Very Old Bones

by William Kennedy

  He said all this in earshot of Sarah, who was sitting in front of the television watching “Death Valley Days,” a western series to which she gave loyalty because it advertised 20 Mule Team Borax scouring powder, which Sarah used for cleaning, as had her mother before her. Sarah said nothing to Chick when he hung up, did not acknowledge that he was in the room. He walked in front of the television and said to her, “Sarah, you and your mad ways are out of my life. And Tommy’s life too.”

  The latter threat was not to be carried out. Chick had concocted an instant pipe dream that he would take Tommy to Florida with him, care for him, let him grow old in the sun. But Tommy could not move, and would not; said he didn’t want to leave Colonie Street in such nice weather. Tommy, in a week, seemed to have forgotten the beating Sarah gave him. He did not really remember why he couldn’t walk right, yet he shunned Sarah even so, leaving the room when she entered. He did not talk to her about the beating, or about Letitia Buckley, and when Molly tested him and asked what happened to his back he thought a while and said some bad boys hit him with sticks down on Pearl Street.

  After six weeks in the wheelchair and sleeping on the sofa in the back parlor to avoid going up and down stairs, Tommy began to improve. Despite this, Molly felt herself sliding back into the melancholy mood that had enveloped her after Walter’s death. She barely talked to Sarah, who had withdrawn into her cocoon of injured merit, and nurtured herself with silence and television. Also, with Chick being gone, probably forever, the house never seemed emptier to Molly.

  She took short walks in the neighborhood, visited with neighbors, Martha McCall across the street, who was supervising the movers who would take her and Patsy and their household of forty-four years out of the neighborhood and up to a new house on Whitehall Road, and Libby Dolan, who said she was selling her house to a Negro woman. Would Molly know anybody on the block in another year?

  Molly also bumped into Letty Buckley, to whom she had apologized coming out of church the first Sunday after Tommy’s cane trick, and found Letty sweet, even forgiving, knowing how simple Tommy was, a bit abashed it was a simpleton who had done that to her, and even worried for him. Will you have to put him away? No, never, said Molly. And she came home in a fog of emptiness.

  Coming into the house made it worse. Talk to Tommy? Talk to Sarah? Talk to the walls? She called her niece, Peg Quinn, just to hear a family voice, and Peg was strong, as always. Molly updated her, leaving out the cause of Tommy’s injury, and Peg immediately offered to come down and visit, or take Molly to supper Downtown, or a movie maybe? But no, that wouldn’t solve anything. And then, after a half-hour of speculating on what would become of Chick in Florida, and analyzing Sarah’s sullen isolation, Peg said, “Why don’t you go up to Saratoga and spend some time at the hotel? The weather’s beautiful, and Orson’s there, isn’t he?”

  “He is,” said Molly.

  “Then call him and tell him to get a room ready for you, and one for Tommy, and for Sarah if she wants to go. Get a change of scenery. Do it, Molly, do it.”

  Do it. Molly understood the advice. Do it, Molly, Walter told her, Chick told her, Peter told her. And did she do it? In her way. But she didn’t weigh much. Ha-ha.

  “Maybe I will,” Molly said. The hotel, the lake, Orson. “But Tommy needs his wheelchair. I couldn’t handle it alone.”

  “I’ll send Billy down to give you a hand getting him and the chair into the car,” Peg said. “And Orson can help you at the other end.”

  Molly called Austin McCarroll at the Texaco station and told him to come and take her car down off blocks and make it drivable. Walter had given her the car, a 1937 Dodge, and taught her to drive it. In seventeen years Molly had driven less than four thousand miles, drove it back and forth to Saratoga, took Sarah and Tommy for drives in the evening to get ice-cream cones, went riding Sundays after the war. This year she didn’t even bother to take it off blocks when the good spring weather came. No place to go anymore.

  But now Molly could see herself again at the wheel, driving up Route 9; going up the hill into the Grand View driveway, a thrilling prospect, something she hadn’t done as a vacationer in years. Even though so much time had passed, the Grand View had never been out of her mind for long, and whenever she did find herself turning into its driveway she knew that it would be like going home again, going home to love.

