B000FCJYE6 EBOK (9 page)

I figured that if I needed to find my mother, I would have to take a left on Main Street.

But they were sitting there, my mother and father, peacefully enough. I pulled my blanket up to my nose and smelled it and thought maybe things were all right now that they were having coffee and it was Christmas night.

When you’re six, you don’t know about what happens at the end. Because the world revolves around you when you’re six, you assume the end must be catastrophic, because it would be catastrophic to you. The end would be dramatic and loud.

But what really happens at the end is that you sit down and have coffee without looking at each other. There is a sort of strange relief: The thing that was hanging in the air like a gas leak, invisible and toxic, has happened. It’s out. It’s a relief. It is a solid, tangible. When you’re six, you can’t possibly imagine that your parents—who are blowing carefully on their coffee—are only being peaceful because they know what you don’t: that there is no stopping whatever comes next, and so they might as well have coffee while they wait.

Four little Indians. Three little Indians. Two little Indians, sitting on the couch.

I watched my mother cross one nyloned knee over the other, and I thought that the best thing about night, in wintertime, was how cold it is outside and how inside the lights are yellow and safe.

“I’m in love with you, you know,” my father said.

“That doesn’t seem,” my mother said gently, “very relevant.”

“Well put,” he said. He took a sip. “You’re thinking of leaving me, aren’t you?”

After a minute, my mother said, “Yes.”

There was a long, calm pause in the living room.

My father said: “Claire, I want to die.”

Carefully, my mother replied, “You’re aware that you’ve said that before?”

“Jesus, Claire,” he said. I flinched at the rising voice. “I mean, my God, you won’t let me near you, not that I blame you, I don’t have the energy to do a damn thing with myself. Christ, I’m
useless,
I sit here all day thinking about you, about Esau, what I could have done, anything I could have done—” He put his forehead in his hands. “I don’t blame you for wanting to leave. I don’t have anything
left,
Claire.”

“You do have something left,” she said, her voice low and angry. “You have us. You have a family. You selfish, selfish man. What more do you want?” She turned her face away from him and I watched her wipe a finger quickly under her eyes.

“So do you!” he cried. “And what, you’re planning to walk away yourself! What the hell business have you got telling me to stay for the sake of my family?”

She turned on him. “I need to
leave
for the sake of my family! I cannot have them watch you sit here and
rot
! I
will not
let my children watch their father die!” She put her face in her hands. “Darling,” she said, her voice fragile. “Darling, darling man. They love you so much.”

“They do,” he said flatly. “Not you.”

She looked up, resting her chin on her fingertips. She said, “I do. I wish I didn’t. But I do.” She turned her face to him.

“You’ve left already,” he said slowly. “Haven’t you?”

She didn’t speak for a moment. Then, angry, she said, “Why should I stay when you’re already gone?”

He looked at her, then slumped forward in his chair. His face showed a fury I had never seen. He spoke slowly. “You don’t have to wake up every morning and think of one reason, just one good fucking reason, to go on.”

My mother was quiet for a minute. Then she said, “Are you waiting for me to feel sorry for you?”

He didn’t answer.

“Because I don’t,” she said, setting her coffee down. “I just don’t.”

I watched her walk down the hall.

My father’s face crumpled like a paper napkin.

Sometimes you are very young when you learn how important it can be to lie. How you can sometimes shatter an entire tiny universe by telling one horrible truth.

I watched my father sit there in his chair with tears running down his cheeks. Not making any noise. I wanted to stand up and go over to him and tell him it would be all right.

But I was glued to the floor, and it wouldn’t be all right.

You don’t know until you’re older how many times you will go over one night in your head—replay each exchange, remember each look, each gesture. You will remember how you sat glued to a dark corner. You will remember how you did nothing.

You did not go to your father.

You did not say it would be all right.

You did not say the magic words.

You did not say, I love you. It’s not your fault. It will be all right.

You did not lie.

You did not say good-bye.

My father wiped his face and stood. I heard him out in the garage. I went to stand at the living-room window, pressing my face against the glass.

