by Anita Shreve
—A week. Maybe ten days if I’m lucky.
—Could I talk you into coming up to Maine?
There was a second’s hesitation, long enough to forfeit plans already made or hoped for. Linda heard the pause and was annoyed with herself for having asked. She remembered when Maria and Marcus had been children and had begged for rides downtown or had hoped to invite friends to the house. And her own moment’s pause while parental agendas had been consulted and discarded. Of course I can. Of course I will. When had nature flipped the balance, causing the parent to ask the favor of the child? At twenty? At twenty-two?
—Just for a few days, Linda said immediately, qualifying her request. I don’t expect you to give up your entire vacation.
—No, I’d love to come. To her credit, Maria sounded enthusiastic. We’ll see about the dates.
But Linda would release her daughter from this promise; release her to her own young life. Are you getting any sleep? the mother asked.
Static stole her daughter’s answer. Linda rolled over, dragging the phone off the nightstand. She pulled it up by the cord. One day Maria would be a pediatric cardiologist. Staggering to think of that. Staggering for Linda, who’d been the first in her family ever to go to college.
—I’ve met someone, Maria said, apparently for the second time.
For a moment, Linda was confused, afraid the words had issued from her own mouth.
—Tell me about him.
—He’s a resident. His name is Steven.
An image formed in Linda’s mind, doubtless incorrect, doubtless composed of other Stevens, though she couldn’t think of any at the moment. And you like him, Linda said cautiously.
Another pause on Maria’s part, possibly for emphasis. I do. He’s very good-looking.
—That counts, Linda said, never one to dismiss beauty in a man.
—Maybe I’ll bring him to Maine with me.
And Linda thought, This is serious.
—What were you remembering about Dad? Maria asked.
—About his white shirts. And the way they fit across his shoulders. The daughter was silent in the face of a memory too private for a child to share. Are there people at the festival you know? she asked instead.
—I do now, Linda said, wishing to dispel the sense of being needy.
—Good, Maria said, unburdened. I’d better go. If I don’t have these lab reports done by six, the resident will kill me.
Linda doubted that, though the sacrifice required of someone wishing to be a doctor was staggering. Mistakes were made from lack of sleep. One day Maria, in a fit of tears, had confessed her own.
Linda put the phone down, disconcerted by the mix of truth and lies in a conversation with a child. More lies than truth this time, though it had often been so. One could not prepare a child for the future; such knowledge might be intolerable.
The quiet in the room was absolute. Even the air-conditioning had stopped its hum. It was as though all traffic had suddenly ceased, all radios rendered silent. What time was it? Nearly four? She imagined people lining city streets in homage to the passing of some great hero.
* * *
She went out into the sunshine only to retreat from it. In this city, she had been told, there were shops that she should visit (the exchange rate was very good), but when she entered a famous department store, she was saddened by the sight of people buying things to make them happier, or thinner, or impervious to death. She fingered a silk scarf and ran her hand along the shoulder pads of suits, neatly aligned with spaces in between to indicate best quality. She admired a negligee and remembered nights with other negligees, and still the sadness, that cloud, was not swept away. She went up the escalator, up and up, preferring the concrete evidence of floors to the free flight of elevators. She saw a lemon sweater with delicate edging in Children’s and tried to think of anyone she knew with a baby, and then reflected that it would have to be a grandchild now. She stood at an entrance to a café, ravenous and impatient to be seated, but when she had been shown to her table, she felt the store to be suddenly airless. She could smell the chemicals in the clothes as she fled, wafting off Men’s Shirts in fumes. What had she done? She had raised a family. She would not be remembered. She was deteriorating daily. She could not let her body be seen. She would never sit unclothed upon a beach. Some things could not be gotten back. Most things could not be gotten back. Even her images of Vincent were fading: he was more substantial now in photographs than he was in her memories, like children are after they have grown.
She went outside, supremely conscious of herself as a middle-aged woman in a sensible raincoat despite the heat. Men, as if they had been programmed, did not turn their heads. Whereas Vincent, her admirer, her lover, had pronounced her beautiful even on the morning he had died.
