“There were potted geraniums on my husband’s grave. Did you take them?”
“Potted geraniums? No . . .”
“Yes! There were potted geraniums here. What did you do with them?”
Hesitantly Claudia tells the woman that she might have seen some broken clay pots in the grass, but not geranium plants; that is, not living plants. She might have seen dead plants . . .
“And some artificial flowers? In a pot here?”
“N-No . . . I don’t think so.”
“Ma’am, I think you are lying. I think you’ve been stealing things from graves. I’m going to report you . . .”
Claudia protests she has not been stealing anything. She has cleared away debris and dried flowers, and pulled weeds . . . Everything she has cleared away is in a trash heap at the edge of the cemetery . . . But the scowling woman is speaking harshly, angrily; she has worked herself up into a peevish temper, and seems about to start shouting. Claudia is quite frightened. She wonders if she has blundered into a place of madness.
Is that what comes next, after grief? Is there no hope?
Abjectly Claudia apologizes again. In a flash of inspiration—in which she sees the jeering face of her brother-in-law—she offers to pay for the “missing” geranium plants.
“Here. Please. I’m truly sorry for the misunderstanding.”
Out of her wallet she removes several ten-dollar bills. Her hands are shaking. (She sees the woman greedily staring at her wallet, and at her dark leather bag.) The bills she hands to the woman who accepts them with a look of disdain as if she is doing Claudia a favor by taking a bribe, and not reporting her.
With sour satisfaction the woman says: “O.K., ma’am. Thanks. And like I say, next time mind your own damn business.”
At her vehicle Claudia fumbles with the ignition key. She is conscious that her car is a handsome black BMW; the only other vehicle in the parking lot, a battered Chevrolet station wagon, must belong to the scowling woman. More evidence that Claudia is contemptible in some way, in the woman’s derisive eyes.
She is very upset. She must escape. The cemetery, that has been a place of refuge for her, has become contaminated.
A shadow, or shadows, glides across the gleaming-black hood of the BMW. Her brain feels blinded as if a shutter had been thrown open to the sun. She feels a powerful urge to run back to the scowling woman bent over her husband’s grave in a pretense of clearing away weeds. She would grip the woman’s shoulders and shake, shake, shake—she would stab at the sour scowling face with something like a sharp beak . . . .
Of course the widow does nothing of the sort. In the gleaming-black BMW she drives back to the (empty) house on Aubergine Lake.
“Claudie? I’d like to drop by this afternoon, I have a proposal to make to you . . .”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“I’ve been talking to a terrific agent at Sotheby’s, you know they’re only interested in exceptional properties . . .”
“I said no. I won’t be home, this isn’t a good time.”
“Tomorrow, then? Let’s say four-thirty p.m.?
“I—I won’t be home then. I’ll be at the cemetery.”
“Fine! Great! I’ll swing around to the house and pick you up at about quarter to? How’s that sound? I’ve been wanting to visit Jimmy’s grave but have been crazy-busy for weeks and this is—the—ideal—opportunity for us to go together. Thank you, Claudie.”
Claudia tries to protest but the connection has been broken.
Your husband has left. Your husband has gone. Your husband will not be returning.
Calmly, cruelly the voice stalks her. Especially she is vulnerable when she is alone in the house.
Not her own voice but the voice of another speaking through her mouth numbed as with Novacaine.
Your husband has left. Your husband has gone . . .
Shaking out sleeping pills into the palm of her hand. Precious pills! One, two, three . . .
But the phone will ring if she tries to sleep. Even if there is no one to hear, the phone will ring. New messages will be left amid a succession of unanswered messages like eggs jammed into a nest and beginning to rot—Claudia? Please call. We are concerned. We will come over if we don’t hear from you . . . .
The doorbell will ring. He, the rapacious brother-in-law, will be at the door.
“I will not. I’ve told you—no.”
Hastily she pulls on rubber boots, an old L.L. Bean jacket of her husband’s with a hood. She has found a pair of binoculars in one of James’s closets and wears it around her neck tramping in the wetlands around the lake.
Here, the widow is not so vulnerable to the voice in her head. No telephone calls to harass her, no doorbell.
