Carthage (59 page)

How then can I not forgive this person who’d acted blindly and unknowing of the hurt she afflicted upon others as upon herself.

IN YOUR LETTER
which I was not supposed to open unless you did not return from Iraq you’d said the children I would have with another man, a husband, would also be your children.

If you’d died in Iraq. If you’d died of your wounds. If you’d never returned to marry me.

So it sometimes seems, the babies I’d had with David Stedman are in some ways your babies too.

Before you went away for the second time, and were so damaged. Before your soul was damaged. When we were together weeping together that we would be apart for so long and our plans uncertain yet we lay together in such happiness it was a kind of innocence and I thought
If I become pregnant now, we will know that our love is blessed.

And your words echoed my thoughts, that I had not uttered aloud—
It’s like something was decided tonight isn’t it. Oh God.

Together in such happiness as if a pure radiant flame burned about our bed blinding us as it warmed us and protected us from all others.

“THIS IS BEAUTIFUL.
What a beautiful day.”

We drove to Friendship Park. Cressida’s first day in the sun. Eagerly and avidly she was looking about. This was a familiar landscape, we’d been taken to Friendship Park for picnics and outings through our childhood, but now, to Cressida, things seemed to look different. And Arlette was pointing out changes to her—a refurbished band stand, an expanded playground.

Cressida’s eyes are newly sensitive to light, she was wearing a pair of my sunglasses. And on her head a colorful scarf, one of Mom’s pre-wig scarves, that confers upon the wearer an air of both festivity and convalescence.

We’d told Cressida about the memorial hiking trail named for her. We’d warned her about the bench with the plaque—
CRESSIDA MAYFIELD
1986–2005.
She stared at the plaque. She ran her fingers over the plaque.

“You did this for me, Mom? It’s very beautiful.”

“It wasn’t just me. Others donated. And Zeno and Juliet helped—of course.”

Was this true? I doubt that Zeno was involved, he’d been pained by so much attention focused on our private loss. And I know that I was involved only minimally, for the same reason.

The mother’s grieving was public, she’d wanted so badly to preserve her lost daughter in the memories of others; she’d wanted to make of the daughter’s disappearance a communal Carthage memory—she’d told us of how other mothers, who’d lost daughters or sons, had embraced her, wept with her.

As if there is a river of grief. And we all must wade into it, and be carried by its current, in time.

“I’m a ghost, I guess. Returning.”

Cressida’s voice was a hoarse whisper. The pneumonia had left her vocal cords raw.

Arlette said, “The plaque will be removed, soon! The park authority has promised.”

“Does everyone hate me here in Carthage? I know that I would hate myself in their place.”

“Cressie, no! It isn’t like that at all. Everyone understands you’ve been sick.”

Arlette sat on the bench, in a patch of sunshine. She signaled for Cressida and me to join her and so I did, but Cressida remained standing.

Cressida was wearing a pair of lightweight khaki pants, and a pullover sweater; she was still very thin, and her skin had a sickly pallor, but she was regaining her old energy, in intermittent surges.

On the third finger of her left hand she is wearing a star-shaped ring—a silver ring, I think—not beautiful. The ring is much too large for her thin finger so she has wrapped string around it crudely and it is her habit to nervously turn the ring, round and round her finger turning the ring, unconsciously, maddeningly—I feel a sisterly impatience, wanting to slap lightly at her hand, to stop her.

As when we were young girls together Cressida had the most maddening habits—tapping her foot, wriggling her foot, shifting her weight in her chair at dinner with a loud rude sigh; scratching her scalp, scratching her face, her armpits, God knows where all else, oblivious of others as a little monkey. Did my parents believe “Cressie” was
cute
?

Her sarcasm, her habit of interrupting others—particularly her older sister—did they think this was
charming
? The meanness with which she treated her few girlfriends—the supercilious way in which she spoke of “popular” classmates and many of her teachers—did they think this was
admirable
? The only time in my life I can recall that I shocked my mother was when I’d told her in a weak mood that I was worried about having babies, worried that I carried a family gene of some kind for “autism” or “borderline personality”—whatever it was that defined Cressida, I could not bear to pass on to a child. And Arlette had stared at me in utter incomprehension.

Juliet what on earth are you saying? I don’t understand.

Quickly then I dropped the subject. Though I did discuss my concern with David with whom I was engaged at the time. And David said
Juliet please! Our babies will be beautiful and brainy and perfect—have faith.

Cressida had told me a little of her life in Florida—she’d lived with a woman in a succession of places in several cities and though they’d loved each other they had not been
lovers
.

Shocking to hear this, from my sister. But of course Cressida isn’t a child any longer, she’s an adult woman of twenty-five. We had not ever discussed sex with each other, any sort of intimate sexual/emotional issues. Cressida’s affect had been to scorn such predilections as mere weakness from which she had been exempt.

