The Weight of Memory Page 18

  It was a small church and could seat a hundred during a normal service, but because it was nearly Christmas, the wooden, unpadded pews were squeezed full. The walls were painted a bright white, and each stained-glass window seemed to tell a story. I could feel the gaze of all the other people on us as we entered.

  We stood when everyone else stood and sat when everyone else sat. We read the words when the cues came, and our voices melted in with all the others.

  Why had we decided to go to church? Were we looking for something different in the world, something new?

  Mary sat very close to me, holding my hand the entire time. I glanced over at her. We had been secretly married for four months, and I felt a growing connection with her, a sense that we belonged to each other. No, it wasn’t quite that—it was that we were becoming each other, that the lines separating what made up me from what made up her were blurring, and what made each of us, us, was mixing.

  The rector finished his sermon, and then he and a bunch of other robed people began going through the motions of preparing us for communion. At least, that’s what I gathered from the program. Shirley occasionally leaned in and explained things when we had questions (which happened every minute or so). Even though she hadn’t grown up in the Episcopal church, she knew some of the terminology.

  As the rector waved his hands over the bread and the wine, Mary’s grip on my hand turned into a vise. I leaned over to jokingly tell her to ease up a little, but when I saw her face, my heart sank. Her skin was nearly the color of the white walls, her lips a straight line.

  “What’s wrong?” I whispered.

  But she only shook her head. She didn’t let up on my hand.

  The priest explained communion and invited up anyone who wanted to partake. I glanced at Tom and Shirley, and they shrugged. Why not? That didn’t surprise me—they were normally up for just about anything. Mary nodded too, but the fear was still in her eyes.

  We stood when it was our turn and waited in the line that led to the front. Mary was in front of me at that point, her hand trailing behind so that she could still hold mine. I leaned forward. The scent of her was intoxicating—she smelled like vanilla and springtime.

  I whispered in her ear, “What’s wrong?”

  “She’s here.” She cast the words over her shoulder.

  “Who?”

  “That woman who was looking in our windows at the cabin.”

  “Where?” Now my heart was racing.

  “Up front. Behind the priest.”

  There was no one behind the priest.

  No one. Not a man, woman, or child.

  I didn’t say anything else. We shifted our way to the front, knelt at the altar, and waited for the priest to press the bread into our hands (“The body of Christ”), then waited for one of the others to tip the cup of wine into our mouths (“The cup of salvation”). The knot never left my stomach, this sense that Mary was ill. She needed something, or someone, that I could never provide or be for her.

  When we returned to our seats, the knot turned into an ache.

  All I wanted to do was leave. I thought again of Mary’s words.

  Where everything wrong is made right.

  Sometimes everything being made right seems an impossible distance away.

  Following Her Down

  I follow Tom down again, leaving the sounds above me, and sink into the freezing lake. This passing from one world to the next comes with a simple blip in my ears as they plug against the water. I try to kick my way to the bottom, but I am in no shape for this, and my buoyancy pulls me up. I am momentarily envious of Tom’s fit body, his ability to move through the water like an otter. I float unwillingly back to the surface, gasp for air once again. Tom is still under. The clouds float lazily across the sky, indifferent. A gull, miles from the ocean, calls out in a lonely voice.

  When the two of you emerge, Tom taking in a long breath, blinking water from his eyes, dragging you up out of the depths, I expect you to be dead. It seemed so long since you went under that I’m shocked to hear you coughing, choking on water. Tom swims gently on his back, tugging you along with one of his arms, speaking soft words into your ear.

  “It’s okay,” he whispers, taking in a deep breath before speaking again. “You’re okay.”

  I swim weakly behind you both to the boat. I say your name with each sputtering exhale, gasping it out. “Pearl. Pearl. Pearl.”

  Your eyes are open but dim, your mouth wet with water and drool, your hair clinging to your head like seaweed.

  “Hold her while I get into the boat,” Tom says.

  I grab you with one arm around your chest, my other arm holding on to the back of the boat. You turn, fold your skinny, cold arms around my neck, and start to cry.

  While Tom gathers himself in the boat and prepares to lift you, I pull you tighter to me and whisper into your ear, “Pearl, what happened?”

  “She pulled me under,” you whisper.

  “Who pulled you under? Tom?”

  “No.” You bury your face deeper in the crook of my neck. “The woman.”

  “The silver-haired woman?”

  “She was under the water the entire time. She wanted to show me something, she wants to help me learn how to swim underwater, and she pulled me under.”

  I think about the look on your face before you sank, the way you glanced down into the water with something like recognition.

  “Pearl,” I whisper, not knowing what to say.

  “She only wants to teach me. She just wants to help,” you say again, this time in a neutral voice without fear or regret. “That was all. It’s very important.”

  “What did she show you?” I ask.

  Tom reaches down to take you from me, but I hold up my hand, motioning for him to wait.

  “Everything,” you say, and there is a deep sadness in your eyes.

  Something Beyond Us

  It was cold, so cold, when we left the church and walked out into the winter air. I put my arm around your grandmother and held her tight. It seems funny calling her your grandmother. We were so young, only teenagers at the time, and she had less than one year to live.

