Lady (41 page)

The town had gone wild with celebration. People where whooping it up in the street outside the fire station and the drugstore. Miss Jocelyn-Marie was applauding Porter Sprague, who was marching around with a Japanese flag and wearing his air-raid warden's helmet.

When we got to the Green, it seemed that all the doors were flung open and people were congregating as if by some recognizable signal under the branches of the Great Elm. The Sparrows were there, and the Harrelsons, and the Marinis -- old Tony and his wife -- and Teresa's younger brothers and sisters. And other neighbors, some of whom, newcomers, I didn't recognize. All those joyful, friendly faces, all the happiness of that momentous afternoon.

We stopped at Lady Harleigh's, where Helen said that Lady was being bathed by the nurse, and could we wait a bit. And if that racket out there didn't do Mrs. Harleigh in, nothing would. Cars were careening around the Green, some straight across it, including a spanking new squad car, siren going full blast, and someone was shooting off a gun. As though drawn to this most historic part of town, people were coming over from the Center, including P. J. Sprague, still with his Japanese flag, which he was flourishing like a matador's cape. Eamon Harmon and his wife were holding a sort of open house on their front porch, and the country-clubbers had already forgathered for a pitched and drawn-out celebration.

At dusk the streetlights came on, and though this had become common practice again since the danger of bombing from Europe had ended, still it was a happy sight. Drinks were being served at people's front doors, and rejoicing continued unabated. I wished Lew could have been there to see it. And Blue Ferguson.

Under the Great Elm the crowd grew more boisterous by the moment. Firecrackers were being exploded, car horns were blowing, one of the country-clubbers on the Harmons' porch had a jazz whistle, another a fish horn, another a cowbell, an orchestrated madness while more drinks were downed. Johnny Marini, Teresa's brother, appeared -- had gotten into town that very moment -- and there were tears and hugs among the many Marinis. I saw Helen waving from Lady's stoop, and while Teresa went home with her family I made my way across the Green, accepting back-slaps and kisses as if I'd won the war single-handed.

"Is it over?" Lady asked weakly when I came into her room. "Is it really over?"

"It's all over."

"Thank God."

I made conversation, telling her about our picnic and the town's rejoicing out on the Green, and that Johnny Marini had come home.

"Oh, dear, oh, dear, you're all home. All?" She paused in fugitive recollection. "No -- who's missing? Someone --" Her voice trembled more, and she began to cry.

"Lew -- Lew won't be coming home," I said.

"Lew is dead?"

"Yes. Let's not talk about it, okay?"

"Oh, my dear, I've upset you -- I'm so sorry." With difficulty she reached out and touched my face. I thought of the winter I'd fallen through the ice, and she had nursed me. Those hands, so loving and so willing. Now it was too much effort for her to even lift them.

She jumped slightly as more firecrackers exploded out on the Green. Sounds of merriment came from all directions; like the sounds of one giant party.

"You should be out there, with the others. Not here with me."

"Of course I should be here. I want to be. This is the best part."

"Oh, the best part -- there isn't any best part anymore."

"It is for me."

"How dear you are. My l'il Ignatz -- except you're my big Ignatz now. If I were younger, would you marry me?"

"In a minute. But I'm going to marry Teresa Marini, and I want you to come to our wedding. You know -- larks and everything?"

"You're going to be married? To Teresa?"

"Not right away. Don't you approve?"

"Of course I do. Teresa is fine -- a lovely girl. She'll give you lots of children. Lots of --" She trailed off, murmuring Teresa's name in a tone of vague speculation, as though wondering if she really did approve. Then she closed her eyes and was still.

Outside, the noise became even louder. I heard the bell of the fire truck, and it sounded as if there were people down on the lawn. I recognized Eamon Harmon's jovial bass voice, and Mr. Harrelson's. The 5:10-ers must be working their way down the Green, I decided. There were calls and shouts, and then they began singing, drunkenly, but happily. The nurse hurried in to shut the window, followed by Helen, who was bringing me a Tom Collins.

"What are they doing out there? Don't they know Mrs. Harleigh's --"

Lady opened her eyes and they caught mine as we listened to the singing. We had recognized it at the same instant.

"Wait," I told the nurse before she could slam the front window down. "Open it, she wants to hear."

