Gun Insurance as Gun Control: Profiles in String

Showing posts with label Profiles in String. Show all posts

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Profiles in String: The Whole Enchilada

Monday, December 5, 2011

Profiles in String 30: The End

With thanks to Darwin, who wanted to read it more than I wanted to write it sometimes, and to Nicole and Brandon for sharing their writing as well, so I didn't think I was the only crazy one.

Dedicated to Blanche Hodge and Elsie Bennett.

...

The haze of the last week was beginning to clear as I journeyed home through the quiet morning streets, and so was the mental fog that had enveloped me since Emma’s death, or before. As I drove I whispered the story to myself, adding details and spinning words so that the threads became woven into a tapestry of experience, and the isolated events that had buffeted me over the past weeks were revealed as mere slubs in the texture of the fabric. Even Emma’s death seemed to trace out, however tortuously, from the tangled cords of her sickness. Only Martin stood out, a strange golden string knotted ostentatiously into the front of the tapestry and weaving a shining, incongruous, gorgeous line across the whole.

I arrived home, unremarked, and sat on the edge of my bed. It was 8:00 -- I didn’t need breakfast, it was too early to call my parents, and I didn’t have the serenity to fall back asleep. I showered, got dressed, and went to Emma’s room. Jane Eyre was sitting on her bedside table. I dropped into her cozy chair and snuggled under the quilt that had been laying over the arm, and took up the book. At first I was conscious of the still house and the faint sounds of the neighborhood coming to life, but soon I was reading as I used to do before grades, before professors and classes and cold analysis; I was reading for the sheer joy of reading, pressing along too fast, skimming passages and having to go back; reading favorite bits aloud; absent-mindedly answering the anxious calls of my parents and oblivious to their presence once they arrived; skipping meals and mechanically gnawing the sandwich from the plate my exasperated mother banged down on the table next to me. I read until I finished, and when I finished I stretched my cramped limbs and looked with red and bleary eyes at the clock to discover that it was 3 AM. I staggered to my room and fell into bed with the weary satisfaction of one who has done a good day’s work.

The next day, after Mass, my mother was firm. “You’ve had your day of rest,” she proclaimed, “so don’t even look at that book today. You can go through Emma’s closet for me and start sorting out what needs to be donated and what should be kept.” She parked a complex organizational system of boxes in the doorway to keep me from wandering out of the room.

I sorted diligently for a time, checking the pockets of pants and dresses for hidden items and winnowing out the clothes that were too worn to give away. I inspected shoes. Half the morning and half the closet were gone before I decided to reward myself with a break from clothing to take down some of the boxes at the top of the closet.

The first box held mementos: souvenirs, papers, lacy handkerchiefs, old birthday cards and address books and photos, and beneath them lay a vintage Girl Scout sash covered with round badges. The next box contained photos and letters, but I didn’t recognize any of the faces or names. I dug through the contents, looking for letters from Howard, but perhaps she had stored them somewhere else, or thrown them away. Then, as I fished around in the sea of envelopes and snapshots, my hand closed on a little box, and I drew it out.

It was a small cardboard box of the sort that that held jewelry. I lifted off the lid to reveal two pads of cotton wool, between which were sandwiched two rings. With care I laid the woman’s ring upon my palm and held it under the lamp to inspect the glittering channel of diamonds set across it. As it caught the light, I realized that the inside of band was engraved in a tiny, flowing script: As long as we both shall live.

The man’s thicker ring echoed the details of the woman’s, and when I placed it next to its more delicate counterpart the two rows of diamonds flashed at one another. This ring also had an inscription: I, Howard, take thee, Emma.

A note, much folded, was hidden underneath the bottom pad of cotton wool. I opened it carefully and read: “He didn’t say much at the end, but he did tell me he wanted you to have this, since you always seemed to honor the ring and the vow more than he did.” It was signed “Barbara”. I hunted through the letters but could find no indication of who Barbara might be. Sitting back on my heels, I puzzled over the two circles of gold in my hand. Who was Barbara to Howard? Was she the other woman?Why had Howard kept his ring so long? Why had Emma kept hers? The kind of sentimental impulse that would lead one to keep hold on to the keepsakes of a broken marriage seemed alien to Emma’s character. I stood up and navigated my way past the boxes to get to my bedroom, where I carefully tucked the box in the back of my drawer. There was something private and sad about the pair of rings nestled under their woolen blanket, and I wasn’t ready to expose them to speculation and shame.

Dad had worked himself up to the conviction that we were sitting on a gold mine with the library, and would not hear my demurring. “I’ve called in an appraiser,” he announced as we gathered for dinner. She’ll be coming tomorrow morning.”

“I thought you were talking to the lawyer tomorrow morning,” my mother objected.

“Emma could handle it,” Dad averred. “She knows the books better than anyone else in the family.”

“Dad,” I protested, “I don’t think the books are going to be worth as much as you think.”

He made the excuse that he needed an appraisal for tax purposes anyway, but his eye gleamed with an avaricious light.

The next morning, I opened the door to a short brisk woman in low heels and a big necklace. Her earrings bobbed as she grasped my hand and pumped it once.

“I’m Carolyn Ferrer,” she said in a tone that brooked no doubt. “I spoke to a Mark Trapnel about appraising his aunt’s book collection at this address at 10:30.”

“This is the house,” I confirmed, “and that is the time. My name is Emma Trapnel. Let me show you to the library.”

She stepped in and cast a practiced eye over the shelves. “About 2000 books,” she stated, setting her bag on the table. “Now. I charge by the hour, so I don’t like to waste your time. It helps me sometimes if there’s a list or catalog to go by. Did your aunt keep records of her acquisitions?”

“She didn’t, but I did.”

I brought my notebook to her, and she paged through it. “These are detailed notes,” she complimented, stopping here and there and asking to see the particular book described. “You have a good eye.”

“Thank you. My father is convinced that the library will make us rich, but I doubt it. Almost all the books have literary value and are well-preserved, but they don’t seem to be extremely uncommon editions or to have many distinguishing features.”

We assembled a stack of the volumes that interested her most, and she examined the title pages, gently flipped through the books to ascertain the condition, and checked the bindings.

“Your instincts were right,” she said, laying aside one book and sizing up the rest. “This is a fine collection for reading, but it’s not going to make your family a fortune. Most of the books are under $100, so for those I can offer you an appraisal as a lot.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“I bet it doesn’t.” She regarded me with a keen eye. “Have you done this kind of work before?”

“No,” I answered slowly. “I graduated last year, and for the past six months I stayed here at the house caring for my aunt, who had Alzheimer’s. She died last week.”

“You compiled this list while you were watching someone with Alzheimer’s full-time?” She seemed almost impressed.

“It wasn’t difficult. I’ve always liked to read.”

“Hmm.” She had been packing her bag, but now she asked me, “Are there any other books in the house I should look at before I finish up?”

“She kept a few things in her room.”

We marched down the hall, but she shook her head at the books in the room. “Sorry, same story.” I turned to go out, but instead of following she crossed to Emma’s bedside table and picked up Jane Eyre.

“Is this one of hers?”

“It was. She gave it to me when I was 14. Her ex-husband gave it to her about fifty years ago.”

She examined the title page. “Did this book come with a slipcase?”

“Yes, I still have it in my room.”

“What kind of shape is it in?”

“I’ve kept it safe, so it’s held together well. Of course it’s old, so it has a few dents and scratches.”

“Can I see it?”

I brought it from my room. She slid the book and admired the effect, then gently removed it.

“Look,” she said, almost mildly, showing me the title page. “This is a numbered copy from a limited run by a French publisher, in 1923. It has the Gabain lithographs. It’s been kept in very good condition, almost like new. The slipcase is as good as can be expected.”

“It’s been inscribed,” I said doubtfully.

“Well, yes, that does reduce the value,” she conceded. “But Jane Eyre is a popular book and there are people who wouldn’t mind the inscription if they could lay their hands on a clean copy like this. It should fetch close to $1000.”

I gaped.

“I can give you the names of some reputable book sellers who would be happy to make you an offer on this,” she said, handing it tenderly back to me. “As for your aunt’s collection, I’ll write up a formal appraisal for your father, but it would probably bring in $5000, $6000, not more than that.” She strode back to the library for her bag.

