Lie Down in Darkness (21 page)

What would he say to Helen? Yes, what could he say? What had he ever been able to say to her? Virtually nothing. And even through his sorrow—at the time of judgment, it occurred to him suddenly, the sun would shine like this all day, searching from an immovable apex, casting no shadows—he felt a sharp pang of resentment, and anger: she would
not
compromise, she would make no concessions. Which was bad, wrong. Yet he couldn’t tell her that—not today. Not ever, perhaps. He had not been able to tell her so that night, nor on the other nights when she had come to him—cool, precise, reserved at first—repeating in essence the same tortured accounts of separate guilt, communal guilt, uneasy accusations, righteous accusations—differing only in small details: “I wrote Peyton three letters, Carey, and she didn’t answer. It’s Milton, I know; he’s writing her, too, he’s warping her mind——”

Did she really care? And was she crazy? No. He didn’t think so. Obsessed, or something. But not crazy.

“Oh, no, Helen. Really, I don’t believe that.” Smiling a little. “Really, Helen, that’s not a very nice thing to say. Why should he——”

Did she really care? he wondered.

Bending forward, she would look into his eyes, the reserve, the statuesque poise all going to pieces, as he had learned to expect it to, after an hour or so; and the fine, lovely mouth would quiver a little as she said: “Oh, Carey, what am I going to do? Should I get down on my
knees
to him? Is that what he wants? What in God’s name does he want?”

No! Yes! He wanted to bang on his desk, arise magisterially, like a good confessor, being purposeful and stern. He wished to say both at the same time: No! Yes! No, my dear Helen, he doesn’t want you to get down on your knees; that insults, at least embarrasses, any man. He wants only affection, decency, humanness, a woman’s tender greeting. Yes! For heaven’s sake, yes, get down on your knees not to him but to yourself: get down on your knees to that image you hate, be humble for one moment and perhaps your prayer will cast a light through the darkness around you; ask forgiveness for despising yourself.

Once he had tried that—“Helen, I think you have a low opinion of yourself—” but she had become disappointed and sulky. And once, irritated and rather bored, he had said shortly: “Helen, I can’t help you, you know. I can only listen. You’ve got to look into your
own
heart and mind.”

And she had wept, horribly, the only time he had seen her collapse. “You desert me, too! Even you!”

“No, Helen. Oh, no, listen, please don’t get me wrong!” And after coffee and a talk full of stupid (he knew) reservations about a woman’s right to happiness, all of which sounded vaguely like a soap opera, he had walked her to her car, a hand on her shoulder paternally—or in some fashion—saying, “I wish there was something I could do. Just hope, have patience. And pray, pray hard” (to yourself, he thought, love yourself), “this thing of his will wear itself out. It’ll be easier for you then.”

“And Peyton?” she said, absently.

“Oh, yes—” what could he say?—“I’m sure you’ll see her soon. Don’t worry about what she wrote Milton. I say she doesn’t want to come home not because of you, but … you know how girls are … I think … they like to visit, go places.” Fishing about hopelessly for words. Did she really care?

“Good night, Helen dear.”

Sometimes she scared him a little, but she interested him; secretly he knew that it flattered his vanity to have her seek him out, talk to him: her visits, usually at night, averaged one every two or three months for the next few years. They became good friends, they talked about other matters; on one or two occasions she failed to mention Milton or Peyton—“her sorrow,” as she put it once in an embarrassingly awkward attempt at irony. She seemed totally lacking in a sense of humor, but it really didn’t matter: they talked of God, immortality, time and space, all in the enthusiastic, disorganized, eclectic way of high-school seniors, which Carey, being nominally, at least, and at the most unquestioningly, committed to Faith, hadn’t employed in years, and which finally disturbed him so much that he guided the conversation back to the value of prayer. Then at times they would talk of Milton, of the sad vanishing of love and passion, and why, Carey explained, using Diotima’s discourse as a point of departure, it was necessary, after the falling away of years and the dissolution of the object of love on earth, to search for the lasting, the greater, the eternal love. To
fight
for love. And this, being in the larger, abstract realm and therefore less easily available to effort or practical application, stirred Helen—partly because Carey was, he had to admit, a fairly persuasive talker—and filled her, at least momentarily, with a sort of radiance: she was not, he figured, a highly intelligent woman but intelligent enough, if she concentrated, to be infected by the rhythms, the hard, pure grandeur of Plato’s lines. And even as he finished—letting the book fall with a decisive plop upon the desk, trembling himself with emotion and, a little startled, hearing Helen say: “Oh, Carey, isn’t that grand, isn’t that true?”—a thin sharp blade of despair sliced across his heart because he knew it was true but that, true as the love of Christ, truth like this poetry lay on the mountaintops, a temple. But humanity never stirred from the valleys to seek comfort there, or perhaps it suffered too much to attempt the climb. Which was right?

