by Lisa Alther
I directed Hawk to a tractor seat and sat in one next to him. I ordered us Bloody Marys, feeling extravagant, backed as I was by Ira’s credit cards. The waitress, dressed in tattered Daisy Mae cutoffs and a bandanna halter and a huge straw hat, inquired with a French accent, ‘Two Red Roosters?’
‘Whatever,’ I said with a shrug.
The drinks when they arrived had miniature pitchforks for swizzle sticks.
After a few minutes, I went in search of the ladies’ room, which was decorated to look like an outhouse.
When I returned, Hawk was no longer there. I assumed he was in the men’s room and sat down to wait. A man sitting next to me in suede overalls and brogan platform shoes started humming ‘Red River Valley’ under his breath.
Finally he turned to me and asked, ‘What ya reading?’
I was holding a Montreal guidebook in one hand. ‘The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.’
‘Yeah? Is it good?’
‘If you’re into that kind of thing,’ I replied, glancing around uneasily for Hawk.
‘Do you like Red Roosters?’ my friend in the neighboring tractor seat asked, his eyes fixed on my tits.
‘What? Oh, Red Roosters. Yes. Yes, I do.’
‘Want another?’
I stared at him with surprise. It invariably amazed me when someone tried to pick me up. I would never be able to assume that someone would rather talk to me than to stare off vacantly into space. The male ego was truly an object of wonder.
‘No, thank you. I’m waiting for my date.’
‘Yeah? Well, he went out the door about ten minutes ago.’
I looked at him quickly. ‘Are you sure?’
He nodded. I scrambled down and raced from the restaurant. I charged around all the adjacent blocks searching for him. Then I decided he’d gotten tired and had returned to the Bona-venture.
When I got back to our room, Hawk wasn’t there. Only his pack remained.
I collapsed on the vast bed and fell asleep.
The next morning I went to the offices of the various war resister groups and inquired about Hawk. After getting absolutely nowhere and finding the men behind the desks reluctant even to talk with me, I realized that my image was at fault. In my Sally Suburban pantsuit with my hair tied back with a scarf, I looked like a wronged wife. I went and had my hair cut in an Afro, and I bought a patchwork peasant dress and some hand-tooled leather clogs on Ira’s charge cards.
In my new disguise, I returned to the offices and inquired anew about Hawk. This time a couple of men confessed to having known him but not having seen him for several months. One gave me his old address. I checked it out. It was a dingy crumbling townhouse well away from the downtown area. The dumpy woman behind the desk remembered Hawk, but hadn’t seen him lately. I entered a Missing Persons report with the police.
For a couple more days I prowled around following various dead-end leads, trying to find people who had known him. I had concluded that eventually he would surface and return to his old friends and old haunts. I planned to be there to take care of him when he did. It would be my life’s work: I would take a room somewhere, find a waitress job, and spend my free time scouring Montreal in search of my war hero. What else did I have to build a life around?
I returned to Stark’s Bog to gather up my spare belongings. I was dumped from the bus right next door to Ira’s office. I was toting Hawk’s nearly empty pack, having checked his belongings in a locker at the Montreal bus station until I should return to claim them.
Ira blanched when he saw me. He drove me to the house in his fire chief car. Among my waiting mail was a letter from Mrs. Yancy asking me to come to Hullsport and be with Mother, who was hospitalized with a clotting disorder. On the way to the St. Johnsbury airport, with Hawk’s pack filled with all my worldly possessions in the trunk, Ira notified me that he intended for Wendy never to see me again. She had had a few difficult days but was now happily absorbed into Angela’s brood. I owed it to her to stay out of her life.
14
Saturday, July 22
Ginny stood looking down at her sleeping mother. Cotton plugs in her nostrils and gums, a pad between her legs, new bruises on her arms and calves. Her right eye bandaged. She had developed a slight temperature.