“Was this volume valuable fifty years ago?” I asked as I trailed her.

“Oh, I’d have to look up the prices, but very likely, especially if it were still uninscribed then.”

“It was.”

“Well, whoever bought it must have thought a lot of the recipient to write in such an expensive gift.” We stepped to the door, and she gave my hand another brief shake. “I’m sorry about your aunt’s death.”

“Thank you.”

“Here’s my card,” she said, presenting me with that item. “When you’re free after you wind up your aunt’s affairs, call me and I might know of a few opportunities in the book and appraising line, if that sort of thing interests you.”

I sat in the living room, reverently handling my Jane Eyre. Had Emma known how much it was worth when she’d given it to me? Had she trusted me that much to watch over her beautiful book, or did getting rid of the memory of Howard take precedence over mere financial concerns? Howard himself must have known what it was worth, yet the black scrawl of the inscription betrayed no hesitation in marking up a book of such value. It seemed a waste that this doomed relationship had not only affected the lives of Emma and Howard, but had devalued the book as well. Why couldn’t he have left it blank? Maybe then she wouldn’t have felt compelled to get rid of it.

“I wouldn’t get rid of you,” I whispered to the book. It rested warmly in my lap, and its very presence helped me ignore the fuss in the kitchen. The low appraisal value of the books had caught Dad in an already bad mood, and he was complaining in the kitchen about the legal travails of the day.

“The line at the county clerk’s was out the door,” he growled, pulling a can of Bud Light out of the fridge and popping the top. “It was as if everyone in the county suddenly had to go clerking.”

“Why were you at the county clerk’s?” asked Mom, who’d spent all day in the garage with her laptop, listing items on online auction sites.

“You won’t believe this,” said Dad, flinging himself into one of the chairs at the table. “As we’re going through the documentation and paperwork and whatever at the lawyer’s office, it turns out that he doesn’t have a copy of Emma’s divorce decree. He doesn’t even think she was ever divorced.”

I snapped to attention on the couch.

“What?” asked Mom. “Didn’t she tell you she was divorced?”

“Well, no,” Dad admitted. “Howard just left, a long time ago, and she never said anything about it, and we all assumed... But just in case, I had to check to see if the record was on file at the county clerk’s, and it wasn’t. Now we might have to file for his death certificate just to cover all our bases.”

I found my feet and my voice, and lurched to the doorway, abandoning Jane Eyre on the cushion.

“Are you saying,” I demanded breathily, “that Emma never divorced Howard?”

“Why would she have stayed married to him when they were separated for all those years?” Mom asked incredulously.

“I don’t know,” Dad grumbled. “Why did Emma do anything? Probably only to give us trouble after she was dead.”

“Couldn’t he have divorced her?” wondered Mom.

“I don’t take it that Howard cared much whether he were married or divorced,” said Dad. “Why should he go to the bother if she didn’t?”

“That’s no answer,” I said shrilly.

“That’s all the answer I have,” snapped Dad. “I don’t have my crystal ball. I can’t see back in time. Nothing about it makes sense. All I can tell you is that she never got divorced.”

In a daze I picked up my book and shut myself in my room. I set the book on top of the dresser, and I pulled out the box of rings and laid them softly on top of the book, and I sat and contemplated them: Howard’s extravagant gift and the round symbols of fidelity. Then I did the only thing that made sense. I called Martin.

“I can’t hear a word you’re saying,” he bellowed. “Sorry, I’m stuck at this birthday party with Grace and kids are literally bouncing off the walls.”

“I have something to tell you,” I shouted as best as I could without being overheard in the kitchen.

“Come do it in person, then,” he roared. “I’ll text directions.”

So I dashed out the door clutching the rings and the book, calling vague excuses to my startled parents, and found myself at a birthday party at which fifteen four-year-olds (and one newly minted five year old) were hurling themselves around a big indoor playground. The echoes were deafening.

“You see the problem,” he said as I stood by him in mild shock. “But you were saying...?”

“You must know I can’t tell you anything in here,” I accused. “Why did you tell me to come?”

“Because I wanted to see you,” he said. “Look, it’s cake time, and that’s always the last step. Come on.”

We watched as the youngsters scarfed, smeared, and picked their way through garishly frosted cake.

“I don’t know that I’m cut out to be a parent, if I have to love this kind of thing.”

“Oh, everyone parent hates this kind of thing.”

Grace didn’t seem surprised that I should show up unannounced to such an odd occasion. “Are you going to our house?” she asked as we stood outside the party and Martin and I waited for our ears to stop ringing.

“Yes,” I said. “Your dad owes me dinner, at least.”

“Daddy, are we still getting pizza?” she begged.

He raised an interrogative eyebrow at me.

“I love pizza,” I said. “But not with anchovies.”

“Eww!” she shrieked in delight. “Are you going in our car?”

“Nope, I brought my own. But I’ll meet you at your house.”

Dinner was a more festive affair than last time. Grace was somber for a moment on hearing that the old lady from last time had gone to heaven, but sorrow did not linger naturally on her small face. She told me everything she knew, and then some, over dinner. She showed me her room and all of her toys and games and books, until Martin hovered uneasily and made threatening noises about bed time. She moped and fussed a bit, and brushed her teeth and showed me her pajamas. Martin read to her, I read to her, and finally he had to hold the doorknob while she kicked and raged.

“Is it like this often?” I asked him over the doorknob.

“She’s wound up tonight from the party and the company,” he said. “Most nights she goes down easily.”

“I’m sorry to throw off your schedule.”

“If you were here more often, you could become part of the schedule,” he suggested.

“If I were here more often, I wouldn’t have to wait all night to tell you something.”

“You might,” he said, and he slumped so wearily against the doorframe that all my sarcasm melted away.

“Here, come see what I brought,” I urged, peeling his fingers off the doorknob. He treaded downstairs slowly while I ran out to the car and brought in my treasures in to display on the coffee table.

“Sit down, and I’ll tell you a story.” I recounted the events of the day: the value of Jane Eyre, the finding of the rings, the ambiguous note, the discovery of the un-divorce. He listened attentively and with rising excitement, and once I’d finished he took the last point first.

“She was never divorced?”

“Looks that way.”

“She stayed married.”

“Yes, but why?”

“Because she understood!” he exclaimed, suddenly animated. “She wouldn’t break her vows. That’s the key thing.”

“But why?” I cried. “There’s so much of the story we don’t know yet.”

“I don’t care,” he declared. “I don’t have to know the whole story to know that this is the part that matters most. She said, ‘‘Til death do us part’, and she meant it. Oh, I admire that woman, Emma.”

I pondered. “She didn’t want his book around, though. She gave it to me.”

“She gave it to you because she thought you deserved it. And she was right. Look at the care you’ve taken of it. What are your plans for it? A thousand dollars is a pretty chunk of cash.”

I looked at him, with his greenish-gray eyes warm behind his glasses, and that one lock of hair falling over his forehead again. He had picked up the book and was holding it respectfully, letting the pages slip through his fingers as he studied the lithographs. Closing the book, he stroked fine leather of the cover and spine with gentle fingers. Then he glanced up and met my eyes, and I was caught and tangled in his gaze.

He broke away first, and dropped his eyes to the book. “Are you going to sell it or keep it?” he asked, a bit huskily, but I couldn’t reply until my whirling thoughts had crystallized.

“Neither, I think,” I replied slowly, with a hot flush rising in my cheeks.

He looked, not at my eyes, but at my hands. “And how does that work out?”

“I’ll show you.” Kneeling beside the coffee table, I pulled my fountain pen out of my purse and opened to the flyleaf of the book, and before either of us could stop me, I placed the pen under Howard’s inscription and wrote: “To Martin, with love from Emma.”

“Emma!” he cried, snatching the pen from my hand, “That’s a thousand-dollar book!”

“Not anymore,” I said shakily, with a little despairing gesture. “I’ve just decreased the value for everyone but you.”

He took up the volume and stared at it, and his hands too were shaking slightly. “But this was a gift from Aunt Emma.”

“I hope,” I said awkwardly, capping my pen and twisting it with warm and nervous motions, “I hope I might be keeping it in the family.”