All this was fine. The sweet intoxication of poetry and truths and heady generalizations lulled her mind and heart and for a while gave her an excess of peace, and finally he had to deny her so many visits, telling her over the telephone, as nicely as he could, that she mustn’t, she really mustn’t: remember what he had told her about mind and heart, self-reliance? Of course he was flattered, to know that he, a churchman, could give a little comfort to a sufferer, yes, a real sufferer: flattered, and pleased, too, that Helen had sought him out instead of a doctor—although sometimes he thought with vague suspicion that it was a doctor she really needed. Oh, how could you reconcile these things! He thought that he was enlightened, and he wanted to be, but this business of psychology and such matters was to him maddening and strange: that so potentially strong an ally should still possess no real Godhead and be so indecently inquisitive and expensive, and have no respect for the tender and infinite mutations of the heart.

So he was proud, flattered that Helen had come to him, and they were good friends as long as he agreed with her, admitted she was right. Only when, as now, he remembered how she would not compromise and how little they had accomplished during the past few years—the words, the poetry, prayers, the terrible inaction—did he feel misgivings and anger. The devil—or somebody—was still around. And God had not revealed himself. But I must make her see, he thought. I must bring them together.

“Never. No more,” she had said, only a month before as he had left her house after a visit, hopeless, feeling that there was nothing he could do, “I’m alone now and there isn’t any difference between laughing and crying. I can’t do either.” And shook her head, absolutely. She had killed, denied, the very thing she had come to him for in the beginning.

Now at the same house he drew up slowly at the curb, in the shade of the sycamores, and alighted heavily from his car, hot and sweaty and with a sort of hopeful despair on his round, friendly face, but with more despair than hope.

“Oh, please. Dear Jesus, wake up now.” Some voice lilting and sorrowful, distantly arousing her from the hot solacing heart of sleep. And her shoulder. What was that trembling at her shoulder? Hot, too, the five-fingered grasp upon her arm, yet tender, drawing away the last rags of darkness, urging her to light, toward which she struggled, eyelids fluttering, reluctantly. “Wake up now, Miss Helen, oh, Lawd God, Miss Helen, I got de word about it … now there.”

La Ruth hovered above, her face an enormous black ugly mask, suffering, shedding streams of tears. “Miss Helen, de reverend’s downstairs waitin on to take you to de cemetery, he say.” She stood beside the bed, Helen watching her drowsily—the hulking, misshapen form still bending forward in apprehension—watching her from the grief-filled bespectacled eyes to the huge, formless legs draped in stockings that had skidded about and hung in folds around the knees, and the transparent, water-stained skirt.

“Oh, Lawd, Miss Helen, I been pushin at you all dis time and you wouldn’t rouse up, I thought you was dead, too——” And drew back then with a gasp, a cry of horror and grief. “God
knows,
Miss Helen, I’nt meant to say dat! Gret God, Miss Helen, Mama come home an’ tol’ me ‘bout po’ little Peyton last night and directly I fell down on my knees and spoke up fo’ you, prayin fo’ de divine intersection of precious Daddy Faith an’ says wing down yo’ angels to pick up de sperit of po’ little Peyton and leave yo’ chosen dearest one right here on earth to take keer of po’ little Peyton’s mama who——”

“La Ruth,” Helen interrupted, sitting up, “go get me a glass of cold water.” A raw feverish film covered her throat; her voice, these first words, came hoarsely.

