Bereavements (3 page)

With the following afternoon free to spend as he pleased—more likely to “kill” or somehow dispose of, since he hated being out-of-doors in the humid, Indian summer’s heat and the day’s intermittant rain—Dori considered a film. But his taste was limited to science fiction and suspense melodrama, a good one not always easy to find.

Instead, he decided to shop. He badly needed shoes, and could do with a few shirts and a tie or two. Besides, on his way out Mrs. Evans had called after him, her voice deceptively idle: “Oh!—and if you happen to pass a record store, do buy me a cassette. Have you enough money?” (He did.) “I’ve always wanted to own one.”

She had never wanted to own one, of that he was sure.

Occupant. Box 89 . . .
The
thick
envelope.

“But
please. Dori. Only
if it’s convenient. Don’t go out of your way.”

He bought the cassette first, in a small shop off Eighth Avenue; a handsome, compact beauty bound in leather.

Shoes were next, inordinately troublesome to find in a day of bizarre styles and rainbow-dyed leather and plastics.

“Size nine, double-E, black, thin soles, absolutely plain tip . . .”

Three clerks in three stores looked at him as if he were a visitor from outer space.

He settled for a pair of relatively plain wingtips, hoping Mrs. Evans wouldn’t notice, or, if she did, wouldn’t mind.

I seen what you wrot . . .
Now why should he have thought of that!?

He walked idly east, forgetting the shirts, the ties, stopping for coffee, ostensibly with nothing more on his mind than a leisurely stroll.

Dear Mother . . .

The Village was always interesting: crowded, busy, noisy, sometimes a bit exciting if one encountered a street brawl, talented tramps, youngsters who sang or danced, a violinist who, except for luck, or dope, had enough genius to place him on the stage at Carnegie Hall . . .

Im lost. Please fine me . . .

But the crowd thinned, the noise diminished, the excitement was nowhere to be found, and the brawlers and the tramps, if there were any, were occupied elsewhere.

Dori had walked much too far east, away from the Village proper, finding himself ultimately, and surprisingly without surprise, directly facing the door of a local newspaper office:
The Village Voice.

Youre loving son. Angel . . .

What had happened, of course, was similar to a post-hypnotic suggestion, the subliminal logic something like this: if “Angel” had
seen
what Mrs. Evans had written (“I seen what you wrot”) then whatever had been written must have been
public:
a public announcement of some kind. This accounted for
all
the letters, the announcement making Box 89 available to its many readers. An “announcement” could only have been an advertisement, a
personal
ad surely. This eliminated
The New York Times
as well as
The Post
and
News,
none of which carried such ads. And since it was impossible to consider seriously any of the underground papers, the only answer was right before him. In all probability, Mrs. Evans had placed a personal ad in
The Village Voice.

She had.

And Dori found it.

On the very last page of the September Eighth issue of the newspaper, in a section called
Bulletin Board,
which carried two oversize columns containing any number of brief, usually two- or three-line commercial or personal advertisements, including abortion services, political lectures, homosexual counseling and dances, biofeedback equipment, lesbian raps and parties, Mrs. Evans’ sad, incredible little ad appeared.

Mother who lost son, seeks son who has lost mother. P.O. Box 89, Village Station, New York City, 10014.

In their bereavements, irreplaceable losses, hopeless or broken loves, what extraordinary things human beings will do!

Before at least ten lifted heads, twenty curious eyes in
The Village Voice
office, Dori leaned his face to his hands on the counter over the newspaper and wept.

If Dori wept for Mrs. Evans, Mrs. Evans had long ago given up weeping for herself. Grief had become such an implacable state of suffering that the pain, like anything forced to its absolute limit or extreme, became something other than itself.

Ice becomes water, water a gas. Hysterics mixes happiness with tears, or, to remember, Blake: “excess of joy weeps, excess of sorrow laughs.”

