Double Happiness (19 page)

He said, and first he coughed, he said that he would try to find something like that but this is what they knew so far, that no one, not a single person who arrived at work, who made it above the seventy-second floor, who made the change and climbed into the second elevator, not a single person who arrived at work that day had survived. Not one. If they came to work, if they arrived. No one. Not a single one. Not anyone.

All around the ballroom hands shot up. What about staircase A? And what about the walls that were only Sheetrock, easily penetrated, easily torn through. The man at the microphone pushed down the large black bulb near his mouth and sobbed. And the hands stayed in the air, some polite, all waiting for his composure to reassert itself. She was the only person in the room that believed him. She watched him for another minute. Let's go, she said to Kathleen. Outside the ballroom she waited, opening her purse to see that she still had her wallet, she'd been so forgetful lately. She waited while Kathleen called the boys, who would be in Rumson already, looking for pots and pans. She waited another week, then called Father Rielly, and he said, Of course, Ann, of course. She was grateful that he hadn't felt the least impulse to offer his counsel.

It was a miracle Sister Mary Arthur got through at all, the way Kathleen monopolized the phone. Set up in her old bedroom, taking her time to sort out her next move. She'd left the perfectly good law firm behind to think about NGOs. She told her mother, There's so much I could be doing! So far, the doing involved tying up her mother's telephone lines and flirting with the Henderson boy. Whose wife everyone knew was a grave disappointment, according to Kathleen. Who says, Ann McCleary asked, what's to be disappointed about these days? Everything preset, preknown. No surprises. And her daughter gave her the look she'd grown weary of in herself, the no-point-explaining
look. There it is, the family crest, said Ann. She put a hand to her daughter's cheek. We must learn some new tricks, you and I. And that's why she'd gone to see Sister Mary Arthur. She needed to expand, she needed new experience or she'd die. Not that dying had been out of the question. She'd realized, after a long while, her own proclivity to slip away. And that understanding might have had something to do with Kathleen and the lovely suits piled up on the twin bed, and the job search that went nowhere.

First the fall, the kind of slip anyone might take, a spill off a high wet slate step. But she'd hit her head and her chest, a bruise spreading over her left side, blue as a sign from God. Something holy. Advil helped and was all she agreed to take, along with a bit of wine past five. That was the first winter. In spring she walked out to pick a flower, a daffodil, and was bit by something nearly malarial. High fevers and her gait grew rigid from the inflammation. But she didn't understand herself until an early frost that third October put down a black ice unexpected in the night, and she drove to early Mass and hit the brakes fast on a curve at the shake of something in her peripheral vision. Her rear wheels froze. She spun out and off the road and raced down the Kittree's handsome hill to the decorative pond and sank. Passenger side aimed like an arrow to the muck that held the lilies tight at the bottom. She watched the water rise as calmly as she might watch a faucet filling a pitcher. She knew she'd want to go home now, once she stepped
out of the car, she'd have to miss Mass this one morning. The water was at her knees when she detached her house key from the ring, when she pushed open with a force she didn't know she had, the water already pushing back against her door, and slugged out and waded, making havoc with Margaret Kittree's dormant flowers, making a mess, she told Kathleen. How will I ever apologize? That kind of thing takes years to develop and there I am, a lunatic out of nowhere. God forgive me. Everyone forgave her, and suggested Valium, Wellbutrin, Prozac, a grief group. But who could she possibly sit with who might look her in the eye and smile and say I know you. Besides, she had no time for groups, never had.

But then she'd had the idea, and maybe, if she was honest, it came from Kathleen and her endless chatter about doing good for the children in Africa. This was the substitute for romance with the Henderson boy. Or maybe no substitute, what could she really know these days. But why Africa, she thought, why not just here? There was one family in Rumson who'd lost a father. Ann McCleary invited the widow to tea. She used all her kindness, and spoke as she would, as she already had, to any one of her own children. When she left the pretty girl with the dark bob—whose eyes, Ann hoped, would be less dark in time—when she backed away down the drive Ann gave a sweet wave and called good-bye. Good-bye.

But what about Holy Cross. She knew everything there was to know about children and many times she'd served as chaperone,
as helper. For someone as agile and as knowledgeable as herself, some use could surely be found.

