A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [87]
When Rafferty asked me about Lizzy’s death I told him, as best I could, the sequence of events. There were several things I omitted, however. When Alice shouted, “Don’t force me,” in the church vestibule at the funeral, everyone froze. Lizzy’s relations, all in a line, pulled away from their embraces, their handshakes, their words of comfort. They looked at my wife tramping out the door. I stood still and stared at the floor, trusting that time would pass. It did. Finally the woman behind me huffed, “Well.” That served as a signal for noise and motion to resume. Theresa was the only one in line who was kind enough to ask after Alice. I don’t remember exactly what I said to explain or excuse her before I went into the sanctuary. I put my head down for the opening prayer. Right away I realized I was cursing Alice instead of turning my thoughts to Lizzy.
Even as I was telling Rafferty about the percentage of butterfat in my Guernseys’ milk, I had the feeling that I’d lost part of my memory, or experience. Something was happening to my brain. I used to be certain about plenty of things. That certainty was slipping away as I rested between my sentences. I didn’t tell him that my wife had been sleeping twenty hours a day. I didn’t say that she hadn’t been able to speak or dress herself. I told myself afterward that omission isn’t much of a sin. It’s a safety valve, nothing more or less, for those of us who have been brought up to be honest at all costs. I didn’t mention the night before her arrest, when I’d come into our room and seen her on the bed. She used to do that, go to bed while it was still light, because she was waiting. It used to be a sign. I had come in that night and found her lying on the bed with her clothes on. She was shivering, in the heat. All that was in keeping with our common language. I knew that she had finally come back into herself because she raised her head and turned toward me. I was sure then that she’d been waiting.
I couldn’t have explained what had taken place that night, to Rafferty, or to anyone else. I hadn’t given it much consideration myself. She had knocked me over. She had kneed me in the jaw as she flew up. Rafferty was saying he didn’t know how people got over the death of a child. He stared at me from across the table. I felt my jaw with both hands, like the hurt was fresh. I said they’d probably never recover. He asked me if there was anything else I should tell him. That night before they came to get Alice I had misunderstood the signs, the private language, the rituals—things I had taken for granted for years. Rafferty kept his eyes on me, as if I was the culprit. I said again that I didn’t know how you’d continue after a loss like that. I wondered if I had ever understood Alice. I wondered, how, after years of our life together, there was only a handful of sentences that I would admit to a stranger about my wife.
Chapter Twelve
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THERESA APPEARED AT OUR door the night after the preliminary hearing. I wasn’t expecting to see her. It was mid-July and they’d been gone almost a month. I had been trying to clean a cherry stain off the new white T-shirt my mother had given Emma earlier in the summer. Emma had realized, too late, that wiping her dirty hands on the shirt would spoil it. She was trying to be calm and hold steady while I scrubbed hard against her ribs. Claire was in the living room, glassy-eyed, watching a musical-variety show. If my mother had been with us she would have rushed to the shirt and held cold compresses to the stain. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a shadow in the yellow light of the evening. I thought a cloud had passed over the sun. Theresa came right up to the screen and pressed her hands against it, around her face. “Is anyone home?” she asked. Her voice