Duet for Three

by Joan Barfoot

  “Your trunk,” she pants.

  “For heaven’s sake, that’s far too big for you to manage alone. You might at least have waited for Frances to help you.”

  “Well, it’s not too big or I couldn’t have done it.” Under the weariness there’s pride.

  This blue hump-backed trunk, with its leather straps and handles and brass catches — Aggie remembers it being lifted into the back of the buggy as she and Neil left her home, and turning around in her seat waving over it. This trunk is what caused the scratches on the floor of the hallway inside the front door when he dragged it in. She doesn’t remember who could have put it in the attic, or when. And now here it is, making another appearance, looking a bit daunting and making more scratches on the floor.

  “Oh my,” she says, “that really takes me back.”

  “Mmhmm. I’m going to have a bath now, Mother, unless you want to go to bed first.”

  For the moment, however, it might be unwise to move. She shakes her head. “No, you go ahead.”

  All of this, all this past — it crowds a whole life, an entire eighty years, into this room, making it feel cramped, like her heart struggling to pound out a space for itself against the pressing flesh.

  Funny, that old trunk sitting right beside the big colour television set, the one they bought when the bakery was shut down. She hopes she isn’t one of those old people who seize on things like that, to point out how much times have changed. But still, how times have changed, her times, between that trunk and that television.

  “It’ll be nice for you during the day,” June said when they got the colour set, replacing the old black-and-white they’d bought when Frances was eight or nine because all her other friends’ homes had TV and if she didn’t have an ordinary family, she might at least have that. A retreat into television, at least in daylight, however, is Aggie’s idea of sin: uneventful, passive, dry, and passionless. Even in the evenings it’s not turned on very often. What she sees now, looking at the screen, is her own self looking back, a furry grey reflection.

  Between the day the trunk and she arrived here and the day the television was delivered came the bookshelves. There are more, added over the years, than the teacher started with, and they’re loaded now with her own books. Aggie remembers thinking she’d maybe read some of her favorites again someday, perhaps when she was eighty. Now she wonders why she had ever thought she would manage that when there are still so many stories she hasn’t read, so many facts she doesn’t know. It makes her feel a little frantic.

  Maybe when she’s ninety the time will come for rereading.

  Ninety? What’s she thinking of? It’s a miracle this body has held up this long; she can hardly expect another decade out of it. If she were a car, she’d be a collector’s item, worth a fortune; although she would also have to be restored with some care, and probably with a fair number of spare parts. “I’m just going to drive her into the ground,” people say about their cars. Well, here she is, an old model driving herself into the ground.

  Poor old lumbering, graceless, unwieldy, wrinkled, crumpled body, with its aches here and unexpected frailties there and the bits inside that are breaking down, and its terrible anchoring bulk. It’s one thing to cling on, trying to fend off death, but consider the alternative. Who would want to be Methuselah? Or how dreadful, to find out suddenly that she’s really only at, say, a halfway point. Imagine another eighty years. What on earth would she do with them?

  At least death tightens up events, gives them the context of a cut-off point.

  What a peculiar thought for someone terrified of putting her head back and letting go. What the hell does she want, anyway: life or death? What a choice. Another joke, she supposes, although at the moment she’s not inclined to laugh.

  Oddly, considering that Frances lived here the least length of time, there are more signs of her in this room than of either Aggie or June. There’s the framed oil painting on the far wall over the sofa, done by Frances when she was about thirteen. June gave her a paint-by-number set for Christmas, and Frances painstakingly did this single landscape, with its little purple flowers blooming beside a stream, and big grey tree limbs hanging down. Aggie had it framed. Instead of doing any more paint-by-numbers, Frances used up the left-over oils by mixing the colors. Eventually they got over-mixed, so that what started out as brilliant slashes of colour on her little canvasses just turned muddy. Frances said, “I always go too far,” and threw them out.

  On the same wall, over a bit, is a gallery of photographs of Frances. Well, not exactly a gallery: just three. Formal, so they have a posed, self-conscious look. Even the baby one, with Frances’s pudgy arms propped on a cushion, her hands cupping her chin, looks like someone masquerading as a baby. Then she’s graduating from public school, in a stiff pink dress that hints of breasts beginning. That was when she had her first nylon stockings, and her first shoes with modest heels. To the right of that one is her leaving university, in gown and cap, the latter perched precariously on sleek long, straight hair that was then in fashion. Under the gown, as Aggie recalls, was a skirt that was a daring five inches above the knee. June complained, but she hadn’t seen anything yet. A few months later, Frances’s skirts were so short she couldn’t bend over, and some of her outfits had matching panties, just in case.

  Another, much younger Frances gave Aggie that little green ceramic deer on the windowsill. It’s actually a vase, although there aren’t any flowers in it. That deer’s been on that sill since Frances was nine. It has a long, arched neck and thin, frail-looking legs, but somehow they’ve managed not to break it in all these years. It came to Aggie for her birthday, filled with violets from the garden, picked by Frances. “Isn’t he beautiful, Grandma?” she’d asked.

  What did a child’s eye see? Frances loved that green deer. “It’s for you, but do you think,” and she was hesitant, picking her words, “that I could have it? Someday?”

