Luck (24 page)

“Well, you know, Sophie, in my religion, among others, we have services the next day after death, or even the same day. My Lily’s was the day after, and I mourned her with all my
heart. A longer time or a shorter time, it can be a matter of custom, not grief. In any event, perhaps we revere custom more than we should, especially if altering it causes people to think more closely about the one who is lost.”

Lost. Sophie has lost skin, tenderness, touch, hands, purpose, even a minor kind of salvation. “Maybe. But Phil had his own friends, and there’s people upset because they can’t get here and probably some people still don’t even know yet, and isn’t it all supposed to be about him? Shouldn’t it be what
he
would have wanted?”

“No. No, the departed have departed, and I don’t believe they bother themselves with worldly concerns.” All worldly concerns? Including Sophie? Including Nora? Including everything in Phil’s entire life—just uninterested, just like that? Can that be how Max thought about Lily—forty years and suddenly he would be of no interest to her? Sophie has never considered Max a hard man before. But, “It’s our attachments that matter. Lily is always alive to me, and Philip will be, too, for those who cared for him. But they themselves have moved away, and we cannot imagine where that is, or if it is anywhere at all. Which is only the great, last mystery, beyond solving. The ceremonies acknowledge our attachments and the mystery, and so are only for us, I think.” He pauses, then asks quietly, “Will you miss him a great deal, Sophie?”

“I feel strongly about all death,” she answers, quick as she can. “I’ve seen too much of it.” She immediately regrets that; it’s cheap, using real suffering to account for her present distress. “But yes, of course it’s a huge shock. I’ve lived here for so long he was family in a way.” She stumbles over the word
family.
Oh, she cannot keep talking, she just can’t.

“Sophie?” Max sets down the mixing bowl and turns to face her.

“Yes?” She keeps her head down.

“We all have different affections and loyalties, and you know mine are particularly for Nora, but I would like to tell you while we’re alone that I believe you are carrying a special burden with considerable compassion and grace. Do you understand me?”

He knows. Does he, how could he? A stab in the dark, then? “Thank you,” she ventures. “We’re all doing our best.”

“No, Sophie. It is hard, what you are managing to do, and you should accept my admiration. And perhaps, on Nora’s behalf, although as we both know she would not agree, my gratitude. You are earning it, and you should accept it. Only between us.”

It is dangerous, it is even a breach of Phil’s trust, but, “Thank you,” she says again, in shakier tone. It’s a relief. It’s not so lonely if somebody knows. Goodness, good behaviour, they can take many forms, and if some are more ambiguous than others, well, that’s the tricky, complicated world of grown-ups, isn’t it? The ambiguity of Max’s particular virtue is, it seems, that he is not inclined to betray Sophie or Nora or Phil. Quite an accomplishment.

Now that her armoured but very real grief is acknowledged, though, Sophie sags where she stands. Max puts an arm around her. He’s a nice man. No wonder Nora holds him in such high regard. “How did you know?” she whispers.

“I watch. I listen to tones. I can sometimes feel things.”

When? Max spent a rare day here some weeks ago—a short holiday in the country, much time on the porch, everyone with their feet up talking about work and nothing else very important except, now and then, world events—what could he have seen? Nora’s a watcher, too. Nora calls watching a requirement of her job, and makes a little joke about the
fortuitousness of that, given that observing is also her inclination and nature. Does Nora see less acutely than Max, or is she just more careful about what she will see?

“I’ve been watching you for a long time,” Phil said to begin with, and without will or warning, just like throwing up, Sophie is weeping into Max’s shoulder, his arms folded around her, one of his big hands stroking her hair, the other tight on her back, an old man maybe, but firm as a tree. She is gulping for air, she is crying so hard she makes deep-throated, gasping, hiccuping sounds. She would throw her head back and howl inside these arms except even now she is aware of Nora upstairs, and how could she explain the depth and volume of her anguish if, curious and alarmed, Nora came down?

Finally she is able to step back and allow Max to dry her cheeks with his thumbs. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“Ah Sophie, we do our best for many reasons, do we not? I know you have done yours. In his way, Philip did his best as well. Life is complicated, and then suddenly it is much too simple. Strange, isn’t it?”

Yes, it is.

