Olivia (18 page)

More important, did I really want his love to be that strong?
Or was I like Mother, closing my eyes, and dreaming of a more pleasant place, a place where the man I really loved was with me?
Mother died four days later in the middle of the night. It had begun to rain softly only a few hours before we were called, the drops resembling the tick, tick, tick of a watch as they tapped against my window pane. They streaked and zigzagged like tears. Occasionally, there was a burst of lightning in the distance.
I heard the phone ring and not more than five minutes or so afterward, I heard a gentle knock on my bedroom door. My heart was throbbing in my chest. I felt a hot flush through my body. It was one thing to expect the bad news, but another to have it actually happen. I rose slowly, slipping on my robe, and went to the door to find Daddy in his pajamas, barefoot, his hair disheveled. He was chalk white. Even his lips had no color.
"It was the hospital," he said. "Your mother's gone." He turned like some mindless messenger of death and went to Belinda's room to knock on her door. It took her longer to answer. I stood in my own doorway and listened to him make the same report. Then I heard Belinda's wails.
"I have to go over there," Daddy said turning back to me. "There are papers to sign."
"I'll go with you," I said.
"No, no, just stay with your sister," he replied and returned to his bedroom, closing the door behind him.
For a few moments, I remained where I was just listening to Belinda's sobs and gasps. I had yet to shed a tear of my own. I went to her door and looked in on her. She was sitting on the floor beside her bed, her head on her arm against the bed, her body jerking in small spasms.
"Mommy," I heard her cry repeatedly. Finally, she caught her breath and turned to look up at me. "Olivia," she said, her mouth twisting, "what will we do?"
"Do? There's nothing we can do. I'll help Daddy with the funeral arrangements," I said. I didn't recognize the sound of my own voice. I felt as if I were speaking in a long, narrow tunnel, my words echoing in my ears and sounding mechanical, a recorded voice with little emotion, similar to the voices of trained telephone operators reading from prepared instructions.
"What should I do?"
"You must not do anything to cause him any more grief," I replied.
"What do I do? I don't cause him any grief!" she protested.
"I don't have the strength or the desire to go through the long list of troubling things you do, Belinda. Just don't do anything wrong for a few days, please," I concluded and returned to my own room.
I heard her crying again. Then I heard Daddy come out and start down the stairway. I went to my door to call to him.
"Are you sure you don't want me to come along, Daddy?"
"What? Oh, no, Olivia. I won't be that long. Get some rest. Tell Belinda to get some rest, too. Everyone, just get rest," he said and disappeared down the stairway, his footsteps falling away like the drumbeats of a passing funeral parade. I heard the front door open and close and then all was silent. Belinda's crying began again, only louder.
I went back to bed and stared into the darkness, thinking about my mother's last bright smile, a smile I would see no more. Less than ten minutes later, Belinda came to me. She stood there at the foot of my bed, her arms folded across her bosom, her shoulders rising and falling with her deep breaths.
"She died before I had a chance to talk to her again," Belinda said.
"What would you have said?" I asked.
She was silent. She looked away and took another deep breath.
"I don't know. There were things to say, weren't there?"
"From you? Just I'm sorry," I said, "and she didn't want to hear it."
"I would have said more than just I'm sorry, Olivia. I would have told her how much I loved her, you know." In the glow of the hall light, her eyes glistened with her tears while her face turned red with fury. "How can you just lay there and be mean to me at this moment?"
"I'm not being mean," I said calmly.
"Yes, you are. You've been meaner than ever to me just because . . ."
"Because of what?" I asked. My heart stopped and then started with a quickened beat. My ears were already ringing in anticipation.
"Because of what I did with Nelson Childs," she shot back at me. "I know you know."
"What? Why that's . ."
"Nelson told me," she said. I just stared at her. "That's the reason you've been meaner to me, and you know it," she said.
How could Belinda have such insight? She couldn't. She was just taking wild stabs at me because she was in so much pain.
"I disapproved for other reasons, Belinda, but I never told anyone."
"You told him. That was enough," she said. "You've got Samuel now. You shouldn't hate me."
"I don't hate you. Don't be ridiculous. I told you not to do anything to cause anybody any more grief at the moment, didn't I? So don't."
"I'm not jealous of you. I've never been jealous of you, Olivia."
"And I'm not jealous of you, so stop it. Stop it!" I shouted.
She was silent.
"Well, maybe I am jealous of you," she admitted.
"Oh, and why would that be, Belinda? What do I have or what have I done that you could possibly covet?" I asked, amused more than curious.
"You spoke to Mommy last," she said. "You have that."
She stared at me in the darkness a moment and then she turned and went back to her room. Through the walls, I heard her sob herself back to sleep. I lay there finding myself feeling more sorry for her than I was for myself. I wondered if I always would.
.
Mother had a very large funeral. There were so many people in attendance that a large number of them had to stand outside the church door. We kept the coffin closed and strewn with her favorite flowers: jonquils. The minister eulogized her as a faithful loving wife, a woman who truly personified the Christian spirit, full of love and forgiveness, someone who brought light and joy into her home. At one point Belinda cried so loudly, I had to gaze at her with hard, cold eyes to get her to smother her sobs. Daddy looked stunned and stared ahead, shaking hands and thanking people mechanically after the service.
It wasn't until we were at the cemetery and we stood before the open grave, waiting to swallow Mother into the earth, that I finally faced the fact she was gone. I surprised myself with the intensity of my own grief. I would miss her very much. Ironically, she turned out to be the most honest person in my life. I could never be like her, but I recognized that I had needed her, that I still needed her, that I had never been more alone.
