Remembering the Bones (17 page)

Z
YX and WV

UTS and RQP

ONM and LKJ

IHG, FED and

C—B—A

Oh, there’s no reprieve from living inside your own head. The alphabet sung backwards—of what use? Miss Grinfeld was obsessed with having us learn from every direction: forward, backwards, rote and rhythm. She placed the words of old poets in our young minds. Did she do transplants when we weren’t looking?

But thank heavens for living inside the mind. Living inside a broken body gives little joy.

See how the branches droop above me. This is not easy to explain. The last time I looked, they were reaching for the sun. Was that when I first landed? When I first fell?

The fall of Georgie.

I feel silly, light-headed. My head has a hard ache. A bell
rings in the distance. I don’t remember which day I left. Only that I’m to present myself at the palace on Wednesday. Oh, the grand staircase, which I shall never see. And I won’t be wearing Lizzie’s pearls; the case is out of sight, stuffed into a pocket of my purse.

Perhaps the bell tolls because I’m being mourned. Perhaps I’ve been missed and no one knows where to find me.

Leave them alone and they will come home, dragging their tails behind them.

One thing is certain: I am not lying in wait for the Grim Reaper. See how far I’ve come!

Be steadfast, Georgie.

Is that you, Grand Dan? I heard your voice again.

Have hope, courage. Push dig shove. Suck the buttons on the cardigan, even though there’s no moisture left. Think of redemption, beauty, belief.

In Geneva, I stood in a museum that held Monet, Van Gogh, Cèzanne and Renoir, all in a single room. I didn’t know which way to turn. I swelled and then shrank before them, and lamented that Ally was not beside me to see such beauty.

My jaw is stiff from talking to myself. My eyes are dry. They feel as if tiny logs are stuck inside them.

I need to get angry again. I need to make a hit list to pass the time until my rescuers arrive. Close to the top would be Harry, after our doomsday trip to Labrie. When we returned home, he went to the spare room, where sun poured in the rest of the afternoon, and he sat on the bed that had been made up for visitors. With his back to the wall, he began to read magazines, newspapers, whatever was at hand. When he came out of the
room, I was aware of his fragility. I tiptoed around, afraid he would break, like an egg. He slept in our bed at night and I lay beside him with my gut clenched. When I got up in the morning, my gut was still clenched. I went for a long walk and kept to the edge of the hill because snow was piled high and the roadway had narrowed to a single lane. I didn’t care if I slipped; I needed to get out of the house. As I walked, I thought about what had gone wrong between us. Harry had dug in, and he had dug in alone.

For days, he ignored me and stared out the window. He sat at the table for meals, but scarcely ate. He was in pain but could not trade the pain for words. He talked about it only once, and told me it reminded him of the flames in the clock. My memory darted and probed before I recalled the dream he had related in what now seemed another lifetime. Some mornings, I stood in the shower and cried without restraint. We could not move towards each other. Harry would not allow it.

Case gave me strength. Did I thank my daughter? She was part of this, too. She and Rice came up the hill as often as they could, even knowing how strained things were. They helped me to prepare for Christmas, and I was able to turn my energy away from Harry. Gordo was arriving from New Brunswick on Christmas Eve. Verna and “Ourman” were expected the same day. They wanted to spent Christmas with Harry. None of us referred to it as “Harry’s last.”

Determined to brighten the house, we placed red in every room. Case sat across from me and threaded cranberries. I thought of the kind of child she’d been, making sets, creating displays, always a flair for the bold and dramatic. We tied ribbons above doorways, ironed felt runners and stretched them over tabletops. Case dragged in branches of green, the way she
used to drag in her “forests” for backdrops. I wanted to ask if she had said everything she had to say to her father, but I didn’t. I knew that she had already received from him what Ally and I had never had from Mr. Holmes. Outside, snow was heaped higher than the windowsills. Harry became thinner as we decorated, but he was glad Case was there. He sat and watched and was cheered by the transformation of the house.

The day before Christmas, Verna walked into the house carrying a green basket made from paper and filled with crafts she and Arman had made during the fall. Inside were spray-painted pine cones, red-and-white striped rocks, lean, gritty-looking Santas painted red and carved to be bottle openers—Arman had done the carving beside the wood stove in his kitchen. He had retired as a travelling salesman, and had become Verna’s business partner. I envied their closeness.

Verna had woven the basket from strips of grocery-bag paper and green crêpe, and she set it—now emptied of crafts—under the tree. She must have seen the look on my face because her voice drawled, “It’s for your bathroom, George. For later. To hold extra rolls of toilet paper.” Arman stood behind her and nodded, approving.

