Beacon Street Mourning

by Dianne Day

  I walked back and forth among the graves, forcing myself to accept the likelihood that Father would die. The thought weighed on me. Indeed, in this place, with its tombs of John Winthrop and Paul Revere and such venerables, one felt the whole heavy weight of history. That weight is part and parcel of Boston, it was what I wanted to feel.

  “Fremont, you are not in San Francisco anymore,” I said softly to myself. Stating the obvious, yes, but I needed the reminder. San Francisco ways of thinking would not work for me here, nor the more open, casual manner of dealing with people. Boston was everything I’d run from four years earlier, that was true; yet this place was in my blood, my origin if no longer my home.

  Surely if I remembered to draw upon the maturity that had become mine through experience during those four years I’d been away, I could do well in the difficult time I knew lay ahead of me. I might have been a child here—even here in this very graveyard where I used to come out of morbid curiosity—yet I did not have to let this city evoke in me the frustrating, helpless paralyses of childhood.

  Slowly I raised my gaze from a tombstone I’d been contemplating, whose principal decoration was a skull with wings where its ears should have been, and looked toward the New State House. “New” it is called, though it was built in the 1790s or thereabout. Different from San Francisco indeed.

  Across a few blocks of rooftops I could see architect Bulfinch’s golden dome of the State House glowing like a beacon, making its own light in spite of the grayness of this cold afternoon. All the buildings around were equally old and equally different from what my eyes had become used to during the past four years. Dark red brick and stone formed the predominant materials here, with roofs being made of even darker slate.

  In this part of Boston—even on my own street, Beacon Street—the architectural style is most often plain; the buildings, whether designed as places of business or family dwellings, are flat-fronted and without ornament, save for the occasional pediment or pilaster. Pembroke Jones House was no exception. I used to know the name of the architect who designed the family home, someone famous; but such things were never very important to me and I had forgotten. The style of architecture, that I could remember: It is called Federal.

  I stood in the graveyard a few moments longer, breathing more easily and deeply of the cold air as my body adjusted to a changed clime, and my mind did too. I was wearing both the fur hat and the muffler, and leather gloves of course, though they were not lined. My full-length, fitted coat of burgundy wool was the heaviest available ready-made at San Francisco’s best (at least in my opinion) department store, the City of Paris—yet I feared it was not really warm enough for Boston. If we—if I—stayed here very long, I would need something warmer. And perhaps of better quality. I should have to see what Augusta and others were wearing.

  I sighed. I had to think about these things again, and I didn’t like it. Clothes and fashion and style and such trivia can clutter up one’s mind interminably once one lets that sort of thing get started. Yet I had a purpose here, things to prove, points to be made; and if I must dress and act the part of my father’s daughter, his only rightful heir taking her place in society, in order to achieve my purpose, then most assuredly I would.

  Perhaps I could even convert these damnable canes into a kind of dignified accessory, I thought as I returned to the hotel. I walked as tall and straight as possible, with an almost normal gait. If every now and then I felt a twinge that caused a hitch in my step, I stopped to stare at some detail of nearby scenery as if my pause had been intentional. I was not fast but I was becoming more and more surefooted with each passing day. The Parker House being so near the Common and the Public Garden, I would be able to take my daily exercise easily. A considerable bonus: There were no hills to climb. Even Beacon Hill, which rises between Beacon Street and the Charles River, is nothing compared to the steepness of our San Francisco slopes.

  Nor was the Charles much compared to San Francisco Bay. I would miss my City by the Bay, but I had work to do here, and I was about to begin it. The things that would happen in the next few weeks might prove to be the most important things I would ever do in my entire life.

  I SIGHED. It was extremely ungracious of me, perhaps even rude, but I could not help it.

  “Michael,” I said, trying hard to keep the exasperation out of my voice, “did you even bother to read the note I left you?”

  His eyes flashed blue fire, like the hottest part of a flame. “Yes, I read your note. But surely you don’t expect me to let you go off by yourself like that! Why do you think I came all the way across the country with you? Go ahead, that’s not a rhetorical question. Answer me if you can.”

  “Shush! You are embarrassing me in front of the doorman, not to mention the passersby.” I answered his question, if only tangentially, in a low voice: “I know you came to be of assistance, but there are times—this first visit to my father in the hospital being one of them—when I absolutely must do things by myself.”

  Intent on his own agenda, he ignored everything I’d just said and ranted on:

  “What if you’d fallen? The doorman told me a woman of your description—and I ask you who else could that have been, even considering that I did not know precisely what you would be wearing—had gone for a walk a full half hour ago. I was beside myself with worry.”

  “I have no sympathy for you. If you had paid attention to what I said in the note, you would be in your room, or perhaps in the hotel bar, right this very minute. All safe and sound and tranquil as a … a bug in a rug. A poor metaphor but the only one that comes to me at the moment.”

  “How can I be tranquil as bugs in rugs or whatever other ridiculous ideas may enter your head for the moment, when you’re out doing unwise things that may—probably will—result in your getting hurt again?”

  I moved farther along the sidewalk in the other, less traveled direction, away from Tremont Street, where there were fewer pedestrians passing to overhear this argument, which was vexing me more with every passing minute.

