Sometimes, when the silence thickened, my father would ask me what I was reading.
Living with Heart Disease. Surviving Loss. The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
“Nothing much,” I’d say. In the old days, he might have kept asking till I came up with an answer, but now we acted as if the tiniest pressure could shatter our eggshell selves.
The only subject he liked to talk about was Eschatology for Dummies. I wondered if his ideas about the afterlife had changed now that Margaret might be there. I wanted to test my theory that Margaret was relocating, in stages, to a more comfortable dwelling. But it seemed safer not to ask, and besides, my father’s subject was the apocalypse and not the ragged hole that one death could rip in a few fragile lives.
Though he’d been working on the book for years, he never got tired of thinking about how people coped with their fear or their hope that our planet might not last forever. He wasn’t religious, he didn’t have an agenda based on his own beliefs. He was simply interested, in a scientific way, in how his fellow humans imagined the unimaginable. He liked the fact that I cared about ecology and the earth. Sometimes I felt that he was planning to interview me for a final chapter about whether us gloomy, Al Gore types really believed, in our heart of hearts, that fossil-fuel emissions would strangle the planet. What would I tell him? I believed it. I didn’t. I did. I couldn’t.
At Goldengrove, whenever customers bought novels about the rapture, my father inquired if they just liked the plots, or if it was something they expected to happen. He always asked so politely, with such a genuine desire to know. He never went near my questions: Would they be raptured wearing their clothes? What would happen to their cars if they were vacuumed off the highway?
It was calming, like listening to bedtime stories, eating grilled cheese, and hearing Dad go on about the Micronesian tribe building a landing strip for the planes that would fly them to heaven, or the Siberian shamans who banged their drums until the gods destroyed the world just to make them keep quiet. Or the Aztecs who thought that they’d outlived four suns, and that the fifth would burn out unless they quenched its thirst with human blood. He spent a whole lunch explaining how the Norsemen were convinced that you could tell the end was coming because winter would follow winter without a summer in between.
“Kind of like global warming,” I said.
“You got it,” said my dad.
One afternoon, I sensed a change. Nothing dramatic, but noticeable enough so that when I asked my father how his writing was going, I could tell from the way he said, “Not bad,” that he meant, “Really good.”
He said, “Listen, Nico, I’ve been working on a chapter about a doomsday cult that lived around here.” He was staring at me with an intensity that, for one dizzying second, made me think he’d joined some sect of fanatics. People did stranger things. I’d read a book about two brothers whose mother died, and they gambled away every penny of the fortune she’d left.
“When?” I said.
Dad said, “The nineteenth century. Their leader, Williams Miller, calculated that Christ would arrive to inaugurate the millennial kingdom on October 22, 1844.”
“Exactly?” I said.
“Exactly,” my father said.
“Cool,” I said. “Smart guy.”
“Nico, Nico.” My father smiled.
I said, “So how many suckers did he get to believe him?”
“Fifty thousand,” said Dad.
“No way,” I said.
“Way. They were all so convinced that they gave away their possessions, their house and farms, their cows, their horses, their—”
“Who’d they give them to?” I said.
“I don’t know,” said Dad. “How strange I never thought about that. Neighbors? Relatives? Friends? The faithful wouldn’t be needing their donkeys when God beamed them up into heaven.”
After a while, I said, “Dad . . . So how did it work out?”
“Right. On the appointed day they dressed in white robes and climbed the highest mountain and waited for the saints to pop out of their graves and witness the believers rising into the air to be married to the Bridegroom Christ. They stayed on the hill for forty-eight hours. Everybody singing and dancing and playing homemade flutes. The whole crowd watching the sky.”
He leaned across the table. “You know how when you’re supposed to meet someone, and the person is late, and you look up every two seconds to see if the person has arrived?”
“I guess.” I was trying to remember if I’d ever met anyone anywhere by myself, let alone if I’d been early. Aaron and Margaret were always on time when they’d picked me up after a movie. When I met Dad at the Nibble Corner, he was always there before me. I wondered if he meant Mom.
“That’s what it must have been like. Two days of thinking that an angel was going to land any minute. Imagine the stiff necks.”
I pictured the crowds of people shivering in their thin white garments, holding hands and singing hymns and leaning into each chill October breeze as if it were the headwind stirred up by the angel. I saw them swaying like wheat, like birches, turning briefly into trees and then back again into humans.
“Nico?” said Dad. “Are you with me?”
“So then what happened?” I said.
“I just told you,” said Dad.
“Sorry,” I said. “Tell me again.”
“What do you think? After two days, when the angel still hadn’t arrived, the elders called an emergency conference. They’d decided there’d been a miscalculation, and their leader went back to his actuarial tables so he’d get the date right the next time. Their neighbors attacked them on their way home. You know, Nico, I never realized it was probably because the neighbors assumed that they’d want their farms back. I guess I never thought about it till you asked whom they gave their stuff to. That’s why I like talking to you about this—”
“Thanks,” I said. “Me too.” I hoped I sounded convincing. After a beat Dad said, “When it didn’t happen, when nothing happened, the Millerites always referred to it as the Great Disappointment.”