—You’re beautiful, he’d said.
—I’m fifty. No one is beautiful at fifty.
—You surprise me. Of course you’re wrong.
Amazing how one yearned to be called beautiful, how much the single word could please. She saw a couple, in expensive clothing, arguing as they walked. He had blond hair and a beard and moved inches ahead of his wife, while she gestured angrily and said, I can’t believe you said that. He kept his hands in his pockets and didn’t answer her. He would win the argument, Linda thought, with silence.
She stood before a building of Gothic spires and darkened stones, though she supposed she would never truly be able to regard a Catholic church as just a building. Its authenticity beckoned between the excess of the smart boutiques on either side. (Yet weren’t the spires evidence of excess in themselves?) She entered a musty narthex and remembered that as a child she had refused to believe the scent a product simply of mold and dust; instead, she’d been convinced that it was the holy water in the font that had produced that somewhat frightening smell. She was momentarily embarrassed to interrupt a Mass in progress (she who had known Saturday church only for Confession), and she moved quietly to the pews, not genuflecting, not crossing herself, though her body wanted to from habit.
The interior cooled the perspiration at the back of her neck. She let her coat slide from her shoulders and was glad she did not have crinkly and noisy packages. It had not been so long that the words were unfamiliar to her, but still it had been years, and so she listened to the liturgy with small mental exclamations of surprise. And as she did, she had a startling thought: her own poetry mimicked those cadences! How had she not noticed this before? How had someone else, a critic perhaps, not have noticed this as well? The similar rhythms could not be missed. It felt a stunning discovery, like unearthing a letter that explained one’s childhood after all.
An older woman in front of her was crying copiously (what grief or sin had caused such tears?), but Linda could not see the features of the other parishioners, ten pews up or more. She said a quick prayer for Marcus, who needed it the most, and when she was finished, she glanced up at the darkened stained glass (so little sunlight between the tall buildings on either side) searching for a likeness of Mary Magdalene. She found John the Baptist and a tableau of the Last Supper, but not the woman she was looking for.
She administered to Him of her substance.
And then, as she had nearly always done in church years ago, she let her mind drift. And with the drifting, she saw images. When she’d been a girl, the images had begun, say, with a mental picture of the cherry tree in the backyard, then would segue to a glass of cherry Coke, and then would find their way to the knee and leg of a boy she had once seen at the diner in a leather jacket ordering a cherry Coke. But that afternoon, she saw faces (Vincent’s and Thomas’s) and then rumpled bedclothes (from Vincent and her on the day he had died) and then a small, neat package of laundered linens from Belmont Laundry that had sat upon a chair in her bedroom unopened for months, each image leading to the other as if by a fine thread, the thread invisible, the connections both supple and labyrinthine. The images were sometimes disturbing and at other times pleasing to her, evi
dence of a life lived, though some memories attested only to foolishness, appalling naïveté.
But then an unbidden and unwanted image sneaked in amongst the others almost before she’d realized it, and instantly she tried to ward it off. She felt it dragging her down, but she could not, for the moment, pull away. She heard a muffled sound — a word? No, more a gasp or a whisper, a man’s mouth pressed into the bone of her shoulder, his weight heavy on her thigh. Had he hurt himself, or was this (more likely) yet another utterance in the new language he was teaching her, that strange dialect that had no vocabulary or sentences, but seemed, all the same, full of meaning — full of need and mute pleadings and silent, if extraordinary, gratitude?
Her dress, pale blue, was dry upon her skin and floated like tissue over the hollow of her belly. The sun was on the daybed and on her face. It would be ten or ten-thirty in the morning.
The bristles of his short beard were not soft but instead were prickly like the fur of the thistles that grew in the vacant lot at the end of the block. After the first time, when she, dazed as if by the noonday sun, had examined herself in the mirror, she’d seen that his beard had rubbed the thin skin at the base of her collarbone a shiny pink; and that soreness combined with the other, had been a reminder, all that day and the next, of the fearful thing that had happened to her. But she was not afraid. Not of the man, who seemed if not entirely irrelevant, then not what occupied her mind; and not of the event itself, which she had allowed to happen four times. For something within her welcomed — indeed, was almost glad for — these extraordinary attentions.
