She blinked and then turned her eyes from mine. She was gazing up at the ceiling when she answered: “Soon.”
29
When Karol died, time stopped working as it should: a day stretched into a year, a week passed in a blink. Space changed, too. Before, there was the solid fact of him everywhere—his razor in the bathroom cabinet, his jacket on the hook, his laughter and his cold sweat, his weight on the other side of the bed—and then he was nothing; less than ether, he was gone. The atmosphere in the house had shifted. Every day I had to consider different options and choose the best one and this might have been what life looked like all along, but I’d never realized it before, and when I did, it was exhausting. I was a widow, but otherwise my roles were the same—mother, sister, neighbor, friend—and yet they didn’t feel the same; they didn’t come naturally to me anymore, the actions were no longer automatic or easy. I became a mechanical doll that moved a dozen muscles to make a smile. Sometimes it worked. Often, it didn’t.
Those first few weeks, I felt sick to my stomach. Then it changed to a sharp pain in my chest, then an itching, then an ache. Grief took over my whole body so I felt it in every organ and limb, except when I was numb, which was much of the time. After a while the ache went away, and I discovered that I still had my arms, my ankles, my liver, my spleen. Eyes blinking in bright light. Lungs filling and emptying.
My heart had been beating the whole time, I realized, without skipping a beat.
A recovery of some kind. Grief stretches on to the horizon, but you keep moving through it. I knew this because Karol’s death wasn’t my first tragedy. There was my brother Junior disappearing: word came that he’d hopped a train going east, and that was all we ever learned. And then there was Herbert, who’d passed the year before Karol did. My parents’ death was a cruel joke—killed in a car accident during the only vacation they ever took in their lives, pursuing that classic dream of every midwesterner, to see the ocean, just once. The police said my father wasn’t wearing any shoes, and the mystery of this detail haunted me still. And then there were the family tragedies that happened before I was alive, or at least before I could remember. The brother I only ever met as a baby, a sister who died of sickness years before I was born. The family’s losses become part of you, become your own. My mother never spoke of the children she grieved over, but my father would remind us on the occasion of an anniversary: “Be kind to your ma today. She’s remembering your brother.” The anniversaries were always those of their deaths, never their births. My mother was certainly one for endings.
What I’m saying, then, is that I wasn’t inexperienced in loss when Karol suddenly left me all on my own. But one tragedy in no way prepares you for the next. I mourned Karol, and there was a sort of pleasure in the mourning because I was certain that it was the worst I’d ever suffer. A wife loses her husband; her children lose their father. No one has a greater claim on devastation. No other loss can compare to this.
I continued to believe that right up until Lydie died.
In the end, I spent a little over three weeks living alone with her in that house. Twenty-three days altogether, but it might as well have been a year, a decade, a lifetime. It was like something from one of Debbie’s science fiction novels: a whole civilization rises up, thrives, collapses, and turns to dust—and on the last page you find out that it all took place in the blink of a god’s eye. Not the God but a god. Those books have to invent everything, starting right at the beginning.
During that time, I sent Joe and Debbie to stay with Rena and John Charlie. Joe was angry with me because he no longer got to help George and the Hughes boys with the farm, but what could I do with my son’s anger over something trivial when I had Lydie’s orders to follow? And I had no doubt that they were orders. She had made it clear that she wanted me to be the one to lead her down those last few steps toward death, and this wasn’t a directive I would have refused anyone, much less someone from whom I’d taken so much.
Did she know what I’d taken? Was this the reason she felt she could ask me—tell me, more like it—to nurse her at the end? I didn’t know. I couldn’t ask. Even if she knew or had somehow guessed about George and me, staying with her was nothing so simple as a punishment. It was something else: a pact, maybe. An agreement. It was her bonding me to her memory while she was still breathing, while her heart continued to beat. It was an assurance that when she was gone, I would honor our friendship better than I’d done when she was alive.
George was living in my house with Gene and Bobby. I tried not to think of them there—him, especially. I assumed he was sleeping in the bed where we had often made love. His head was on the pillow, and I both looked forward to and dreaded the time when I’d return to the house and find evidence of him there: stray hairs, a lingering scent, a sock kicked under the bed. He and the boys were eating at my kitchen table; Rena told me she dropped some food there every other day, and others of our neighbors and friends were doing the same. They were all curious, of course, about this arrangement that exiled George and his sons from their home, and me and my children from ours. Why Hazel? they might be asking. Why not one of Lydie’s sisters-in-law? And in fact, George’s sisters did call the house; they were about the only ones, aside from his parents. Everyone else figured they had no claim, I guess, but family could insist. I gave them updates on Lydie, and each time I had to repeat her instructions that no one come to see her. Somehow or other, they all obeyed. Whether they resented me or were thankful that I was the one chosen to take on the nursing duties and not them, I didn’t know. My guess is that it was some mixture of both. In any case, both family and neighbors stayed away from the Hughes’s house, and if anyone bothered George with inquiries, at least they were keeping him and the boys fed at the same time. You could count on neighbors to buy their gossip with casseroles.
