A Quiet Belief in Angels (29 page)

In that moment her eyes were clear and blue and piercing.

“The children?” I asked.

“Ha! The children! You can’t possibly know anything about the children! I was the only one who ever knew about the children . . . me, and him, of course. He knew all about the little girls because he knew who had done those terrible things—”

And then she stopped mid-flight and stared at me, literally pinned me to the chair. “Who are you?” she snapped. “What are you doing here? I’m not telling you anything until you tell me who you are!”

I frowned. “I’m Jose—”

She raised her hand. “As a matter of fact, I don’t want to know who you are! I don’t want to know anything about who you are or what you’re doing. I want you to leave now. I was doing just fine until you came and started pressing me for answers to questions, questions I don’t even
want
to answer.” She paused to catch her breath. Her eyes seemed to cloud over once more and she turned her face away from me. “They will not poison me, you know? They try to poison me with their lies and filth, the things they say . . . I hear them. I hear them all, their whining voices, their crying, and they don’t want to understand that there is nothing—” My mother turned to look at me. “There is
nothing
I can do to help them. It’s too late now, too late for anything to be done.”

She started to cry silently, her chest rising and falling as she suppressed her sobs. I rose from the chair, stood for a moment looking down at her, and believed that it would be better if she died. Such a thought did not seem criminal, but rather compassionate.

I left the room and went outside. I walked up and down the road for half an hour. When I returned I found Alex seated in the front reception area of the hospital. She looked as if she too had been crying.

She said little, but then Dr. Gabillard came through and took me aside. He spoke to me in hushed words. I had forgotten about him, had avoided looking for him each time I had visited.

“She will need to rest from now until the birth,” he said. His expression was grave and concerned. “She needs to eat well and rest. She needs a good diet, a
very
good diet. She needs to eat for two, and until now she has barely eaten for one—”

“I understand—” I started, but the doctor interrupted me.

“She has explained to me the situation,” Gabillard went on. “I didn’t ask her, she just told me. I appreciate your predicament, what with your mother here and the fact that you have no legal foothold in this situation.” He shook his head slowly. “The fact of the matter is that your mother is unwell. She has not responded to the treatment we have attempted, and the painful truth is that I don’t believe she ever will. I cannot see that she will ever leave Waycross.”

Gabillard waited for me to speak, but there was nothing I could think to say.

“See an attorney,” he said quietly. “Have an attorney draw up papers to transfer control of your mother’s affairs to you, and I will do what I can to have her sign them.” He paused and took a deep breath. “This is neither my jurisdiction nor my professional responsibility, but I cannot help the fact that I am human. Your mother is going to die before she leaves here, and I cannot stand by and let a pregnant woman suffer. Do this thing, Mr. Vaughan, and whatever moral issues might be raised, whatever element of social obligation and expectancy may or may not apply, I also seriously,
very seriously
, recommend that you marry this girl before your child is born.”

I opened my mouth to speak.

“In fact, I am going to make that a condition of my help in this matter. Come back to me soon with a marriage license and your power of attorney and I will do what I can. That is all I can do.”

Gabillard, once again, waited for me to speak.

“I shall take your failure to respond as a sign of agreement,” he said, and then he reached out and gripped my shoulder. “Marry her. Get the papers. We’ll do what we can.”

He released me and turned to walk away.

“Doctor?”

He slowed up and turned.

“How long does she have? My mother. How long d’you think she has?”

Gabillard shook his head slowly. “I think whatever time she had ran out a good while ago.” He held my gaze for a second longer, and then he turned once more and walked away.

I was motionless. I looked at Alex, seated there on a chair with her head in her hands.

Enough, I thought, and started over toward her.

We drove back. I spoke of the future. I told her we would be married. I told her what Gabillard had said about the power of attorney and his wish to help us. Alex’s manner changed utterly. She even laughed at one point. I did not speak of my mother, the things she’d said about the little girls. My mother’s mind was a cat’s cradle of lies, half-truths, imagination and paranoia. She could not know anything about the children. I had to believe that what she said was nothing more than the ramblings of someone without their mind.