He closed the book and put it on the table. He took the pen from my hand and put it beside the book, and then, sliding off the couch to kneel beside me on the floor, he combed my hair out of my face with his fingers, and kissed me long and deep.

I still have the book. I still have the rings. I still have the mystery of Emma and Howard’s marriage, but Martin was right: the marriage matters, in the end, more than the mystery. And Emma was right too: there’s always another woman, and I often wake to find her in my bed, red curls dangling in my face, begging me to get up and make breakfast for her in Martin’s kitchen.

My kitchen.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Profiles in String 29: Penultimate Chapter

I think I was wrong that all my shaking of last week was from weariness. It's cold in the house. We seem to hold around 50 degrees in the big unheated rooms and spaces. But, the boiler is ordered and may even be installed by late next week. We're getting heat, and nothing else, for Christmas this year -- next year too, probably.

...

There’s something very disconcerting about waking up in a strange bed, no matter how comfortable. The shock of entering consciousness in an alien place is enough to offset the effects of a night’s sleep, no matter how sound. My sleep was not particularly sound. It was broken and troubled with dreams, and I would drift in and out of awareness that I was in a place I ought not to be.

I opened my eyes and laid still, trying to place the dark room in my mind. It was neat enough, if neat meant “nothing on the floor”. Clothes were draped neatly over chairs and books were stacked neatly on most available surfaces. Several mugs were stashed on the bookshelf, accompanied by a few shot glasses. There were only two photos in the room, both on the dresser: a black and white image of a gargoyle with an icicle erupting from his open maw, and a snapshot of a girl with vibrant red curls holding up a big fish on a line. A clock told me it was 6 AM.

I suddenly sat up in the bed and remembered, appalled, that it belonged to Martin, that he had put me there last night after… I remembered hurling myself at his head, and I groaned and hid my face in my hands. Now I was stuck in his room, in his shirt, and there was no way out except past him where he must be sleeping on the couch. I found my shoes, unbuttoned his big shirt and hung it on the chair, shivering a bit in my camisole, and left the room to tiptoe downstairs. My coat was right by the door, and my keys were in the pocket. Except they weren’t, and Martin wasn’t on the couch.
He was sitting with his coffee at the table, feet hooked over the rungs of his chair, reading the paper while crunching toast. I hesitated awkwardly at the edge of the room, and he looked up over the paper.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, as easily as if I came down to breakfast every morning.

I sat down while he rose and poured coffee.

“I hope you weren’t too uncomfortable sleeping on the couch last night,” I faltered.

“Oh, no,” he replied. “It was infinitely preferable to Grace’s toddler bed.”

I hid behind my mug, calculating how quickly I could get out the door. It was hours before my parents would expect to hear from me, but the fact remained that I was going to have to drive home in my pajamas... I blushed and wondered if the floor would be so obliging as to swallow me now.

“What I did miss last night,” said Martin, slinging a plate of toast in front of me, “is brushing my teeth.” He started up the stairs, then turned and eyed me. “If I go up and do that, are you going to run out on me?”

“No,” I lied.

“Ah, in that case I didn’t need to hold onto your keys,” he said, disappearing from sight. I sighed and went over to rummage in the fridge. Soon I had milk, eggs, and butter on the counter.

“Can I help you find something?” He had come down as I was rattling through the pans in a lower cabinet.

“If I’m to be stuck here,” I said, extricating myself from the cookware, “I intend to eat something more than toast. French toast, to be exact. Where is your sugar?”

He handed me a sweater he’d brought downstairs, and then reached into the pantry and tossed a bag out onto the counter.

“Thanks,” I said, pulling the sweater over my head.

“Not at all.” He had his back to me, preparing to brew fresh coffee. “Nothing gives me greater satisfaction than to see you making breakfast in my kitchen.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to touch that one, so I kept my mouth closed. In silence I whipped up the eggs and milk with sugar and vanilla and dipped the bread in the mixture, and he tended the slices in the hot pan with equal dedication. When the batch was finished, we carried our plates and mugs to the table and sat opposite each other.

We chewed with great concentration for a moment, then Martin put down his fork.

“So,” he said, “who starts the conversation about last night: you or me?”

I leaned my tired forehead against my hand. “I suppose I don’t deserve to get out of it, after my behavior last night.”

“You make it sound so very horrible.”

I lifted my head to glare at him. “Yes, it was appalling, okay? I’m sorry about it.”

“I’m not.” He looked down at his mug, twisting it as he spoke. “It would be hard for me to be sorry that when you were desperate and lonely you came to me. I know how difficult this past week has been for you, when it seemed like no one cared that Aunt Emma was dead. I could see how much you were struggling yesterday at the funeral and at your house. All that emotion and grief had to come out sometime. It means more to me than you know that you trust me so much as a friend that you could depend on me to be a safe outlet.”

I stared. “A safe outlet?”

He pushed away the mug. “Even you can’t deny,” he said, with a faint edge in his voice, “that I was as safe as I could be.”

I rose from my chair and retreated from the harsh glare of the kitchen light to stand facing the living room, arms clasped across my chest. “You’re right that I was overwrought last night,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “I hold things in at the best of times, and this week has been one blow after another. I’m not ashamed that I was upset. Anyone would cry over these things.”

He was quiet, but I didn’t turn around. Finally he too rose and carried his plate of half-eaten toast to the sink. “Then I guess we’ve had our conversation,” he said resolutely.

I twisted around to face him. “I came over here,” I said with repressed vehemence, “because I wanted to kiss you. And I threw myself at you because I wanted you to kiss me back. I accused you once of pushing and pushing, but last night I would have kept pushing until I was broken if you had let me. You did keep me safe, from myself and from yourself. I put you in the position of having to stop things if they were going to be stopped, without even thinking about what it might mean for you. That’s the behavior I’m ashamed of.”

He was standing at the sink, regarding me intently as the water coursed unheeded over his plate. Suddenly he dropped it in the sink and crossed over to me, taking my face in his wet hands. I waited, but he studied my face for a moment and said, “Let’s have a different conversation, then.”

“About what?”

He exhaled. “I’m attracted to you, Emma, don’t doubt that. I would love nothing more than to act on that, but I have to be honest with you about what that entails. I’m not free to move in and out of relationships at will or to take years to figure out where I stand. I have to play for keeps, because of Grace.”

“What do you mean by playing for keeps?” I asked, tracing his lower lip with my thumb. He took my hand away and held it.

“You’re almost six years younger than me. You want to be self-sufficient, to start a career, to be productive. I’ve known too many women who see those things as being in conflict with marriage and children. What I mean is, if you want to start this, would you, at twenty-three, think seriously about having a step-daughter and getting married -- about marrying me -- sooner rather than later?”

“Are you... proposing?”

He gave a shaky laugh. “No. Do you want me to?”

“Wait.” I wriggled out of his grasp and sat on the couch. “Slow down. Are you saying that you won’t kiss me again unless I can be sure I want to marry you?”

“I’m saying I don’t want to start anything unless I have a good chance of finishing. And that Grace and I are a package deal.”

I sat and tried to ponder having a four-year-old daughter, but the concept was as bouncy and elusive as a rubber ball. “That’s a great deal to have an answer for right away.” Rising, I pulled on my coat over his borrowed sweater. “Are you going to give me back my keys?”

He took them out of his pocket and held them out to me. I took the keys, and his hand.

“I think it’s manipulative of you,” I murmured in his ear, “to bind all this up with one little kiss.”

“Right now,” he said, turning me by my shoulders and marching me out the door, “there are no little kisses.”

Friday, December 2, 2011

Profiles in String 28: Antepenultimate Chapter

I steered a fine line, and I hope you'll agree I stayed on the right side.

...

The Funeral Mass proceeded apace. Few tears were shed; Emma had been old and ill, and though her death was sudden, it had caught almost no one but me by surprise. In short order we were following the casket out of the church and preparing to join the procession to the interment. I wasn’t able to speak to Martin on my way out, but he smiled at me past the press of people as I followed my parents to the car. The motorcade was not very long, and all the way to the cemetery I watched his silver car in the rearview mirror.

My dad parked the car behind the hearse and the gathering mourners observed quietly as the casket was carefully unloaded. Again the pallbearers took up their burden. My mother asked me, “Are you coming?”

“You go ahead,” I told her, watching Martin making his way past the line of cars. “I’m waiting for someone.”

