A Death In The Family (22 page)

“Joel, I know that God in a wheelbarrow wouldn’t convince you,” his sister said. “We aren’t even trying to convince you. But while you’re being so rational, why at least please be rational enough to realize that we experienced what we experienced.”

“The least I can do is accept the fact that three people had a hallucination, and honor their belief in it. That I can do, too, I guess. I believe you, for yourself, Hannah. All of you. I’d have to have the same hallucination myself to be convinced. And even then I’d have my doubts.”

“What on earth do you mean,
doubts
, Papa, if you had it yourself?”

“I’d suspect it was just a hallucination.”

“Oh, good Lord! You’ve got it going and coming, haven’t you!”

“Is this a dagger that I see before me? Wasn’t, you know. But you could never convince Macbeth it wasn’t.”

“Andrew,” Mary broke in, “tell Mama. She’s just dying to know what we’re ...” she trailed off. I must be out of my mind, she said to herself.
Dying
! And she began to think with astonishment and disgust of the way they had all been talking—herself most of all. How can we bear to chatter along in normal tones of voice! she thought; how can we even use ordinary words, or say words at all! And now, picking his poor troubled soul to pieces, like so many hens squabbling over—she thought of a worm, and covered her face in sickness. She heard her mother say, “Why, Andrew, how perfectly
extraordinary
!” and then she heard Andrew question her, had she had any special
feeling
about what
kind
of a person or thing it was, that is, was it quiet or active, or young or old, or disturbed or calm, or was it anything: and her mother answered that she had had no particular impression except that there was someone in the house besides themselves, not the children either, somebody mature, some sort of intruder; but that when nobody had troubled to investigate, she had decided that it must be an hallucination—all the more so because, as she’d said, she thought she’d actually
heard
someone, whereas with her poor old ears (she laughed gracefully) that was simply out of the question, of course. Oh, I do wish they’d leave him in peace, she said to herself. A thing so wonderful. Such a
proof
! Why can’t we just keep a reverent silence! But Andrew was asking his mother, had she, a little later than that, still felt even so that there was somebody? or not. And she said that indeed she had had such an
impression
. Where? Why she couldn’t say where, except that the
impression
was even stronger than before, but, of course, by then she realized it was an hallucination. But they felt it too! Why how perfectly uncanny!

“Mary thinks it was Jay,” Andrew told her.

“Why, I ...”

“So does Aunt Hannah.”

“Why how—how perfectly extraordinary, Andrew!”

“She thinks he was worried about ...”

“Oh, Andrew!” Mary cried. “Andrew
Please
let’s don’t
talk
about it any more! Do you mind?”

He looked at her as if he had been slapped. “Why, Mary, of course not!” He explained to his mother: “Mary’d rather we didn’t discuss it any more.”

“Oh, it’s not that, Andrew. It just—means so much more than anything we can
say
about it or even think about it. I’d give anything just to sit quiet and think about it a little while! Don’t you see? It’s as if we were driving him away when he wants so much to be here among us, with us, and can’t.”

“I’m
awfully
sorry, Mary. Just
awfully
sorry. Yes, of
course
I
do
see. It’s a kind of sacrilege.”

So they sat quietly and in the silence they began to listen again. At first there was nothing, but after a few minutes Hannah whispered, “He’s there,” and Andrew whispered, “Where?” and Mary said quietly, “With the children,” and quietly and quickly left the room.

When she came through the door of the children’s room she could feel his presence as strongly throughout the room as if she had opened a furnace door: the presence of his strength, of virility, of helplessness, and of pure calm. She fell down on her knees in the middle of the floor and whispered, “Jay. My dear. My dear one. You’re all right now, darling. You’re not troubled any more, are you, my darling? Not any more. Not ever any more, dearest. I can feel how it is with you. I know, my dearest. It’s terrible to go. You don’t want to. Of
course
you don’t. But you’ve got to. And you know they’re going to be all right. Everything is going to be all right, my darling. God take you. God keep you, my own beloved. God make His light shine upon you.” And even while she whispered, his presence became faint, and in a moment of terrible dread she cried out “Jay!” and hurried to her daughter’s crib. “Stay with me one minute,” she whispered, “just one minute, my dearest”; and in some force he did return; she felt him with her, watching his child. Catherine was sleeping with all her might and her thumb was deep in her mouth; she was scowling fiercely. “Mercy, child,” Mary whispered, smiling, and touched her hot forehead to smooth it, and she growled. “God bless you, God keep you,” her mother whispered, and came silently to her son’s bed. There was the cap in its tissue paper, beside him on the floor; he slept less deeply than his sister, with his chin lifted, and his forehead flung back; he looked grave, serene and expectant.

