Earthly Possessions - Anne Tyler [70]
We looked at each other. We were not cruel people, either one of us. We weren’t unkind. So why did we take such joy in this? My wickedness made me feel buoyant, winged. Gliding past a mirror, I was accompanied by someone beautiful: her hair filled with lights, eyes deep with plots, gypsyish dress a splash of color in the dusk. When Amos and I met in public, our hands touched, clung, slid off each other and parted, while we ourselves went our separate ways blank-faced and gloating like thieves.
I photographed Miss Feather swathed in a black velvet opera cape, holding a silver pistol that was actually a table lighter. “This will be for my great-niece LaRue, who never comes to visit,” she said. “Make up several prints, if you will.”
“All right,” I said.
“For my other great-nieces, too. Who also never come to visit.”
“I’ll have them by tomorrow,” I said.
It was night. I was tired. Mama had dropped off and I was trying to catch up on my work. But I could hardly see to focus the camera; everything was haloed. “I believe I’ll go to bed,” I told Miss Feather.
“No, wait, please.”
“I need some sleep.”
“But what about Saul? I mean to say,” said Miss Feather, “Saul is not himself these days.”
“Who is?”
She fumbled at her throat, cast off her cape, and rushed at me. A tiny, excitable woman waving a silver pistol. “Now listen, please,” she told me. “I had this in mind to say for some time: he’s your husband. Would you like to take a little vacation together? I could stay with the children.”
“Vacation, Miss Feather. I consider it a vacation if I can make it out of Mama’s bedroom.”
“But … dear heart—”
“Thank you anyway,” I told her.
I went upstairs, took off my shoes, and sagged on the edge of the bed. Saul wasn’t there. He had taken to going on long walks in the dark. I was on my own, and felt free to slip a hand in my skirt pocket and pull out my true self’s photograph. She smiled back at me, carefree and reckless, but my eyes were too tired to make any sense of her. It seemed she had arrived unassembled. I couldn’t put her together.
How did you turn out, finally? What kind of grownup are you now?
Late in December they took Mama away and put her in the hospital. I had hoped to avoid that but Dr. Porter said I was getting strange-looking. Besides, he said, she might not even notice. She was hardly ever conscious any more. They hooked her up to a number of cords and dials. She lay silent, with her eyes tight shut. I imagined she was doing it deliberately—not sleeping or comatose but closing me out, hugging her secret clawed monster. I felt jealous. The nurses told me to go on home but I stayed, stubbornly gripping the arms of my chair.
Amos brought me a Big Mac—the smell of beautiful, everyday life. When I wouldn’t come away with him he laid it on the table beside me and loped off down the corridor. His moccasins made a gentle scolding sound. Then Julian danced in all edgy and skittish, dressed up as if for a night at the races. He gave me a note from Linus: I can’t visit hospitals. Can’t manage. Taking the Children to pizza palace, is my sympathy gift to You. I thanked Julian and he danced out again.
Saul stooped in the doorway, took stock of the room and then entered. He settled in the armchair next to mine, tugging at his bony black cloth knees. His head lunged forward awkwardly. “Have you eaten?” he whispered.
“Yes,” I said.
The Big Mac sat untouched on the table; the smell of it had made me full.
“How is she?”
“The same. You don’t have to whisper.”
He cleared his throat. He set his Bible on his lap, took out his reading glasses and polished them with the end of his tie. Then he put them on and opened the Bible. I went back to studying Mama. She reminded me of a withered balloon. All those cords were just to hold her down; without them she’d lift up, level and sedate, and go