  By “someday” Frances obviously meant when Aggie died. What a tactful little girl. “Of course you can, pudding. It’ll be all yours.”

  She must remind Frances of that this weekend. Probably they’ll laugh. Frances’s tastes have changed, and the deer is a poor old thing.

  Is there anything else Aggie promised her? What else is there, and in all these boxes, too? Which parts of her grandmother’s and her mother’s past might Frances care to take away with her?

  Or, what parts might surprise her?

  Aggie suspects, actually, that Frances dislikes any idea of things in this house that are unknown. Mysteries. She must have an image of them that she carries off with her and comes back to, but Aggie would bet it’s an image of them frozen. Like one of those old science-fiction movies, in which the inhabitants of a town are locked by evil-doers from space into a single moment, so that they’re caught licking an ice-cream cone that cannot melt, or raising a foot to kick a perpetually cowering dog, or holding someone in an embrace that can’t be felt, and there they are, ridiculous and helpless, while the invaders carry on their crimes. There is always a hero who retains the power of movement, sees the truth, and is out there fighting. That, Aggie supposes, would be Frances: the one allowed to move.

  Well, maybe that’s not so untrue, or so unfair. Sometimes Aggie’s events seem, even to her, to have been terribly abstract. Given another eighty years, then, she might go out instead of in. She might pare down her body and take it in different directions. She might hunt around for pleasure and experience.

  She does not have another eighty years. She has only a little time, and even less before Frances comes through the front door like the wind, pushing their silences back into corners, brightening rooms as if the light bulbs have been changed. The light she will bring this time now seems ominously surgical, however.

  It is quite a new experience, to be afraid of Frances. And even more afraid of the ways she may betray herself.

  What’s she
doing, being afraid? Damned if she will be. Let them take their best shots. She’s stood up to worse than this in her time.

  But that’s a lie. There’s nothing worse than this sort of creeping decay, leaving her so vulnerable inside this monument of flesh she’s built.

  Nevertheless, she finds herself patting her belly, as if it’s an upset child she can still find ways to comfort.

  TWENTY-THREE

  June’s arms, legs, and back hurt. What an enormous job, getting all that out of the attic and downstairs, especially the trunk, which almost got away from her. She might have been crushed beneath it, or pulled off her feet by it, struggling with its weight; she is now amazed by her courage, or her obliviousness to the danger at the time. Several of the boxes, perhaps containing books, were heavy too, and others, while light enough, were oversized and rattley.

  Two things, however, were accomplished; the drive to get the job done, and the difficulty of doing it, have kept her mind focused, so she hasn’t had spare energy for feeling badly, going into the front room and seeing Aggie sagging, looking vague. Also, in a box marked clearly “June: papers” she found the crucial envelope. Sorting through, she also found such things as insurance policies and old bank-books. The insurance policies shouldn’t have been up there anyway, and the rest could go in the trash. She felt, however, a peculiar stab tearing up the manila envelope, which she didn’t bother to open. No point in looking at it all again, but still, it seems like another ending, when there are already so many endings going on. A bit overwhelming.

  How much can really be thrown out? It begins to look ominous, all piled up in the front room: so much past. Perhaps too much.

  But not her own past, necessarily. The few things of hers she has stored have been clearly, efficiently marked. So most of this must be Aggie’s, and perhaps a few of Frances’s things as well. But then, Aggie is eighty years old. A lengthy past adds up, in boxes.

  Not much of a future, though.

  June feels her will faltering, but that’s probably only weariness. She slips to her knees beside her bed to pray. The thing is, what to ask for? But then, mustn’t ask. Thy will be done. If only that meant she could stay in bed for the weekend, letting God work His will downstairs with Frances and Aggie so that when she went down on Sunday night, everything would have been settled in her absence. Fine for God to have His will done, but it takes so much participation; He requires speech and action. All the hard parts she has to do herself. Like being a construction worker, digging foundations and building up bricks for some architect who just sits back in an air-conditioned office, drawing lines on paper.

  But who’s she so angry at? It sounds like God, but surely not. On the other hand, it’s not Aggie, either. Aggie brings on irritation, impatience, sadness; a dull sort of hurt, perhaps, but not a sharp rage like this. So who else is there? Well, Frances. June does have a sense of an enemy in the air, a hostility seeping about. But Frances isn’t even here. Maybe it’s what she is capable of doing when she does arrive, the effects she may have. Her visit is being depended on for something, a decision of some kind. June herself is counting on it, and Aggie is unnerved.

  But who gives Frances control over final words? Who says matters of such importance are up to her?

  This is all unreasonable, of course, and June does not feel it is like herself to be unreasonable. She’s only tired, and is sure things will look different in the morning.

  She doesn’t often remember dreams, and those she does are generally the bad ones. Tonight she has an awful one. Aggie is dead; and June is at the funeral home, except it’s the funeral home grown huge: a cavernous golden room, bigger even than a church, cool and empty, except for Aggie in her casket and June standing beside it. The two of them, even Aggie, are tiny in the enormous space.

  Aggie is dead, and June can’t move to turn away. Even her blood and her breath seem to have stopped.

