by Abby Norman
When he came home from the front, Walter traded the chaotic death of wartime for the more sterile, controlled kind of demise to be found in the city morgue: he became an undertaker. It was only after years of trying to patch bodies back together that he decided to go into law enforcement, hoping that he might save some people from the kind of exsanguinatory fate he knew awaited them on the slab.
When I was a kid, I was expressly told that Walter didn’t like children, which was why he didn’t have any. I didn’t find that too hard to believe: although I was never frightened of Walter when I came in from playing to find him seated at my grandmother’s kitchen table, I was a little wary of him. Even still, his tight-lipped reticence fascinated me. He didn’t say much, but he was a constant, quiet presence. He and my grandmother never lived together—he came and went as he pleased—but he was always around to mow her lawn or shovel us out after a blizzard. His frequent presence was a given, even if I didn’t know if that meant he was there for me.
It was Walter who found, and bought, Harrison for me. This was on two conditions: first, that the car remain in his name until I could afford to pay for the insurance myself, at which time he’d sell it to me, and second, that he was going to teach me to drive. The prospect of being taught to drive by an ex-cop was a little terrifying, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. So when Harrison came into my life, he brought Walter—the real Walter that I had not known—with him.
After school, Walter would pick me up and fold himself into the front seat of the Taurus. He’d firmly instruct me as we drove through town, but he never raised his voice or demeaned me in any way if I made a mistake. He would suggest that I stop speeding, and made a point to inform me that I was not, under any circumstances, to open the car’s sunroof. When I asked why, he answered by telling me about a time during his years on the force when he’d spent several hours by the side of the highway looking for heads when a convertible full of teenagers had been in an accident.
“They had, of course, been decapitated,” he’d said, glancing at me sideways from the passenger seat, and then slowly looking up at the sunroof.
“So, I don’t want to see that open…” he’d said, clearing his throat, “or heads—as they say—will roll.”
I turned to look at him, still trying to keep one eye on the road. He was grinning in his dark way, but gestured for me to pay attention to driving. Our shared macabre sense of humor got us through the agony of my driver’s education, and by the end of it, not only did I have my driver’s license and a safe vehicle—but I had a semblance of a grizzled grandpa. If Harrison wouldn’t start, or it overheated on a backroad, I could call him, and he’d lumber over to fix it, sending me on my way after leaving a $20 bill in the cupholder.
While Walter and I talked plenty about mortuary science (he would have liked to see me go into it, I know), we hardly ever spoke about anything else that happened in either of our lives. But one day I asked him why he got me the car. It wasn’t that I was ungrateful. Quite the contrary: I was just surprised.
“I knew if I didn’t, no one else would,” he said simply, the words blunt but softened by the warble of his voice. “You’re a good kid,” he added—and that was my answer.
Walter was already an old man when I was born, so by the time I entered adulthood and fell ill, he, too, had entered a more feeble state of existence. Although I had learned, through his patient teaching, how to change a tire on my own, and check the car’s fluids, I had a feeling of security knowing that Walter would always pick up the phone. Each year on my birthday, no matter where I was living (and I was almost always living somewhere new), as if by magic I’d get a card from him. Some years his was the only card that came.
The year I turned twenty-five, I did not get a card from him. I had visited him at his home—for the first time in years—a few months before, and he had not been well. Of course, neither was I, but I didn’t want him to know that. I spent several hours with him in his old farmhouse, and he spoke more in those hours than he had in the twenty-five years I’d known him. He showed me a picture of his wife, who had died too young of cancer, and whom he had never stopped loving. He showed me the military medals he’d been awarded, photographs of him as a young man in all black, the crisp uniform of an undertaker.
He also told me that it had meant a lot to him to be part of my life when I was a child. I was touched, but also found it curious. I’d been told repeatedly that he didn’t like children, had never wanted any, and that the fact that he tolerated me was just the exception to the rule. He got a bit misty-eyed as he explained that was not true in the least: he had been rendered infertile during the war. That was why he had no children.
