Well-intentioned friends, relatives, neighbors. Colleagues from the private school in which she teaches. Often she is unable to answer. Her throat closes up, her face flushes with pinpoints of heat. She sees these good people glancing at one another, concerned for her. A little frisson passes among them like a darting flame, their concern for the widow that links them as in an exciting conspiracy.
She has a fit of coughing. A thorn in her throat, she’s unable to swallow. A thorn in a cookie brought to her by one of the well-intentioned, she had not wanted to bite into, but had bitten into that she might prove how recovered from shock she is, how normal she is, how normally she is eating, unwisely she’d bitten into the cookie accursed as a fairy tale cookie for she has no choice, such cookies must be bitten into. And she begins to choke for she can neither swallow the thorn nor cough it up.
“Claudia? Are you all right? Would you like a glass of water?”—the cries come fast and furious like bees.
Quickly she shakes her head No no—no thank you. Of course she is all right.
It is the widow’s task to assure others, these many others, eager-eyed, greedy to be good at her expense, of course she is all right.
Her husband was a well-liked person, indeed well-loved. There is an unexpected burden in being the widow of a well-loved man. Your obligation is to assuage the grief of others. Your obligation is to be kind, thoughtful, generous, sympathetic at all times when all you want is to run away from the kindly prying eyes and find a darkened place in which to sleep, sleep, sleep and never again wake.
Children are brought to the widow’s somber house. Staring-eyed children for whom death is a novelty that threatens to turn boring after just a few minutes.
Adults for whom the death of their dear friend James will provide some sort of instruction or educational interlude for their children.
A brash child who says My mommy says your husband die-ed.
The widow sees looks of shock, disapproval in the adult faces. Embarrassment in Mommy’s face. The widow wants to hide her own face, that the brash child will not see how his crude words have made her cry.
The widow stammers an excuse. Retreats to the kitchen.
The widow will not hear her visitors murmuring in the other room for they have pitched their voices low, and she would rather draw a sharp-edged butcher knife across her forearm than overhear what they are saying.
Has the widow become an object of fear? An object of terror?
Has she become ugly?
Has she become old?
She thinks of witches. Women without men to protect them. Women whose husbands have died. Women whose property might be annexed by rapacious neighbors. Fortunately, the widow does not live in barbarous times.
This widow is protected by the law. The husband left a detailed and fully executed will leaving her his entire property, his estate.
When the widow returns to the other room her guests smile at her nervously, worriedly. They have prepared something to tell her and it is the widow’s oldest friend who rises to embrace her speaking of how James had “seen the best in everyone”—“brought out the best selves of everyone”—and the widow stands very still in the embrace, her arms limp at her sides, arms that are not wings, arms that lack the muscular power of wings to unfold, to lift the widow out of this embrace and to fly, fly away for her obligation is to submit to the commiseration of others and not scream at them Go away all of you! For God’s sake go away and leave me alone.
“James! Darling, come look.”
She has begun to sight the great blue heron more frequently, at unpredictable hours of the day.
She believes that there is just one great blue heron at the lake. At least, she has never seen more than one at a time.
The large predator bird is fascinating to her. There is something very beautiful about it—there is something very ugly about it.
On her walks the widow has discovered the solitary heron hunting for fish in a creek that empties into the lake, that bounds the edge of her property—standing in the slow-moving water very still, poised to strike.
For long minutes the heron remains unmoving. You might think that it isn’t a living creature but something heraldic wrought of pewter, an ancient likeness. Then as an unwitting fish swims into view the heron is galvanized into action instantaneously, stabbing its beak into the water, thrashing its wings to keep its balance, emerging in triumph with a squirming fish in its bill.
It is a shocking sight! It is thrilling.
No sooner does the widow catch a glimpse of the fish caught in the heron’s bill than the fish has disappeared, in a single swallow into the predator’s gullet. The rapacity of nature is stunning. Here is raw, primitive hunger. Here is pure instinct, that bypasses consciousness.
Sometimes, if the fish is too large to be swallowed by the heron in a single gulp, or if the heron has been distracted by something close by, the heron will fly away with the live fish gleaming and squirming in its bill.
There is a particular horror in this. The widow stares transfixed. It is not so difficult to imagine a gigantic heron swooping at her, seizing her in its bill and bearing her away to—where?
The heron invariably flies to the farther side of the lake, and disappears into the marshland there. Its flight seems awkward, ungainly like a pelican’s flight—the enormous slate-gray wings like an umbrella opening, legs dangling down. Almost, if you don’t understand what a killing machine the heron is, and how precise its movements, there is something comical about it.
Except this isn’t so, of course. The heron is as much a master of the air as other, seemingly more compact and graceful birds.
The widow is appalled, yet riveted: that reptilian fixedness to the heron’s eyes. Obviously, the heron’s eye must be sharp as an eagle’s eye, to discern the movement of prey in a dense and often shadowed element like water.
The long thin stick-like legs, that dangle below as the bird flies flapping the great wings. The long S-curved neck, the long lethal beak of the hue of old, stained ivory.
