Bereavements (13 page)

Pause. Silence. What else?—quickly now!

“What a handsome ring!” (the “ruby”).

Oh
—! It was nothin’; not really. But it
could
cut glass; that’s what it was for; he could scratch his name, clear as anything; if she had some glass aroun’ he’d scratch it for her.

Well. . .She looked doubtfully around the room, careful not to see the entire wall of windows they were facing. Not at the moment; but the next time he came, she’d have Dori bring in some glass and he could scratch her name.

And gradually, particularly with anything that made him laugh, Angel lost some of his tightness. The small clenched fists began to loosen, and the unconscious sporadic outward jerk of his chin, probably
tic douloureux,
became much less frequent and finally disappeared.

His eyes didn’t lose their awe, however, for the walk through the house, and a smooth ride up two floors in a tiny ornate elevator only big enough for two to the “Morning Room” (he wondered if there might be a “Night Room” and an “Afternoon Room”) had exposed him to a display of wealth previously seen only in movies and museums.

Also, his eyes never met hers, evasive always, moving restlessly, roving about the room, concentrating on objects, sometimes himself: a nail chewed, an itch scratched. The healed wound on his head from which a bit of hair was missing and starting to grow in, seemed to bother him, and his hand reached for it frequently, conscious or not, fanning nearby hair over the small open space to hide it.

There was one embarrassing (to him) yet funny (to her) moment when, aching for something to say, to contribute during their first long pause, for it was she, up to now, who had kept the conversation “going,” he turned up a sudden soiled sneaker for a glance at the stained sole, blurting an unthinking. “F’a minute it looked like I stepped in some dog sh—.” Had it been anyone in the world except Mrs. Evans facing him, he probably would have gotten the word out.

As it was, he concluded faintly, “but I guess I didn’t,” the word unfinished: dead, hanged, a corpse swinging in the air between them.

Was it time?

They had been talking twenty, perhaps thirty minutes; tea was on its way, and everything had gone, all in all, well enough. He was bright, he was quick; she suspected he had a very high IQ despite his loathing for school, his constant truancy—which accounted in part, though probably his parents were mostly to blame—for his bad grammar, his atrocious spelling.

Ready or not, she thought, here I come. What about his mother; when had she died?

Well . . .

His face, after a quick chin-jerk, was fairly composed. Better, it was blinking and blank. Several doubtful fingers came up to rake the air; did she count two, three, four? And what were they: weeks, months, years? He didn’t say. Only: “I try to put it out of my mind. I like to forget.”

Mrs. Evans could well understand that, and didn’t press for specifics, though she was aware of what seemed a needless and rather peculiar vagueness. But there were other things she desired strongly to know, and soon she was speaking about them—more to adult than to boy—but he proved equal to it.

“There is a thing,” she found herself saying, “called ‘pregnancy psychosis.’ You
know
what psychosis means.”

He nodded his head vigorously: “Sort of—crazy.”

“Yes. Some women who are about to have babies . . . some mothers, go insane, truly insane . . . for just a little while.” She paused. “What I’m suggesting is an analogy of sorts. I propose,” and for the second time since they’d met she touched him, the lightest of pats on the hand, “that something similar to that can happen—
does
happen often—when a child dies, though I’m not sure it has a name. I suppose one could call it a loss—or death—psychosis. But what it means, really, is simply ‘expressions’ of
extravagant
bereavement . . .”

She paused, then repeated heself: “Bereavement. Do you know what
that
word means: truly, exactly?
I
didn’t. I had to look it up.” She moved a little closer to him, trying to capture his eyes. “Angel
. . . ‘bereavement’
means ‘to deprive of—
rutblessly
—especially hope and joy.’ It also means ‘to make desolate through loss, especially death.’ ”

Now she smiled slightly, continuing: “Under ‘obsolete’—(you know that word also?)” and the boy nodded again—“it said ‘to take away . . . by violence.’ ”

“Angel,
all
these things happened to me, as I’m sure they must have to you when your mother died. I was ‘deprived of
ruthlessly,
made
desolate
through loss.’ Indeed—” and now she was just a bit playful, her eyes crinkling in amusement, “indeed, I’m afraid I qualified under ‘obsolete’ too: because
all
that I had, all that was dear, in any way meaningful to me was taken away, by violence.”

“Do you m—mean . . . ?”

The boy was stammering, unable to shape adequate words to suit gentle shy inquiry, afraid to make another embarrassing mistake. “Do you mean that yours—son died in an accident, like a car crash? I had a friend got killed on a motorcycle. Wheels hit an oil slick; he got thrown . . .”

“ No; it wasn’t . . . ”

“ . . . twenty feet . . . ”

“ . . . an accident . . . ”

“ . . . an’ crushed his skull . . . ”

“ . . . it was
normal . . . ”

“ . . . against a stone wall.”

“ . . . At least the doctors called it that, as if, at fourteen,
any
death can be normal!”

They had somehow garbled the conversation, but each to the other had been clear.

