Crazy in Love

by Luanne Rice

  Father Clarke had a great mop of red hair. Honora had thought him a terrific young priest, handsome and intelligent. When it came time in the mass for the eulogy, he smiled directly at me and Clare and Pem.

  “Honora Swift never came to me in the usual way,” he said, and I knew he meant confession—Honora had a horror of going to confession. “But once in a while she’d pass by and ask if I’d like to take a walk. Who would turn down a walk with Honora? I’ve lived in Black Hall for five years, and she showed me things I never knew existed—like a beaver’s dam on Gill River and the house of a lady who collects nuts and charges admission to see them. Everyone who knew Honora knows what I’m talking about. She was interested in everything.

  “But nothing interested her so much as her family—her daughters. On these walks she would tell me about Georgie and Nick, Clare and Donald, and Eugene and Casey. Every detail of their lives concerned her. From Georgie’s bay profile to Clare’s brownie recipe. ‘Too sweet, Father,’ she said to me one day. ‘Clare should use bittersweet chocolate. And she needs more moisture. They’re dry, Father—her brownies are dry.’ ”

  I glanced at Clare, who had started to cry.

  Father Clarke was going on about Honora, about her endless fascination with the family. Every anecdote was on the money—his stories were so vivid, he had conjured Honora then and there, at her own funeral. But I knew Clare’s tears were caused not by the stories’ content, but by the fact that stories were all we had left of our mother.

  A gentle cross breeze blew through the open doors and windows, but the sound of people fanning themselves with prayer books filled the church. Nick held my sweaty hand in his own. A brass section from the Hartt School played “Ave Maria,” then “Galway Bay.”

  Back at the house we fed people we knew well and others we hardly knew at all. The neighbors came.

  “Black Hall won’t be the same without her,” the librarian said.

  Dr. Orion, now stooped and gray, held my hand and told me how Woods Hole had changed after we had moved away. “Your mother gave the place class,” he said, and his apparent sincerity left me with my mouth open.

  “She always said you considered her the Painted Lady of Meteorology,” Clare accused.

  Dr. Orion chuckled. “Some of us did, standing in our labs, watching her speed away in that black limousine. She was a pip, but she was a dedicated scientist.”

  At that, tears sprang to my eyes and Clare’s.

  “Thank you,” we said.

  John and Helen Avery had been talking to Nick. They made their way through the crowd to me. “We’re so sorry,” they said. “I remember my mother’s funeral,” Helen said, shaking her head. We stared into each other’s eyes, remembering that dinner at my hotel. She wore a different caftan of black and orange.

  “You were so young when your mother died,” I said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Helen said. “It was hell for us, and it will be hell for you and your sister. A mother is a mother.”

  “I’ve told Nick to take some time off,” John said. “Until you’re ready to let him go. Jean has things under control in London.”

  “Oh,” I said, wondering how Nick felt about that.

  “You be brave,” John said, giving me a big hug.

  Aunt Kat’s oldest son had put on weight. He stood with his arm around Pem, reminiscing with her about the old days, the many happy Fourths of July he had spent at Black Hall. She laughed, nodding her head, leaning into his soft body. He walked her across the room to me, tilted his head, said, “An era gone by,” as if he had a lot of practice, knowing just what to say at funerals.

  I nodded earnestly. “So true,” I said.

  “Who’s the bird?” Pem asked, watching him head for the buffet table.

  “That’s John, Aunt Kat’s son,” Clare said. We hadn’t seen him for years. Pem regarded him long and hard.

  “He got hit with the ugly stick,” she said.

  “So true,” Clare said.

  “Will this be over soon?” I asked.

  “Depends on how hungry they are,” Clare replied. We watched people take bits of baked ham, potatoes au gratin, jellied salad. It seemed vaguely mysterious that they would accept our hospitality at a time like this, or that we would offer it. A hundred conversations filled the room. We heard the name “Honora” repeated thousands of times, even when they thought we weren’t listening. Everyone admired the view from her windows, the architecture of our houses, the beauty of her daughters and grandsons, the pity of her mother’s decline. Clare and I stood by the banister, taking it in. Pem leaned against the fireplace’s cool stone. Donald was helping Eugene and Casey and some of the relatives’ children fly a kite.