Rain is not a deterrent, she discovers. Waterfowl on the lake pay not the slightest heed even to pelting rain, it is their element and they thrive in it.
A sudden croaking cry, and she turns to see the great blue heron flying overhead. The enormous unfurled wings!—she stares after the bird in amazement.
Belatedly raising the binoculars to watch the heron fly across the lake. Slow pumping of the great wings, that bear the bird aloft with so little seeming effort.
Flying above the lake. Rain-rippled slate-colored lake. Chill gusty air, mists lifting from the water. Yet the heron’s eyesight is so acute, the minute darting of a fish in the lake, glittery sheen of fish-skin thirty feet below the heron in flight, is enough to alter the trajectory of the heron’s flight in an instant as the heron abruptly changes course, plummets to the surface of the lake, seizes the (living, thrashing) fish in its bill—and continues its flight across the lake.
That stabbing beak! There has been nothing like this in the widow’s life until now.
She is determined, she will be a good person.
James would want her to continue her life as she’d lived her life of more than fifty years essentially as a good person.
This catastrophe of her life, a deep wound invisible to others’ eyes, she believes might be healed, or numbed. If she is good.
She forces herself to reply to emails. (So many! The line from The Wasteland seeps into her brain: I had not thought that death had undone so many.) She forces herself to reply to phone messages by (shrewdly, she thinks) calling friends, relatives, neighbors at times when she is reasonably sure no one will answer the phone.
Hi! It’s Claudia. Sorry to have been so slow about returning your call—calls . . .
I’m really sorry! I hope you weren’t worried . . .
You know, I think there is something wrong with my voice mail . . .
Of course—I am fine . . .
Of course—I am sleeping all right now . . .
Of course—it’s a busy time for a—a widow . . .
Thanks for the invitation but—right now, I am a little preoccupied . . .
Thanks for the offer—you’re very kind—but—
Yes I will hope to see you soon. Sometime soon . . .
No I just can’t. I wish that I could . . .
Thank you but . . .
I’m so sorry. I’ve been selfish, I haven’t thought of you.
The phone drops from her hand. She is trembling with rage.
Still the widow is determined to do good, be good.
She will establish a scholarship in her husband’s name at the university from which he’d graduated with such distinction.
She will arrange for a memorial service for her husband, in some vague future time—“Before Thanksgiving, I think.”
She will donate most of his clothes to worthy charities including those beautiful woolen sweaters she’d given him, those many neckties and those suits and sport coats she’d helped him select, how many shirts, how many shoes, how many socks she cannot bear to think, she cannot bear to remove the husband’s beautiful clothing from closets, she will not even remove the husband’s socks and underwear from drawers, she has changed her mind and will not donate most of his clothes, indeed any of his clothes to worthy charities. She will not.
That hoarse, harsh cry!—it has been ripped from her throat.
Flying, ascending. The misty air above the lake is revealed to be textured like fabric. It is not thin, invisible, of no discernible substance but rather this air is thick enough for the great pumping wings to fasten onto that she might climb, climb, climb with little effort.
She has become a winged being climbing the gusty air like steps. Elation fills her heart. She has never been so happy. Every pulse in her being rings, pounds, beats, shudders with joy. The tough muscle in her bony chest fast-beating like a metronome.
Low over the lake she flies. Through ascending columns of mist she flies. The great blue heron is the first of the predator-birds to wake each morning in the chill twilight before dawn. It is an almost unbearable happiness, pumping the great gray-feathered wings that are so much larger than the slender body they might wrap the body inside them, and hide it.
Into the marshy woods, flying low. Her sharp eyes fixed on the ground. Small rodents are her prey. Small unwitting birds are her prey.
She will wade in the shallow water moving slowly forward on her spindly legs, or standing very still. She is very patient. Her beak strikes, she swallows her prey whole, and alive—thrashing and squealing in terror.
The hoarse, croaking cry—a proclamation of pure joy.
Yet she is happiest when flying. When she is rising with the air currents, soaring and floating on gusts of wind. When her eye detects motion below, a flash of color, fish-color, and her slender body instantaneously becomes a sleek missile, aimed downward, propelled sharply downward, to kill.
