetic metaphor that Marie Fitzpatrick had discovered in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, he had blown out the candles of his past, and that was enough. For him, the world lit by lightning was in the classrooms of Raemar University. He would stand in that electrified environment as long as possible.

  The drive-away from the home of his childhood was melancholy, a sweet-sad sensation. He thought of his mother and father and of his brother, Toby. The land was infused with them, and the greening of spring resurrected them, gave them shape and form. He could hear the glad melodies of their voices, could see the waving of their hands from the arms of trees.

  He wondered if he would ever again see his homeplace.

  He passed the turnoff to Breedlove Cemetery and suddenly, inexplicably, he thought of the letter from Marie about going there on her only return to Overton. On impulse, he slowed his car to a stop and sat for a moment looking back through the rearview mirror at the cluster of trees covering the gravesites, then he pushed the gear handle to reverse, guiding his car back to the turnoff, and drove over the washed-down road leading to the trees.

  He got out of his car and went into the cemetery and stood for a moment, remembering the sundown time with Marie Fitzpatrick on their first date and remembering also her letter about the cemetery being her favorite place in Overton.

  And then he thought of a walk he had taken with his father through a similar cemetery when his father—playing to his imagination—had whispered that if he listened carefully, he could hear the voices of the dead seeping up from the ground. His father had said it was possible to feel the ground vibrating with their voices if you stopped and stood still. Absolutely still. Not-breathing still. And if you listened intently enough—put your ear to the ground— you could understand their words. There in Breedlove’s Cemtery, he believed his father. He could hear voices. Plaintive, humming voices. And the earth—overgrown with weeds, the humps of burial mounds leveled by time—vibrated.

  He thought of teaching Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology, where voices of the dead told revealing, sometimes-desperate stories, and of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, where residents of the cemetery in Grover’s Corner, New Hampshire, still offered opinions about the world around—and above—them.

  In Vermont, near Raemar, was a cemetery having majestic tombstones. If he again taught Spoon River Anthology, he would have a session in that cemetery, he thought. He would ask his students to read the headstones and to create tales, fashioned in Masters’ style, of those who had been buried there.

  He turned to leave, then recognized the stone bearing the name of Daniel Breedlove, a name only faintly recognizable, a name worn away by rain and wind and mold. He kneeled to read its obscured epitaph: N w esting on th bo om of od.

  He stood, stepped back, and then he saw it. At the foot of the grave of Daniel Breedlove, partly covered by the debris of leaves and grass, he saw a block of marble, no larger than the size of a shoebox.

  The name chiseled into it was Marie.

  There was only one car in the parking lot of Elder’s Funeral Home, giving it a look of abandonment. He knew, being Sunday, there was a chance no one was there, still he rang the doorbell and waited. After a few moments, he heard footsteps and then Moses Elder opened the door. He was dressed as Cole had seen him at the library and again on the visit with Littlejohn—a tailored suit, the ensemble of shirt and tie giving him a distinguished manner. A look of surprise rose in his face.

  Dr. Bishop, he said.

  It’s Cole, Cole told him. Am I interrupting anything?

  Not at all. No business today. I skipped church to do some book work, but that can wait, Moses replied.

  Can we sit on the porch for a minute? Cole asked.

  Of course, Moses said.

  They took seats in rockers placed for mourners.

  You headed back to Vermont? Moses asked.

  Yes, Cole told him. Yes, I am.

  Thought that’s what you said the other day.

  But I wanted to see you before I left.

  What can I do for you? Moses asked.

  Tell me about Marie, Cole said.

  The expression on Moses’ face did not change. He crossed one leg over his knee and folded his hands in his lap. What about her?

  Her burial, Cole replied.

  For a moment, Moses did not speak, or move. His gaze stayed on Cole’s face, yet Cole could see his eyes go soft. You saw it? he said.

  I did, Cole told him. I stopped by the cemetery on the way out. I haven’t been there in a long time.

  I should have told you.

  I wish you had.

  I thought it was too dangerous, Moses said quietly. Don’t know if what I did was legal. You just can’t bury people’s ashes anywhere you want to.

  But that’s where she wanted to be, Cole said. Am I right?

  Moses nodded his nod of habit. She had her ashes sent to me. Wanted to be put at the foot of the tombstone that had Daniel Breedlove’s name on it. Said she wanted it to stay between us.

  The stone?

  I did that on my own, Moses confessed. Didn’t seem right not having something.

  Just her first name, though. Why that?

