Blackbird Fly (22 page)

A fine list of ‘what-whats.’ Her lists, her
sanity-keepers. The calendar with its regiment, its comforting
lineup of hours. Was that the real core of the problem, insane
list-making, schedule mania, calendar memorization? Or were those
coping mechanisms, ways to stave off the scary chaos of the
answerless questions: What is life anyway? What is death but an end
to the pain of living? What happens after death? Why am I here on
earth? Why was I born?

Was there an answer to any of them? No one knows why
they’re born. You are simply brought forth in love. You arrive, and
then everything else is guesswork. You choose a path, or it chooses
you. You protest your lot, or accept it willingly. It doesn’t
matter. It’s yours, you own it. And now you have to live with
it.

The calendar fixation seemed, now that she’d been
away from the office so long, simply a neurotic way to cope with
the passage of time. That was what bothered her: Time.
Tick-tock
. The way it slipped away, unnoticed, so that days
went by in a flash. Weeks slid by, then months, seasons. Winter
blew cold and snowy then before you realized it the grass was green
and you’d somehow missed the delicate onset of spring, the opening
of buds. Children grew overnight from tiny kissy-face cherubs to
strapping, shaving, back-talking sluggers. It wasn’t fair, it
didn’t have to happen.

She felt the rock in her chest again, not so big but
still there, pressing against her heart. Life didn't have to
happen? Ah, but it did. Time marched on, unbidden by protest and
the thin desires of the flesh. It would not stop. It would not slow
for adoring mothers or trial attorneys or absent fathers. It would
not stretch its languorous minutes for you or anyone. Time was an
equal opportunity torturer.

How did everyone else cope? You couldn’t control
time. You could schedule yourself to death, packing in every second
with so-called meaningful work. You could try harder, be smarter,
love more. But that was only a torture you did to yourself. It
wasn’t time’s fault you accepted its reins so readily. The only
thing was to accept. Accept change. Accept time. Accept death.

The moon poked up over the wall, shining a flash of
light on the espaliered pear tree, its fruit now swelling and
heavy. The bones that hid in the latrine for so long: who was it?
Who had lived, and died here? Who cared for them, who loved and
missed them?

Did it matter? Death comes to all of us —
but most
of all, to me
. It will claim my flesh, make it weak. She
thought of Harry again, as his heart seized, as the light went out
of his eyes. What did he think of? Did he know he was dying? Was he
afraid? She wanted suddenly to have been there with him, to have
held him and comforted him and whispered to him as he went, to tell
him she had loved him once even if she’d been so very neglectful
for, oh,
years
. She wanted, she realized now, too late, his
forgiveness. How would she ever forgive herself without his
blessing?

Harry had moved on. He’d adapted to her coldness. He
had found warmth in the arms of another woman and the soft hands of
their child. She tried to imagine him forgiving her. She tried to
hear his voice, those words. She tried to make them manifest on the
night air:
I forgive you, Merle. I was happy with my new woman,
my adorable girl. Don't feel bad you didn't have it in you to love
me
.

But it wasn’t right; it wasn’t him. Harry didn't care
about any of them, before or after his death. Not really. He didn't
care enough to forgive her.

It's a mystery, how you'll die. But it wasn’t a
mystery itself. No, it was very ordinary. The Big D. The Dirt Nap.
It would come. And sooner than you expect.

Tristan was snoring. The evening had cooled and the
turmoil in her head had stilled. Cigarettes and
what-what
done for the night.

As she stepped into the parlor she heard a noise
under the floor. She’d put out a dozen mouse traps, baited them
with camembert (for world’s most pampered mice) but hadn’t checked
them recently. Grabbing the flashlight she pushed aside the
cabinet, pulled up the door in the floor and shone the beam down
the wooden stairs. At the bottom step a mouse was caught in a trap,
the wire across his back but still alive. She picked up a length of
plastic pipe and a plastic bag and started down the steps.

Night or day the cellar was pitch black, no worse
than her basement at home except the dirt floor smelled of mold.
The mouse was pushing himself in circles on the step, one foreleg
functional. No sense prolonging the misery. She whacked him hard
over the head. With a flick of the wrist she scooped him, trap and
all, into the plastic bag.