  She was so shaken by seeing the silver-haired woman in the church that her body trembled when we left, so I put my arm around her shoulders and pulled her in to stop the shaking. Tom and Shirley were in front of us, so they didn’t notice. The walk through the parking lot was quiet, and the stars were bright above us. In the western sky a darkness was gathering, clouds bringing in another snowstorm.

  “Well, that was interesting,” Tom stated as we all found our spots in his car. Shirley sat in the passenger seat, a peaceful smile on her face.

  “What are you smiling at?” Tom asked, laughing.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I liked it.”

  “Liked what?” He seemed to be getting more and more confused by Shirley’s obvious enjoyment of the church service.

  “I don’t know. Goodness, Tom. Why are you being this way?”

  “I’m not being any which way,” Tom said, his voice softening. “I want to know what you liked about it.”

  “It was peaceful,” Mary offered unexpectedly from where she rested against me in the back seat.

  “Really?” I asked, surprised at how quickly she’d forgotten her terror at seeing the woman.

  But Shirley had found an ally, and she pressed the advantage. “Yeah! That’s it. It was peaceful. Didn’t it feel wonderful taking communion?”

  Tom turned on the car but didn’t make a move to drive away. “Wonderful? I don’t know about that.” But I could tell by his voice that something about the service had moved him. He clapped his hands to warm them, then blew on them so that his breath steamed out between his fingers. “I mean, I wasn’t crazy about sharing that cup with everyone.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” Shirley said, pouting.

  “That’s what I keep asking you!” Tom laughed out loud and clapped his hands against the steering
wheel. “What in the world are you talking about?”

  We all laughed, even Mary.

  “Oh, Tom,” Shirley said in a wistful voice. “I don’t even know what it was.” She paused, but no one else broke the silence, so she kept going. “You guys know how it felt this past summer when we were out on the lake, drifting along in our kayaks, and none of us were paddling or anything. We were floating on the water, under a blue sky, the hot sun shining down.”

  I knew what she meant.

  “You remember how that felt? Like we were the only ones in the world, but there was something else too, something beyond us, something that cared?”

  I felt Mary’s head nod against my shoulder.

  “That’s what I felt tonight, when we took communion.” She turned toward Tom. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  He reached over and squeezed her hand, then adjusted the rearview mirror and pulled away from the sidewalk. I knew what Shirley meant. I knew exactly what she meant. Because that’s how it had felt to me too.

  “I saw her there tonight,” Mary whispered so quietly I wasn’t sure if the two up front had heard her.

  Shirley’s head snapped around. “What?” she asked, her face no longer in that saint’s ecstasy.

  “The woman who was at the cabin last summer.”

  “Where?”

  “Behind the priest.”

  “Where should we go?” Tom asked, either not hearing or not caring what Mary was talking about.

  “Tom!”

  “What?” he asked in a wounded voice.

  Shirley turned back to Mary. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I told Paul.”

  Shirley’s piercing gaze darted over to me, and I could feel Tom’s eyes searching me in the rearview mirror.

  “And?” Shirley asked, directing the word at me.

  “And what?” I asked.

  “What did you do?”

  “What did I do?” I didn’t know what to say or how to say it. “I didn’t see her.” How could I tell them that the person Mary told me she saw wasn’t there? That she was a figment of her imagination? That Mary was probably mentally unstable? This beautiful girl. My young wife.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Tom asked me.

  I eased away from Mary and stared out the window at the small town of Nysa as we drove through.

  “So we’ll go to the diner,” Tom said, but Mary spoke up.

  “Can you drop me at my house, Tom?”

  A heavy sort of quiet settled in the car, and no one said anything. Soon the town was behind us and we were out in the countryside, the trees reaching down over us. Then we were flying through the flat, empty fields. Snow began to fall, swirling at us through the night, strobing in and out of the car’s headlights, distracting, mesmerizing.

  Let’s Not Leave Her Alone Anymore

  You are wrapped in a thick down comforter, lying on one of the deck chairs like a sideways cocoon, like a moth waiting to be transformed. The blanket even comes up over the top of your head so that only your face is showing: your sweet, round eyes are closed, your lashes tender and at peace. I panic again, convinced you have died after your submersion in the lake, your near drowning, but then I see the slight expansion and retreat of the blanket where it wraps around your chest. The thought that races through my mind, that you are alive, that you are fine, sends a rush of relief through me.

  Tom swoops out of his house and onto the deck carrying three mugs. He bends his knees and manages to place one of the mugs under your chair—hot chocolate with a generous portion of cloud-like marshmallows floating on top.

  “Something warm to drink,” he says, handing me a cup of black coffee.

  I have to admit, the warmth is welcome. Even though the sun is still shining, this late September day has gotten cooler, and a brisk wind sweeps up off the lake. I look out at the water, and it doesn’t bring the same sense of peace that it often has before—I have this sense that something sinister lies beneath its surface. I think of your story, of the woman beneath the water, beckoning to you. I shake my head to clear it away. I have enough to worry about in life without taking on your imaginary stories. Such as this knot on my head. Such as finding you a place to live after I’m gone. Such as dealing with the pit that has resided squarely in my stomachever since I saw those photos Tom took of your grandmother.

