Sing Them Home

by Stephanie Kallos

  Marital infidelity, yes. One hides those for obvious reasons.

  But the body’s truth?

  “He knows where all the bodies are buried,” they say, not only about assassins and hit men, but about anyone who has illicit knowledge of dastardly deeds. Embezzlers, civil servants on the take, crooked cops.

  Physicians, too, it turns out.

  When I revealed what I thought was happy news to Llewellyn tonight after putting the children to bed, his face was anything but happy.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He hemmed and hawed for a while, finally coming out with this: “Hope, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to have this baby.”

  The words—and his tone—chilled me so much that for a moment I couldn’t speak. “What?”

  “I just … you seem worn out so much of the time with just two. So frazzled and exhausted. How are you going to have the energy for another child?”

  “Are you saying I’m a bad mother?”

  “No! No, Hope, I’m not saying that at all. Please don’t get defensive.”

  I couldn’t believe it. “You’re telling me that you don’t think I should have our baby. What reaction do you think is appropriate?”

  “I’m just saying, think about how tired you are.”

  “That’s your argument? That’s ridiculous. There’s not a mother I know who doesn’t wish she could lie down for a couple of hours every day and take a nap.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No. I don’t, Llewellyn. What are you talking about?”

  In the silence, he got this look. I can hardly describe it. His face hardened in a way I’d never seen before. That was when I started to be afraid that he was hiding something, that something was really wrong.

  The phone rang—a convenient excuse for L. to cut short our discussion.

  “I have to go,” he said after he hung up. “We’ll talk about this later. Will you please call Viney? Let her know I’m going to need her tonight. We’ve got an emergency and I’m on my way.”

  He rushed out the door, leaving me here with my heart pounding.

  Hours later I’m still waiting for him to get home, holding my hand to my belly as I write this, trying not to imagine what it is about my having this baby that would make my husband terrified—for that was what the look on his face reflected.

  Fell asleep in the children’s room last night waiting to hear from L. He finally called around one A.M. to say that he and Viney were at the hospital in Lincoln with the family of a boy who’d been severely injured in a car accident. The boy was in surgery, they were awaiting news. Told me he’d call again later this morning.

  No mention of last night’s exchange, which didn’t surprise me.

  Got the kids off to school. When the phone rang again, it was Viney letting me know that they were still up in Lincoln. Llewellyn wanted to stay the afternoon, possibly all night, to be with the boy’s family and make sure he was stable.

  BULLSHIT! I wanted to shout, and yet calling into question the Good Doctor’s motives would be tantamount to blasphemy.

  “Viney, what’s wrong with me?”

  “What?” Viney sputtered.

  “Is there something wrong with me?” I repeated. “Physically?”

  “What do you mean?’

  “I’m pregnant again,” I said, and let the remark hang. There was just enough silence on the other end before she chirped, “Oh, Hope, that’s wonderful!” to make me realize that whatever Llewellyn knew, Viney did as well.

  I went on. “Llewellyn doesn’t want me to have it.”

  More silence.

  “Why, Viney? What wouldn’t Llewellyn want me to have this baby?”

  She started crying.

  “Oh, honey, I don’t know,” she said finally. “I can’t imagine why he’d say that. When he gets back from Lincoln, I’ll make sure he—”

  I hung up on her.

  Thus stonewalled by my best friend—who is such a terrible liar—and with my husband conveniently unavailable—I got in the car, sped into town, and sought out the only person I knew would answer my questions honestly.

  Dr. Williams was in his garage as usual, hunched over one of his creations, carefully, methodically applying brilliant glossy red enamel paint to the wings of a whirligig cardinal.

  All it took was that dear old gentleman saying “Hope! What a lovely surprise! Come in and let me fix us some tea” for me to start crying uncontrollably.

  After pulling myself together, I recounted Llewellyn’s odd reaction to my announcement, his comments about my fatigue. Dr. Williams looked genuinely puzzled. He asked if I minded answering some health-related questions, I said no, and he went on to inquire if I’d experienced anything besides fatigue, did I sometimes feel that the fatigue was debilitating, did it keep me from participating in the normal activities of daily life, had I experienced numbness in my limbs, changes in my vision? To which, of course, the answers were all “yes.”

  “Do you usually feel very well when you’re pregnant?” he asked.

  “Yes. I mean, aside from the miscarriages.”

  He nodded. “And in the months after birth, are you very tired?”

  “Yes, but who isn’t?” I replied.

  He nodded again. It was a long time before he spoke.

  “I suspect—and I cannot be sure, it would be terribly wrong of me to suggest that this is anything but an educated guess, but based upon what you’ve told me—the loss of feeling in your feet and legs and hands, the blurred vision you’ve experienced over the years, the sudden loss—and then return—of your vision yesterday morning, the way all these symptoms come and go, the way your fatigue is exacerbated by heat.... This constellation of findings indicates that you might be suffering from a neurological disease.”

  Constellation of findings. Lovely phrase.

  “Such as?” I prodded.

  “I couldn’t say. There are many things that would need to be ruled out.”

  “Name one.”

  He hesitated. “Well, MS for one. Multiple sclerosis.”