  The Grand View Lake House: An Old Brochure

  Situated on the eastern shore of Saratoga Lake, fifteen minute ride from railroad station, our car and porter meet your train; the hotel and cottages offer beautiful vista, eighty rods from and no feet above lakeshore, avoiding excessive dampness at night, free from miasma and malaria; convalescents accommodated, consumptives not entertained. Rolling lawns, shade trees, canoeing, boating, fishing, bathing, tennis court, croquet, clock golf, eighteen-hole golf course nearby, bird sanctuary in woods, small game and bird hunting in season, tents available for camping in nearby woods, thousands of flowers, garage on premises, motor parties welcome. Dining room screened, strictly home cooking, all eggs, milk, cream, poultry, and vegetables from our own farm. Wide, 200-foot long veranda, two fireplaces, casino for dancing, piano, phonograph, talking pictures every Sunday night, shower baths, inside toilets, long distance telephone connection, cars carry our guests to nearby Catholic and other churches. Proprietors Patrick and Nora Shugrue, William Shugrue full partner. Hotel open from June 1st to October, 105 rooms, three cottages, special rate by the week, write for terms.

  Molly and Giselle: A Colloquy, September, 1954

  “I must tell you about love,” Molly said.

  “I must tell you about marriage,” Giselle said.

  “You seem to know nothing about love.”

  “I know everything.”

  “It would not seem so.”

  “Peter loves you.”

  “And I him. But he loved Julia more. I wonder did he ever love Claire.”

  “And Orson loves you.”

  “And I him,” said Molly.

  “I haven’t loved much in my life, but I know I love Orson with a full heart,” Giselle said.

  “It would not seem so.”

  “You should know me, should be in my head. Then you would understand.”

  “You left him alone last year.”

  “We’d been apart for six months, but even so we were always together.”

  “It would not seem so.”

  “You are old. You don’t understand the young.”

  “You must never leave them alone for long if you love them,” Molly said.

  “Then you live for them, not yourself.”

  “You seem to know nothing about love.”

  “You should have seen us together.”

  “It looks alike sometimes. It looks alike.”

  “You should have seen us together at the Plaza.”

  “You were not together then.”

  “But we were,” Giselle said. “Even there in The Candy Box with his stripper I felt no jealousy. There was a woman in Germany he went with one night, and he must have had others in New York, but I was never jealous of any of them. But this night I loved him and yet I was jealous of the vision he had of me, for it wasn’t me. That loving, successful, talented, noble woman, that was his invention of me. Orson hallucinating again. Orson of the brilliant imagination. Orson the fabulous lover, like none of the others. Orson the marvelous, loyal dog of a man.”

  “And that is what you think love is?” Molly asked.

  “I knew he might go away from me, but I also knew it wasn’t me he was leaving but the idea of me. And when I looked at his face I wanted to photograph what I saw. There was an uncertainty in his eye, a calmness, with that old wildness banished. There was something in him I didn’t understand.”

  “As he didn’t understand you.”

  “When we left The Candy Box after the shooting we took a cab back to the Plaza. He saw me to the elevator, then went out for a walk, to clear his brain, he said. He didn’t come
back, and after an hour I feared he wouldn’t, so I got dressed again and scoured the lobby and the hotel bars, because I couldn’t believe he’d left me. I preferred the Life editor’s apartment, where my things were, if I was going to spend the night alone, but I still thought there was a small chance Orson would return. And I knew he knew I’d wait for him in the hotel. And so I did. I phoned Peter and found Orson had neither been there nor called. Peter said he knew an all-night bar where Orson sometimes went and offered to go there alone, or with me if I wanted. He said he’d call Claire, but I knew that would achieve nothing, and it did.”

