The House of Closed Doors (33 page)

T
he small silver-gilt clock on Mama’s nightstand ticked so softly that I usually never noticed it. Now, after an hour of sitting by my mother’s bedside listening to the faint wheeze of her breath, the tick of that clock became a torment to me. I was just considering whether I should move it outside until it wound down when Mama opened her eyes.

“Hiram? My dear, it is late. You should be in bed.”

“It’s me, Mama. Nell. And it’s just two o’clock, you know. See? It’s still light outside.” I shifted the pillows until Mama seemed more comfortable; she almost had to be sitting upright to breathe easily.

“Nell. Where is my husband?”

“Still in North Carolina, Mama. Remember? We cannot find an address to let him know‌—‌“ I bit my lip. I had been about to say, “that you are dying.” For there was no doubt in my mind by now. The doctor and Bet had done their best to prepare me. And Martin, who by now was visiting us three times a day, had sat with me for a long hour in the parlor and let me question him about his own mother’s deathbed. Strangely enough, that had relieved my mind. The only deaths I had ever seen till then had taken the shape of two small, wizened bodies and a tarpaulin-covered form. The other deaths‌—‌my father’s, my brother’s‌—‌had happened, as it were, offstage, and I knew so little about them. Mysterious death, sinister death. To hear Martin describe Ruth’s departure in simple, practical words had removed some of the frightening unknownness of what was about to confront me.

Mama struggled to moisten her lips, and I held the water glass so that she could take a sip. I was glad that the heat had abated a little, although the much-needed rain had not fallen.

Mama’s gaze had fallen upon my hand, and it took me a moment to understand that she was staring at my ring. “Emmie’s ring,” she whispered. “It never leaves Hiram’s pocket.”

“He gave it to me, Mama. Remember? Because of Sarah. So that I could tell people I was married.” I hoped that Mama would remember about Sarah and the circumstances of her birth. I did not want to have to explain it. Putting it into words made it sound worse.

“She had a baby.” Mama had shut her eyes, wandering in the past as she often did now. “Dead, like my little boy. But they said‌—‌“ she took a few deep breaths, struggling like a diver for the little air that could enter her lungs, “things. I remember that your father told me.” She smiled, her eyes still closed, and her voice strengthened so that she sounded almost like herself. “Strange. I had quite forgotten. To think that so long ago we talked about Hiram, never knowing that he and I would be joined as one.”

I shuddered, thinking of the fate I hoped lay in store for Hiram. At least Mama would not know.

There was silence for several minutes, and I thought Mama had drifted off to sleep again. I was startled when she spoke, her eyes still closed.

“They said that Hiram paid the midwife.”

“What do you mean, Mama?”

“To destroy the child in the hope that Emmie might live. And she did survive the birth, but the fever took her. My poor Hiram.” Her brow creased into deep furrows. “But perhaps it was wrong… to destroy the child. And it was just a rumor, after all. Just talk, Jack.”

I jumped but then realized she meant my father. I did not want to correct her‌—‌let her think he was in the room with us. Perhaps he was.

Mama began talking again, but I could not distinguish the words well. I leaned back in my armchair, listening for the faint sounds in the house, and after a while I half-dozed. I thought I was at the Farm again, looking out of the workroom window at Hiram getting out of the carriage. His large form loomed over the frail old man with him. I saw Hiram’s power, the power to do what he wished with people, because we were all weaker than he‌—‌smaller, older, less capable in mind, less able to summon help. My imagination conjured up a picture of Emmie‌—‌I saw her as small, childlike, and blonde, and maybe I was seeing Jo too‌—‌whimpering in pain as a small, bloody shape was pulled out of her…

I jerked upright in my chair. Some noise had awoken me‌—‌was it Mama? No, I could hear her breathing, the wet sound that her overtaxed lungs sometimes made. I would have to adjust the way she was laying. Then I realized what I had heard. Voices. Bet’s brogue, rising and falling like the sound of the sea‌—‌and in counterpoint, a bass rumble. Hiram was home.

B
et must have explained everything, because when Hiram entered the room he did not ask any questions. I nodded a greeting, and he grunted in return, fixing me with a look of distaste in his cold blue eyes. I hastily stood up from the armchair and motioned him to come forward. The smell of cigars wafted over me as he took my place, lifting my mother’s small, cold hand and gazing at her intently.

I moved around to other side of the bed. “I will move her up a little more,” I said. “Her breathing is rough‌—‌propping her up usually helps.”

For a moment my stepfather glared at me. And then Mama made a small sound in her sleep, a tiny moan, and his expression changed. Nodding, he lifted Mama gently while I rearranged the pillows so that she would be comfortable. I watched him lay her back as carefully as if she’d been made of glass and wondered if he could really be the ruthless killer I took him for.

“Thank you.” Hiram’s tone was even, with little warmth but with no hostility either. “I will sit by her now, if you would please leave us alone.” He sat in the armchair and gathered Mama’s hand into his, running his thumb gently along the back of her hand and leaning forward to kiss her forehead. I backed away from the bed and turned to go downstairs.