Where did she put the other traps? She shone the
light into the far corner, behind the tall stack of kegs. Another
success, a fat dead mouse. She kicked the old rug rolled in a long
sausage. Prime rodent hideout. She’d put a trap at each end of the
hole. Another kick then two mice dashed out by her foot, vaulting
the trap, causing her to jump backwards and lose her balance. She
fell into the kegs, smashing three of them in a loud snapping and
crumpling of wood.

Swearing, she got to her feet and brushed herself
off. She’d dropped the bag and the flashlight. It shone over her
shoulder against the back wall where the kegs were stacked. As she
picked up the light she moved closer to the wall. Something was
different about this wall.

A light went on upstairs. Tristan bent over the trap
door. “Mom?”

“
Sorry. Checking mousetraps. I
couldn’t sleep.” She ran her hand over the wall. It was wood, and
not a wall at all. “Put some shoes on and bring that manila
envelope down here. In the cabinet. Left drawer.”

Tristan came down the steps in white socks, tennis
shoes, and plaid boxer shorts, his blanket around his shoulders. He
held out the envelope. “What’d you find?”

She brushed the spider webs off the wooden planks of
the door. A wrought iron lock was set into the surface. There was
no handle, just a key hole. “A door.” She rummaged in the bottom of
the envelope.

“
Wait, Mom. Maybe it’s another
skeleton,” Tristan said.

“
You think so?” She held up the big
key.

He shrugged, frowning at the sealed door. “Could be
anything.”

She’d seen one skeleton this week; two wouldn’t make
a huge difference. Besides, there was no skeleton in here, she knew
it. What were the odds of finding even one pile of human bones in
your homestead?

“
Hold the flashlight.”

He trained the beam on the keyhole. Jiggling the key,
she felt for how it turned, if it turned. Left, right, she pushed
it in and out, back and forth. Debris dribbled down the wood, ash
or mildew. Then it turned.

Merle looked at Tristan, her face lit up in the beam.
She pulled on the key. The door wouldn’t budge. “Hit the corners of
the door with the flashlight,” she ordered, smacking it with the
heel of her hand. He banged around with the light until she told
him to stop. “Let’s try again.” She heard the ping of wood
separating, then, with a jerk on the key, it opened an inch.

“
Stick your fingers in and pull,”
she said. They each put a foot on the back wall and pried the door
six inches wider. “Give me the light.”

The door stopped eight inches from the floor, as if
to keep floodwaters out. She wedged her knee in the opening and put
her face up to it.

“
More bones?”

“
No.” She swung the light back and
forth. “Bottles.”

Prying open the door farther they squeezed inside the
old wine cave. The room was only five feet deep but as wide as the
house. The racks were about half full, up to chest height, but lots
and lots of bottles. She brushed off a bottle and sucked in a
breath.

How long had this wine been here? Since Weston’s day
anyway. Dust and mold lay thick on the bottles. She pulled out one,
rubbing the label. ‘Château Pétrus.’ That was the label Albert said
was very fine. The label was crude and brittle, almost shattering
at her touch.

A beautiful, ancient space with a vaulted ceiling and
carved racks, this was the traditional place to store one’s wine in
France, underground, at a constant temperature, in darkness, much
like Gerard’s fancy oak barrels. Merle counted the bottles quickly.
Twelve cases, a hundred-forty-four bottles of wine.

“
It must be old,” Tristan said,
pulling a dusty bottle from the rack and blowing on the label.
“1947. Yeah, that’s old. Do you think my grandpa hid this
here?”

“
He stored it here anyway.” Why had
he never sold it, or taken it with him to the U.S.? Had he died
before he had a chance to import it? “Hold up the light to this
one.”

Inside the bottle the wine looked dark as ink. Some
sediment had collected along one side. But the corks looked decent,
intact. The lead covering had held. Sixty years though, a long time
for neglected bottles. It was probably spoiled.

“
Peuw. There’s big ol’ green mold on
these,” Tristan said, pointing to one end where water had leaked in
from above.

Merle stepped down the rack to examine the end ones.
“Let’s take one up from here. And one from the other end, and that
one.” She grabbed one, and let Tristan take two bottles. “Upstairs,
don’t drag your blanket. Wait.” She found the bag of dead mice on
the floor, relocked the cave, and followed him up the steps and
shut the trap door.

