The Grief of Others (15 page)

This coldness toward John settled in her like conviction. She did not question it. Recklessly, she welcomed it: a kind of armor. She discarded her fantasy that the doctors had made a mistake, gave up meditating on the image of a fully blossomed rose. The coldness saw her through the last week of pregnancy, through the final, futile humiliations of the Cervidil, the Pitocin, the epidural, the pushing. Then the baby came and the baby breathed. For fifty-seven hours she held him in her arms; for fifty-seven hours the ice inside her abated. She and he hung suspended in time, and it was, if not a reprieve, then a respite. And then he died and the ice clamped on more solid than before, and when she looked at her children she had to hide the fact that she felt nothing, and when she looked at her husband she did not bother to hide it. She lay, in those early days home from the hospital, on their queen-sized bed, wishing she were sick, wishing she were dying, wishing for cancer, an aneurysm, an earthquake, a gun. Looking blankly, for hours at a time, at the horrid trees, river, bridge, sky.

On the third morning she found herself remembering bits of the Robert Louis Stevenson poem her mother used to recite whenever Ricky had been kept home from school with a cold or flu. “When I was sick and lay a-bed, / I had two pillows at my head, / And all my toys beside me lay / To keep me busy all the day.” How sweet the experience of being bedridden when she was small.Yes, there was the achy head, the bilious stomach, the scratchy throat. But there was also the certainty that all would be well and right again in a day or two or three. And in the meantime, the luxuries! Pajamas all day, endless paper and crayons. Her parents’ doting; the special snacks they brought as she regained her health: miniature portions arranged like delicacies, for maximal tempting, on the prettiest plates; the treat of having her father sit next to the bed reading out loud or telling from memory his favorite stories by I. L. Peretz, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Sholem Aleichem; her mother administering an alcohol rub while reciting the poems of her childhood. “I was the giant great and still / That sits upon the pillow-hill, / And sees about him, dale and plain, / The pleasant land of counterpane.”

Ricky upon the pillow-hill five days after the baby’s death saw about her the barren plain of bedclothes, the unpleasant coverlet rumpled and askew, the spiteful blankets and twisted, tormented sheets. The old towel she’d spread out under her hips to protect the sheets bunched up beneath her. Her lochia still flowed red, her perineum was still swollen, her breasts hard with milk, her husband at work, her children at school, her baby in ashes.They’d had him cremated. No doll-sized coffin, thank you. No lamb-topped gravestone in a leafy cemetery where passersby might pause and read aloud the dates, do the math, sigh: “Only three days, how sad,” and go on with their pretty strolls.

Somewhere there was a box—a volunteer at the hospital had prepared it for them—containing the baby’s hat and onesie, his socks and receiving blanket, a lock of hair from the base of his head (lucky, someone had commented, he’d been born with any), a few photographs, his footprints on a card. The meanness of these relics revolted her. John had put the box away somewhere. Ricky didn’t care to think about that now.

She didn’t care to think about John now, for that matter, or Paul or Biscuit, either. It wasn’t simply that she didn’t want to think about them, it was that she couldn’t manage to care. On some level she knew that must be very bad. When she thought of them they seemed oddly abstract. They were like the paper dolls of her childhood, iconic figures of HUSBAND, SON, DAUGHTER, each adorned in the appropriate costume, arms akimbo, expressions fixed.

But: Dr. Abdulaziz. Of him alone could she think these days and be brought to softness, be returned to a state in which her old, unruined self seemed to have breath left in her. She dreamed up scenarios of going back to the hospital, roaming the building until she encountered him on the ward, or in the lobby, or in the elevator—“chancing” upon him and exchanging a wordless look, which would be filled with mutual sorrow and understanding. Her fantasies, in which she received not only his succor but also his passion, his desire, moved her to shed small, hot tears. She licked those that rolled by the side of her mouth and tasted salt.