“Be with us all you can,” she whispered. “This is good-bye.” And again she went to her knees. Good-bye, she said again, within herself; but she was unable to feel much of anything. “God help me to
realize
it,” she whispered, and clasped her hands before her face: but she could realize only that he was fading, and that it was indeed good-bye, and that she was at that moment unable to be particularly sensitive to the fact.

And now he was gone entirely from the room, from the house, and from this world.

“Soon, Jay. Soon, dear,” she whispered; but she knew that it would not be soon. She knew that a long life lay ahead of her, for the children were to be brought up, and God alone could know what change and chance might work upon them all, before they met once more. She felt at once calm and annihilating emptiness, and a cold and overwhelming fullness.

“God help us all,” she whispered. “May God in His loving mercy keep us all.”

She signed herself with the Cross and left the room.

She looks as she does when she has just received, Hannah thought as she came in and took her old place on the sofa; for Mary was trying, successfully, to hide her desolation; and as she sat among them in their quietness it was somewhat diminished. After all, she told herself, he
was there
. More strongly even than when he was here in the room with me. Anyhow. And she was grateful for their silence.

Finally Andrew said, “Aunt Hannah has an idea about it, Mary.„

“Maybe you’d prefer not to talk about it,” Hannah said.

“No; it’s all right; I guess I’d rather.” And with mild surprise she found that this was true.

“Well, it’s simply that I thought of all the old tales and beliefs about the souls of people who die sudden deaths, or violent deaths. Or as Joel would prefer it, not souls. Just their life force. Their consciousness. Their life itself.”

“Can’t get around that,” Joel said. “Hannah was saying that everything of any importance leaves the body then. I certainly have to agree with that.”

“And that even whether you believe or not in life after death,” Mary said, “in the soul, as a living, immortal thing, creature, why it’s certainly very believable that for a little while afterwards, this force, this life, stays on. Hovers around.”

“Sounds highly unlikely to me, but I suppose it’s conceivable.”

“Like looking at a light and then shutting your eyes. No, not like that but—but it does stay on. Specially when it’s someone very strong, very vital, who hasn’t been worn down by old age, or a long illness or something.”

“That’s exactly it,” Andrew said. “Something that comes out whole, because it’s so quick.”

“Why they’re as old as the hills, those old beliefs.”

“I should imagine they’re as old as life and death,” Andrew said.

“The thing I mean is, they aren’t taken straight to God,” Hannah said. “They’ve had such violence done them, such a shock, it takes a while to get their wits together.”

“That’s why it took him so long to come,” Mary said. “As if his very
soul
had been struck unconscious.”

“I should think maybe.”

“And above all with someone like Jay, young, and with children and a wife, and not even dreaming of such a thing coming on him, no time to adjust his mind and feelings, or prepare for it.”

“That’s just it,” Andrew said; Hannah nodded.

“Why he’d feel, ‘I’m worried. This came too fast without warning. There are all kinds of things I’ve got to tend to. I can’t just leave them like this.’
Wouldn’t
he! And that’s just how he was, how we felt he was. So
an
xious. So awfully concerned, and disturbed. Why yes, it’s just exactly the way it was!

“And only when they feel convinced you know they care, and everything’s going to be taken good care of, just the very best possible, it’s only then they can stop being anxious and begin to rest.”

They nodded and for a minute they were all quiet.