Through the air she plunges and her sharp beak is precise and pitiless spearing a small fish which in a single reflex she swallows alive, still squirming as it passes down her throat, into her gullet.
She hunts without ceasing for she is always hungry. It is hunger that drives all motion, like waves that never come to an end but are renewed, refreshed.
Again the triumphant cry which you hear in your sleep. I am alive, I am here, I am myself and I am hungry.
Each morning it has been happening. The widow wakes with a sudden violence as if she has been yanked into consciousness.
A hoarse croaking cry from the lake.
A blinding light flooding the brain.
She is furious with the (deceased) husband. She has told no one.
Why did you go away when you did? Why did you not take better care of yourself? Why were you careless of both our lives?
How can I forgive you . . .
Why had he died, why when he might not have died. As he’d lived quietly, unobtrusively. Always a good person.
Always kind. Considerate of others.
He’d had chest pains, a spell of breathlessness and light-headedness but he had not wanted to tell her. He’d promised he would pick up his sister’s son at Newark Airport and drive him to relatives in Stamford, Connecticut; no reason the nineteen-year-old couldn’t take a bus or a taxi but James had insisted, no trouble, really no trouble, in fact it is a good deal of trouble, it is a trip of hours, and some of these in heavy traffic. Already as he was preparing to leave she’d seen something in his face, a sudden small wince, a startled concentration, with wifely concern asking, Is something wrong? and quickly he’d said No, it’s nothing, of course James would quickly say It’s nothing for that is the kind of man James was. And that is why (the widow thinks bitterly) James is not that man any longer, he is not is, he is was. And she might have known this. She might have perceived this. Asking, But are you in pain?—and he’d denied pain as a wrongdoer would deny having done wrong for that is how he was.
She was saying, there was pettishness in her voice (she knows), why don’t we hire a car service for your nephew, explain that the drive is just too much for you, and then you have to turn around and return and we would pay for it ourselves of course, but James said certainly not, no, he’d promised to pick up his nephew and drive him to Stamford, it would be an opportunity for him and Andy to talk together, for they so rarely saw each other in recent years. And he said my sister and brother-in-law wouldn’t allow us to pay for a car service which seemed beside the point to Claudia who said exasperated, Then they should pay for the car! Why are we quarreling, what is this about?
Well, she knew. She knew what it was about: James’s feelings of obligation to his family. James’s habit of being good. His compulsion to do the right thing even when the right thing is meaningless.
Even when the right thing will cost him his life.
The husband’s compulsion to be generous, to be kind, to be considerate of others because that is his nature.
And the pains had not subsided but increased as James drove along the Turnpike and in a nightmare of interstate traffic his vehicle swerved off the highway just before the exit for Newark Airport. And he was taken by ambulance to an ER in Newark where he would survive for ninety-six minutes—until just before the terrified wife arrives.
Exhausted insomniac hours at her husband’s death going through accounts, bank statements, paying bills.
Not death, desk. She’d meant.
The brother-in-law has left a glossy Sotheby’s brochure.
The brother-in-law has left a glossy brochure for a “genetic modification” research institute in Hudson Park, New Jersey across which he has scrawled Terrific opportunities for investment here but it’s “time sensitive”—before the stock takes off into the stratosphere.
The brother-in-law has left a snide phone message—Claudie? You must know that I am your friend & (you must know) you have not so many friends now that Jim is gone.
She is not unhappy! She has grown to love rain-lashed days, days when there is no sun, mud-days, when she can tramp in the wetlands in rubber boots. In an old L.L. Bean jacket of her husband’s with wonderful zippered pockets and flaps into which she can shove tissues, gloves, even a cell phone.
She will not usually answer the cell phone if it rings. But she feels an obligation to see who might wish to speak with her. Whom she might call back.
Not the brother-in-law. Not him.
She is returning to the house when she sees his vehicle in the driveway—a brass-colored Land Rover. She knows that he is ringing the doorbell, rapping his knuckles smartly on the door. She sees him peering through a window, shading his small bright eyes. Claudie? Claudie it’s me—are you in there?
Amid dripping trees at the corner of the house the widow waits, in hiding.
She will say It is very quiet at the lake. It is lonely at the lake.
Most days.