The House

by Anjuelle Floyd

  Anna stepped outside and turned back to Helena standing in the doorway, one hand holding open the screen door. The other steadied her small frame against the entryway. Helena reiterated her appreciation of the visit. “I’m glad you took the time to come by. It gets pretty lonely around here. I miss my husband.”

  “I’m told that his boxes were unique and well-designed,” Anna said.

  “They were a hobby that Edward was instrumental in transforming into a successful business. Sales from those boxes keep me afloat in Canning’s absence.” Helena McGrath was doing more than remaining afloat. Yet Anna sensed that she had been speaking about matters that lay beyond money. The demure little woman lifted her hand and added, “Canning’s boxes are to me what Manning Ventures is to you,” then pointed to Anna. “Perhaps we can do for each other what our husbands accomplished between themselves.” Anna frowned at the perplexity so obvious in the old woman’s statement. From the pocket of her housedress Helena lifted a small rosebud and presented it to Anna. “I never liked all those women with whom Edward was involved. But then Canning would always remind me how well Edward saw to you and the children.” Anna shuddered in contemplation of how many discussions of her and Edward’s marriage Helena and Canning McGrath had carried out.

  “Thank you.” Tears filled her eyes on accepting the orange-pink bud.

  Helena said, “Canning always said that men hurt just like women. ‘We men don’t know how to heal. We’re not like the women we bring pain to. Nowhere as strong.’ Those were his words. Since Canning’s death, I’ve come to see that Edward was hurting.” Anna took a long, stiff swallow. Helena said, “It’s hard watching your mother struggle day-in and day-out. Violet was trying to make ends meet and never able to catch her breath.”

  Anna was about to ask about how she knew Violet when Helena McGrath said, “Canning found hope in his boxes. The money they brought was just extra. It was what he wished to have given his mother.”

  Again she looked to the bud now appearing more orange than pink. More tears came.?

  Chapter 43

  Anna left Helena McGrath’s house and started to Bryce’s office in downtown Oakland. The Ecuadorian rosebud lay on the front passenger seat. As she exited onto Highway 24, her cell phone rang. It was Bertrice. “You need to come home.”

  Anna dialed Bryce. “Bertrice called,” she explained. “Said I needed to come home. It’s Edward.”

  “Okay. Let me know what’s up,” Bryce said, then added, “If I don’t hear from you in a half hour, I’ll be over.”

  Anna turned the car around, and headed home.

  Anna met Bertrice midway up the stairs. The look on Bertrice’s face pulled at Anna. Bertrice said, “He’s moaning and calling for you.”

  “Can’t you give him something? I won’t have him in pain and suffering.”

  Anna didn’t want to see Edward, not like this. She needed time to sort things out. Life was crowding in. Manning Ventures. Inman. Helena McGrath. Anna’s discovery of Canning McGrath’s relation ship with Edward. Though twenty years apart in ages, Canning and Edward had shared similar childhoods, perhaps even a penchant for extramarital relations. And then, there was Helena McGrath, Inman’s aunt.

  Bertrice said of Edward. “I’ve given him the morphine. It’s you he now needs.”

  Anna bit her lip, angry that Edward couldn’t have asked for her in the years prior. She made her way up the steps, pushed open the door to the bedroom, and walked to Edward asleep upon bed. He lay curled like a baby in a crib. The Ecuadorian rosebud Anna had received from Helena McGrath was in the pocket of Anna’s sweater. Beside it was Anna’s wedding band that she had kept in her pocket ever since visiting her father’s gravestone.

  Like all other changes and transformation wrought by life, the dying of her husband went against everything in Anna; it defied the laws of physics stabilizing her mind. Edward, and people like him, by Anna’s estimation were to have outlived those like her. Anna had felt the same about her mother compared to her father. Elena had been stern and strong; Elijah, deeply emotional and feeling weak, in Anna’s estimation, frail, and unable to cope and succeed like herself. Anna and her father had been uncertain and fearful, and not quite sure of life or themselves. They had felt uncertain of their power and ability to survive the world, and weather storms and losses.