  “We were up at Saratoga Lake for three weeks. Mama was dead six months and it was a suffocating summer. We were sitting on the veranda talking about I don’t know what, and I saw that a new arrival, a good-looking fellow who had struck up a conversation with Sarah yesterday, was talking with her again. Then I saw a bird fly into a tree on the lawn, and it must’ve hit something, because it fell to the ground. I ran out to get it and picked it up and started to cry. The newcomer squatted down beside me and said, ‘May I see it?’ And I showed him this beautiful creature that he said was a cedar waxwing. ‘It seems to have an injured wing,’ he said. ‘We can help him.’ I asked how that was possible and he said, ‘We’ll keep him alive while he gets well.’ And that’s what we did for the rest of the week. We fed him and made a nest for him in the birdcage the hotel gave us and he became the pet of the guests. I loved him so, that little creature. Everybody came to my room to see him. We took him out of the cage and he did fly a little inside the room at the end of the week, but not very well. On the tenth day he seemed ready and, when I carried him to the veranda, a dozen guests and waitresses came out to watch him go. I released him over the porch railing and he flew so well, right up into the same tree he’d fallen from. We were all so happy. He perched there in the tree for a minute and then he fell again, not injured, but dead.”

  “Orson was gone two more nights before we found him. Peter had the idea to call Walker Pettijohn, Orson’s editor, who suggested looking in Meriwether Macbeth’s apartment. He said Orson sometimes worked there among Macbeth’s papers that Macbeth’s widow still kept intact, though she no longer lived there. And Orson was there all right, and as close to death as he ever will be until his time comes. He was in an alcoholic coma, five whiskey bottles, all empty, strewn around the room. Peter lifted him up and slapped his face but he didn’t come to, didn’t react at all. Death in life. And if he did live he wouldn’t remember anything of this moment. I went out to a pay phone and called the ambulance.”

  “It was sad that the bird died. I cried so hard. But I’ve been grateful to it ever since, because that’s how I met Walter. The cedar waxwing introduced us. Walter picked the dead bird up and took it into the hotel and wrapped it in a handkerchief and put it on ice and we called around till we found a place, down home in Albany, that stuffed birds. We drove down together and gave the waxwing to the little man, who said he’d never stuffed such a small bird before, usually folks only stuff the big ones they shoot, owls and hawks, or their pet parrots. I still have the bird. I always bring it when I come up here.”

  “Who is Walter?”

  “Walter Mangan, my husband. He taught Latin in a boys’ high school. He died in 1937.”

  “And you miss him still.”

  “We were so in love. Nobody loves you like an Irishman. He read me poetry about the bird.

  “ ‘. . . A sparrow is dead, my lady’s sparrow,

  my own lady’s delight, her sweetest plaything,

  dear to her as her eyes—and dearer even . . .

  I’ll attend you, O evil gods of darkness.

  All things beautiful end in you forever.

  You have taken away my pretty sparrow,

  Shame upon you. And, pitiful poor sparrow,

  it is you that have set my lady weeping,

  Dear eyes, heavy with tears and red with sorrow.’ ”

  “I went mad for Orson when we met. He wasn’t like anybody else I’d ever known. He made me laugh and he was smart and he was crazy and I loved it.”

  “You sent him home alone.”

  “He was sick and I knew he’d get well in New York. I had a chance at a career, and I knew if I had to nurse him and abandon the career I’d hate him. And what kind of marriage would that turn into?”

  “Walter was never sick. You must never leave them alone for long. You would’ve gotten your career.”

  “Did you ever leave Walter alone?”

  “Did I ever leave Walter alone.”

  “Orson left me alone and then he went off to drink himself into oblivion. He stole the world for me, put himself in jeopardy, facing jail, really, and then he went off to die. I love him so for that.”

  “You love that he wanted to die for you?”

  “He wanted to die for the image of me. He was too crazy to see I was only a bright, immature woman out to save herself, which is really all I knew how to do. He wanted to make me into a goddess and I helped him, because I loved the idea of such a man, and loved what his love did to me.”

  “But the love was a lie.”

  “You should have seen us in bed.”

  “But you didn’t stay in his bed.”

  “No.”

  “Did he ever understand how you were leading him on?”

  “I wasn’t leading him on. I was trying to be equal to his dream. I’d deceive him again if it meant keeping that love alive.”

  “Are you brighter than Orson?”

  “Would it make any difference if I was?”

  “You know something, but love isn’t what you know.”

  “I know everything about love.”

