Homecoming (3 page)

When she awoke, it was night. The lamps were lit. A few people were talking in low voices. Now she was alert enough to understand what they were saying.

The taxi, going, as witnesses said, much too fast, had smashed the stroller, which had just left the curb. The twins had died instantly. Poor Maria Luz, injured, had been taken to a hospital, treated for shock, and released. She was now staying with relatives. The children would be buried in the Byrne family plot in the country.

These were the facts. This was all. So it ended. The charmed life was over.

On the third morning Cynthia was awakened by the sound of hangers rattling on the rods in her closet.

“I’m looking for something she can wear. It will be cold.” That was her mother’s voice.

“You’ll have to ask her. I don’t know,” said Andrew.

“The doctor gives her too much stuff. She’s half asleep all the time.”

“Just till the funeral’s over. No more after that, he said.”

“Well, I suppose—oh, there you are! Darling, I’m searching through your things for something black.”

They were both in black, her mother in a correct black suit and Andy in the same, with the tie that he had needed to buy for his uncle’s funeral. What sense did it make to care what one wore? The only appropriate thing was sackcloth and ashes, anyway.

“I never wear black,” she said.

“Darling, navy blue will do very well. This wool dress, with a warm coat, will be fine. Shall I help you dress?”

“No, I’ll be all right, Mom. Thanks.”

“Then I’ll leave you. Your father’s arranged for the car. There’s just time for a quick bite before we start.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You must take something. Andrew, make her eat. And you eat something too.”

“They’ve taken care of everything. They’ve been wonderful,” Andrew said when Daisy left.

“Have they—I mean, are Tim and Laura—do we—”

“They’re up there already. Oh, God, Cindy.”

For long minutes they held on to each other. It was as if one or the other, alone, would have fallen. When at last they straightened themselves he fastened the back of her dress, she brought him an extra handkerchief, and they went out together.

In the limousine silence held almost all the way, broken briefly when Cynthia’s father gave directions to the driver. Andrew’s right hand, joined with her left, rested on the seat between them. Once she spoke.

“Does this seem real to you?”

In answer he shook his head. For her, reality kept flickering in through a dull sense of detachment that was equally terrifying. Was she about to lose her mind?

Reality was the memory of another time in another long limousine, not grim black like this one but white, festooned by one of their friends, a practical joker, with a J
UST
M
ARRIED
sign: she had
worn a pale green linen suit and they had, as now, been sitting on the backseat holding hands. Reality was coming home from the hospital with one wrapped-up baby in her arms and another in Andrew’s.

And she blinked hard, forcing the pictures to fade. This was no time for such pictures, going now where they were going.

“We’re almost there,” her father said suddenly.

The car rounded a turn and passed a parking lot filled and overflowing onto the roadside. It stopped at a walk that overflowed with people. And she wanted to flee, to hide from sympathetic eyes and soft, murmured words. Yet it was very kind of all these people to be here. So she understood what was expected of her.

She was expected to take Andrew’s arm, to walk in and go straight down toward the two little white caskets. And she did so.

An odd other and outer self that had been observing her for the last two days took note of the flowers that lay in wreaths and baskets and sheaves on the floor. They, like the sprays of lilies on the caskets, were white. For purity and innocence, they stood.

But Tim had not been innocent! He had been a rogue, a rascal who stole Laura’s cookie right out of her hand and made her cry. Andrew was—no, had been—boastful about his boy. “Tim is one tough guy,” he always says—no, used to say. One tough guy.

The other self was watching her carefully. It told her to remember everything because this was the last day she would ever touch them or touch, rather, the flowers and the smooth white lids. She leaned forward to put the tips of her fingers on the lids. The wood was smooth as satin and cold. The lily petals were cold too.

An organ was making soft, tentative sounds like whispers or footsteps in a room where a child is asleep. When it stopped a rich, manly voice began to speak. The words were poetic and half familiar, all about mercy and love. Prayers. Beautiful, gentle words. Well-meaning. At her back there were crowd sounds, the light occasional coughs and tiny rustlings of polite, well-meaning people. She wondered when it was all going to be over.

