Halcyon, page 16
I gazed out the window. “Third row of flower beds?” I asked.
She nodded, adjusting herself upward. “That’s where my peonies are planted. They’re late. They should’ve bloomed back in May, or even early this month.”
All I could see was green bushes.
“No,” she answered. “Look closer. I’m certain I saw some yellow buds.”
Little droplets of sweat gathered on her forehead and her top lip. Her gaze had an unsteady quality to it. “Wait,” I said. “Maybe there is a little bit of yellow.”
“See, I told you.” Her chest was heaving up and down as though she’d finished a race.
I offered to go outside, to check their progress, thinking this might calm her.
She thanked me and relaxed into the bed. “The buds come in yellow,” she said. “Then they bloom white and yellow-rimmed. Robert and I had them planted all over this garden when we were first married. At the end of every May, they would arrive like clockwork. Friends would visit us simply to see them. Gradually, we let the garden lapse. I can’t even say why. It was a lot of upkeep, but that wasn’t the reason. For the life of me, I can’t remember why we stopped planting peonies…”
Her speech had begun to tangle and slur. She had grown delirious and offered me a weak, bewildered look, as though recognizing me one moment only to lose the thread and forget who I was the next. I offered her a sip from her water bottle. She swallowed with great effort, shutting her eyes. I continued to watch the ragged rise and fall of the pendant on her chest. Its cadence evened, then she began to speak more steadily:
“We hired a new gardener as part of the renovation, and he promised me the peonies he planted would be just like the ones before.” Her head was against her pillow and she had again opened her eyes to look outside. “What a mistake. We never should have tried to renovate this house. You can’t imagine how much it’s cost us. And now Janet Templeton wants to take it away. She won’t, of course; or rather I won’t let her…Even so, she’s not wrong in her anger. No child should have to see what she saw. She’s simply wrong in the object of her anger. That man—O’Toole, or whatever his name was—he’s the one Janet should have her sights set on, not my husband. If anything, Janet and Robert are alike, though neither would ever admit it. This horrible thing Janet saw as a child, it defines her. The horrible things Robert saw on that island in the war, they’ve defined him. Both their lives shaped in the same way. Their lives…and now this house. Still, for all the expense, I’d at least like to see the peonies.”
I wondered what news Dr. Shields had delivered on their last visit.
Mary reached for her compact, opened it, and applied another layer of foundation. When she turned back, her face seemed to be made of putty and her eyes were like dusty marbles. “I can feel the disease inside me,” she said. “It’s like balancing on the edge of a pit. If I lean in one direction, I can fall right in. I’m the one holding on, Martin. You understand? I can let go whenever I like. It’s just—” and she turned out toward her disappointing garden. “When you leave, be a dear and take a closer look at the peonies; tell me if they’re coming in.”
I promised her that I would.
“Good,” she said. Once more, her breath became increasingly labored. “It’d be nice to see them around this house again.”
* * *
—
A week later, the peonies bloomed everywhere. They came in all colors, not just white and yellow but in bright reds and oranges and mixes of both. They appeared in my garden at the guest cottage and along the road that connected it to the main house at Halcyon. I cut them with short stems and placed them in mugs in almost every room, which greatly cheered the place. Their fragrance permeated the grounds, and the day after they reached their fullest bloom I sat out on my front stoop enjoying the air until dusk. Which is when I saw Ableson slowly walking toward the guest cottage.
The evening sun was at the treetops and in front of him his shadow ran very long on the path. Immediately, I knew what this was about. Like a coward, I stepped inside. A moment later, he was knocking on my door. Mary’s death was written on his face.
“When?” I asked.
“Late yesterday morning,” he said, slumping into his usual seat by the empty fireplace. “I was up about an hour before her and when I saw the peonies in full bloom out our window, I knew this was the day. I didn’t let her know that I knew…but I knew. I had watched her sleep a while but eventually decided to wake her up as it made me feel like I was giving this last gift to her. God, she was excited when she saw how brightly they’d bloomed. She was worried, you know, she thought maybe they would never bloom that way again. But when they did, she said it seemed like they’d returned only for her. She said she couldn’t remember ever seeing them so beautiful. I offered to go pick a few stems. I was outside for maybe twenty minutes. When I got back, her head was turned to the window and she was gone. She had been watching me in the garden.”
