I Knew You'd Be Lovely Part 15

Sail away, kill off the hours.

You belong somewhere you feel free."

When we walk in the door, the phone starts to ring. "Maybe that's Daddy, calling from heaven!" Coco says. I try to give my sister an expression that says I never suggested there were phones in heaven, but I don't know if it tracks. She looks as if someone has just torn out her heart and handed her a box of ashes, which is exactly what someone has done. Her purse is over her shoulder, and she lets the machine take the call.

"I have to meet with my lawyer," she says. "Can you watch the girls for a couple of hours?"

"Sure," I say, nodding. "Of course."

It's started to rain, so I plant the kids in front of the TV. First they watch a show called The Wiggles. Then they want to watch The Sound of Music for the one hundred and seventieth time. " 'Edelweiss,' " I'll tell them someday, "was my parents' wedding song." While they sit in a row on the bed with their eyes glued to the screen, I lie on the floor and lean my head against my duffel bag. Before I do, I remove the folder of pictures. I begin to flip through them. Here is my sister wearing pink plastic sungla.s.ses with lenses in the shape of hearts. There she is with her hair twisted in buns on the sides of her head like Princess Leia. Here she is holding a plate of cookies and carrots while I display a letter we've just written to Santa. Now she's cradling a Siamese kitten like a baby. A line from a Richard Powers story I read recently comes to me: "He's amazed that this fate has been lying in wait his entire life."

Saltine Teacup climbs off the bed and comes over to lie down beside me. She may be quiet, but she sees. She sees everything.

"Why are you crying?" she says. I open my eyes, and on the screen, two teenagers in a gazebo are about to kiss.

"It's a sad movie," I say.

My sister walks through the door, holding a stack of mail, rain and tears streaking her face. Sometimes she lets herself cry in front of the girls-she wants them to know it's all right to be sad-but it's clear this is not one of those times. Her keys thunk in a heap on the counter, and she turns in a circle. I can tell she wants to hide, or maybe throw up, but there's nowhere to go. I usher the girls into the bedroom and give them my makeup kit to play with.

"What's wrong?" I ask, and wonder if I have ever in my life asked a more idiotic question. She hands me the stack of mail. On top is a doctor's postcard, addressed in her husband's handwriting, a reminder for his yearly pilot physical. For a second, I'm vulnerable to the doorbell fantasy myself. Could he secretly be alive somewhere, and sending himself postcards? Could he show up at the front door any minute?

"I don't want this," she says quietly. Her eyes are filled with desolation and restraint and fear. "I don't want this life without him in it." She succ.u.mbs, and weeps silently, standing in the center of the kitchen, her body trembling. All around us, the windows stream with rain. I stare beyond her at the refrigerator, not knowing what to do. It seems impossible that this has happened. There's a magnet on the fridge that says: INSTANT HUMAN. JUST ADD COFFEE.

After she has cried for a bit, a subtle formality enters her body. She straightens and says: "While I was at the lawyer's dealing with the insurance, he suggested I redo my will." She wipes her eyes, tucks her hair behind her ears. The tip of her nose is red, and once more, she reminds me of a version of herself I recognize from thirty years ago. "I need to know if you'd be willing to take the girls if anything ever happened to me."

"Me?"

"Who else?" She sighs. "It's okay if you don't want to. You just have to say so."

My body is frozen in place: feet on the tile floor, hands pressed against the counter. "I don't know," I say. "I'd have to think about that."

My sister says nothing. I realize I'm inventing things, but the words I impute to her expression are: Well-think. The room we're standing in begins to feel very, very small. I reach for the keys. "Is it all right if I use the car?"

"Sure," she says. "The girls have ballet at five. Where are you going?"

"I was thinking of going to church." Coco's head pops out of the doorway. Her face is painted like a harlequin doll's.

"I want to come to church," she says. Going to church is one of our favorite things to do together. "Can I, Mommy?"

"You can't go looking like that," my sister says.

"Sure she can," I say. A priest once told me a story about a homeless man who wandered into a cathedral and was stopped as he made his way down the aisle. "You can't be in here without a shirt and shoes," said the monsignor. The homeless man looked up at the figure on the cross. "He doesn't have any," he said.