She’d never been in love, Cressida said. That is, she’d never been
in love with
another person who had loved her in return.

Here, there was a pause. Not a graceful pause. In silence Cressida’s eyelids quivered.

Yes I did love him, your fiancé. Of course I loved him and my selfish love precipitated the ruin of our lives.

Carefully Cressida said, she was learning just
to love
. There could be happiness in that, and a secret meaning,
To love
another person and expect nothing in return.

I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to slap at her hand, knock the clumsy ring from her finger.

Quietly in the old sweet-Juliet way I told her that yes, that could be a life. A rich full life—
loving.

Remembering a stinging rebuke of my sister’s years ago, she’d meant to ridicule the others of our family who did volunteer work for community organizations, quoting the poet Auden in some cynical wisecrack about social workers, what’s the purpose of
helping people
.

But now, Cressida was speaking sincerely. Now, we must interpret her as sincere.

Loving!

Like one who hasn’t been walking unassisted in some time Cressida was making her way along a woodchip trail that ran into the woods and looped back over a distance of about two miles. Arlette and I sat watching her walk along the path—unsteadily, but enthusiastically—like a somewhat gawky child—and fumbled to clutch hands.

Both our hands were chilly. Arlette’s fingers are always chilly.

The thought came to me
She will run away again. She will disappear. This time into the river. That is why she returned to us, to make an ending.

On the Nautauga River approximately fifty feet below the park bluff were fleet antic reflections of clouds spinning past high overhead. Though the nights were still cold the days of late April were balmy, warm. You could feel the subtle pull of the river, like a gravitational pull.

After Brett had left my life, after my beloved Brett had cast me off like a ridiculous little paper boat, often I stood above the river, leaning against the railing. Thinking
Jesus will not release me, this is cruel. Why then did Jesus let my fiancé turn against me.

It was believed in Carthage that it was Juliet Mayfield who had broken the engagement with Corporal Brett Kincaid. It was believed that
the pretty Mayfield girl
was a shallow opportunistic bitch who’d deserved rude remarks, dirty looks, disdain.

Impossible to correct such misinterpretations. For they were covertly murmured, never quite in earshot. Looks of dislike blurred like reflections in a mirror, at the periphery of vision.

Brett too had sneered at me, at the end. As if his disfigured body were sneering at me, his scarred face.
Give it up. It’s bullshit. Run for your life. Don’t look back.

On the woodchip trail hikers passed Cressida, walking swiftly on strong-muscled legs. Perhaps they said hello to her as hikers often do in such circumstances but they gave no sign of recognizing her.

After a quarter mile Cressida turned back. As if she’d depleted her energy and must limp back to us and as she approached us suddenly she burst into tears.

Was she fainting? Sinking to her knees? In astonishment we watched as my sister knelt impulsively in the grass beside the woodchip path. We could hear her hoarse voice—“I am so grateful. So grateful.” Like a penitent she lay full-length on the ground with her arms out-flung and her face hidden from us in the pallid grass of early spring and it seemed to me that my sister was kissing the earth in utter gratitude of her life restored to her.

The earth she’d defiled with her bitterness, her hatred. Now, the earth she loved with a frantic passion.

I knew this. Cressida didn’t have to explain.

You’ve been broken. Now, you are mending. We will mend with you. We love you.

ON THE
WAY
HOME
Cressida said, Juliet forgive me?

Calmly I said, There is nothing to forgive.

EPILOGUE

April 2012

D
RIVING THE LONG WALL.

Sixty-foot-high wall with no (visible) end.

I am making the journey alone, to Dannemora. I will be seeing Brett Kincaid alone in the maximum-security prison at Dannemora.

I will see him—Brett—without my mother. Arlette had suggested that we visit him together but I’d said no, that would make it too easy for me.

DRIVING THE MOUNTAIN
roads. Narrow twisting hypnotic roads through the Adirondacks.

My new life. My life restored to me. Always I will cherish the memory of how Brett helped me when I’d fallen from my bicycle on Waterman Street. The way he’d straightened the wheel and the fender, that would have scraped against the tire.

Always cherish the way he drove me home that day. His kindness and tenderness that is his innermost heart.

That other Brett, Corporal Kincaid—he is a stranger.

That other Brett—he too must be loved.

Zeno is confident that Brett will be released from prison within a year. Zeno is revived and animated in the old Zeno-way on the phone making a stream of calls—to the county prosecutor who handled the case, to the New York State Court of Appeals, to the governor’s office, to the Department of Veteran Affairs and the Office of the Pardon Attorney in Washington, D.C.

There is also a veterans’ organization—the Wounded Warrior Project.

I will help Zeno, too! I will do all that I can to help Brett.

I pledge to you, Brett! However long it is you are incarcerated here, I will live in Dannemora, and I will be your friend.