Samuel stood beside me. He gestured to embrace me, but I stood away, straight and firm. I would never depend on any man the way Mother depended on Daddy, I thought. No man would ever claim to be my rock and foundation.
Nelson and his family were at the church and at the cemetery. His fiancee was back in Boston. I heard some excuse for her absence, but didn't pay enough attention to remember it. They returned to the house with the other mourners to comfort us. Our house was full of people, their voices low and melancholy at first and then, as the day wore on, growing louder, stronger until there was actually the sound of laughter and what had begun as a gathering of mourners turned into a strange sort of party with people wearing their smiles and finding humor as a way to drive death itself out the door. For most, it worked. It worked for Belinda, of course.
Only an hour or so into the gathering, she was surrounded by her flock of bubble-gum friends and a number of young men. She soaked up their attention with her sponge smiles and her extra long hugs, turning her lips toward certain boys when they went to kiss her in comfort. I watched her become Scarlett O'Hara and then I fled from the scene and went to the rear of the house to just stand alone in the shadows. I could see the rain clouds in the distance turning toward us. It wouldn't be long before they dropped their tears into the wind funneling through the trees and over the knolls around our home. What could be more fitting than a night of rain, I thought and hugged myself against the chilled air.
"Cold out here?" I heard and turned to see Nelson standing behind me. He had a glass of bourbon in his hand and swirled it before he took another sip, his eyes on me.
"It's cold inside, too," I replied.
"Yes, I imagine it is for you," he said. "I always liked your mother. She was always very up and happy. She made you feel good when she was in your company or you were in hers. My parents were very fond of her."
I nodded.
"When are you and Samuel planning on getting married?"
"Samuel thought it would be nice if we timed it around the completion of our house. What about you?"
"A little less than a year. You might actually beat us to the altar if I know Samuel. He'll hock his eyeteeth to hire additional workers and speed up the construction."
"You met your fiancee rather quickly," I said, "or did you know her even when you came here?" I asked pointedly, my eyes on the boathouse. Nelson laughed.
"You don't have any subtlety to you, do you, Olivia? You go right for the jugular?"
"If you mean I go right for the truth, yes," I said. "We knew each other. My decision to become engaged came shortly afterward," he replied.
"So you were just testing the waters to see if you were going to make the right decision?" I asked.
He shrugged.
"Something like that."
We stared at each other a moment.
"I wonder what it would be like being married to you," he said. "Does Samuel fully understand how strong you are, how assured and competent a woman you are? The other women he's known have all been like . . like .
"Belinda?"
Nelson's lips curled into a wry smile.
"Yes," he said
I looked out at the sea.
"I haven't given him any other impression about myself than what I am," I said.
"Well then, either he's accepted that or he's deluding himself into believing he can change you," Nelson said. I smiled without turning back to him.
"You don't think I can change?"
"No. Actually, I'm not sure I'd want you to change," he said and held his eyes on me when I turned to him again.
I wanted to say I had thought he was coming back here to see me after he had come to dinner with his family that night to pursue me and not to have a dirty little assignation with Belinda in our boathouse. I wanted to say I thought he was a better man than that, but I didn't. I simply bit my lower lip and swallowed back my regrets and disappointments like so much stomach acid.
"Your father's lucky to have a daughter like you, especially now," he continued. "You're going to hold your family together. You're a strong person."
"Too strong for you?" I dared ask.
He smiled.
"No. I'm too frivolous a person for you. We would probably end up killing each other," he joked.
"Yes," I said, cloaking my disappointment in a smile. He took another sip of his bourbon.
"Can I get you anything?"
"No. I'm coming back in," I said. "I just had to get a breath of fresh air. All those people . , ."
"Yes," he said nodding as if he understood, as if he could ever understand. "Well, I'll be inside," he added, reached out to touch my hand and then turned and entered the house.
I stood there trying to swallow. I felt as if the air around me had turned to ice. A few hundred yards to my right, Belinda's dead fetus lay planted like some seed of deformity, a sin pressed down into the darkness in a vain attempt to keep it forgotten. Belinda was capable of forgetting. That was her strength. She could wipe away her yesterdays like she wiped the chalk board at school and start again.
I couldn't. Everything that happened and everything I did and thought was indelibly written on the surface of my heart. It was an organ covered with scratches and small tears already. The biggest tear came with the realization that Nelson Childs was never to be mine.
Desire was cruel. We should want only the things we can have, I thought; otherwise, longing becomes pain and pain turns us into creatures of dissatisfaction, sitting with arthritic, curled fingers, scowling at the horizon, furious at the sun for rising and bringing us another day of disappointment.
"There you are!" Samuel cried. "Nelson told me you were out here. My poor Olivia," he said
sauntering over to embrace me. I smelled the odor of whiskey and onions on his breath and my stomach churned. "You shouldn't be alone at a time like this, Olivia."
"You can only be alone at a time like this," I replied.
"I'll make it up to you, Olivia. I'll work like a dog to make you happy again. I'll start tomorrow. I'll dig the first shovelful for our foundation first thing. I'll . ."
"Let's go inside, Samuel," I said sharply. "It's getting colder."
"What? Oh, yes. Of course."
He kept his arm around me clumsily as we approached the door and then I stepped forward and his arm slipped away.
Just like Mother's hand, leaving me alone to face what was to come.

