Grace (19 page)

“What do you mean by that?”

“Those books she has.” He is saying more than he wants to, but he has waited a long time for this moment. “It has taken me a while, but I figured out. It was you who gave them to her.”

She does not deny this. “She finds them helpful,” Anna says.

“They fill her with the illusion that life is simple, that there are easy answers.”

“They are comforting to her.”

“It’s all that American optimistic bullshit,” he says.

“It’s American optimistic bullshit that has made this country great,” Anna says. “You immigrants come from a world of disappointment and hardship. It’s hard for you to imagine an easier way.”

He cannot let this statement go unchallenged. “It is our hard work that gives you the luxury of optimism,” he says.

She begins to answer and he cuts her off. He has had enough. He does not want to be drawn in further. “I need to go to bed,” he says. But she has disturbed him. He wants her to pay. “You may not have to teach tomorrow,” he says. “I do.”

His remark has the desired effect. Her voice loses its authoritative edge. “You won’t solve your problems the way you’re going about it, Justin,” she says.

“That’s just it, Anna. They are my problems. Sally’s and mine.”

“And Sally is my friend.”

He makes the effort to control his anger. “I really must get some sleep,” he says.

“Okay,” she says, “okay, but I’ll be talking to Sally.”

JUSTIN DREAMS OF death that night. It is not the usual dream. In the usual dream, which began when his father left for America and his mother followed soon afterward, he had hope, the promise the priest made on Sundays of life hereafter. They would be back one day, too, his parents. Days stretched to weeks, weeks to months, months to years never-ending, but he believed. No one came back from the dead to give witness, but the priest said, and the congregation agreed, so the boy hoped. And there are the letters, said his aunt in the usual dream. And the phone calls. The dead do not write letters; the dead do not make phone calls.

Rainy seasons came and went. Nine times the earth got parched. Red petals fell from the immortelle tree and curled up in the dust. Nothing changed.

But this night, in the dream he has, Justin knows the promise of hope is a lie. He wakes with a start and remembers: It is true. It is final. His father is dead. He will not return.

He tiptoes into his daughter’s room and kisses the top of her head. She stirs. Daddy? I’m here, he answers.

He walks toward the den, turns and retraces his steps and beyond. Justin? He brushes his lips across Sally’s forehead. I’m here, he answers. He slides under the cover next to her in their bed.

Sally goes about her chores mechanically. She makes the bed, she dresses Giselle, she packs her lunch. She follows her chatter. The child notices nothing different in her behavior, but Justin sees a difference. It is mostly in her eyes. There is a dullness there, a lifelessness. The flesh around her jaw is slack. Her skin has a pallor that reminds him of wax.

When Giselle runs upstairs to get a dress for her doll which she wants to take with her to the baby-sitter’s, Sally stands motionless by the window, staring vacantly outside, plucking her lower lip. Justin says her name and she responds vaguely: “Time to go?” At the door, just before she leaves, she gives him her cheek. He kisses her. She does not kiss him back.

TEN O'CLOCK. The Great Books class. Act 5 of
Hamlet.
Justin is having difficulty concentrating. He cannot erase the image of Sally looking not so much at him as through him, as if
he were not there, reaching for Giselle’s hand but only after their daughter had tugged her arm twice: “Mommy, we’ll be late. Mommy!”

“‘Not a whit, we defy augury,’” Justin reads. “‘There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.’”

What had he gained by his accusation that morning that brought them here, to this place now, where Sally turns dull eyes to the leafless tree beyond their kitchen window and stands frozen when he kisses her good-bye? What had he gained when it was only under the veil of sleep that Sally had murmured,
Justin
, when he kissed her forehead,
Justin
, said with such tenderness he would lie next to her and hold her?

Eight o’clock. Quarter to eight (for he knew the time exactly; he had looked at the clock when she turned her key in the door), quarter to eight, he tells himself now, was not late, not suspiciously late, not so late that he should accuse her the next morning of a lover. Why had he not accepted her explanation? A child was sick. She took the child to the hospital. She stayed to talk to the parents. Why did he have to force a quarrel? She was making pancakes, stirring the batter in the bowl for him. For his breakfast. Did he want to make her cry, to make her confess? Confess what?
I am not happy, Justin.
For in the end, that was all she confessed. And what if it had been a lover? What then? What would have been gained? More tears, the dissolution of his marriage. He did not want the dissolution of his marriage. He could not handle the dissolution of his marriage. So then why couldn’t he have held his tongue? Why couldn’t he have waited until Sally had righted herself? Why couldn’t
he have let her work out her troubles on her own time, at her own pace?

“Can anyone tell me what Hamlet means?” Justin looks up from the book to the students in his class. “What does he mean when he says, ‘There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow’? ”

No one speaks.

“Ms. Clark? Does what Hamlet says here change your opinion of him?”

Ms. Clark twists her ample body in her seat. Her hair swings across her shoulder and tumbles down her back.

“Ms. Clark? Does it seem to you that Hamlet has come to a decision?”

“If you tell me what augury means,” she says.

“A sign, an omen. The predictions of a fortune teller.”

“Well, I guess he decides not to go that route. He’s tried everything else.”

A young man in the back row guffaws.

“What do you think about that? Do you still think he is a coward, Ms. Clark?”

Another student raises her hand. He tries to ignore her, but she is insistent. “Ms. Jones? There is something you want to say, Ms. Jones?”

“Hamlet has a feeling things could go wrong for him. He has an uneasy feeling that something bad could happen if he accepts the challenge Laertes gives him and goes and duels with him.”