  Aggie’s face is smaller than it was when she was alive, and uncreased. Not young, not as if years have been stripped off, because there’s the white hair, except it’s long again, and wound around her head. There are people outside the room, waiting, and Frances is calling out and hammering on the door, but first there is some interpretation June has to make of those fixed features of her mother. Death, however, seems to be difficult to decipher.

  The bones are surprising. It’s years since they’ve been noticeable, but now the flesh has fallen back, leaving the nose distinct and almost pointed, and the jaw firm. Something about the jaw? Set with determination, but, without the padding, looking exposed and vulnerable and maybe even brave. It is possible that she is about to sit up and tell June just what she thinks of things, in a clear voice carrying once and for all the answer to some vital question; although June can’t think just what that question is. There is also a slight lift at the edges of the mouth, as if Aggie might be on the verge of an embrace, anticipating tenderness.

  Time is gone. It seems June might have been here for days, staring, trying to discern the message in the dead face of her mother.

  But it’s not fair. Aggie is dead, so what can there be for June to wait for? It’s a cruel tease, she thinks. Too late.

  Is that it, then? Because suddenly she can move, and it feels terrible that it’s too late. She hears her own voice crying out.

  That was in the dream, but startled awake, she thinks she can hear the echo of a sound in the air. Could she have called out loud?

  Like the sound, the image of the dream lingers: Aggie’s face, and her own loss. Something she couldn’t find out, because it was too late.

  She feels like a child left behind.

  And now, more alertly awake, she is reminded of stories of women in wartime, waking violently in the middle of the night, hearing their soldier husbands calling out to them, and learning later that that was the very moment of their death.

  It only takes an instant to flick on the lamp, pull on her robe, and notice the time: four in the morning. She slips down the hall to Aggie’s room and cautiously opens the door.

  It seems Aggie has fallen asleep reading. The light is still on, and a book has fallen on her chest. Her head is drooping and her eyes are closed. Her face is big and jowly and frowning a little, not like the one in the dream. June sees the book rising and falling with her mother’s breathing. A false alarm, then.

  In the dream, this face contained a secret. Aggie merely asleep may look more helpless, but there’s nothing mysteriously knowing about her.

  June sees that Aggie will have a stiff neck in the morning, lying that way, but hesitates to disturb her. Shutting the door softly, she pads back to her own room, where she falls asleep again a little uneasy that the awful dream may come back.

  It doesn’t, as far as she knows, but in the morning she has a tiny headache. Aggie’s sheets are dry. Frances will be here late tonight. Things of one kind and another are piling up.

  June rubs her arms, and Aggie says, “You look tired.”

  “I am. All that lifting and lugging last night, and then I didn’t sleep very well.”

  “I didn’t, either. At least, I don’t feel rested.”

  Actually, when Aggie woke up she had the impression she had overslept. The room was so bright, it might be midday. There was a strange weight on her chest, her neck was stiff, and her back hurt.

  She also had an extraordinary sense of dread.

  Oh God, that would be Frances coming tonight. Or not Frances herself, but what she signifies: something drastic and irrevocable. Whatever it turns out to be won’t be up to Aggie. Will it be up to June either?

  Aggie regards her daughter more closely. She has noticed Frances’s grey hairs, but has not paid particular attention to June’s. She has seen that Frances’s body is not quite what it was in the days when she lay in the backyard in her bathing suit, getting a tan; that there are pinchings and drawings, small saggings beginning, little pucker
ings above the breasts. But how long ago did that start happening to June as well, without Aggie noticing? How drawn June looks this morning; how hollow.

  It isn’t fair, it really isn’t.

  What, though, does fairness have to do with self-protection? And, anyway, what would June do with freedom, which in any case she could have had at any time along the line. What might make either of them think that this time she might grasp it properly?

  “What would you do without me?” Aggie asks abruptly. “Have you thought about it?” She has a feeling she’s asked this same question before, in another context.

  “Of course I’ve thought about it.” June turns from the stove, pan of scrambled eggs still in her hand — angry?

  “Well then?”

  She turns away again. “I’m not sure. But something. Just,” in a rising voice, “to be on my own.”

  “Do you feel I’ve stopped you? I’ve thought and thought, you know, and I can’t see really that I have.”

  “I suppose not, no.” Tone flattened, June spoons the scrambled eggs onto their two plates. “It’s just, it’s always something. You, or Frances, or having to go to school or do the shopping or clean the house or go to the bank. Something’s always in the way. I can’t ever see my way clear.”

  Well, who ever can? Anyway, is June’s wish to be clear, or just blank? Still, Aggie nods, thinking she might almost understand what June seems to have in mind: peace, and no demands.

  June might even like that for a day or two. Not likely longer, though. Aggie smiles.

  June sighs. “Do you want to start sorting through that stuff today while I’m at school?”

  “Probably not. I might as well wait for you.”

  How will Aggie spend the day then? It’s not like her, June thinks, to sound so listless; and not even bothering to bake for Frances.

  “Then,” June says briskly, “we’ll tackle it as soon as I get home and try to be done by the time Frances gets here.”