Trouble With the Truth (9781476793498) (26 page)

“You
really
think so?” I said aloud.

“Of course,” came the answer, as clear as only a voice in the mind can sound.

“Lucresse?” Aunt Catherine inquired from the other side of the door. “Did you get out of those wet things?”

I didn't answer, paralyzed momentarily by her rude interruption.

“Lucresse? Did you change?”

There seemed only one answer, one of high drama, that she would never know the true meaning of. “Yes,” I called vigorously, “I changed. I sure have.”

I dressed and, claiming to need a breath of sizzling air, went out and stretched out on the grass as far back in the small backyard as I could get. I told my father about Mrs. Dunhamly and paused, thinking again of all that she'd said. It seemed to me that the world really belonged more to the dead than the living, by virtue of their majority. Death wasn't the least frightening. It was nothing a-tall. All the people who'd ever lived had died; all who ever would live, would, too. I told my father I wouldn't have thought of any of this if it hadn't been for Mrs. Dunhamly, and that he and I may never have gotten together again, like this. He said we would always be together.

I came back into the house humming the thumping melody of my
high-school song, whose words I'd already forgotten… “Al-ways togeth-er, in bad or fair weath-er…”

Aunt Catherine shook her head at me wonderingly. “It's wonderful to see you so cheerful, Lucresse—in spite of everything. I was afraid that poor, old soul would depress you.”

“She's the most cheerful person I ever met.”

“You got to remember, she's a little off.”

“Maybe not as much as a lot of other people.”

Aunt Catherine arranged for a special service at her church for eight p.m. I couldn't consider thinking about, much less talking to, my father there, in the presence of her well-meaning friends. I refused to go. She and Joe reluctantly left me alone for an hour—time I spent telling my father that I didn't feel desolate.

•  •  •

I don't think Aunt Catherine recognized the woman at the airline's desk the next morning as the same creature who'd bounced out of our Palm Beach house one early morning years before, swinging a Grecian bell. I almost didn't know her. Felicity was heavier, squarer, with thick, dark brown hair streaked with threads of gray, and her conservative beige linen dress had a neckline that met the hollow of her throat. Only the eyes were the same: Felicity-round, as deep and brown as ever, now seeming darker, filled as they were with sadness as very slowly her lids lifted until her eyes were looking into mine. It was as though her eyes could see through mine into an area inside that was mysterious even to me.

Her hands on my cheeks were so tender they tickled. “Don't talk unless you want to,” she said to me as we left Aunt Catherine and Joe. We walked out to the plane, holding hands, mute.

After we were seated and had waved once to Aunt Catherine and Joe, the motors roared and faded to a monotonous hum, and I could keep still no longer. “I do want to talk, Felicity, but I don't know how
to explain this to you. I don't want to talk
about
him. I want to talk
to
him.”

Her eyes were pained. “I know, Lucresse. I know that feeling.”

“And I found out I
can
. You don't think that makes any sense, do you?”

“Nothing makes any sense,” she said sweetly.

I grasped her hand again. “You know, I haven't cried once. Death isn't any change at all. He didn't go any place. It's just as if he was still alive, only I can't see him.”

“Then there is a change, Lucresse.”

“You don't understand. You don't understand the
truth!
” I snapped. “You're just like Aunt Catherine.” And for the rest of the trip I treated Felicity as though she was a not particularly attractive stranger I'd been forced to sit next to. My civilities were too civil and I wouldn't offer another word having to do with the reason we were traveling together.

In the long hours of our silences, I closed my eyes, pretending to doze, and spoke to my father in my head. I told him I understood that he wouldn't be with Ben to meet us and how Felicity had changed.

“She's still better to take care of things for a while than Catherine, don't you agree?” he said. “Aren't you glad I arranged things this way?”

I had to agree, and smiled in my feigned sleep.