A library? she said to Sister Mary Arthur. Ann had no wish to disguise her detachment, detachment was her best friend. Are you thinking of building something, then? Maybe take over Father's precious garage.

No, no, not a bit, Ann, no, not in the least. I thought of something roving. Something that floats a bit, she laughed, and Ann always appreciated that laugh, and wondered how in these years it hadn't lost its light touch. Ann was listening, waiting to hear the laugh again: that's how she does it. I know all your tricks, Sister, she said.

It will be a bit of a trick and I need a conjurer, will you help me?

It was a graceless thing, her cart. The wheels squeaked and the wire mesh caught at the pages and grilled them, engraved them with a crisscross. But this was the library Sister had in mind. Ann McCleary could choose her beneficiaries at will, one kindergarten, two first grades, two second grades. Why not Tuesdays, Sister said, Tuesday mornings, nine to noon. Mrs. Guski will keep us in literature, and keep the cart locked safely in the supply closet. And here was her first battle. Mrs. Guski thought literature for small first readers involved saints and martyrs. Lurid paintings, the wounds especially crimson; even in her day the illustrations weren't so gruesome. No, she
wouldn't read them, wouldn't even carry them. Ann McCleary held her ground and had soon tucked in books of her own, things she'd found on bookshelves kept for the towheads. And she wandered when she didn't mean to, just popping into the A&P for some radishes but she'd find herself next-door in Sally Hetzler's bookstore, who gave her a discount for the library, and she became a regular customer.

The children weren't much interested. They had grandmothers of their own, and even Holy Cross had computers in the kindergarten. She never spoke about this to Mary Arthur, never said she wasn't quite as welcome as she'd hoped. And once, when the blank faces greeted her as a stranger, even the teacher couldn't make her out, she'd wheeled her awkward cart all the way out to Father's garage and wept beside the Karmann Ghia where no one would think to look for her. She was not a quitter. But now she wondered why that mattered, that quality. She'd already held a high head, but maybe life shifted. Maybe the things that sustained you just wore out and new things, new people, needed other qualities, and yours just went to sleep. Sometimes a life just finished, unexpectedly, and it was the ones still wandering around in foolish stiff bodies after they were already done who were the sorry ones. She cried and cried and no one came to comfort her because who could.

Ann McCleary told her children when they were small, when things were hard, if they were sick, or especially for the older ones, for Terry, when their father died and they were too little
to lose him, she told them that one day they would realize they were better, and that they'd been better for a while. They hadn't noticed the shift, it came so quietly, and that was God's grace, she believed it, and she told them it was true. Only Terry gave her a hard time. He dove off the high dive two summers after his father's death, and by a wicked chance made the inward arc just to the spot where his chin cracked the tile edge. Blood bloomed out into the deep end and she caught him first, unconscious, the concussion a sure thing, and forty stitches in two layers, and black eyes, both, and bruises on the shoulders, a mess, a terrible mess, and she was forced to revise her theory, her theology. Sometimes the pain needs to reverberate for a long time, for longer than even you or anyone else might think necessary or fair. Sometimes that's how it goes, and God may or may not be a part of that, probably is, she told her boy. But it's anyone's guess, she said, surprising herself in the admittance. And later she remembered a smile in him, a long time later, too long she thought, when the others had bounced back, to her credit everyone said, they admired her, everyone did, to her credit her children thrived. And one day, Terry smiled a smile she recognized in her deepest self. He pulled a bit of onion grass out by the root; she just happened to spot him through her kitchen window. He was almost nine, now, and not so tall, with beautiful hands, like his father's, long, someone made for a piano. Up came the grass, roots and blades and he examined it all closely, the whole package clutched in his hand and he smiled
at the shape and the sharp stink of the roots. He put his face close, then wrenched back and laughed, his face so happy, and then happy to be happy, the double-happiness smile she called it, so hard won, and it never left him after that, it became the way he smiled, the way he lit every room he ever walked into.

