Pearl (39 page)

She sees Breeda, sitting in the dark apartment under the origami birds, the television blasting, the pictures of uprearing horses, of white seals. She looks down the dark road: windless, treeless: there is nothing. Is this the choice then, or is there no choice: the incomprehensible or nothing? Is there no choice, or is there only one, the one Breeda has made, the one Breeda has offered her? It would seem impossible to refuse her. It would seem dishonorable to say no.

She thinks of Breeda’s face, her thin eyelashes, her ruined teeth, her eyes almost too large, too undefined. Breeda says she needs her, for the work of memory. Breeda has said she is forgiven. If she has been forgiven, she must do the needed work. Work that is needed to be done by her.
By her.
By her and no other. Done by her or left undone. The work of memory. Work.

She remembers the definition of work from physics class: “Work is the product of force acting upon a body and the distance through which the point of application of force moves.” She got an
A
in physics; she liked physics very much, but she never thought it would come back to her in this way. Force and movement. Work uses force for change. Forgiveness opens the door to believing that work can be done, that you can do it, that it matters if you do it. That you, a body that possesses a force, can move through space to touch something, move something else.

Breeda has said she is forgiven. Needed. To do the work of memory, which only she can do. None of this is comprehensible. But to deny its force, its power: that would be dishonorable. That would be a lie.

She has always wanted to tell the truth.

Breeda’s face. Her face. Incomprehensible.

Pearl sees Breeda’s face. She understands that you cannot see a whole face at once, even in memory; she focuses on one feature at a time. Mouth, nose, eyes, eyebrows, forehead. And, for the first time since the news of his death, she sees Stevie’s face. No longer flat, white, dish-shaped but a set of features: the light-blue eyes, the full lips, the mole the size of a dime on his left cheekbone, the light wheat-colored hair. Feature by feature, Stevie’s face is hers again; he has come back to her. He has come back to her when she was looking for his mother. His mother who has sent her a bouquet of Mylar balloons: “I hope you’re fine. I’m fine. I miss you.” His mother who has said that she needs Pearl to do the work of memory with her. His mother who, despite everything, has said that they are friends.

“Breeda is great,” Pearl says.

“Great,” Maria says. “Absolutely great. God, the place she lives in is a nightmare. You know, Pearl, I was thinking maybe she’d like to get away from Ireland, too many sad memories for her here. Maybe she’d like to come to America. We could find her a job in New York; there’s a big Irish colony up by the Cloisters. I know people up there; we could get her a green card eventually, I’m sure we could. I mean, I know a million people, there must be a way. Then we could see her a lot and she could have a whole new life. I’m going to start calling some people I know.”

Pearl laughs. It’s the first time she’s laughed hard for a very long time, and it hurts her throat. Her mother is absurd. She met Breeda for—what was it?—ten minutes, and she has a plan for Breeda’s whole life. And if she tells Breeda, Breeda will be taken up with an idea she’d never have thought of before her mother walked into the room with the force that makes you think the only good thing is to go along, or you’ll be missing something wonderful. Ridiculous, her mother’s sense of possibility, her endless belief in the goodness of change. An old instinct tells her that her mother must be wrong. But what if she isn’t? What if change is, as she always says, “much more possible than people are willing to think”? Her mother is a person of faith and hope. Her mother believes in change.

Her mother believes in change; her mother will never change. This is the sort of thing, this inconsistency, that in the past had made Pearl angry with Maria. But now her mother’s combination of constancy and inconsistency amuses her, delights her. The spectacle of her mother’s life, this lively life, these habits of hers, this headlong rushing ahead, tickles Pearl’s palate like the imagination of a tart dessert. She had said to her mother: Go and do this thing for me, and her mother had done it. She hadn’t hesitated; Pearl had known she would not hesitate. Her mother is her mother. My mother is my mother and I am I. This seems quite amusing; she could repeat it to herself just for the pleasure of the words.

My mother is my mother and I am I.

Of course, her mother is wrong about Breeda. Breeda can’t be taken up, seized in her mother’s beak on one of her swooping flights. How can she trim her mother’s beak and not curtail her flight? Her mother is a swooping bird, a galloping horse, a ship in full sail, an airplane soaring, barely visible, a black dot in a wide blue sky. Her mother is not death, but sometimes she moves too fast.

Pearl looks at Maria. The eagerness in Maria’s eyes makes her seem to Pearl terribly young. How can this be when just moments ago she saw her mother as not young at all? How can it be that she now feels herself much older than her mother? Her mother is running headlong, running too fast; she may crash into something, she may hurt herself, hurt someone else. Pearl can see that. Her mother cannot.

“Mama,” she says. “Slow down.”