I leaned back on my hands against the car and he came and leaned against it too, arms folded against his chest, not quite touching me. We stood silently as everyone else began the short, slow journey across the grass to the grave site. I longed to rest my head against him, to feel his arm through the rough cloth of his coat, but instead I said, “The woman standing over there in the red jacket is my mother.”

He flicked a casual glance at the knot of people assembling at the grave site. “You mean the one trying to look as if she’s not watching us?”

I almost smiled.

“Your veil is very becoming,” he said. I wasn’t ready to answer that question today, and I wished he wouldn’t look at me with such a grave and unreadable expression in his gray-green eyes.

“I hope it wasn’t too much trouble for you to come back early for the funeral,” I said, awkwardly twisting the conversation away from myself. It was difficult to stand so near him and yet be separated by this careful distance he seemed to be maintaining, so different from his usual light and irrepressible demeanor. I gave him an opening. “I’ll try not to stage a repeat performance of the way I bawled like an idiot last time I saw you.”

His voice was as soft as a caress. “There’s nothing wrong with crying at a funeral.”

“If I start, I won’t be able to stop,” I confessed in a hoarse whisper, turning my head away from him to study the way the edges of the asphalt road crumbled into the new green grass. He straightened up and slid his arm behind my back, and I dared to hope that he would pull me to himself and hold me safe, shutting out all the noise and chaos and numbness of the past week, and pushing aside all memory of the battered body in the casket. Instead, he found my hand I was leaning against, and pulled it out to intertwine his fingers with my own. “We should go,” he said, and tugged me gently away from the car. As we walked over to join the people milling around the grave, I was sure I could feel his thumb lightly tracing minute but electric circles along my palm.

I endured the burial by clinging to his hand and giving into the urge to lay my head against him. When tears threatened to overwhelm me, I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead against his arm and focused on the fact of his presence beside me, warm and solid and real. After Emma was consigned to earth and the priest had prayed the final blessing, the mourners began to drift back to their cars. Peggy had come up and touched my arm, her eyes red with weeping, and followed the rest. I remained by the open grave with Martin, purposefully ignoring the sight of her and my mother in furtive gossipy conference.

“Do you think I was wrong to keep Emma’s rosary?” I asked Martin, finding my voice after the silence by the grave. “Perhaps I should have let it be buried with her.”

“Keep it and use it,” he said. “That would please her most.”

We wandered slowly back toward the car. “There’s a reception of sorts at Emma’s house,” I said. “Are you doing anything after this? Will you come?”

“My whole day is free,” he answered. “Will you ride over with me?”

“Yes, but what about Grace? Don’t you need to pick her up this afternoon?”

“No. Since I wasn’t supposed to get into town until late tonight, Tom and Janice decided to take her with them to Janice’s sister’s house this weekend.”

In the car it occurred to me that the combination of insular family gathering, and Martin, in town for the first time in two weeks, might not be the most felicitous mixture. The family atmosphere had been very thick last night at the house, and today gave every promise of being louder and longer. And then there were Uncle Larry and his boys...

“You don’t drink Bud Light, do you?” I asked anxiously.

He was indignant. “I’ve been accused of many things in my life, but that’s low even for you, Emma.”

“I wasn’t trying to be offensive,” I apologized meekly.

He glanced at me in surprise. “You are wound about as tight as you can go. Let’s drive around a bit before we go back.”

I breathed out a sigh of relief. “I’d like that.”

We took the scenic route home, and as we drove our easy camaraderie started to reestablish itself. He bantered and I snapped, and I felt more alive than I had in the past week, and perhaps even since I’d seen him last.

“Let’s just keep driving,” I suggested suddenly. “Let’s go somewhere. Anywhere.”

“We can’t do that, Emma. Your family will miss you soon.” He turned us in the direction of the house, and soon we were parked in front of Peggy’s house. The entire curb and driveway of Emma’s house was overflowing with cars bearing license plates from several different states. I sat in the car while Martin opened my door, and only reluctantly took his hand when he offered to help me out.

“Shall we?” he asked. I hung back.

“Please, let’s not go in,” I whispered desperately, clutching his hand in both of mine. “It’s quiet out here. We can talk.”

“You need to go in,” he said, and tried to lift my chin to make me look at him, but I refused to meet his eyes. He took my arm and ushered me along before him toward Emma’s front walk.

“People are expecting you,” he reasoned with me.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” I said grimly as we neared the door.

My predictions were without error. The house was bursting with relatives and a few old friends, people who’d know each other in the good old days and were reliving them with manic zest. And it wasn’t just the good old days that were revived -- Dad and Uncle Larry has started on the first wary round of an old political argument that threatened to blow up into full-blown feud before the evening was over. The warmth of so many bodies opening so many beer cans in so little space was oppressive. Martin and I were jostled and joshed as we retreated to the big plate glass window at the back of the living room. The basketball crew behind us roared their approval of the game and talked utter trash about the abilities of the competition, and each other.

“There’s nowhere to go,” I told him bitterly as we looked out at the smokers in the backyard. “Every seat is taken. Even the easy chair in Emma’s room is occupied by vultures picking through her things. The only quiet space in the house is my bedroom, and you don’t seem like you’d approve of that today.”

“Maybe they’ll leave soon,” he murmured.

I scoffed resentfully. “This could go on all night, believe me.”

We stood in widening silence as the house behind us seethed with life. My mother came pushing through the crowd toward us. “Emma, I’ve been trying to find you all afternoon! We’re sorting out the kitchen stuff while everyone’s here, and we all decided you should have first dibs, so come tell us what you want.” She smiled in a non-predatory fashion at Martin. “I’m Emma’s mother, Jennifer Trapnel. So nice to meet you.”

He made polite reply, I made brief introductions, and we moved into the kitchen. The scene reminded me of Thanksgiving dinners of yore, except with an added acquisitive edge as the women circled the sets of dishes and glassware. I wanted to retreat to the corner with Martin, but I was dragged into the center of the negotiations. Martin stuck it out as best he could, but finally, during a lull in the proceedings, he came up behind me and spoke in my ear.

“It looks like you’ll be busy for a while, so I’m going to head home,” he said. “Do you think you’ll be free tonight?”

“I highly doubt it,” I snapped.

He rested his hand on the back of my neck and massaged his thumb up and down my spine. “Well, good night, then,” he said quietly, and was gone.

His touch lingered all evening, through the sports madness and memories and beer cans and increasingly acrimonious debates. My dad slammed into the kitchen to gather his strength for the next bout with Uncle Larry, and saw me wilting quietly next back near the pantry as the ladies reshelved the china and started to make plans for a late dinner.

“How’s it going, hon?” he asked, putting his arm around me.

“I’m so tired, Dad,” I moaned. “I’m going to bed.”

“Poor baby, you’ll never get to sleep with all this commotion,” he commiserated. Raising his voice, he called to Mom across the kitchen, “Jennifer, Emma is exhausted.”

Suddenly everyone was all solicitation. Plans were formed for reassembling in the lobby of the hotel and bringing in food. The sports fans offered to get hot wings for the whole group. Soon the crew was cleaning up and packing up, and I went to sit in my room until I heard them all clattering out the door.

Mom and Dad were the last to go, and she came in to see me before they left, her face soft with concern. “You just get some sleep, sweetie,” she urged me. “Get up as late as you want in the morning, and don’t mind about us; we’ll probably want to sleep in too. We won’t expect to come over tomorrow until we hear from you.”

Finally alone in the house, I discovered that the promised rest eluded me. I kicked off my heels and tossed my funeral dress on a chair, slipping into soft pants and a snug camisole. My neck and fingers and face all burned where Martin had touched me, and I prowled restlessly as I brushed my teeth and got ready for bed. He had not called, and would not call, but still I carried my phone obsessively. The long-awaited stillness of the house began to grate on me as a stinging reminder of Emma’s absence. After pacing an hour in this desolation of loneliness, I grabbed my keys and pulled on my coat, and in ten minutes I was trying Martin’s door.

It was locked. I rapped hard, and after a moment the light in the hall was switched on and he opened the door in his t-shirt and jeans. “Emma,” he said, hand on the door, and his voice and expression were a mixture of surprise and, for one fleeting instant, sudden longing.