  “Michael,” I said insistently, “in the first place, I didn’t get my legs broken because of anything I did, any mistake I made, or the least bit of carelessness on my part. My injuries were not my fault, any more than the broken collarbone that plagued you for quite some time was yours. You and I and many other people were victims of a violent criminal act made to look like an accident, you know that. So just stop trying to make me feel guilty.”

  He nodded gruffly, but didn’t say a word. His eyes were still flaming blue in their depths and a nerve jumped in his cheek, evidence of—or perhaps a protest from—a tightly clenched jaw. He wore a black bowler hat pulled down almost to the black arches of his eyebrows, and his breath came out in visible puffs like smoke on the cold air.

  As he did not choose to speak, I continued: “In the second place, you can just think of it this way: Have I ever complained, even once, about all the times you disappeared out of my life, just went away, sometimes for weeks and sometimes with no warning? Come on, tell me: Have I ever complained?”

  He scratched one eyebrow with a black-gloved finger. “Well, no. But this is different.”

  “Yes, it’s different all right. It’s different because instead of weeks or months—which is how long you tend to be gone—I’ll be away only a couple of hours. It’s different because I wrote you a note explaining in some detail just exactly where I’m going, how I plan to get there, when I expect to return—things you have seldom if ever done for me. I did all that, but you still couldn’t trust me, could you?”

  I was getting wound up, my cheeks were hot, but I couldn’t stop myself, the words came pouring out. “Oh no, you had to come down here and hang around the hotel entrance, waiting for me as if I were some recalcitrant child. Well, I’ll tell you this right now, I won’t have it! I’m not a child and I’m not your wife, and I’m going to do this my own way!”

  “God!” he exploded. “You are the most stubborn woman!”

&
nbsp; We stood inches apart, glaring at each other, both of us breathing hard and creating clouds of steam that rose between us like a two-headed dragon.

  “Go back inside the hotel, Michael,” I said after a few moments.

  The tension between us broke. He took a step back. “Allow me to assist you into your carriage and see you on your way first. Please.”

  “That would be most kind of you.”

  The doorman had been properly trained for his role at a good Boston hotel: If he had been the least bit shocked by our bad manners, airing a disagreement in public, his face did not betray it. He simply summoned a horse-drawn cab for me and I was soon on my way.

  THE PRIORY is an old, private hospital overlooking the Charles River, not too far from Massachusetts General Hospital. One hears the latter is becoming rather well known for medical breakthroughs.

  At least, I mused as the cab bumped through the ice-rutted streets, I had not been accustomed to keep up with such things in the past, but perhaps I would be wise in the future to change that. In my present situation I would have liked very much to have acquired some base of knowledge, so that I might better understand what was happening to Father. I wished too that I had known more about the nature of my own injuries when they occurred, and what I should have expected in the healing process—what a lot of agony some knowledge might have prevented!

  I sighed. As they say, there is no use crying over spilt milk. For me it was too late now. Either my legs were mending properly or they were not; there was nothing to be done except I must continue to rebuild my strength and take care to do no further damage. But perhaps it was not too late for Father. Perhaps William Barrett—that traitor—had not really known what he was talking about when he said all who suffer from what ails Father will surely die.

  One can always hope.

  I clung to that thought as I alighted from the cab, paid the driver, turned toward the hospital, and immediately found myself confronted by a distressingly steep flight of steps. It appeared that the main entrance of this place was on the second floor!

  Surely that could not be right. Sick people cannot be expected to climb or descend so many steps—this was my reasoning, and it turned out I was right. Perhaps those steps were meant to present an impressive appearance, but fortunately they also concealed a large pair of doors right at ground level, the threshold perfectly, reassuringly flat. I entered through these doors with ease, and inquired at an information desk for the number and floor of my father’s room.

  “I am his daughter,” I added, “Caroline Fremont Jones.”

  I had not told anyone, including Dr. Searles Cosgrove, that I would be visiting this afternoon, but that did not seem to matter. The sweet-faced, gray-haired woman who manned the desk smiled when I said I was Leonard Jones’s daughter, and provided me with the room number and a set of thorough instructions on how to proceed.

  Hospitals always seem to me like a foreign land with laws that are incomprehensible to the average person, ruled by a corps of white-coated dictators, all male, usually bearded. That these dictators are generally served by attractive handmaidens does not further endear them to me.

  Also, hospitals smell peculiar.

  Getting into the elevator with two of the handmaidens, otherwise known as nurses, reminded me that Priory is a Catholic institution. The nurses were nuns; I must remember to address them as “Sister.” I did not think I would have any trouble remembering—their headdresses, which were shaped like wings, made it hard to forget they were not ordinary women.

  As I followed two of the wing-headed creatures of this alien land off the elevator, I had a sudden, stabbingly sharp mental image of the winged skull on the tombstone in King’s Chapel graveyard.

  I could have done without that, I thought—mentally, as it were, shaking myself to dispel the unwelcome sight from my mind.

  Yet I could not make it go away. And so it was that I approached my father’s hospital room with a vision of Death, in the stark form of a skull with wings to either side of its hollow eyes, floating in the air before me.