Maria looks at her daughter and blinks, as if she’s just heard the most intriguing sentence of her life. And then they both begin to laugh. They laugh as if what Pearl just said was the best joke in the world. They feel they may never stop laughing and it doesn’t matter, because it’s the best thing to do.

.  .  .  

Dr. Morrisey comes in while they are laughing. Of all the responses she would have predicted, laughter was not among them. Words of anger, gestures of recrimination, anxious sobbing, clinging, followed by a push to separate: all these and many others had occurred to her. But laughter? No, she had not thought of that. She wonders what this means about her, what it means about the body of her knowledge, that this common act, one of the most common in the world, the act that some philosophers said make humans human—man is a laughing animal—is one she hadn’t thought of. She is humbled by the sight of them, mother and daughter, holding hands, laughing.

But when we think about it, how can we blame her for being surprised? In the iconography of mothers and daughters, laughter has not taken much of a place. Desperate loyalties; struggles to the death, struggles against death; bosoms of comfort, choking hands; get out of the house, stay in the house; find yourself a man, no man will ever love you; this is the way to bake bread, to clean, to keep your body beautiful: in all this lore, who has mentioned a mother and a daughter laughing? Why not? I don’t know.

Dr. Morrisey can’t stop to think about it. She checks Pearl’s vital signs and is satisfied. Later, she will try to discover the cause of Pearl’s agitation of the day before: the thrashing and the panic, the call asking for Stevie’s mother, then her own mother, who has done something, changed something, so that they sit here laughing. Later, she will speak to Pearl. But for the moment she will let it be. Tomorrow, she will act once more as a doctor, as a scientist. She knows how troubled Pearl must be to have acted so radically, to have planned her own death. As a scientist, she knows better than to believe in the miraculous once-and-for-all turnaround, the bend in the road irrevocably taken, that leaves the path of sickness far behind for good. But for now, looking at Pearl and her mother, she can hope: that things will be all right. That there is enough health here to have faith in. What, she wonders, scientifically speaking, is the place of faith and hope?

“Sorry to break this up, ladies, but my patient needs her rest.”

“Dr. Morrisey,” Pearl says, “can I see Joseph later?”

Hazel Morrisey makes a calculation: Is she pushing it again, is she taking a risk? Wasn’t it Joseph who precipitated the last crisis? She has no scientific basis for her judgment, but she believes her instinct: Pearl has turned a corner. She is better than she was. The road is long, she knows that, but a corner has been turned.

“You can see him for a little while.”

“Mama, will you send Joseph over? So I can talk to him alone.”

“Of course,” Maria says. At last, an easy request: no plunging into the lives of strangers with impossible questions, impossible requests. All Pearl wants is for her mother to deliver a simple message:
Pearl would like to see you now, alone.
But really, Pearl could ask her anything. She can do anything now; the reign of terror is lifted, life is possible once again, knives cut, clocks can be believed, the earth can be stepped upon with confidence.

She walks home, enjoying the damp air. Joseph can see that she is happy.

“She seems much better. I think she’s going to be all right, Joe, I really think it. She wants to see you alone. And I’ve done something celebratory, maybe a little rash. I can’t stand this place anymore. It’s just too depressing: the spread, the curtains, the fake stained glass. I’ve booked us into the Shelbourne. It’s madly expensive, but I’m in love with the naked ladies on the art nouveau lamps. And it’s just across from St. Stephen’s Green, so we can walk somewhere nice and not be run down by trucks. Don’t say we can’t afford it.”

So Pearl has told her nothing; Maria knows nothing of what came between them. He is grateful for that, of course, but Pearl’s good behavior makes his bad behavior stand out even more. Just a few hours ago, the sight of her was the most desirable thing on earth to him. Now he dreads it as he has dreaded nothing in his life. But he must take his punishment. What will she say to him? Whatever she wants to say, he must listen.

He looks at Maria, her eyes lively with the prospect of her new luxurious hotel, and realizes she has no idea of how much money she has. Of what shape the business is in. Of what the nature of their investments is. And this knowledge makes him feel, for the first time in three days, undefiled. This is what he can do: he can make sure that Maria and Pearl will never have to worry about money. Will be free of its press and its entrapment and corruption all their lives. Yes, he will do that. From Rome, occasionally from New York, he will guard their fortune, the fortune provided by her father. He will be the good steward: a Judas who kept the purse. What if he had gone on keeping the purse instead of hanging himself?

They will live as they always have, without thinking about money. He won’t see them often, but he will guard their prosperity.

“I’m going back to Rome tonight,” he says. “Everything’s fine here.”