  I thought her first name wouldn’t say much, Moses answered. He paused. Except for you. I guess I knew there was a chance you’d find it. And I guess I hoped you would. Someday.

  What about the letters she wrote to you? Cole asked.

  I burned them, Moses replied.

  Why?

  Again there was a pause—long, heavy, holding grief. Finally, he s
aid, You have to remember how it was fifty years ago. I’m black. Anybody found those letters, it would have been trouble for me.

  Were they that personal?

  Nothing more personal than telling me I was smart enough to get away from here, but it didn’t matter. Her name was like poison in those days, Moses said. Mailman asked me about it one time. Wanted to know why I was getting letters from her. I told him she was writing something for her school about colored people.

  But you never wrote to her, did you?

  Once, but I didn’t mail it, Moses admitted. Guess I didn’t have the nerve. After a while, I quit hearing from her. Then she called me when she was dying, telling me what she wanted.

  She disliked the South, Cole said. Did she say why she wanted her ashes to be buried here?

  Moses smiled, a shadow of movement across his face. She told me this was where she learned the most about herself, and she guessed that’s where her homegoing ought to be from. He paused, then added, That’s what she called it: her homegoing.

  Cole thought of Marie’s fascination with the word. It was right for her.

  She never knew about Jovita’s house burning down, did she? Moses asked.

  I’m sure she didn’t, Cole said. She would have written to me about it, or she would have returned here with her own torch and she might have burned the town—fire for fire. It’s part of the reason I didn’t tell her. There was nothing she could have done other than make matters worse.

  You probably right, Moses said.

  The two men sat motionless, without speaking. A car rolled slowly along the street in front of the funeral home—an old car, having a rattling motor and a smoking contrail of exhaust, the oily scent of it drifting to the porch.

  I know you don’t want to answer and I won’t ask you for a name, but you do know who started the fire, don’t you? Cole asked.

  Moses moved in his chair, rooting his shoulders into the slats. He again touched his fingertips together, licked his lips. I do, he said after a moment.

  He got away with it, Cole said.

  No, Moses said. No, he didn’t. Truth is, he paid for it in a lot of ways. Still does, but it turned out all right for him and for a lot of other people. He’s made his amends.

  You sure you know the right person? asked Cole.

  Moses dipped his head once. He came to me about it a few years ago, he answered. Said he needed to get it off his chest, or the weight of it was going to crush him.

  A sudden chill struck Cole. He thought, My God: Art Crews. He could sense a wave of astonishment, of sadness, blink across his face. Art. He did not have to hear the name to know. It was a fit, all of it. It had to be Art. Art, acting impulsively, with the kind of temporary bravado that had existed in their youth, lashing out at something he did not understand. On the day of the visit with Sidney Witherspoon, Art had said, I did a lot of things I need to atone for, a lot of things that rested heavy on my heart. Chest-heavy, his mother had called such moments. With Art, the burning of Jovita’s home would have been chest-heavy enough for him to make his confession, to do his deeds of redemption, to become the giver, the caretaker, the speaker of prayers.

  Cole leaned his head against the back of the rocker and gazed at the tongue-and-groove ceiling above him, painted blue to keep away wasps. In a near-by tree, a mockingbird sang a spirited melody in a piercing soprano. The warmth of the day moved on a breeze and for a moment he believed he could smell the watery richness of a plowed field and could hear the clacking of his brother’s tractor. Age, he thought. Age, mixing memory and imagination. Or maybe it was nothing more than being in the South, where memory and imagination were as similar as identical twins wearing matching outfits.

  Before he left the reunion with Hugh, Art Crews had said to him, I’m sorry, Cole.

  For what? Cole had asked.

  For what we put you through, Art had replied with sadness.

  Art, he thought again. Art.

  He rocked forward and stood. I should be leaving, he said. I’ve got a long drive ahead of me.

  I don’t envy you, Moses told him, also standing.

  Glad you were here this morning, Cole said. I appreciate all that you shared with me.

  Moses again made his head-nod. He extended his hand and Cole accepted it.

  I want to send some flowers here, to you, Cole said. Would you put them on her grave for me?

  Be glad to, Moses said. He added, Hope we stay in touch.

  We will, Cole promised. We will.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  In 1975, he had received a letter from Marie, a ten-page diatribe about a suitor who had lied to her—I never really liked the son of a bitch, Cole, but he had no right to lie to me.—and he had responded in defense of the suitor, knowing that whoever he was, he would wither helplessly before the onslaught of Marie’s vengeance.