On our way into town, I play with various phrases in my head. They all contain the word but. "I love you, and I love my nieces more than anything, but ..." But I'm not sure I can accept such an important responsibility.... But I'm not sure I'm qualified for such a responsibility.... But I would be lying to you if I said I wanted to be a mother.

The church is nearly empty. Coco and I slide into a pew up front, near the banks of candles. She crosses herself twice before taking a seat, and I know it's because she gets confused at the end about whether it goes up-downright-left or up-down-left-right, so she does both. I notice a gla.s.s case behind the altar and it reminds me there's something I need to tell my sister about her husband, but I have no idea how to do it.

I glance around and am stunned that I've never before registered how maternal all the imagery is. Everywhere you look, there's a mother holding a baby. At five o'clock, these pews will fill with a dozen or so parishioners, usually older people; there have been times when the girls and I were the only ones without white hair. But for now, it's just us, and a lone woman over by the shrine to the Sacred Heart. For a second, she reminds me of a solitary, parallel-universe version of myself, and I think: Is that it, then? Is this the day I'll look back on as the one on which the path of my life changed? I prop my hands against my forehead like a visor, and pray my favorite one-word prayer: Help.

Coco wants to light a candle for her father. She does, and then we light one for my father, and then we light one for those who have no one to pray for them. When the initial flare of the flames excites her, I briefly wonder if you're not supposed to teach six-year-olds to play with matches. Then we bless ourselves with holy water and step out into the rain.

Driving home, we stop at a convenience store. We hurry through the doors, holding hands. "Mommy, may I please have a pack of rainbow-stripe gum?"

I let go of her hand. "Don't call me that," I say.

"But you love it when we call you Mommy."

"Just-don't call me that today."

The man behind the counter eyes us with concern, no doubt skimming his memory banks for missing-children posters. I buy a stack of celebrity and fashion magazines to distract my sister, and he rings me up.

"Could I have a pack of American Spirits?" I say at the end. I can't believe these words are coming out of my mouth. I haven't smoked a cigarette in twelve years. "The yellow ones," I say.

In the car, I crack the windows and turn the air-conditioning on high. We idle in the parking lot while nicotine hits all the dormant receptors in my brain.

"Don't tell," I say, exhaling. "And don't ever smoke. It's really bad for you."

Coco starts to cough, and I think: Right. This right here is why you have to say no.

"Can we listen to the music?" she says. She pushes the power b.u.t.ton, and Bob Dylan starts to sing a melancholy song about heaven.

"What's it like, where Daddy is?" she says.

"I don't know, honey. Please-don't ask me questions like that." The only thing that comes to mind is a clever advertis.e.m.e.nt I saw recently: Beyond your wildest imagination. Exactly what you'd think. "All I can tell you is I'm betting it's not all harps and clouds." The irony is that there have been days, other days, when I've sat in a car filled with music I loved with bright sun all around and a feeling of light flooding my veins, and thought: This is the closest I'll come to heaven on Earth. Now I'm sitting in the rain in a car I know has all my sister's husband's suits, belts, and shoes in the trunk. "I couldn't decide which would be less painful," she confessed. "To keep them, or to give them away."

I lean my forehead against the steering wheel, and Coco rubs my back. She doesn't ask what's the matter; she must be getting accustomed to adults behaving oddly.

"You have to follow your own path in life," I say. "Even if it feels guilty or selfish or wrong. It's the only way to live."

When we get home, Saltine Teacup runs to greet me. She wraps her arms around my waist and hides her face in my belly. I place my hand against her head, which is exactly where it would be if I were pregnant.

"Why didn't you take me with you?" she says. "I wanted to come to church, too."

My sister and I lock eyes above her, and the words just come out. "I'll do it," I say.

After dinner, after the girls are asleep, I hear my sister in the old empty house, keening. I have ears for her voice, and in spite of the distance, the night air soars with pain. It is a sound both fresh and ancient; my sister has joined a lineage of women she never wished to be a part of. Someday, I think, I'll tell her. Then I realize that someday is today.

She's lying on the floor of the master bedroom, in the dark. She must have heard me enter the house, because she's stopped crying. I halt in the doorway.

"Can I come in?"

"Sure," she whispers. I walk over and lie down beside her. From the ceiling, electrical cords and metal tubes coil out of the Sheetrock like snakes.

