The O'Briens (16 page)

“We'll have another baby,” he told her.

She shook her head. Tears started down her cheeks. He reached for her hand and she pulled it away. She stared fixedly at her book. It wasn't possible that she was reading, but she stared at the book with tears shining on her cheeks, and even turned a page.

“Iseult, I'm so sorry I wasn't here.”

He wanted to take away the book and comfort her, but she wouldn't look at him and he didn't know how to proceed. She was only protecting herself, he figured. Grief was a rough blade. While he searched the tent for the prayer beads and Catholic missal the Little Priest had sent him for his twenty-first birthday, the girl held a steaming cup to Iseult's lips and, cooing in Chinese, tried to persuade her to drink. Iseult had carried their child in her womb; her pain must be even sharper, deeper than what he was feeling.

~

The storeroom was hardly a room. Just space and shadows. Kneeling, he clutched his rosary beads, each one the size of a sunflower seed. Strung together in tens — decades,
so called. He hadn't prayed a novena since quitting the Pontiac, but he figured the ritual was due their child. He had no belief whatsoever that he or anyone else would ever touch the hand of a god. He didn't need a god. After the death of his mother he had left his Catholicism in the Pontiac, but he believed instinctively in the continuum of the dead, the living, and the unborn: a sleepy, barely cognizant community of souls. Saying the old prayers was acknowledging his own connection to the dead generations that had preceded him and the ones that would follow after.

The earth floor was cold and hard on his knees. The oil lamps weren't trimmed properly. They smoked. Candles would have been better. There ought to be a box of tapers somewhere in their stores.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou amongst women and

Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners

Now and at the hour of our death.

The harsh drone of his voice reciting the rosary in the cold, empty room might have frightened his daughter. He would have picked her up and held her, sung to her, done anything in his power to console.

~

WU BALTIMORE CNCPYELLOWHEAD-EDMONTON CANADA

3075833-13762 WU 22 OCTOBER 1912

TO: J O'BRIEN

O'BRIEN CAPITAL CONST LTD

MILE 84 TETE JAUNE BRITISH COLUMBIA CANADA

PERMISSION TRAVEL DENIED RECTOR FATHER MAAS QUOTE NO FUNERAL RITES FOR UNBAPTIZED AND SACRED CANONS DECREE NO COMMUNION WITH DEAD IF NO COMMUNION WHILST ALIVE ENTRUST CHILD TO MERCY OF GOD END QUOTE. BEG YR FORGIVENESS TOM

~

At the head of the funeral procession, Joe walked along the gravel grade wearing his best blue suit and carrying the white coffin in his arms. The chief clerk had suggested they put it on a handcar, but that hadn't seemed right. Iseult came next, Lee Peng and the Chinese girl helping her along, then the clerks in derby hats, tweed suits, and celluloid collars, their polished boots getting muddy. Then the engineers, surveyors, and gangers. Then a couple of hundred navvies, teamsters, and mechanics walking two and three abreast along the grade. Their clothes were in rough shape so late in the season: overalls crudely patched, moth-eaten pullovers. Boots mended with wads of tar.

He had told the timers that wages would be paid but no work was to be done. The funeral procession was as long as any train that would howl through those mountains, but the only noise was hundreds of pairs of boots scuffling on gravel, wind moving through firs and cedars, and cawing ravens flapping from treetop to treetop.

The Chinese bone-house was on a hillside, probably an avalanche slope, west of the camp. There was hardly any soil; the open ground was bare rock or scree. Squat, solid, built of stone, the bone-house almost concealed itself on the bare slope. It was unlikely that anyone would ever notice it from a passing train. The rough stonework was meticulous; they had used no mortar. He had allowed them some sheets of galvanized iron for the roof.

Leaving the grade, jumping the ditchwork, he started up the slope with the coffin in his arms. Two warm days and a night of heavy rain had dissolved nearly all the snow in the valley, but the peaks were gleaming white, and now he could feel the weather changing again, pressure dropping, wind picking up. It wouldn't be long before snow was flying again. Their season was just about over.