Out in the dark, I watched a tree split down the center from cold.

I
heard the shot.

In memory, I knew before I heard. It goes like this:

I know. My head snaps left.

I hear the shot.

I run. Kate is coming down the hall. In one motion, I grab her, turn,
fold over
on her completely, in slow motion, as if actually
tucking her into
my rib cage.

I remind myself of an animal.

We sat in the back of the sheriff’s car, heading north, toward Nimrod.

I might have bitten the officer, which would take some explaining. I wiped Kate’s nose with my hand. Her head was damp. She was hysterical, which calmed me.

She fell asleep in my lap. We crunched into their drive. The door flew open. Oma trudged through the high snow in her nightdress and a coat and yanked open the car door. Opa peeled Kate off me, tucked her under his arm, and plodded back into the house while she screamed and flailed.

Oma wrapped a blanket over my shoulders. “Inside. Right now,” she said. She watched me for a moment, then slapped my left cheek, whipped out a flask, poured whiskey into my mouth, and snapped my jaw shut with her gnarled hand.
“Ja, ja.
Okay. Here we go, dear.
”
I swallowed it and gasped, and she pulled me out of the car.

I was almost two feet taller than she and I trailed her like a gigantic child.

Inside, Oma poured me another whiskey. Kate was under the dining-room table, playing with two spoons.

She showed no intention of coming out anytime soon. Her spoons whispered happily to one another and danced. Her lips were purple with grape juice. Her skin was the color of paste, her eyes sunken and blue. She looked dead. Tubercular. Drowned. I took a swallow of my drink.

“Katie,” I said.

“What.” She fitted the spoons into each other. Turned to look at me with her horrible eyes. “What,” she repeated.

I couldn’t think of what, so I left her alone and she forgot me.
Are you dead, Katie?
I was not feeling myself.

Around three in the morning, she emerged from under the table and crossed to the center of the room. She lay down on the floor, tucked her arms and legs tightly under herself, and shut her eyes, her rump in the air, like an infant.

Oma sat in the chair across from me, knitting.
“Kleine,”
Oma said. Her twisted fingers did not stop.
“Kleine,”
she said again, more firmly. She sighed, set down her knitting, pushed herself out of her chair. “Bed now,” she said. “To bed.” She bent down and took hold of Kate’s shoulder, whereupon Kate, without opening her eyes, let out a shriek that could have shattered glass.

“Go away,” Kate said calmly. “I’m sleeping.”

Oma sat back down in her chair and resumed her knitting.

It was still dark when Opa’s bedroom door opened. His after-shave preceded him down the hall. His white hair was combed and slick. He had a little piece of bloody tissue stuck to his Adam’s apple. He stopped when he saw Kate.

“What the hell,” he said, shaking his head. He hooked his thumbs through his suspenders and gave them a snap. “What in the damn-blasted hell.”

He looked at me. “’Bout time for coffee, you think?” He turned and went into the kitchen. The percolator began to spit and hiss like a cornered cat. When he came out, he crouched over Kate, his hands on his knees. He eased and grunted his way down to one knee.

“Say there,” he said. “Say there, Salamander.” She pretended to sleep.

“Salamander Suzy,” he sang. She fought a smile.

He put his arms around her and wrestled himself upright. He walked out of the room with her, whispering, “Slippery slimy Salamander Suzie.”

It was silent for a moment. Then, in the guest room behind us, I heard the gruff rumble of his made-up salamander song.

At breakfast we told her he was dead.