  “I don’t think that’s too appropriate, do you?” Clare asked.

  “Why not? They’re little and bored. Remember how we felt at funerals?”

  “I don’t feel so different right now,” Clare said.

  “Neither do I,” I said, checking my watch, wishing everyone would go. Clare went outside to help with the kite.

  I nearly fainted when I looked up and saw Mark Constable coming toward me. He clutched my hand. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “I saw it in the paper.”

  “No, I don’t mind,” I said, astonished because I had never expected to see him again.

  “I’m sorry about your mother. I feel . . . I don’t know, connected to her. She had her heart attack that day we were together in New York.”

  “She had another one,” I said, not wanting Mark to feel too connected to anything as important as my mother’s death.

  “I’m going back to the Middle East after all,” he said.

  For an instant I felt the wild thrill of panic, the thought that I was driving him back to the war zone.

  “They gave me a call, they need me there,” he said, “and I’m ready to go.”

  I placed my hands on his shoulders, kissed his lips lightly. “Godspeed,” I said, and he was gone.

  Nick came to me from across the room. “He’s leaving for Beirut,” I said. Nick just slid his arm around my shoulders and nodded.

  Funerals are a wonderful distraction. They are like giving a big party, only none of the guests expect much from the hosts except grief. You plan the service, choose the coffin, call the caterer, decide on the hymns. I looked around, wondering whether Honora would have approved of her funeral. She would have liked Father Clarke’s eulogy, and the fact her old colleagues from Woods Hole had come. But mainly she’d be thinking of us—me and Clare. Worrying that it was too much strain for us. “Sweetie,” she might have said to me, “just get it over with.”

  “Everyone wanted Pem to have a drink,” Donald said after everyone had left.

  “I think they thought I was mean, insisting she drink only juice and soda,” Clare said, “but to hell with them. I couldn’t stand another apparition of Georgie the Holy Mother.”

  “It’s over,” Nick said.

  “Thank heavens it’s over,” I said.

  But it was just beginning.

  17

  HONORA WAS NOWHERE. HER BODY WAS planted in the cemetery bordered by the Gill and Laurel rivers, the closest we could get her to the water. Her soul had gone to heaven, if you believed in heaven. But her spirit was gone from Bennison Point. She was absent from every conversation. Clare and I would be talking, and we would pause at places where Honora would have wanted to comment. One morning before dawn I wakened to thunder and lightning, and I worried because Honora wouldn’t call to tell Nick not to fly.

  “You can’t fly today,” I said, shaking him.

  “Maybe the storm will pass,” he mumbled, still asleep. An hour later, when his alarm rang, the sun shone brightly.

  Every morning Nick and Donald chattered across the waves in the seaplane, waving at me and Clare standing in Honora’s front yard. Together we walked to Honora’s house, where Nick and I were staying, to fix breakfast for Pem and the boys. Then we would dress Pem, and Clare would go home to
her house. One of us would phone, or we would run across the yards to visit, several times a day. I tried to pull together the pieces I had been working on for the Swift Observatory, but I couldn’t concentrate. I stopped thinking about my baby. All my energy went into missing Honora. I tried to remember the things we had talked about the last time I saw her. Clare and I compared conversations we had had with her, excursions we had taken with her. At night I lay awake feeling that once my life had been rich and now it was poor.

  I kissed Nick until he woke up. “Hold me,” I said.

  “What is it?” he asked kindly. He wasn’t getting enough sleep these nights, but I couldn’t stop myself.

  “I’m scared. I’m afraid of dying.”

  “We’re not dying,” he said.

  “But we will someday.”

  There was nothing he could say to that, but I wouldn’t let him go back to sleep. I couldn’t stop worrying. I began to worry with a vengeance: about plane crashes, ptomaine, shark attacks, aneurysms. Danger from without and danger from within the body; Honora had been killed by her own heart. I thought of all the terrible things she had feared. She had worried the family might be torn apart by natural disaster or nuclear war. Didn’t that mean she feared death? I lay awake thinking of her last minutes alive, much as I had thought of my father treading water in the North Sea. Had she known what was happening to her? Had she been afraid?