Difficult to get very close to the vigilant bird but the widow has seen that it has a white-feathered face. Dark gray plumes run from its eyes to the back of its head, like a mask. There is a curious rather rakish dark-feathered quill of several inches jutting out at the back of the heron’s head—this feature (she will discover) is found only in the male. Its wide wings are slate-colored with a faint tincture of blue most clearly sighted from below, as the heron flies overhead.
Yet it is strange, the bird is called a great blue heron. Most of its feathers are gray or a dusty red-brown: thighs, neck, chest.
She has heard the heron’s cry many times now: a hoarse, harsh croak like a bark. Impossible not to imagine that there is something derisive and triumphant in this cry.
“James, listen! We’d been hearing the great blue heron for years without realizing what it was . . .”
The harsh cry is a mockery of the musical cries and calls of the songbirds that cluster close about the house, drawn to bird feeders. (She and James had always maintained bird feeders. Among her dearest memories are of James biting his lower lip in concentration as he poured seed into the transparent plastic feeders on the deck at the rear of the house in even the bitterest cold of winter.)
In books on her husband’s shelves the widow has researched the great blue heron—Ardea herodias. Indeed the heron is a primitive creature, descended from dinosaurs: a flying carnivore.
Its prey is fish, frogs, small rodents, eggs of other birds, nestlings and small birds. Eagles, the heron’s natural predators, are not native to this part of the northeast.
Considering its size the heron is surprisingly light—the heaviest herons weigh just eight pounds. Its wingspan is thirty-six inches to fifty-four inches and its height is forty-five to fifty-five inches. It is described as a wading bird and its habitat is general in North America, primarily in wetlands.
She and James had favored the familiar songbirds—cardinals, titmice, chickadees, house wrens and sparrows of many species—and had less interest in the waterfowl, that often made a commotion on the lake; now, she is less interested in the small, tamer birds and is drawn more to the lake and the wetlands surrounding it.
In the night, the blood-chilling cry of the screech owl wakes her, but also comforts her. She keeps her window open, even on cold nights, not wanting to be spared.
She has come to recall the heron attacking the mallards’ nests as an actual incident, shared with her husband. Vague in its context it is vivid in details and has come to seem the last time she and James had walked together along the lake shore, hand in hand.
Now I want only to do good. I want to be good.
If I am good the terrible thing that has happened will be reversed.
The cemetery is just ten minutes from the house. Very easy to drive there. No matter the weather.
It is not the cemetery favored by her husband’s family, which is in the affluent community of Fair Hills fifteen miles away. It is not the cemetery the widow was expected to have chosen in which to bury her husband—that is, her husband’s “remains.” Instead this is an old Presbyterian cemetery in a nearby village, dating to the 1770s. It is small, it is not so very well tended. It is no longer exclusively for members of the church but has become a municipal cemetery. The earliest grave markers, close behind the dour stone church, are a uniform dull gray whose chiseled letters are worn smooth with time and have become indecipherable. The markers themselves are thin as playing cards, nearly; tilted at odd, jaunty angles in the mossy earth.
More recent grave stones are substantial, stolid. Death appears to be weightier now. Words, dates are decipherable. Dearest Mother. Beloved Husband. Dearest Daughter 1 Week Old.
Each day in the late afternoon the widow visits the husband’s grave which is still the most recent, the freshest of graves in the cemetery.
The grave stone the widow purchased for the husband is made of beautiful smooth-faced granite of the hue of ice, with a roughened edge. Not very large, for James would not have wished anything conspicuous or showy or unnecessarily expensive.
In the earth, in a surprisingly heavy urn, the (deceased) husband’s ashes.
No grass has (yet) appeared in the grave-soil though the widow has scattered grass seed there.
(Are birds eating the seeds? She thinks so!)
It is consoling to the widow that so little seems to change in the cemetery from day to day, week to week. The tall grasses are mowed haphazardly. Most other visitors come earlier than she does and are gone by late afternoon. If there is any activity in the church it is limited to mornings. Rarely does the widow encounter another mourner and so she has (naively) come to feel safe here in this quiet place where no one knows her . . .
“Excuse me, lady. What the hell are you doing?”
Today there has appeared in this usually deserted place a woman with a truculent pug-face. Like a cartoon character this scowling person even stands with her hands on her hips.
Claudia is astonished! Her face flushes with embarrassment.
In the cemetery at the gravesite of a stranger buried near her husband she has been discovered on her knees energetically trimming weeds.
“That’s my husband’s grave, ma’am.”
The voice is rude and jarring and the staring eyes suggest no amusement at Claudia’s expense, no merriment. There is a subtle, just-perceptible emphasis on my.
Guiltily Claudia stammers that she comes often to the cemetery and thought she might just “pull a few weeds” where she saw them . . . It is not possible to explain to this unfriendly person that untidiness makes her nervous and that she has become obsessed with a compulsion to do good, be good.