•  •  •

The body had been cremated as I'd expected. The house was still neat. Hubert padded about in his customary way. The faucets weren't a decibel less shrill; the doors still complained. Even Ben was, as I'd expected him to be—authoritative in his report, contemplative for moments at a time, but then, as interested in his own world as ever. He got Felicity to try his barbells and was gratified at how “all right” I was.

“Of course I am,” I said evenly.

Suddenly, he looked alarmed. “You're
too
all right.”

“I know things you don't.”

Felicity gave a long sigh.

“About what? About Dad?” he pressed.

“It's the same as if he was still here—because I don't believe all the stuff Aunt Catherine does, and you both probably do. He's not flying around somewhere with wings, or jumping over live coals somewhere else.”

“So what?” Ben said angrily.

“So, if he's nowhere else, he might as well be here. Don't
you
understand either? He
is
, to
me
.”

I felt I was saying too much, yet I didn't care. It was time
somebody
understood—somebody besides Mrs. Dunhamly whom I might never see again.

“Lucresse, he's gone, don't you realize that?” Ben said.

“All right, where did he go?” I said defiantly.

“I don't know,” Ben boomed. “But you've got to realize, he's gone. Dead. Forever.”

“Those are just words. They don't mean anything, if you don't believe in heaven or hell. And Daddy didn't.”

“I don't either, but there's such a thing as facing the facts.”

“Yes,” Felicity said heartily.

They were trying to corner me. I met the challenge head on. Triumphantly, I told them, “I've talked to him since yesterday, and he's answered me.”

Ben and Felicity stared at each other. For a moment I was the outsider in the room. Then, in a flash, I knew that I, and Mrs. Dunhamly, were perhaps the only insiders on Earth where death was concerned. The billions of Christian and Jewish faithful, and all the Moslems, Hindus, Mohammedans, and Indian-lorers, and for all I knew, the Bens and Felicitys and Aunt Catherines, were the outsiders.

“I'm going to my room and talk to him now,” I said. And I left them
with spring in my step and new freedom in my heart, now that there was no need to hide what I knew.

Felicity had planned to stay with us for only a few days. Two days later, she changed her mind. I couldn't understand it. Though she'd been long finished with a motion picture career, she'd become entrenched as a resident of Beverly Hills and had achieved an estimable reputation as a hostess par excellence and an active participant in community affairs. “Don't you want to go back?” I asked.

“I've more important things to do here,” she answered.

“We're all right. Mr. Askew at the bank is in charge of everything.”

“He's not in charge of how you feel,” she replied.

“I feel fine, Felicity. You can see that. And Ben's okay.”

“Yes, Ben is.”

Three boys from Ben's class and Louise Loder came over that evening to “pay their respects,” as Louise's mother must have told her to say. They paid them with such gravity that I couldn't tolerate their attitude.

“Felicity once taught us how to do a time step. Let's turn on some music and she can teach you,” I said.

“You sure you
want
to?” Louise said, surprised.

“Sure. My father would love it.” I urged everybody up as I switched on the radio.

Felicity cooperated, but after the company left, she pointed her finger at me. “I wish you were plain
shicker
or plain
mashugana
, the way you're acting. But I know you're not either. All I can say is, I'm glad I'm here.”

I don't know how many days passed. The duration of times of unusual emotion is always indistinct. However, I know that, for a while, I knew a mood of peace unduplicated in my life. Felicity and Ben and Hubert existed in the cloudy fringes of my attention. Much more defined was my father's voice. It began to sound without my summoning it. At odd times it summoned
my
replies.

Felicity was searching high and low for the keys to his jewelry
satchel, preparatory to turning it over to a dealer designated by Mr. Askew. As I watched her rummage through his desk for the third time, he told me, “They're in the breast pocket of my brown suit.”

“Oh, thanks,” I said aloud. “I'll tell her.”

“What?” Felicity said.

“Daddy told me they're in the breast pocket of his brown suit.”

She gave me a startled look and stomped upstairs to his closet. She took the keys out of the breast pocket and whirled at me. “Sit down!”