That was what disappointed them, that they were still alive? That someone you loved could disappear—now, that was the nasty surprise.
“The Great Disappointment,” my father went on. “That pretty much sums it up. Whatever you hope for, you’re not going to get. I know I shouldn’t be saying this to my kid, who I want to have a positive outlook. But I don’t know, Nico. Sometimes, ever since . . . I keep thinking . . .”
“Thinking what?” Ever since what? I wanted to make him say it.
“You know what Janis Joplin called it?”
“Called what?”
“The Great Disappointment. The always being let down by life. She called it the Saturday Night Swindle.”
“Who’s Janis Joplin?” I said.
“Very funny,” my father said.
“Margaret thought she was cheesy,” I said.
My father said, “She would have loved Janis. Eventually. Another year or two, maybe.”
We checked out each other’s grilled cheeses, and each took small bites of our own.
“Anyhow,” said my father, “the point is . . . the hilltop where they waited for the angels isn’t far from here. I think the town library might have some old newspapers that might help us figure out where it was.”
Help us? When had Dad’s rapture fantasies become a family project?
“We could go there and walk around and see if we can . . . I know this sounds crazy, Nico, but maybe we’d feel something. Some leftover . . . vibration.”
“It does sound crazy, Dad. Vibration?”
“Come on, Nico. It’s worth a try. Just to see.”
Dad’s hippie-dippie project was making me want to put my head down on the table.
“Sure, Dad,” I said. “That would be great. Find out where it was.”
ONCE MY FATHER REALIZED THAT I COULD HANDLE THE CHALLENGE of running the bookstore, he began spending more time at the
library to search the archives for information that might help him pinpoint the site of the Great Disappointment. I liked having the place to myself. I could relax and read about heart disease and the afterlife without worrying that my father might catch me.
It seemed like a good sign when, for a break from the death books, I started skimming the books about sex, idly stroking the crotch of my jeans and listening for the doorbell. I couldn’t tell much from the line drawings of smiling men and women twisted into pretzels, diagrams that reminded me of those pamphlets explaining how to install your new electronics purchase.
Despite what Margaret had said, I knew that sex was more than knowing what flavor of ice cream you wanted, more than deciding how many dates you had to go on before you let a boy touch your breasts, more than no meaning no. I understood that sex could make anyone do anything, but I couldn’t figure out how the feeling I got from rubbing myself could make people ruin their whole lives.
One afternoon, as I walked down the poetry aisle on my way to the human sexuality section, a thick book caught my attention. It was an anthology of poems from around the world, and at the end was an alphabetical index of first lines.
On a hunch, I looked up “Margaret.”
I turned to the page, read a few lines, and then reread them, trying to understand and at the same time to convince myself that I must be mistaken. I no longer cared if someone walked into the store. I sank to the floor as I reread the poem.
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
I didn’t get it right away or, truthfully, at all. Wanwood leafmeal sounded like some kind of garden fertilizer. I knew the poem was about grief and mourning and sorrow, about everything and everyone getting older and dying. For some reason, it infuriated me. I held the book open before me like a cross to ward off a vampire, like the surprise piece of evidence at my parents’ trial for . . . what? What sadist would name a baby after such a depressing poem? Maybe they’d actually caused her death by naming her Margaret. Nancy or Suzie or Heather might still be alive and well. I slammed the book shut as if it were the poem’s fault, though I knew that if I’d read the poem when Margaret was alive, it wouldn’t have meant anything beyond some dead guy’s weak attempt to sound gloomy and important.
The effort of wedging the heavy book back onto the shelf left me so exhausted I had to lie down on the floor. I opened my eyes to see my father leaning over me.
“Nico!” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I was taking a nap.” I glanced at the shelves, where the incriminating anthology had faded back into the rows of books. I almost said, “I found the poem. I know what you and Mom did.” But what would that have led to besides a conversation I didn’t want to have, looking up at my father from the bookstore floor?
I said, “I’m trying an experiment. A sort of osmosis thing. I’m seeing whether if I take a nap next to the poetry books, maybe a few lines will seep into my brain and make me understand poetry better.”
Dad said, “My little scientist. So does it work? Did anything stick?”
“Not a word,” I answered.
“Too bad,” my father said. Clearly, he didn’t believe me. But at least he didn’t ask why my experiment had left me in tears.
I HAD TO BE CAREFUL WHAT I SAID, LEST ALL MY LIES COME TRUE. My experiment in the poetry aisle had been an accidental success. Something lodged in my mind, so that for the rest of the day, that line, “It is Margaret you mourn for,” bashed around inside my brain like a bird trapped in a house. I knew it was insane to think that naming my sister after a morbid poem meant that she would die young. But the line stayed with me, and I wanted to get rid of it, the way you can pass along a tune that’s driving you crazy by singing it so that it leaves your head and enters someone else’s.
That evening, at dinner, I kept quiet as long as I could. Then I asked, “So are you going to change the name of the store now, or what?” It wasn’t what I’d said so much as the way I’d said it, the aggrieved, sullen teenage tone my parents hadn’t heard since my sister died. They sat up and listened as if they were hearing the voice of someone they used to know.