I brushed past him into the entryway. “I hardly think it’s fair of you to lock your door when you’re always walking in on me without knocking.”

“Only when I’m expected,” he said guardedly, closing the door softly and remaining with his back to it. I let my coat fall to the floor and took a step toward him. He tensed slightly, and the Polish eagle on his arm rippled.

“I would never have known you had a tattoo if you hadn’t had your shirt off the night we met,” I said, running my hand up his arm to brush the eagle with my fingertips. “Peggy said you weren’t shy about taking off your shirt. When would you have showed it to me?”

“Emma, what do you want?” he asked, keeping his voice steady with effort, and I felt a desperate thrill to see how hard it was for him not to let his eyes wander down my body.

“You,” I whispered, cupping his face in my hands. “Oh, Martin, only you.” I pulled his head toward mine and kissed him, hungrily. As I melted into him, I could feel him responding, meeting and matching my eagerness, his hands thrust in my hair and then sliding roughly from my shoulders to my waist. My lips moved along his jaw and down his neck to...

“Emma. Emma, stop.” His breathing was ragged and he spoke as much to himself as to me, holding my face away from his. “Calm down. You’ve had a hard day. You need time to think.”

“No I don’t,” I insisted, pulling him toward me. Once more I caught him with his defenses lowered, and it was a moment before he jerked away.

“Up until today,” he said, in a voice harsh with desire, “you’ve been the soul of caution, and I could scarcely get you to stand near me. And here tonight you’re suddenly throwing yourself at me hard, way too hard.”

“You were the one who said you would be delighted if I responded in kind,” I challenged, my breath keeping pace with his. “Have you changed your mind, or can you only fit in flirting on your own schedule?”

“This is more than flirting, Emma.” He stood back, and this time he let his eyes rest on my body, taking in every curve through my thin clothes. Then he leaned forward against me, and I lifted my face toward his in anticipation. But he lifted a dress shirt from a hook on the wall behind me, and tucked my arms into the sleeves. Settling the shirt on my shoulders, he ran his hands down along the front of my body and starting from the bottom edge of the shirt, he fastened every button up to my chin. Then he kissed me once, gently, and steered me over to sit on the couch.

I was almost shaking with frustrated passion and embarrassment and rage, but he said nothing, only looked at me as I hunched in a tight ball with my knees drawn up to my chest. Then he sighed and kissed my hair and held me, murmuring, “It’s okay.” The tears that I had been fighting down all week poured out in rising waves of hysteria, and I cried against him for the second time, wailing in grief until I was almost sick with exhaustion. How long I wept I don’t know, but by the end I was dimly aware of him shepherding me upstairs and tucking me into his bed.

“Good night, love,” he soothed, brushing my hair off my forehead. Then he stepped out and shut the door behind him, and I slept until morning.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Profiles in String 27

My father took over dealing with the business end of death. I would have had no idea where to begin, but he was Emma’s trustee and could talk to the lawyer downtown and the bank and the mortuary with ease. The funeral was set for the following Friday, and I spent the week in a quiet haze. Nothing was demanded of me. My mother was pleased to baby me, and I accepted it as I had accepted her care when I was a child. After the building months of tension and watchfulness, it was a relief to release all responsibilities for a time and allow myself to be provided for. Mom was full of schemes for my well-being and emotional health, ferrying me around to the salon for a hair cut and a facial, or to the mall for a dress for the funeral.

“This looks like something you’d like,” said mom, plucking a black sheath dress off a rack and inspecting the fabric. “You can get a lot of wear out of it after the funeral, too.”

“Not black.”

Mom was surprised. “I thought you preferred black.”

“I’d rather get something with some color.” I was firm. “Black makes you look dead.”

Phones rang all week with updates from relatives making travel plans. Uncle Larry, Dad’s brother, planned to come in with some of his grown kids; some distant cousins were making the trip. Everyone was planning to stay at Mom and Dad’s hotel. It was turning into a big family reunion, and of course everyone wanted to kick back and catch up. “We’ll all be meeting up at Emma’s house following the graveside service,” Dad told anyone who called. “It’s empty.”

Of course, there was the issue of Emma’s empty house. It was held in trust now, but it would have to be sold before any inheritance could be realized. No one really wanted to live in it: Mom and Dad had just settled in Florida and had no plans to move back; Uncle Larry had his own place; Stacy and Brad liked New York and were already babbling excitedly about the quality of the local school district. And I, even if I could have afforded to live there, didn’t want it either. It was a house filled with memories, but they were Emma’s memories, not mine. Of course there was plenty of work to be done before the house could be sold, and short of other plans, it seemed natural that I would stay on and oversee the fix-up and cleaning out of the house.

By Thursday funeral preparations had assumed a festival atmosphere. Uncle Larry had blown into town with a few of his adult children, and after the rosary and vigil at the funeral home they had pulled up to the house with a stack of pizzas and a 24-pack of Bud Light. Mom had poured her ferocious energies into clearing out the cabinets, and a trove of lost and forgotten items were assembled for the amusement of the company. The basketball game was switched on, and the cousins who weren’t crouched in front of the TV, pizza in hand, were helping Dad clear furniture from the front room to the garage so Mom and Jocelyn, Larry’s second wife, could vacuum and rearrange and keep themselves busy in the way that in-laws do at big family occasions.

I helped out a bit, but eventually my mother urged me rest up. “Don’t worry about all this, sweetie, we’ll take care of it. Go lay down before you bite someone’s head off,” she ordered, escorting me to my room. I flopped on my bed and stayed there for the rest of the evening. The laughter and commotion and shouting of the sports fans drifted into my room even through the pillow I rammed against the crack at the bottom of the door. I could catch snippets of conversation from the front room where Mom and Jocelyn were hiding out from the boisterous mass of Trapnel guys working themselves up to a lather over the game.

“...Still in shock, you know....been a hard week for her...living with Aunt Emma for six months would be enough to drive anyone crazy...seeing anyone?...nephew of the lady next door, he has a little girl...did you want to look at those dishes now?”

I rolled over and looked at the clock. It was 9:30 PM, and the crew in the living room might not leave for hours. I had retreated as far as I could get without having to walk past everyone and leave the house. Martin wasn’t answering his phone, doubtless because he was out somewhere having a better time than I was.

Ten bitter minutes later, I received a text from the man himself: Coming home a day early for funeral. Brief layover in Charlotte NC. Get in after midnight. See you tomorrow.

We arrived at church early the next morning. I sat with Mom and Dad, clutching the rosary with the clear green stones, which I’d taken off Emma’s bedside table and claimed for my own, to no protest. I had also taken a black lace chapel veil from a drawer in Emma’s room, which did occasion some complaint. My mother had asked pointedly, “Don’t you think that’s a little dramatic, Emma?” as I pinned in on before Mass. Now I parked defiantly in the front pew, daring anyone to challenge me on my right to wear Emma’s veil to Emma’s funeral.

As it turned out, no one was particularly interested to talk to me about Emma. Old friends and visiting relatives were chattering around the nave, catching up on years of gossip in what were intended to be hushed tones, and the cacophony of their murmuring filled the large stone church with whispering echoes. I stiffened my spine and let the beads of the rosary slip automatically through my fingers as I waited for Martin. Peggy and John were already there -- she had caught my eye and smiled encouragingly as I craned around to watch the door -- but perhaps it was unreasonably early to expect him. My dad gave my hand a consoling squeeze. “Not too much longer, hon,” he said as he rose to gather with the other pallbearers in the back.

The congregation rustled to its feet in waves and turned to watch as the priest began by blessing the coffin in the back. I turned as well, but I didn’t see at the coffin. Martin was standing next to Peggy and John, looking exactly as when I’d first met him at Christmas, in suit and tie with his fair brown hair falling over his glasses, and his eyes were fixed on me.

“You go ahead,” I told her, watching Martin making his way past the line of cars. “I’m waiting for someone.”

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Profiles in String 26

I wrote 50,000 words, and all I got was this little badge!

And Darwin's back, so those of you who are heartily sick of Emma and Martin should be cheered. For all four readers of this story: I can't wrap it tonight, but I think we're heading for a close over the weekend.

...