They set the bottles on the oak table. Merle got a
roll of paper towels and wiped the bottles clean, dabbing the paper
labels gently. The vintages were the same three as the labels in
the safe deposit box. Three wine labels to remind him what he had
stored here.

Merle sat down. Château Pétrus ’46. Château
L'Église-Clinet, 1949, a black and white label. Château
Cheval-Blanc, 1947, the label faded. She pulled the labels out of
the envelope. They matched the bottles exactly.

She opened the old menu and for a moment tried to see
if there was some clue hidden among the kidney pies and mutton
stews. Murky. Was this what “they” were after? Were these wines
rare and exotic? She had no idea. “Tristan. You must not say
anything to anybody about the wine downstairs. Even Albert. It’s
our secret. Okay?”

He was huddled back in his bed. “Okay,” he said
sleepily.

“
Take your socks off, they’re
filthy.”

“
You coming to the tournament
tomorrow?”

She pulled the blanket up under his chin. He hadn’t
shaved in a week and whiskers were sprouting all over his chin,
making him look not so much like her child anymore. She bent down
and kissed him on the forehead. Hard to believe he’d be going home
in a few days, without her. The thought of it made her sick.

“
Wouldn’t miss it for the world,
D’Artagnan.”

Chapter 24

The baby.
The baby
. The. Baby.

Marie-Emilie can’t get enough of him, the tiny, red
creature. So helpless, so beautiful it makes her cry to look at
him. She would stare at him all day long, as he slept, as his tiny
hands plied the air. But she has to find food.

Stephan has left her a bag of stale bread in the
alley behind the bakery. She has not seen Stephan for days, but he
does this for the baby. She has searched the hedgerows for fallen
fruit. She has begged at the old widow’s farm. The woman was unkind
at first but when Marie-Emilie got on her knees and cried, she
offered three eggs and a quart of goat’s milk.

The milk is necessary for the baby; Dominique will
not nurse him. She refuses to hold him, turning her head away when
Marie-Emilie exclaims about his little curl of hair, his tiny
fingernails. She wants nothing to do with her baby. So Marie-Emilie
is anxious for his survival. If only she could bare her own breast
to feed him, to nurture him. Dominique makes her angry. Then
Marie-Emilie holds the baby and the anger melts away.

Sometimes she thinks of Stephan but she is so tired
the thoughts don’t stay long. He leaves bread sometimes but nothing
more. She is devoted to the baby’s survival. That is all that
matters.

Were there still such women as wet nurses?
Marie-Emilie does not know. She has asked at the church and
received only a shake of the old priest’s head. She fashions a
nipple from goat hide, ties it to a bottle. Poor little thing. Poor
baby. He suckles the makeshift nursing bottle. He looks in her
eyes. There is love there. She sees it.

The priest does baptize the baby. Reluctantly, as
long as Dominique doesn’t enter the church, he says. The baby is
innocent, he must be saved. Both the baby and Marie-Emilie cry when
the holy water is touched to his scalp.

The days are busy, finding food for the three of
them, hoeing rows for a farmer who needs more help than he has,
making Dominique eat broth, changing the baby, feeding the baby who
demands so much and yet who is she to deny him? He did not ask for
this. He is innocent, a baby.

Marie-Emilie names him Henri-Laurent, a noble name.
She does not tell Dominique though, whispering the name to the baby
alone. The girl worries her. She grows thin. She lost much blood
with the childbirth and is weak. But the days grow warm and one
afternoon Marie-Emilie returns from the farm and finds the girl in
the garden, sitting in the sunshine with the baby on her lap. She
has cradled him in her skirt and swings her legs back and forth as
a song comes from her lips. But she doesn’t look at him while she
hums. She looks away, at the birds flying in the sky, at the pear
tree against the house, at the roses opening against the wall.

For a moment, Marie-Emilie is too stunned to move.
She stands by the door of the house, watching Dominique and her
baby, a horrible feeling inside her. Dominique will leave. She will
take Henri-Laurent. She will take the baby away and they will both
be gone forever. Her heart contracts at the thought of never
holding the baby again.