Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 01 - Wild Nights (24 page)

Eric was on the phone with the funeral home, but nothing could be done New Years Day. It’s a busy night for the coroner. No one in the family had buried a child since our grandmothers, two generations before. We needed to learn how to do that. Would there be two services? Two burials? Could we even stand that? There would be no viewing; the damage was too great. I wondered if that was better, to not have that last image of a stranger called by your sister or niece’s name stuck in your memory.

Anna and I went over to Binky’s where Mom was passing time cleaning out the refrigerator and making homemade soup. It smelled like a hundred Sunday afternoons growing up. Arthur was playing a video game with Sam. Samantha was in her room with the door closed. Ted was wandering around. Samantha came out of her room and then went back in a few minutes later, carrying her mother’s jewelry box. I smiled at her; she didn’t smile back. She closed the door. I’d have to tell her I still had my father’s.

No one was watching football or reruns of the Rose Parade. I knew what they were doing; they were living in a shocked ground fog, suspended between then and the unknown of what would come when the sun burned through the haze. I thought of a sky sandwich, of Jon saying we can’t go to those other worlds without some help. But they would, they would somehow get to the next place like we all do, with or without help.

I hugged Ted, he was stiff; he thanked me for coming. He was going to need to do a lot more than wander in the years ahead. I hugged my mother and she started to cry. The fabric on my shoulder was completely soaked before she ran down. I was crying on her shoulder. It felt like we were literally steaming with grief.

Anna and I didn’t stay long. There would be days and days of it to get through. We started home. I told her about the miscarriage. She reached over and held my hand and started crying. I felt cried out. I said she needed to pay attention to her driving or she’d get us killed too. Black humor was creeping in. We drove down to the beach, parked and just sat together. Eric called to check on us. We went home. He needed us too; we sometimes forget that about him.

None of us were hungry. I said I thought being hungry confused the issue so Anna defrosted homemade lasagna and heated rosemary rolls. We devoured it. I wondered if they felt the same twinge of guilt I did, for enjoying food when Binky and Amber never would again.

Friends and neighbors would start arriving with food at Binky’s tomorrow, as soon as the word spread and their New Year’s hangovers were behind them. We would stop calling it Binky’s soon, and start calling it Ted and the kids’ house. I wondered if Ted would remarry. I thought so. I hoped he had better luck.

I checked my email. Margaret and Karin had both responded with concern. Margaret said not to worry; we would be fine no matter how much we got done before we left. Karin was shocked and said to call when I got a chance. Jon hadn’t called. I tried him, but it went to voicemail. I hung up. I knew I couldn’t get through leaving him a message. I didn’t even know why I was calling him.

I took a long hot shower and put on my nightgown. I felt like a little girl in a red and yellow flannel nightgown in my brother’s house. My mother had given it to me for Christmas with the note, “red and yellow, catch a fellow.” She hadn’t met Steve yet. But when I was only fifteen she’d given me sets of red and black lace underpants and bras. I didn’t know what to make of it at that age. She can be so out of synch.

The next days were a blur of arrangements. We picked out caskets and shopped for funeral clothes with the kids. We talked to the minister and listened to music for the service. We picked prayers. We picked photographs to have enlarged.

We took turns being the hostess at Bettina’s. Food, flowers, strained conversations. I made a point of being the one who ferried food back and forth from neighborhood freezers so the kids didn’t have to do it. They’d find out soon enough that they were aliens in a changed land.

Ted and the kids wanted one service, one burial. After Grandma’s burial Bettina had announced that she wanted to be buried in Altadena too. Ted was torn between burying them close so the kids could visit, and honoring Bettina’s last request. He opted to buy new plots, side-by-side. No one got on their high horse about Binky’s last wish. We knew it didn’t matter. As far as I knew no one in my family had ever visited my father’s grave. I decided to ask Eric to do that with me. I emailed Margaret and Karin progress reports. I knew they were sitting out there loving me.