When the pain medication ran out at the end of the week, Ricky rose from her bed without wishing for more. She no longer needed the tablets for her physical symptoms, and no longer wanted them to mute her emotions. Her emotions seemed perhaps too muted already. Paul and Biscuit had come into her room various times over the past several days, Paul bringing supper to her on a tray and doing his homework on the rug; Biscuit sitting on the edge of the bed to have her hair braided after her bath. That their exchanges were skeletal (“What’s sixteen times seventy-four?” “Tell Daddy he didn’t get all the cream rinse out”). Ricky didn’t find herself noticing until afterward, and then with only the most far-off flicker of regret. The vast, spearmint distance she felt between herself and everyone—everything—else was almost, she imagined, what royals must feel, and forevermore Ricky would link mourning with royalty, and royalty with mourning; for the rest of her days, the words
king
and
queen
would remind her of deep sorrow.

Sorrow, anyway, she could admit. Mourning. Not anger. She—who had made one grievous error in failing to recognize her anger back in January—made a second in consciously disavowing it now. She told herself that to be angry over the baby’s fatal condition would imply the belief that it was unfair, which would in turn imply that she believed she and her child deserved a better outcome than they had gotten. An insupportable claim, in light of all the different varieties and magnitudes of tragedy that people faced on earth. Given how relatively fortunate, how unmarred by suffering, her life had been up till now, given how much others suffered by comparison, the loss of this one baby, in peacetime, to natural causes, when she had two healthy children at home—this tragedy, compared with those of countless others, was small. She resolved not to feel anger. It was nothing she was entitled to, and she would not commit the disgrace of grasping at it.

Sorrow. Mourning. Queenliness (a cupped hand oscillating from the window of a carriage). These might carry her through the motions, through the days. These she might claim, and would, and did. It was Friday. She threw out the empty pill bottles and showered and dressed and went downstairs. She did the dishes and took a walk and cut some pussy willow switches from the tree out back and put the cuttings into a pitcher of water, and then she went to the store and came home and made tomato soup and cornbread and did the laundry and after school she listened to Biscuit practice her recorder and she did geology flashcards with Paul and when John came home he found the three of them sitting on the living room rug having dragged out the old board game Sorry.When Ricky looked up at him with a shallow smile, and he returned it with a relieved, grateful one of his own, she knew she was unworthy of him, but not how to make it right.

He set his teeth. He was getting used to hearing his name pronounced like that, in husky tones, dove-gray with pity.

“I just
heard
.”

The whole department had heard; it would have been hard to keep the news private. For one thing, his closest colleagues had all known his wife was expecting, so it had been necessary to break it to them when the sad news about her pregnancy emerged. Then he’d needed to tell the head of the theater department the specific date of the induction in order to get his classes covered. Furthermore, this being the theater department, communication flowed expertly while the practice of discretion was somewhat less well-developed. By the time he’d returned to work a week later, everyone from the campus police to his firstyear students seemed to have heard of his misfortune.

Not every response had been unwelcome. The department had sent a vase of white hyacinths to the hospital, and a simple potted gardenia bearing a card signed by the college president had arrived at the house. Charlotte from the costume shop had baked lemon bars, which she’d offered with a merciful absence of fanfare, and his department head had told him he could get his midterm grades in after the deadline. But as many responses had felt invasive. A bouquet of crimson roses, of all things, had appeared on his desk, the accompanying cloying note signed by his most grade-grubbing student. There’d been a dozen condolence cards, awful, glossy, pastel things with ornately scripted Bible verses and soft-focus pictures of lilies and angels, which John had opened and promptly thrown away. The topper was a pious letter, sent by the dean’s hopelessly well-meaning wife, announcing that a donation had been made in the Ryries’ name to the March of Dimes.

All in all, John was relieved when the expressions of sympathy began to peter out. It was certainly easier to work without having to dodge the bullets of people’s good intentions.The fact of his tragedy had seemed to foster in everyone around him a sudden, alarming presumption of intimacy.