But now tears gathered and glistened in Mrs. Evans’ eyes; he saw her throat move as she swallowed, each of her hands seizing the other to hold back emotion.

And seeing such visible grief in another, he felt impotent, helpless, alone. If they had met to share grief, in some strange way comfort each other and ease their mutual pain, they were not doing so.

Each was isolated, in a separate cell, without windows or doors: she the beautiful, kind lady in her sumptuous gold dress, he the thin dark boy from the Spanish ghetto with the small silver bead in his ear and the crackerjacks “ruby” on his finger.

The chin-tic returned, pronounced, in a jerking spasm that would not stop. This time he could not help but be shamefully aware of it and put up both hands to still the shudder.

“My father,” he said shyly, “hates me to do that. I don’t mean to.”

She tossed the apology away with a shrug. Shake, shudder, writhe, scream she seemed to say: all of it served no more purpose than her useless tears.

“What I meant,” she said, continuing, quick to fill in the silence, “is that death, no matter how, regardless of the circumstances, is the unutterable violence. Didn’t you find it so with your mother? I mean . . . What did you
do;
what were
your
expressions of”—now she laughed just a bit, trying to lighten the word and the moment—
“your
expressions of extravagant bereavement?”

The boy was silent a long time, his eyes downcast, watching his nervous fingers twist and retwist an extra, single thread loose in the knee-seam of his dunagarees. Then, when the silence became overpowering, too thunderous to bear:

“Well . . .”

The word was explosive, but more silence followed, until he blurted:

“I answered your
ad,
for
one
thing.”

Mrs. Evans looked at him, amazed. How knowing, how “deep,” how brilliantly emotional he was! She nodded.

“A
brave
thing to do. To meet me. To
be
here. Truly an extravagant expression. But . . .”

The ornate tea service had arrived, virtually a miniature forest of glittering silver, after Rose, three times, had tap-tap-tapped one foot against the door, unable to free a hand from the immense tray.

The girl waited while her employer, with a slight worried frown, glanced over what she had brought.

“How does
that
look, Angel?” Her eyes raised anxiously to his. “Chocolate chip cookies, sandwiches . . . Do you mind the crusts cut off? I don’t like
bulky
foods. And what’s
this,
Rose, that’s bubbling so?”

“A glass of coke, Ma’am. Cook thought, when I told her, that the young man might prefer it to tea.”

“Is that
so?”
Four waiting eyes attending the boy.

“Oh, yes! I like coke.”

The maid left, and a plate piled high with thin white sandwiches was raised toward him, cookie-cutter cut in the shape of diamonds, hearts, curled ribbons and squares. He didn’t know which to choose, then decided on all four: first a heart, which he had the quick sense to realize should be picked up with the silver tongs provided. He placed this (
God,
correctly) on one of the small empty plates, followed by a ribbon, a diamond and a square.

He waited, watching Mrs. Evans carefully as she reached for two of the diamonds for herself, poured tea by turning a little spigot in the fat-bellied urn, and began, so delicately it seemed, to eat. Then, famished, he quickly munched one of his own sandwiches, the heart, so small it was in his mouth in a single bite.

“What
is
it?” he asked, incredulous, teeth chomping, tongue sliding against something indescribably strange and wonderful.

“Only Cook and God in Their wisdom know,” Mrs. Evans replied, nibbling a bit more. “I’d guess—a sprig of watercress, slightly
bruised,
understand, to enhance the flavor, and a paste made of—let me see—” (exploring thoughtfully, eyes up in her head) “—crushed bacon, a touch of sharp cheese, probably cheddar, a few drops of fresh lemon with a crumble of rind, the barest dash of white wine, heavy cream, several spices . . .” She concluded lamely: “I don’t know. The final secrets of cooks when they die go to their graves with them. Believe me, Angel, the proud fathers of the Inquisition would have failed utterly if they’d had Cook on the most exquisitely-devised of their wretched racks.”

“What?!”—brown cheeks bulging. It was the first time all afternoon she had said something he hadn’t quite understood.

“Nevermind.”

Smiling at the boy, she determined that every single sandwich, all the golden, bitter-sweet chocolate-chip, Cook-marvelous, just-baked cookies would ultimately disappear.

The day darkened. The shadows grew long. The room was filled with the beautiful, deepening blue-grey of the late, autumn afternoon.

From somewhere in the house, a clock chimed, faintly, but quick, clear and silvery, and Angel counted every stroke.

His golden lady hadn’t turned on a single lamp, explaining, “This is my favorite time of day. I like it best.”

Then she asked him to do something really freaky—or so at first it seemed.

Could they—not talk?—just for a little while. There was no need for friends, for people who really
liked
each other, who were
en rapport,
so to speak
(that
word eluded him), to find silence painful. Wasn’t it so? On the contrary, silence said more, meant more sometimes than many, many words.

So would it be all right if they just—sat there, and were with each other, and not be nervous, or impatient, or bored, or even happy or sad, not
thinking
at all; just . . . quiet, peaceful, still, simply sharing each other—each other’s
be
-ing and presence?