Gordo had driven for two days, negotiating heavy snowstorms all the way from New Brunswick. This dismayed me because of his age, but he did not wish to fly, he told me; flying upset his stomach. As if remembering other flights, he pulled a
TUMS
from his pocket and popped it into his mouth.

Harry was immensely cheered. He had his family around him. And I, too, was cheered.

On Christmas morning, Case and Rice had not yet driven up the hill. They were to pick up Phil and her companion, Tall Ronnie, from the Haven and bring them to the house at noon.
Because the inmates received so much attention, Phil had actually begun to enjoy Christmas mornings at the Haven. An Anglican service was held; gifts were given; carollers sang on each floor; musicians serenaded. Rice had done his part and had given a concert there the previous week, which Case and I had attended.

Harry and I got up out of bed and went downstairs. I made the coffee. Gordo appeared next, and the three of us sat in the living room with mugs in hand. Outside, the wind shrieked and tugged at the shingles on the roof. We were inside; we were warm and together. Not safe, but together.

Verna and Arman came down to the living room in their bathrobes, wished everyone Merry Christmas and put a record on the old stereo, which was still in working order. They began to waltz to “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” and after that, “Adeste Fideles.” Harry and I sat on the chesterfield and watched. It was the closest we’d been in weeks, despite the fact that we shared the same bed. I moved into his side, and the warmth of his body darted through me like a quick, sad memory.

At the end of “Adeste Fideles” and as if by prior agreement, Arman left Verna standing and went to sit in his favourite chair. Verna leafed through a stack of LPs, chose a record and walked over to the chesterfield. She tugged Harry to his feet. The two, brother and sister, separated for more than half a century and having found each other late in their lives, stood quietly until the music began, his hand on her waist, her hand on his shoulder.

At the first chords, they began to shuffle in time to “Abide with me,” Harry’s favourite hymn. It was Verna’s gift to her little brother. His eyes were bright, almost feverish; his cheeks were hollow, his neck thin, his shoulders slouched. He was taller than Verna, and half her size. He limped while he danced.

Three months later, he was dead.

W
hy didn’t I rant and roar and rage at Harry?

Because of what we once had. I tried to preserve that, like a lone ember in a cold fire. And we did have something.

Harry died on the third floor of the hospital in the Danforth Wing. The naming of the wing was an honour belatedly bestowed on my grandfather, now recognized as one of Wilna Creek’s pioneers in medicine.

What were Harry’s last words? Case never asked—the way Ally and I had once asked Phil about Mr. Holmes. The truth is, I don’t know if Harry spoke at all, to the nurses or to himself. Because I was not in the room when he died.

Just before one in the morning he appeared to be sleeping, and I went downstairs to stand outside the main entrance, to gulp in fresh air. It was March, early spring. I was desperate to be free of partitions and walls and the odour of Dettol. A strong wind had been blowing during the day, but had settled into a softer breeze. I wore no coat—only my Austrian cardigan. I stood in shelter of the low overhang outside, and hugged my
arms to myself. I looked towards Emergency, the part of the hospital most brightly lit, and watched an ambulance pull up quietly, no fanfare, no patient to wheel inside. Two young men got out and I recognized them as the two who had responded to my call when Harry was admitted for surgery several months earlier. They entered Emergency by the same entrance through which he had also been wheeled on a stretcher in 1947, shortly after our polio honeymoon.

I leaned against the brick building. The town was quiet, the sky unusually clear. The stars seemed smaller somehow, as if they had shrunk inside their own shapes. There was still snow on the ground but it was spring snow. I had noticed signs of melting during the day. Honeycombed snowbanks were steadily receding; thick icicles dripped from the eaves and left puddles that turned to black ice at night. I wondered how long this would go on. There was no name for “this.” It could not be called waiting. I was not waiting for Harry to die. There seemed nothing else to do but to come to the hospital every day and be with him.

As it turned out, I was in the elevator on my way back up to the third floor when Harry took his last breath. The time of his death was recorded as 1:25 a.m. A night nurse was standing in the hall and saw me step off the elevator. “I need to talk to you,” she said, but she would not say why. She led me to Harry’s room and put her hand on my shoulder and told me that my husband was gone. She did not say the word
dead.

I don’t know if he spoke before he died, but I clearly recall every gesture of our final conversation, two hours earlier. I’ve never told anyone about this. There had been no Cheyne-Stokes
breathing, no death rattle, no farewell, no romantic declaration like that of my grandfather ‘who had passed on the message, “Tell my Danny she’ll always be the love of my life,” before he exploded.

I had gone home for a shower and a change of clothes, and returned to hospital around eleven in the evening. When I walked back into Harry’s room he must have heard my footsteps, because he turned his head to face the doorway. I could hear a distant voice, my own, inquire, “How are you?” as I entered. It was the polite inquiry of a stranger. A stranger who did not want to hear the reply.