She heard another nonword then, also precise in its meaning. He wanted at her chest and was even now fumbling with the buttons of her dress and pushing aside the cloth. He fastened his mouth on her breast, which was new and always changing now. She could not see his face and did not want to — his eyes squeezed shut, the neck wrinkled, the grime caught in the creases. For the thing that they were doing was best done in private, one’s own face turned away, the eyes averted.
Her body loosened, and there was a fluttering in her belly. She was moist between her legs, fat there as she was not elsewhere. He hitched himself higher up on her body and struggled for a moment with her skirt. The sucking was like being bled, she thought, and she remembered pictures of leeches covered with bell jars, the glass making perfect circular welts on a woman’s back. He pushed a finger inside her, then two, more hurried now, even somewhat frantic. She wondered if it would be like running a finger around the slippery insides of a narrow jar. A fingernail caught on her skin and she flinched, but he seemed not to notice. And now it was not his finger, but the other thing (she had never said the word aloud), and she understood that soon it would be over.
She craned her neck so that she could see through the window at the head of the daybed. A large bird sat motionless on the roof of the house next door. The man finished, as he always did, with a convulsive shudder and a slight hiccup. And when he pulled away, she felt a bit of the wetness trickle out of her, a small spill of fluid upon her thigh. She watched him as he sat at the end of the bed, white and shocky all about his eyes. He zipped his pants and laced up his shoes.
She had no tender word from him, nor did she want one. He said only when he stood, “Don’t tell anyone what we did here.”
As if she would. As if she would.
* * *
In the pew, Linda began to tremble violently from the memory, not retrieved in years, until words — reassuring and comforting — allowed her to be still. It wasn’t her doing, she told herself. And it hadn’t ruined her life. Life was more than childhood violations, childhood victories. Life was work and loving someone else and having babies; life was Vincent and Marcus and Maria. But as soon as she had the thought, Maria, Linda began to tremble again. Seen from the eyes of a mother, the episode was inexcusable and terrifying. All she had to do was imagine Maria on the daybed, and she was filled with fury. Beside her, people filed slowly along the aisle, some glancing in her direction. The Mass was over, and she hadn’t noticed.
She took a long breath and slowly let it out. Vincent had been antidote to memory. Now, without him, was she losing that protection? And why that shameful image after so long a time?
* * *
She returned to her room, needing food and a cup of tea, but the message light was flashing. Sitting at the edge of the bed, her coat still on, she composed questions and worded probable replies: How did your panel go? Dinner? Are you sure? Do you think the others would mind? But when she listened to the message, she heard that it wasn’t Thomas who had rung, but rather David, Marcus’s lover, asking her to call him as soon as she got in. Proximity to another’s grief made her panicky as she misdialed the number twice, saying Shit before she got it right. How long had she been gone from the room? One hour? Two hours?
—Marcus has been arrested for drunk driving. The lover spoke without preamble.
Linda leaned forward, as if she had not heard correctly. When?
—Early this morning. Around five A.M.
Instinctively, Linda looked at her watch. They had waited twelve hours to tell her.
—And there was an accident, David added.
—Oh God, Linda said, incapable of words of more than one syllable. Was he hurt?
—He’s banged his knee up pretty bad. He’s had an x-ray. They say he bruised some cartilage.
—Was anyone else hurt? Linda asked quickly, already terrified of the reply.
—No.
She sighed with relief. And to think that she had just said a prayer for Marcus. Is he there? Can I talk to him?
One could not mistake the deliberate pause at the other end. She imagined David — Marcus’s height, but stockier; reddish hair and pale eyes; something soft around the edges though his clothes were beautifully tailored — standing in the kitchen of their Brookline apartment. Or was he with her son in the bedroom?
