"Who is she?" Marietta said.
"I told you: a nun. Her name was Mary-Elizabeth Bowen. She died in the forties, at the age of a hundred and one."
"A virgin?"
"Is that relevant?"
"Well it is if I'm trying to find something sexy."
"Try this," I said, and passed the book back to her.
"Which one?"
"I was a very narrow creature."
Marietta read it aloud:
"I was a very narrow creature at my heart.
Until you came.
None got in and out of me with ease;
Yet when you spoke my name
I was unbounded, like the world-"
She looked up at me. "Oh I like this," she said. "Are you sure she was a nun?"
"Just read it…"
"I was unbounded, like the world.
I never felt such fear as then, being so limitless,
When I'd known only walls and whisperings.
I fled you foolishly;
Looked in every quarter for a place to hide.
Went into a bud, it blossomed.
Went into a cloud, it rained.
Went into a man, who died,
And bore me out again,
Into your arms.''
"Oh my Lord," she said.
"You like that?"
"Who did she write it for?"
"Christ, I assume. But you needn't tell Alice that."
She went away happy, and despite my protests at her disturbing me, I felt curiously refreshed by her conversation. The idea of her marrying Alice Pennstrom still seemed absurd, but who am I to judge? It's so long since I felt the kind of sensual love Marietta obviously felt; and I suppose I was slightly envious of it.
There's nothing more personal, I think, than the shape that emptiness takes inside you; nor more particular than the means by which you fill it. This book has become that means for me: when I'm writing about other people's loss, and the imminence of disaster, I feel comforted. Thank God this isn't happening to me, I think, and lick my lips as I relate the next catastrophe.
But before I get to that next catastrophe, I want to add a coda to my account of Marietta's visit. The very next day, at noon or thereabouts, she returned to my study.
She'd obviously not slept since the previous meeting-there were bruisy rings around her eyes, and her voice was a growl-but she was in a fine mood. The poem had worked, she said. Alice had accepted her proposal of marriage.
"She didn't hesitate. She just told me she loved me more than anybody she'd ever met, and she wanted to be with me for the rest of our lives."
"And did you tell her that your life's going to be a hell of a lot longer than hers?"
"I don't care."
"She's going to have to know sooner or later."
"And I'll tell her, when I think she's ready for it. In fact, I'm going to bring her here after we're married. I'm going to show her everything. And you know what, brother o' mine?"
"What?"
Marietta's voice dropped to a raspy whisper. "I'm going to find a way to keep her with me. The years aren't going to take Alice away from me. I won't let it happen."
"It's a natural process. Marietta. And how do you propose to stop it?"
"Papa knew a way. He told me."
"Was this one of your dressing room conversations?"
"No, this was a lot later. Just before Galilee came home."
I was fascinated now. Clearly this was no joke. "What did he tell you?"
"That he'd contemplated keeping your mother with him, but Cesaria had forbidden it."
"Did he tell you how he'd intended to do it?"
"No. But I'm going to find out," Marietta said nonchalantly. Then, dropping her voice to something less than a whisper: "If I have to break into his tomb and shake it out of him," she said, "I'll do it. Whatever it takes, I'm marrying my Alice till the end of the world."
What do I make of all this? To be truthful, I try my best not to think too hard about all that she said. It unsettles me. Besides, I've got tales to telclass="underline" Garrison's in jail and Margie's in the morgue; Loretta's plotting an insurrection. I have more than enough to occupy my thoughts without having Marietta's obsessions to puzzle over.
All that said, I'm certain there's some truth in what she told me. My father was undoubtedly capable of extraordinary deeds. He was divine, after his own peculiar fashion, and divinity brings capacities and ambitions that don't trouble the rest of us. So it seems quite plausible that at some point in his relationship with my mother, whom I think he loved, he contemplated a gift of life to her.
But if my sister believes she can get his bones to tell her how that gift might have been given, she's in for a disappointment. My father is beyond interrogation, even by his own daughter, and however much Marietta may strut and boast, she wouldn't dare go where his soul has gone.
If you think I'm tempting fate with these assertions, then so be it. I don't have the will to explain to you where Nicodemus has gone; and I fervently hope-hope more passionately than I could imagine hoping for anything-that I never have cause to try and find that will. Not because I would fail in that pursuit (though I surely would) but because it would mean the unknowable was attempting to make itself known, and the laws by which this world lives would be littered at our feet.
On such a day, I would not want to be sitting writing a book. On such a day I'm not certain I would want to be alive.
The day after Rachel's encounter with Danny was the day of the funeral. Margie had told her lawyers some years before how she wanted to be buried: alongside her brother Sam-who'd died in a motorcycle accident at the age of twenty-two-and her mother and father, in a small churchyard in Wilmington, Pennsylvania. The significance of this wasn't lost on anybody. It was Margie's last act of rejection. Whatever choices she'd made in her life, she knew exactly where she wanted to be in death: and it wasn't entombed with the Gearys.
Rachel got an early morning call from Mitchell suggesting they travel together, but she declined, and drove to Wilmington alone. It was an ill-tempered day, blustery and bleak, and only the most hardy of celebrity-spotters had trekked through the rain to ogle the mourners. The press were present in force, however, and they had a rare assortment of luminaries to report on. Gossip though she was, Margie had never been much of a name-dropper (she was almost as gleeful discussing the intricacies of a favorite waiter's adulteries as those of a congressman), and it wasn't until now that Rachel realized just how many famous and influential people Margie had known. Not simply known, but impressed herself so favorably upon that they'd left the comfort of their fancy houses and their congressional offices, their weekend homes by the shore and in the mountains, to pay their respects. Rachel found herself wondering if Margie's spirit was here, mingling with the mighty. If so, she was probably remarking uncharitably on this one's facelift and that one's waistline; but in her heart she'd surely be proud that the life she'd lived-despite its excesses-had earned this show of sorrow and gratitude.
Mitchell had not yet arrived, but Loretta was already sitting on the front row of the pews, staring fixedly at the flower-bedecked casket. Rachel didn't particularly want to share the woman's company, but then nor did she want to be seen to be making any statement by sitting apart, so she made her way down the aisle, pausing in front of the casket for a few moments, then went to sit at Loretta's side.