“Yes’m. Oh, yes, ma’am.” La Ruth stood there motionless, with grasshopper eyes, touched with dim, blossoming wonder at this victim of tragedy who, not once but twice now bereft of motherhood, could suffer so stoically and wake up from a hot day’s sleep like this without hysteria. She herself had lost two of her three children and although she couldn’t rightly place the father of either of them she could recall with what fright she had awakened for many days afterward, shrieking, blubbering crazily for God to send down his Apostle. Quick. To lead her not into paths of Belief (because she believed, anyway, with every part of her soul and body) but into paths of peace and grace, into Baptism, into the true waters that would wash and caress her worn-out body and flood away the various sorrows of her mind, which always sought dreamily for a man. And soon God had not just sent his Apostle, but had come himself, in a Cadillac, to make sure everything was all right no matter how much she had worked and sinned, no matter the children she had lost: Daddy Faith, who was the King of Glory, Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. That had been ten years ago, and all this time she had cherished him and loved him and, having contributed over four hundred dollars to his cause, had become an Outer Angel of the Port Warwick annex heaven, detached from Baltimore. Today was Daddy Faith’s annual August Coming, and she had worked herself up into a fever of excitement, so perhaps could be excused for this sudden evangelism. Helen stirred, placed her feet shakily on the floor and looked up once more into La Ruth’s stricken face that pleaded for understanding—that tried to tell her that she, Helen, too, was qualified for the million, billion, trillion, septidemicillion blessings, blessings flowing free for all that slaved and sweated and were acquainted with grief, or had ever just lost a darling baby child. “Po’ Miss Helen,” she said.

A car passed on the road. Helen looked at her wrist watch: it was just before noon. A hot odor filled her nostrils, a smell of body, crotch and armpit, like onions. “I just want a glass of water,” Helen repeated in a weary voice.

“Yes’m. Po’ thing. I sho’ will git it for you. You just wait right there——” She hurried ponderously out of the room, and her huge flat-footed descent of the stairs, even from the distance, set the mirror rattling faintly, like the passing of remote boxcars.

While she was gone, Helen went to the head of the stairs and called down. “Carey! Carey!”

“Yes, Helen!” The voice floating up from the hall tried to be cheerful, lifted and fell in soft spaced syllables, rocking between professional solicitude and earnest, far-away sadness. “Are you—are you all right? Is there anything I can do? We’d better go soon. Is there anything I can do?”

Poor Carey, she thought. Such a dear, such a real dear, always trying to do the right thing.

“I’ll be right down,” she called. “I’ve got to get dressed.”

In her room she spied the withered dahlias. She threw them in the wastebasket, then went into the bathroom and poured the stale water into the lavatory. As she dressed, the plodding elephantine footsteps echoed once more, ascending this time, and La Ruth appeared, with a glass of water isolated upon the vast expanse of a flowe ed enamel tray. “Dere, ain’t dat nice?” she said. “All nice and cold and everything. You just set down for a minute and drink it all up—you look hot, Miss Helen.”

“Thank you, La Ruth,” she said. And indeed it was hot. Nothing disturbed the quiet; the holly leaves outside the window were motionless, reflecting brilliant tinfoil shapes of light. Beyond the trees and down the lawn the bay was slick and calm, without color, and in the sky, where only a solitary gull dared to soar through the heat, dusty gray vapor hung like a colossal balloon above the bay, threatening to unloose its dismal baggage of rain and wind. Helen powdered her face, covering up as best she could the lines and wrinkles there, and sat down—just for a breather, she thought—wondering if she could make it at all. The medicine, a sedative which she had taken two hours before, made her feel groggy and she was on edge, her nerves all raw. She longed for a cigarette—but Dr. Holcomb had said no. She sipped the water slowly and then, when the glass was empty, placed it on the window ledge, watching her frosty thumbprints fade and vanish, silver ghosts of snails contracting inward upon some sightless wonderland infinity. The floor creaked beneath La Ruth abruptly; Helen looked up.

“Miss Helen,” she said, in an earnest voice, “I ain’t got no mo’ning clothes. Mama she tol’ me today befo’ she come over here fo’ me to git some mo’ning clothes from Sister Alberta Lemmon dat lives by de Bankhead Magruder place but when I went by there Sister Alberta she done left to go down to de Little Boat Harbor where Daddy Faith praise his name is holding preleminary ce’monies fo’ de baptisin’ tonight. Sister Alberta, she’s an Inner Angel——”

“That’s all right, La Ruth,” Helen put in. “You don’t need mourning clothes.” She looked up into the scowling face, at the bulging eyes, which were bespectacled, still moist with a grief that seemed to embrace the entire world; the pink lower lip protruding a full inch outward, forever exposed to the wind and sun, ravaged by strange, livid runnels and gullies, now inexplicably filled Helen with something deeper than despair. She got up quickly. “You don’t
need
mourning clothes,” she blurted, with a sort of sob, and turned. “Oh, God, it’s hot! What am I going to do?”