Later you asked him why he left.
—I couldn’t answer their questions, he said.
His own. He couldn’t answer his own questions.
His shoulders straightened as he walked out, and his head lifted; his shoulders and back both straightened. His stride was long and sure. He paused in the door’s frame. You reminded yourself to swallow. He stepped out onto the walk. A cable car clanged past in the rain. The door sighed shut.
Five minutes later, you rose and walked out. You followed him. You went after a stranger, a man, in the rain.
Ten years have followed those five minutes.
Stone steps aside for the nurse. He’s alert to his surroundings, constantly observing. The world and its inhabitants interest him. His easy movement reminds you of a dance. You must be two centuries older than he is.
He’ll never be bored a day. He’s hard-working. Resilient. He still thinks a person gets to choose.
Do you believe in free will? That’s what Henry asked.
I’ll believe whatever you want me to, you thought but did not tell him.
Henry Plageman, the early days, the ravenous days: He was lean and tall and blond and narrow-hipped with an unnatural height and a mouthful of incoherent poetic language about self-knowledge and knowledge of God, and all of it seemed to be life or death for him; all of it served to make him more vitally and essentially male. Listening to him doubled your pulse. He could have read the names of city streets, recited the begats in Genesis, and your heart still would have raced. The cadence. The pitch. The meter. The hope in his voice. Newfound. Like he wasn’t expecting it.
The decision was easy. Was it even a decision? Henry would say it wasn’t. He would say it was given to both of you. Fine. Yes. If one can say that a windstorm is given. If one can say that an earthquake is given.
For a Lutheran, faith is not something one achieves. It is not assent, belief in propositions, or striving. Faith is trust, and trust is a gift, not a feeling. Emotions make an unreliable measuring stick. You don’t have to feel anything to be a Lutheran.
Maybe that’s why he left his congregation.
You found him four blocks from Irving Hall. He was journeying west on Post Street, a clergyman fleeing his congregation in the rain. He ducked to miss an awning, to dodge the swinging sign of a tailor; he passed a large plaster molar hanging outside a dental parlor. Hands behind his back, he strode, coatless, beardless, craggy as a sheared cliff. You approached, stepped alongside him, matched his pace. He looked over and there you were, walking next to him, like you’d meant to be there, like you belonged. An excellent fake. An outstanding imitation of a confident woman.
Well. Hello.
That’s when it begins. When you’ve trotted up alongside him and there’s nothing strange, when your body and his body are already fine, already talking to each other.
Do you believe in free will?
Depends who’s asking.
Did you consider propriety, duty, fidelity, society? Yes. Did they stop you? They turned to sounds that day; they lost their meaning. They fell to the ground untouched, a jumble of consonants and vowels. Later you would have to retrieve those words, spell them out. You are spelling them still.
Henry’s kindness is the hardest to relinquish. Today, especially, keeping away feels cruel, feels like kicking a dog. He was unfailingly gentle.
And except for the very last time, he never left the cottage without kissing Blue’s hands, one first and then the other. And her knuckles.
—You have the most beautiful hands, he would tell her as she glowed up at him.—And I am the luckiest father on the planet to have held them.
He talked better than he wrote. He talked like he touched. Lightly.
Stone’s gaze never strays. His eyes are nothing like Henry’s. Nothing about this fellow is in the same species. How is this possible? How does the male animal operate?
And how dare you think such things when your daughter lies injured, waiting to be seen by a doctor who is running late, a doctor who is slow in coming?
Dissociation; another word Henry taught you. The splitting off of a group of ideas from the conscious mind. But you’re tired of men teaching you things. You’d rather teach them things.
You glance up. Stone’s still observing you, his eyes resting steadily. Are you blushing? No. You don’t faint, and you don’t blush either.
That first Sunday in the rain, Henry asked your name.
—Lucy, you told him.
—Lucy who?
—Christensen, you said, shy all of a sudden.
—Lucy Christensen.
His voice thickened with resignation.
He had no place to store this information, no place to hold a young woman named Lucy from Omaha, a woman who’d ridden the train west alone, searching for a cousin who did not want her, a woman who chased a minister after he delivered a three-line sermon that had taken eight months to compose, she being the only one who had understood it.
Twenty-one. What does anyone know at twenty-one?
Enough. You knew enough. And better.
He repeated your name.
—Lucy. I don’t think I’ve seen you before.
—It was my first time.
—Will you return?
—Will you?
You countered his question with a question. It steamed up from the base of your ribs, flew out before you could retract it.
He shook his head.
—I don’t think I can. I think I just left Irving Hall for good.
—Then no, you told him. I don’t think I can either.
Blue
—SHE MANAGED TO LAND IN GLASS, the doctor says, talking as if I’m not right here in front of him.—Why wasn’t anyone watching her?
—I was watching her, Ma says.
Now that the doctor has appeared, a flock of white-uniformed nurses surround my bed.
—Really? he says.—These lacerations would suggest otherwise.
Ma has put on her emergency face again. She’s pinched and solemn. The doctor makes a note in his clipboard as he talks.
