He sat with his hands on his knees trying to sort his mind which was not ratcheting along but felt thickened as if it were the slush of a thawed pond. If this was grief he did not understand it. Nor was it the grace of faith for while he silently ran through the usual passages of condolence and strength they were vacant words more cloudy and vague than he already felt but neither was it a crisis of faith but simply God along with much else had left the house. He told himself it was the shock, the suddenness of it but even this did not explain the sluggish leaden mind. Was he thus? His true self? In a trite huff Robert had once called him a shell of an intellectual wrapped in a husk of self-importance and Henry had not risen to that juvenile jab but walked out of the room although the barb of the words had stayed with him. Not truth but that his son should see him such. Where was grief? He did not know.
Hours ago briefly alone in the kitchen with the doctor, Henry had refused the sedative offered, not able to explain he already felt sedated, only saying there had been too much of that stuff around the house anyway.
Westmore studied him and then said, “If anything, Henry, there might’ve been a split second when they realized what was about to happen. But the rest of it was too fast and absolute. Neither of them felt a thing.”
“Am I to find solace in that?”
Westmore raised an eyebrow. “Few are so lucky in death. You know that.”
“But,” Henry stopped. Then quietly, as if guilty he said, “I would’ve liked the chance to have talked to her.”
The doctor nodded. “You think so now. But such scenes are rarely as gratifying as we imagine. And usually a culmination of weeks or months of suffering. And the patient,” he corrected himself, “the dying person is not always in sound mind. My own mother as she lay dying was such. I bent to kiss her cheek, thinking she was sleeping and told her that I loved her. At which she opened her eyes, raised herself onto the pillows and told me she had no idea what that meant anymore. And sank back and died. What she left me with.”
Henry was quiet a moment. Then said, “Thank you.”
But now this night, this morning belonged to Olivia.
He turned off the parlor light and went up through the house in the dark where he sat on the far side of the bed, his side, looking out the window upon the silent dimly lit campus, his hands spread palms down on the tightly stretched counterpane that just this morning her hands had snapped tight and tucked. They might have a housekeeper but Olivia made their own bed. As he became aware of the faint violet sachet scent of the room, so long present he wasn’t sure when he’d last noted it and now recognized as long as it lasted it would be the scent of her. Then he was enveloped by the combination of absence and fullness within the house and placing his elbows on his knees sat with his face in his hands. Ephemerally he thought he heard her voice and then did not—as he tried to recall it, to raise it into the ear of memory it was maddeningly just out of reach, not even an echo so much as an audible glimmer—the tone and pitch he knew but could find no words, even direct memories of actual conversations were rendered in his own interior tongue. How could this happen so quickly? They knew each other so well. And then, the revelation of death—all this was now gone, the day-to-day gauge of himself against her, against that knowledge she had of him, was gone. And with that, a trembling uncertainty. What had he missed? What essential core of her had always been tucked back, withheld? It was true of us all, he knew this. It was how we live. And so, there is always that promise of one more fraction of knowing, one bit more slipped through one to the other. Now gone. She would recede, was receding already into the multiple beings of memory that belonged not to her but the people who knew her. He might have first claim but there were some no doubt who would think they knew her better. He’d seen and known this before—in fact it had been part of his life since his own youth. And he wavered under this, for with it came a short memory from the summer before at the Lake Cottage when he had arrived by train and walked down from the Lakemont platform and so entered the cottage with no one knowing he’d arrived and stood for a moment in the entryway; looking out the window at his two oldest grandchildren, cousins, playing on the grass that went down to the small incessant flap of wavelets against the smoothed shale shore and from down the hall overheard his daughter Polly speaking. Immediately afterward he broke it by reaching behind and pulling the screen door sharply shut because he did not want to, did not need to hear anymore of it. But still the tone and emphasis were unmistakable. As was the target of the comment.
“You’re a saint, Mother. No, don’t argue with me. Don’t defend.”
Polly’s voice was clear as if in the same room. Was this then part of the expenditure of dying? If he’d paused, waited to hear Olivia’s response he knew it would be no more clear than his earlier attempts, but he knew at least something of what she would’ve said, regardless of whatever set Polly off.
“I’m no more a saint than you, Polly.”
Or some such.
They’d eaten breakfast together. Robert was not yet up. There had been no argument, no discussion, nothing memorable. Perhaps they’d spoken of the coming summer reunion with the girls at the lake or that could’ve been the day before. She’d been wearing the yellow dress with the small blue flowers, he was sure of that. He’d read the morning paper when his plate was pushed aside, over his last cup of coffee. He’d kissed her goodbye but only the perfunctory buss of morning departure. So much lost, there. And yet. What would they have done otherwise if somehow they’d known? Emery had been right—it had been a fine lovely day for both of them right up until it tore like a sheet of paper. A far better day to die than to have someone die. A smile with no pleasure crossed his face and he was lonely again—only Olivia would’ve understood this wry humor upon himself. Only Olivia.
Earlier, but not much, after all had left but Doyle and Mary, Mary had come and taken him with a stern grip upon his arms, her eyes a red welter, looking up at him, an older different version of her daughter. “I was just recalling the two of you meeting. That first time. At the station to go down to the Lake. You were the new professor of English and we were all surprised by their choosing such a young man for the job. But even before you came up the word was out about you, did you know that? Now, who was it? I forget. Who was it that brought you up that summer? I can’t recall. And you were so sincere and polite and in such a bad suit. There wasn’t room in the carriage for you and we promised to send it back up but you said No, that you’d follow us down and we all thought that strange but endearing, a bit of a lark. And you didn’t follow but loped right alongside the carriage down the hill, right beside me keeping pace all the way. Commenting on the beauty of everything we passed but all the time your eyes on Olivia. And we all knew. Maybe you didn’t realize it but the rest of us did. And there was a dance the girls got together that very first night and arranged it so there was no one but you to take her ...”
And Henry held his again-weeping mother-in-law, his head over her shoulder as he patted her back, his eyes off across the years, thinking she’d gotten it wrong—he’d glimpsed Olivia two days before that day and hadn’t even known who she was but knew all he needed to.
In a long white dress tucked tight below her bosom, some sort of dairy-maid round cap trying and failing to hold her full dark chestnut hair that in sunlight took on hues of wildflower honey, her face turned away from him in a crowd of other young women but time to time her chin dipped toward him as she’d known too.
He stood in the dark room, only enough light from the window so the furniture were dark bulks although it could’ve been pitch night and not mattered but he made his way to the damask lace over her bureau top and lifted from among the scant bottles and single sandalwood box, the silver handled and backed hairbrush and gently pulled free one of the longer hairs there and left the room, wrapping the hair around his finger, over his wedding