Lydia Millet - Magnificence

But at least they could have the present, its heat and light. Weightlessness! The lightness of now, the infinity. The children had no past, so all they had was in front of them. Not far in front but right in front, now. You could get a glimpse of it yourself — what it was to be unencumbered. She wanted to be there with them.

Then she would have the past in her house and the present in her work — she could dispense with the future, she could stop wishing for what she’d never have.

•

For some minutes she rested with the old women around her, while outside in the backyard the backhoe ground and creaked and, in reverse, emitted a harsh warning beep that went on and on and penetrated the eardrums. She sat a few feet from their card table on a couch, in a daze until Angela came over and arranged herself on the cushions nearby. It was Oksana’s day off and Susan had said they could do without a sub, knowing the ladies would be there. Now they’d taken Ellen Humboldt aside and were holding a glass of water at the ready, prying her assortment of pills out of a long white-plastic tray whose compartments were marked with the beginning letters of the days of the week.

“There are small elevators that are quite affordable,” started Angela. “You can order the whole thing, they put it together at the factory. I saw it in a brochure. Or they also have the kind that lift wheelchairs. They put them right on the rail of the staircase.”

“We don’t need an elevator,” said Susan distractedly.

“Well, you see,” said Angela, “I’d like Ellie to live with me. And she really wants to. You know, her son has a new girlfriend. Most nights she’s all alone.”

Susan turned and looked into her face. Angela was smiling uncertainly, as though she knew the request was outlandish.

“But Angela,” said Susan gently, “you’re not even living here permanently yourself.”

“My son could pay for it. He’s very generous. And Casey could use it too, when she visits.”

“You do understand,” said Susan again, “you’re staying here with me just until they get back from Malaysia. Right?”

Angela gazed at her, wounded. Her eyes shone.

“As far as I know, that is,” went on Susan, to soften the impression.

“I like it so much here,” said Angela.

“Thank you,” and Susan put her hand out to pat the woman’s arm. “But I’m not quite ready to discuss major renovations. Ellie looks to me like she may need real care. More than we can give her. With nurses and doctors. You know, medical help on standby in case of emergencies. Don’t you think?”

“She doesn’t want that,” said Angela. “She doesn’t want that at all.”

“I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we move you down the hall for now. OK? We can put you both in the same room, together. We’ll set up some screens up around your beds, however you want them. The music room, maybe. Then she won’t have to navigate the stairs and you can look after her.”

And Oksana would look after both of them.

“The music room,” mused Angela. “Does it have lamps? We like to read our books in the evening. We eat cookies and drink tea and I read to her before we go to sleep. Because she can only read the large print.”

“It’s a pretty spacious room,” said Susan. “And you’d have that whole wing of the house to yourself at night.”

“Can we have tents to sleep in?”

“Tents?”

“Pink tents make a nice light inside them. We could have lamps under there. And cushions. It’s the Arabian Nights,” said Angela.

They were girls in a fairy tale — children again, listening to stories. That was how Angela saw herself with Ellen. The novels about angels coming down to earth were only the beginning. Together, as they faded out, they could step onto those sweeping dunes, they could look up at white palaces and minarets, flying carpets, clouds that bore horses with wings. They would move among the genies and camels and the thieves, the women in veils, reflecting pools and curtains of brocade.

Storytime: to sit and listen and let the years pass. How many years had it been? Five was the school district’s limit, she thought she remembered. It had been longer than that now. But before she could teach again she would have to call the teaching commission, renew her credentials, maybe work for a while at a small private school.

“Ladies? I’m going to drive Ellen up to the drugstore to refill her Adalat prescription,” said Portia.

“Wait, wait. Will you come back tonight, Ellie?” asked Angela eagerly, and rose from beside Susan.

Susan watched as they walked the oldest one slowly down the hall to the door — all five of them, long skirts swaying gently. The dog called Macho trotted at their heels.

Then she composed a letter to send to Casey and to T. She was resigning from working for him, now that they were family, now that his business had changed, now that he had become a foreign traveler and a philanthropist. She was happy for both of them, she wrote, she loved what they were doing. Or the idea of it, because truthfully, she wrote, she didn’t really understand what it was they were doing, she failed to understand the venture’s actual content. The “non-timber forest products,” the “sustainable community-based harvest models,” frankly it was pretty much Greek to her. In her mind’s eye she only saw brown men with loincloths, looking quite good. She saw women who had never heard of brassieres tapping latex out of big trees.

Despite her lack of comprehension she liked the gesture, she wrote. She liked the idea of the shower that hung from a branch and was heated by the sun, she liked the all-terrain wheelchair, she even liked the non-timber forest products that stopped you from having to cut down the trees; but there was no room for her in all of that. There was no reason for her to go into the office anymore, to draw a paycheck for sitting at an empty desk and staring at the unruly stacks of his boxes — boxes whose documents were no longer relevant anyway. She was alone in the shell of what had once been his company, and she was turning the light off, locking the door behind her, and leaving.

She was still his mother-in-law, she wrote jokily, so he had better be nice to her. She hoped all was going well in Borneo. She hoped there were no more frightening incidents of violence. Here in the city, she was digging up her yard. She was fending off lawsuits with moderate success. Her house was turning into a retirement home, though it still retained its displays of ferocity. Old people roamed the halls, forgetting everything. The old people forgot their lives, but still they kept on living them.

•

None of the others were in the house when the backhoe driver came to get her, beckoning but not saying much, wiping his dripping brow with the back of his forearm and swigging from a large bottle of orange soda. It was the end of the afternoon.

She followed him out the French doors in the back, through the pool enclosure, down the path to the grove. She saw the yellow of the digger first and then a waist-high mound of dirt piled up beyond. Then she was at the hole, standing a couple of feet back because the edge obviously wasn’t stable — the soft, dug-up earth gave under her foot when she put her weight on it. She couldn’t see in: only a small round of darkness behind the hill of soil.

“But what is it?”

“It’s a tunnel. It’s got a ladder going down.”

She peered over, her stomach turning in a quick thrill.

“But no — no manhole shaft? No metal tube that goes down? That’s what Portia said there’d be.”

“No metal tube, no. The cover was just sitting there on some cement.”

“Huh.”

“Can’t see how deep it is right now, ” he went on. “Too late in the day. The sun’s low.”