There had been little for me to do after the accident. The police were mainly interested in talking to witnesses, and I had seen nothing. Emma’s body was loaded into an ambulance. I had been wrapped in a blanket and tucked in the back of a heated squad car while the officers gathered accounts. The distraught driver, a petite ponytailed blond on her way to a gig as a personal trainer, had sobbed in hysterics.

“I never saw her,” she wailed. “It was pouring so hard, you know? And I had the wipers on high, but I just couldn’t see anything. And then -- oh my God! -- she just stepped out in front of me, she didn’t even look at me. I barely had time to even hit my brakes. She just appeared in front of me,” she repeated, appealing through tears to the officers, the bystanders, and me. “I never even saw her until it was too late.”

Calls had been made. I said I know not what to my father, who offered to take care of calling other family members and promised that he and Mom would make flight arrangements that day. I fielded anxious calls from my mother and Stacy, who seemed to be under the misapprehension that I’d been injured, as they kept asking if I were all right. I spoke in a clear, pinched voice to Peggy, who drove immediately down to the scene, took one look at my white face, and ran interference for me and contacted whoever needed to be contacted -- the parish, the doctor’s office, I don’t know. I shook and made shrill wisecracks, and Peggy spoke soothing words to me and asked if I was okay to drive myself home.

That night in the living room, the green brocade sofa was still frayed and shabby. The green carpet still matted with age and the massive television still bore up under the weight of the remote, a TV Guide, and a box of tissues. The large dining table still stood in its usual spot between the living room and the kitchen and every chair was tucked in its place. Every individual aspect of the space was substantially the same, but the essential character of the room was altered. It was not a place of joy or anger or tension or grief. It was empty, a place of nothingness.

I wandered aimlessly, touching an item here, pausing in a doorway there. There was nothing I wanted to do. No one needed anything from me. I was free.

After a time my phone rang. It was Martin, calling at the usual time. It rang, and I looked at it as it rang. I would have preferred nothing more in the world than to suddenly find myself laying beside him, quietly sheltered in his arms, but to talk to him on the phone at that moment was beyond my abilities. The sound stopped after a moment, but I wished it would continue for hours so at least I could know that he was thinking of me.

There was a knock on the door. I laid on the couch. The door opened, and I heard Peggy calling, “Emma? I’ve brought some dinner for you.”

I appeared in the hallway. “That’s kind of you, Peggy. I don’t think I’m very hungry.”

“You probably don’t feel like eating, but when you do, you won’t feel like cooking.”

She told me a few things about the calls she’d made, and the expressions of sympathy she’d heard. I nodded and carried on competent conversation.

“Do you want me to stay here tonight, Emma?” she asked, getting ready to leave. “I could sleep on the couch?”

“No, but thank you. I think I’d like to be by myself.”

She accepted that, but at the door she added, “If there anything you need me to do for you tonight -- run to the store, do the laundry, anything?”

I hesitated. “Could you... would you call Martin and tell him about it?” She looked surprised, so I rushed on, “I... I can’t talk to him right now. Tell him I miss him and I wish he were here.”

“Of course,” she said, so gently and simply that I had to set my face to a rigid blankness until she left.

I went into the kitchen and poked through paper bag of food. Peggy had made macaroni and cheese -- from scratch, apparently -- and salad, and there also was a bottle of sparkling juice and a box of good tea. I tried to eat a noodle or two, but the effort of stabbing a noodle onto the tine of a fork and lifting it to my mouth was just more bother than I wanted to put myself through. I left everything sitting on the table and threw myself face down onto the couch. After fifteen minutes my phone buzzed with a text message from Martin.

I’m so sorry. I understand.

I laid on the couch and refreshed the screen until the battery ran dangerously low and whispered the words to myself as if they were an orison to with which to summon him.

Sleeping on the couch wasn’t really as attractive in theory as in concept, so eventually I staggered down the hall to the bathroom to brush my teeth. My reflection in the mirror was strange and pale and desolate. I felt as if I’d never truly seen my face before this moment. Emma’s cup for cleaning her dentures was on the side of the sink where she’d left it this morning, and I did not move it. I didn’t move any of her things, or touch them, in case -- I couldn’t clearly formulate the reason in my head -- in case they might be needed again. They were still her things.

My parents flew in the next day, Saturday. I was glad to see them; I had missed them more than I realized. They each held me in turn when they arrived, and I felt warm and protected, safe and weightless for a brief time. Mom set immediately to cleaning the kitchen, fascinated by the odd assortment of items stashed away among the dishes and the pantry. Dad sat with me on the couch while I told him the whole story of the accident, what little there was to tell.

“I didn’t even see it happen, Dad,” I told him, my head resting on his shoulder. “I was doing just what the doctor told me to do, making sure that she had her walker, so she wouldn’t fall and hurt herself. What a stupid reason, right? If she’d fallen at least she’d still be alive now. I should have locked her in the car until I got the damn walker open.”

“Aunt Emma always had a mind of her own,” he pointed out. “She could have unlocked the door if she’d wanted to get out.”

“At least that might have given me time to catch her.”

My mother entered the living room carrying an item enclosed in its tupperware container. “Emma, this bag of flour expired five years ago!” she exclaimed. “Why didn’t you get rid of it?”

“Emma didn’t like the things to be moved around too much, and she seemed to know if I threw anything away. It was easier not to upset her.”

“Well, I’m tossing it now,” Mom proclaimed, heading back into the kitchen. I opened my mouth to protest, then stopped.

“It can’t possibly matter to Emma now, hon,” reasoned Dad, seeing my twitch. But it seemed wrong to start clearing out her things so soon. That was her expired flour, after all.

Mom and Dad were staying at a hotel, since they weren’t particularly keen to sleep in Emma’s bed. Dad, like Peggy, offered to stay on the couch, but I still wanted to be alone. Their vitality affected me strangely. I knew that Emma’s death mattered to Dad. She had been a favorite aunt of his, and he had many fond memories of her. But it seemed to me as if, for them, Emma had been dead for years. They weren’t shy about touching her things or throwing away junk, or speculating on who might get her dishes or furniture. They had not lived with her for the past six months, feeding her and clothing her and fighting with her and loving her.

I had no desire to sit up alone in the empty house, so I got ready for bed early. Sleep didn’t come instantly, though. My active imagination wrote and rewrote Emma’s last moments, crafting new endings or magnifying minute details of that morning into glaring portents of impending catastrophe. I should not have let her get out of the car. I should not have bothered with her walker. I should not have taken my eyes off of her. I knew, better than anyone, how unpredictable she could be. How could I have been so careless?

The mental fidgeting became so disruptive that I couldn’t lay still, so I sat up and swung my legs out of bed, preparatory to making some of Peggy’s tea, when my phone rang. I snatched it up. It was Martin.

I tried to sort out my emotions. After the day with my parents, I wanted to talk to someone who knew Emma as I did. But I still didn’t know whether I was ready to handle the vulnerability of having to express myself to him in words. Without having come to a full decision, I took a deep breath and answered the phone.

“Hey.”

“Emma,” he said, his voice warm with concern. “I’m so sorry. I wondered a bit when you didn’t answer the phone last night, but I didn’t expect anything like this.”

“Neither did I.”

There was a pause.

“I keep wanting to ask if you’re all right,” he said, “but that doesn’t seem like a good question right now.”

“No.”

Another pause.

“Do you even want to talk now, or should I let you go?”

“I... I’d rather just listen to your voice, if you don’t mind.” I curled up in bed again and laid my head on the pillow.

“I’d be happy to oblige, if I could think of the right thing to say.”

“How’s Grace?”

“Oh, she’s fine. I don’t think she really misses me when I’m gone, which is one of the reasons I decided to stop traveling so much. She’s not used to me being around all the time, and I want that to change.” He waited for a second to see if I would respond. “I had some barbeque here in Kansas City.”

“Was it good?”

“Our clients took us to this restaurant where you can order sausage wrapped in bacon and barbequed up with way too much sauce. I like bacon as much as the next man, but I couldn’t even look at it. You would have been appalled.”

“That’s just vile.”

“I don’t know if I’d go that far, but it almost put me off bacon, and that takes some doing.”

I had nothing to say to that, and the silence stretched on.

“Emma,” he said at last, “I really am so sorry. I know you don’t want talk about it, but I don’t want you to think that I don’t care. I hate the thought of you being all alone right now.”