  “Thanks,” I say, taking the tiniest sip of coffee. It is scalding hot.

  “She okay?” he asks me.

  I glance at you, not because I need to in order to answer the question, but because everything brings me back to you. Always.

  “I think she’ll be fine,” I say, shrugging. “That was strange.”

  “I don’t know how she went so deep so quickly,” Tom replies, raising his own mug to his face and blowing. “Especially for someone who can’t swim.”

  The coffee smells comforting, familiar. I take another sip.

  Sitting there on Tom’s deck, behind his house, at the end of his long lane, fills me with a feeling of isolation like I’ve never had before. We are so far from civilization. In front of us the lake spreads out, and the far bank isn’t visible, even on clear days. We are fifteen miles or so outside of the small town of Nysa, which is a forty-five-minute drive from the highway, which is an hour or two from any other place.

  Part of me feels relieved to be so far away, so removed from the world. It’s like the further removed I am from normal life, the further removed I am from my diagnosis. If I can refrain from reaching up and touching the knot, I can almost believe it’s not there. Except for the tightening of my skin at the corner of my eye. And the dull ache that radiates down my neck.

  But being far away also comes with a certain level of anxiety. What if I need emergency treatment? What if you break a bone or need a doctor?

  What if Tom is not who I remember him to be, and we’re stuck out here in the middle of nowhere with him? What if he tries to do something?

  “Amazing how much she resembles Mary,” Tom says.

  It’s true. Of course I’ve noticed this before, but I don’t like the way he says it, so I take another sip of coffee and hope the subject will change.

  “Do you remember when Mary told you she was pregnant with John?” he asks, and there is some strange element in his voice I can’t recognize.

  “I’ll never forget it,” I reply, smiling.

  “The four of us were in the diner, and it was late, wasn’t it? Like one or two in the morning. Someone said something about a baby.”

  “You said you’d die if your mom had another baby.”

  “Is that what it was? I guess it could have been. There were so many of us siblings.” He laughs, and I can’t help but smile.

  “One too many, as far as I’m concerned,” I say.

  He laughs again. “And Mary started crying.”

  “Yeah, she was pretty upset. That’s when she said it. ‘Paul, would you die if I had a baby? Because I’m pregnant.’”

  “When was that?”

  “January or February, I guess. But when she said that, I thought I was going to have a heart attack right there in the diner.”

  “Wouldn’t have been the first person to die of a heart attack in that place,” he jokes. He pauses for a minute, seems to see me, really see me, for the first time in the conversation. “Why’d you guys keep the baby?”

  “Why’d we keep John?” I ask. His question rubs me the wrong way.

  “You didn’t know it was John at the time.”

  “We were married.” I can feel myself getting defensive.

  “You were barely eighteen. Were you even eighteen yet?”

  I try to shrug off the conversation. “That was forty years ago, Tom.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  I look over at you still sleeping in your cocoon and point to you. “That’s why. Right there. Pearl.”

  Tom stares at you for a long time. A cloud covers the sun, and the breeze picks up, rattling the leaves. Ther
e is a yellow tint to the forest—has it been this way since we arrived, or did the leaves start changing color the previous night?

  “Fair enough,” Tom says, taking a long sip from his mug. “Fair enough.”

  This is where I’m torn, because even though I’m realizing Tom is not the same person I knew forty years ago (who would be?), even though this new quiet and subdued side of him makes me feel ill at ease, I still need a place for you to be when I’m gone. He seems kind. He seems like he could care for you. I reach up and gingerly feel the knot on my head.

  “Tom,” I ask hesitantly, “would you consider talking to Pearl later today?”

  He looks at me inquisitively. “Sure. Anything specific?”

  “You know, all the things I’ve been telling you about. Her . . . imagination.”

  “So, you mean, speak with her in my professional capacity as a therapist?”

  I nod. “She thought the same woman dragged her down into the lake today.”

  He frowns, licks his lips, takes a sip of coffee. When he swallows, his sharp Adam’s apple disappears. He clears his throat. “I’ll talk to her. But let her get some more rest first.” He leans his head back on his padded deck chair and closes his eyes. “I’ll talk to her.”

  “I’ll carry her to her room,” I say. “She can rest there until lunchtime.”

  “Take the boat out. If you’d like.”

  “I’m not much of a sailor. Maybe I’ll give it a try.”

  I pick you up. Your hot chocolate is still under the chair. You are almost too heavy for me, and I grunt with the effort.

  “Paul?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Let’s not leave her alone anymore. Not until I have a chance to talk with her.”

  I nod. “Yeah. I’ll take her in and let her rest on the sofa.”

  Too Many Secrets

  The day passes strangely. You are in and out of sleep on the couch in the living room. I get you soup for lunch, and you eat most of it. I sit on the floor beside the sofa, reading to you. I pace the room and the deck and the kitchen, looking for food but not really hungry.