Happy People Live Here

by C. Sean McGee

9B

  “My husband, he’s useless” confided a woman in the group, Fiona, looking anything but spiteful or convicting. In fact, she merely looked uninvolved, as if she were reading a bus time table or stating a trivial fact.

  “I mean, I love him, I do, unconditionally you know, but he just doesn’t understand. He’s like all those nurses at the hospital. You know that whole, suck it up, and stop crying about it, you need to just get over it, that whole type of thing. I remember the nurse dropped this pamphlet on my lap when she came to take away the breakfast trays. And it was so casual like so, ‘who cares?’ And I sat there and I watched my husband just lean over, pick up the pamphlet and he sat back in his chair, eating the last of my crumpet and reading that thing like it was a brochure or something. I mean, I had just lost my baby and there he was, picking stale bread from his teeth and just casually listing things from this pamphlet on how I’m feeling and what I’m gonna go through like we’re in a hotel and he’s just browsing over our itinerary. I just...”

  The woman’s hands were curled and stretched out in front of her as if she had her them locked around the neck of someone she loved and her face, it was tensed in way that the lines etched upon them, read of the treachery and violation done to her, that of which she could not say in words.

  Her husband sat beside her. He had been clenching her hand throughout the entire meeting. They had walked in together. And they had sat down side by side. And the woman and her husband, they had sat, hand in hand and listening to the sadness that spoke from each tongue, as the other couples around the room openly grieved the sudden and tragic loss of their children.

  Some spoke of hanging up the phone and thinking, how quiet everything seemed. And they spoke of how deafening it was, having that silence now follow them, the rest of their lives. Some of them spoke of how they had thought, their little girls had just been sleeping and how they had done so many needless things when maybe if they had just known…

  It was only when it was their time to speak, that the woman, Fiona, managed to slip her hand from her husband’s clammy grasp. Her hands pulling away from his were nowhere near as obvious as his, still reaching for her in shameful disbelief.

  He wore a look of error on his face, like that of a child, whose wrong was about to be exposed. And he looked to her with wide glassy eyes and he said nothing, he just looked long and fraught, like that very child, in the midst of an encounter, hoping a look was enough to make it all go away.

  He was uncomfortable as his wife talked about how he had forced her to have a baby and how he had forced her into having the Caesarian section and how he had chosen which hospital it would be and how had talked her into having a baby in the first place and how he could just get over it and how he, could just take the advice of doctors and nurses and his bitch of a mother and expect that she, should just get over it too.

  He fidgeted in his seat. And when she said words like ‘useless’ and ‘thoughtless’ and ‘stupid’, he looked around at all the faces in the circle and he nodded, as if he believed she was right, as if she were talking about someone other than him, someone not in the room, someone not sitting right beside her, someone not reaching for the flapping fold in her dress with the tip of their twitching index finger. And he smiled awkwardly too when she blamed him for everything.

  “I never wanted a son or a daughter. I know it sounds selfish, but I just never imagined myself being a mother, being like…” she said before a pause, “my mother.”

  The other couples pulled closer to one another. Wives wrapped their arms, like coiling snakes, around the limbs of their lovers, their partners, their confidants and their companions. It was hard to hear her story and to not grip onto something.

  “And I thought I would feel nothing. That was my fear you know when I first got pregnant. What would happen if I didn’t love it? I mean... him. What would happen, if I didn’t love him? My mum, she was a mum. She cooked and she cleaned and she knew always what to say and when and how to say it if it would make me stop feeling scared or even to shut me up when I’d crossed that line. I didn’t know any of that. I still don’t. And that was my biggest thing. To me, a mum, a mother, whatever, but a mum is my mum. A mum has her shit together. She’s responsible. She sets an example. She doesn’t break rules. She doesn’t just go out and do whatever the hell she wants. She’s…” Fiona said, pausing once more, her mood lightening somewhat, or less heavy that it had been, and this, it was felt in the air as a querulous smile flickered on the faces of those around the room, as if her honesty had touched a loose wire in their hearts, one that they thought had been long since severed.

  “She’s mum, you know? And I remember the first time I felt him kicking; Connor. It was so weird. Up to that point, the pregnancy was more annoying than anything else. I didn’t really get morning sickness or the typical type of pains. But it was just really annoying. Having to get up and pee all the time. Having to sleep on my bloody side. I love sleeping on my back. It’s the only way I can get to sleep. You know how annoying it is, lying on your side and having to face the oaf who did this to you and seeing his on his back, snoring loudly. And just turning to the other side takes so much bloody effort that you just look at him all night and you think ‘you ass’.”

  Her husband, with his teeth gritted and bearing a contrary type of grin, stared around at all the faces in the circle. None could return his stare. Most felt when they were caught by his attention, the air of his embarrassment being upon their own breaths. And they could feel, in an instant, how he felt about himself and it made them turn away from him for pity only worsened his condition.