  Despite being a man who distributed the word of God, Reverend Elijah Chason had made plain the doubts he held. It was the one thing Anna’s mother had hated about him. One Sunday after church she had pressured Anna’s father concerning his fierce questioning of life.

  She said, “If you don’t trust the Lord, you can’t expect the congregation to trust you.” Earlier that morning Elijah had spoken, during his sermon, of the venomous gray areas that plagued life and living.

  “I never said I didn’t trust God,” Elijah defended. “I’m just not going to lie about the questions I hold.”

  All three had sat eating dinner, the Reverend Elijah at one end of the oval, dark pine table; Elena at the other and facing him. Anna sat in the middle, an empty chair across from her. Fifteen years old and finding a narrow way through high school, Anna yearned for Elena’s counsel to guide and comfort her.

  Elena said to Elijah, “Your questions show a lack of faith, and raise doubts about you.”

  “In what, my ability to be perfect? Or that I have needs, and don’t lie about them?” Elijah slammed his hand upon the table, causing Anna to jump. “I’m human, Elena.”

  Anna had and would never again witness her father so disturbed. Her mother did not veer her attention from him. “I’m just saying—”

  “You don’t have to say it. I know what you mean.” Elijah confessed. A watery film of redness filled the white encircling his large brown irises. “You doubt me,” said Anna’s father. “You don’t love me as a man. But you cannot accuse me of lacking faith in God.” Elijah’s words carried vehement strength. “I’ve preached too hard and long in doing the thing I love, ministering. You will not take that from me. No.” He threw down his fork.

  “What are you saying?” Elena egged on.

  “I’m saying that I’m not God. Not your god, not the church’s god, no one’s god. I don’t have all the answers. Neither can I get them, not all of them. I will preach the word, as best I know it. I will tell the truth about my own struggles. Perhaps that will comfort my flock.” His brown raging eyes appeared to settle. The redness cleared, but not the mist. Whatever had stirred them never truly died.

  During her mother’s last days over a decade later, Anna sensed her father struggling and tormented by what had driven him to speak with such anger and hurt. By then, Anna had lost what little roots of faith her mother had planted. She had yet to join the Catholic Church, her mother’s religion. The question remained and fueled Anna’s doubt. Had Elijah been unfaithful to Elena? And if so, why? Had he, like Anna, longed for a show of affection, a sign from Elena that he mattered? In his yearning, had Anna’s father sought and received comfort elsewhere?

  Anna lifted Edward’s hand. Guilt for having refused to come when her mother asked to see her one last time descended upon her like a white sheet of despair. Anna felt dingy and blackened by her refusal. Parts of Anna craved to abandon Edward like she had her plans for selling the house and moving to France. She had stopped the divorce proceedings, turned her life upside down, and taken him in. But had she halted everything only for him?

  Edward opened his eyes. Slowly, he tried to smile. Failing, he licked his lips then in a low rasp uttered, “I’m sorry for abandoning you all these years.” Anna lowered her head as he fought to speak through the clouds of death settling around them. “I’m sorry ... truly ... please ... forgive... ”

  “I forgive you,” Anna whispered.

  Edward murmured, “I was the one who lost out.”

  Anna’s chest grew full; the pain within threatened to overwhelm her. She clinched her jaw against a low moan that managed to slip through.

  “You have
to go on,” Edward said.

  “How the hell am I supposed to do that? I hardly know you. Thirty goddamned years and I don’t know you. We were supposed to spend a lifetime together.”

  “You know me better than you think,” Edward uttered. A sad smile overtook his face as if it were a death mask.

  “You were supposed to tell me who you are, we were supposed to learn about each other. You cheated. You quit.”

  “This is who I am,” Edward said. He raised a weakened finger and lowered it upon his chest. His eyes were like those of Elena when searching the Reverend Elijah’s face concerning the doubt and faith he had preached. I’m not your god. I can’t be.