"There's something I wanted to tell you," I say. With no furniture in the room, my voice makes an unexpected echo. "I did something, in the hospital, at the end." I hesitate. "I probably should have asked your permission first." My sister doesn't say anything, so I keep talking. I tell her how on one of the days in between when the stroke damaged his brain stem and the day he died, I anointed her husband. I gave him unction. I have some holy oil that was blessed by the bishop who performed my Confirmation, and I brought it with me on the plane, in a plastic container that used to hold Neutrogena lip gloss. I describe how I dipped my fingers in the oil, and laid them on her husband's wrists, and on his feet, and on his side. I tell her how I made the sign of the cross on his forehead, and blessed him. And how, at the end, I held my hand for a long time over his heart, his beautiful heart. I don't tell her how unworthy I felt to the task, or how I remembered some lines of Annie Dillard's, and uttered them before I began: "Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in his holy place? There is no one but us.... There never has been."

When I've finished, we both lie still in the silence. I can hear my pulse in my ears. My sister turns to me.

"You had no right to do that," she says.

"I know. I guess I figured it wouldn't do any harm."

"You figured it wouldn't do any harm? That's why you did it?"

My eyes have adjusted, and I can see now that the room is filled with pale moonlight. "I loved him, too, you know," I say.

"You loved him from a distance," my sister says. "Your favorite way to love."

"Excuse me?"

"In my world, we don't show people we love them by pouring oil on them when they die. We show people we love them by spending time with them when they're alive."

I don't have an answer to that, so I stand up.

"Why don't you leave," my sister says.

"I'm leaving."

"No, I mean-why don't you go home."

The next morning, when I wake up, I find a napkin on top of the folder of pictures.

I'm sorry, my sister has written. Please stay. I pick it up and carry it with me into the kitchen, where she's sitting at the computer.

"You're sorry," I say. "What are you sorry for? I'm sorry!"

"Thank you for being here," she says. "I appreciate it." I put my hand on her shoulder, and this time, she lets it remain.

She stands up. "Where'd you get those pictures?"

"I stole them from Mom."

"Would you mind if I scanned them into the computer?"

"Not at all," I say. She gets the folder and begins to scan them, one by one, while I sit with her. There's a framed wedding photograph on her desk of her with her arms around her husband under a canopy of leaves; they are nose to nose. She unscrews the back and removes the photo. Then she places it facedown and leaves her palm against it while the light rolls by. Everything around us reeks of life: the blooming tulip trees, the fresh coffee brewing, the sun-dappled pool. I hear voices, and a moment later, the kids are spilling into the room. Coco opens the refrigerator. Pepper clambers into my lap. Saltine Teacup's eyes are even bluer when she first wakes up. She takes one of the photos from her mother's stack.

"What's this?" she says.

"That's the house we lived in when you were first born," my sister says.

"It is?" she says. She doesn't remember anything from that time; she was too young. My sister's husband, aware of how sick he was, had said at the end: "But if I die now, the girls won't remember me."

"That's the house where they wanted to make your daddy cut his hedge, but then he went around and took pictures of the hedges of all the city council members, and they stopped," I say.

My sister smiles. I haven't seen her smile in so long.

"We will always tell you stories about your father," I say to the girls. "You won't ever forget him." When they're old enough, I will tell them how when he died, their mother had said: "You were the best thing that ever happened to me," and had climbed into the hospital bed and lain down beside him. One day I will tell them how I watched her weep at the memorial while gigantic pictures flashed on a screen above our heads, and the whole auditorium swelled with the music of their wedding song: "I Just Want to Dance with You." Someday I will tell them about the hiking trip where he spontaneously stripped off all his clothes and jumped into the Merced River. One day I'll tell them how I once saw him change a diaper with one hand, after he'd broken his wrist, and I thought: Now I've seen everything. Someday I will let them read this story.

AUTHOR'S NOTES

I love it when authors share the backstories to stories and snippets about their creative process. So I thought I would part the veil and share my own.

THAT OF WHICH WE CANNOT SPEAK.

In my twenties, for about a year and a half, I smoked. I was never very good at it, but the real catalyst for quitting was an extremely educational two-week bout of laryngitis. Somewhere in my files there's a photograph of me from a party I attended during this humbling, voiceless fortnight. It's taken from behind, and at first looks like a throwaway shot. Only on closer inspection can you see the piece of package string tied at the back of my neck.