When he died the following winter, I was quite grief stricken. Walter had not, at any point in my life, been someone I spoke to daily, and aside from that one afternoon where he had told me so much, I still knew very little about him in the grand scheme of things. I’d been grateful to him, and for him, my entire life. And I had a pristine driving record that I chalked up entirely to his teachings. But I had known, on some level, when the birthday card had not come that year, that it meant he would probably die soon. I also knew, from all our conversations about death over the years, in the most scientific of senses, that he had not feared it. He had not wanted me to fear death, either, which was why he spoke about it the way he did.
I realized in the days following Walter’s death that he had succeeded in that: it was not my own death that I had feared, but his. When he was truly gone, and I knew that if I called the telephone in that old farmhouse that it would ring and ring into eternity, never reaching him, I came to see that the most valuable thing he gave me was not his help, or his money, or even his kindness, but that he had taught me to take care of myself.
I also inherited an antique embalming kit from him. I can tell you that, circa 1952, the lip color du jour for the on-trend corpse was Avon’s “Misty Carnation.” There were also several typewritten drafts of papers that he had written as head of the mortuary, instructing his charges how to properly handle dead bodies so as not to expose the living to any “pestilences” of “time immemorial.” He advises them that they need not fear, because they have the technology and know-how—what he calls “mercifully true science”—to prevent such scourges, so long as they pay attention and heed the facts.
As I drove home with this rather large embalming case (embossed with a gold plate bearing his name) in the front seat, my car bleated incessantly in a misguided attempt to alert me that the “passenger” wasn’t belted. I had a good cry thinking about all those times I’d be behind the wheel with Walter in Harrison’s passenger seat.
One night, during that summer when Harrison had become a temporary domicile, I was sprawled out in the front seat, staring up into the night sky through the opening in the roof. My dwelling was almost comedically filled with clothes and books, all my worldly belongings—and then some. I stuck my feet on the dashboard and read under the halo of a streetlamp, trying to find answers in the pages of worn books. I wasn’t at ease, but I wasn’t exactly afraid, either. I had what I hoped wouldn’t turn out to be a Blanche Duboisian reliance on the kindness of strangers, along with reliance on my own strange self to figure out what was next. And for once in my life, I wasn’t worried about bleeding all over anyone’s Egyptian cotton sheets.
During the run of the show that summer before senior year, I had taken a shine to a woman who worked at the theater named Estelle. She had this air of glamour that made her look wildly out of place in Midcoast Maine, which was probably because she was a little out of place there. Like many interesting people, she had once lived in New York City—a fact that dazzled me as much as she’d hoped it would. One night, during the final run of the show, Estelle was taking bobby pins out of my hair after the performance and casually asked me about where I was off to. Overtired but still high-strung, and therefore chatty from the adrenaline, I spat out the not-too-glamorous truth. I’ve always been a sh
itty liar when in need of a nap.
Aghast—something that Estelle loved to be, for the sake of tragedy—she blurted out that she had a spare room, the implication being that I should stay with her.
AT THIS POINT, I WAS essentially acting as my own case worker and vetting a potential foster mother. But what do you suppose happens when a pedantic teenage girl, desperate for a family but with no real sense of what family means, sets out to try to forge healthy relationships with adults in her life who should, in theory, care for and about her?
During my unfinished research on maternal attachment at Sarah Lawrence, I read a book postulating that some children who are orphaned or put into foster care seem to possess a peculiar, almost bewitching kind of resilience. Adults are drawn to them in orphanages, in hospitals, in schools, and in care centers. This is how these children survive and sometimes even thrive. They have a certain quality about them that is just a little bit magical.