—She needs sutures along the earlobe. The lacerations on her lower legs will heal, but keep them bandaged. How in the world did you let a child her age roll in a bed of glass?
Ma stiffens.—I didn’t let her—
—And why is she soaked through? Do you want her to catch pneumonia?
He glares at her. I glare at him. If Pa were here, he would tell that doctor to stop speaking to her that way. May and June would defend her, too. They’re her friends, maybe her only friends. I have more friends than my mother does, if you count the snails that live on our front step.
—They’re our reinforcements, Ma said to me the other day.—Our backups.
She was talking about May and June. Not the snails.
—Backups for what? I asked.
She didn’t explain.
May and June live on the other side of the estate. During the day, they sell tickets to Mr. Sutro’s museum. At night, once in a while, they play hopscotch with Ma. They hoot and howl over whatever tale Ma is telling. They toss pebbles where they’ve scratched lines into the sand. When the game’s done, the front step will creak; that’s May sitting her big bottom down. Their laughter wanders back into the cottage, where I am supposed to be sleeping.
They both came over the night Ma found out her cousin had died. She didn’t hear the news until it was almost my bedtime. She and Mr. Claude had spent the day cleaning up Big Ben for his first public viewing, and she was telling us about it. Big Ben is a sea lion who washed up dead on the shore. Mr. Sutro decided to make him part of his collection of stuffed animals.
—How will they do that? I asked Ma.
—Put him under glass.
—Mr. Sutro?
—No. She laughed.—The sea lion.
She was standing outside, wiping her hands on her skirt, leaning her hip against the door. May and June were sitting on the step.
—It’s natur
e made permanent, she went on.—That’s what Mr. Claude said. Nature made permanent.
May chuckled.—Permanent, my hide.
—Meanwhile, there I was, up to my elbows in sea lion guts.
May said: You wear it well.
June sipped her steam beer and snorted.
Ma didn’t learn the dead man was her cousin until Mr. Sutro stopped by with the news. By then she was too full of beer to say much one way or the other. May and June stood and helped her inside. All four of us sat together in a row on the bed. To help her, June said.
Ma looked at her hands in her lap. Finally she shook her head like she was trying to ward off a headache.
—I had better write my mother.
That was all she said. May and June asked her if she needed anything. I kept waiting for her to say she wanted Pa to come over. But she turned her face to the wall and asked us to turn down the lamp. I don’t remember if she sent the letter.
Lucy
HE TOOK YOU TO LUNCH. He didn’t drink and he didn’t eat. He ordered two roast beefs on rye. You dislike roast beef, the chewy texture, the spongy pink. But you ate the entire thing. Henry picked up his sandwich but never took a bite.
—What’s wrong? you asked when you noticed him not eating.—Is something wrong with your sandwich?
—Not at all, he said, and set it down untouched.—It’s delicious. I’m sure it is.
But beginnings are easy; beginnings are the ignition.
—Where’s your family? he asked.—Do you have anyone?
—I have a cousin, you said.—And a mother.
After that, you didn’t know what to tell him. Your swirling thoughts refused to be coaxed into speech. So you sat there and nibbled at the rye crust, thinking to yourself, He must believe I’m slow; he thinks I’m dull-witted. Henry kept quiet. Sipping his sarsaparilla, he never once took his eyes off you. People came and went at the other tables, and he didn’t see another person. Not a single woman interested him. Only you.
—You don’t have to finish eating if you’re not hungry, he said.
—When I was young, you abruptly confessed, leaning in, when I was young, my mother boxed my ears for something I did. I can’t remember what anymore. Something minor. When she boxed my ears, my eardrum ruptured. Only instead of losing my hearing, I lost my speech.
—You lost your speech? Henry said, mirroring your posture. He pushed aside his plate.
—Yes. I mean, my ear rang for a few days. But I wouldn’t talk at all, not even after my hearing returned. My mother never could figure it out. Not for a month. I didn’t say a single word for over a month.
You paused, considering.—I think I was protesting.
He nodded.—Not everything needs to happen all at once, Lucy. You don’t have to solve everything all at once. Things have a way of working themselves out over time.
—There will be detours, you said, nodding.
His smile returned.—Yes.
He was thirty-nine, which back then seemed old; the skin at the base of his throat had started to weather. That was weathered? You hadn’t seen anything yet. But his eyes were kind. And his hands: you could not stop looking at them.
—You fascinate me, he said.
He needed to lie down with you. That much was obvious.
One hour to lie down with you in his arms. Just one. That was enough. After that, he could return to his regular life.
You could do that for him. In days to come, you’d have an hour to spare.
Or a thousand.
The estate workers shared a dormitory, and your room lay at the end of an unlit hall on the second floor. It boasted a gabled window and an iron lamp that hissed and smoked. A deer head missing its antlers stared from the wall over the bed, a leftover from the taxidermist, a failed attempt from an earlier apprentice. A fox head with a bald patch observed from its station above the bureau.
You had worked for Mr. Claude just a few weeks, and already these creatures seemed to wander after you, to pin you in their sights. The day you brought Henry over, his shoe caught on the edge of a rug made of deer hide and leftover raccoon pelts.