  I thought back to Larken’s birth, the OB’s persistent and annoying questions about my vision.

  “How long do you think Llewellyn has known something’s wrong?” I asked.

  Dr. Williams shrugged.

  “Did you know?”

  “No,” he said emphatically, and I could tell it was the truth.

  He tried to soften my anger, explaining that the medical ethics of these times dictate that physicians hide the truth when it comes to illnesses like this.

  “This was the case when I was a young doctor, too,” he said, “and when I was new to my practice, I withheld information from my patients as well. It takes time and experience to know when these rules need to be bent, or even ignored. I’m sure Llewellyn thought he was doing the right thing in keeping this from you, Hope. I’m sure this deceit on his part comes from a place of real love, from a desire to protect you.”

  That sounded about right, but it didn’t lessen my anger.

  “Is there any danger to the baby?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Is it inherited? Can I pass it on?”

  “No one thinks so, no.”

  “Why did you ask about my pregnancies?”

  “Some women with MS feel very well when they’re pregnant, their symptoms lessen or even disappear completely, but after they give birth the exacerbations come back worse than before. I’m sure that’s what Lwellyn is worried about.”

  I thanked Dr. Williams and left, and now I’m home, waiting, still not comprehending.

  What right did any of them have to hide this from me?

  Never mind “any of them”—the generalized world of ethics-adherent physicians. What I mean is my husband—and, it would seem, his nurse.

  All this time—years and years—the insidious march of the disease, as if the disease and I were not one and the same.

  I am the disease. I should never have been hidden f
rom myself.

  I am having this baby.

  I may never be able to forgive him.

  Chapter 22

  The Widow Finds Her Story

  There’s a special kind of pretending that goes on in small towns. It involves neither willful ignorance nor blindness. It is the opposite of gossip: a pretense of not-knowing.

  This pretending is what allows small-town people to continue living in such close proximity. How else could they mingle on a daily basis with the sinners among them? Without the practice of not-knowing, it wouldn’t be possible. Were a stranger to enter the societal cocoon of a not-knowing town such as Emlyn Springs and start asking questions like “Shouldn’t he be in jail?” or “Did they ever get married?” or “Has she put on some weight?” the answers will come back I can’t say, You’re asking the wrong person, You make a good point, or That’s a very interesting observation.

  This kind of forgetting can occur within an individual as well. After all, a single life might come to contain many identities, a whole community of selves one has inhabited over the course of, say, seventy-five years. In order for all those selves to cohabitate, one must occasionally direct the power of not-knowing inwardly; for example, should one self ask, When exactly did I start sleeping with my best friend’s husband? another self could answer with conscienable ease and genuine wonderment, Why, after she gave me permission to do so, of course! For years, Alvina Closs has managed internal conversations like this with perfect poise.

  But now she is the last surviving member of a charterless two-person club dedicated to the not-knowing about and abetting of certain burdensome domestic crimes. The other member of this club is gone, and this has left her with an aching loneliness.

  What’s the point? has been the dominant conversational question among the town of selves that constitute Alvina Closs.

  To which the not-knowing replies have been, Gosh, I can’t really say or You’re asking the wrong person.

  And so here she is: confined to a hospital bed miles from home, exhibiting symptoms that no X-ray can account for and no physician (except for Welly, of course) can diagnose.

  Of course it was a marriage, Gaelan said. How could it have been anything else?

  It is difficult, so difficult for the aggrieved to open themselves to the complexity of feeling that follows a loss—and many cannot. There is a commonly held misconception that we must only speak well of the dead, encountering them in our hearts and minds with abiding love and un-perturbed kindness, fabricating a revisionist view of personal history that excludes pain, suffering, and sin.

  And yet grief cannot proceed and healing cannot occur without a willingness to speak truthfully of the dead and of our relationship with them. Expressing the full range of feelings toward those who’ve abandoned us has a scouring effect—and a strengthening one, too; it allows us to stand with firmess on the terra incognita of a vastly reconfigured future—possibly a long one. “Till death do us part” is a terrible vow to force upon a married couple. Death doesn’t end a thing. What was imperfect in life will remain imperfect after death, whatever was unmended cannot be repaired, unuttered words will echo like a curse, unsaid words will become a cancer, and yet this must all be acknowledged and spoken of, in one’s own heart at least, if nowhere else.

  It wasn’t in 1976, when Hope told them they could.

  It wasn’t in 1967, when Wally Jr. died (no, not even then), although when she thinks about it, that could be when it started. It depends on how you look at it.

  One thing that’s sure: She made something of herself, by herself, after her husband died. Maybe that’s where it really began: widowed, without question, when she was thirty-one.

  There was grief, of course, but she was still peppery and strong-willed, a real ball of fire as Llewellyn Jones said. She’d been rebellious since childhood, a staunch nonconforming little girl who preferred jeans to dresses and who was mortified by tears—hers or anyone else’s. Most folks expected that she’d grow out of this in time, become more compliant. Maybe there were even some who believed that Alvina Closs had gotten her comeuppance when her husband died so sudden like that. And so young.