  FIVE

  I STOOD IN the open door of my father’s hospital room. He appeared to be sleeping. He lay on his back with his mouth open, his breath coming in gasps that did not sound at all normal. I could hear him better than I could see him because of the light from the windows beyond, which cast his form in shadow.

  It was late afternoon; ironically, the sun had chosen this time of day to escape from the sky’s heavy gray cloud cover, and now blazed forth in brief glory. Father had one of the better rooms in the hospital, with two windows side by side on the far wall, overlooking the Charles River; which is to say, the windows faced northwest and thus had a view of the setting winter sun. I saw his face in profile against the sunlight, which made a nimbus of his hair—hair that had once been dark and thick but was now sparse and pale. Thus haloed, my father looked like an ungainly angel. If not for the harsh, irregular sound of his breathing I might have thought him already dead.

  The Sister behind me gave a little nudge. “It’s all right, you can go on in,” she said.

  “But he’s sleeping,” I whispered.

  Now that skull with the wings was floating over Father’s bed. I could see it—only in my mind’s eye, I knew, but still I could see it.

  “Then wake him.” She had a smile in her voice—I didn’t have to see her face to know that smile was there. “He will want to spend every possible minute with you. I know he will, for he has talked of you often.”

  Her warmth gave me courage, and I entered the room. I walked around to the other side of the bed, so that I would no longer have the sun near-blinding me. I heard the Sister close the door … and then I was alone with my father.

  I had a lump in my throat the size of China.

  Oh, he was so dreadfully different from the father I had always known; different even from the greatly changed man I had last seen less than a year ago. He looked a hundred years old. No, more than that, he looked as if he were already partially in the grave. Even worse, his body bore a faint odor that seemed on the edge of decay—even though one had only to glance at him to see that he was being scrupulously cared for, his nightshirt and bed linens pristine. His skin had an alien yellow-brown cast and lay slack upon his bones, as it does with people who have once been full-fleshed but have morbidly wasted.

  I moved closer and bent down, wanting to kiss his cheek, but at the last moment I found myself afraid to do so. My presence suddenly seemed an intrusion. For a few moments I felt almost as if I should leave, or as if I should not have come—this chilled me. I backed away from the bed.

  I stood there horribly confused, not knowing what to do, to stay or go. But then, through the confusion came a faint glimmer of understanding: My mother had died in this lingering way. I’d been only fourteen then, and had to watch uncomprehending as slowly her life, all that remained of her existence, became focused more on something or someplace beyond, than on the room in which she lay, or with the people—my father and myself—to whom she was so dear. I’d felt held at a distance from Mother as she died, by some invisible force; nothing I could do would bring her closer to me. Inexorably she’d drifted farther and farther away until finally one day my mother was not there at all. Her death had been a bitter lesson.

  My impulse to go away now and leave Father to his dying was selfish—I only wanted to spare myself the pain of that slow yet final separation. But I was not fourteen anymore. Nor was Father dead yet. He needed me for a while longer, and I would stay. But I did not want to wake him, simply being in the room with him was enough for now—so I refrained from kissing his cheek.

  Father was dreaming, or so I fancied, for his eyes were moving back and forth behind his paper-thin eyelids, as if he were watching something only he could see. What else could that be but a dream? I hoped the dream was a good one, for it was clear that Father’s life outside of dreams was not good, not now.

  Once again I silently cursed William Barrett for plan
ting in my mind the insidious thought that I was responsible for causing my father additional suffering. Then I cursed Augusta Simmons for being the origin of that idea in the first place. Who knew but what, if he’d had proper medical attention in a hospital months ago, he might not be in this condition now? For at least the hundredth time I wondered how much of his illness was Augusta’s fault, and hers alone.

  Father had not moved. His breath, though full of unhealthy noises such as wheezes and an occasional whistle, came at reassuringly regular intervals. I adjusted the slats of the window blinds so that the sinking sun’s light was directed upward, where it might bounce off the ceiling and fill the room with a mellow glow. Then I took off my hat and muffler, hooked my canes over the arm of a chair placed near the bed for visitors, sat down, and began to unbutton all the buttons down the front of my burgundy wool coat.

  This took a while. When I looked up from undoing the final three buttons nearest the hem, my father had opened his eyes.

  “Is it really you?” he said. “My girl has come at last?”

  “Yes, Father,” I said, biting my lip, which suddenly quivered uncontrollably. “I came as soon as I was able.”

  He opened his near arm to me, and I rose, forgetting everything except an overwhelming desire to feel that arm around me. I do not know how I got to his bed without my canes, nor do I remember what I said to him or he to me in the first overwhelming joy and pain of that meeting.

  But I do remember the sunset on that February day in 1909, how brilliant was its light, how red it glowed off the ceiling and walls of my father’s hospital room, like being bathed in blood.

  “AUGUSTA WILL BE here soon,” Father said much later, after we’d talked and I had shed a few unavoidable tears. “She generally arrives when they bring the evening meal. She’ll make it her business to see that I eat. I’d far rather she didn’t—” He paused to cough, a painful process obviously, which racked his thin chest and left him shaking.