Meanwhile, George was there, inhabiting the rooms I’d lived in my whole life, and I was here, in the home he’d made with Lydie these past two decades. He was a ghost haunting my house, and I was a ghost haunting his.
And what was Lydie? The god of all this. Everything happening in the blink of her eye.
I didn’t see much of anyone, but I called George every evening to give him an update on his wife. We never talked long, and I spoke with the certainty that other ears might be listening. I told him how the day had gone—how long she had been awake, whether she’d eaten at all—but I left out the worst of it. After all, the whole reason Lydie had wanted her family to leave was so that they might be spared the difficult and messy end. And the truth was that I felt some protectiveness over her dying. I was watching her fight a losing battle, and I was a part of the fight, too, even if I was only the equivalent of a flag-bearer. The real fight was all hers. But it was also true that I knew the struggle better than anyone but her, and I was possessive of my role as first and only observer. Talking to George on the phone each night, I kept my updates short and vague. I left out all that mattered.
The only time I saw him was a few days before Lydie died. It was at my house; Rena had brought my children to see me, just for an hour or two. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving Lydie alone any longer than that. I didn’t want to go far, either, so we met at the house. This was the second time—the first had been the previous week. It didn’t seem right to absent myself completely from Joe and Debbie when in reality I was staying just down the road from our house. But I also couldn’t give them much time because Lydie was in no place to care for herself. If she needed to move, I had to be there to help her. If she wanted water, it was me that fetched it.
Both times I saw my children, we met when George and his sons were out working. We sat on the porch and talked as if we were acquaintances. The first time, Debbie cried. The second time she pouted. Joe looked out at the fields with open longing and talked only when Rena asked him a direct question, trying to coax him into talking to me. For my part, I didn’t try very hard. I was nearly exhausted with the emotional labor of nursing a dying woman who
was both my best friend and the person I’d most wronged in my life, and I couldn’t worry about anyone else, not even my children. They were with Rena; they were fine. This would all be over soon.
That second meeting, however, George came up to the porch unexpectedly, and when he saw me, he gave me a look like I might be on fire. It was clear he didn’t know what to say, so he talked to Rena and the children and he ignored me. He’d come to the house for some water, and after a minute or two of small talk, he went past us into the kitchen and we all listened to the sound of the tap running. Then he came back out onto the porch and asked if he could have a moment’s private talk with me.
We went down the porch stairs and walked around the side of the house in silence. At the back was the fence with blackberry bushes, and I saw that the berries were full. Beyond them, on the other side, was the garden where I would normally be spending my mornings this time of year. I didn’t want to see the state of it—overripe tomatoes blackening on the ground, weeds crowding out the carrots and beets—so I stopped and said I thought this was far enough to put us out of earshot of the others, and asked what he wanted to talk to me about.
“What do you think I want to talk about, Hazel? You think I brought you out here to chat about the weather?”
I straightened my shoulders and looked him in the eye. “If you brought me out here to shout at me, then I won’t bother to stay. You go on and yell at the wind if you want to yell.”
“Never heard me shout before, did you? ‘Mild-mannered George, never raises his voice.’” He said this last in a strange tone, high and affected. Then he shook his head and frowned. “Lydie used to say that. It made her so angry that I wouldn’t get upset when we fought. Me, I always figured there wasn’t much to get worked up about. What do you think we fought about?”
He looked at me as if I might want to answer him, but I had folded my arms and sealed my lips tight. If he wanted to deliver a monologue, I’d let him, but I wasn’t going to participate in any other way.
“The kids and money,” he went on, “that’s all. How much are we going to have and what’re we going to spend it on. How much do we put aside. But that’s all shared business, so why’d I want to get angry at her over something we’re trying to solve together? Never made sense to me. Not one bit. And still it made her mad that I stayed even-keel. She wanted to ruffle my feathers, and they wouldn’t be ruffled. Well, I’ve got a reason to scream and shout now, and she won’t even see it. Won’t even let me show her how upset I can get.”
He was moving as he spoke—not pacing, exactly, but taking a little step to the side and then back again, like the ground was so hot it was burning the soles of his feet. It almost looked like he was dancing, and I pictured him at one of the stomps I’d gone to when I was young. He’d have been among the men who stayed close to the wall, building up the nerve to ask a girl to take a spin on the floor. There were certain kinds of men who couldn’t keep their feet from moving: all that nervous energy had to come out somehow. Those were the ones you wanted to dance with. You had to try extra hard to send the right signals, though, because most of the time they weren’t good at reading them.
George paused to take out a cigarette and light it. He blew the smoke out in a sharp cough. “What am I supposed to do, Hazel?” he asked. “Family’s not supposed to split up this way. I’ve got two boys who know their mother is dying, and we’re none of us allowed to get anywhere near her. Gene and Bobby don’t say nothing, but I know they’re thinking about her. Bobby gives me a look sometimes. What am I supposed to say to him?” He took another pull on his cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke. “Paralyzed, that’s what I am. I’m no better than an army vet who’s lost his legs.”