And suddenly it was. The organ resumed its quiet song, men appeared to bear the little caskets
away, and somebody said, “Come, Cynthia.” Two by two people moved toward the door with Andrew and Cynthia in the lead.

Daylight burst into their faces. Following it eastward, they walked on the graveled path between last summer’s stalks of dead brown grass and entered the burial ground.

Many generations of Byrnes and others among the forebears of Laura and Tim lay here in this old place. It had never been a sad place, just vaguely interesting when you were a child brought to it on Memorial Day and then most interesting when you were old enough to be curious about history. So many children were buried under these gray, time-ravaged headstones with their worn inscriptions. Molly, aged three, now with the angels. Susannah, aged two. A second summer death, most likely the result of drinking unclean cow’s milk after her mother weaned her. Ethan, aged eighteen months and sixteen days. Eighteen months, thought Cynthia. Like mine. I must remember to count the days. But I can’t think this minute and there is no time.

For they had reached the hole in the ground, the hole with the green drapery that was meant to
conceal the stony, clodded earth which, considerately, would not be shoveled in until everyone had walked away.

The crowd had dwindled to relatives and intimates: Gran with swollen, pink eyes, Andrew’s people, cousin Ellen who wept behind a handkerchief, the boss and staff from the magazine and—and I can’t believe it, thought Cynthia, there’s poor Maria Luz with a relative who somehow found the way here. All come to say good-bye to Laura and Tim.

Oh, my Tim, my Laura, you weren’t here very long but you will never be forgotten, not your smiles, your first teeth, your long eyelashes, your cries and red cheeks and fat hands—

“Amen,” spoke the fine voice, and the circular gathering responded, “Amen.”

Someone, Andrew’s mother or her own, or someone else, said quietly, “It’s over, Cynthia.”

Once more she took Andrew’s hand. It was wet on the back where he had used it to wipe his eyes. The little crowd parted to let them proceed to their car. Low comments floated past them as they walked. “I heard it was the taxi’s fault.” “I was at their wedding.” “Remarkably brave.”

“Saddest thing I’ve ever seen.” A woman looked into Cynthia’s face as though she wanted to say something and didn’t know how to say it.

At the end of the path they got into the car and went home the way they had come.

For a long time they held on to each other. No matter how their parents loved them and mourned with them, this agony was still Cynthia’s and Andrew’s. They became very solitary. They took long walks in the snow through the park, where once they had so proudly wheeled their twins, where and when the future was theirs and the world a field of flowers.

In the evenings they listened to music together. The broadcast news meant nothing to them. The apartment was completely quiet now. No more did they keep their ears open for a cry or a call. Only the great, solemn music broke the silence. Friends telephoned with tactful invitations to dinner or a movie; with equal tact they accepted refusal.

Once every week they went for a counseling session. Everyone knew that was what you did
when tragedy struck. Andrew was the first to stop going.

“It’s only rubbing salt in the wound,” he said. “Nobody needs to tell me that I have to get on with my life. Don’t I know well enough that there’ll be a line waiting for my good job if I lose it?”

“What good job? We don’t need any job.”

“We have to eat, Cindy.”

“Do we? I don’t know why. I’m never hungry, and I don’t care where I live. I don’t need anything.”

“I know. But we can’t kill ourselves.”

“If it weren’t for you, I would.”

He sighed. “Don’t say that, Cindy.”

“Why not? It’s true.” She got up and began to pace the floor, from the window to the bookshelves and back again.

“I shouldn’t have been working. I should have been taking care of my own children. I’ll never forgive myself, never. I look at myself in the mirror, and I see guilt written on my forehead. Yes, believe it, in big red letters:
G-U-I-L-T
.”

“Darling, that’s foolish. It was a ghastly accident
that could have happened to you, or me, or anybody.”

“You know what? I’m going to quit the stupid job. That’s what I’m going to do.”

“I wouldn’t do that so hastily. You’ve taken a long leave of absence, so wait till that’s over and then decide. It’s too soon after—after everything to make such a big change.”

