Mudwoman (44 page)

Agatha had been sixty-seven at the time of the first stroke. In her circle of Carthage friends and neighbors, sixty-seven was considered
still quite young.

She’d suffered from high blood pressure for years. She was overweight by many pounds. Long she’d entertained others with recitations of her many failed diets—“grapefruit”—“water”—“Dr. Atkins”—“Eaters Anonymous 12-Step”—but really it wasn’t funny, as M.R. had known as a young girl, and so there should have been no great surprise at Agatha’s collapse, though Konrad seemed not to have anticipated it.

“But, Daddy, how could you
not
?—she made appointments with doctors, she canceled. . . .”

“Please don’t speak of your mother as ‘she’—you owe her that respect at least.”

This cutting remark was so uncharacteristic of Konrad, M.R. was struck dumb.

Agatha had fainted and fallen in the backyard amid a wild tangle of flowers and weeds, and had called to Konrad for help. But she had refused to see a doctor and a few days later she fainted again, and fell, this time on the stairs in the house, and had not recovered consciousness for twelve hours. The stroke was considered “mild”—but she’d lost sensation in her right leg, was more than ever dependent upon a cane, and even with a cane had difficulty walking. She became averse to reading—“nasty squiggly lines like spiders”—and even to watching TV with Konrad—“just flat pictures and people acting like fools.” Her hair turned white in streaks giving her a savage look, that quite shocked M.R. when she saw her. Where Agatha had been girlish and tender and her trilling laughter delightful now Agatha was harridanish and harsh and never laughed but made irascible grunting sounds in mocking mimicry of laughter.

Konrad confided in M.R., it was his fault for not having forced Agatha to lose weight, and to keep her doctors’ appointments. He felt such terrible guilt, he couldn’t bear to think of it.

Privately M.R. had thought yes, this was partly Konrad’s fault. The Neukirchens had drifted through the years and decades like infatuated honeymooners in a little boat lacking oars and a rudder.

She’d said, “Daddy, it isn’t your fault. You know how stubborn she—Agatha—is.”

But Konrad hadn’t been placated. With a little snort of derision he’d said, “ ‘Daddy’—you’re calling me? But you call your mother ‘Agatha.’ There is something wrong there.”

M.R. had been speechless. Was her kindly Quaker father now turning against her, too?

“Something very wrong, your mother sensed long before I did. Our ‘Merry’ was not the daughter we’d believed her to be.”

“But—of course I am not ‘Merry.’ I was never ‘Merry.’ You know perfectly well that I—I am not your biological daughter. . . . You have no right to expect of me that. . . .”

Articulate before large audiences, never at a loss for words in public, M.R. began to stammer in her father’s angry presence.

The power of a parent to wound, to kill. The power of a parent is terrible.

But it was Agatha who was most unreasonable of course. Agatha sprawled on the living room sofa splotch-faced and sullen, her eyes swallowed in the fatty ridges of her face. Her mouth that had always been so soft and warm now resembled a carp’s mouth. Her disapproval of M.R. had hardened into dislike.

M.R. was frightened in the woman’s presence like a stepchild in a fairy tale that has unexpectedly turned malevolent.

“You. I know why you’re here. Waiting for—I know what. S-s-s-so you can have your father all to your-s-s-self.”

M.R. protested, she’d come to see
her
—Agatha. She’d heard that Agatha wasn’t feeling well and she’d come quickly. . . .

“Heard I had a s-s-s-stroke. S-s-s-so you can have your father all to your-s-s-self.”

Yet even before the stroke Agatha had grown ever more resentful of M.R.—whom she called, coolly, “Meredith”—for having deceived her and Konrad. “Promising you would return to Carthage to teach, after Cornell. And then—Harvard! Why wasn’t one of the state colleges good enough for you? That cost a fraction of that fancy tuition? Some worldly notion of yours—some blindness . . .”

Notion
was a Quaker term roughly synonymous with
unfounded, illogical, delusional.

“And you never made the slightest effort to get a job here—I know, I have friends at the high school. And you never told us your plans—your plotting.”

“Of course I told you—I kept you informed. When I received a fellowship to Harvard—”

“ ‘Received a fellowship to Harvard’—do you hear how you sound? How vain, how—hollow? And plain silly.”

M.R. wanted to say hotly
What is silly about Harvard?