  But Viney refused to shrink to fit what the town expected of her: a stoic period of mourning during which she’d be the beneficiary of pitying looks, noodle casseroles, and visits by elderly church ladies spouting Bible verses; this followed by a decorous reentry into polite society via church socials, Fancy Egg Days dances, and St. David’s te bachs; and then eventually there would emerge some bland, flabby, balding male—a widower, a middle-aged bachelor, or one of those types who lives with his mother. He’d take her daughters out for ice cream a couple of times, toss a football around with Wally Jr., and expect that would be enough, because after all, as used goods and the thirtysomething mother of four she wasn’t much of a catch. She’d be so thankful for his kindness and fatherly instincts, his health benefits, his life insurance, his pension, and his paycheck that she’d willingly, gratefully take his arm at the front of the Bethel Welsh Methodist Church, wearing a modest veiled pillbox hat and a matronly suit in pink or pale yellow or even off-white with matching pumps, say I do with a look of utter admiration, and spread her legs whenever called upon to do so.

  No. Not that.

  Never that.

  Long before Ms. magazine found its way into her life and the term feminist became common conversational currency, Alvina Closs understood that, although the hand that rocks the cradle might indeed be the hand that rules the world, it doesn’t hurt if that hand’s owner also earns the paycheck.

  She married and had her first baby at seventeen—not because she got knocked up, as the saying goes (and goodness knows there were plenty of girls of Viney’s generation for whom that was the story). She was a smart girl, a nice girl, and she was a virgin on her wedding night. Getting married young and having babies early was what she chose. And she wasn’t about to stop making choices just because chance—or fate, or God, or whatever you want to call it—had thrown her a curveball. As Viney has aged, she’s been amazed by how many people go through life without making choices—as if that’s any way to live! She can’t stand them.

  And so after Waldo died she chose again—to go back to school, to become a nurse. She stood firm and proud on the rightness of that decision, even though it meant sacrifice: She went into debt, took out a loan; her children had to become more responsible, more self-sufficient.

  She studied nights after the kids were in bed, and there was terrible weariness during that time, the house constantly messy, meals made from boxes or cans. But there was always love. And she knew that at some point Wally Jr. and the girls would understand what she’d done. Maybe even admire it.

  On graduation day, they all stood together: Viney and her four kids and Hope and Welly and their two toddlers. There’s proof: a photograph buried in a box somewhere in the basement. Maybe she’ll try to find it, get it framed.

  There were three happy unencumbered years after that. She had a dear friend in Hope and a fine employer in Welly—although he was Dr. Jones then in the office and Llewellyn in social settings. Not only was she his nurse; she ran the office, too, since he couldn’t afford a full-time clerical salary.

  So it was Viney who sat at the front desk when the bell jingled that afternoon. She didn’t look up right away; she was doing the books. Her first thought: Why would two such healthy-looking young men need to see a doctor? She didn’t even register the fact that they were wearing uniforms, not right away; it was cold that November. They’d removed their hats but were still wearing their overcoats.

  Her history from that moment through the next few months is a construct, a collage of images and linguistic fragments—forward operations base, Dak To, recon mission for armed escort, engaged the gun, hit in the aft, tail boom separated, explosion, fire, unable to extract both pilots, graves registration team, metal and ashes, bone fragments, teeth, but nothing more, nothing more.

  One of the youngest pilots to
die in combat.

  A folded flag, a grateful nation.

  Eventually she started to borrow images from other Gymanfas—because she wasn’t present at Wally Jr.’s, not really. When she attended other funerals, she would think, it must have been this way for Wally and from there she assembled something, a fleshed-out fabrication that now passes for a memory of her son’s burial.

  Welly sang at the church service. That’s one thing that really happened. He had the most beautiful voice.

  So in time she was able to believe that she saw her son buried, but she was never able to reconstruct his death, and that was crazy, it was unacceptable, because to have been present at Wally Jr.’s birth and his Gymanfa and his funeral but not his death just made no sense whatsoever.

  Welly started taking her with him on emergency calls. Her children were old enough, they could be left alone, so he would pick her up, often in the middle of the night because most of the carnage occurred after closing time.

  There were so many car accidents in those days, more than now, so many drunk drivers. This was before the admen got together and invented all those catchy PSA phrases: watch out for the other guy, friends don’t let friends drive drunk, be a designated driver, buzzed driving is drunk driving. Back then, everyone drank and drove, and when parents spent the next day in the bathroom throwing up, they told their children it was the flu, and of course those children watched carefully and eventually learned the truth and so drove drunk, too, and wrapped their cars around trees and on those nights Viney would get a phone call and it would be Llewellyn saying he was on his way, he needed her, he needed her, although in the beginning he didn’t really. She just stood nearby, a numb spectator handing him whatever he required, her sangfroid passing for what it was not but counteracting any hysteria on the scene and there was a lot of that.

  Welly always pretended to be sleepy on the way back home. Would you mind driving, Viney? he’d ask. I’m dead on my feet.

  She didn’t mind. She was never sleepy, even though she never slept. How could she when all the lights had to stay on? She couldn’t let Wally Jr. come home to a dark house.