  He had suggested it was possible that psychologists had it wrong in their contention that truth relieved guilt and therefore set things right for victims of deceit. Truth, he had written, was a tricky thing. Truth could be more damaging than lying, if lying avoided hurting someone, or kept one from being hurt. Truth could never be absolute. It begged to be interpreted, to become perception. Truth was not entirely instinctive, he had written; lying was. Lying—gentle lying, at least—was elastic, flexible. It could be as soothing as a cooling skin creme. It forgave and kept alive dreams so cherished they were concealed secret into secret into secret, like extraordinary gifts wrapped box into box into box. If truth sets man free, he had pronounced in his advice to Marie, then lying—gentle lying—could help keep him free.

  An irritated Marie had fired back a three-sentence reply: The truth is this, Cole: What you wrote is pure bullshit. No lie. The son of a bitch is history—scalded history.

  Now, when he thought about it—when he took her letter from its safekeeping and again read her reply—he realized he had been writing about himself. He, too, had always been a liar—a gentle liar, he hoped, but still a liar.

  He had lied to myself. He had lied to students who wanted to become grand writers, or teachers, but would not. He had lied to friends who unwrapped their dreams before him—secret from secret from secret—and asked in thin, hopeful voices, What do you think? He had lied to strangers who needed assurance. But he had not lied to hurt or to destroy. He had lied to see a flash of relief in eyes, to hear a sigh of worth in throats. To him, it had been a small compromise for people who would find surrender inviting. Henry Fain. If he could have been with Henry Fain, could have lied to him by praising his work, Henry Fain might still be alive. If he was wrong, then he was wrong.

  Yet, he knew he was not alone.

  Everyone on earth lied in some degree—great or small.

  Moses Elder had lied.

  Moses Elder had contended that his sole purpose in obeying Marie’s deathwishes about her ashes being buried at the foot of the ancient grave of Daniel Breedlove, was professional.

  Awkward, yes, but professional, a matter of business.

  Cole knew there was more to it, could sense the cover-up of it in the way Moses had talked about Marie. Awe in his tone, a memory made gentle by time. He had said again—as he had said in Littlejohn Curry’s home—that Marie was a force. Hard to say no to that woman, was his statement, offered with a head-shake signifying surrender. It was a gesture Cole had recognized, one he had used many times in his consideration of Marie.

  Moses had talked of the day that he met with Marie and the Curry children in the garage of the rented house on Church Street.

  Scared me to death, he had said, and he had recalled walking through the neighborhood to go to the house. Had remembered a white woman working in her yard glaring at him as he walked past her home. It was a glare he had never been able to dismiss—mean, arrogant, threatening.

  Don’t know to this day why I even went over there, he had admitted. There was just something about her.

  What he did not say—the lie of it—was how profoundly Marie had affected him. H
ad hinted at it. Had said, Guess it was the first time I saw a white person caring about anybody with colored skin. It was a good lesson to learn.

  And Marie had lied. Or had ranted to him out of habit. She had vowed never to return to Overton after her impulsive visit in 1976, yet she had willed her remains to be shipped to Moses Elder with instructions for him to put them in an urn and to then bury them in a forgotten, untended cemetery. She had chosen the land she ridiculed to be the land of her resting—if resting came with death.

  Still, it did not matter. He knew where she was.

  Tanya was already seated in Arnie’s Place of Gathering when he arrived, reading from a paperback book with the pretentious title of Living a Life of Routine: How Habits Rule Us. She quickly closed it.

  So, she said. How are you?

  Good, he told her. You?

  Do you know we always use the same greeting for one another? she said.

  He smiled, reached for the book, held it up. It’s our routine.

  She shrugged. All right, you caught me. But it’s true. Sit down. I ordered coffee for you.

  You always do, he said. You can’t help it. Routine, you know.

  That’s enough, Cole, she said.

  He sat across from her, picked up the cup of coffee still steaming in front of him, tasted it. Strong, good.

  Did you do it? she asked. Did you finally finish? It’s been long enough.

  He handed her a manila envelope.

  This is it?

  He nodded.

  Do you mind if I read it now?

  I’d rather you wait, he said.

  All right, she replied. Then: Are you really glad to be back?

  I am, he told her. Yes.

  I was afraid we’d lost you, she confessed.

  And who would I have to irritate me if I’d stayed in Georgia? he teased.

  Amy, she said.

  Amy’s a sister. Sisters are sweet, kind people. At least, mine are.