—Mrs. Fallon, David said (David, who seemed incapable of calling her Linda, even after repeated invitations to do so; David, who’d said he couldn’t read poetry and hoped she didn’t mind), I think Marcus and I need to handle this together.
Linda, dismissed, was silent.
—Of course, David said immediately, softening the blow, if the knee thing gets serious, I’ll call you right away.
Linda was surprised she did not feel more resentful than she did.
—And I think, David added with another pause, I think we need to discuss the possibility that Marcus should go into rehab.
—Rehab? You mean for being drunk? Is that really necessary?
—I’m afraid it is. Marcus has been drinking for days. He missed my concert last night. He passed out and never woke up until I came home. We had a huge fight, and he took off. He called me from the Nashua jail this morning.
—Nashua? New Hampshire? What was he doing there?
—I’m not sure he really knows.
Oh Marcus, Linda thought. Oh my poor, poor Marcus. She had seen him drunk at Thanksgiving and again at Christmas, but she hadn’t quite realized. Or had she simply refused to see?
—Are you thinking of an intervention? Is that what they call it?
—I don’t think that will be necessary, David said thoughtfully, indicating that he had considered it. At least, I hope not. He just needs a kick in the pants. And he got it in Nashua. He’s pretty scared.
—Do you have any place in mind?
—I’m not sure. I’ll have to make some calls. They say Brattleboro is the best.
Linda recoiled at the thought of her son in an institution. She pressed her lips together. If it was as bad as David had said — and of course it was; Marcus had had an accident — what more proof did a mother need?
—I really would like to talk to Marcus, she said again.
—He’s sleeping, David said. They gave him something at the hospital.
—I see. She took a breath to control her anger. It was unnatural to push a mother away from her cub. Though, to be fair, M
arcus was hardly a cub.
—If it’s as bad as you say, the past months must have been difficult for you, Linda said, trying to be generous.
—I love him.
The statement, too bald, was like a naked man in the street, something that should be clothed. Vincent’s death had freed Marcus. Within a month, he’d told his mother and his sister he was gay. Within the year, he’d found David.
—I had no idea he was so unhappy.
—I don’t know how much happiness has to do with it.
What makes an alcoholic? Linda wondered. Poor mothering? Bad genes? A fatal gene, commonly carried in Irish blood? She’d hardly known her father, but she had known her uncles, alternately morose or exuberant, sometimes brutish. And to think how smug she’d once been, gloating inwardly over the success of her children: Maria at Harvard, now a medical student at Johns Hopkins; and Marcus at Brown, now in graduate school at Boston University. How often had she casually insinuated those prestigious names in conversation? And now there would be this to say: My son is an alcoholic. My son, Marcus, is an alcoholic.
Was she an alcoholic as well? All her own drinking put now in a different perspective.
—The car’s totaled, David said. They towed it. Another pause. He’ll lose his license.
—Oh, I know he will. Linda stifled an incipient wail. We need to get a lawyer.
And too late, she heard the we.
David waited patiently, parent to the parent now. We have one, Mrs. Fallon. A friend of ours. He’s very good.
On the bed, Linda put a hand to her brow, clammy with the news. You’ll let me know. Trying to keep hysteria from her voice. You’ll let me know how he is and what you’ve done. What you’ve decided.
She was certain that she heard a sigh. Of course I will, David said.
* * *
Linda lay back on the bed. Marcus was suffering — with shame and a battered knee. And would suffer worse, in court and certainly in rehabilitation, about which she knew nothing. Was rehab physically painful? Was it excruciatingly dull? She tried to recall all the times she had seen Marcus drinking. There had been beer in his refrigerator at Brown. At the beach, he would sometimes start with gin and tonics at three o’clock. She’d thought then that the drinking had been festive and celebratory, merely summer playfulness. But she had known, hadn’t she? She’d known. And had forgiven her son even before the word problem had had a chance to register, almost as quickly as she’d tried to adjust her expectations when she’d learned that he was gay. And she’d known then, too. Of course she had.