Ramona Ausubel - Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty

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Mac followed Fern’s directions to her old house. There had been much new development since she had last been back. Big houses, uglier by a thousand degrees than their predecessors. Fern said, just as her mother would have, “It’s wretched what they’ve done.” White columns had replaced brick, old trees were cut, lawns were unearthly green, vibrating with color much too late in the season. She figured the interiors would have been filled with flash and bright colors, mirrors, shiny white plastic. Fern felt old. She had not expected to miss what had come before so much. She had not expected to be a skeptic about the way things were going, the future outlook.

And then came the old wooden fence, the familiar driveway, and they turned down it and the old house was the same cream color with blue trim, the same stone geese sculpted by Fern’s mother out front, the same pink geraniums in the window boxes.

They parked and stood outside looking at the house. Fern had planned to take a moment, maybe walk the perimeter, but now she went to the door and knocked. Of course it went unanswered. Of course it was locked. But there were so many entrances and Fern knew all of them. They tried the screened porch, the kitchen, the garage. At the maid’s entrance the doorknob turned easily and they stood in the laundry room where there was still a load of whites hanging on a drying rack.

The house, awaiting the legal process, was exactly as her parents had left it, exactly as they had died in it.

Fern stood in the living room and smelled the wood of it, the fibrous old-age rugs. Mac pulled out a huge leather-bound edition of The Pilgrim’s Progress . The pages were half dust. The room was breathing, was what it felt like, and Fern had to sit down on the floor because the chairs were all too familiar. All those same books, all those same pictures, the fireplace and the nooks beside it for reading. Her grandfather had built the house for a happy family, the children tucked away with books and the mothers and fathers on the porches with their sketchpads and tall glasses of iced tea. Outside: bees, butterflies, a constant parade of roses in the garden, dripping fountains. It had been a true dream, sometimes. Fern running through the wildflowers and grasses; supper on the porch by candlelight; lying on the dew-grass at night while the stars poured down.

Fern thought of her brother. Ben, inside alone with a gardening catalogue, a pair of scissors and a roll of tape, rearranging the plants so they were grouped by family, rather than alphabet. “Lily, lily, lily,” he said, pressing garlic beside onion beside a picture of a massive white bloom, like an outstretched hand. The floor around him was covered in bits of paper like so many snowflakes. Ben, making better sense of things. He had been safe in this house and should never have been made to leave it.

Mac stayed downstairs but Fern went up the creaking stairs. Her parents’ door was closed. There was a hang-tag on the knob and Fern remembered the trip it had come from. They had all gone on safari when she was ten, had watched the beating heart of a water buffalo slow down while a lion untangled the ropes of its muscles with her teeth. Fern had been able to smell the blood. It was sweet in her nose and the lion looked right at her while she ate the buffalo’s living leg.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Evelyn had said. “The cycle of life.”

Ben had had to turn around. He was watching the clouds change. “Tell me when it’s over,” he had said. Fern watched, trying to prove strength to her mother.

Fern, standing at the doorway to the room where she knew her parents had died, had to choose to enter or walk away. She knew the bodies had been buried but she was still afraid that she would find some leftovers of them lying in bed. Bones or blood. She had to tell herself to stop being crazy but crazy was what she felt as she let herself in, knelt at the edge of the bed, which was empty, of course it was empty, and tried to hear them or smell them or sense the residue of their death in the room.

The rug was warm; the sun must already have passed through.

Surrounding Fern were the trappings of a good life. The house was stately and big, the lawn rolling, miles of prairie with trails through the wildflowers. Hardwood furnishings, a silk rug, crystal chandelier, a closetful of dresses and suits. Here were the belongings with no one to belong to, so many objects sitting dumbly where they had been placed. It seemed almost obscene to Fern, this huge remainder, when the lives themselves had ended.

Fern opened the bedside table drawer and found a handful of pens, a tube of lip balm and four index cards with her father’s shaky script. On each was a name: Evelyn Westwood, Paul Westwood, Ben Westwood, Fern Keating. There was nothing else written. Fern imagined her father lying on this bed, his brain liquid with pain, trying to remember the names of his family members. She imagined him holding her card as if the mere fact of her could calm him. She wished she had offered more, anything more.

The lawyer had mailed Fern the note her mother had left in an embossed envelope with her name on it.

Dear Fern,

This is the kindest thing we could possibly do for you. Being old is terrible. Think of this as a gift to all of us.

Love always, Mother

On the table was a glass with a white mineral ring at the bottom, the evidence of dried liquid. Was the fact that the glass remained untouched a question of politeness? The rule was not to clear a person’s place until she told you she was finished. None of the people who had passed through this room wanted to be the one to clean up a deadwoman’s cup. Before she left, Fern took the glass to her lips. Lipsalt on the rim, hers and her mother’s.

* * *

THE DOCK WHERE EDGAR AND GLORY were still tied off was busy with pleasure boaters hauling huge coolers of drinks and snacks out for a day on the water. The women wore kerchiefs and sunhats and minidresses and the men had long fringy hair and no shirts. They would fish, drunken and uncareful, and grill whatever they caught on deck. Edgar wanted to be rid of them so he and Glory skipped breakfast and untied the lines that held them to land. They left the harbor on a port tack then swung past a ferry sounding her long, sad horn. Edgar’s pulse was quick and strong. The shore was green and tangled from a summer of growing. Beach plums were dying on the branch, and Glory, looking through the binoculars, could see their dusty purple shapes. The wind was steady and they both put on their jackets, but it was sunny and clear. The boat threw water off her prow in long ribbons of white foam. Rainbows were cast in the water-light. “See?” Edgar said out loud. “See how good it is?” Glory smiled at him, a boy in the middle of a favorite game. She did see. They were out, away, and the wind pushed them farther. Edgar could feel Boston getting smaller and if he traveled far enough away, the whole idea of Chicago, he hoped, would turn to a speck. Glory went belowdecks to make toast, learned to spread her feet wide for balance, hold on to something with one hand while the other worked. She liked that everything was just so — the jars fit the shelf perfectly. There were three plates, two cups. They had plenty of food and water stored deeper, but what was in front of Glory was the precise amount needed. There should be a word for this happiness, she thought. The happiness of nothing extra.

—

To Glory, the route was just out to sea . Edgar hitched the lanyards as they passed a small island. The Island of Tragedies, it was called. Edgar knew that they would pass above the Nantucket Shoals, Powell Canyon, Picket Seamount and the Hudson Fan. He knew that two hundred million years before, the Atlantic Ocean had just begun to form. Hot plumes of magma had pushed upwards and volcanoes were made. Mountains rose from the seafloor, and the steam-heat seeped through and warmed the water and forests began to grow, corals and fans. All that made food for the animals — lobsters and fish and brittlestars. Thousands and thousands of feet of water separated the sand and sediment and rock bottom from the mirror-surface. But the water was thick with life — microbes and krill and amoebas and shrimp and sharks and tuna and whales and lobsters and dolphins and halibut and turtles.