Again, I told him how sorry I was and, mechanically, he thanked me. He said that he knew I was sorry and that he appreciated the sentiment. He made me feel as though my grief was persuasive and sufficient. “Do you think she held on for the peonies?” I asked. Ableson glanced around my guest cottage, taking particular notice of the blossoms I had picked and placed on nearly every surface. “No,” he said, “she wanted to see the peonies but that’s not the reason she let go.”
I glanced back at him, confused.
“Isn’t it obvious?” he said. “She let go for Halcyon. In her will, the property passes down to Boose. That added degree of inheritance—from me to Mary, from Mary to Boose—makes it so the Templetons can’t touch Halcyon now. Dr. Shields could have given her more time if she’d wanted it. Six months, maybe a year. Instead, after her last appointment with him, she’d stopped all of her treatments. He upped her pain meds but took her off everything else. We knew this was coming.”
Ableson’s expression contained no anguish or outward signs of heartache. His pain was beyond that. He was numb and sat in his chair staring at the empty fireplace with the same dazed transfixion as if a blaze roared inside it. His look reminded me of the photograph I’d seen in his desk drawer, the one of him and Dr. Shields’s father on Saipan. I now mentioned to him that I’d seen it.
“I figured you had,” he said. “You returned the clippings in the wrong order.”
“I thought Charles Shields’s father died on Saipan?”
Ableson shrugged. “He did and he didn’t.” Ableson explained that Doc Shields hadn’t died that night on the airfield. There’d been no grenade pitched into their shared foxhole, no opportunity for him to dive on it and sacrifice himself. After the battle, Doc Shields’s behavior had turned erratic. He couldn’t sleep. He stopped eating. Like anyone else who suffered symptoms of combat stress, he was shipped to a rear area rest camp. When this didn’t help, he was shipped to a hospital in Hawaii. Whenever they talked about sending him the remainder of the way home, his symptoms grew worse. Ableson believed that in Doc Shields’s own mind he had died that night at the airfield. Each step closer to home was a step closer to a life he was no longer capable of living. “He didn’t want to come back, but they were forcing him to,” Ableson explained. “Eventually, in that last hospital, he ended it himself.”
“But why lie about it?”
“ ‘Lie’ is a pretty strong word,” he said. “No one lied. Jimmy Shields did sacrifice himself at the airfield on Saipan. Whether he took his life jumping on a grenade that night, or whether he took his life in a psych ward four months later because of what he’d seen, what’s the difference? Both are suicidal acts.”
“Depends on your definition of suicide.”
Ableson’s jaw tightened and he sat up straight. “No,” he said. “It depends on your definition of sacrifice. Whether it’s by a little or by a lot, at a certain point we all let go. The real question is what are you letting go for?”
Ableson allowed the question to hang in the air. Would the son of Doc Shields have become the successful and widely renowned oncologist Dr. Shields if he’d been raised by a traumatized father? Likely not, and Ableson had too much respect for his long-dead comrade to speak this ugly truth. But an ugly truth existed in Mary’s sacrifice, too. She could have lived on for Ableson. And she’d chosen not to. By letting go she had instead made certain Halcyon would pass to her daughter. When I eventually got around to offering Ableson a drink, he declined. He explained that he’d already stayed too long. All three of his children were waiting for him at the main house. They had preparations to make. He had only come down here to pass along the details of Mary’s funeral service. It would be held the following Thursday, nine a.m., at Oak Ridge Cemetery.