So, though she wryly considered the prognosis promising, she wasn’t exactly insane, not quite yet. But in the eleventh month of her sorrow—while still in mourning and heavily veiled except to the servants of her intimate household—she found that beneath the cloud of black silk and net, an occasional smile “happened”; even a soundless laugh if a situation became disarming or irresistibly funny.

With this surprising change, the question of her suicide, until now—quite as Dori had suspected—always a
when,
never an
if—
became a moot one.

The delay, so filled with suffering, was puzzling. Pain couldn’t prove the magnitude of her love, nor was there need to expiate guilt. Jamie had died in her arms, neither of them aware, ever, of any serious hurt to the other, yet both of them limitlessly liable, forgiven and forgiving of sins, even those uncommitted.

Why then the delay?

And why did food again have a flavor, flowers a scent?

Clearly, she wanted to live. That was the answer. But not without Jamie. It was impossible.

When he’d died, heart to her heart, she had held her own breath to hear his very last; already dead herself. The only difference between them now, was that she still moved, breathed, spoke, walked . . . as useless and foolish as Lady Madelaine of Usher rending her coffin, the stink of her grave wrapped around her like a cloak.

Well then—if she wanted to live and couldn’t possibly live without Jamie, the answer to the paradox was simple enough. And she laughed suddenly, pleased, absurdly, bewilderingly hopeful, remembering something idiotic she had once read about Rimbaud, or had it been Verlaine?—who one day, when he was a boy, went to his father announcing, “I have learned the secret of raising the dead; I am going to do it after lunch.”

He sends his love.

Many kisses . . .

The Village Voice,
a weekly, appears on the newsstands late every Wednesday, but it is dated the following Monday.

On the evening of the fourth of September, a Thursday, Mrs. Evans looked for her ad, more than anything simply to see if it was there, imagining, quite possibly, she had dreamed it.

She found it almost instantly; last page, first column, under
Bulletin Board,
a few inches from the bottom.

Looking at it, the words slightly blurred because she wasn’t wearing her reading glasses, she felt no particular emotion, having spent it all on the day she’d gone to the
Voice,
her embarrassment and indecision so acute it was quite as if, five months pregnant, she’d been seeking an abortion service instead of placing a small personal ad.

She’d had to pace the sidewalk outside the newspaper office a full ten minutes before the flood of anxiety turned into something resembling a numbed hypnosis. Surprisingly, no one noticed the chalk-faced zombie that finally shuffled in, leaving behind it a trail of fresh mud from its grave.

All of her anxiety was useless and absurd! If she’d imagined her ad odd, in any way unusual or peculiar, impossible to print, the pleasant-faced if unsmiling young man who counted the words and in a sweet, bored manner told her how much to pay the cashier, certainly, most positively, did not.

The first days following publication of
her Bulletin Board
item brought Mrs. Evans no replies at all: one political flyer, presumably for the previous holder of Box 89.

Well—her expectations were premature. Surely a certain amount of time was needed for a newspaper to circulate, to get around.

Still, the whole of the first week proved no better. Disappointed, she strained her eyes to look into the small, clouded window of her post office box, so grimy and stained with rust she might miss any letters that were there.

But no. Empty.

The second week: nothing. But then, just as she was about to leave, a bodyless hand on the other side of the honeycomb of brown metal and glass inserted two dim letters.

She didn’t want Dori to see them, so before she went out to the car, placed them in her knitting bag, a long shoulder-hung pouch she was never without. Why it was with her at all was a mystery—to increase her heartbreak no doubt, or to provide strange comfort—for in it was a half-finished scarf she’d intended for Jamie—to which not a single stitch had been added since his death, and perhaps never would be.

With this sad fragment of her love and industry were ivory needles and the last ball of red wool Jamie had helped her wind, his fingers at the time, in the final week of his illness, so skeletal and white that the terrible part of her mind that was irrepressible poet—with its usual supply of tiresome metaphors—scattered a few bleached bones on the cracked clay of a desert.

He’d wanted to help, to please her, pretend he had strength left or newly grown, the skein of red wool spread taut between hands of blue-veined porcelain.