  Anna held tightly to Edward’s hand. “This marriage was sup posed to set me free.” Anna sobbed. “I’m not your mother. I worshipped you in the beginning.” She considered the women, Edward’s women, tried seeing their faces. How many were there? She would never know. She placed her other palm underneath his, and sandwiched his hand between hers. Her head dangled; a stream of tears descended first upon her hand holding Edward’s, then onto her lap. Their trail obliterated Anna’s vision of the carpet where her feet rested. Edward’s night shoes lay beside them.

  Why all the women? And why is God is taking him now that the approach of illness has delivered him to me? Helena McGrath’s words returned from hours earlier. He was hurting and searching. The women had been but way stations in the trek to find his mother, and then his way back to you.

  Anna crawled onto the bed and took Edward’s frail and withered body into her arms. She brushed his head. What were those women like? She failed at wiping the thought from her head. They were her obsession, or rather what Anna imagined that she lacked, what had driven Edward to them. Anna had proven herself faithful. She had not abandoned Edward as she had her mother. The circle of thoughts would not let her go.

  “Moments,” Edward said in more certain terms. His breath growing more shallow ebbed and flowed. “They were but moments, just moments. Stella ... Esther ... Gabrielle ... all moments in time.” He breathed in as if it were his last. Now fifteen minutes into the morphine Bertrice had given him, Edward struggled to make each breath. “I love you . ...”

  Weeping, Anna laid her head upon his chest. “You cannot die.”

  Her will was no match for the universe’s divinations. “If you felt that way then why did you leave me so many times?”

  Edward said, “You thought I was your mother.” Anna cringed at his awareness of her truth.

  Edward’s eyelids fluttered as he strained to keep them open. “The house was all I had,” he rasped. “My mother never had one. I wanted ... needed one as a child ... a home.”

  “I only wanted you, not the house,” Anna sobbed against the pain of cradling his dying body in her arms. The conversation was traveling in circles, leading to oblivion. Anna would emerge changed, but not where she desired.

  Edward lifted his eyelids. The brightness and sparkle never strayed from her gaze. He connected one last time. Edward with Anna then drifted off to sleep. Anna sobbed, not knowing if he would ever open them again.

  Some moments later, Edward parted his lips. He fought to speak. “They were never you. Only moments in time. You ... you ... you were ... an eternity.” His words though slurred, settled upon Anna’s ears and heart with an uneasy clarity.

  Anna pulled the Ecuadorian rosebud, now pink, from her sweater pocket. She brought it to her lips, then laid it upon Edward’s chest. She kissed Edward’s forehead. Though warm, he remained silent and still.?

  Chapter 44

  Anna’s call to Bryce was brief. “Edward has died.” She again spoke those words to David, Theo, Linda, Serine, and then Father Richard.

  Hours later, she sat at the kitchen table. The rosebud from Helena McGrath’s garden lay before her with Anna’s wedding band beside it. And next to that the Tricycle Magazine to which Edward seemed to have grown attached during the last few weeks.

  Images of him reading as if mesmerized by the words upon its pages streamed before her. He had been reading it upon Anna’s re turn from a weekday morning Mass after which she had met with Father Richard. Edward had put it aside when she confronted him about Stella and Esther. He had returned to reading the magazine, had continued to do so when Serine and Grant had argued on the other side of the pool. Anna had last caught him reading it when, following the horror of the board meeting, she had burst into the bedroom.

  In the dim glow of the kitchen light, she stared at the Buddhist nun on the cover. Forgiveness was the theme of the issue. She peeled back the cover of the magazine and thumbed through the pages until reaching one with the right corner folded back. The dog-eared page held several underlined sentences. “Penitence and the Art of Forgiveness” read the title at the top of the page. There was a picture of the Buddhist nun beside the title of the article that she had penned. In this second image she wore an orange robe, lighter in fabric than the burgundy one she donned on the cover of the magazine.

  With Edward’s body now in the mortuary, Anna began reading

  We are all seeking forgiveness or penitence for something. We have all been treated wrongly. We have all acted incorrectly at some time or another. Anna scrolled down, noting the passages wherein sentences were underlined, words that had apparently moved Ed ward. Salvation is granted to those who acknowledge their regret, and to those who possess the strength to show mercy. Her eyes moved across the page.