I sat on his bed.

“You
remembered
that he kept them in that pocket, whether he was wearing that suit or not.”

“No!”

“Ben!”

Ben ran in from his room, the script he'd been memorizing still in his hand.

“Tell
him
,” Felicity commanded, her big brown eyes sparkling frantic.

“Felicity doesn't believe I didn't
remember
where Daddy's satchel keys were. I
didn't
remember. He
told
me.”

“Do you think I ought to phone my old head man?” Felicity asked Ben.

“Lucresse,” Ben said, “I hate to do this to you, but it's got to be done. Come here.”

He led
me
and Felicity downstairs to the spot in the living room where the marble-topped table had been.

“I'll be Dad,” he said. “We were bending over the table this way. I was approximately where Felicity is…” Felicity moved to the sofa and leaned against its arm. “Hubert was on the long end, over there. We lifted once, about two inches. His face got red, and he gasped…”

Ben's head jerked back, as though thrown by the force of the rushing air he gulped in. His resemblance to my father was uncanny. Even his trousers looked baggy.

“I let down my end and said, ‘Are you all right?' He started to lift again…”

“Ben, stop!” Felicity cried.

I drew my breath with difficulty.

Ben didn't stop. “He dropped his end, just let go… it's a wonder the whole top didn't crack in two. His hands just fell, didn't even try to break his fall. He collapsed right about here…”

Ben, reverting to Ben, indicated a body's length area on the floor.

“We carried him to the sofa. His suit jacket dragged on the floor… I stepped on one of the buttons as we carried him. Hubert ran to the phone and called a doctor. I kept squeezing his face. He looked sick to his stomach, but he didn't vomit. Without opening his eyes, he said, ‘Get Felicity to bring Lucresse back. Be nice to her, Ben…”

A shudder swept through me. Ben's voice was too the same as the voice I'd known all my life, the voice that had never stopped speaking to me.

“Then it was over. In an hour, the doctor had been there, I had called Mr. Askew, who called the men from the crematorium. They took him out…I didn't go.

“Before I called either of you, two fellows came with the transport truck and crated the table top. They lifted it with no trouble at all. And that was all. It was gone. And
he
was gone. Now, do you understand?”

My hands dug into my temples, trying to make my brain understand. “If I could have
seen
him…” I said.

“Be glad you didn't.”

Felicity touched my arm and said to Ben, “No, you're wrong.”

She took me to my room. “Rest a while,” she said. “We're going out later.”

I didn't ask where. I didn't care. Whatever she wanted to do was all right with me, as long as she'd leave me alone now so I could talk to
my father and get back my bearings. I closed my door after her, with a slam.

“Ben's a pretty good actor,” I said. “You always said so.”

My father's voice was weaker than before. “I always said he'd be a success.”

“Sometimes I can't tell whether he's acting or not.”

“Good acting always has some truth to it.”

“Was he telling the truth just now?”

“People can only tell the truth as they see it. And everyone sees it differently.”

“Then
I'd
have seen it differently. I
do
see it differently,” I said victoriously.

Felicity knocked at my door and came in before I could admit her. “Do you have a hat?” she asked excitedly.

“No.”

“We're going somewhere where you need one.” She disappeared and returned with a fourth-moon black straw piece with a short veil. “Wear this, and something dark.”

Again I didn't ask where we were going.

Ben drove us to a church at the bottom of the hill, near the station. No one said anything on the way except Felicity's, “Lucky there
was
one today. I hope we aren't late.”

All the people entering the church were smiling sadly to each other. A somber attendant ushered us to a back pew without asking who we were. Centered on the altar was an open coffin. A bald minister appeared at the lectern behind it. He monotoned some responsive readings, and more energetically, sailed into a lengthy eulogy. We sat in silence. Though I listened carefully, I didn't feel that I knew any more about the body in the coffin at the end of his speech than I'd known at the beginning, except that it was a man's. I wanted to leave.