Трейси Шевалье - Falling Angel

They’re sitting each on her own grave, like they used to. I ain’t seen them together in a long time, though neither would ever tell me what the matter was with the other whenever I saw one alone. Too much happened in too little time for them girls.

They don’t see me-I hide well.

They ain’t quite themselves now-they don’t have their arms linked, and they don’t laugh the way they used to. They’re sitting far apart and making polite talk. I hear Maude ask, “How is your mother?”

Livy gets a funny look on her face. “Mama is going to have a baby any day now.”

Maude looks so surprised I almost laugh and give myself away. “That’s wonderful! But I thought-I thought she was too old to have children. And-after Ivy May…”

“It seems not.”

“Are you pleased?”

“Of course,” Livy says. “Life does go on, after all.”

“Yes.”

They both look at their graves, at Ivy May’s and Kitty Coleman’s names.

“And your grandmother-how is she?” Livy asks.

“She is still living with us. She had a stroke a few months ago and can’t speak.”

“Oh, dear.”

“It’s just as well, really. It’s much easier to be with her now.”

The two of ‘em giggle as if Maude’s said something naughty. I come out from behind a grave and scrape my feet in the pebbles on the path so they’ll hear me. They both jump. “Hello,” Maude says, and Livy says, “Where have you been, naughty boy?” and that’s like old times. I squat by our granpa’s grave across from them, pick up two pebbles from the path, and rub ’em ‘tween my fingers.

“How did you know we were here?” Maude asks.

I shrug. “I knew you’d both come. King’s dead, ain’t he?”

“Long live the King,” they say together, then smile at each other.

“Isn’t it a pity?” Livy says. “If Mama has a boy she shall have to name him George. I don’t like that name as much as Edward. Teddy, I would have called him. Georgie isn’t quite so nice.”

Maude laughs. “I’ve missed your silly remarks.”

“Hush,” Livy says.

“Simon, I saw your father just now,” Maude says suddenly.

I let the pebbles drop back onto the path.

“What happened to him?” she asks real quiet.

“Accident.”

Maude don’t say nothing.

“He were buried. We got him out, but…” I shrug again.

“I’m sorry,” Maude whispers.

“And I,” Livy adds.

“I got something to ask you,” I says to Livy.

She stares at me. Bet she’s thinking ‘bout that kiss down the grave, years ago. But that’s not what I’m going to ask her.

“You know I marked all the graves here. Got all of ‘em in the meadow, far’s I know. ’Cept yours.” I jerk my head at the Waterhouse angel. “You told me not to, all them years back, after the Queen died. So I didn’t. But I want to now. For Ivy May. To remember she’s there.”

“What, to be reminded she’s just bones?” Livy says. “That’s horrid!”

“No, no, it ain’t that. It’s to remind you she’s still there. Some of her rots, sure, but her bones’ll be there for hundreds of years. Longer’n these stones, even, I’ll bet. Longer’n my mark. That’s what matters, not the grave and what you put on it.”

Maude looks at me funny, and I can see that all these years she ain’t understood my skull ‘n’ crossbones either, for all her being smarter than Livy.

Livy don’t say nothing for a minute. Then she says, “All right.”

I get up and go behind the plinth with my pocket knife.

While I’m back there, scratching the mark, they start talking again.

“I don’t care if Simon marks the angel,” Livy says. “I’ve never felt the same about it since it fell. I’m always expecting it to fall again. And I can still see the break in the nose and neck.”

“I have never liked our grave,” Maude says. “I look at it and none of it makes me think of Mummy, even though her name’s on it. Did you know she wanted to be cremated?”

“What, and placed in the columbarium?” Livy sounds horrified.

“No, she wanted her ashes scattered where flowers grow. That’s what she said. But Daddy wouldn’t do it.”

“I should think not.”

“It’s always felt wrong, burying her here, but there’s nothing to be done. As you said, life goes on.”

I finish the mark and fold up my knife. I’m glad to have done it, like I finally scratched an itch on my back. I’ve owed Ivy May a long time. When I come out I nod at them. “I has to get back to work. Joe’ll be wondering where I am.” I’m quiet a minute. “You’ll be coming back to see me, both of you?”

“Of course,” they say.

Don’t know why I asked that, ‘cause I know the answer, and it ain’t the one they gave. They’re growing up and they don’t play in the cemetery anymore. Maude’s got her hair up and looks more like her mother every day, and Livy’s…well, Livy. She’ll be married at eighteen, to a soldier, I expect.

I hold out my hand to Maude. She looks surprised but she takes it.

“Good-bye,” I say. She knows why I’m doing it, ‘cause she knows the real answer too. Suddenly she steps up to me and kisses my dirty cheek. Livy jumps up and kisses the other one. They laugh, then they link arms and start down the path together toward the entrance.

I got an idea back there behind Ivy May’s grave. Listening to Maude made me think about her ma’s grave, and how our pa got buried in it. I always thought maybe it were a sign she didn’t want to be buried there. Sometimes I think Mr. Jackson thought the same thing. The look on his face when her coffin were lowered into the grave was like a knife turning in his gut.

I go down to see Mr. Jackson. He’s in the lodge meeting with a family ‘bout a burial, so I wait in the courtyard. A line of men are pushing wheelbarrows ’cross to the dumping ground. This place don’t stop even for a king.

When Mr. Jackson’s showed his visitors out, I clear my throat. “Can I have a quick word, guvnor?” I say.

“What is it, Simon?”

“Something I need to say inside. Away from everybody.” I nod at the wheelbarrows.

He looks at me surprised, but he lets me into the lodge and shuts the door. He sits behind his desk and starts straightening the ledger he’s been writing in, recording the next burial-date and time and place and depth and monument.

He’s been good to me, Mr. Jackson. He don’t never complain ‘bout our pa not digging. He even pays him same as ever, and gives me and Joe extra time to finish. Some of the other diggers ain’t happy ’bout it, but Mr. Jackson shuts ‘em up. They looks at our pa sometimes and I can see ’em shiver. “Grace of God,” they whisper. “There but for.” They don’t talk to us much, me and Joe. Like we’re cursed. Well, they’ll have to live with me. I ain’t going nowhere, as far as I can see. ‘Cept if there’s a war, what Mr. Jackson sometimes says there might be. They’ll need diggers then.

“What did you want, Simon?” Mr. Jackson says. He’s nervous of what I might say, wondering if I got any more surprises to tell him. I still feel bad, giving that one up ‘bout Kitty’s baby.

It ain’t easy to say it. “I been up at the Coleman grave,” I says at last. “Maude and Livy were there.”

Mr. Jackson stops moving the ledger and lays his hands on the desk.

“Maude were saying how her mother wanted to be burn-cremated. And how she looks at the grave now and there ain’t nothing there of her mother‘cept her name.”

“Is that what she said?”

“Yep. And I were thinking-”

“You were thinking too much.”

I almost don’t go on ‘cause he sounds so miserable. But something about Kitty Coleman keeps linking him and me.