  Still, as his wife spoke, he supported her and wished that he had stayed in the car.

  “But when I felt that first kick,” she said,” everything was different. I didn’t have something inside of me. I had someone inside of me. I mean, words, they really, they really don’t describe what it feels like to just become aware, that this thing inside you, it’s not a thing. It’s my son. And he’s inside me. And he’s growing inside of me. And then it’s all so real and everything just goes haywire and I knew that second, that I was a mother. I felt it, you know?” she said, looking at everyone, every man, and woman, nodding her head as they nodded back at in concurrence while her husband counted, the number of blue squares inside the patch of carpet below his feet.

  “And how dare he. How dare you” she shouted, turning her veining face to her husband who sat like a scared and reckless pup. “I didn’t want a child. I didn’t want anything to change. And you made me change. You wanted it. But you didn’t have to change anything did you? You still slept on your back. You still had your beers and your cigarettes. You didn’t have to curse and moan and struggle just to get up to pee a hundred times a night. You didn’t even know that that happened did you? You didn’t blink once. You didn’t offer to get up with me. You didn’t change. You didn’t have to. You didn’t have to feel your son kicking inside of you and then fall in love with him. You didn’t have to. You didn’t fucking feel him. So how dare you tell me I should just get over it and move on! How dare you think it’s so fucking easy, that I have to forget him. Fuck you!” she screamed. “Fuck you!”

  The husband covered his face with his hands. He could feel every eye, now that he couldn’t see, falling upon him with concern and judgment. And they were right. And she was right. They were all right.

  “But you know he is with us, right now,” said The Leader, coming between the two; the seething wife and her sullen husband. “Connor,” she said. “He is with us.”

  She stood staunchly in front of them, like an overhanging rock, blocking out the glare from those about the room, in case they too might be swept up by the current of the woman’s vindication. She rested her large hands on both of their heads and both the husband and the wife, they bowed, subservient to her compassion.

  “He is with us right now. And he walks with you, throughout your sorrow. On the loneliest nights, even on those where in each other’s c
ompany, you feel so estranged, he is with you. He is watching you. He is sitting by the end of your bed. And he is blowing you kisses each and every night. And when you do fall asleep, like any child, he sneaks into your bed and he curls between you. He is your angel, looking down on you from heaven” said The Leader.

  The husband and wife kept their heads bowed and their hands joined. Once more, she took her husband’s reach and she clasped it tight, tighter than she had ever clasped before. And the husband he smiled. It wasn’t so much that it made him happy to have her near; it’s just that, it felt so much worse for her to be so far away.

  He still hurt. And he also felt ashamed. But the light of castigation had been dimmed. And the healing, complete. And like every week at this time, he wanted nothing more than to sleep. And they were not better. But they were improved. And maybe, though she wouldn’t say it and he wouldn’t hear about until next week, maybe, just maybe, she blamed him a little less.

  “All of our children,” said The Leader, “ and not just our children, but our brothers and our sisters and our mothers and our fathers, all of them who have so sadly passed, they have, in no way at all, left us behind. They are with us. Their strength and their spirit are in our hearts and as long as we think of them, as long as we mourn them and love them so passionately, just as we did the moment they were gone if we love this way each and every day, they never will be gone. They will live in our hearts and in our eyes. And in heaven, they will look down upon us and they will protect us from the sad cynicism from the world around us. I want you to think of the person you lost. I want you to close your eyes and see them now as if they are right in front of you. Because they are” she shouted, “right in front of you.”

  The Mother closed her eyes and in her hands, she held tight the colored butterfly. And her two index fingers, they lightly creased the small knots where its wings joined against its soft body. The body of the butterfly was black with small colored circles. There was a green circle by the right wing, a blue one by the left and there was a yellow circle, just below where one of its eyed had been picked off.

  “I want you to hold out your arms and I want you to invite them into your arms. Look at them” she said, her own eyes shut, her arms abreast like some great winged angel, ready to close in around the spirit that had been lost, wandering outside of her heart.

  She was an enormous woman. Through a blinking eye or on a dark corner of a dimly lit street, she might have been mistaken for not just a man, but a great big hulking mass of a man. And so alarming and comforting was it then, to have someone of this statute, so genteel and compassionate in her address and so callous and unaffected, in how she confronted and endured so much depression.

  But then, to do this, day in and day out, to sift through the bitter sediment of the bereaved as the focus of her work, as the passion of her labor, she had to be both reasonable and unforgiving; gentle in opening an old wound and coarse in how she scraped it clean.

  “My son,” said The Leader, “come to my arms.”

  The Leader fell to her knees and a whopping great thud echoed throughout the room. Her hands were wide, unlike the others, whose arms were drawn across their chests; mothers holding their wandering children tight against their hearts and fathers, resting across their closed arms to ensure their lost little boy or girl would never again slip away.