“Yes,” Justin reads the lines aloud. “‘But thou wouldst not think how ill all’s here about my heart.’ Ms. Clark, does Hamlet
have any reason to feel this way, to feel that things could go wrong?”

Ms. Jones answers for her. “He said he had been practicing his sword fighting and he thinks he’s a better fighter than Laertes.”

“So if he thinks he is better than Laertes, why does he have this feeling that something can go wrong? Ms. Clark?”

“Is there nobody else in this class except Ms. Clark?” Ms. Clark shoots back.

“I want to find out if you have come to a different conclusion about Hamlet. Do you still think he is a coward?”

Even as he asks this question, Justin is aware that the answer has become personal to him. Would it have been cowardly of him to have held back, to have exercised restraint, to have not let suspicion so control him that he would say to Sally, “I
know
you are having an affair.” What had he known for sure? What evidence had he had?

But thou wouldst not think how ill all’s here about my heart.
He could have defied augury. For in the end that was what it was. There was no other man, no lover Sally was seeing. It would not have been cowardly for him to wait, to give her time. He would not have been less of a man.

“Ms. Clark,” he says, “Hamlet has this strange feeling that something bad could happen to him. Was it not brave of him not to give in to this feeling?”

“I never said he was superstitious. I said he was a punk. He’s a coward.”

“He’s a coward even though it looks as though he will duel
with Laertes in spite of this feeling he has that something bad could happen to him?”

“Didn’t she just say he had been practicing his sword fighting? It doesn’t take courage to fight if you know you’re better than the person you’re fighting.”

“Good. Good point, Ms. Clark. Now we come to the other part: ‘There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.’ What does he mean here? Anyone?”

The class is silent. Papers rustle, chairs scrape against the rubber-tiled floor. Justin, too, is uncomfortable, uncertain of the truth of the answer: Does one do nothing? Should one simply put one’s life in the hands of destiny? Fate? God? Should he have suppressed his fears when Sally turned away from him in bed?

“Anyone?” he asks. “Anyone? ‘There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.’ Do any of you go to church? Doesn’t seem to me any of you has been in a church lately.” He fakes sarcasm, for he is riddled with doubt, a training in rational thinking that will not allow him to give in easily: Should he have left it up to Him to sort out his problems with Sally? “Are we atheists here?” he asks his students.

“Ahh, Professor.” Several of the women protest.

“Never been to a funeral?” he asks.

“Professor, you not serious?”

“Never sang at a funeral?”

Some of the younger women begin to giggle.

“Is there a special gospel song you sing at a funeral?”

A thin woman with ropes of veins running down her arms,
which, though it is winter, are bare to her elbows, raises her hand. “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.”

“Excellent. Excellent. Do you know that gospel song?” he asks the class.

But the thin woman does not wait for anyone else to answer. With her two hands lifted above her head, palms open wide, as if she is about to give witness in a church, she recites the entire song. “‘Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come, / Why should my heart be lonely.’”

Justin does not stop her; he cannot stop her. She will finish the song. “‘I sing because I’m happy / I sing because I’m free.’”

Another student asks to be acknowledged. She stands up. “‘Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.’ Matthew Ten, verse Twenty-nine.”

The class is quiet. No one stirs. The young man in the back row lowers his head.
Yes, and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.

“Hamlet is confident that God will look after him,” says the woman. “He will accept His will. He does not have to decide anything. He can leave his future in God’s loving hands.”

“‘Let be.’” Justin reads Hamlet’s conclusion.

Let be
, but the stage directions that follow suggest the consequences:
A table prepared. [Enter] Trumpets, Drums, and Officers with cushions; King, Queen, [Osric,] and all the State, [with] foils, daggers, [and stoups of wine borne in]; and Laertes.

One dagger, unbeknown to Hamlet, has been dipped in the unction of a montebank. There is poison at its tip; the wine, too, is poisoned. In the end all will die: Hamlet, the king, the queen, Laertes.

If this is what
Let be
will bring to Hamlet, what would
Let be
have brought to him if he had let the morning pass, as Sally had planned it to, he sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper, Sally with her back to him facing the stove while hot batter sizzled in the frying pan? It is a question Justin cannot answer. He can only say with certitude what did happen when he disturbed the morning, when he did not let be. And for a minute he feels pure envy for the faith that silenced his students.
Let be.
Yes, they tell him, their confidence in the miracle of Providence unshakeable, Hamlet did the right thing.

It is after five when Justin gets home. Giselle meets him at the door. Her finger is pressed against her lips. “Shh,” she whispers in his ear, “Shh. Mommy’s been crying. I heard her in the bathroom. But she didn’t hear me, Daddy. Shh.”

“And where is Mommy now?” He picks her up and kisses her.

“She’s sleeping. She told me to play quietly. See. I am playing quietly. Shh.” Justin puts her down and takes off his coat. “How long’s Mommy been sleeping?”

“She came out of the bathroom and her eyes were red, red, red.”

“What did she say?”

“She said she was tired. She was going to take a nap.”

“How long has she been taking a nap?”

“A long time. A long, long time.” She takes his hand. “Tiptoe, Daddy. Don’t wake her up.” She is standing on her toes. She has a blue sock on one foot and a red one on the other. “Let’s go in the kitchen. Quiet. Not a sound.”

Everything is in a mess in the kitchen. Laundry is scattered on the floor, spilled out of the basket that is lying on its side. Towels and underwear that had been folded are undone, heaped in a pile. Justin sees the other side to the dirty red sock Giselle is wearing on top the pile of clean towels. He picks it up.

“My socks were dirty,” Giselle says, taking off the other red sock. “I can’t find the blue one.” Justin takes a white pair from the basket and puts them on her.