Harry stared. He was propped against four pillows and he was so wasted, so unlike the man I’d once known, I had a sudden impulse to run to the bed to check his wristband to see if this gaunt figure truly was my husband.

He raised his arms, opened his palms and let his hands drop back to the sheets. He had no energy to reply. He looked out the window, to punish me, and his expression said:
Can’t you see that I’m dying? Do I have to spell it out?

When I think about that moment, I am confronted by the question I asked that was not worthy of response. Harry was offended. He was angry throughout his entire illness. He was angry until the day he died.

I did not pose the right question.

What was the right question? What did I want to say?

I wanted to put my hand to his cheek and say things great and small. I wanted to say, “Remember our good days, Harry? The months and years of good days, before your illness, before the pain?” I wanted to say, “Isn’t it remarkable that two separate lives, our lives, managed to become one life.”

It was too late. To say such things would have been an outrage. Harry was going about the business of dying and he had gathered himself fiercely. Fierce was something I understood. I also understood that I was more alone than I had ever been. And Harry, too, was alone.

I had given up my anger. But was it also necessary to give up my love?

A
fter Harry was cremated, Verna told me what it had been like for her when her second husband died. She was in a confessional mood and we were alone in my kitchen. It was midnight and we had taken off our funeral clothes and were wearing dressing gowns. Arman was upstairs in bed, and so was Gordo. Harry’s older siblings had survived him. Ally and Trick had flown in from Florida and were staying with Trick’s relatives in town. Case and Rice had driven Phil and Tall Ronnie back to the Haven after the funeral. Tall Ronnie had loomed over Phil, and I saw how dependent she had become on his friendship. I watched him stoop over her as she held his arm and walked to the car. They leaned to each other as if they’d been partners throughout their entire, very long lives.

Verna and Arman had arrived at the church with several bottles of vodka in the trunk of their car. After Harry’s coffin was escorted to the crematorium—that part was for family only—the two of them and Gordo accompanied me back to the church hall. They toted the vodka inside while I began to
greet the gathered mourners. Gordo sat down, looking done-in and weary. Arman wore a two-inch wooden cross around his neck, suspended from a thin strip of leather. He had carved the cross from a maple in his own backyard. He had brought two bottles of Russian champagne along with the vodka, but the corks had popped while he and Verna were driving on bumpy roads and some of the champagne had overflowed. The bottles had been placed upright in a box, but were little more than half full. The vodka was intact, and was consumed in the church hall. The town had not seen a funeral quite like it.

The remaining champagne was left in the car and, when we returned home, Arman carried it in, popped corks and all. Verna and I sat together later, numbed by the funeral and by the leftover champagne, which the two of us had finished off. We faced each other across the kitchen table.

“George,” she said, her voice deeper and more Russian after the champagne. “The reason I married three times is because I need to love. Sometimes I’d be sitting at my kitchen table, maybe gluing sequins, or weaving strips of crêpe, and I’d raise my head and say into the air, ‘I love you.’ But who was there to love? If nobody was sitting across from me, I went out and found a husband.”

She looked at my face as if wondering whether to go on. “My second husband died making love to me, George. I swear it’s true, though I’ve never told a soul. He never had a problem with his heart before, not a bit of chest pain. He was an outdoor man, a master pruner. But he was passionate. You don’t need to pass this any further but, well, he died the moment of—you know, orgasm. I didn’t even realize what happened at first. I had to push him off. ‘My God!’ I was shouting. ‘What happened! What’s the matter!’ I didn’t know what to do, who
to call. I would have to say what we were doing when he died. It would be everybody’s business and the whole countryside would know. So I kept it to myself. I called the ambulance and said into the phone, ‘My husband died in bed. Please come.’”

She started to laugh, and I laughed too, and we laughed for ten minutes. I thought of Grand Dan and her barked laugh at my grandfather’s funeral service; I thought of the women of our family, hysterical in the front pew the day we buried Mr. Holmes.

Verna reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “Anyway,” she said, between gulps and sobs—we were both crying now—“the forests were safe. The trees trembled when he came near, George. I wouldn’t have believed it, except I saw it for myself.”

The master pruner had been felled—not by a tree, but by love. It was a death Harry might have envied.

Verna went upstairs to join Arman in bed. Before she went up, she wrapped her big arms around me and said—her voice sounded strangely husky, like Harry’s—“You learn to move on, George. You learn how to do this.”

As I watched her haul herself slowly up the stairs, I understood that she had become a second sister to me. I thought of her sitting alone in her kitchen, raising her head and saying into the air, “I love you,” and moving on. I thought of Phil, her mouth full of pins, taking up a hem—and rewriting her history. Phil had moved on, and now she had Tall Ronnie to love. I’d become used to Ronnie in her life; he, too, was part of the family.

