Duet for Three (16 page)

This is the importance of proper memory; not birthday parties.

That winter when she was thirty-one set records. There was more snow than anyone in the town could recall, and between snowfalls the temperatures dropped bitterly. “This is one for the books, all right,” people said.

Aggie rather liked it. Apart from the kitchen, the house was hard to keep warm, and hanging out the wash with mittened hands fumbling with clothespegs was difficult. Bringing it in again, stiff and frozen, was also tricky; sheets could shatter like glass. But her own padded body was a kind of protection. She did not need to go around bundled up like the teacher and June. At night she lay listening to winds roar and whistle around the house, and found the sound more stirring than menacing. For once, the weather was as violent as the little seed of fury she contained, and she lay with fists clenched, limbs rigid, skin flushed, hearing the destruction.

There was no such pleasure for people who had to go out. Neil and June struggled to school together, hand in hand, ploughing their way out every morning and home at night. They came in wet and cold, steam forming instantly on his glasses in the warm kitchen, June's pale-blue eyes rimmed with red and her nose running. They clapped their hands and hugged themselves and wore layers of sweaters. Aggie warmed June's nightgown in the oven before sending her to bed.

June came down sick, and then he did, although he kept going to school for a few days until he lost his voice and had to give in. Aggie had a lot of extra work then, with two patients, a lot of running up and down stairs with juices and soups and hot-water bottles. She made them hot lemonade and wrapped their throats in warm greasy rags and rubbed their chests with liniment. It was odd, touching him: hairless and smooth, and so narrow she could feel the breastbone and ribs beneath the skin. Too much pressure sent him off into a spasm of coughing; otherwise she might have been tempted to dig her fingers right in, through the flesh.

Sometimes he was sleeping when she went into his room. It was interesting, watching him without his knowing. How vulnerable he was, lying there. A stranger. What did she have to do with this man? She could not make out what could have induced her to alter visions. He was thirty-nine, and just like a child sleeping. She thought there must be a way to get free of such a person, it ought to be easy; but apparently not. Weak people, she saw, had the force of a multitude of the strong.

Without his voice, he had to point at what he wanted, or write it down. He couldn't call out to her, so he clapped his hands when he wanted her attention. His room was close and dark. There was too much human flesh in it for such a small room; their flesh in it together made it smell somewhat peculiar.

And then there was June, tossing and feverish and demanding. Poor little girl. Aggie sat on the edge of her bed and stroked her forehead and read stories to her. Really, it was all a great deal of work, and there was no time to spare for books or baking.

She was amazed she wasn't sick herself, spending so much time with them. She was proud of her body standing her in such good stead.

The weather improved and so did June. In a couple of days she'd be ready to go back to school, and he would follow shortly. Aggie could see an end, to this at least.

Throughout it all, and it went on for more than a week, it did not occur to her to call a doctor. Doctors, in her experience, were for things like chicken-pox or scarlet fever or whooping cough, certainly not for colds.

The morning she went into his room and didn't immediately hear the rasping of his breath, she abandoned prayers. At first she thought he was better, and sleeping. She stood in the doorway, looking at the heap of blankets. Closer, however, the view was different.

He was on his side, his right hand clutching the pillow as if he'd needed something from it — perhaps a breath. His eyes, unfortunately, were open, and so was his mouth. She thought later it might not have been so terrible if his eyes, at least, had been shut. He must have put up quite a fight for the last tiny trail of oxygen.

(Once, back home, she'd been exploring up in the barn and come across one of the barn cats, its limbs stretched rigid, eyes blank and open, the same peculiar combination of absence and tension about its body. “Distemper,” shrugged her father, who took it off on a shovel to bury it.)

He looked so plain. Just a small, plain man. This wasn't what she'd meant at all. God could surely not have heard a request for death in her prayers for freedom. “Oh, God,” she whispered, backing away. This time it was a protest.

“Mother,” June was calling, “I'm awake, can I get up? I'm thirsty, can I get a drink?”

There were all those moments when she'd looked at him and thought of getting free. God must have misinterpreted, or taken her too literally. Brutal. And could He plan, with one of those grand sweeps of His that massacre whole peoples for small errors, to free her entirely?

Panicked, she bolted to June's room. But June was sitting up looking peevish, her eyes clearer and her fever down. “You can get a drink of water,” Aggie told her, “but then come right back to bed and stay quiet. Daddy isn't well, and I have to go out for a few minutes.”

However could she tell June? What she wanted was to crawl under the sheets, huddle beneath the blankets, and be comforted. Also to protect June against any further whims God might have in mind.

Outdoors, it was white and silent. Standing on the porch she looked around, wondering just where she had thought she would go, and what she'd intended to do.

Down the block and around the corner was the minister's house. To deal with this error of God's, it seemed reasonable to go to His interpreter. She began to run through the heavy snow, clumsy in the rubber boots she'd pulled on.

“Good gracious,” said the minister's wife. Aggie supposed she must have pounded on the door, and heaven knew what she looked like. “Whatever's the matter? Come in, you'll catch your death out there.”

She was led to the kitchen. A cup of tea appeared. There was an arm around her shoulder, and a calm voice in her ear. “Now you just come with me,” leading her upstairs, directing her to a bed, helping her lie down, “and I'll send my daughter right over to June. You just try to be calm, my husband will take care of things. I'll be back in a minute.”