  The Mother shivered as for a second, she saw her boy as she last remembered him. He was even wearing the same oversized flip flop, the one he had taken from beneath his father’s bed. And he only had the one; on his left foot. And he was wearing the same blue cuffed shorts and he had on the same sleeveless red t-shirt that her mother gave him, when he turned one.

  And a second later, he was gone.

  She opened her eyes and she saw first The Leader, on her knees and weeping in the center of the room. Her arms were still drawn wide and her fingers were bending in faint invitation, calling something or someone near. And her eyes, though they were closed, the muscles around them were tightened in a penitent knot, the kind that The Mother tied herself from time to time, after having drawn upon, a living room wall.

  The Mother then turned to the rest of the group. They were embraced and curled around each other like scores of thin lathers of differently colored soap, rolled and squashed into a fleshy ball of emotion. And all of them, wept for forgiveness. They wept so loud and they yearned so passionately that their tears naturally bridged into an aching belly of laughter. And it wasn’t strange or wrong and it wasn’t a bad thing. It was just how they felt; having just woken from a dream to find that the person they cared about the most was still right where they left them.

  They were healing.

  Or so they thought.

  “Come to me,” said The Leader, at first, soft and congealing, like a mother to her frightened child. “Come to me,” she said again, this time, with more demand.

  Her waving fingers, at first were so inviting; like the watery dance of coral leaves. Then, with her every plea, she sounded like the stubborn and right owner or a disorderly child, disguising her worry in the rasp of her angering tongue.

  Her words were no different.

  “Come to me,” she said, over and over again.

  But each time, the words were heavier, until they could no longer be spoken solicitously; they had to be swung from her mouth like a gravel filled sack.

  The Mother and all the others in the room, all turned to the center and they all let go of their folded arms. They all let go of their imaginings. They let go of one another. And they all stared at The Leader as the veins in her neck rose, like pyroclastic flows and her inviting waving hands became two reckoning fists, swinging high into the hair and projecting her pointing finger, down, down, down; down before her feet.

  “Get over here now” she screamed. “Don’t you walk away from me. Don’t you…”

  The Leader stopped. She said no more. Not a word. Her hands swiftly became less like fists and more like the leaves that danced upon the ends of a lightly swaying branch. Her face too was less severe. Her veins sank beneath her skin and her eyes were no longer molten.

  She walked around the room and touched the head of each man, woman, and child. And she did so so that her touch was no heavier than a light breeze. And the mothers felt warm and the fathers felt more at ease and the husband, who was once more so near to his wife, he felt as if one day, he might carry less of the blame.

  “I love you, my son,” said The Leader, looking up to the peeling roof. “I know you’re scared. But I will always be here, waiting. And I will wait as long it takes until you are ready to come home.”

  The couples looked at their leader. They had all found some healing. They had all seen their son or daughter that they had lost. They had all invited their child to their breast. And had all gotten closer to healing.

  “Healing,” said The Leader, “it is not forgetting. It is not moving on. It is not dealing with it. Healing is keeping that which you love close enough to your heart without the pain of feeling it so far away. We must never forget, never. And I know we have to cover up our pain. We have to wear those faces. We have to put them on every day and we have to see unimportant things as if we really care as if any of it really matters. And even if we explain what we’re going through, it’s not like anyone will ever understand us. We are the bereaved. Our children are gone. They have been taken from us. God took them from us. And it was their time and I know it’s unfair, it all seems unfair, but God has a plan and our little angels, they are part of that plan. They are miracles. And your children who are still alive” she said, staring at the innocent eyes looking up at her sheepishly. “They are miracles. And they miss their brothers and sisters as much as we. And the comfort we have in our tragedy comes in knowing that our angels are free and at peace. And that no harm can ever come to them as they live with the angels in heaven. So know that the path to healing is long and it is tiring. And it’s not some pill that you can just take and feel better. Healing is every d
ay of the rest of your life. It is…” she paused, her gargantuan hands, pressed upon her chest, “for as long as we still remember.”

  The group erupted in tearful applause. Some made for the door immediately while others stuck around, orbiting The Leader, wanting to say something, something personal, away from the topic, something to maybe make them friends.

  “How was it?” asked The Father.

  It was still raining.

  The Mother sat in the backseat, her fingernail stretching out the fine threat that held the small button nose in place. She looked to her right at the orange and black car seat. Its belt was unbuckled and hanging over the side.

  “Why are you wet?” she asked.

  There was not a hint of curiosity in her tone. She was like a bored cat, flicking about a half dead mouse. And The Father’s attention was the game that she had grown tired of.

  “We need to talk,” said The Father.

  “He’s leaving,” The Mother thought, still divorced from how she really felt about him.

  “So who’s picking up Korine?” The Father said.

  The small button nose, it fell to the floor.

  ridicule