This reminded me of when I was small, reading well above my grade level, and the school librarian gave me a copy of Matilda by Roald Dahl. As most little children are, I was enchanted by the story, but it wasn’t until many years later (and years of comparisons being made) that I thought perhaps the librarian had hoped I would identify with Dahl’s bookworm. That maybe I would find some hope in it. It’s true, Matilda does get her happy ending. Her teacher, Miss Honey, adopts her and it’s all quite lovely. Of course, it’s all also very convenient, because Miss Honey does not have any children of her own, and Matilda still has plenty of time developmentally to form a strong attachment to her new caregiver.
With a somewhat clumsy flourish, I took Estelle up on her offer and lived there my senior year of high school. Most, if not all, of my memories of her from that time involve standing out on her back porch at dusk watching her smoke a cigarette. I have never in my life met someone who looked as good smoking a cigarette as Estelle did. As detrimental to one’s health (and wallet) as smoking may be, Estelle looked like an old Hollywood movie star whenever she held a cigarette between her slim, elegant fingers. Her high, severe cheekbones shaping her face as she inhaled, the glittering assortment of precious stones in her rings catching the rays of fading sun. No doubt she, too, had caught light that way once.
“Don’t you just love the pink light, princess?” she’d ask me in her fervent way, her deep, throaty voice cutting through a plume of smoke as she gestured to the haze of light that fell over her yard when the sun went down.
Estelle brought an unchecked intensity to everything in her life that fascinated me, and she could be wonderfully affectionate and supportive. At times, she was a maternal force in my life, something I had desperately needed. When I confessed to her that I was embarrassed by my apparent inability to wear tampons, she sat outside the bathroom door patiently trying to talk me through it.
From day one, Estelle had also taken it upon herself to try to teach me how to be less of a frump. For a young woman who had spent the better part of her childhood undernourished, the weight of puberty was welcomed. I didn’t see myself as being especially overweight, but my run-ins with the town gossips at the grocery store kept me abreast of my mother’s and grandmother’s opinions on the subject, which were pretty fatalistic.
I carried their perception of fault with me, but I suppose I didn’t find it enough of a slight to take any action. Still, I was dressing my newly curvaceous body in a never-ending cascade of vintage attire that worked well in theory, but perhaps not for the decade I was actually living in. I didn’t care. I loved clothes, and I dressed for myself. Estelle did suggest that perhaps I could try a little harder in terms of pride in presentation, though—especially where my eyebrows were concerned. I can still see her face, her own brows knitted together in concentration—so much so that I was getting a headache just looking at her—as she studied them, a pair of tweezers poised above my face. Ever since the day she plucked them, I’ve continued to diligently have them waxed and shaped. I’ve never tried to make them into something that they aren’t naturally inclined to be, but Estelle did show me the power of tidying them up a bit.
It might seem like Estelle offered me little of emotional substance, since her focus always seemed to be on appearance. But with my mother and grandmother, that focus had always been laser-sharp, hypercritical, and honestly, very warped. Estelle really was only trying to help, and trying to find a way to forge a bond. We weren’t mother and daughter by any stretch—although, whenever she’d be in the position of having to explain who I was or why I was living in her house, she’d sort of wave her pretty hands in my general direction and go, “I’m like, her mom-thing.”
Mom or not, she tried to impart her decades of feminine wisdom however she could think to do so. Getting dolled up made her feel good, so I think she hoped it might make me feel better, too. As much as I would feel a bit embarrassed if she tried to style my hair or show me a better way to apply makeup, I appreciate now that she was trying to teach me something about living in the world with the body I had. Estelle had an eye for beauty, something I’d learned about her right away when I’d watch her studying the sun as it slinked down over the horizon. But a lot of people can appreciate beauty when it’s obvious. Estelle could see something beautiful even when it was obscured, or had been browbeaten into hiding. She could coax beauty out and find a place for it to live, welcomed in the world’s empty spaces. Estelle could see the possibility of beauty everywhere. Even in me.