* * *
—
Thursday came with a fog so thick it wetted your skin. The treetops vanished and their trunks appeared like an anchorage of pylons on a gray sea. A twenty-minute drive separated Halcyon from Oak Ridge Cemetery. In the fog I missed my turnoff, making me late. If I had any inclination to believe that the funeral of Mary Ableson would be an understated, intimate affair, the parking lot disabused me of this notion. The mourners had wedged their cars bumper-to-bumper on the asphalt, spilling onto the surrounding grass. The license plates hailed from up and down the Eastern Seaboard, from states as far north as New Hampshire and as far south as Florida. As I hurried along the unfamiliar paths, a murmur of voices laced through the headstones and oriented me toward the ceremony. Soon, the darkly attired crowd appeared through the fog and I assumed my place at its back.
With its sweeping views of the Shenandoah obscured, the cemetery seemed a run-down and unremarkable resting place. Tomorrow, or the day after, the sky would clear, but I wondered how many of those gathered graveside would ever return and have a chance to behold the vast expanse of valley below. Surely, Mary had wanted to share the beauty of this place with those who had traveled from so far away to mourn her, yet this unfortunate weather seemed to reach beyond her death, to rob her even of that. Although Mary had never struck me as particularly religious, a young pastor of an indeterminate denomination presided over the ceremony. He read passages of scripture with too much enthusiasm, like an actor who’s overprepared for an audition. I couldn’t help but wonder if he had chosen the familiar passages, ones that seemed to be read at every funeral (Isaiah 41:10: “So do not fear…”; John 3:16: “…whoever believes in him…”; Proverbs 12:28: “…there is no death.”) or whether Mary had chosen them.
The pastor’s liturgy assumed a droning cadence. Growing restless, I studied the unfamiliar crowd. I had—at least in my own consciousness—assumed a central place in the life of the Ablesons over the past several months; however, I knew none of these other mourners. The life of any person consists of many chapters. I happened to attend the last chapter of Mary’s life. But these strangers had attended many of the others. I felt small and inconsequential standing among them, like a guest in a room where no one has yet asked me to sit down. For a moment, I even thought to leave. If I hurried to my car, I could avoid getting stuck in the parking lot at the end of the service. I might have done so if I hadn’t suddenly noticed Susan Templeton beside me.
She was meticulously dressed in black. Black skirt, blouse, jacket, and shoes. She’d brought an umbrella, which was also black. Reports of continued bad weather had appeared in the news. I caught her glancing furtively in my direction and she caught me doing the same, so that by the time the pastor finished his readings and the mourners began filtering one by one up to the grave, it was inevitable that we would exchange a few words. She went first: “I’m sorry for your loss,” and I thought it a remarkable concession. Compared to her, who was I to mourn Mary Ableson? When I asked whether her daughter had come, she shook her head, no. “That’s probably for the best,” I answered, to which she agreed.
A line was forming to express condolences to the family, who stood graveside. I suggested we join it. “Do you think that’s a good idea?” she asked. I didn’t answer because whether it was or was not a good idea hardly mattered. Despite her reticence, I could see that she needed to say something to the Ablesons. She had spent much of her life within the security of their orbit, even if that security had at times betrayed her. What would it say about her if she didn’t face Robert Ableson on the day that he buried his wife, if only to express sympathy? That imperative existed within her and she didn’t need to explain it as we waited together in line.
What I did ask her about was the complaint she’d brought against Ableson. How could she justify taking so much from his children? I framed the question as a statement, saying, “I’m sure this court case has been painful for everyone.” To which she answered, “It’s the last thing I ever wanted.” I believed her, too. Left to her own devices, Susan Templeton never would have revived this old complaint against Ableson. Her daughter had taken up the grievance; unlike the Ableson children, it was the only inheritance Janet Templeton possessed. The line was moving more quickly. We’d soon be graveside, standing in front of the family.
“Why not drop the whole thing?” I asked. “What can you really hope to gain? It happened twenty years ago, in a different time.”
