In The Garden Of The North American Martyrs (17 page)

“No, it's not fun. I can't explain.”

“Why is it all so sad?” Mother asked. “Why all the diseases?”

“Maybe,” Dr. Murphy said, “sad things are more interesting.”

“Not to me,” Mother said.

“Not to me, either,” I said. “It just comes out that way.”

After dinner Dr. Murphy asked Mother to play the piano. He particularly wanted to sing “Come Home Abbie, the Light's on the Stair.”

“That old thing,” Mother said. She stood and folded her napkin deliberately and we followed her into the living room. Dr. Murphy stood behind her as she warmed up. Then they sang “Come Home Abbie, the Light's on the Stair,” and I watched him stare down at Mother intently, as if he were trying to remember something. Her own eyes were closed. After that they sang “O Magnum Mysterium.” They sang it in parts and I regretted that I had no voice, it sounded so good.

“Come on, James,” Dr. Murphy said as Mother played the last chords. “These old tunes not good enough for you?”

“He just can't sing,” Mother said.

 

When Dr. Murphy left, Mother lit the fire and made more coffee. She slouched down in the big chair, sticking her legs straight
out and moving her feet back and forth. “That was fun,” she said.

“Did you and Father ever do things like that?”

“A few times, when we were first going out. I don't think he really enjoyed it. He was like you.”

I wondered if Mother and Father had had a good marriage. He admired her and liked to look at her; every night at dinner he had us move the candlesticks slightly to right and left of center so he could see her down the length of the table. And every evening when she set the table she put them in the center again. She didn't seem to miss him very much. But I wouldn't really have known if she did, and anyway I didn't miss him all that much myself, not the way I had. Most of the time I thought about other things.

“James?”

I waited.

“I've been thinking that you might like to go down and stay with Michael for a couple of weeks or so.”

“What about school?”

“I'll talk to Father McSorley. He won't mind. Maybe this problem will take care of itself if you start thinking about other people.”

“I do.”

“I mean helping them, like Michael does. You don't have to go if you don't want to.”

“It's fine with me. Really. I'd like to see Michael.”

“I'm not trying to get rid of you.”

“I know.”

Mother stretched, then tucked her feet under her. She sipped noisily at her coffee. “What did that word mean that Murphy used? You know the one?”

“Paranoid? That's where somebody thinks everyone is out to get him. Like that woman who always grabs you after Mass—Frances.”

“Not paranoid. Everyone knows what that means. Sol-something.”

“Oh. Solipsist. A solipsist is someone who thinks he creates everything around him.”

Mother nodded and blew on her coffee, then put it down without drinking from it. “I'd rather be paranoid. Do you really think Frances is?”

“Of course. No question about it.”

“I mean really
sick
?”

“That's what paranoid
is
, is being sick. What do you think, Mother?”

“What are you so angry about?”

“I'm not angry.” I lowered my voice. “I'm not angry. But you don't believe those stories of hers, do you?”

“Well, no, not exactly. I don't think she knows what she's saying, she just wants someone to listen. She probably lives all by herself in some little room. So she's paranoid. Think of that. And I had no idea. James, we should pray for her. Will you remember to do that?”

I nodded. I thought of Mother singing “O Magnum Mysterium,” saying grace, praying with easy confidence, and it came to me that her imagination was superior to mine. She could imagine things as coming together, not falling apart. She looked at me and I shrank; I knew exactly what she was going to say. “Son,” she said, “do you know how much I love you?”

 

The next afternoon I took the bus to Los Angeles. I looked forward to the trip, to the monotony of the road and the empty fields by the roadside. Mother walked with me down the long concourse. The station was crowded and oppressive. “Are you sure this is the right bus?” she asked at the loading platform.

“Yes.”

“It looks so old.”

“Mother—”

“All right.” She pulled me against her and kissed me, then held me an extra second to show that her embrace was sincere, not just like everyone else's, never having realized that everyone else does the same thing. I boarded the bus and we waved at each other until it became embarrassing. Then Mother began checking through her handbag for something. When she had finished I stood and adjusted the luggage over my seat. I sat and we smiled at each other, waved when the driver gunned the engine, shrugged when he got up suddenly to count the passengers, waved again when he resumed his seat. As the bus pulled out my mother and I were looking at each other with plain relief.

I had boarded the wrong bus. This one was bound for Los Angeles but not by the express route. We stopped in San Mateo, Palo Alto, San Jose, Castroville. When we left Castroville it began to rain, hard; my window would not close all the way, and a thin stream of water ran down the wall onto my seat. To keep dry I had to stay away from the wall and lean forward. The rain fell harder. The engine of the bus sounded as though it were coming apart.

In Salinas the man sleeping beside me jumped up but before I had a chance to change seats his place was taken by an enormous woman in a print dress, carrying a shopping bag. She took possession of her seat and spilled over onto half of mine, backing me up to the wall. “That's a storm,” she said loudly, then turned and looked at me. “Hungry?” Without waiting for an answer she dipped into her bag and pulled out a piece of chicken and thrust it at me. “Hey, by God,” she hooted, “look at him go to town on that drumstick!” A few people turned and smiled. I smiled back around the bone and kept at it. I finished that piece and she handed me another, and then another. Then she started handing out chicken to the people in the seats near us.

Outside of San Luis Obispo the noise from the engine grew suddenly louder and just as suddenly there was no noise at all. The driver pulled off to the side of the road and got out, then got
on again dripping wet. A few moments later he announced that the bus had broken down and they were sending another bus to pick us up. Someone asked how long that might take and the driver said he had no idea. “Keep your pants on!” shouted the woman next to me. “Anybody in a hurry to get to L.A. ought to have his head examined.”

The wind was blowing hard around the bus, driving sheets of rain against the windows on both sides. The bus swayed gently. Outside the light was brown and thick. The woman next to me pumped all the people around us for their itineraries and said whether or not she had ever been where they were from or where they were going. “How about you?” She slapped my knee. “Parents own a chicken ranch? I hope so!” She laughed. I told her I was from San Francisco. “San Francisco, that's where my husband was stationed.” She asked me what I did there and I told her I worked with refugees from Tibet.

“Is that right? What do you do with a bunch of Tibetans?”

“Seems like there's plenty of other places they could've gone,” said a man in front of us. “Coming across the border like that. We don't go there.”

“What do you do with a bunch of Tibetans?” the woman repeated.

“Try to find them jobs, locate housing, listen to their problems.”

“You understand that kind of talk?”

“Yes.”

“Speak it?”

“Pretty well. I was born and raised in Tibet. My parents were missionaries over there.”

Everyone waited.

“They were killed when the Communists took over.”

The big woman patted my arm.

“It's all right,” I said.

“Why don't you say some of that Tibetan?”

“What would you like to hear?”

“Say ‘The cow jumped over the moon.'” She watched me, smiling, and when I finished she looked at the others and shook her head. “That was pretty. Like music. Say some more.”

“What?”

“Anything.”

They bent toward me. The windows suddenly went blind with rain. The driver had fallen asleep and was snoring gently to the swaying of the bus. Outside the muddy light flickered to pale yellow, and far off there was thunder. The woman next to me leaned back and closed her eyes and then so did all the others as I sang to them in what was surely an ancient and holy tongue.

TOBIAS WOLFF
lives in Northern California and teaches at Stanford University. Author of the recent novel
Old School
, he has received the Rea Award for excellence in the short story, the
Los Angeles Times
Book Prize, and the PEN/Faulkner Award for
The Barracks Thief
, also available from Ecco.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.