She raised the sash again, and turned with a dismayed expression, but Lady was smiling. She knew the song was for her.

"Good night, Lady, good night, Lady,
Good night, Lady, we're going to leave you now.
Merrily we roll along, roll along, roll along --"

She fumbled for a handkerchief, sniffled, and laughed wryly. "If that's Colonel Blatchley down there, you'd better tell him it's Lady that's going to leave him." The serenade ended and the voices quieted, though the revelry continued unabated at a distance. Helen and the nurse retired again, and I continued to sit by Lady's bedside. There was still the trace of a smile on her lips as I helped her straighten herself on her pillows. While she dozed, I wandered to the back window and looked out on the flowering garden, and thought of other times. I felt a bitter sorrow then, as ghosts from the past nudged me. I seemed to see myself on the carriage-house roof, with Lew below, watching as I flew into the cucumber frame. I saw Lady seated on the terrace wall while the boat parade went by. I saw us digging out the septic tank. Saw Dora spying from the loft window; saw myself in the wind, rescuing the gazing-globe. Saw Blue Ferguson's market truck parked at Mrs. Pierson's kitchen door. Saw Lady and Jesse making their spring garden. I thought with amusement how they had fooled us all, she playing the Merry Widow while they lived up here as man and wife. Absently, I ran the tips of my fingers along my chin: I needed a shave. How was that possible? I was still a boy, wasn't I? I hadn't been away, had I? Lew was still alive. Blue was driving for the Pilgrim Market, Jesse and Elthea were downstairs. . . . I raised my glass to absent friends.

"'Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home -- '"

Hearing her speak, I turned and saw her smiling, as if in that old and miraculous way of hers she were reading my thoughts. She broke off and lifted her brows, one of her minute signals I could still read,

"'Your house is on fire, your children will burn. . . .'" I gave her back the line, and she asked me to take her to the chaise. I prepared it, then carried her in the bedcovers to it, where she lay back with a tiny sigh of contentment.

"Those tulips -- did I put in bulbs this year?"

I explained that Papa Marini had come and done the work, which had restored her gardens to their former glory.

"Oh, Mr. Marini," she said, as if he were there with us, "thank you. Thank you." Her brow furrowed and she reached out toward the window. "But I don't see it --"

"See what?"

"The gazing-globe. Jesse's gazing-globe."

"It's there -- in the vase on the dressing table."

"Why is it there?"

"You wanted it. You said you wanted it in the room."

This seemed to register, and to afford her some satisfaction. "Yes, that's nice."

"You said 'Jesse's gazing-globe'?"

"Jesse's, yes. He bought it for me, you know."

"No, I didn't."

Her eyes snapped briefly and her voice had an impatient edge. "Well, he did. He said I could see the whole world in it, if I wanted. He said --" The effort of talking was costing her too much. I tried to calm her, but she was persistent. "He said, 'Broken mirrors can't be mended. Neither can people, sometimes.' Perhaps he wanted it as a reminder to me. I treated him so dreadfully that time. He always liked my hair long, he liked to sit there on the bed and watch me brush it. So I cut it. To spite him. To make him unhappy. Wasn't that a dreadful thing to do?"

I remembered it well, the day I'd overheard the argument about the shrine on the gate-leg table. I remembered her slamming the silver brush at the mirror and the shattering noise it made.

"I wonder . . ." she murmured.

"What?"

"Oh . . . nothing important . . ." She smiled reassuringly; then her expression altered slightly, became a little sly, a little knowing. "He's down there, you know."

"Who?"

"You know . . ." Again her brows indicated a secret understanding between us. "Our friend. Ott."

"Ott? The red-haired man?" On her deathbed, the conclusion, the denouement, the final revelation . . . The room became still, and the silence of the room was broken by the bursts of laughter out on the Green. Someone was ringing the fire bell, and the country-clubbers were singing "Der Fuehrer's Face."

"Promise not to tell?" She said it like a little girl with a childish secret to be told.

"I promise."

"He's under the pedestal."

"The gazing-globe?"

"Yes. Under the brickwork."

"I thought he was in the sewer excavation."

"I know you did. I did, too. I was sure of it."

"First I thought he was in the coal bin."