I believed it so.

I
had
to believe it so.

I married Alexandra Madigan Webber on Wednesday, June eleventh, 1947, at Charlton County Courthouse before Judge Lester Froom. The witnesses were Reilly Hawkins and Gene Fricker from the grain store. After the brief and perfunctory ceremony Reilly drove us to the offices of Littman, Hackley and Dohring, Attorneys-at-Law, and, for three dollars, Leland Hackley drew up a letter of proxy. He worded it in such a fashion that all my mother would have to do was sign it, and the house would belong to me. Reilly drove us to Waycross, I in a suit, Alexandra in a pale cream skirt and blouse, her hair tied at one side and decorated with a flower, and there we met with Dr. Gabillard.

“You don’t wish to see her?” Gabillard asked as he took the paper from me.

I shook my head. “No,” I replied. “Not today.”

He nodded, smiled understandingly, congratulated us on our marriage and walked away.

“When shall I—”

Gabillard turned and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he said. “You’ll have to leave it with me. I’ll do what I can . . . no promises, okay?”

And then he turned once again and disappeared into the hospital.

The storm lasted eight days straight. The ground swelled at first, and then sank in defeat revealing the clean roots of trees. Like gnarled and arthritic fingers they grasped with everything they possessed to hold the earth in check. The runoffs broke and swamped the crops. Reilly Hawkins made it across to see us a week after the wedding and did not dare to return for a further two days. He brought food and wine, what little provisions he could, and we talked endlessly of what we would do and where we would go. Had there been word from Gabillard it could not have reached us.

The storm abated on June twenty-first, a Saturday, and the sun broke high and clear from the bruised horizon. Nine people had drowned, seven of them Negroes in the fields, the other two a man and his wife from Folkston who had attempted to reach Kingsland on the St. Mary’s River. Teams of volunteers came from the surrounding towns and surveyed the devastation. Many of them turned around and went home.

On Monday a letter came from Gabillard. Within it was the proxy document, signed and witnessed. Reilly drove me to see Leland Hackley and he notarized the paper and drew up a letter of authority for the bank. Within an hour a loan had been secured against the property, all of one thousand five hundred dollars. I took two hundred dollars in cash, stuffed it into my pockets, and Reilly and I went to the Falls Inn to spend some of it toasting our change of fortune.

“You’ll have a new truck,” I told him. “We can take your old one and drive it into the Okefenokee Swamp.”

We laughed about such an adventure on the way back to the house, and the way Alex would be unable to contain herself when she found out what had happened.

Reilly drew the truck to a halt at the end of the road.

“Come in,” I said.

“For God’s sake, no,” he said, laughing. “Go in there and share the good news with your wife, Joseph. You don’t want me hangin’ around half-drunk and stupid at a time like this.”

“No,” I said. “You’re as much a part of this as I am. I couldn’t have done any of this without you, Reilly. Please come in, just for a little while at least.” I turned and shouted toward the house. “Alex! Alex! Reilly’s out here and he doesn’t want to come in and see you!”

“Hey!” Reilly said. “That’s just not true. You can’t tell her that, for God’s sake.”

I was laughing by then, had started walking away from the truck toward the gate. “Alex! Come see what we’ve got! Come on out here and see what we’ve got.” I pulled handfuls of dollar bills from my pockets, held them like bunches of flowers for Alex.

Reilly was following me then, and when I turned to look back at him I noticed something. A flicker of something in his eyes. He shook his head, and then he looked up at the house and started shouting at the top of his voice. “Alex! Alex! We’re back!”

There was nothing.

My heart quickened. I looked at Reilly once more and he nodded his head. He started to jog toward the gate. I was there first, pushed through, almost broke the thing off of its hinges, and then I was charging up the path, Reilly right behind me, both of us shouting Alex’s name.

I burst through the front door, stopped dead in my tracks, and then Reilly was right there behind me, collided with me like a freight train, but when he saw what was there I heard him inhale suddenly. I let go of the money in my hands. Dozens of dollar bills cascaded to the ground, floated out across the floor.