It was not calm that came, although it was reassuring that unpleasant details were being taken care of, but anger: how dared God misinterpret like this when He was supposed to understand perfectly? This must be a punishment, then. But of whom? Of her, for lacking love and grace? Or for something petty, like not going to church? A petulant God, that would make Him. Or was it aimed at Neil, whatever sins he might have committed; or at June, who had done nothing at all?

She wanted an explanation here, someone to account for God's perversity, this way He had, apparently, of caricaturing longings. She could ask the minister's wife, but when the woman returned, Aggie had no words.

“My dear, everything's being done. My daughter's gone to June and my husband has sent for the doctor. And, well, you know, he'll make the arrangements, too. So you can just stay here and rest as long as you like and not worry.”

But obviously in a world of mad events, one would be best up on one's feet, alert and if possible fighting back. “No, thank you, you've been very kind, but I think I should go home to June.”

June, who had now been told, looked up at her with enormous eyes. She was just a little girl, not accountable in the way adults were, or God should be, but she was furious and frightened, and she did say, “You killed him.” And repeated, “You killed him. You let him die.”

That was a possibility, and Aggie considered it. She could see that it might be the case. Not through any action, of course, but perhaps through lack of it.

“Now, now,” said the doctor, “your daddy was very sick.” He turned to Aggie. “It just turned into pneumonia, I think. There wasn't anything you could have done, you know, you mustn't blame yourself. And he wouldn't have suffered for long, not really.”

But what if she had called the doctor days ago? Was he telling her comforting lies? There must be cures.

“You know, June,” said the minister, “your daddy's happy now because he's with God. God needed him because he was such a good man.” June turned away and faced the wall.

Surely there were such things as oxygen tents, or drugs, something that a doctor could have done. Still, it came back to God. No one told her a doctor might be needed.

Confused, Aggie watched as people flickered through the house on unknown errands. They murmured regrets, which meant at least that they did not discern guilt in her, or responsibility. But then, the idea would never occur to them.

“Such a fine man,” they said. “Such a fine teacher. He will be missed.” Really? If she'd been the one who died, what would they have known to say?

They brought food, and hovered. They seemed to be waiting for some action on her part. She understood finally that they must be waiting for tears. She had none, however. It wasn't exactly grief that she was feeling: just that something important that she couldn't identify was missing.

He was laid out in the front room, and people filed in, filed past, filed out. There seemed to be so many of them. Had they all respected him, or liked him? Was it for Neil or for the teacher? And who was there for her, the teacher's widow?

The night before the funeral, when everyone had left, she pulled up a chair beside him. He was lying on some kind of white satiny pillowy material, inside the shiny wooden box. He wore his best black suit, and his hands were folded neatly on his white shirtfront. Expressionless, of course.

The room she had made so light was now too light, the cream color inappropriate. At the moment, she could see how he might have felt about the dark.

He looked smaller, more fragile and also more firm. There was so little to him. The undertaker's pots and brushes had given a waxy gloss to his face, an artificial, fevered flush to his cheekbones. Through the still flesh of his hands, she could make out bones. How long would it take for the flesh to fall away, leaving just the white and gleaming bones beneath?

A waste. She could not see his life at all. Who was this man, her husband, this orderly heap of matter waiting to be buried? How cruel, not to be able to see.

He'd been different. There were pictures of him, a chubby little boy in short pants, blouse, blazer, cap, grinning shyly at the camera. It had amazed her that he had once been plump and smiling. She had no connection with that little boy at all.

If his bitterness had squeezed the plumpness out of him, and her bitterness had made her fat, whose was greater?

He must have been so frightened. Always, not only at the end. He'd done a few brave things: coming here alone, and then this marriage. That must have worn out his courage, and having it turn out so badly.

If she'd known before that he was just afraid, really; nothing much more than that. And now when she could have spoken, and might have tried to make it better, he was out of reach. That was what death took away: the chance for resolution.

She had an impulse to hold him, comfort him, restore the plump innocence and make it better. She felt, she thought, like a mother, not a wife. She even reached out a hand — surely she had enough life for the two of them, enough to spare that she could even restore the dead? But she flinched back from the flesh, so amazingly inert and mysteriously dead. Was this how he'd felt about her living flesh?

And, after all, what could she have said? That she was sorry. Not an apology, but certainly a regret that they'd been equally unhappy, equally adamant and stubborn. But he was the one who'd given up and died. That would never have occurred to her.

The next day at the funeral she greeted people automatically, shook their hands, heard them from a distance, listened to the minister's prayers, his eulogy, from far away. None of it seemed to apply. He said the teacher had been a wise, gentle, kind, and learned man who would be a jewel in God's heavenly crown. For Aggie and June, his family, he said, the loss of so good a man was a blow only their faith could help them endure. “Thy will be done,” recited the mourners, “on earth, as it is in heaven.”

June did not hear any of this. The minister's wife had said, “It would only upset her more, and really, she should remember him as he was.”

Aggie had some questions and would have liked to add them to the service. She wanted to ask the minister, or anyone else who might know, if she or God were responsible. She wanted to say that she had prayed for freedom, never dreaming, and to ask what she was now supposed to do with it. What would these people have to tell her about a God who turned such a request into death?

She looked at Neil, the point of this gathering. He would be appalled if she stood, asking questions. He would say, “How could you, you ruined my funeral.” She giggled aloud, and several people glanced at her, but must have mistaken the sound for a sob.

It was hard to see the men carrying the coffin, now closed, out the door; it left her almost lonely. She couldn't account for that; then she thought, “It must just be that I like him better dead than alive.” Another giggle nearly escaped, and she wondered if she were hysterical in some peculiar internal way.