"But he was. For a time. Then Jesse put him in a drift behind the carriage house. He was frozen all winter. By spring he had to be moved. Jesse wouldn't tell me where. I thought sure he'd done something to stop up the sewer line and that was why the Green was so wet. I was awfully frightened. But Jesse put him in the garden -- it was the night of my birthday party -- and next day he began laying the bricks over him. It was the last thing he told me --"

I recalled Jesse's disappearance at the party, and how he'd come in, cold and with muddy shoes, when Lady was singing. Recalled too the muffled words into Lady's shoulder that day at the freight station. "Yes. I see."

"No one will know, now. Will they?"

"No. No one will know."

"I'm glad."

A slight flutter of her fingers on the back of my hand, then she slid off to sleep again, or if not to sleep to that alien place she now spent so much of her time in. Her mouth opened and the rasp began in her throat again. The nurse would disapprove my having moved her, I was sure. I took her into my arms, returned her to the bed. She stirred uneasily, softly moaning, then uttering unintelligible sounds in a strident tone. When I had settled the covers around her again, she opened her eyes.

"Edward?"

"No. It's me."

All recognition was gone now. I said my name, got a glimmer. "Not Edward. No, I -- wouldn't have supposed. He has been here enough, Edward."

"Has he?"

"Yes! Yes, he has!" The sound rang out, angry, defiant. She raised up on her pillow with an effort and fairly shouted the words at me, as though she found his presence in whatever form indefensible, heinous, not to be borne. She stared down at her pale, crabbed hand, clutching the top of the turned-down sheet. She held it up, inspected it. "I had pretty hands. What has happened? What have you done to me?"

"Nothing . . . nothing . . ."

"You have come for the end."

"It's not the end." In that reasoning yet hopeless tone that is self-defeating by its very intrusion.

"Yes. The end. Now. It is coming. Not quite now -- but soon. He will come for me. He wants me buried beside him. He has told me so. So many times, he has told me. It will be his last revenge. I would a hundred times rather -- no, no, it is fitting. Right and fitting." She laughed a wild, crazy laugh and I knew she hardly saw me. I reached to calm her, she flung my hand away, then fell exhausted on the pillow. Her torment was more painful to witness than anything that had preceded it. I groped for a glass and the bottle of sedative pills. She seemed to understand what I was doing, and she shook her head. "No. No pills. They make me sleep -- If I sleep, you'll be gone. Bring --"

She was pointing at the globe. I took it from the bureau and placed it in her hands. She stared into it, looking like a gypsy fortune-teller, the hag-seeress. She spoke again: "All things, past and future are here. I can see them. The future -- I will come back to you. I know you are waiting." I realized she was talking not to me but to Edward.

"Are you listening?"

Now she was looking at me; she seemed to have confused my physical being with his ghostly presence. I said yes, I was listening.

"Edward -- he --" The name choked her, she couldn't get beyond it. I said she already had told me about Edward, reminding her of that day on Lamentation Mountain. She shook her head.

"No -- more -- more --"

But she could not. Using what little remained of her resources, she looked from me -- or the imagined Edward -- back to the globe. Her senses seemed briefly to right themselves, and her features relaxed slightly. Then, peering at her curved reflection in the globe, she began to cry softly.

"Do you love me?" she asked.

"Yes." I did not know if I spoke as myself or as Edward.

She said, "And Jesse loved me. That is enough for one lifetime. But I have done dreadful things -- terrible things --"

"No --"

"I have! I have! I have lived in hell and I will go to hell. It's in the Bible! Dreadful, terrible things!" Her voice rose in a crescendo, drowning out the celebration on the Green. She did not continue, but lay panting from her exertions, staring intently into the globe resting on her chest. "But that is all in the past. We know the future. Now there is only the --"

She clamped her lips. The present would not do for her. Her fingers relaxed, the silver ball slipped from her grasp, and before I could catch it, it fell to the floor and smashed to pieces. Unperturbed, Lady glanced down with a faint smile.

"There," she said, as though in this dying moment she had solicited and won some small but signal victory. "Make 'Eternity' from those if you will."

She closed her eyes. I brought the wastebasket and one by one dropped the pieces into it, then brushed away the remaining bits of silver dust. The past, the present, and the future, exploded, gone. I carried the basket to the door, then stopped as she murmured something.