It was impossible to imagine going back to that office, receiving condolences and pitying looks, being chic, being “with it,” and brave. She would have to find something completely different, where there were no reminders, among people she had never seen before.

Certainly she would find something else, but not yet. She was not ready yet. And anyhow, my job is ridiculous, she thought. It has no real meaning. Fashion! Silly dresses for women who don’t know what real life is all about. Hemlines are longer, or are they shorter again this season? I don’t know. I know that jackets have to be fitted this year, so of course you must throw last year’s jackets away, mustn’t you?

She saw that Andrew was filled with pity for her. But then, her heart was broken over him too.
He didn’t pace the floor for relief of tension as she did. He did not because no doubt he felt he must not. He was a man; men did not give way to grief. So they had been taught, poor souls.

At night they lay close with their arms around each other. When they needed to turn, they lay back to back, feeling the comfort of simple contact, and wanting, in their despair, nothing more than to be one.

Then, after a while, Andrew began to feel the rise of desire, but she felt nothing. “I can’t,” she said. “Not yet.” And he complied. It was incomprehensible to her that he could feel the need for pleasure. What pleasure could there be ever again? Inside of her there was a poison, corrosive as acid, a savage hatred for the man who had killed her children and was still alive to breathe the good air; a terrible rage at unjust suffering; rage at the world.

There came a time when Andrew did not willingly comply.

“How can you feel pleasure?” she cried.

“It’s not just pleasure, as you put it. It is an act
of love between you and me. We are still alive, you and I.”

“How soon you have forgotten!” she exclaimed.

“ ‘Forgotten’?” he repeated. “How can you even think that about me?”

Then she apologized. “I didn’t mean it as it sounds.”

“It was pretty clear to me. A simple word.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again, and sighed. “It’s just that I can’t think of anything else. I see them in the stroller, their pink faces, their little hands in mittens, so precious, and in one second—”

“Don’t, don’t, Cindy. You have to stop this sometime,” he pleaded.

He was not always so patient. “That doctor you’re seeing doesn’t seem to be doing you much good.”

“No? He has only saved my sanity, that’s all.”

There was a pause before Andrew said, “Soon it will be six months.”

Six months since we last made love, he meant. And that night, when he approached her, she did not turn away, but gave herself, lying like a stone, feeling nothing.

She did not fool him, and he told her so without reproach, only with sadness.

“I can’t help it,” she answered.

She intended her answer to be true, and although in a measure it was true, there was another measure by which it was not true, by which she actually could have helped it but did not want to. How could they, how could Andrew, think that they would ever resume the life that had been before the tragedy destroyed it? Perhaps after all, men were different.…

They began to drift. When he came upon her sitting one day at the window with her hands in her lap and her red eyes swollen, he upbraided her.

“Sooner or later you will have to stop crying. I don’t know how to help you anymore. We can’t go on like this. I can’t.”

His words and his tone offended her. “And you will have to stop thrashing around all night,” she cried. “I don’t ever get a night’s sleep. Speaking of wearing on somebody’s nerves, do you realize that you’re constantly cracking your knuckles? Every night we sit in front of the television, and I have to hear the sound of your cracking bones.”

They went to bed and lay far apart. An emotional storm was sweeping through Cynthia. For months she had been lethargic and numb; now instead there came these storms, panic and fear of confronting love or life; panic and fear of being shut out of life. She felt a terrible, inexpressible loneliness.

She knew she must get hold of herself. She knew that they had been living like hermits, and that it was terribly wrong. So one day when a friendly couple, Ken and Jane Pierce, invited them to dinner at their country club, she accepted.

“I’m so glad,” Jane said. “Frankly, I didn’t think you would say yes, but I thought I’d try.”

The two couples rode out of the city together, which was agreeable because conversation had to be impersonal. At the club there would be many people they knew, people from whom Cynthia had long retreated, and so, for this first appearance, she had considered her dress with special care. Is this the return of pride? she asked herself ironically. Or is it the slow return of mental health? The doctor said it was.