Winter Birds (17 page)

The three of us divided what money I had found in small stashes around the house, some two thousand dollars in bills and the six hundred dollars from the coins, and a week later I took Mother in my car to Kentucky. For the next five months I attended her night and day. I do not care to think about the sights, sounds, and smells of that time, about the bitter taste in my mouth, the feel of cold fingers raking my flesh as I accompanied my mother to the threshold of death.

I have heard the phrase “a labor of love.” In the strictest sense I suppose I can claim it. Of a certainty I did labor. And I did love my mother—I was not beyond that. It was a strange love, however, that lacked certain characteristics usually associated with the word—heat, spontaneity, steadiness, joy. At times it felt like an instinct, an unthinking reflex, and at other times like an ancient law one had no choice but to obey. I often meant to sit and ponder this kind of love, to determine its validity, but the days passed, and now it is too late. If one does one’s duty, is his motivation of any importance?

I dream that my mother calls her three daughters before her, as King Lear did, and asks them, “Which of you loves me most?” We answer, not by age as in Shakespeare’s play, but in order of height and beauty: Virginia first, Regina second, and I last. Virginia replies prettily, declaring that words are inadequate to express her love for our mother, though she expends a great many of them in her effort to do so. Regina follows with more of the same, pronouncing Virginia’s love tender and well-meaning yet coming up short when compared to her own.

And then it is my turn. “What do you have to say?” my mother asks me. And like Cordelia, I reply, “Nothing.” Oh, but “nothing will come of nothing,” my mother sternly reproves, indicating that I will receive no deathbed blessing if I remain silent. I will be consigned to my small dark house with its stench of death. She admonishes me to mend my words, to plump up my chances by speaking. I cannot.

And in my dream, as in life, she dies at last. I receive no blessing, no parting words of encouragement. But I have weathered the storms of her going and am content to remain in my small dark house, mercifully alone.

I called Purtles Funeral Home in Carlton, Kentucky. They informed me that I must acquire a death certificate before they could “accept the body.” Who was her doctor, the man wanted to know. She had no doctor, I replied. Had she been in the hospital recently, he asked. No, I said. What had she died of, he asked. I heard suspicion in his voice. I didn’t know, I told him. I knew what he wanted to ask: “What do you have to say for yourself—a daughter who would not even take her own mother to a doctor?” And if he had asked, I would have given Cordelia’s answer, as in my dream: “Nothing.”

And now, in another time and place, in a corner of someone else’s house, I await my own ferry to cross the river from this life to the next. As Edgar, the Earl of Gloucester, says later in
King Lear
, “Men must endure their going hence.” Death is not a negotiable proposition. If the ferry doesn’t come now, it will come later. Eventually every man and woman must take his or her trip across.

I stored away my mother’s dying words to think about later, perhaps to smile about someday. But many years have passed, and I still have not smiled over them. Though my mother was not a religious woman, neither was she a blasphemer. The closest to a curse word we ever heard from her mouth was the mild epithet
durn
, which she used sparingly for times of greatest provocation. She was of the opinion that southerners were generally guilty of lazy talking, which, she said, inevitably led to unladylike speech. She once washed Virginia’s mouth out with soap when she heard her call a teacher a “jackass from hell.” It was with some surprise, then, that during her final months at my house, I heard her speech peppered with durns, as well as a few other words I had never before heard her say.

She died on a bright September morning, one of those days poised between summer and fall. I sensed that the end was near. Her breath was coming slowly, faintly. The air outside was clear and dry, the sky a brilliant blue. The sun streamed through the window beside her bed, where I sat. Suddenly she strained forward from her pillows, pointed to the window, and cried out, “Turn off the durn light!” Then she fell back, dead. Perhaps Julius Dixon would have suggested to her another way to put it: “Dim, dim the durn lights. I want some atmosphere.”

My mother was right. Getting old is no fun. And, as she told me it would, my time has indeed come. This is a winter that will not turn to spring. No new nesting sites for old birds when the snow melts. I am reminded of the names of other towns I have seen on the map: Death Valley, Tombstone, Last Stop, Edge of Nowhere.