“My parents were here,” I said with difficulty.

“That’s good. I’m glad you had some company.”

“They weren’t good company. It doesn’t really seem to matter to them that Emma is...” I hastily reached for a safer formula. “...isn’t here.”

“My poor Emma,” he comforted, with a catch in his voice that nearly undid me.

Now my words rushed up and forced their way past the tightness in my throat. “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, Martin. This wasn’t how Emma was supposed to go. She was supposed to die of Alzheimer's, and now she’s one more traffic statistic. I would have taken care of her until the end. Instead she died because I was taking care of her.”

“Emma,” Martin said gently, “you’re blaming yourself, but this isn’t your fault. It isn’t anyone’s fault. She might have died at Christmas when she got lost; we just happened to find her in time. You kept her safe as long as you possibly could. That’s what matters.”

He was right, of course, but it was no solace to me.

I laid with my eyes closed and listened to him breathe.

“Do you want me to let you go?” he asked finally.

“No,” I said. “I wish you could read to me until I fell asleep.”

I heard a faint rustling. “Well, here are your options,” he said. “I have on the one hand a half-completed draft of ‘Supply Chain Efficiencies and Warehouse Management Technology’ and on the other, a copy of The Tailor of Gloucester I picked up for Grace.”

“You went on a two-week trip and didn’t bring a book for yourself?”

“I don’t think,” he said simply, “that you really want to hear about five years in a Vietnamese prison camp.”

Pages turned.

In the time (he began) of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets -- when gentlemen wore ruffle, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta -- there lived a tailor in Gloucester.

I pulled up my blanket and wrapped myself in his voice.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Profiles in String 25

48,728/50,000. After getting three hours' sleep I had a few moments of hating everything today, including my kids, Darwin, and all of you, until I realized that I was going to be able to bring it in tomorrow. Today.

Here's a picture of me with the radiant Sarah Reinhart taken two weeks ago, after I'd spent a good deal of the weekend in the hospital with my mom. I'm the bleary-looking one on the right. You can imagine how haggard I look now.
...

Every night when Martin called me, I had new and strange stories about Emma to relate.

“Last night she was dozing in the easy chair in the living room, and her walker was standing in front of the fireplace. She doesn’t like the stupid walker, and she often parks it right there. As I was passing through from the hall to the kitchen, she plucked at my sleeve to get my attention, and pointed at the walker, and she asked me, “Do you see that orangutan? He’s just sitting there.” And then she started waxing eloquent about the orangutan on the hearth. Stop laughing, Martin. It was extremely disturbing. I tell you she must see these things. She’s so serious about it, as if there were nothing to debate.

“Okay, you’ll like this one. Emma was sacked out in the same easy chair in the living room, and she was looking at one of the chairs pulled out from the big dining table, in that space between the kitchen and the living room. And she turns to me and says, “Doesn’t that chair look just like the Holy Family?”, as if it were the most natural thing in the world that a chair should bear any resemblance at all to the Holy Family. I tried to get her to elaborate, maybe point out which leg looked like the Virgin Mary, but she couldn’t be any more specific. It’s as if she’s seeing omens.”

“Tonight it was a rhinoceros. No, in the kitchen this time. I don’t know why you’re so amused; don’t even try to tell me you weren’t shaking like a little girl over the man in the closet.”

The evening was a witching time for Aunt Emma. She wandered and kvetched and growled some nights; on others she sank into a tearful depression. This odd sundowning began to take its toll on me. She and I both became nervous and apprehensive as the skies darkened and stars begin to twinkle and night rolled in. Some evenings we sat rigid in the living room, Emma in her own world and me in an agony of frayed nerves over the impending upset or vision that might not even occur.

I described all these things to Peggy as we stood in the yard, her with the paper and me hauling the garbage cans. She grew worried at my nervous laughter and shaking hands. “Emma, you need to get out,” she prescribed. “Let me sit with your aunt tonight while you do something. Get a massage or have your nails done” (I guiltily thrust my ragged fingers behind my back) “or do the shopping or something, but do something for yourself, without Aunt Emma.”

I murmured my acceptance of her offer and retreated inside, where I seethed as I watched her right a fallen flowerpot on her porch and establish herself in a rocker to read the paper in the crisp morning air. How easy it was for her to tell me to take care of myself! Even if I went out tonight, when I arrived home Emma would still be waiting for me. My going out would not solve the problem of Emma’s decline, nor would it fix what ailed her, nor would it stop the twilight madness. When I came back home everything would still be the same. My going out would solve nothing except to give me a slight taste of the carefree life of anyone who was not me. I resented Peggy for her easy life with her happy healthy family and loving husband. I resented Emma for the disease which required someone to wait on her hand and foot. I resented Grace for living with Martin and siphoning his time away from me. I resented Martin for his unconscionable good luck in finding a job that let him travel to exotic locales like Kansas City, where at this moment he was probably having intelligent conversation with polished and professional and non-needy women...

“Stop!” I ordered myself, clutching my arms and rocking a bit. “Stop it, Emma! Get a hold of yourself. You’re being stupid and you know it. Stop now.” But I moved through the afternoon with hot tears brimming and a tingling jittery ache radiating out to my fingertips and feet. I would snap at Emma even as I enjoined myself to resist such behavior. My agitation kindled her own, and she grew restless and angry, which, in turn, keyed me to a pitch of irritation hardly to be endured. By the time Peggy arrived late in the afternoon, I was barely fit to speak to her as I rushed out the door.

I drove aimlessly through Emma’s neighborhood, passing up and down the pleasant residential streets with their lacy covering of venerable branches starting to swell and burst with new foliage. My meandering route brought me around to the cemetery, and without questioning, I parked and passed through the flaking iron gates into the still peace of the abode of the dead. “Resquiescat in Pacem,” bid many of the gravestones, and indeed, I seemed to be the only unquiet soul walking amid the tombs and monuments to grief. I brushed the brittle lichen off the markers and studied the tiny memorials of heartbreak in the children’s section. I passed up a hill crowned by a vast and spreading tree, and at the summit looked down at the sun glinting off the steeple and arches of Our Lady of Lourdes.

Though I had had no firm intention of doing anything in my precious free time, my feet drew me to the heavy doors of the church and to the rear of the line of penitents awaiting their turn in the confessional. A woman intently studied a pamplet entitled “An Examination of Conscience for Mothers”, and a trio of older gentlemen carried on a quiet but spirited discussion of the impending baseball season, which seemed to vie for importance in their minds with the entire Triduum. A small knot of college students preparing to enter the Church at Easter clung to each other for moral support in the face of their first time in the confessional. I allowed myself to be pushed forward along the line until I was before the tripartite box with the ornately carved doors, the leftmost of which opened to emit one of the college students with a joyous, tear-stained face.

I had barely had the mental wherewithal to think of anything in the confession line, much less examine my conscience, and it was not until I found myself kneeling in the dark cubicle and being blessed by the priest on the other side of the screen that finally confronted the reality of the present moment. I took a deep breath and opened my mouth and spilled out all my failings of the past months, the jealousy and anger, the envy and bitterness, the petty grudges and spites. I enumerated the times I’d failed Emma and the ways in which I’d hurt Martin. I dredged back into my past and hauled up times I’d lashed out at Stacy or disobeyed my parents. And then I waited for the judgment to fall, braced against the consequences.

“The Lord has already forgiven you,” said the priest.

And when I emerged from the confessional with a joyous, tear-stained face and knelt with bowed head in the wash of jeweled light pouring through the stained glass window, my ridiculously simple penance of three Hail Marys , so little to offer the One against whom I had truly offended, became sufficient by the very merit of their inadequacy. They were not enough, but I offered them, in that present moment, with everything I had to give, and the peace I received in return was extravagantly out of proportion to my meager gift.

Aunt Emma was planted in her chair with her evening face on when I arrived home. Peggy greeted me with undue warmth as I walked in the door.

“Oh, Emma, I’m so glad to see you,” she said, with the slightest hint of hysteria in her voice. “She’s been saying the oddest things, stuff you wouldn’t normally pay any attention to, except that it’s as if she really sees something. I feel as nervous as a cat. Is she always like this anymore?”