10
The Bride No One Would
Have Believed
.
During the days that followed Mother's funeral,

Daddy fell deeper and deeper into his own grave of despair. His eyes remained bleak, dark, haunted. I had never understood how much he loved and needed what I had thought was only her silly little jabber. However, without it, our home became an empty music hall, every sound echoing on the previous. I realized that Mother had created all the real melodies here. Her laughter, her symphonies of gossip filled with funny, inconsequential information about this one or that apparently had provided Daddy with a very necessary contrast and respite from the more serious, dour talk of business. She had been there to greet him with a kiss and a hug, to whirl around him in her newest dress or float her hand under his nostrils to give him a whiff of her latest cologne.

He could tolerate her illness because there was always the false hope that stems the flow of nightmares, the belief that something miraculous could still happen, that medicine and science would produce a cure just in time, what the Greeks called their deus ex machina, a last minute device to save the day and restore our world to its balance and health.

However, once death came calling, all that hope died with Mother's last breath. In the beginning, right after her funeral in fact, it was still difficult to believe she was gone. The heavy truth lingered like a persistent storm overhead, the truth seeping in more deeply each day. Mother was really gone. We were never going to see her again.

Even Belinda had trouble reviving herself. She moped about with large, teary eyes, took long naps, or just curled up like a baby in her bed and stared at the wall, her thumb against her lips. Her friends called, but her conversations were far shorter than usual and none of them came to visit. She discouraged them with her tears and moans of sorrow.