She was eating a soft-boiled egg in an egg cup. It was her favorite thing, and I couldn’t make it for her. Only Oma. At home, she’d sit at the table and squawk, “Three minutes!” like a tiny queen. But I never cooked it right. “Three minutes, Mom,” she’d call, and despite my vigilance at the kitchen clock, despite knowing how she wanted it, a liquid yellow yolk without any watery white, despite the fact that I
could
for God’s sake boil an egg, I always lifted it from the slow-boiling water with a sinking heart. At my silence, she got nervous. I’d hear her chair push back, her feet squeak across the floor. She’d step over to the egg and the two of us would look at it. “Take his hat off,” she’d suggest, as if this time I might have done it right. I’d get a sharp knife from the drawer, tap the shell once, and slice off the pointed end, holding the egg upright. I knew before I lowered it for her to look. “Too done,” I’d say. A gold yolk, not hard-boiled but not liquid either—four minutes, easily. She’d give it a long look, deciding if she could pretend. She wasn’t a good liar, though, and she’d say, “That’s all right.”

It wasn’t as if the child starved.

Oma dropped an egg into boiling water when Kate came into the kitchen, herded by her grandfather, who had braided her hair with lopsided good intent. One braid by her ear, one near the nape of her neck. Kate settled into the chair he pulled out, making minute adjustments to her place setting: grapefruit spoon laid out below the grapefruit bowl, fork switched to the right of the plate, where it could more easily commune with knife and spoon.

“Napkin in your lap, Katie,” I heard myself say. My voice startled me, and I watched Katie place her napkin over her knees. She looked up at me, waiting. For approval? Greeting?

Helpless for the correct reaction, I said, “Oma’s making your egg.” Kate smiled and turned to look at Oma. I went into the bathroom and threw up my coffee. I ran cold water on my wrists and looked at myself in the mirror. This will be the face I have now, I thought, though it made no sense, the face was no different than it had been twelve hours before. This will be my face.

I went out and sat down across from Kate again. She was eating the crusts off her toast, saving the buttered center bites to dip in her egg yolk. One piece of her toast was smeared with raspberry preserves, and this she ate in delicate spirals from the outside edges in. Opa set another cup of Folgers in front of me and put his hand on my shoulder. Oma lifted the three-minute egg from the water with a spoon, put it in the cup, tapped and chopped the hat off neatly, set both cup and hat on Kate’s plate. Kate put her toast down and scootched up to sit on her feet so she could peer directly down into the egg as she salted and peppered it carefully, adding a tiny dab of butter, never once chipping the shell.

“Well, somebody tell her, then,” Oma said quietly, her back to us. She scrubbed out a pot and set it in the rack to dry.

Opa was leaning up against the rust-colored refrigerator. He took a swallow of coffee and sighed. “Salamander Suzie, now, you know your dad’s gone and died.”

Arnold’s absence stepped into the kitchen, a fifth body, and pulled up a chair.

I watched my daughter’s face. She put her spoon down and wiped egg from the corners of her mouth. She sat back in her chair and played with the white cotton lace that hemmed her dress. She was wearing a yellow-checked dress that Oma had made for her, a summer dress, one of her favorites. Carefully, she turned the hem over, picked at it a moment, then took her fork and ripped it. She stood up and twisted herself around slowly, pulling the hem completely off, and then she sat back down with a fistful of lace. Using her fork, she tore the hem into inch-long bits and set them in a pile by her plate.

The three of us watched her pick up her spoon, peer into the egg, begin eating again.

I looked at Oma, who shook her head and shrugged.

“Well, okay, then,” Opa said, turning to the coffeepot.

“Do you want more juice,
kleine
?” Oma asked.

“No!” Kate shouted.

“Katie,” I said. “Don’t yell at your grandmother.”

“It’s all right,” Oma said, pouring Kate more juice.

“I don’t
want
any more juice!” Kate shrieked.

“Katie!” I said, shocked.

“Fine,” Oma said, whisking the juice away and pouring it back into the pitcher. Kate looked sadly at the place where her juice had been.

“Say you’re sorry,” I said.

“You’re sorry,” she muttered.

“Very clever,” I snapped.

Kate dipped her toast in the egg repeatedly, and wiped her eyes with her fist. She hunched over her egg and wouldn’t look up at anyone.

Opa went over to her and tugged one of her braids. “Life’s no fun sometimes, hmm?” he asked. Kate shook her head and nibbled her toast. “No fun,” he repeated.