Glancing back, he saw Iseult leave the grade and start up the scree slope with the Chinese widow helping her. Most of it was limestone debris, with a few gnarled firs. His biceps were sore from carrying the coffin all the way from main camp. His fingers were stiff. He set it down on shaggy silver grass outside the bone-house and looked around. Men were leaving the grade and coming up the slope but keeping respectfully behind Iseult. He felt the first drops of rain: sharp, needle-like. Soon it would be sleeting.

When she reached the bone-house, she shook off the Chinese girl's hand and stood gazing at the white coffin.

“Iseult.”

He ought to have made her ride in a handcar or insisted she stay in bed. Underneath her enormous hat, her face was white. Purple pans below her eyes. The rain was coming down harder. “Iseult, none of this is the end, not for us. We'll see her in all the other children. I promise you we will.”

She glanced up. She didn't believe him; he saw that in her quick eyes. He'd make it his life to prove it to her. He hadn't married her and brought her all the way into these mountains to give her an ending — to finish her life, perish her. No, goddamn it, no. There would be more. There'd be more of everything.

The men were now gathering around. One of the Chinese station men tried the timber door with his shoulder, nudged it open a few inches, then nodded at Joe and left it slightly ajar. Joe had holy water in a silver flask borrowed from one of the gangers. Holy water was supposed to be blessed by a bishop or a priest but he had done it himself, following directions from his missal, and it would have to serve.

As soon as he took the missal from his coat pocket the wind ruffled its flimsy pages and he lost the place he'd marked. He was still trying to locate it when he felt Iseult grasp his arm. The men stood six or seven deep in front of the little stone hut, a crowd smelling of dirty hair, wet wool, and leather. She held onto his arm so tightly — was it possible she hadn't given up on him entirely? Maybe it was just that he was all she had at that particular moment. Squeezing hard. Fingers like furious bones through the cloth.

Whether she trusted him or not, he swore to himself he would do his best to deserve her. He found his place and began reading aloud the Rite of Burial for Unbaptized Infants, the sound of his voice amounting to very little on that wind-battered slope.

~

Tools, machinery, and material were stored in sheds and supply dumps. Buildings not needed for storage were demolished or burned. What was useful was put aside, the rest thrown into the giant bonfires. Men straggling in from remote stations were paid off in Bank of Montreal scrip exchangeable at Edmonton. A couple of hundred of the best horses were collected in pens near the railhead for shipping out; the others were being turned loose and left to forage through the mountain winter.

On their last morning in camp she asked him to burn down the tent instead of packing it up and storing it away for next season. It was a good tent, but he took a can of coal oil and doused the floorboards and canvas walls. Then he dipped a pine bough in coal oil, lit it, and walked around the outside of the tent, touching flame to canvas. As they watched the fire consume the tent, consume the first eight months of their marriage, the scream of a train whistle came floating up the valley. A few hours later they were aboard and gone.

~

In Venice that winter he took over the spare room for his study but still spent hours each day in his brother's real estate office on Windward Avenue, where he had commandeered a desk and a telephone and spent the days writing and receiving letters and telegrams to and from Canada, London, and New York.

There was a lot of white fog. Iseult didn't know what to do with herself. Elise O'Brien was absorbed with her daughter, Virginia, and it was hard to go for afternoon walks on the boardwalk with Elise pushing the baby in her beautiful white pram.

Iseult decided the only thing she could do to help herself was to find other women who needed help. The next day she went to Santa Monica Police Department, then to the sheriff's station at Ocean Park, and asked to visit the women in the lock-ups. The policemen and deputies were surprised, and amused, by her determination. In both places she was denied, but when she returned the next day and repeated her request, she was admitted.

She began visiting women prisoners every afternoon, writing letters for them and listening to their stories. One Portuguese girl had been sentenced to forty days for smashing a shop window and stealing a hat. Another girl had stolen an automobile parked in front of the baths and driven it onto the beach, where it got stuck in the sand. Another girl had stabbed a man with a penny knife. They were mostly prostitutes. She brought them newspapers and magazines and soap and hairbrushes and cigarettes and underclothes and small presents. When the women were released from jail, she gave them small sums of money.