Although I'm more physically allied with Samantha, it was Bradley's emotional struggle that resonated with me. Giving voice to the inner life and speaking the truth even when I know it won't be well-received are ongoing battles. There's an art to being both honest and gentle, and a sadness to always erring on the side of caution, as Bradley does. I'm personally so fascinated by people who are not restrained by a fear of disapproval that I once stared in awe at a man who was clipping his fingernails in the lobby of the midtown office building where I worked. Although it's true that when I related this story to a friend, she said: "Well, let's not confuse lack of self-consciousness with schizophrenia."

While working on this story, I was haunted by a quote by Thomas de Quincey: "If in this world there is one misery having no relief, it is the pressure on the heart from the Incommunicable." I kept wondering if the pressure was pure misery, or if there might not be some pleasure in it.

THE ONLY WAY OUT IS THROUGH.

Lee K. Abbott once told me that a good story should cost the writer more than just time and ink. There were a couple of moments while I was working on "Through" that I had to stop typing, put my head down, and let myself cry. I straightened up after one such break, remembered Lee's advice, and thought: Well, maybe this one will be good.

In typical fashion, I acc.u.mulated piles of research about camping-including purchasing and reading the book referred to (they really were out of Camping for Dummies)-only to write a story in which the characters never actually camp. Which I can't hold against them.

I don't mind being outdoors occasionally; I just don't feel the need to sleep there. I had numerous alternate silly names for Fetterman's band-naming being one of the best reasons to form a band-including 60 PhDs, Command Z, and Undisclosed Location.

Martin Lee Anderson is the name of a real teen bootcamp casualty. Once I'd been moved by his experience, I didn't want to change his name, so I gave him a cameo. It was only after I'd written this story that I saw the parallel between the way it ends and the Bible's Abraham and Isaac.

GOOD IN A CRISIS.

Some years ago I ran a personal ad that began: "Blond, blue-eyed Harvard grad, 29, seeks kind and brilliant man who is intellectually uninhibited, socially independent, and spiritually intrigued." It was an unmitigated disaster. Most of the respondents who didn't sound as if they kept their mother's body in a bag in the bas.e.m.e.nt said such things as: "I'm not at all what you're looking for, but I liked your ad." Although it didn't lead to romance, I guess you could say the hours spent reading the ads of others helped sp.a.w.n this story. And the experience of writing an ad was invaluable, if for no other reason than the challenge of trying to reconcile, in words, a love of solitude with the desire for companionship. I came across a single poet in LA who did it fairly well: "Particularly interested in those who do not squirm in quietude."

My public high school in Winchester, Ma.s.sachusetts, was (and still is) such an arcadia of gifted teachers that I often wish I'd had the sense to capitalize on my good fortune at the time. Just one more example of too soon old, too late smart. The year I wrote this story was the same year I finally got around to writing a thank-you note to one of my favorite teachers-Fran Russell, head of the English department-only to hear back, in a lovely handwritten letter from her sister, that she'd died a few months earlier.

There was another teacher, a charismatic and attractive English teacher I had soph.o.m.ore year, who later disappeared. I suppose "Crisis" was partly the result of my wondering what had happened to him.

For a long time while I was working on this story, an odious invention known as grammar check kept suggesting I rewrite the second sentence as: "The language people mesmerized her." This was highly annoying until I realized that, indeed, the language people do.

THE THING ITSELF.

I've always enjoyed the fiction in The Atlantic Monthly, and at one point someone told me that they really like stories where something happens. Which I do, too; I love humor, and insight, and language, but I think most of all, I love stories where something of genuine importance to the characters is at stake, and I don't think it's a crime for literary fiction to be suspenseful or entertaining. So after I heard this, I went home and wrote the opening lines: "Something was about to happen. He could feel it." And immediately I thought: Aha! Now I've got it!

In the truly gloomy days that followed, it slowly dawned on me that now that I'd set the stakes, I was going to have to find a way to live up to them. Which of course wound up being a tremendous gift, and in the process of trying to do so, I was able to allow the story to surprise even me.

Nota Bene: This story has an ending that not all readers grasp the first time through. So I will offer this hint: Janet has news of her own.

Special thanks to ZZ Packer, for choosing "The Thing Itself" to win the 2008 Arts & Letters Prize.