Any day now her mother’s brain might hemorrhage. There was no longer any way to avoid acknowledging it. Her mother hadn’t been out of bed in almost a week. She lay all day without talking. The nurses whisked in and out, doing this or that to make the bruised flesh more comfortable. Ginny had lately been thinking of her mother’s body as an apple, formerly firm, now fallen and rotting. It was an appalling image, but she couldn’t seem to banish it. Like an apple, its entire purpose for existence had been to transport, protect, and nurture the seeds of new life. Now that these once new lives — Karl, Jim, and Ginny herself — were ripe apples themselves, her mother’s function had ceased. She was being disposed of. She was lying in a hospital bed rotting. She had been used. It wasn’t fair. But then, as she had always insisted, life wasn’t fair.
Ginny strolled into the hall. Coming from Coach’s room were droning commands: ‘Get me out of here right now. Do you hear me? I want out of here now. No ifs, ands or buts, now!’ Ginny was incapable of saying whether Coach was living in the past or the present at this point. He knew he was in the hospital and really wanted out, or he was wrapped up in some drama out of his past?
Stationed in Mrs. Cabel’s doorway was Sister Theresa in her hospital robe and gown. A hand clutched either side of the door frame. In front of her, his nose at her chest level, stood Mr. Solomon, quivering with rage in his blue wool robe.
‘The voman is suffering, Sister Theresa!’
‘How can you know, Mr Solomon? A human being is more than just a biological mechanism. Mrs. Cabel’s spirit may be thriving in her impaired body, for all we know.’
‘Acts of omission are no less morally reprehensible than acts of commission,’ Mr. Solomon insisted. ‘Compassion requires that I not lie in the next room listening to her moan if it is vithin my power to alleviate her pain. Let her rest, Sister, in that great black void on the other side.’
‘That is not compassion, Mr. Solomon. You are not thinking of Mrs. Cabel’s suffering. You are thinking of how to relieve your own suffering at having to listen to her. If you were truly compassionate, Mr. Solomon, you wouldn’t exhibit such overweening impatience as Mrs. Cabel works out her role in the cosmic scheme.’
‘Cosmic scheme! You and your celestial vet dreams! There is no cosmic scheme, Sister! This life is it. Rendering this life as painless as possible is the only virtue man is capable of. Ven pointless misery can be averted, the ends justify the means. Step aside and let me by, Sister!’ He snatched futilely at her beefy arms.
‘Such means as you are referring to, Mr. Solomon, can never be justified by any circumstances. You seem to regard man as master of his fate. But man is much more than just his intentional side. Your proposed system of ethics makes human rationality the basis of morality and puts man at the center of the universe, determining its purpose…’
‘Someone’s got to determine its purpose, Sister,’ Mr. Solomon interrupted, ‘and your God is out to lunch. Your attitude, Sister, is the most profoundly irreligious one I’ve ever heard; you attribute everything to divine purpose and leave no scope for human responsibility. You are incapable of going beyond your sense of dependency on your God to become an active agent in the universe.’
‘In fact, Mr. Solomon, whether you know it or not, this universe is being administered quite handsomely without our assistance. So say those with eyes to see. You might do well to concentrate on developing such vision. Man’s assignment is to live morally by discovering the meaning of the universe and conforming himself to it, rather than trying to fashion the universe to his purposes. You want complete control over life and death, Mr. Solomon, but you don’t — and can’t — have it…’
Ginny’s head was spinning as she returned to her mother’
s room. Eddie had been right: People should be prohibited from ever beginning a sentence with ‘Man is…’ And more important, hadn’t Sister Theresa and Mr. Solomon done complete turnarounds in their stands on the advisability of snatching the tubes out of Mrs. Cabel? How had this changeover occurred? Ginny pondered their lines of reasoning. Mr. Solomon had switched from insisting that the prolongation of human life under any circumstances was the greatest good, to insisting that physical comfort and relief from pain was the greatest good. And Sister Theresa had switched from maintaining that God’s plan included releasing Mrs. Caber’s spirit from her body on the spot, to maintaining that God’s plan included confining Mrs. Cabel’s spirit to her body until He in His infinite wisdom felt she was ready to leave it. Intriguing. But what intrigued her most was their regarding themselves privy to knowledge of the highest good and of God’s plan, respectively. How had they arrived at this enviable state of clarity and conviction?