M.R. tried to point out that, apart from the state university at Plattsburgh, and St. Lawrence University in Canton, there were no colleges or universities within a reasonable distance of Carthage where she would have felt “comfortable”—an awkward way of saying that no college or university in the vicinity of Carthage was quite good enough for her Harvard Ph.D., or for her.

M.R.’s voice faltered and failed. Maybe it was all—
silly.

The vanity of the intellectual life, or any kind of life at all—
silly.

“Your first duty is to your parents who brought you into this world. And kept you in this world. Who cared for you, and made a place for you in their hearts.”

Duty!
M.R. had wanted to protest, she thought of her life as a life of duty, in fact.

“You’ve broken our hearts! I’m not even sure if you are our daughter! Still we will always love you. That is God’s wish and that is our vow.”

Agatha glared at M.R. with a look of such contempt, M.R. had to turn away.

She does see into my heart. She knows me. Mudwoman!

“I
had every intention of selling this house, Meredith! I signed the contract with McIntosh Realtor in full awareness of what I was doing, and that I would have to pay a penalty if I backed out. And then, at the closing—I backed out.”

Konrad spoke with an air of disbelief as if this admission were scandalous to him, even now.

“It isn’t in my character, you know. To ‘back out.’ ”

They were in Agatha’s overgrown garden at the rear of the house. Konrad was sitting in a frayed lawn chair and M.R., too restless to sit still, in a flurry of emotion at being in such proximity to her father, was prowling about Agatha’s abandoned garden.

Crimson peonies, purple phlox, pink cluster roses and stunted sunflowers amid a choking profusion of weeds.

In the high grass, weatherworn concrete statuary—miniature pig, owl, cat, deer, leering gargoyle with hands pressed against its pointed ears.

How strange, the gargoyle! M.R. remembered the animal statues—she thought—but not the gargoyle, which didn’t seem at all like Agatha’s taste.

“Then, I intended to rent the house. Neighbors have been suggesting that I rent out just a room or two but that doesn’t appeal to me—living with strangers. I wouldn’t inflict myself upon
them
—you know how I like to stay up late, and watch TV and now my ears aren’t so sharp, the volume has to be turned up high. And my eating habits—since Agatha passed away—are what you’d call
improvised.
” Konrad paused, peering at M.R. “You should get Agatha’s gloves, if you’re going to pull those spiky weeds, Meredith. You’ll cut your hands.”

M.R. went into the garage, to find Agatha’s old, soiled gloves.

There in a corner, her old bicycle—badly rusted, with two flat tires. She’d forgotten the bicycle, totally—with a rush of emotion she recalling now how thrilled she’d felt, such a sense of freedom, liberation, flight—pedaling the bicycle up the Convent Street hill, toward the outskirts of Carthage.

Sniffing suspiciously Konrad’s dog came trotting after her. Konrad had insisted that Solomon was a “friendly animal”—“if not a very well-trained animal”—but Solomon didn’t seem altogether welcoming of this tall young woman whom his master had greeted with such mysterious effusion.

When she returned to Agatha’s garden, with Solomon close at her heels, Konrad said loudly, “Solo-mon! Don’t fuss over dear Meredith, you will scare her away. And she has just arrived.”

The red setter was an older dog, with coarse, lusterless fur and mournful eyes. He’d been a “rescue dog”—county animal control officers had rescued him from an abusive home and, on the eve of his scheduled execution, Konrad had adopted him.

“It was just after Agatha had passed away. One morning I woke up and there was Agatha instructing me—‘Go to the animal shelter on Platt Road, hurry and bring him home!’ And I said, ‘Him? Who?’—and Agatha said, ‘You’ll know when you see him.’ And so it was, I saw Solomon—and I knew.”

M.R. laughed. This was Konrad being whimsical—was it?

In the frayed lawn chair, in baggy khaki shorts exposing his pale, oddly hairless legs, Konrad was determined to entertain. His silvery-white whiskers bristled with static electricity. His eyes were shrewd and intelligent and crinkled at the corners as in a perpetual squint.

It had always been his way, M.R. recalled. To render experience into navigable anecdotes. To soften the sharp edges of things.