Chapter 13

Wipe Off the Dust That Hides Our Scepter’s Gilt

When robins return north from their wintering grounds in the South, they start out in an enormous flock, which steadily breaks into smaller groupings as the birds seek out the regions where they were hatched and fledged. By midsummer robins may be spotted in the northernmost regions of Canada
.

I take careful note of the ages of the people whose deaths are recorded in
Time
magazine. In some issues my own age of eighty falls in the middle, sometimes near the end. Out of the six or seven people listed, there are sometimes as many as four who were older than eighty when they died. I feel the smallest spark of gladness when I see such an issue. “DIED. PRINCESS JULIANA, 94, revered Queen of the Netherlands for 32 years.” See, I tell myself, you may live another fourteen years. Other times, however, I am not encouraged. Once the oldest out of seven entries was only seventy-eight.

The deaths on the Milestones page are recorded in order of age, youngest to oldest. I always read the page backward. In one issue the first entry I read was “DIED. TIMOTHY THE TORTOISE, approximately 160, British navy mascot that in 1854 witnessed the bombing of Sevastopol during the Crimean War aboard the HMS
Queen
and later served in the East Indies and China.” To what extent, I wonder, did a tortoise “witness” a historical event?

I felt it was frivolous of
Time
magazine to include Timothy on the same page with inventors, musicians, political figures, entrepreneurs, shapers of society. Timothy’s obituary continued its inappropriate humor by recording that the “veteran” had spent his “retirement” in an earl’s garden and that “an ill-fated mating attempt in 1926” had brought to light the fact that Timothy was actually a female. Ending with the fact that “Timothy will be buried with full honors on the castle grounds,”
Time
completed its demonstration of tastelessness in the matter of life and death.

Since coming to Patrick’s house, these are some of the younger victims I have read about in
Time
: Jason Raize, 28; Marco Pantani, 34; Paul Klebnikov, 41; Olivia Goldsmith, 54. An actor, a champion cyclist, a journalist, a novelist. These are some of the older victims: Robert Lees, 91; Joseph Zimmerman, 92; Frances Dee, 96; Morris Schappes, 97. A screenwriter, an inventor, a movie star, a scholar.

As noted earlier, causes of death are seldom reported for people of advanced age. No reason is necessary to explain the sudden absence of those who have already occupied space on earth for more than the average lifespan. There are exceptions, however, as in the case of Robert Lees.
Time
reveals that Lees, 91, “was beheaded by a transient in his home.” The suspect “was charged with capital murder.” I should hope so.

Each of these deaths is the end of a story, none of them a happy ending. Suicide, drug overdose, gunshot wounds, heart attack, decapitation, old age—no “happily ever after” for these people. But then, I ask myself, what kind of death would qualify as a happy ending—for the person most directly affected, that is? For others in his family it may be a happy ending, of course.

When I taught elementary school, a fellow teacher received word one day while we were on recess duty together that her father had died after a lingering illness at a private nursing home in Missouri. The two of us were standing by the fence near the swings. Millie was not one for pretense. After the secretary had given her the message and left the playground, Millie turned and placed her hands on the top rail of the fence. She looked out across the parking lot for a long, silent moment. I spoke at last, expressing my sympathy for her loss, for the thoughtless way the news had been delivered, and asked what I could do to help.

The secretary had already called a substitute to take her class for the afternoon and for the next several days, but I offered to come to her house and do whatever she needed. I could cook, I could clean, I could pack her suitcase, feed her cat, get her mail, whatever she needed. Millie turned to me and said, “I thought this day would never come, Sophie. I’ve dreamed of it for years.” She squeezed my hand and said, “Thanks for your sympathy, but save it for someone who deserves it. I don’t.” When she came back to school a week later, she was driving a new black Mercedes.

I wonder what Patrick and Rachel will do with my money when it is theirs. I wonder if they have already made plans. I wonder if they talk about my health: Do you think she looks as well as when she came here in October? Did you notice how distracted she seemed tonight? I wonder if it’s some form of dementia? What did her parents die of? How old were they when they died? Do you see how she puts her hand over her heart? Do you suppose she has a heart condition?