—Deuce, he softly cursed.—What is that?
—Castoffs, you said, and you guided him inside, shut the bedroom door, and locked it. You were getting used to all this. Henry wasn’t. All he’d seen of the Outside Lands was the city cemetery. He hadn’t moved here yet. Though that was coming. Though you would do that to him also.
Your room smelled of mildew and leather. Henry skittered, nervous, a mariner missing his compass. He thought you two might take a stroll near the water’s edge first.
—There is no water’s edge, you told him.—It’s all rocks.
His hands trembled when you reached for them. Beneath your feet, the carpet of hides was soft.
Later he told you he was afraid. Nervous he would not be able to satisfy you. Satisfaction was never the issue.
—You said you were a widow, Stone says as the doctor steps away to confer with the chief nurse.
—Yes, you reply, not meeting his eyes.
Widow and widower refer to people who have lost their spouses. Orphans are children who have lost their parents. What’s the word for parents who have lost their children? There isn’t one.
And Henry has no idea he nearly lost his daughter today. Half of you wants to keep that information from him, to protect him. Today isn’t the day. The other half of you wants to shove the news down his windpipe.
Because Blue is still here. Isn’t she? Lying on her back in this hospital bed while this doctor stands here haranguing you. She’s above the ground and not below. She’s eight years old. She needs her father.
You can hear him: But you sent me away.
—What happened to him? What happened to your husband? Stone asks.
—Lungs, you say flatly.—He was a lunger. He ran out of air.
Blue
ANOTHER MAN IN A UNIFORM rolls a stretcher down the corridor. The noisy wheels interrupt the doctor, which is good because he has started lecturing Ma again. When the doctor takes a breath, she says:
—You’re not giving me a chance to explain.
—Her injuries speak for themselves. You were careless.
—It’s not her fault, I say, interrupting them.
I reach out and pull at the doctor’s sleeve so he will stop picking on her. She’s the only mother I have. I need her to last.
—I fell through a skylight and landed in a well full of the ocean, I say.—Ma didn’t see. A monster at the bottom of the well tried to swallow me.
—Blue, she says quietly.—It’ll be all right.
But he’s absorbed now; my tale has given this doctor something to think about, something to occupy his time. More nurses crowd into the pavilion. They crane in and ask how I’m doing. They pat me and stroke my hair. I can’t remember when so many people have paid me so much attention. The nurses marvel over how close to death I came, how brave I must have been. Ma’s supposed to be the brave one.
—That’s what hospitals do best, Mr. Stone says as he watches the nurses petting me.
—What’s that? Ma asks.
He shrugs.—Make a person feel important, feel like the most necessary body in the world.
My parents never take me anywhere together. They never take me to Golden Gate Park together. Well, they did once, to the midwinter fair there, but I was only five. Three years have passed since then.
I’d never had so much fun as I did at that fair. Ma and I hid inside the fine arts building. We came out in time to let Pa buy us gum from the Wrigley Gum Girls, who snapped their gum when they chewed. We saw exhibits of the world, genuine native Eskimos, rowboats on Stow Lake. And buffalo in a paddock. The last thing we did was tour the Forty-Niner mining camp. Ma clapped her hands when she saw the men dressed as old-time cowboys. They wore ten-gallon hats and had six-shooters strapped to their hips.
—It’s a world within a world, she said.
Pa left before we had a chance to
finish the tour. Someone he knew saw him and called his name, a man named Stevens; I heard Pa say it. Ma froze. Pa whipped around and bolted. He sped out of there three ways from Sunday. He disappeared in less time than it took Ma to grab my hand and turn me in a different direction.
Which direction? Away. It’s the only direction she pulls.
She moved me so my back faced the man who had waved and my nose was pressed against the window of the camp store.
—Who’s Stevens? I asked.—And what are we looking at? Ow.
Her nails dug into my shoulders.—Shh. Blue. Please.
Behind the window was nothing but unfinished wood. The store wasn’t real.
A nurse carries a tray of instruments over to my bed. When she sets it down, I raise myself up on my elbows to see. Yikes. There are tweezers, a metal bowl, scissors, a scalpel, and some other sharp things I don’t care to look at. I can’t help but shrink a little. Ma makes a strange face too.
—I’m staying with her. Let me stay, she says to the doctor.
—You’re half fainting already, he says.—Go have something to eat in the dining room. We’ll have her stitched up by the time you return.
—I’m not leaving her.
—Seems to me you already did. What a poor excuse for a mother.
He points at Stone.—You, sir. Please take your wife out of the operating area.
—I’m a widow, Ma snaps.
Her hand finds its way through the wall of nurses to my shoulder; she pinches me, reminding me again of my duty.
—Mother, I know, I declare from my throne on the cot.—I won’t say anything to them.
11:00 a.m.
Marilyn
ONE OF MRS. WOOD’S little inmates trudges in your direction. She could have stepped straight out of Maria Kip’s annual report. She’s the spindly one you saw earlier, the one with straggly chestnut hair and a metal brace on her right leg that clicks whenever she takes a step.
The Half Wives Page 10