Dad was the first to realize that it was only my former self. “Why would that be?” he said.
“Goldengrove,” I said. “Isn’t that from the poem you named Margaret after?”
My parents looked puzzled. Could they have forgotten? Did they think Margaret was just a name they’d liked when they were hippies planting vegetables by the light of the full moon?
I said, “Would you like me to bring the book home and read it to you?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Dad said. “I remember it perfectly well.”
My mother said, “Margaret’s a beautiful name.”
“Was,” I said. “Was a beautiful name.”
“Is,” she said warningly.
“I still think Margaret’s a pretty name,” said my father. “As is Nico, for that matter.”
“Pretty?” I said. “Pretty?” I looked to Mom for support even as I felt my case collapse. How could I accuse them of harming my sister by naming her after a poem? Soon they’d insist on sending me for professional help. I wondered if Aaron’s mother had told him I’d said he should come visit me at the store.
I said, “Speaking of doctors,” though we hadn’t been. “Did you guys make that appointment for me to see the specialist in the city?”
“What appointment?” said Mom.
I said, “I can’t believe you forgot.”
“Nico, sweetheart, there’s nothing wrong with you,” said my father.
I said, “The sooner the better, okay? The heart specialist?”
“Will do.” My mother gave me a trembly version of Margaret’s Ginger Rogers salute.
And though it was still early, I went to my room and got into bed.
Seven
THE NEXT MORNING, I WOKE UP DRENCHED WITH SWEAT FROM A night of troubling dreams. In one, a blotchy purple stain seeped in from the edges of my field of vision. I’d never had a nightmare like that, of gathering darkness and blindness. I was afraid to open my eyes. I opened one. I could see. Then I remembered the line from the poem.
I whispered, “Help me. I need your help. Tell me what to do.”
Margaret and I used to play with a ouija board we’d found in the attic. The first few times were thrilling. The gliding, the spelling out, my gathering amazement as the letters turned into words. I’d wanted to believe that Margaret and I were taking dictation from the beyond.
The last time we did it, we’d asked the spirit what its name was.
“M-o-t-h-r-a,” it spelled out.
I said, “Isn’t that the monster in that horror film you like?”
“Hush, you’ll scare it away,” Margaret said.
The spirit spelled out “N-i-c-o.” I caught my breath.
It spelled, “G-e-t y-o-u-r s-i-s-t-e-r s-o-m-e c-a-k-e.”
I said, “You’re doing it, right?”
“Think what you like,” Margaret said.
It was easy for us to play like that, then. Whom did we think we were contacting? We’d never met anyone who had died.
But now, though I longed for a message, I would never have touched the board. And whom would I have played with? Instead, as I lay in bed, feeling the sun filter through the curtains, I prayed to b
ecome a human ouija-board puck. Let my sister move me.
After a while, I felt . . . something. The urge to get out of bed, a faint pressure on one elbow. I let it push me, I didn’t resist as it steered me to my closet. My hand rose, and I plucked Margaret’s Hawaiian shirt from the swaying clothing. I reentered my body to find it wearing my sister’s shirt and feeling ever so slightly braver.
“Thank you,” I said to the empty room. Or to Margaret, if she was there. In the shirt, I could face the bookstore and not succumb to the temptation of obsessively rereading the poem about death and my sister.
I slipped out of the house. I didn’t want my mother to see me in Margaret’s shirt.
My father was waiting in our usual booth at the Nibble Corner. When he spotted me, he looked vaguely irritated or anxious, as if I were bringing him bad news about a broken household appliance. Maybe Margaret’s shirt stirred some recollection that failed to compute. Or maybe that was the default expression his face assumed that summer, before he knew someone was watching. He didn’t seem to notice what I was wearing, or to connect the shirt with my sister. Evidently, Margaret’s fashion sense hadn’t come from Dad.
We ate our sandwiches. I went to the bookstore. I felt fine, or almost fine. The silkiness of the shirt on my skin could have been Margaret touching my arm. The palm trees swayed, hula girls danced, Margaret’s ghost exerted its pressure, and all of it lulled me and kept me from seeing the hurricane heading my way. Still, I must have sensed some disturbance in the air. Because when my father left for the library, I didn’t want him to go.
I said, “Have fun, Dad,” in someone else’s reedy voice. I felt a grinding in my chest. I needed to see a doctor! The first appointment my mom had been able to make was not for another few weeks.
To calm myself, I opened my favorite book, a volume on Sienese painting so large that I had to spread it across the counter. Each picture reeled me in, first with the bait of its story line, then with the lure of the secret beneath it. Turning the pages transported me from a candy-colored city to a hillside on which two shepherds and their dog huddled by a fire, gazing up at an angel powered by a rocket exploding from its robe. I paused at a levitating monk, rising into the air, then went on to the garden paradise crowded with joyous, reunited souls. All around were flowering plants in glorious full bloom, trees loaded with enough lemons for eternal lemonade. How glad the embracing angels were to have ended up there.
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