She felt he was unwilling to share her grief, to take up any share of the burden of it. She had to carry it all alone for both of them. When he came home late one night from the office, she was in her bed. He was bending over her, trying to kiss her, but she couldn't contain her anger anymore. She pushed him away and sat up.

“I've never felt an ounce of love from you,” she said. “You don't know what it is. You're afraid of it.”

“Maybe that's true,” he said. “You've been through a lot. I've asked a lot of you.”

“And never given anything back,” she said. “Nothing but mud and cold and pain. I wish I'd never met you.”

“Things are hard now. They will get better.”

“Maybe they will for you. That's all you care about anyway. If you cared about me the baby wouldn't have died.”

He had taken off his tie and collar and slipped off his suspenders, but now he pulled the suspenders back on.

“What are you going to do, run away?” she taunted.

He picked up his coat and hat. She knew she'd hurt him. He looked tired and there was something broken in his face. She'd not been able to hurt him before, and it gave her a satisfaction almost delirious, and a taste like salt on her lips.

“Go away then, run away,” she said triumphantly. “You can't face it, can you. You're not so tough as you think. Go away! I wish you'd never come in here. I should never have let you in. Go away and leave me alone.”

He left the room, and a few moments later she heard him leaving the house.

She was sitting up in bed. She felt more awake and more aware than she had in weeks. There was a glow from her anger. She listened carefully, thinking he might come back at any moment. She had no idea where he'd gone, and after a while fell back on the pillow. She was beginning to feel bruised by her own outburst.

He wasn't going to abandon her, was he? He was certainly going to come back. Their marriage was a shallow thing, not really grounded, but she knew that much about him, or hoped she did.

After half an hour, unable to sleep, she got up, picked up her little Kodak from a shelf, and took it back to bed along with some tools and brushes wrapped in a soft cloth. The shutter had been sticking; she made herself concentrate on cleaning and adjusting the camera. She was worried but she still felt better than she had in weeks — cleaner.

Then she heard him come into the house. She switched off her bedside light and didn't say anything. She waited for him to enter their bedroom, but he didn't. She heard him go instead into the room across the hall, which was crowded with metal file cabinets and boxes of paperwork. He shut the door.

At least he was home. In the morning they'd be able to sort things out. He was essentially kind, essentially passionate. They needed to have another baby. He felt things the same way she did; he just didn't want to admit feeling them. He was guarding himself. That was understandable; it was what men did. In a few moments she would go and fetch him and bring him back to her bed. She felt confident that all was going to go better between them from now on.

She fell asleep without quite meaning to, feeling raw and guilty and satisfied. A few hours later she awoke with moonlight streaking across their twin beds and a strong, almost visceral awareness of her husband's animal loneliness. His bed was untouched, empty. What was left of her anger had washed away while she was asleep, like snow under spring rain.

She put on a wrapper and went and knocked on the door of his study. He didn't respond. She called his name. He didn't answer. When she tried it, the door was locked from the inside. Remembering her father and the Colt Navy pistol, she panicked. She pounded on the door and called his name, then ran outside and peered in the window, but the shade had been drawn and the window closed tight and bolted. She looked around for something to break the glass but there was nothing, just clods of sandy earth. She hurled one against the window and it made a thud, then a gritty, trickling sound, but the glass wouldn't shatter. She ran back into the house, telephoned the operator and asked her to ring the fire department, then ran back outside and pounded her fist on the study window. It would not break. Maybe she didn't want it to. Maybe she was afraid what she'd find.

She went to the canal path and paced up and down in her nightdress alongside the still, dark water. It was just a ditch, not a real canal. Venice was a fraud. The cottage had never been a home for her; she hadn't wanted to live alone in white fog. To breathe well wasn't enough. Books and pictures weren't enough; peace, order, and repose would never be enough. She wanted to build a life with a man, a hectic life, a messy life — mud and mountains, risks and riches. And children. She kept seeing the two young Chinese station men who'd died in her arms the summer before. Joe wasn't going to die in her arms, was he?