Love and Lament (27 page)

That winter was colder than any Mary Bet could remember, though it could’ve been simply that the house was colder. She spent more time in her room than she ever had, with her books and her sewing. She wrote long letters to friends, trying to explain her situation without complaining about it. If not for Clara’s friendship and understanding, she thought she might just kill herself. But as soon as the thought surfaced, she saw her brother walking along the tracks and she shook the idea away. She resolved to confront her aunt, and so she kept a mental list of everything that she would tell her. Yet it felt petty—what could she say that would not make her feel small herself? She wanted to make her aunt as miserable as she was made to feel.

But it turned out that she didn’t get the chance. One morning in early spring, the first day that Mary Bet didn’t see her breath when
she woke up, her father had another spell. “I feel like I’m at the bottom of the river,” he said, sitting over the remains of breakfast.

“What river, Daddy?” Mary Bet said. She glanced over at Cattie Jordan, who was still working on a biscuit thick with jam.

“You know what river. The Deep River, of course.”

“Maybe you’d better go lie down,” Cattie Jordan suggested.

“That wouldn’t help atall,” he said. “But maybe if I went upstairs, I’d get to some better air.”

Mary Bet stood to help her father, but he was already up and looking at her as if annoyed at the suggestion he was in any way infirm. “I just don’t see the point in any of this,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t. It’s all—” He shook his head and started forward, catching himself on the side table, then on the sofa.

“It’s what, Daddy?”

“It’s all black,” he said. He maneuvered out of the sitting room and, catching himself in the doorframe, paused, and then stumped into the vestibule, rattling the tin mail plate on the credenza and the mirror that Siler had framed. “All black.”

Mary Bet came out into the vestibule and watched her father pull himself up the stairs. She heard the creak of his steps overhead, and she went into the kitchen to start frying pork chops. A few minutes later he was coming back down, his stumping gait quicker than normal. Mary Bet ran out into the vestibule. “What is it, Daddy?” she said.

“I can’t find it,” he said, moving past her and around to the dining room. She followed him as he pushed through the swinging door and into the kitchen. Then he wheeled around and faced her. “Where did you put it?” he demanded.

“Put what, Daddy?” She tried to keep her voice calm and even, but her chest felt suddenly tight and it was hard to breathe.

“I’ll find it,” he said and stormed into the summer kitchen and out the back door.

Cattie Jordan came and joined her niece, and they watched Cicero stride across the yard toward the toolshed. “Has he been like this?” Cattie asked.

Mary Bet shook her head. “No, I don’t know what he’s after. He loses things and then thinks I’ve hidden them, but I haven’t. The only thing I hid one time was his whiskey, and he about tore the house apart looking for it.”

Now Cicero was coming back in, his face red and his eyes wild with some kind of torment Mary Bet had never seen, as though something were pursuing him. The hair on the sides of his head stood out in tufts like a fledgling. He was talking to himself, or singing, and it was not until he was on the back porch, letting himself into the parlor that they could hear a tuneless song—“Heart was all a-flutter, around the bend the number ten, peanut butter.”

Mary Bet went around to the porch, and just as she stepped out, she saw her father reaching up on the shelf where they kept lanterns and old gloves and hats. And he pulled down a box of cartridges. “Aha!” he said. “I knew they were there. Can’t fool me.”

“What are you doing, Daddy?” Mary Bet said, her voice shaking, for now she was frightened.

Cicero brushed past her and went inside to the vestibule closet, reached in, and pulled out his gun. Mary Bet came in from the parlor just as Cattie Jordan stepped around from the dining room. “I’ll go fetch the constable,” Cattie said. She started out the front door, then paused. “Maybe you should come too.” Cicero was fumbling with the cartridge box, trying to open it with one hand while holding the rifle with the other.

“Daddy?” Mary Bet said. “What did you need your gun for?”

He looked up, glanced at his daughter, then at his wife, who was halfway out the door. “To by-God shoot it!”