He was going in circles, saying the same thing four different ways, none of them quite right. I’d have let him go on for a while if I thought it would do him some good, but I could tell it was doing the opposite. He was a man; he needed to go throw or hit something, to act out his emotion through some physical act. I glanced back at the house to make sure no one had ventured off the porch in search of us, and then I walked past him a few steps toward the barn. “Come with me,” I ordered.
The barn door slid open without much noise; George had oiled the slides sometime recently. I saw that the tractor was gone now, which meant that Gene or Bobby was out somewhere riding it. I saw, too, that the barn was deserted. Once inside, I took George’s hand and led him over to the butchering table, which we hadn’t used for years. It was thick with dust and bits of hay. A quick wipe with his gloves made it clean enough.
What is there to say about what followed? I held on to him tight and put my face to his shoulder, and though I didn’t feel like crying, it was the right position for a woman to take comfort from a man. He had his face pressed to my neck, and that felt right, too. We were quick about it, and quiet; it was a great heavy table made of wood, and it had handled heavier bodies than ours.
When he was finished, George breathed heavily into my neck for another half a minute and then he suddenly pulled away, pushing me from him almost with violence. And this let me know in an instant that I’d been wrong: our making love hadn’t solved anything. George turned toward the wall to zip up and I heard him say, so quietly I almost didn’t hear, “Getting too old for this.”
Without looking back, he slid open the door and went out, leaving the door open behind him. I gazed at the slanted rectangle of light on the ground and thought about what had just happened. It had been an act with only physical dimensions, almost a reflex. We hadn’t talked during or after; we hadn’t even kissed. His face buried in my neck and my face pressed to his shoulder, this had kept us separate the whole time.
Searching my conscience, I came up with only the old guilt, nothing new added to it. I put a hand to my hair and smoothed my dress over my hips, and then I went out through the barn door into the bright light of another nearly endless summer afternoon.
Before heading back to Lydie’s house, I sat awhile longer with Rena and the children on the porch and talked about cattle and trucks. Though Joe was upset with me for taking him from his work with George and the boys, he’d started helping out at Rena and John Charlie’s dairy farm, since he was staying there now for what might be the whole summer. It wasn’t really farming he was interested in but machines, and the machinery on a dairy farm was, in its way, just as impressive as a tractor. John Charlie had started giving him driving lessons down the roads out their way, too, and driving a car had been Joe’s greatest dream for at least two years. I was glad he had something to be excited about. As for Debbie, she remained sullen the whole time.
After they left, I went inside the house to grab a few things. I was getting tired of wearing the same three dresses I’d brought with me to Lydie’s and wanted to refresh my wardrobe. When I entered my bedroom, I saw that the bed was neatly made, and George had left no traces other than a suitcase that lay closed on top of the cedar chest. I had no interest in examining the bed for his head print on the pillow. I opened the closet and chose a few of the summer dresses hanging near the front, and then I closed the door again and left the room.
I had one other errand to complete at the house. When I told her I was going over to the house to see Debbie and Joe, Lydie had asked me to pick up some books; she’d gotten tired of the selection at her house and could no longer bear the television. So I climbed the stairs, the heat opening up with every step, and once upstairs I went right to the corner closet, where the boxes of books were stored. The closet held an odd assortment of things: a handleless pot I’d never got around to having mended, a box of mason jar lids, Karol’s paintings. There were too many of those paintings, and they all looked the same; I would have to get rid of some of them when I had the time to think of such things. In the closet there were two boxes of books, one near the front and the other near the back, but the first one held mostly Debbie’s space alien novels, and I didn’t figure Lydie would be too interested in those. I moved some things out of
the way and dragged out the one from the back. It was bigger than I’d counted on, too heavy to carry easily down the stairs, loaded down as it was. I took out about half the books and left them pushed against the wall by the closet, and then I carried the box downstairs and out to my car. I glanced back as I drove away and thought how unnatural it felt to leave my house like that, how lonely it appeared in the rearview mirror.
At Lydie’s, the smell of dust and old paper tickled my nose as I carried the box inside, my arms aching from the weight and the angle. I went right into the living room and found Lydie awake but bleary: it was clear she had been sleeping only a moment before I arrived.
“What’s that you’ve got there?” she asked with what sounded like suspicion.
“I brought over some books from my house. You asked me to, remember?” Lydie and I seemed to fall into this way of talking from time to time, in which she acted doubtful and, in response, I pointed out that I was only looking after her interests. She had sent away all those who loved her, and she was stuck with only my company. Things were bound to get testy sometimes.
I crossed the room and set down the box on the chair beside the bed. Before they left, George and the boys had replaced the sofa with a mattress on box springs, but there wasn’t a headboard and this meant that now Lydie spent all her time lying down. She turned her head just an inch to peer at the box out of the corner of her eye, but then she returned to her previous position, face tipped to the ceiling. She’d told me that she had mapped the whole thing—all its watermarks, its minor dips and hills—so that she could have described the terrain even with her eyes closed. It had become a strange sort of landscape for her, she said, and any time a June bug or a spider went crawling over it, she’d watch its passage with such keen interest that even if she fell asleep, as soon as she awoke she’d scan her eyes over the ceiling in search of it.
Rebellion Page 53