I know about heart conditions. The human heart is a deep well, and its waters are never pure. I know that the contamination of one heart can spoil the heart of another, like a polluted stream flowing into a clean one. I know that a betrayed heart can never again be a soft heart, for the knowledge and pain of deception calcifies into stone, which, ironically, becomes a breeding ground—for anger and hatred. Yes, I have a heart condition. It is called an understanding of reality.

It is a Thursday morning, a week before Christmas. Rachel has risen from her sick bed and wrapped gifts to put under the tree. She had a doctor’s appointment three days ago, but I have not heard it discussed, nor have I asked the outcome. I observe the gifts now from across the room, twelve in all. They are wrapped in two different patterns of paper—one with snowmen imprinted on it and the other with red and green holly.

Rachel is presently away from home, for what she called a “prayer vigil” at church, and I am at my post at the front window. Someone has decorated the entrance of Wagner’s Mortuary with two festive wreaths. Funerals have continued at regular intervals during the holiday season. Even now a hearse is pulling out from under the side portico, a line of cars forming behind it, all with their headlights on, heading north on Edison toward the cemetery at the edge of Greenville.

I think of the prayer vigil Rachel is attending. She offered only one detail before she left: it is for a woman with cancer. How does a woman like Rachel pray? Does she pray for life, which is merely a prolonging of the illness, or for death, to ease the woman’s suffering? I wish I could see and hear her at the prayer vigil. I wonder if she prays aloud. I can’t imagine that hers would be a lengthy prayer. Perhaps she prays for the miracle of healing, though Rachel has seen little enough evidence of miracles in her lifetime.

The cars continue to join the funeral procession snaking solemnly down Edison Street. One of them, a streamlined red convertible, looks out of place, like Timothy the tortoise on the Milestones page. I have considered asking Patrick to give me his copy of the
Delta Democrat Times
each day after he has read it. This way I could read the local obituaries and keep track of the funerals across the street. I would know which ones are for important people. I would be reminded of the fact that the corpses of former mayors and school superintendents are transported in the same hearse as those of waitresses and janitors. And of the fact that death visits itself upon young and old alike. It has no sense of time.

Many years ago Eliot prepared a speech on “Problems of Time” in Shakespeare’s plays, which he delivered at a conference in Cincinnati, Ohio. I typed the manuscript for him, of course, and also attended the conference with him. Because Eliot’s accommodations were covered by the conference, we stayed in a Holiday Inn rather than a budget motel, which was his usual choice if he was paying. I sat in the audience for Eliot’s speech and looked at him proudly.
That is my husband
, I said to myself. This was early in our marriage, when I was newly smitten with my status as wife.

I suppose Shakespeare scholars are familiar with the bard’s warpings of time that allow such unlikely events as the separate sightings and dockings of three different ships in a single harbor within the space of fifteen minutes and such inconsistencies as that of Desdemona’s having no opportunity to be alone with Cassio, with whom she is accused of having an adulterous relationship. Months, even years, are passed over without comment during many of Shakespeare’s plays. In his speech Eliot cited these and many other instances of liberties taken concerning the passage of time. I recall the sense of awe I felt that my brilliant husband could stand before other brilliant minds and comment on the weaknesses of William Shakespeare.

I also recall his pointing out the lapse in logic that occurs somewhere in
Richard II
, when Northumberland announces an impending invasion of England, which could hardly have been planned and executed in the available time. In the rush of drama, however, such problems go unnoticed. Impressions, the sweep of emotions, striking characterization, significant and well-motivated action—these were of more concern to Shakespeare than literal precision of time. This was the theme Eliot reserved for the conclusion of his speech.

When he stopped abruptly, then nodded primly at the smattering of applause that followed, this was the thought that came to me:
Thus by altering realism, a writer may actually enhance realism
. In my mind, this would have provided a fitting summary for his speech, though I never would have dared to suggest a revision of anything Eliot wrote or said. What did I—a former elementary school teacher, a mere typist—know about Shakespeare? When he asked me how I liked his speech, I told him it was perfect. He smiled complacently, as if he knew it already but was pleased at my discernment. I, too, had learned a good deal about enhancing realism by altering it.