“Oh, Joseph, please don’t,” she says, then looks repentant. “Oh, I know. I’m being selfish. I have to get used to your not being around all the time. You’re going to move to Rome, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I think I am.”

“Are you seeing someone there?”

“Yes,” he says. He
is
seeing someone: himself, a well-dressed middle-aged man in a wide Roman piazza. The sun falling straight and indiscriminate. Young people laugh and smoke and ride their Vespas. Tourists enter churches; old couples walk arm in arm; Asian and African nuns walk in pairs; Japanese teenagers in groups of twenty pose for photographs before a fountain. He isn’t part of it, but he watches, and no one wonders, Who is that man? because he isn’t someone who is looked at, he is one who looks.

“Pearl will be fine,” he says. He believes it because he must.

“I hope,” she says, and he knows she believes it because she is a person of hope, and so she hopes.

50

The doctor says, “I’m lowering the dosage of your medication. I’m going to trust you.”

Pearl nods. She is trusted. Forgiven. Once again.

51

Pearl’s eyes are closed when Joseph walks into the room. The room is dark; her white bed is brilliant in the darkness. There is discoloration under her nose. There is a tube attached to her hand. Her hands are ringless and her nails, unvarnished, are nevertheless luminous in the darkness, like moons.

He sits in the turquoise plastic chair and waits for her to open her eyes. She is very beautiful, silvery in her cone of darkness, transected by the rectangle of her bed.

“Oh, Joseph, things have been so strange. I’ve had all kinds of things happen, and then these strange dreams. Some of them were beautiful, some were quite disturbing, and I have no idea, because of the drugs and what’s going on with my body, what things have really happened and which were dreams. I’ve given up trying to figure out what really occurred. It doesn’t seem terribly important.”

What is she saying, that she doesn’t believe he said what he said? That it was a nightmare she can relegate to the world of useless nightmare images: the winged creatures with talons and teeth, the bottomless well, the door that will not open? Is that what she’s saying? Does she believe it, or is she trying to let him off the hook?

She mustn’t let him off the hook; hanging from the hook of her blame is where he belongs. He has harmed her. He has betrayed her. He wanted her for himself. He suggested marriage, when that would be a terrible betrayal; he didn’t see it as the betrayal it would be. He only saw what he wanted. He looked harmfully. He wanted to make sure she would never suffer, so he committed the sin of idolatry. He wanted her to be a creature he could worship, a treasure, hidden in a tabernacle, hidden from the world. He committed the sin of greed. He committed the sin of theft. He stole from her the belief that there are in the world safe corners where nothing jumps out, where there is no possibility of ambush or destruction in the form of unexpected visitations.

How can this be forgiven? He doesn’t want any forgiveness from her, and certainly not forgiveness that is only a mistake. She must know what he has done, so that she isn’t haunted by it, so that in future it won’t rise up, another ambush, and in a vulnerable moment cut her down.

“It wasn’t a dream, Pearl. I said what you think I said. I can’t explain it. I can only offer you—I don’t even know what the word is; apology is far too light. I am terribly sorry. I can only ask your forgiveness. I wanted so to protect you.”

Never has she seen a face so taken up by its distress. This distress, the absolute giving over to it, makes him seem innocent and, as her mother seemed to her a short time earlier, very young. Young in his suffering, defenseless. How can she defend him? It is himself that he must be defended from, and she has no idea how to do that. She knows what it is like: to feel that you must be defended from yourself. She would like to help him. She knows how much he needs her help.

“It’s not important, what you said. You’ve been good to me all my life.”

“I don’t understand,” he says. “I hurt you.”

“It’s not important. I’m all right.”

He is abashed by her generosity, by her kindness, but also angered by it. He would rather have her blame. Does she really believe what she’s saying, that what he said wasn’t important? Or is she just being kind? He feels shaken, clumsy, like a fumbling, dangerous animal, dangerous in his largeness, in his maladroit lunges toward the human world. He thinks of a poem by a Polish poet, about a bear who is afraid neither of men nor fire. He steals meat off the porches of houses. The friend of the poet shoots the bear under the shoulder—only understanding the bear’s odd behavior when he tracks him down and sees his jaw half eaten away by abscess. The poem acknowledges that the problem of the bear was insoluble. The bear had to be shot. He was a danger. The fact that his behavior was explicable did not mean he didn’t need to be destroyed.

But she has said his dangerous lunge was not important. That she’s all right. How can that be? He has lunged dangerously, like the wounded bear, and failed to do harm. What, then, protected her? Certainly not himself, with his pathetic passion for protection. What was it that has kept her safe?

