I wanted to shout at the doctor that Father wasn’t mad. Anyone could see if they only looked?—?he was turning into his bear. I begged Mother not to send him away. I would feed him and nurse him, as if I had found him wild and injured in the woods; all this I promised without knowing how agonizing my failure would be.
Yet here again words are lacking, for this is nothing like the story of my childhood. What about the rich hues and variations in the texture of experience? There were the evenings before, when Mother would be preparing her lessons and Father would open his sketchbook and the three of us would talk of everything imaginable, of God and Spirit and free will, of poetry, enslavement, Transcendentalism, good works and the destiny of humankind, such vivid conversations that I believed that Mr Darwin, Mr Emerson, Mr Whittier, and Miss Susan Anthony were our intimate friends. The intensity to those hours of debate! Mother turning to her Bible verse: “That ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light,” countered by Father quoting his own prophet: “Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue. Every natural action is graceful.” I was encouraged, even at a very young age, to enter into the fray and voice my own thoughts, but only if they were well considered and interesting.
Most precious of all, in those hours I witnessed how these two desperately disparate individuals, my Quaker Mother and irreverent Father, had fallen in love.
And what of the morning Father appeared at the kitchen table for breakfast, after weeks of living in the woods? We thought he was beyond our reach, yet here he was before us. He had shaved his wooly beard, and the skin was pale and nicked with small cuts. His shirt was misbuttoned, his voice broken. He had never looked so small to me. His hand trembled when he held up his cup to be filled with water from the pitcher. Mother would not meet the gaze of his blood-shot eyes, and she did not speak a word to him. I have often wondered what guided her?—?fear, anger, or grief?
That was the last time he entered the house. Several nights later, I saw his lantern light near the barn. I ran into the yard in my nightgown and bare feet, thinking to call him inside. Maybe once more he would sit at the table with me. We could talk again, of the instinct toward art and the capacity of stone, of flying mice and demi-gods. He could tell me of his next sculpture. He could remember who he once was.
Yet I did not call out to him, for as I watched, I saw that Father carried the large kerosene can and that he splashed oil against the barn. When he reached the end of the wall, he knelt beside the barn and poured the oil onto himself, down his back, over his head and wetting his face and beard. He knelt there for some time in the lantern light, head bowed and shoulders bent toward the ground, so that I was beginning to think that he had entered some sort of trance. But then he abruptly stood and dashed the lantern at his feet.
He caught fire the same instant as the flames unfurled along the barn wall. I watched as the scene unfolded before me, as Father walked, burning, into the barn, and the flames crawled toward the roof. I watched until the billowing fire consumed the night sky, and Mother came running from her bedroom, then fled toward the quarry to see if there were men who could help put out the fire.
All this time, I did nothing. Still I can remember the cold, rough ground beneath my bare feet, and the terrible heat from the fire, the smell of the heat, and the sound of fire like wind ripping through wood. All this I remember with clarity, but what did I feel? What kept me silent and unmoving? At some moment did my child’s mind think of mercy, of allowing one kind of suffering to end another, or was I merely suspended by cowardice? As a grown woman, I often imagine running up to this younger self, grabbing the girl by the shoulders and begging her, Please, please, why don’t you do something?
So here lie the darkest, most tender places in my heart, the ones I keep hidden from even a sweet girl like Charlotte, and I would have sworn that never in my life would I share them with another.
Yet, I did, didn’t I? I told just one person. I told you, my dear Allen. We were walking in your Mother’s garden, and it was like the day at Nantasket Beach?—?you did not spurn me or counsel me or beg me to leave these memories behind, but instead, when I finished telling you everything, you took up my hands and cupped them in yours, blowing on them and gently rubbing them, as if to keep them safe from some deep cold.
June 9