Eric and I went to our father’s grave. We wondered why people do that. We had Filipino friends who set up a whole Christmas tree, and Hispanic friends who took picnics. Presbyterians are called the frozen Christians; we don’t go in for graveside partying.

“Anna told me what happened, I’m sorry. We hoped you’d have a good time over there,” he said. “Get a fresh start.”

“It’s the most fun I can ever remember having, but it wasn’t meant to be, none of it. I guess it was a fresh start in a way. The alternative would have been a nightmare. The boys next door were sleeping in a hut they built. Do you remember the forts Binky built for me?”

“Yeah, especially the pink sheet tent. Then she served you graham crackers and mandarin orange slices for two days until you threw up and Dad put a stop to it.”

“Warm mandarin slices. I still can’t even think the word
mandarin
. She saved me from the boy up the street when I was nine, did you know about that?”

“What boy?”

“The Taylor boy, not boy really, he was probably eighteen. I was over playing with his sister. I didn’t even know she had a brother; he just appeared one day. He took me in the den and stuck his hand down my pants and rubbed me. He told me to wear something silky next time. I didn’t know what he meant. I was still wearing cotton underpants with smiley faces.”

What I didn’t tell Eric was how it had felt good; his voice in the dark room was hypnotic. I felt guilty at age nine without having any idea why.

“That guy was never a boy, he was a fucking freak.” Eric was looking off in memory. “He was always being hauled off somewhere for reprogramming.”

“I told Binky about it at a swim meet. I can still see her in her shiny blue bathing suit and one of those horrible caps that tear your hair out. I swore her to secrecy.”

“Binky never kept a secret in her life,” he said. “God, could she blab.”

“She must have blabbed to Mom and Dad. The guy disappeared. No one ever mentioned him again. I still played with his sister.”

“Dad probably took him half a tank off the coast and shoved him out of the plane.”

“That’s kind of mafia for a Presbyterian.”

“That was a no-fly zone for him.”

“That’s comforting to know. I was wondering about it the other day. I’ve never known what would be okay with him.”

“He was no Puritan, obviously. But he was dug in about people confining their activities to the appropriate age group.”

“Yeah. Mom too. She hired a painter once when I was in high school. He said something funky to me and I told her. She got in the car to go to the office, then drove around the block, came in and kicked him out of the house.”

“Mom. Took her a trip around the block to decide to fire him before the work was done. It’s hard to find a painter.”

We ended up on the ground laughing. It’s good to laugh when you’re burying your sister and niece. I asked him why Aunt Asp wasn’t around. I couldn’t believe she’d miss a chance to be cruel to her sister over the death of her daughter. They were traveling in China; it was too much to come home. Nice sister, but better for Mom that way. We were lying on the grass looking at the sky, taking a break from adulthood.

“What kind of truck was it?” I asked.

“Mack.”

“A John Deere would have been too weird, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah, but as Anna said, stranger things have happened.”

“What did Binky keep of Dad’s?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh come on, Eric. She told you everything. She had to blab.”

“She wouldn’t tell me that. I can’t even guess.”

“Does his watch work?”

“No. The crystal was broken, it could probably be fixed.”

“What time is it?”

He was quiet; he knew what I meant. “Eighteen-thirty-one. You were right. I looked it up. It was sunset.”

“It’s hard to see that time of day,” I said.

“For this family at least,” he said.

The world turned and the day of the service finally got around to us. Ted and the kids looked like a set of papier-mâché death effigies on sticks. Their clothes hung off them. Samantha was wearing Binky’s pearls. I was wearing mine. Mom was in a black suit with some room in it; she’d lost weight. Her skin looked pale and flakey through a hole that was starting in the back of her black pantyhose. Adam and Grace sat with Sam and Sam, next to Ted. Arthur and Eric flanked Mom, who looked out of focus. Anna and I found space to fit in.

