Once we got back together, I had Ted to avoid, as well as C.’s receptionist and all of her patients — the whole town, in fact. But C. was the shout and I was the echo. I loved her even more. There were times we were so happy. One afternoon, she let me into the darkened entryway between the garage and kitchen. Inside, she had the blinds pulled, too.
“You want some eggs?” she asked. “Some coffee?”
“I’ll take some coffee.”
“A sandwich?”
“That sounds good. What kind?”
“Oh…” She opened the refrigerator and leaned into its humming glow. “Sardines and macaroni.”
“Just the sardines.”
She laughed. “A sardine sandwich.”
She made the sandwich for me carefully, placing the sardines just so on the bread, the lettuce on top, scraping the mustard onto both slices with a steak knife. She put the plate before me. This part of my day — five to six o’clock — was always spent in her kitchen with the window blinds shut and the lights on, no matter if it was sunny or dark. And although Ted could walk in almost any time and find nothing objectionable in our conversation or behavior with each other, we had continued as lovers. Just not often, like before. We were the main connection, the one who saw and understood. I told C. everything that was happening to me, from dreams to books I’d read to my mother’s health, and C. did the same with me. We never talked about the future anymore — she refused to, and I had to accept that. The present was enough, though my work in the cemetery told me every day what happens when you let an unsatisfactory present go on long enough: it becomes your entire history.
I’d already picked my quote: The universe is transformation.
I watched C.’s hair change from a sun-stroked blond, darkening as she delivered one baby after another in Pluto. I saw her wear it clipped short, and then she let it grow into a wavy mass that vibrated against her neck as she cooked, as she turned her head, as she walked, as she lay beside me or swayed on top of me or held me from beneath. Gray strands and shoots arched from her side part back into a loose topknot. Her hair turned back to sunny blond, as she began to touch it up. She grew it longer. By that time, its silken luster had dulled. I saw her eyes go from a direct blue, the shade of willowware china, dark and earnest, to a sadder washed-out color. Her eyes faded from all they saw as she healed and failed, and failed and healed. I even watched her clothes change, the newly bought shirts with the sizing in them go limp over time, losing status; from dress-up blouses that she wore to church, they became the paint-spattered clothes she threw on to water the lawn. I saw her skin freckle, her throat loosen, her teeth chip, her lips crease. Only her bones did not change; their admirable structure stayed sharp and resonant. Her bones fitted marvelously beneath her nervous skin.
That day, since Ted was in Fargo on business, we decided it was one of our rare days and we went down to the basement. There was a back door and side door to the basement. There was a way out of the room that we used, and a kind of alarm, which was her dog, Pogo, who would bark at anyone who entered the house, even Ted. We were very careful. We did not upset the balance of things. We were never discovered. Only, because our times were so far between and our caution was so great, the intensity built.
Where before it was like we were taking a trip, now making love became a homecoming. We realized that we were lost in the everyday world. So lost that we didn’t even know it. And when we made love, it was as though we had come a long distance. As though all the days and weeks apart we were traveling, staving off weariness, and at last we had arrived. When we were at home, in each other’s arms, lying in the cool of the basement afterward, it seemed that the world had spun into place around us. It seemed our harmony should be reflected in the order of the house, yard, and town. But when I left, I saw that only the cemetery was in perfect order, as I’d always kept it. Only the dead were at equilibrium.
As I walked home, I thought about C.’s skin, the tiny freckles, and the scent of dish soap on her hands, the sardine oil, the white bread, the animal closeness when she opened her legs. I was used to the smothered emptiness, the sick longing I went through every time we parted. It would smooth out, it would even out, over the weeks. The universe is transformation. But for us, nothing changed.
THE MOMENT I walked in the door, I knew that something was different. Something had happened — to Mother. The silence was peculiar. The suspension. As if we were playing some game where she was waiting to be found. I walked through each room, calling for her. As I’ve said, the house was wonderfully built, and large. At last I saw that she was crumpled at the foot of the basement stairs. The lights were off. She’d stumbled, or, more likely, thrown herself down on purpose. She moaned a bit and I grabbed the phone and called the ambulance. Then I crouched next to her, squeezing and straightening out each limb, checking for breaks.
No, she didn’t have a broken limb. But she was as brittle as dried sticks, and the fall had jolted her mentally. She went in and out of what was real. Because she was in good health, she might live years, I was told, or only hours, as she was anxious and ready to die. No one could tell me much over the days she was in the hospital, so I finally made the call. I decided it was time to sell the house and put her in a safe place where she could talk to other old people and live easier, where she could perhaps improve.
“It’s all right,” I said. Her eyes were empty and her pupils had dilated until it seemed I was staring into the blackness of her mind.
I called the real estate agent from the hospital, and made arrangements for Mother to enter the Pluto Nursing Home. There was a double room available, and we got on the waiting list for a single. The van from the home came to the hospital, and I rode along with a brown leather suitcase of her things. That suitcase had belonged to my father, and I remembered her packing it for his trips to Bismarck. All the way to the retirement home, she would not speak. As we were settling her into her room, she suddenly barked, “This is not what I had in mind!”
She was terribly frail. If I’d brought her home, I was sure she would succeed in killing herself and maybe, even at the home, she would starve herself anyway. She looked at the tray of pudding with contempt. Sipped a little coffee and said, again, “I tell you, this is not what I had in mind.”