M
ama did not wake again. Hiram talked to her, for hours at a stretch, in a low whisper that made it impossible for me to hear him through the closed door. Were they words of love? Simple small talk to comfort her with his presence? Or a confession?

He allowed me to sit in the room with him for much of the last, peaceful forty-eight hours. I drew one of Mama’s dainty chairs up to the other side of the bed, and we each held one of her hands. Any animosity that existed between us was suspended as we listened to Mama’s breathing grow gradually harsher and more difficult. In the last few hours there were terrifying halts in her breathing; each time I would look mutely at Hiram and he, apparently more accustomed to deathbeds, would shake his head. It was not yet time.

When the moment came when her breathing stopped and did not return, Bet was sharing our vigil. Marie had been summoned two hours before to say goodbye to her mistress but had dissolved into blubbering tears, and Bet had soon sent her away, with Sarah in her arms, to wait in the kitchen.

Martin had come too about an hour earlier and had kissed Mama’s cheek and bade her farewell with simple gravity. Hiram was in the room; otherwise, I think I would have hugged Martin to me for comfort. He had been through this just a year before with his own mother, and I had not been there, and now I hated that thought. I followed Martin out of the bedroom, and Bet and I both accompanied him to the door.

“How long?” he had asked Bet.

“Not long, sir. But she’ll have an easy time of it, if I’m any judge. There’s been no pain as you could call it, just the usual discomforts‌—‌a little while longer and she’ll pass in her sleep, I’ll be bound.”

Martin had dropped a brotherly kiss on my forehead and walked away, glancing back at the upper story of our house as he opened the gate. I watched him go and walked slowly back upstairs to measure out my adored mother’s last moments on this earth.

T
he clock ticked as we all held our breath in the silence, waiting to know if Mama had finally passed into eternity. Hiram felt her hands and her neck, running his hands over them with an intent look of concentration. Then he looked up at Bet and nodded curtly. I sat paralyzed as the two of them swiftly removed all but one pillow from under Mama and gently lowered her into a reclining position. With the lightest of touches, surprising in so big a man, Hiram slid her eyelids over her half-closed eyes.

I started as Bet produced a strip of cloth from one of her pockets and motioned to Hiram to help her close Mama’s mouth, which had fallen slightly open with her last breath, and bind her jaw. “Bet‌—‌“ I did not want to see my mother lying there with a bound face, as if she had the toothache.

“It’s only for a short while, Miss. If you don’t do it straightaway, it becomes difficult later, you see? By the time we have laid her out, we’ll be able to take it off and make her beautiful.”

“Laid her out.” I looked with trepidation at the still form on the bed.

“Well, you’ll want to do it with me, won’t you, Miss? I’d hardly want to have that weak-hearted Marie helping me and crying all over poor Mrs. Jackson.” She turned to Hiram. “If you could go for the doctor and the undertaker, sir, Miss Nell and I will manage just fine.”

FORTY-THREE

B
et kindly left me alone with Mama for a few minutes, but I had little to say to the quiet face in its binding whose expression somehow settled into a deeper stillness as I watched. When Bet returned, I was ready to find relief in action.

For the next two hours Bet had me working alongside her in a purposeful hush of whispered voices. Moving mechanically under her direction, I felt calm and almost peaceful; yet I could scarcely believe that my mother had come to the end of her life at not even forty years of age. Still, I recalled, she had lived longer than my father.

Bet labored steadily and efficiently, showing me what to do and explaining every step in detail. I felt terribly shy about seeing my mother’s nakedness, but the way Bet arranged things there was no undignified exposure, nothing but gentle respect and love. Indeed, I had never loved this stout, hot-tempered woman so well as when I saw her lovingly wash my mother’s still-warm skin with a glow of tenderness in her brown eyes.

“Have you done this many times?” I ventured to ask.

“A few, Miss. First time was helping Ma with my little sister when I was twelve. The diphtheria took her. Ah, and a bonny mite she was, just a little over two years old. I pretended to myself for a while that I was playing with a big, curly-haired doll. It helped me bear it.”

How little I knew her, I thought.

And how well she knew me. As horrified as I would have been at the thought of laying out my own mother’s body had I been given time to think about it, there was something peaceable about this form of leave-taking. I had always found hard work easier to bear than idleness, and although I had been unable to shed a tear so far, my hot eyes and aching head felt much better by the time we had Mama attired in her best nightgown and resting in a clean bed. We braided her hair, pale gold in the lamplight, and tied it with a plain, dark-blue ribbon. With the binding cloth removed, her face looked so young, so pretty, that you could imagine her as a young bride waiting for her bridegroom.

The doctor came and went, and the undertaker; given the hot weather we agreed that there would be only the briefest of visitations and that Mama would be buried the next day. So till late in the night Hiram and I held court in our parlor, receiving a steady stream of visitors while Bet and Marie were kept busy dispensing the refreshments that seemed to appear from nowhere, brought by the women of Victory I supposed.