Her mother was awake. Her unbandaged eye was staring out the window at a red squirrel in the elm tree. As they watched, the squirrel took a running jump and landed on the tip of a neighboring branch. The branch sagged under the squirrel’s weight. Ginny and her mother smiled at each other, charmed by the squirrel’s casual grace.
‘Mr. Solomon and Sister Theresa are at it again,’ Ginny said.
‘Oh?’
‘Now Mr. Solomon wants to unplug Mrs. Cabel, and Sister Theresa won’t let him. Each has a whole new set of equally convincing arguments.’
Her mother smiled faintly. ‘They’re playing word games. It’s a waste of time. You don’t figure these things out by talking about them.’
‘I’ve noticed.’ The confrontation had reminded Ginny of Wendy. Not surprisingly, since Wendy was now springing into her mind at the least excuse. As she drove down the road, each child she passed required a second look to be sure it wasn’t Wendy. In a store, almost unconsciously, she would gather armloads of the foods Wendy favored; she would sit at the cabin absently munching animal crackers by the hour. The few times the phone had rung, she’d raced to it, certain that it was Ira and Wendy. She was obsessed and she knew it. And she couldn’t stop herself.
Anyhow, Mr. Solomon’s and Sister Theresa’s debate had recalled Wendy’s preverbal days. Ginny and Ira would sit talking to each other after dinner. Unable to stand being left out any longer, Wendy would interrupt, babbling incoherently at a furious rate, and gesturing with her hands for emphasis, and staring intently from her mother to her father, convinced that her sounds were as meaningful and as worthy of attention as those of her parents. And she was probably right.
‘But what do you think about euthanasia?’ Ginny asked. Perhaps her mother’s detached intellectual observations on the topic would give Ginny insight into her mother’s situation.
‘I don’t think about it as a topic with a capital E — Euthanasia. I think everything depends on the circumstances in which it is embedded.’
‘And in Mrs. Cabel’s circumstances?’
‘I think she should have expressed her wishes in writing a long time ago.’
‘But since she apparently didn’t?’
Her mother shrugged. ‘It’s not my concern.’
‘Mother, one time you asked me not to let you die a lingering death,’ Ginny blurted out. ‘Do you want a gun or something?’ There. For better or for worse, it was out in the open.
Her mother smiled again and for a long time said nothing.
Ginny blushed scarlet, as she had years ago when her mother had told her about menstruation. The two topics — death and sex — were surrounded with equivalent taboos, required equal delicacy. She’d probably blown it by being so blunt.
‘I remember saying that,’ her mother finally replied. ‘That was when I was younger and infinitely more romantic about death. Thank you for asking. But no, I don’t want a gun. I’m not in much pain, just enough to prod me into doing what I know I have to do — close out my accounts. I’m realizing that, like everything else, even death requires elaborate preparations.’
They sat in silence for several minutes, listening to the ticking of the steepled clock.
‘There is a point to suffering, you know,’ her mother added offhandedly.
‘What is it?’ Maybe there was actually a reason that her life to date had resembled the Stations of the Cross?
‘To make you glad to give up life, ready to embrace death.’
‘Oh, neat!’
Ever since her mother’s retina had ruptured, Ginny had been reading to her extensively from the last volume of the encyclopedia. This day she read the final entry, concluding her mother’s nine-year project: ‘“Zwitterion (Dipolar Ion) — A molecule containing both acidic and basic groups may be expected to neutralize itself with the production of an internal salt or, as it is commonly called, a zwitterion.”’
Her mother nodded with satisfaction and lay silent with her eye closed. Then she asked Ginny to collect some papers from her desk at the house and to arrange for her lawyer to come.
For two days she busily consulted with her lawyer and sat up in bed writing on a pad propped against her knees. On the third day she handed Ginny a sheaf of papers. Ginny flipped through them — the format for her funeral, a list of pallbearers, the outfit she wanted to be buried in, her epitaph, a list of furniture to be kept in the family, various financial data. Distressed, Ginny stared at the neat lists.
Matter-of-factly, her mother said, ‘I’ve just sold the house and farm.’