It is her life as a widow, wayward and adrift and yet compulsive, fated. After James’s abrupt death it was suggested to her by the headmistress of her school that she take a leave of absence from teaching, and so she’d agreed while doubting that it was a good idea.
A five-month leave of absence it was. Seeming to the widow at the outset something like a death sentence.
She has busied herself bringing fresh flowers to James’s grave, and clearing away old flowers. She has kept the grasses trimmed neatly by James’s grave though (she knows) it is an empty ritual, a gesture of futility, observed by no one except herself.
There is not much to tend at James’s neat, new grave. Out of a dread of doing nothing, as well as a wish to do something the widow has begun clearing away debris and weeds from adjoining graves.
Why do you need to keep busy, Claudia? All our busyness comes to the same end.
She knows! The widow knows this.
All the more reason to keep busy.
In the neglected cemetery the widow has been feeling sorry for those individuals, strangers to her and James, who have been buried here and (seemingly) forgotten by their families. James’s nearest neighbor is Beloved Husband and Father Todd A. Abernathy 1966–2011 whose pebbled stone marker is surrounded by unsightly tall grasses, thistles and dandelions.
Scattered in the grass are broken clay pots, desiccated geraniums and pansies. Even the artificial sunflowers are frayed and faded as mere trash.
Claudia has begun bringing small gardening tools and gloves to the cemetery. She has not consciously decided to do good, it seems to have happened without her volition.
The only sincere way of doing good is to be anonymous. She has thought.
But now she has been discovered. Her behavior, reflected in a stranger’s scowling face, does not seem so good after all.
Quickly she rises to her feet, brushes at her knees. She is feeling unpleasantly warm inside her dark tasteful clothes.
She hears her voice faltering and unconvincing: “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to surprise or upset you. I just like—I guess—to use my hands . . . I come to the cemetery so often . . .”
“Well. That’s real kind of you.”
Just barely the woman relents. Though the woman doesn’t seem to be speaking ironically or meanly it is clear that she doesn’t think much of Claudia’s charity, that has cast an unflattering reflection upon her as a slipshod caretaker of the Abernathy grave.
Unlike Claudia who is always well-dressed—(she is too insecure to dress otherwise)—the scowling woman wears rumpled clothing, soiled jeans and flip-flops on her pudgy feet. Her streaked-blond hair looks uncombed, her face is doughy-pale. She too is a widow whose loss has made her resentful and resigned like one standing out in the rain without an umbrella.
Claudia hears herself say impulsively that her husband is buried here also.
“He just—it was back in April—died . . .”
It is unlike the widow so speak so openly. In fact it is unlike the widow to speak of her personal life at all to a stranger.
Claudia has no idea what she is saying or why she feels compelled to speak to this stranger who is not encouraging her, whose expression has turned sour. Her brain is flooded as with a barrage of lights. How have you continued to live as a widow? How did you forgive yourself? Why will you not smile at me? Why will you not even look at me?
“O.K. But in the future maybe mind your own business, ma’am? Like the rest of us mind ours.”
Rudely the woman turns her back on Claudia. Or maybe she has not meant to be rude, only just decisive.
Claudia returns to James’s grave but she is very distracted, her hands are trembling. Why is the woman so hostile to her? Was it such a terrible thing, to have dared to pull out weeds on a neighboring grave?
Forget her. It’s over. None of this matters—of course.
It is ironic, Claudia manages to elude friends, family, relatives who express concern for her, and worry that she is in a precarious mental state still; yet here in the cemetery, where Claudia would speak to another mourner, she has been rebuffed.
At James’s gravesite she stands uncertain. She is grateful that in some way (her brain is dazzled, she is not thinking clearly) her deceased husband has been spared this embarrassing exchange. She is still wearing gardening gloves, and carrying her hand trowel. Her leather hand bag is lying in the grass as if she’d flung it down carelessly. Why is she so upset, over a trifle? A stranger’s rudeness? Or is she right to feel guilty, has she been intrusive and condescending? A quiet woman, one of the softer-spoken teachers at her school, Claudia has occasionally been criticized as aloof, indifferent to both students and colleagues. She winces to think how unfair this judgment is.
She doesn’t want to leave the cemetery too soon for the woman will notice and sneer at her departing back. On the other hand, she doesn’t want to linger in this place that feels inhospitable to her. She dreads someone else coming to join the scowling woman, and the scowling woman will tell her what she’d discovered Claudia doing at Todd Abernathy’s grave, and what Claudia had done will be misinterpreted, misconstrued as a kind of vandalism.
High overhead is a solitary, circling bird. Claudia has been aware of this bird for some minutes but has not glanced up since she supposes it must be a hawk, hawks are common in this area, and not a great blue heron for there isn’t a lake or wetlands nearby . . .
She wants to think that it is a great blue heron. Her heart is stirred as a shadow with enormous outflung wings and trailing spindly legs glides past her on the ground and vanishes.
“Ma’am?”—the scowling woman is speaking to her.
“Yes?”