“That’s how it is most nights,” I commiserated. “It can really wear on you.”

“I don’t know how you do it,” she said reverently as she gathered her coat and book. “I think I’d go crazy. You let me know the next time you need a night out, and I’ll make sure John is available to come over and sit here with me.”

“You’re too sweet, Peggy.”

At the door, she took my hand. “I’m serious, Emma. Please let me know if you need me to do anything for you. You’re so competent that I don’t always remember to offer help, but I’m always to give it.”

“I appreciate that, more than you know,” I said. “I think I’ve been trying to be too self-sufficient for too long.”

Even the promise of rain could not dampen my newly strengthened spirits the next morning. The morning was cool and cloudy and temperate -- the first true day of spring. Emma too seemed heartened by the change in weather. She consented to eat, to take her pills with no fuss, and to select her own outfit from the closet. We were going out.

Nurse Linda has expressed concern, at her last visit, with Emma’s increased moodiness and torpor. “This could be just the normal progression of the disease, of course,” she said, “but I think she needs to go in and have her medications evaluated. Maybe we can find a different dosage that will help keep her from these big emotional arcs and mini-depressions.”
“I hope so,” I replied, watching Emma shuffle sullenly around the living room with her book. “It’s painful to see her so unhappy.”

It was more than the usual production to take Emma places anymore, since she had been prescribed her walker. It was apparently a standard-issue model, down to the tennis balls on the front feet, but it seemed less wieldy than the average beast. To fold it for travel took a combination of Rube-Goldbergesque maneuvers, none of which I ever mastered. Every time I set out to collapse the thing it was as if I was confronting it afresh. Emma, for her part, disdained the walker and avoided using it as much as possible. She preferred to travel under her own reduced speed.

Today was no different than usual. I pulled up to the curb at the doctor’s office and wrestled with the walker while she climbed out of the car and started for the door.

“Emma, wait a minute while I get your walker,” I commanded, but she shuffled doggedly on toward the door. Finally I abandoned the half-opened walker and hastened to take her elbow.

“Is it all right if I leave my aunt here for a moment while I park the car?” I asked the receptionist in the waiting room. Emma, safely in a chair, cast a benign eye on the fish tank, the reception station, and the magazines.

“Of course!” replied that lady, with professional cheer. “I’ll keep an eye on her.”

A light drizzle was starting to blow as I parked and hauled the walker with me back into the office. Emma, unbudged, reposed like an angel, cherubically turning the pages of a children’s activity book. The bright colors and simple illustrations pleased her, and she carried it back into the exam room with us.

The doctor and I discussed her strange new behaviors and her recent fall in front of her, as if she were a child, but there was no answering indignation or even interest on Emma’s part as she sat on the paper-covered exam table peering nearsightedly at an image of children ice skating on a small pond on a snowy day. He scrutinized her current prescriptions and asked questions as he checked her over.

“How’ve you been feeling, Emma?” he asked heartily.

“Howard ice skates,” she said, holding the magazine close to her nose.

“Does he? That’s great!” the doctor boomed. Emma paid him no mind, searching, perhaps, for Howard among the hooded and mittened children cutting figures on the frozen pond. “How’ve you been getting around? Okay?” he persisted.

“She hates the walker,” I told him.

“It does mean a certain loss of independence,” he conceded, “but especially with this recent fall I think it’s crucial that she use it any time she’s trying to get around. She was very fortunate not to have been injured the other night, but as the body gets older, even minor shocks to the system can have very serious effects.”

“I’ll do my best to make sure she’s using it,” I promised.

Emma touched the picture in the magazine gently as the doctor and I discussed different options for her new medication routine. He tapped the prescriptions into his computer. “We send ‘em right to the pharmacy for you,” he assured me. “You should be able to go right over and pick them up, and we can get her started on these today. Now you’ll want to call me if you start noticing any of these effects...” By the time we were ready to leave I was awkwardly clutching a sheaf of papers in one hand and guiding Emma’s walker with the other. To complicate the situation, Emma, previously so accommodating, had become attached to the children’s magazine and would not give it back.

“Here, Emma, let’s leave this for other people to look at!” I wheedled, trying to pry it from her fingers. She demurred and fussed and began to protest loudly.

“She can take it with her,” offered the receptionist, with professional cheer. “We’ve got plenty more.”

The drizzle persisted as we stepped out the door, and I looked with dismay at papers, Emma, purses, and walker. Out of the mists of time floated up a memory of my mother trying herd Stacy and I around a store when we were small and rousty. Someone had said to her, “My, you have your hands full!” Standing by the doors just out of the drizzle, I suddenly felt a surge of understanding for my mother wash over me. No wonder she had seemed hassled and frustrated so often, all those times we had thought she was overreacting to what seemed normal childish games. “You were right, Mom,” I acknowledged, shaking my head.

The solution seemed to be to leave Emma parked by door while I drove up to the curb again. After being given her way over the magazine, she was biddable again, and even chatty as we rode over to the pharmacy, commenting on the buildings, the people, and the scenery. Only once did she seem to rise out of her bland affability, on seeing a man with a dark suit and a hat darting out of the rain into a building. “There’s Howard,” she exclaimed, leaning toward the window and craning her neck to follow the figure.

“No, Aunt Emma, it can’t be Howard. He’s not around much anymore.”

“Where’d Howard go?” she asked, puzzled. “Where’s that man now?” And she continued to brood over the question as we pulled up to the pharmacy.

Urban’s is an institution, founded in a brick storefront nestled amid an assortment of small family-run businesses back when Milton Avenue was still a sleepy neighborhood lane. Even as the street grew to be a thoroughfare, and then a four-lane artery, the small historic district has maintained its plateglass charm, though the once broad sidewalks have been reduced down to strips that tuck comfortably under the striped awnings. Tourists and connoisseurs flock to Urban’s now to sit at the vintage soda counter and order phosphates and egg creams, but it is still a working pharmacy. Emma was a long-time customer of Urban’s, and the druggist and cashiers knew her well.

The rain had increased to a steady downpour, and I hoped we’d be able to find a parking space somewhere near the pharmacy so I wouldn’t have far to struggle with Emma and her walker . The street was busy today, however, and there were no gaps along the curb as we approached Urban’s. And then, a stroke of luck: a car backed into the street and pulled away, leaving a vacant meter directly in front of the big glass doors.

“Hang on, Emma!” I called cheerfully. “It’s time for some parallel parking action.”

I pulled up, flipped on my right turn signal, and waited for the irritated driver behind me to get a clue and move on. Then I began to maneuver the car back into the space.

The instructors in my high school driver’s ed class had presented parallel parking in very technical terms, thus producing a classroom full of navigational idiots, but I learned the proper technique on spring break junior year from a white-haired gent in New Orleans who observed from the sidewalk, plastic beer cup in hand, as I made several fruitless attempts to wedge an SUV full of coeds between two compacts on Amelia Street. Whether he took pity on my incompetence, or he just thought I was cute, I don’t know, but he taught me the trick of parallel parking, and I’ve used it to impress people ever since.

Parallel parking is a science first, but there’s a measure of art in the execution. First the car should be even with the car in front of the space. Then, before the driver starts reversing, the wheel needs to be cut all the way to the right. When the car is backed halfway into the space, the wheel needs to be cut all the way to the left. Once the nose is smoothly in, the wheel is straightened out, and the car is adjusted in the space.

“Piece of cake,” I bragged to Emma.

“That’s nice, honey,” she said, leafing through her magazine.

We were nestled nicely against the curb, and Emma would be able to exit the car right under the awning so she wouldn’t get wet. I patted her shoulder. "You stay here and look at the pictures while I get your walker set up."

"Howard ice skates," she said, finding the winter pond scene again.

"That's a good idea, Emma. You look for Howard.

Cars splashed past me, raindrops gleaming in their headlights, as I tried to wrangle the walker out of the trunk without scratching up the car behind me. Emma let herself out of the car and stood watching the street as I fought to unfold the recalcitrant thing. “I’ll have this in a second, Emma,” I promised as I tugged at a sticky latch.

“Okay, honey. That man is Howard,” she said.

“What do you mean, Emma?” I asked, glancing toward her. But she was gone, and before I could even call out for her, I heard an onrushing shriek of brakes and the soft and sickening thud of impact.

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