He would like to say, Look out for me. In both senses of the term. He would like to ask her for her protection. He has already asked her forgiveness and been given it. How will he live with that? Forgiveness for betrayal. Judas the betrayer. He remembers a brother in Portsmouth Priory, Brother Luke. “Poor Judas,” he always said. “He didn’t know how easily he could have been forgiven. He was overcome by despair. By shame.” As if he were telling a slightly obscene story, he nearly whispered into Joseph’s ear, “I believe he is forgiven. I believe he is beside Jesus in Paradise. Along with the Good Thief. Because despair can turn you deaf, and he couldn’t hear the word that would have been his consolation. He was deafened by despair; all he had to do was ask. But I think he was forgiven anyway, even without asking.”

He has asked her forgiveness and has been given it. He doesn’t yet know what this might mean. He knows he must go away. He will stay away.

“Joseph,” she says, “I’ve had all these ideas, my brain’s a little wild, I know that, but one idea keeps coming back to me, and I need your help. I was thinking that after a while, after I’m better, what I’d like to do is go to Cambodia. Look for something connected to my father. Try and find records, something. I don’t know what there is but I’d like to try; in any case I’d like to see the place. I know that would cost a lot of money. Do you think we have enough money for that?”

In all the years he has been in charge of the Meyerses’ money, in all the years he has seen to it that Maria and Pearl—and Devorah, of course—had everything they wanted, none of them ever asked what Pearl has just asked. The question allows him to give an answer that lightens the burden of what he has done to her. He has been clever with her money; there is more than enough. And he can tell her that: with pride, with pleasure. Yes, he can say, there is enough money to do what you want. He has protected her wealth; he will continue to protect her wealth. The Judas who kept the purse.

“You’ve had a windfall with one of your mutual funds,” he says.

Windfall. Mutual funds.
She sees dollar bills twirling like leaves; she sees figures dressed as dollar bills, dancing, holding hands. She smiles. He doesn’t know what she’s smiling at. He hopes it doesn’t mean she’s lost her understanding.

“I’ve had a lot of ideas, things I’d like to do before I go back to school. After I go to Cambodia, maybe I’ll travel around Asia. And then I think I’d like to work on a farm. I’d like to learn about animals. Maybe I’ll come back here, I have a friend whose family has a farm.”

He’s never heard her talk this way: chattery, girlish. She seems younger to him than she has for years.

“Slow down, kiddo,” he says.

“That’s what I said to my mother,” she says. “Slow down.”

“I’m going to leave you now. I’m going back to Rome.”

They both know what he means. That he is distancing himself from her, that he is keeping himself away from her, exiling himself in reparation for what he has done. Is the price too high? He made a misstep, a grievous misstep. Maria has made many; Pearl at least one. And yet they will go home. He will live a stranger in a strange land. Isn’t there any other way, some slow process of return? He doesn’t think so. He believes, unlike Pearl, unlike Maria, that, although forgiven, he will not be given a second chance.

“Rome,” Pearl says. “You love Rome. That will be good for you.”

Does she mean that? Or does she mean, It will be better for me? Whatever she means, neither of them will question her words. And so, I suppose, we will not either.

Maria knocks lightly, shyly, at the door, then enters, although no one has told her to come in. She stands beside Joseph, puts her hand on his arm, leans awkwardly over the bed so she can touch Pearl’s hand.

“I’ve got to get my plane now,” Joseph says. Maria kisses him goodbye.

He bends over the bed to put his lips on Pearl’s cheek. She pats his head. Like a mother, he thinks, and feels the cool light touch his own mother never gave him. She moves her hand so that her fingers come to rest on his forehead. Her fingers are far cooler than his forehead, as if he were feverish, the kind of fever he hasn’t had since he was a child, the kind of fever that makes the touch of a cool hand feel like a poultice. What does a poultice do? It draws poison into itself. Ringless, these fingers, resting on his forehead, not moving at all, but still and cool on his thin skin, and he thinks: the skull beneath the skin, the brain beneath the skull.
Brain fever. The fever broke.
Those were the words used; that was what people said. And something in him does break, or break up, at the touch of her cool fingers, wonderfully still, drawing—what can it be?—the poison of his harm into themselves. She might have been harmed by him, but she does not seem harmed; he feels the strength in her cool fingers, the competence. Not delicate, those fingers, perhaps a bit too short for the wide palm. Her fingers on his forehead make it difficult, terribly difficult, to leave her, but he must go. He walks to the door. Maria blows him a kiss, and Pearl waves her one free hand.

“Bon voyage,” Maria says. She would like to say, Go with God, but she won’t allow herself.

He closes the door. They are together. They are safe. He hears his heels on the mole-colored linoleum and thinks of them holding hands lightly in the damp and overheated air.