  “Walter and I made love in a tent the first time. He set up his pup tent in the woods one night after supper, and went out to stay in it as soon as it got dark. I went down the back stairs and met him in the spot where we watched the birds, and Walter had a flashlight. We went to his tent and he loved me and made my heart bleed with joy . . . like . . . holy and blessed Jesus . . . like nothing else. There was never anything like that, ever before, in anybody’s life I’d ever heard about. Have you? I’d bleed every night if I knew we’d both feel like that when we were done. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes. Maybe.”

  “He never came right out and asked me to marry him. We were walking on Pearl Street one day and he says to me, ‘How’d you like to be buried with my people?’ I said I’d like that just fine. But we didn’t marry then, because I couldn’t. We married when I was able and we took a flat up in the Pine Hills, and I was never happier, ever. A year passed and Tommy fell crossing a street and broke his wrist, and Sarah got sick and couldn’t cook for Chick and him, so I went back home and ran things till Sarah could get on her feet. But she couldn’t. The doctor tried everything, but she was so weak she couldn’t get out of bed, and she wouldn’t go to the hospital. Walter got impatient with me after two months of it, me being with her more than I was with him. And we fought. He said Sarah was faking sickness to keep me there, that she never forgave me for taking his attention away from her that day on the porch. But I couldn’t believe that. Why would she ever do such a thing? Walter never meant anything to her. There was no sense to it. Walter said I should hire a woman to cook and keep house for two weeks so we could drive to Virginia to see his brother, and also break in my new car. He’d bought it for me, but I hardly drove it. It just sat in the alley on Colonie Street while I took care of Sarah. Sarah wouldn’t hear of hiring anybody, wouldn’t allow a woman in the house that wasn’t family, so I didn’t go to Virginia. Walter went with one of his friends from the school, and the friend fell asleep at the wheel and went over a ravine and they were both killed.”

  “Orson didn’t die.”

  “He might have.”

  “No. He has things to do. With or without me.”

  “I fell apart when I heard the news. I couldn’t do anything. Walter’s family took over and had his body shipped home. They were f
urious with me and none of his sisters even called me. They sent the undertaker to tell me where the wake would be.”

  “I wonder which of us will bury the other.”

  “I went in and sat for the last hour of the second night of the wake and never spoke to any of them. They were cool to me, nodded at me when I came in, and one came over and tried to talk, Lila, the youngest, who I always liked. But I didn’t say much, even to her. I just watched, and then when the undertaker came in to tell us to say good night to Walter, that he had to close up, I went and told Walter this was not good night, that we were leaving this place. Then I told his sisters, ‘I am the widow. He was my husband. I have my own undertaker, and he’s right there in the hallway.’ And there was Ben Owens, standing there with three helpers, waiting for me to tell him what to do, and I told the others, ‘I’m taking him to our home, and he’ll wake from there, and I hope none of you try to stop me, because I have a letter my lawyer got me from the courts’—I really didn’t have a letter; I made that up—‘and if you raise one finger against me I’ll have the police on you. I don’t know what you thought you were doing taking Walter, but a widow is not without her rights.’ They couldn’t believe it. They thought he was theirs. But he’d left them and married me, that’s what marriage is. And so Ben Owens put him in the coffin I bought for him and carried him out to the hearse and we went to our house and had the second wake. They didn’t come. They drove behind to make sure where we were going. They thought I was totally mad, but I was never saner in my life. And I sat up with him all night long and then at five in the morning I called Sarah to tell her what I was doing, that she could come to the church if she wanted, seven o’clock mass at St. Joseph’s, where we were married. And we had the mass, and Sarah got out of her sickbed and never went back to it, and Chick and Tommy came with her, and Peter would have too, but it was too short notice. And then we went to the cemetery, with Father Mahar saying the prayers at the grave. Us and Billy and his mother, and all the Quinns, and a few neighbors who’d heard about it were all the ones that came, but then almost nobody knew what I’d done. His family came to the cemetery and stood off to one side and nobody talked to them. And then we buried Walter in the Phelan family plot, right next door to where I’ll be buried, not with his people at all. We always had too many empty graves in our family. We always prepared for death, never for life. So I did that for him anyway.”