It was late, but I knew I would not sleep. I stood at the kitchen window and stared into darkness, guessing at the outline of trees. I thought about Harry’s last days at home. How
before going to hospital to die, he woke to find himself clinging to the edge of the mattress. His body and the bedclothes were so drenched in perspiration, we both had to get up so that I could change the sheets.

I heard Verna’s bedroom door close, and I went into the living room and kicked off my slippers. I stretched out on the chesterfield, still wearing my dressing gown. The champagne was wearing off. I did not want to go up to an empty bed, so I left a lamp burning low and pulled Grand Dan’s shawl over me. I stared at the ceiling.

I was suspended over rough water. Harry had sunk and I had to row alone back to shore. We’d been headed towards death for weeks and months but, irrational as it sounds, when his death came, it came as a surprise.

Harry is dead
, I said to myself.

“Harry is dead,” I said aloud.

I thought of the third-floor nurses who’d been on duty the night he died. After being alone with Harry’s body for a few minutes, I had been ushered into a small room off the nurses’ station where I was left alone to make phone calls. Case had been at the hospital all afternoon and had gone straight to her theatre from the ward. I knew she would be home after midnight, so I called her first, and told her not to come back. She said she would phone Verna and Gordo, who had asked to be notified, day or night. We decided to let Phil know in the morning. The doctor on call came to the ward and did her paperwork. I was permitted to wander in and out of Harry’s room. He was lying on his back. His body would not be sent to the morgue until after I left.

But then I began to sense that the nurses wanted to call housekeeping to have the room cleaned and the bed disinfected and
readied for the next admission. I sensed urgency. Maybe they’d received word that a new patient was on his way. Conversation stopped when I walked past the desk. I went to Harry’s room, lifted his cold hand and then tucked it back under the sheet. I looked at his face and, for a quick second, saw a crease above his right cheekbone. I imagined a loupe in his eye socket, held tightly to his orbit as if he were giving careful attention to some detail I couldn’t see. When I looked again, the crease was gone. I gathered his belongings and took the elevator down for the last time. I stepped into the March air and felt as if I had been shot out into the night.

While I was stretched out on the chesterfield, I thought of all of these things—the nurses who wanted to get on with the next admission, Harry’s cold fingers, his thin white body, the sheet tucked under his chin with the hospital logo showing above his sternum. I thought of Verna and Arman in bed upstairs, of Gordo in the room next to theirs, all of them now asleep. I thought of Grand Dan reading from Ecclesiastes and thinking back to a time when my grandfather had been alive: “If two lie together, they have heat; but how can one be warm alone?”

I tried to alter images that flung themselves into my head. Harry not moving. How could he not be moving? The wedding ring that matched mine being slipped from his finger and dropped into my palm. Harry beneath the lid of a closed coffin, the trip to the crematorium after the service, the reception at the hall with the mourners drinking vodka. Harry as cremains.

Would I be given his ashes in a box? Would there be small pieces of bone inside? Case and Rice and I were to go to the cemetery the following week, for the interment, just the three of us. The Danforth plot had been expanded to include the Witley name, and Harry’s ashes would be laid next to our baby,
Matt. All of these things were going through my mind. I knew I would be exhausted in the morning, but my fatigue did not seem to be connected to the other events in motion.

I heard a noise outside the house, and sat up. There was nothing to see inside the room except the living-room furniture.
The wind is coming up
, I thought.
It’s begun to blow through the trees.
What I heard next happened all at once, a loud but slightly muffled sound. Logic was not part of this sequence. What I heard was the sound of wings beating, many large wings marking time. I thought of the pair of doves that flew to the backyard feeder every day and I said to myself,
But this is the sound of hundreds. How can there be so many? Why would wings be beating at night?

I thought of Matt and I knew that the sound was not from doves, nor from birds of any kind. Was Harry with our son?

Call me crazy, go ahead. I’m the one who was sitting upright on the chesterfield when the house was held, momentarily, in embrace. My senses reacted swiftly. I was immensely comforted and did not want the noise to stop. But it did cease, abruptly, and I was sad and let down and relieved all at the same time, even knowing that the sound was lost to me forever.

The next morning at breakfast, I sat with Verna and Gordo—Harry’s look-alikes—and sympathetic Arman, who slid into Harry’s seat at the end of the table. Far from being offended, I was comforted by the gesture. I asked if anyone had heard the wind come up in the night, and no one had. I said nothing about what had happened. I did not have the words to tell.

I would like to hear that sound again. The wondrous, all-encompassing sound of many wings beating.

The sound of angels.