Then Mary said tenderly, “How awful, pitiful, beyond words it must be, to be so terribly anxious for others, for others’ good, and not be able to do anything, even to say so. Not even to help. Poor things.

“Oh, they
do
need reassuring. They
do
need rest. I’m
so grateful
I could assure him. It’s so good he can rest at last. I’m
so glad
.” And her heart was restored from its desolation, into warmth and love and almost into wholeness.

Again they were all thoughtfully silent, and into this silence Joel spoke quietly and slowly, “I
don’t—know
. I
just—don’t—know
. Every bit of gumption I’ve got tells me it’s impossible, but if this kind of thing is so, it isn’t with gumption that you see it is. I
just—don’t—know
.

“If you’re right, and I’m wrong, then chances are you’re right about the whole business, God, and the whole crew. And in that case I’m just a plain damned fool.

“But if I can’t trust my common sense—I know it’s nothing much, Poll, but it’s all I’ve got. If I can’t trust that, what in hell
can
I trust!

“God, you’n Hannah’d say. Far’s I’m concerned, it’s out of the question.”

“Why, Joel?”

“It doesn’t seem to embarrass your idea of common sense, or Poll’s, and for that matter I’m making no reflections. You’ve got plenty of gumption. But how you can reconcile the two, I can’t see.”

“It takes faith, Papa,” Mary said gently.

“That’s the word. That’s the one makes a mess of everything, far’s I’m concerned. Bounces up like a jack-in-the-box. Solves everything.

“Well it doesn’t solve anything for me, for I haven’t got any.

“Wouldn’t hurt it if I had. Don’t believe in it.

“Not for me.

“For you, for anyone that can manage it, all right. More power to you. Might be glad if I could myself. But I can’t.

“I’m not exactly an atheist, you know. Least I don’t suppose I am. Seems as unfounded to me to say there isn’t a God as to say there is. You can’t prove it either way. But that’s it: I’ve got to have proof. And on anything can’t be proved, be damned if I’ll jump either way. All I can say is, I hope you’re wrong but I just don’t know.”

“I don’t, either,” Andrew said. “But I hope it’s so.”

He saw Mary and Hannah look at him hopefully.

“I don’t mean the whole business,” he said. “I don’t know anything about that. I just mean tonight.”

Can’t eat your cake and have it, his father thought.

Like slapping a child in the face, Andrew thought; he had been rougher than he had intended.

“But, Andrew dear,” Mary was about to say, but she caught herself. What a thing to argue about, she thought; and what a time to be wrangling about it!

Each of them realized that the others felt something of this; for a little while none of them had anything to say. Finally Andrew said, “I’m sorry.”

“Never mind,” his sister said. “It’s all right, Andrew.”

“We just each believe what we’re able,” Hannah said, after a moment.

“Even you, Joel. You have faith in your mind. Your reason.”

“Not very much: all I’ve got, that’s all. All I can be sure of.”

“That’s all I mean.”

“Let’s not talk about it any more,” Mary said. “Tonight,” she added, trying to make her request seem less peremptory.

The word was a reproach upon them all, much more grave, they were sure, than Mary had intended, so that to spare her regret they all hastened to say, kindly and as if somewhat callously, “No, let’s not.”

In the embarrassment of having spoken all at once they sat helpless and sad, sure only that silence, however painful to them all and to Mary, was less mistaken than trying to speak. Mary wished that she might ease them; her continued silence, she was sure, intensified their self-reproach; but she felt, as they did, that an attempt to speak would be worse than quietness.

In this quietness their mother sat, and smiled nervously and politely, and tilted her trumpet in a generalized way towards all of them. She realized that nobody was speaking and it was at such times, ordinarily, that she felt sure that she could speak without interrupting anyone, but she feared that anything that she might say might brutally or even absurdly disrupt a weaving of thought and feeling whose motions within the room she could most faintly apprehend.

After a little while it occurred to her that even to hold out her trumpet might seem to require something of them; she held it in her lap. But lest any of them should feel that this was in any sense a reproach, or should in the least feel sorry for her, she kept her little smile, thinking, how foolish, how very foolish, to smile.