Max has brought air into the house. An outside voice, and moreover a deep one. Those missing bass tones. He also bears an external eye, private solace, a larger outlook on Phil. Sophie takes a deep, ragged breath. Finally, there is such a thing as taking a deep breath in this house. She takes another, and another, and is herself again. Or at least the self that functions and copes. “I’ll pile the sandwiches on a big plate, and then people can eat whenever they’re ready.” Max nods, he gives her a last pat on the shoulder, and takes his place—actually Phil’s place—at the table. That looks strange; but somebody would have to sit there some time.

It would be nice if some similarly warm and consoling event were occurring upstairs, but it’s not.

All morning, from behind the closed door of her room, Beth has been listening to the sounds of the household: the other two getting up, going downstairs, voices rising to her room from below, more trips up and down stairs and then Nora pounding down, Max’s voice joining Nora’s and Sophie’s, and then Nora returning upstairs, Nora going into the bathroom, the shower being turned on.

And nobody this whole long time has tapped on Beth’s door or called out to ask if she’s okay.

She is not okay.

Look what she’s done to her stomach, filling it with poisonous overnight foods—what was she thinking, heating scoops of casserole, cramming herself with cookies and cake? She could feel food dulling history and impulse, but until she was full to bursting with sugar and starch and disgust, she had no idea how heavy food gets; in every way an anchor. She dragged herself back upstairs to bed thoroughly weighted, and then pains in her stomach kept her awake. She did finally sleep, but woke up queasy this morning. Inert, too, even though food is supposed to bring energy, isn’t it?

And nobody cares. They’re probably more interested in what happened to the food than what’s happened to her. Nora, too, not just Sophie. But Nora has a lot on her mind. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t care, only that other things have grabbed her attention.

So Beth must grab it back.

It’s in her power to transform the day.

There now, there’s the surge food is supposed to provide, like a furnace clicking on—just so, Beth finally rolls out of bed and onto her feet, and immediately, once she’s standing, feels
far less pinned and weighed down. She meant to wait, but no, she can’t. Yesterday would have been wrong, but this is the time, this is the day. Nora, now out of the shower, now leaving the bathroom, needs a future, and once Beth reveals it, they can proceed through the rest of the day with their eyes and hearts skipping over the moment, cast forward instead. That sounds right, doesn’t it? Of course it does, and without hesitation Beth aims herself directly from her room to Nora’s. Nora is standing, plump and pensive in mid-calf-length black skirt, black stockings, flat black shoes and navy-blue bra, taking from a closet hanger a black top, long and gold-flecked—an outfit normally worn to openings and other city events. “Nora. Listen.”

Beth’s intention is to raise Nora instantly from misery or weariness or inattention into the thinner, finer, happier atmosphere Beth inhabits simply by standing up, getting moving. “Beth!” Nora clutches the black and gold top to her chest. “You startled me.” Not exactly welcoming, but, “Can I help you with something?”

She can, yes; but more the other way around.

“I’ve been thinking.” Beth is interested to hear how she’s going to put her ideas, what’s going to come out of her mouth. “About plans. What we do next. Wait till you hear.”

It’s only natural that Nora looks confused. “Can it wait? Max is here, you know, and we’ll have to leave soon. I want to get back downstairs.”

“No, please, just a couple of minutes, okay? It’ll make all the difference. Listen. It’s about what to do when we leave here.” Beth hurtles on so that open-mouthed Nora will have no more space for words. Beth can see her perfect vision so clearly right now, and she knows it can save, and she just has to say it.

“See, we go back to the city. I mean, nobody wants to stay here, right? We find a house, or one of those half-houses, what do you call them? Brick, anyway, with a little yard with a fence and vines growing up it, and flowers, and I’ll have a herb garden. You need lots of light, so there’ll be big windows in the room where you work, and it should be on a side street because you don’t want too much noise when you’re working, but it has to be sort of downtown. And high ceilings, and white walls so we can hang your art right, and we’ll have all new furniture for starting out fresh, we’ll have such a good time shopping for exactly what we want, just for us. I can do modelling, or maybe get other kinds of jobs when we need money, and I’ll do the cleaning, and I can learn to cook, too, so all you’ll have to do is your work. Just the two of us, can you imagine?” She is breathless. Perhaps she has spoken too fast. So much, and it’s only taken a moment to say. Maybe it spilled out so full tilt that Nora can’t take it all in at once, and that’s why she’s standing just staring at Beth.