“What for, Daddy? What for?” Mary Bet came over to stand by her father. It was instinct to want to close the gap between them.
She noticed as she reached for him that her hand was trembling, and it was the strangest sensation, as though her hand were not part of her body. She felt as if she were viewing the whole scene from some distant place, some mountaintop far in the past or the future, and it all slowed down until it was a still-life painting on a wall. In the quietness of her mind she heard the word “life.” And then the word became a feeling of such strange oblivion that she felt herself in perfect balance between sorrow and joy.

His back to her, he began loading shells into the breech. She touched his shoulder. “Daddy,” she said. He jerked around, the gun swinging against her leg.

“I’m going to do something I ought to’ve done long ago,” he said. He pointed the gun at Mary Bet’s chest, then at Cattie’s face. He looked calm, almost cheerful, his eyes distant and content, though his breathing was coming in deep gulps, as if he could never get enough air.

“I’ll just step out a minute,” Cattie said. The words hung in the air like holes in the silence, behind which the pork sizzled in the kitchen.

Cicero now pointed the gun at the side of his own head, holding the barrel with his left hand and moving his right down to where he could operate the trigger with his thumb. His eyes were wide in fear now, as though he’d finally awoke to what was going on, to the madness he was creating to overcome the madness in his head.

“Daddy,” Mary Bet said in as calm and steady a voice as she could, “put the gun down now. It’s dangerous. You don’t want to hurt anybody. Put it down. Okay?”

Cicero nodded, but he kept the barrel tight to his temple. “I won’t hurt anybody, just myself. I can’t stand it here anymore.”

“It’s all right, Daddy.”

“I’ll go get the doctor for you,” Cattie said. Mary Bet shook her head sternly, but kept her eyes on her father.

“I’ll shoot him,” Cicero said.

“He’s not coming,” Mary Bet assured him. “We just want you to put your gun down now. There’s no need to shoot anybody or anything.”

“But I want to so badly,” he pleaded. “I really do.”

“I know, Daddy, but you oughten. Put it down, please.”

His lips moved, slowly as the second hand on a watch, and he said, “I have to.”

“No,” she said, “you don’t.” The words seemed to echo off the walls of the foyer and the oval mirror and the ceiling and the turkey rug. He brought the gun away from his head, as though considering. And then he was turning away and hurrying out through the parlor to the side porch, and she and Cattie Jordan went right along behind him as though they were all heading outside to shoot a rattlesnake.

He went down into the orchard and flopped beneath an apple tree, the gun in his lap. He let it slip from his grasp. Mary Bet reached down and pulled it away.

“Make sure of the safety, child,” he said.

“Give it to me,” Cattie said, “I’m going for the constable straightaway.”

“That won’t be necessary, Aunt Cattie. Please.”

“Don’t you know it’s a sin to shoot yourself, Cicero? Even if you’re … well it’s just not right. In front of your family that loves you?” She turned to Mary Bet. “I’m going to fetch the doctor, I don’t care what anybody says. Mary Bet, are you all right?”

“I won’t let him in,” Cicero said. “I don’t want a doctor, I told you I’m fine, I just need to rest.”

“He might be able to give you something for the pain in your head,” Mary Bet said. She nodded at her aunt, and Cattie Jordan headed to the carriage barn. “I’m going to sit with you until Dr. Slocum gets here, Daddy, and I want you to see him as a favor to me. Okay?”

Cicero nodded.

Mary Bet ejected the two cartridges from the gun and slipped them in the pocket of her skirt. She sat with him for a while, and then they went inside. She put the gun away and knelt to collect the loose cartridges and put them into their box. “Let’s go sit in the den for a spell, Daddy.” She crooked her arm for him and he took it, his face gone blank and pale, and Mary Bet wondered if he even knew what had just happened. What was it like inside such turbulence?