“Then, I’d fully intended to rent it—I mean, the entire house. And I planned to find a smaller place, an apartment or ‘condo’—on the river perhaps—where other retirees live. So another time I listed the house with McIntosh Realtor, for I felt that I owed them that much, at least—even if it was only a rental. And this very nice young couple was shown the house, and asked intelligent questions about it, and went away and deliberated, and came back, and—and they were set to sign the contract—and I was set to sign—in the Realtor’s office—just last week—and I got cold feet, again. I mean literally!—I said to them, my feet are numb—my fingers are numb—I am numb with horror at the prospect of leaving my house where my wife and I—and our little girl—were so happy. Forgive me, I just can’t do it.” Konrad paused, laughing. Out of his squinting eyes leaked tears that gathered in his bristling beard like little glistening gems. “They thought that I was utterly mad. And I thought, Good! Then maybe they won’t charge me any penalty.”

M.R. was laughing. “And did they?”

“Well, yes—they did. And now my name is on every Realtor’s blacklist in Carthage.”

By the end of her first afternoon in Carthage M.R. had yanked up dozens of spiky weeds and dumped them in a heap on the grass. The sun was hot and beat on her head and Konrad searched for a straw hat for her in the garage, he hadn’t needed to tell her had belonged to Agatha.

C
an I stay with you please. I am so lonely.

If I could sleep. Sleep!

F
or ten hours she slept, a deep dreamless uninterrupted sleep.

In the room that had been her girlhood room though not in the girl’s bed—for the room had been converted to a guest room, the candy-cane wallpaper replaced by a pale green floral pattern, and the cramped little bed by a double bed—she slept for ten hours and wakened at dawn startled and not knowing at first where she was, and stumbling to use a bathroom, and returning, and sleeping again for two hours until sunshine warmed her face like molten flame and she was smiling in her sleep and there came a voice calling to her—gently, teasingly—“Meredith? Are you going to sleep away the entire day?”

And that night she could not keep her eyes open past 10:40
P.M.
—she and Konrad were watching a movie of the 1940s on a classic-movie channel—and again she slept through the night—ten hours, twelve hours—like one sequestered at the bottom of the sea, gently rocked by the rhythm of the sea.

Through her time in Carthage, in her old room in the house at 18 Mt. Laurel Street, she would sleep in this way, as she had not slept in many years. And she thought
Maybe this was all that I required. Waiting for me here without my knowing.

“S
ince Solomon has come into my life I’ve wondered—is a dog an individual in himself, or only in regard to his master? When I am not present, is Solomon a ‘dog,’ or is Solomon simply a wild creature? He has no name—not even a generic name. He simply
is.
As soon as he sees me—hears me—smells me—he reverts to ‘Solomon, Konrad’s dear companion.’ What Solomon would be in a pack of wild dogs, I wouldn’t want to contemplate.” Konrad laughed, shuddering.

They were walking above the Black Snake River on a bluff in Friendship Park. The sky was threaded with clouds like vapor. The air was warm and fragrant with honeysuckle. Though from the river, or from a freight yard beside the river, came a faint odor of something like nitrogen.

Innocently the coarse-haired red setter trotted nearby. M.R. had the feeling that the dog was listening intently to their conversation even as he went about his doggy routine sniffing, lifting his leg, lunging at grasshoppers, trotting blithely on.

She might have said
Don’t be naïve, Daddy! Solomon is subordinate to his pack leader. A dog, or a man.

She might have said
With his wild-dog pack he would tear out our throats. He is no “Solomon”!

She said: “Solomon adores you, Daddy. You are the one who saved his life. He would give his life for
you.
”

Konrad seemed touched to hear this.

And it was true, too.

T
wice a day they walked Solomon!

Sometimes three times a day.

For Solomon was not an indoor sort of dog but bred to hunt, as Konrad wittily said—
A hunter mon-gre.

Nothing so comfortable as
routine.

A
nd in the neighborhood, they were observed: wiry-white-whiskered Konrad Neukirchen in his usual rumpled shorts, parrot green T-shirt with the white letters
CARTHAGE VETS CO-OP
on the back, very worn Birkenstock sandals, walking with a cane; and beside him a straight-backed younger woman, in loose-fitting slacks, loose-fitting shirt, sandals, crimped-looking hair tied back by a carelessly knotted scarf.

Evident to any eye
A middle-aged daughter, probably unmarried. Visiting her dad.