Or she’s overcome by the splendour of the picture Beth has sketched right in front of her eyes. Oh, there’s lots more details: a fireplace in the living room, white-painted brick flanked by white-painted built-in shelves, flowers always blooming in pottery vases and crystal ones on mantels and tables, and candles as well, tall and short, scented and not, lit every cozy, intimate evening. Soft music, and Nora’s latest, most dazzling works—whatever they’ll be next, they are certain to dazzle—lighting the walls. “Isn’t it perfect, Nora, isn’t it beautiful?” Beth finds a use for slightly pouched bellies: she rests her clasped hands on hers.

Nora stares harder. Nora frowns. Finally, watchfully, in a way Beth can’t interpret, Nora says, “That’s quite an idea, Beth. I can see you’ve given it a lot of thought. But you know,
I haven’t even begun to think about futures. I can’t, it’s far too soon. There’s Philip, you know.”

Didn’t she get it? Does she not grasp altered circumstances? “But that’s just it, you won’t have to think about him, you can do what
you
want, isn’t that just amazing?” Beth sees Nora stepping lightly into this conjured cottage and being … content. Happy and content.
Finally
, Nora would say then, as if she had crossed a long desert to her reward, her true oasis in a warm, fruitful space.

Honest to God, Beth can
see
that, true as true.

Nora takes a deep breath. “Beth, please. Think. Try to imagine being with somebody you care for, day in and day out for nearly twenty years, and suddenly you don’t have them any more.”

Yes. And so? “That’s what I mean, how amazing that is. I
love
you, isn’t that amazing too? I don’t mean sex, not at all, don’t think that, I mean
love.
And you’re free. We can do anything. You have your whole life in your very own hands.”

Now something bad happens. Nora throws up those hands, violently, so that Beth takes a step back. “Beth. I do not have time for this.” There’s a sound in Nora’s voice Beth has never heard before, not even when she was raging about the people in town. She is low-voiced and harsh, a stranger saying, “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, and I don’t think you do either, but I’m not listening to any more of it. You have no idea. There’s something the matter with you, but I can’t deal with it now,” and shrugging herself into the black gold-flecked top she whisks past Beth and is out the door and into the hallway and gone.

Oh.

Beth sinks onto Nora’s bed. Such a big bed. So much space.

How come the largest possible events can take almost no time?

How come when something’s so true, it doesn’t just naturally
come
true? Beth
saw
Nora and herself in their brick city cottage. She smelled the herbs, she heard muffled traffic, she listened to her voice and Nora’s in low evening communion. She felt Nora brushing a hand over her hair, passing by, the way, but different, Nora sometimes brushed Philip’s shoulder, or he touched her arm. Just little, enormous moments.

This is the second time a desire has simply flowed through Beth uninterrupted in the direction of fate. Bricks collapse, white walls darken. Nobody cares. People who’ve made a living off her, how ungrateful they are, and blind, and unworthy.

Beth turns on her side on Nora’s bed. She’s so heavy. Why does no one take care of her? Admiration is different. Lights and tiaras and sashes were never the same thing as care. Even her hours spent bending to Nora’s visions didn’t add up to true attentiveness, much less respect or affection, it seems. All her pictures turn out to be wrong, and acting on them turns out so badly. She only wants to be safe; for someone, one single human to care. Is there really no one? Was there ever someone? Could there have been? How do other people decide things, weigh them up, pick one choice or the other so that they’re loved? Is that what regular people do? How do they learn that?

Maybe by not being so particularly admired. Maybe they learn in the absence of extravagant beauty. Without so many mirrors and glass, light and darkness.

How desolate, how bereft, how swamped with grief Beth’s crushed, collapsed little heart is.

Also, how busy her mind.

Nora’s, too. Once escaped from her room, and it feels
exactly like that, an escape, she could go left, down the stairs, back to the safety of the kitchen and Sophie and Max, as she told Beth she was eager to do. Instead, she finds herself turning right, along the hall to her studio, to stand in its light. That was shocking. Just shocking. Who knew? Should she have known? It takes a minute or two to catch her breath and stop shaking, a few moments to absorb that awful, pathetic encounter.