We got through the service. Eric did the eulogy; he had borrowed part of our graveside conversation. Not the hands down the pants guy, but he talked about swim meets, and pink tents, and how Binky never could keep a secret. Everyone smiled a remembering smile. Amber’s Skipper team came; they wore their team tee shirts with the rainbow jump rope logo. They sang “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” and we all sobbed. Ted could probably have told stories about his wife and child, but that was too much to ask.

The burial was private. Two shiny black limousines followed a black hearse with Binky, and a white hearse with Amber. Their caskets didn’t match either. Binky’s was a soft metallic grey with silver trim. Amber’s was smaller. It was white with little girl trim edging the lid. It looked like multi-colored pastel jump rope. The sweet pastel colors flashed soft flares of rainbow color across Binky’s metallic grey as they carried them across the lawn to be lowered into the ground. The plots were under shade trees. It would be a nice spot for them on hot summer days. The minister said a few words. Then I read Emily’s poem “Hope.”

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops at all

 

And sweetest in the Gale is heard

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm

 

I’ve heard it in the chillest land

And on the strangest Sea

Yet never in Extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

As I read my mind was panicky with the realization that hope had nothing to do with the situation. It was the wrong poem. My voice kept faltering as my brain tried to run on two tracks. No one said anything. I doubt they were listening. Binky wasn’t there to roll her eyes at me.

They lowered them into the ground. We each threw a handful of dirt and a flower on their boxes before turning away to the cars. The raggedy burial boys who had been standing back in the trees started up the coughing backhoe. Diesel fumes drifted our way. Eric looked back at them and they shut it off.

We were halfway to the cars when my mother started making a low growling sound. It reminded me so much of the sound I’d made during the procedure it made my gut spasm, like I was back on the table trying to fight off the scraping. She started keening and sobbing. Arthur tried to take her arm but she wrenched it away and threw herself with pounding fists on Ted. He stood like a statue and took the beating.

She was screaming at him, “Why didn’t you do something, why didn’t you do something? You just let her die. You let them die. You killed your own daughter.”

Eric and Arthur together couldn’t get her off him; she lashed out at both of them when they tried. She scratched Ted’s face. Somehow he stayed on his feet and took it. The children were horrified. Anna and I were saying “Mom Mom Mom,” over and over and trying to reach her. She kept twisting away. She finally ran out of strength and dropped to her knees on the grass.

She was sobbing and chanting, “My baby, my baby, my first baby.” She clawed at the grass.

Anna and I were crying. We murmured at her as we tried to lift her to her feet, but she was dead weight, heavier than dead weight. Eric looked stricken. His eyes were full of tears, his nostrils were flaring; he was trying to keep it together. Ted put his arms around his children and walked them to the car. Adam and Grace were frozen in place to see their grandmother like that. Arthur watched quietly.

We finally got her to her feet; her stockings at the knees were smashed in with mud and grass. She allowed us to lead her back to the car but she kept looking back at the holes in the ground. The burial crew had started to remove the flower sprays from the caskets, but thought better of that too.

We got her to the car. Ted had left with the kids. Mom and Arthur had come with them, so we had to all squeeze into one car. Eric sat in front with the driver. Arthur was rubbing the top of Mother’s hand with his thumb. She was looking out the window. I doubted she could see. Tears were running down her face, her nose was running unchecked, her muscles looked slack. She daubed at her face with a saturated and dirt smudged linen handkerchief. There was an “S” embroidered on it; it was one of my father’s. She had dirt under her bare nails. She looked twenty years older and yet somehow like an angel. There was nothing to say.

We arrived back at the funeral home. We had planned to eat together at Eric and Anna’s, but Mother asked Arthur to just take her home. We drove home in silence, unlocked the door and walked in dropping our purses as Eric dropped his clattering keys on the kitchen counter. He said he was going for a run; he was good at pounding it out of his system. The kids disappeared together into Grace’s room. Anna and I made tea and sat in our burial suits in the living room. Our stocking feet touched on the ottoman we shared.

“Do you think she’ll start drinking again?” I asked.

“She already has.”

“Have you talked to Arthur?”