  That week we had several dinners with the Mackens, as if we were leery of letting one another out of sight. Pem poked listlessly at her food. Once Eugene asked if we were sure Honora wasn’t coming back, and Clare snapped, “We’re sure,” making him cry. Donald and Nick talked about their work. Nick was handling his part of the London deal from New York. But how well could he handle it? Everything familiar seemed to totter: Nick was worrying about his work, Eugene and Casey were worried about their mother’s bad humor, everyone worried about Pem.

  One night rain beat down on the roof and fogged the windows. “She’s not eating,” I said after Pem left the table without saying a word. “Not even sandwiches.”

  “She’s depressed,” Nick said.

  “Very depressed,” Clare said. “I’m not sure she knows where she is or who we are. She doesn’t respond at all.”

  At that, the four of us followed Pem into the living room, made her identify each of us. “You’re Georgie, you’re Clare, you’re the boy, you’re the boy,” she said.

  Satisfied, we returned to the table. “We’ll have to do something about her soon,” Nick said.

  “Like what?” I asked. “Because if you’re talking about a nursing home, forget it. Honora decided Pem would live here for the rest of her life. In fact, it was her last wish.”

  “Hey, don’t talk to me like I’m your enemy,” Nick said darkly.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We have everything under control,” Clare said. “Georgie and I are sharing responsibilities, and we’ve arranged to hire a nurse.”

  “I’m looking forward to moving back into our own house,” Nick said.

  “I can’t blame you for that, especially with the baby coming,” Donald said.

  “I’ll always be so happy Honora was with me when I heard about the baby,” I said, beginning to cry, my hand straying to my stomach.

  “So will I,” Nick said, smiling into my eyes.

  “Mommy, Pem smells funny,” Eugene called. Our noses twitching, we sniffed our way into the living room. Standing in front of Pem, Nick and Donald gagged. Everyone formed a wide circle around me, Clare, and Pem. Horrified, they watched as we tilted her, examined her seat.

  “Honora always dreaded this day,” I said to Clare, feeling as though I might vomit.

  “This is much worse than urination,” Clare agreed. “I’ve changed many diapers, but it doesn’t seem right to have to change my grandmother.”

  “Pem!” we shouted into her ear, rousing her from a deep stupor.

  “Huh?” she asked, startled.

  “Come on.” We led her to the bathroom. By now both Clare and I were choking on the smell. “Don’t come into the kitchen,” I warned the others; the idea of closing the bathroom door seemed impossible.

  “Why couldn’t this have happened before dinner?” Clare asked.

  Pem had sat in her own excrement, and it covered her entire rump, her underpants, and parts of her dress.

  “Burn these,” Clare said, when we had gotten the clothes off.

  “I didn’t do that, I didn’t do that,” Pem protested. “Who put that there?”

  “You did it—it’s okay,” Clare said.

  “You’re a goddamned liar,” Pem said. “Oh, I’ll smash you.” She made a fist and wound up for the punch, but I grabbed her hand.

  “Come on, get into the tub,” I said.

  “I am so fucking sick of seeing my grandmother’s boobs,” Clare said between her teeth.

  “Shut up—you think I like it?” I said, straining to support Pem as we lowered her into the tub.

  “You shut up! Can’t I say what I think?”

  “Oh, you’re freezing me!” Pem cried.

  Clare had one foot in the tub for purchase as she sprayed warm water on Pem’s dirty back. “This is really vile,” she said.

  “Pem, we’ll give you a martini when you get out,” I said.

  “That nurse better get here soon. Can she start tomorrow?”

  “Monday,” I said. “Can you imagine Mom doing this all alone? How could we have let her do it? No wonder she—”

  “If you say ‘No wonder she had a heart attack,’ I’ll kill you,” Clare said, standing up straight, one foot still in the tub. She held the spray nozzle like a weapon. “I really will. We had no idea how bad Pem was because Mom didn’t want us to know. If you hadn’t walked in on that bath scene, we wouldn’t have known until this minute. If she wanted help, she would have asked for it. But oh, no! Honora and Pem, the closed corporation.”