As in the case of Madeleine now, belatedly shocked—she’d just returned from a conference in Denver—standing on the threshold of the scene shop, one hand clutching the door frame, the other having lit upon her artfully arranged décolleté blouse. Madeleine Berkowitz, associate professor of costume design, a perfectly respectable teacher and scholar who unfortunately undermined her own credibility by dressing on all occasions like a vamp. From the feet up, at this moment: ankle boots, patterned hose, a rust peau-de-soie miniskirt whose hue matched her mane of hair, a black blouse with plunging neckline and a heavy amber pendant nestled just at the point of her cleavage. At times her appearance provided a not unpleasant diversion or even comic relief, but right now, coupled with her desire to express bathetic condolences, it was the last thing John wanted to deal with.

“John,” she said, making his name somehow two syllables. “How
are
you?” She crossed to where he stood by the industrial sink.

“Doing well, doing well,” he answered briskly. “Thanks for asking.” He shoved the brushes he’d been holding—half a dozen scenic fitches and badger hair flats—into a can of Murphy Oil Soap and lukewarm water to soak, then wiped his hands on the front of his coveralls. It was nearly evening and he was exhausted. All day he’d been catching up on postponed student conferences in between working in the scene shop; the set for
Twelfth Night
was behind schedule.The more significant reason for his fatigue, however, was that he’d spent the past few nights on the couch, pleading insomnia. His voluntary banishment was less about insomnia, though, than a grab at dignity. It was a refusal to submit passively to Ricky’s indifference in bed. He didn’t fault her for mourning, but the coolness stung. Why wouldn’t she let herself be comforted by him? For that matter, why did she withhold comfort from him?

“I’m sorrier,” Madeleine continued, “than I can possibly say.”

“I know.” He tried to make this sound both appreciative and final.

Yet she pressed on, her tone swelling with concern: “So, how’s your
wife
?”

At this moment—John could have smooched him—Lance Oprisu called from the doorway,“Yo, John.You coming or what? Oh hey, Maddie.”

She pivoted toward him. A hand fluttered to rest on the amber pendant between her breasts. “Hello, Lance.”

“Uh, yeah,” said John. “Let me grab my, uh, coat.”

Lance was in his mid-twenties, with wire-rimmed glasses and a dirty-blond ponytail. He’d been hired as the theater’s technical director only this past fall, but he and John had already constructed three sets together, and in the act of shared labor a mutual, unvoiced affection had grown between them. He and John had not made plans to go anywhere, and even at this moment, as John snatched up his green army jacket and tossed Madeleine an apologetic grimace, he had no idea what Lance intended, other than the obvious and noble cause of rescuing him from this encounter.

Twelfth Night
was Lance’s baby; John had offered it to him even before he’d known how difficult April would turn out to be. For being the first set Lance had ever designed for the Llewellyn-Price, it was admirable; John, for his part, had been glad to play first mate for a change. But work on construction was going slowly. Only a half-hour ago, they’d gotten the first coat of paint on the stage floor. Now, out in the hallway, Lance suggested they go get some dinner while it finished drying, then come back and put on a second.

“Good by me,” said John. “And thanks for that.” He tilted his head toward the scene shop.

The sky outside still held plenty of light, of the faded blue variety that always seemed it could linger in perpetuity—until that final moment when it was unceremoniously snuffed. John’s truck was blocked in so they took Lance’s Miata, a tight squeeze for John, but in its own way liberating, as it triggered memories of more carefree days. When he and Ricky first met he’d been carless, and they’d gone everywhere in her lame coupe, a Pontiac Fiero that was always breaking down, and in which he always felt uncomfortably compressed—and yet. It had been a sweet car, not least for the creative contortions it had induced them to resort to whenever they drove somewhere secluded and parked.

Lance drove fast, with the windows open an inch and the radio turned up loud. They went to Mero Mayor’s, a dive on Route 303 halfway between Congers and Nyack, where they sat at the bar and ordered enchiladas and margaritas, one for Lance, and, uncharacteristically, three for John, which he downed like limeade. They watched the game on the wall-mounted TV. John was a Yanks fan, Lance hated their guts, and they wrangled about this amiably as they drank.

“You done?” Lance asked at last, with a show of impatience. He leaned in ostentatiously to eye the meniscus of John’s glass, then rose from the bar stool. “Come on.”

“No, no, wait. I’m buying the next round.”