I will be your loving friend but I will not expect you to love me in return please understand.

I am not so naïve now. I am an adult woman now.

Arlette has told me—Brett is a changed person. He is not the damaged person we knew nor is he the young Brett whom we’d known but another person like one waking from a painful sleep eager now to be fully awake, and willing to see me.

Arlette had suggested that I write to Brett to ask permission to see him and Brett said yes.

My letter to him was brief. His reply to me was briefer.

Arlette said—you don’t have to talk to Brett every minute. Just sit with him, and be still together. Don’t make him nervous and he won’t make you nervous. If you’re in doubt what to say to him just say nothing until the right thing suggests itself.

Like the Quakers—wait for the Inner Light.

I will. I will wait for the Inner Light.

In a diner in the small Adirondack town Mountain Falls a waitress asks me if I am going to Dannemora and I tell her yes I am. She says visitors to the prison are always stopping in Mountain Falls. She says the majority are women—mothers, wives, girlfriends. After a year of incarceration the inmates’ visitors drop off and it’s mostly only women who continue.

Is it someone special I am visiting, the waitress asks.

I’m not sure how to answer this curious question. I tell her yes, he is someone special. He’d been in the Iraq War and had been seriously injured but not so seriously the State of New York hadn’t thought him fit to be incarcerated in a maximum-security prison.

I said, this is my first visit. I will stay overnight in Dannemora and see him in the morning and I’m—I guess I’m—afraid . . .

The waitress says lowering her voice so other customers won’t hear Oh hon—everybody’s afraid but you get used to it. The first time is the hardest time seeing him in prisoner-clothes but it gets like a routine, see?—I’ve been there myself, visiting a guy I know.

The waitress tells me about visiting Dannemora. What to expect, going through security. How the vending machines are not reliable. How you have to be polite and courteous and take any shit they give you from the COs who have the right to bar you from coming inside, they can really fuck up your life if you’ve driven a long distance for the visit.

I’m seated in a booth. Simulated cedar-wood table. A terrible sensation of weakness comes over me, I feel that I could collapse. I am afraid of crying. Breaking down in front of strangers. The waitress sees this and says, Oh honey, you’ll be OK. Really, you will. Just take it, like, one breath at a time.

The thing is, don’t cry. When you see him, don’t. That will not do him any good, or you. A man does not want to see tears because seeing tears is dangerous to him, for a man does not want to cry. So don’t.

Along the country highway Route 375 to Dannemora. Many miles, a fatiguing journey. It is reckless of me to be driving so far alone, Zeno didn’t approve. Arlette wanted to accompany me. Juliet said nothing—not a word.

My sister is in love with Brett Kincaid still. The young soldier, shining in innocence. She is in love with her memory of Brett Kincaid before he was damaged and so she does not want to see him and feel that love and that yearning awakened in her another time.

I understood that love. I understood, and was bitter in jealousy, and spite. And I killed their love, and can never be truly forgiven.

I must accept it, that I can never be truly forgiven. I would not want Juliet to forgive me. Or Brett.

It is Cressida who should be incarcerated. Cressida,
the smart one,
inside the long wall like a leper.

The shock of the high long wall close beside the highway and the first sign—
CLINTON CORRECTIONAL FACILITY FOR MEN.

The sickening sense of confinement, despair at the Orion prison. The execution chamber, the robin’s-egg-blue diving bell containing death.

I remember that sensation of sudden collapse, despair—as if the body’s molecules were on the verge of dissolution. The body’s proprioception washed away.

I lay upon the death-table. The straps were at my wrists, and my ankles. But I was not strapped down, I was not injected with poison. I did not die.

Arlette warned me—Oh honey a prison is a terrifying place even from the outside.

You will need courage. You will need strength, to hide your distress from
him.

I am resolved: I will move to Dannemora to be close to him and I will commute—if I can—to the university at Burlington, Vermont. I will bring books to Brett—if I can—and I will tutor him—if I can . . .

I will be Brett Kincaid’s liaison to the world. If he will allow it.

Driving the long wall. And now inside the town limits of Dannemora which is a place to which I will become accustomed in the months ahead.

Long high concrete wall seemingly without end. Like something in a fairy-tale film. The driver’s vision on the right is severely restricted by the wall, producing a sensation of claustrophobia, confinement.

Here is the protocol to expect: a CO will call the prisoner, after his visitor has arrived. The visitor does not enter the facility until the prisoner is in the visiting room. Then, at the end of the visit, the prisoner is escorted out, and the visitor leaves. Arlette has said there will be a Plexiglas barrier between you and a small grating for you to speak through but soon, it will come to seem natural.

How soon, I wonder, will it come to seem natural for Brett Kincaid and me?

Driving the long high wall into the village of Dannemora. Driving the long wall.