Had Alex gone with us things might have been different. She would have been present at the attorney’s, then at the bank; she would perhaps have shared a drink with us at the Falls Inn. But she had not been well, had complained of nausea and dizziness. She had chosen to stay home, for we would not be long—an hour, perhaps two. Had we gone straight from the bank we might have been present when she fell, but we were not. She did fall, from the top of the stairwell straight down like a plumb line, and when we arrived we found her unconscious in the lower hall, blood saturating her skirt, her breathing shallow and indecisive.

Later, I would remember the panic and confusion. Later, I would try to recall the exact thoughts that had filled my head, but try as I did they would not come. I remembered screaming her name at the top of my voice. I remembered the blood as I tried to lift her, the feeling of cool moisture on my hands, my arms, on my face as I pressed it to her chest to see if she was still breathing. I remembered carrying her to the truck, the way I held her head in my lap as Reilly bounced and jolted along rutted tracks to Dr. Piper’s house. I remembered blood-stained dollar bills adhered to her clothes, one in her hair, another stuck to her forearm. I remembered how Dr. Piper, immediately overwhelmed by what he saw, urged us to drive directly to Waycross, and the way that journey seemed to swallow some interminable wealth of time. I remembered Gabillard hurrying as we carried Alex through the front doors, the cacophony of voices, the commotion that broke away from us like a wave. I remembered his face—grave and dark, the way he held his fingers to her wrist, her neck, the way he barked orders to nurses.

I recalled all these things vividly, and replayed them in my mind like some old Bakelite record—over and over, until in time the grooves wore shallow, the sounds grew quiet, and nothing remained but the vast well of despair and grief into which I fell.

At six minutes past four, afternoon of Monday, June twenty-third, 1947, Alexandra Vaughan—mother-to-be, wife of twelve days—died. With her an unnamed child. My son.

It was Gabillard who told me, a man who had done all he could to rescue us from destitution and hopelessness; a man who had taken steps that would have guaranteed the survival and well-being of my family. He was my angel it had seemed, at least on that day. He gave, and then he informed me that what had been given had now been taken away.

I was nineteen years old. Alex was twenty-seven.

I took to wondering what crime I’d committed that warranted such punishment.

Years later, as I looked back, the months following Alex’s death seemed to blur at the edges and break up between my fingers. I buried Alexandra Vaughan and my child, and with them I buried the first two decades of my life. People attempted to reach me—Haynes Dearing, Gene Fricker, Lowell Shaner, even Ronnie Duggan and Michael Wiltsey appeared at the end of the road near my house, paused, looked, shared a few words, and then turned to walk away. Their efforts went unrewarded. Reilly I saw frequently, but it was as if our lives merely intersected periodically, and for the duration of our time together those lives were put on hold until we separated once more. Our meetings became less frequent, and by the time the first anniversary of Alex’s death arrived we were seeing one another no more than once a month. I did not visit my mother again. I could no longer face what she had become, and I didn’t think I could face Dr. Gabillard. It seemed that everything that could remind me of the past had to be cauterized or amputated cleanly. I had no shortage of money; when the first fifteen hundred dollars expired I merely extended my loan with the bank and signed over a greater percentage of the house. I waited for something to change. I waited patiently, trying my best to write, to keep mind and body together, but I felt the mooring rope wearing thin. Those things that had attached me to the world grew more insubstantial and transient: monthly visits to collect provisions, a visit to the Falls Inn once every five or six months, and beyond that I was insular and detached. Oftentimes I would feel the pull of company, but I would overcome it with the certain sense that whatever I might gain would soon be lost. Like Reilly Hawkins, never falling in love because he believed his heart could not stand to be broken twice, I gambled nothing in the belief that in such a way I could not lose. It was a pitiful existence, but the pity was not self-directed. I wore a veneer of resilience and fortitude sufficient to withstand the ravages of guilt and emotion.