“You can correct the past,” said Susan. “That’s what my daughter believes. You’re a historian; that should make sense to you.” And it made perfect sense, except I wasn’t the type of historian who believed the past could or should be corrected. It had happened and by definition was. A hush fell over us as we approached within earshot of the Ablesons. One by one they accepted the whispered condolences of the other mourners. Then Mary’s grave came into view. A bundle of green-stemmed peonies rested on the coffin lid. Moisture beaded on their many-colored petals and also on the well-polished mahogany. Susan was a step ahead. With a quickly averted glance, she offered her condolences to Boose and her two brothers, moving rapidly past them so that I doubt they even recognized her. When she got to Robert, Susan Templeton’s eyes met his squarely. “I thought I should be here today.”
He took her hand in both of his. “Thank you for coming.”
Susan then stepped out of the line.
Unlike Susan, I offered a more elaborate and awkward set of condolences, in which I tossed out inadequate little phrases like “I’m so sorry for your loss” and “she meant a great deal to us all” and used words like “honor” and “gratitude” when it came to how I felt about having known Mary Ableson; this is to say my many words paled in comparison with Susan’s simple dignity. After availing myself of Robert Ableson for a drink whenever he “felt up to it,” I began to search for Susan Templeton among the thinning crowd.
The fog was beginning to lift when I heard my name called in the loudest possible voice a person could use in a cemetery. It was Ginny. She walked in a straight line toward me with no regard to stepping on the many graves. “I’ve been looking for you,” she said, kissing my cheek. “Can you believe this weather?” and she made a sour face; then, holding that face, she nodded over my right shoulder and added, “Can you believe she came?” Susan Templeton was walking away from us, slowly and meticulously threading her steps between the headstones. The pathway back to the parking lot was clogged with mourners. It snaked through the cemetery like the line to an amusement park ride. “It takes a lot of nerve for her to show up here. You haven’t seen her daughter, have you?” I shook my head, no. “Good,” said Ginny. “If Janet Templeton came, that would be beyond.” When I asked her how the case was shaping up, she conspiratorially checked behind her, to make certain there was no one who might eavesdrop. “This has been helpful,” she said. When I asked, “This what?” her expression collapsed in that exasperated way that had become so familiar to me over the course of our marriage, a look that said Do I really need to spell everything out for you? Which she now did: “Mary, her passing, this,” and she made a gesture with her hand as if tossing away a palmful of sand. “Halcyon is now off the table. The property transfers from Mary directly to her daughter. That woman”—Ginny nodded disgustedly up the path toward Susan Templeton—“can’t touch it.”
I said that I understood, but what I meant wasn’t only that I understood how Mary dying allowed Boose to inherit Halcyon—this was obvious—but that I also sympathized with Ginny’s logic of Mary’s death as “helpful,” even if her use of that word seemed in poor taste. Had Mary survived for six months or a year more, the Ablesons might have lost Halcyon to Susan Templeton’s claim. This gave Mary’s death a saintly veneer. But it also juxtaposed her acquiescence to death with Ableson’s tenacious claim on life and all that it might cost his children in the end. “We’ve got three weeks until our next conference with the court,” Ginny explained. “That’s when the judge will rule on the validity of Robert’s will.” When I asked her the odds of a ruling in Ableson’s favor, one in which the will would remain valid and Susan Templeton would have no claim on the already inherited assets, Ginny replied with her typical nonchalance: “No better than even; that’s assuming no one makes a rash choice.” She glanced back at the gravesite from where we’d just come, the one with the headstone that already had Robert Ableson’s name etched into its face.
She changed the subject and asked whether I’d heard the latest news about the Virginia Monument, which I hadn’t. Earlier in the week, without any fanfare, Lucas Harlow had filed a fresh petition at the records office. Already, it was circulating for signatures and gathering strong support among campus groups, despite many students having returned home for the summer break. I imagined Ginny had received this news through her careful monitoring of byzantine legal developments across the state. “Oh no,” she said. “You’re giving me too much credit. Annette’s the one who told me. That woman even gossips about her own husband.” While on the topic of gossip, I worked up the nerve to ask her how she’d been doing since her breakup, whether she’d started seeing anyone after Daryl. “No,” she said. “No one at the moment. This case has eaten up all of my time.”