There were certain things about me that she could never understand, or that made her visibly uncomfortable. It seems strange that I could have been intimidating to her emotionally—since she was easily the most ebullient person I’ve ever known. That was the hardest part of living in so many different houses as a teenager: when someone opens their home to you, they need to know who you are. They want to understand you—if for no other reason than that they can rest assured you aren’t going to commit arson or steal their fine china. But there’s also an intimate, emotional component to cohabitation, even if you barely talk to each other. I was almost eighteen. My personality changed with the tides, wavering between child and adult. I spent a lot of time emulating women I admired, trying on bits and pieces, running their intonations across my lips like Dusty Rose, trying to find a shade that suited me. And if Estelle had an abundance of anything, it was feelings and lipstick.
Aside from potential splendor, the other thing Estelle was skilled at dragooning from people was emotion. Her rapt attention encouraged more than a few woebegone soliloquies to emerge from me—an adjective she probably planted in my mind. I’d try to make it home from my weekend job on Saturday afternoons so we could listen to Garrison Keillor on A Prairie Home Companion together.Well, not together exactly, but in companionable orbit. I was usually in the living room with the radio, reading or working on homework. And she’d be bustling around doing laundry and cooking—almost always cooking. In fact, she had speakers or a radio in just about every room of her house. No matter what room you were in—and even if you were on the porch or in the backyard—on Saturday afternoons you’d hear the tales from Lake Wobegon.
Over the years, I’ve found that I can’t listen to it in her absence. It seems incomplete without her rasping laughter punctuating the broadcast, rising up over the banjo-slaps like steam from the pot of water she’d be toiling over in those warm, drowsy afternoons.
One day, I came home from school to find that Estelle had left my mail on the stairs, the same as she always had. Not that I got a lot of mail, and most of the mail I did receive looked like it had gone through the wringer a few times: returned postage, scribbled out addresses, a lot of question marks next to my name. But on that middling winter-spring day, a large, green envelope with Sarah Lawrence College’s logo embossed on it awaited me.
My heart nearly beat out of my chest and I tripped my way up the stairs as I tore into it. I probably used my teeth, my hunger to know its contents tapping into my most primeval needs. I had already been accepted into the other sch
ools I’d applied to: Bryn Mawr, Wells, and the University of Maine, which was my “safety school.” Much to my dismay, I’d been waitlisted at Vassar, because they had requested some kind of essay about me be submitted by my mother, which I, for obvious reasons, could not supply. Sarah Lawrence, though, had always been my first choice, ever since that metamorphic summer at camp when I’d taken dance classes from a raven-haired alumna.
Although I’d really had my heart set on the place, I’d had no idea whether I could actually get in. I had, like many other college-hopeful students, taken the SATs not once, but twice, sending my best scores to my chosen institutions of higher learning. I’d received a perfect score on the essay portion of the SATs, which gave me a thrill that was immediately tempered by how poorly I’d performed in the math section. As it turned out, Sarah Lawrence didn’t even require you to submit your test scores. And aside from that, it had a self-proclaimed writing-dominant program that weighted one’s personal essay heavily. Having written a solid enough essay to convey my readiness at sixteen to care for myself to a judge, I thought it reasonable to hope I could write one to convince an admissions committee of my college readiness. Which, I guess, I did.
Although I had my emancipation document, heavy with its official signage and stamp, tucked away in a box where I didn’t look at it unless I had to, my acceptance letter to Sarah Lawrence became my most prized testimony. I flew down the stairs, nearly knocking Estelle over as I skidded into the kitchen, brandishing it proudly. She’d suspected that it was an acceptance letter, but actually seeing it was positively merrymaking.
The next day, I walked into school beaming. I couldn’t wait for the principal to make the announcement over the intercom (as he did for every senior once they’d chosen a school, military branch, or other post-high-school vocation). No other students had arrived yet, so I sauntered into my favorite English teacher’s classroom. The first bell had yet to ring, and he was alone, sitting at his desk grading papers. I dropped the acceptance letter onto his desk, expecting him to be elated. He looked shocked, lowering his glasses onto the bridge of his nose.