I watched a couple of tears roll off the tip of her nose and into the egg. She stirred them in with a spoon.

We were quiet while she finished eating. She didn’t seem to mind the three of us staring at her. She sat back in her chair to survey the tidy wreckage of her breakfast: the unbroken eggshell, the grapefruit rind, a few crumbs and a smear of red preserves on her plate. She stood up and took all her silverware to the sink, then returned for each dish. Each dish, both hands. Each dish up to the sink, then over the side.

I found her smallness oppressive.

She climbed onto Oma’s step stool and leaned in to wash her hands. The threads of her lace hem dangled down; I noticed that her white tights were on backward, bagging at the back of her knees.

Climbing down, she said with weird formality, “I am having a nap,” and walked out of the kitchen. Down the hall, the door closed.

At least there are rules.

There are rules for what you do when someone dies, and better ways to die, and better times of day to die. It is better when someone dies at night, like this. When my mother died, it was one o’clock in the afternoon on a bright spring day. A southern spring day. There were lilacs, a sprig I’d cut from the bush outside the front door and put in a glass by her bed. I was alone with her. She was sleeping. She woke up, called for me, and I went in with her lunch on a tray, but she was dead. I looked at the clock, and it was only one. A whole day with the lilacs, the uneaten lunch, the spring sunshine coming at me like a wall falling down, a wall she had been holding up with her breath. I set the lunch down by her legs and pulled a chair up next to her and brushed her hair, and then I read a book all day until I could see through the drawn blinds that it was getting dark, and then I called a funeral parlor from the phone book.

But this was better, since he died at night. This way we could just refer to him as
he,
as in
he died yesterday.
This way it was
yesterday.
As in, it took place in the past. It is something that happened. It is no longer happening.

Now it was time for
arrangements.

Oma washed the dishes and Opa dried. Then Oma pulled off her blue rubber gloves and said, “Get dressed, dear. We need to make arrangements.”

You do not make arrangements in your bathrobe.

Arrangements are what you make when someone dies or goes mad. Arrangements are orderly. They are the answer to chaos. I have myself made many arrangements, I am good at it. I got dressed.

I went into the guest bedroom. It took me a moment to remember what I was doing there. I remembered that I was getting dressed to make arrangements for the burial of my husband, who had died the night before. Had killed himself the night before. Because of what I said. Because of me. The remembering of this caused a wave of profound exhaustion, and I faltered at the side of the bed, suddenly able to taste the coolness of the sheets, as you can when you have the flu. Instead I opened the dresser, where we kept spare clothes for long weekends, and put on underwear, a brassiere, and stockings.

Then I stood looking at myself in the mirror, thinking, I am only thirty-eight.

I smoothed my hair and went to the closet for a suitable dress.

Oma sat in her chair under her fold-out leather lap desk, which contained seven separate compartments for paper (everyday paper, list-making paper, formal letter paper, liner papers, note cards, calling cards, and
etvas
paper for jotting), three compartments for envelopes, one for her stack of return-address stamps, one for postage stamps, pen compartments on the left and right, an inkwell, a pencil sharpener, a blotter, a diary, an address book, a calendar, and hanging from the lid so that it faced her, a daily Scripture passage and attendant prayer. At the top of each sheet of paper was printed:

The lap desk had been a wedding present from her mother-in-law forty years before. She polished the leather and brass locks every time she used it, and she used it every day, when she wrote her letters. She’d get comfortable in her chair and Opa would carry it over and set it on her lap; when she was done, he’d fold it up and take it off her again.

She sat there looking efficient and licked the tip of her ink pen. “Sit down, dear,” she said, and I did.

“What first, mmm? Flowers,” she said. “Flowers. Nothing showy, but nothing cheap either, no. We’re not going to hide our heads under our arms in shame, no,” she went on, her pen scratching against the heavy paper. “So then. We’ll have Dot do the flowers then,
ja
?”

“That sounds fine.”

“Ja.
Okay. And what colors? White, some. But some color too. Too showy, all white.” She lifted her pen and looked at me.