She guided him over to his cushioned chair and sat him down. “This is a nice quiet place, Daddy,” she said. “I’ve always liked reading in here, it’s the coolest part of the house since it’s on the north side.” She kept talking this way, about things that required no comment, that only provided the music of her voice, familiar and as soothing as a mother. She thought she would never ever risk the unimaginable hardship of becoming a real mother—the life-draining labor, a forerunner to the years of hard work, and then if she were to lose a child, or have one that became ill—she could not endure it.

Cicero leaned back and put his hands over his face, the thin light of winter trickling through the window so that, for a moment, he appeared to be a young man, burdened but still filled with energy. “It’s hard to see,” he said, looking out the window at the horse grazing in the near pasture. “I can’t see so good.”

“I know, Daddy,” Mary Bet said, stroking his arm. “I know.”

Presently Cattie Jordan returned, Dr. Slocum panting along behind her, his face red as a persimmon. You could at least count on her to persuade people to do what she wanted them to. The doctor plopped his bag onto the credenza and let Mary Bet help him off with his coat. “Now,” he said, “let’s have a look at your father.”

They went into the den and found Cicero sitting there as relaxed and affable as ever. He stood and shook the doctor’s hand and said, “Good morning, Doctor, always glad to see a friend. I’m afraid you’ve missed breakfast, but we can scare you up something.”

They talked quietly for a while, the doctor directing his questions to Cicero. But Cicero let his wife and daughter do most of the answering.

When Dr. Slocum got up to leave, the women followed him out to the vestibule. “I don’t diagnose any particular psychiatric disturbance,” he said, “but this is really beyond my field of expertise.” He nodded toward the other room and lowered his voice. “He’s perfectly calm now. I’ve seen cases like this in which a delusional patient will convince himself that everybody else is in the wrong, that it was all a misunderstanding and no harm was intended.”

“I can hear you fine,” Cicero said from the other room. “Go on, talk about me all you want, it doesn’t bother me atall.”

Dr. Slocum paused, his eyes going from Mary Bet to Cattie Jordan. “The main issue here is whether you fear for your safety, or his. My advice in a case like this is to go ahead and take him up to the state hospital in Morganton. They can evaluate him better than I can.”

“But will they keep him there?” Mary Bet wanted to know.

“Only if they think it’s best, and not if you don’t want them to. I’ll go up there with you. I think the sooner we go the better.”

“I don’t like thinking of leaving him in an asylum,” Mary Bet whispered. “What if they chain him up? We wouldn’t even know.”

“They don’t do anything like that now. They use all the most modern techniques. No more blistering and dunking in cold water. If anything, they’ve gone too far in not treating at all, unless they absolutely have to. There’s less therapy, and more simple custodial care.”

“But he’d be put in with all kinds of crazy people and welfare cases,” Mary Bet said, shaking her head.

“The criminally insane,” Cattie Jordan added.

Mary Bet glanced over. “I’ll never let him go to a place like that.”

“There are separate wards from what I understand. You get what you pay for, and y’all are lucky enough to afford proper care. Let’s
not get worked up about this right now. I’ll make some inquiries tomorrow, and we’ll see about going up there next week. In the meantime, give him a solution of calomel as a sedative.” He placed a little brown bottle on the credenza. “Put two drops in whatever he drinks, morning and night. It doesn’t taste like anything. If he has another episode, I’ll give him a spoonful of heroin.” The doctor passed a hand over his ruddy face and sighed. “And one more thing,” he said, getting to his feet, “get that gun out of this house. Any and every gun.”

“That’s the only one,” Mary Bet said, her voice barely audible, “except for his service revolver, and I don’t know where he keeps that.”

“Well, then, you’ll have to do some snooping,” Dr. Slocum said.

A week later the four of them were in the train on their way to Morganton. As the farms flashed past and gave way to woods and blue hills, Mary Bet remembered standing at the station with her father waiting to take the train to the mountains to see Myrtle Emma. And here they were finally making their first train excursion. The turns life could take. Cicero sat opposite Mary Bet, looking out in the direction they’d been, a peaceful expression on his face, as though at last accepting that his work was done. Mary Bet told herself she would not come home without him.

CHAPTER 17