  Misdeeds demand something of both the wrongdoer and the person who has been hurt, a change of heart. That is the grandest miracle. It is what both must undergo, the wrongdoer and the one mistreated. Each is hurting. Out of regret and sorrow for her or his hurtful actions, the wrongdoer must ask forgiveness. Likewise, the person who has endured suffering on account of the wrongdoer’s actions is called to display mercy. Should either one default on their responsibilities: the wrongdoer fail to acknowledge and apologize for her or his actions, or the oppressed one refuse to show mercy in the face of the wrongdoer’s penitence, both are lost... Our salvation rests in the hands and hearts of each other. It is rooted in our ability to change the rhythms of our hearts. None of us are safe until all of us are rescued.

  The gold wedding band on the table drew Anna’s attention. She brought it to her lips and tenderly kissed it. The Ecuadorian rose bud took on a shade of orange, not unlike that of the second robe worn by the Buddhist nun. Closing the magazine, she clutched it to her chest.

  “Oh, Edward,” she wept.?

  Chapter 45

  The funeral took place four days after Edward died. Good Friday, Anna silently termed it as she stood before the grave site amid the crowd of two hundred or more surrounding her and the children. Edward had died on a Monday, the day for the graceful child. He exited this life on earth, while lying in Anna’s arms, she having granted him a peace and tranquility that while not encompassing all understanding, had certainly touched her heart and soul. Born on a Saturday Edward G. Manning had worked hard throughout his life. That quality formed the essence of his identity, and the common denominator that drew those who came to bid him fare well. It stood as the most positive quality for which people would remember him.

  The face of the Buddhist nun on the cover of the magazine loomed large in Anna’s mind as Father Richard spoke. Anna closed her eyes and recalled words the nun had penned, sentences that Ed ward had underlined. None of us are secure until all of us are saved. It offered a maternal perspective—loving one’s children and wanting the best for them despite their misdeeds and shortcomings. It rep resented unconditional love at its greatest, something with which Anna’s mother seemed unacquainted. Always obedient, Anna had grown up feeling as if she was under the spotlight of her mother’s eyes. She had never pushed the envelope and tested Elena’s affection. As with Edward, Anna had never known the depths for which either her mother or her husband had valued her until death drew near.

  Anna slipped her hand inside the left pocket of her black jacket and felt the Ecuadoria
n rosebud now limp. She fingered her gold wedding band. Unlike Edward, it remained strong and sturdy. David tightened his grip on Anna’s right hand. Theo patted her left shoulder. Tears filled her eyes. Again Anna stroked the rosebud in her left pocket.

  Father Richard spoke of Edward Manning, the family man.

  “Edward Manning was many things to many people. Some of those things weren’t what we always liked or wanted. Others were more than we expected. He surprised many of us in the end.” The crowd released a round of laughter, evidencing their agreement, and startling Anna. “Despite what thoughts or opinions we held, all of us respected Edward Manning’s work ethic.”

  Anna had wanted to make the services private. Bryce had advised otherwise. Among the mourners, several rows back, stood Pierce Dawson, Elliott Thompson, and Harrison Filbert, who had sold their shares in Manning Ventures. Claiborne Rochester, Ephraim Hennessey, and Chester McGee, who had remained shareholders and trustees stood in the line behind Anna and her children. Helena McGrath was absent. Inman had left a message on Anna’s cell phone, I’m sorry about Edward. You’re in my prayers.

  Father Richard continued as he unfolded a piece of paper. “I spoke with Edward Manning before he died. Here, I have words that he wrote and asked me to read.”

  The priest approached David. David squeezed Anna’s right hand. “To my eldest, David, I wish you and Heather all the happiness in the world.” David’s lip trembled. Anna felt herself sinking as if the ground was opening up to consume her. To the right of David, Heather drew Josh and Emily close to her. She wiped their faces and then her cheeks. David’s attention never wavered as the priest continued. “You have been all a father could want and hope for in a first-born child and elder son.”