Ginny looked at her with alarm. ‘Mother!’
‘Yes?’
‘But you can’t just sell our house.’
‘Why can’t I? It’s mine, isn’t it?’
‘But what if I wanted it?’ Ginny wailed.
‘Ginny dear, the biggest favor I can do you is to sell that house. It’s my parting gift to you. Every house should be sold before it’s allowed to become a monument. The past, doted over, distorts the present,’ she said firmly, with the conviction of personal experience.
Ginny stared at her, her eyes filling with tears. It was worse than being pushed out of the nest; the nest was being sold out from under her.
‘But I would like you to have my clock, to take with you wherever you decide to go.’
‘Thank you,’ Ginny mumbled, unable to look at her.
‘“To you from failing hands we throw the torch,” — her mother quoted with a wry smile, as she picked up the clock and handed it to her.
It seemed to Ginny that she was like a runner in an endless relay race, being passed the baton. Just so, she would one day hand the family clock to Wendy. “Yes, but it’s not enough,’ Ginny muttered. What the hell difference did it make if life went on, if the Hull/Babcock/Bliss line flourished, when you yourself would most likely die a horrible death full of pain?
‘No, it’s not enough.’
Ginny knew her mother had faith, whatever that meant. Not Sister Theresa’s faith that Our Father Which Art in Heaven would answer to cries of ‘Daddy.’ Nor Mr. Solomon’s faith in an endless black void of rest and oblivion. Like the veins of coal through the mountains where she’d been born, her mother’s faith laced her entire being. But faith in what, Ginny hadn’t figured out, intended to find out very soon.
As she turned to leave, she set the clock back on the table, feeling that her mother should have it beside her now more than ever.
‘No,’ her mother said. ‘Take it away please. And the pictures, too.’
That night Ginny phoned Jim at the last number he’d given their mother. A young man said, ‘Jim’s, like, split.’
‘Where to?’
‘Don’t know, man.’
‘It’s important. His mother is very sick.’
The young man covered the phone and yelled something unintelligible. When he came back on, he said, ‘He’s, like, backpacking in the High Sierras.’
Ginny called the Park Service, who felt it was unlikely that he could be located any time soon without more specific information.<
br />
Karl in Germany said he’d be home as soon as he could. Apparently the army, though dealing in mass death, reverenced individual death enough to grant leave at times like this.
The next day, as she entered her mother’s room, Ginny noticed how bare it looked without the clock and pictures and encyclopedias. It could have been any room in the hospital. Except for some vases of flowers, Ginny had carted off all external traces of her mother’s personality.
Her mother lay looking out at the squirrels. Ginny sat down. They didn’t speak. Ginny couldn’t think of anything to say. No more encyclopedias to read from. To turn on ‘Hidden Heartbeats’ now seemed distinctly inappropriate. Ginny sat in silence, watching the squirrels. Her mother lay in silence, watching the squirrels. Ginny was longing for some sort of neat statement from her mother, like the closing passage of a novel, that would deftly sum up the meaning of life, that would grant Ginny the gumption to go on with it. A dissertation on “What I Believe and Why.’ No such statement was forthcoming, and it was impossible to ask.
They floated suspended in silence for several days. Without the ticking of the clock to cue them in, time ceased to exist in its usual sense of being a relentless continuum leading from some past moment toward some future moment. Time now just existed as a whole, with Ginny and her mother encased snugly inside it, as though in a cocoon. Time lost its power to command. They took to judging segments of time by their quality, not by their duration. A nurse would arrive with an injection of an experimental drug. The pain of the injection and the pointlessness of further drugs made that particular bundle of time unpleasant, made the nurse’s removal from the room pleasant. Flowers and a card from a friend would arrive. The scent would fill the room, for Ginny to sniff and report on; the colors would dazzle; a note on the card would touch them. That chunk of time would be of outstandingly high quality. Meals would arrive, bland and boring and repetitive, and those parcels of time were so mediocre as not to merit their awareness. They floated through time as though it were a sea of pudding filled with raisins they nibbled with delight, and pebbles they spat out with irritation.