There were Tuesdays and more Tuesdays and they got used to her, and didn't stare when she pushed her squeaky cart into the classroom and took her time lowering herself into the armchair Sister Mary Arthur had placed in each classroom to accommodate her floating library. More like a falling library, they said, our reader falls asleep! And so she did every once in a while on those warm spring mornings. When the five-year-olds lay out their mats and curled on the floor like kittens, she dozed, too, the sound of her own voice putting her to sleep, sometimes first of all. She knew they complained about her. What part of a progressive curriculum did she serve? But Sister Mary Arthur was adamant, and Mrs. Guski whispered it was one of her
conceptions
. It's a charity case, said Mrs. Kelly, who taught the brighter first grade. It's fortunate I didn't quite hear that, Mrs. Kelly. Sister Mary Arthur's door was open, and even Mrs. Guski froze. But nothing more was said about it after that. And Ann McCleary became part of the landscape, along with the candy sales and the beanies worn to Mass.

There was a little boy, of course, after a year or two, in the kindergarten, who didn't entirely dislike a story read out loud. His parents were nostalgic that way, and she let him chew on
the covers of the books she wasn't reading. Still teething are we? A big boy like you? And he smiled at her, and then a sly film of a second smile came, too, he had to pull the thick cardboard cover away to accommodate his own full delight. Look at you, she laughed, a double happiness. He dropped the book and tumbled off. His attention snapped away in an instant. But a few weeks later it happened again, though now she knew to watch and wait was death. She'd only catch it by the very quietest chance, she told Kathleen. And only now and then.

I wish to acknowledge the beautiful work of: Melanie Jackson, Elisabeth Schmitz, Jessica Monahan, Brigid Hughes, Fiona Maazel, Elizabeth Gaffney, Anne McPeak, Stanley Lindberg, Don Lee, David Daniel, Madison Smartt Bell, Beth Bosworth, Meredith Broussard, Rick Moody, Jennifer Egan, Ruth Danon, always Gary Giddins; everyone in Liam Rector's extraordinary community at Bennington, especially Susan Cheever, Amy Hempel, Sheila Kohler, Charles Bock, Bob Shacochis, Mohammed Naseehu Ali, Priscilla Hodgkins, David Gates, and every dance with Jason Shinder; in the Hudson Valley, Louis Asekoff, Martin Epstein, Romulus Linney, Carole Maso, and Mary Gaitskill. Thanks to the Corporation of Yaddo and to the MacDowell Colony. Thanks to my family, always the McCarthys, Shaheens, and Hetzlers. I hold my mother and father and brother close in memory with love. I thank Duke Beeson, heart and soul, for his abiding, astonishing generosity.

ABOUT THIS GUIDE

We hope that these discussion questions
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of Mary-Beth Hughes's
Double Happiness
. They are
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1. These stories have a surface lucidity that goes down briskly. But often time bombs have been set that detonate as one reads on. Rereading reveals even more buried explosives. Which stories operated this way for you? Go back and trace some of the clues that may have eluded you at first.

2. What is meant by the title “Pelican Song”? How close to the mark was old Sven growling over the speakerphone at Christmas (p. 10)? How could the title also relate, at least ironically to the legend of pelican mothers' pecking out their own blood to feed their starving chicks? Could this have been the confused self-image of the narrator's mother? Why? At the end we read “Sometimes I think my mother is still looking for me” (p. 13). Is the daughter still stuck in an unreal past, looking for a mother who wasn't there for her except for money?

3. In “Pelican Song” appears what will be a recurring concern for women in these stories: body image. “My biggest obstacle to respect, however, had to do with men. I had an odd figure for a modern dancer. Rubenesque, my composer boyfriend called my body when pressed for compliments ... I believed a body could be different and still be okay. But when the composer mentioned Botero, I lost confidence”
(p. 2). It's a funny picture for us, those balloon-like sculptures marching up Park Avenue, but what can it mean for a dancer? How does her weight reflect or cause other problems in her life? “My mother ... took figures very seriously. I often felt this was another feature of her generation like the typing and the trays” (p. 2). What other stories in the book come to mind here? In “Aces” Raymond attacks Megan soon after the wedding, when she has been less watchful than before. “You look like a fat little boy” ... “She'd been on a diet ever since” (p. 98). How else does size figure in the story? Helena? Megan's “joyful” pregnancy a decade later?