  “Clare, you bitch,” I said. “If that’s the way you feel, why don’t you pack up and get out of the bathroom. I’ll take care of Pem.” I grabbed for the hose.

  She sprayed it straight into my face. The hot water made me blink, and I reached out to slap my sister. Pem, enthralled by the fight, was splashing us with filthy water.

  “Selfish pig!” Clare screeched. “You want to do everything yourself.”

  “You’re just jealous because Honora told me about Mrs. Billings instead of you,” I yelled, scratching her, trying to hurt her. She grabbed my hair and twisted until I screamed.

  “Ouch!” Clare said, ducking to swat Pem. “She’s pinching my ankle,” she explained, and I joined forces with Clare to pry Pem’s claw-fingers loose.

  “What the hell—” Nick said, grabbing me. I saw Donald grab Clare and in one motion lift her away from the tub.

  “Hee, hee,” Pem laughed, as if she hadn’t had so much fun in months.

  Nick and Donald gagged from the stench, both spellbound by the naked Pem.

  “What are we doing here?” Donald asked, but he helped fill the tub with clean water.

  When Pem was clean, powdered, and dry, we put her to bed. Then Clare, Nick, Donald, and I took a cleansing swim. Although it was September and the air chilly with falling rain, the water was as warm as it had been all summer.

  “Clare, I’m sorry,” I said, breathless with amazement at all that had happened.

  “Me too.” We kissed, bobbing underwater for a second. “I think I went crazy. It hit me, giving Pem that bath. I’m just so sad. About Honora, about Pem too. It’s just so sad.”

  “It’s so sad,” I said, and then the four of us were silent, treading water in the bay of Bennison Point that drizzly September night.

  “SHE’S A TYRANT,” Clare said of the nurse. “A regular Tartar.” We were sitting at Honora’s kitchen table, drinking coffee while the nurse dressed Pem upstairs. This distracted me from Nick’s work troubles. The tender offer had wound up, as predicted, on Thursday; Jean, not Nick, had handled the clo
sing and attended the closing dinner. While Nick was in New York, tying up the tender offer’s loose ends and going to meetings for a new deal, Clare and I had charge of training the nurse.

  “I twig your lay,” I said, nodding my head. “She certainly makes herself right at home, doesn’t she?”

  Glumly we surveyed the changes she had made to the kitchen: photos of her family, total strangers to us, were attached to the refrigerator. Cartons of her favorite granola, her favorite pretzels, her favorite spaghetti cluttered the counters. When I had summoned my courage and asked her to please put them out of sight, she had said leaving them out made her feel at home. Most hideous of all, she called Pem “Shortcake.”

  “She’s not even a registered nurse,” Clare said. “She’s not qualified to give injections, administer medication, anything like that.”

  “Clare, Pem isn’t sick. She doesn’t need medication.”

  “But we’re paying all that money.”

  “Imagine the alternative—” Pem in a home.

  We heard them descending the stairs. Loretta Bryant, tall with a blond bun and a jutting lower jaw, dressed in a snug sea-green uniform, preceded Pem into the kitchen. Pem followed like a sullen child. When she caught sight of me and Clare, she stuck out her tongue at Loretta’s back.

  “Good morning, ladies,” Loretta sang to the tune of “Good Night, Ladies.”

  “Good morning,” we chirped back, trying not to laugh.

  “Let’s see. Hot cereal, buttered toast, some nice orange juice—how does that sound, Shortcake?”

  Pem shrugged, settling herself at the breakfast table. White salve covered the sores on her scalp. Loretta’s unfortunate manner notwithstanding, she was taking good care of our grandmother.

  Loretta bustled around for a few minutes before I noticed her lips were pinched. She kept glancing at me, as if she had something to say. Finally she stopped, her hands on her broad hips. “I understand that the family wants to spend time with the old ones,” she said, “but I have to do my job.”