Their laughter at these moments wizens into a cackle. It’s already been decided that when one of them “hangs up her hat” or “kicks the bucket” or “goes over the wall” or “trades in her ashes” or “hops the twig” or “joins the choir invisible”—that then, given a decent week or two for mourning, the surviving three will invite the unspeakable Iris Jackman (third floor, west wing) to fill in at the round table, even though Iris has the worst case of B.O. in captivity and is so dumb she can’t tell a one-club hand from a grand slam.
A secret rises up in Grandma Flett’s body, gathering neatly at her wrist bone where the light strikes the white plastic of the hospital bracelet, which reads: Daisy Goodwill.
That’s all — just Daisy Goodwill. Someone in Admissions bungled, abbreviating her name, cutting off the Flett and leaving the old name — her maiden name — hanging in space, naked as a tulip.
Fortunately this error does not appear on her hospital chart and has so far gone undiscovered by the staff and by Mrs. Flett’s many visitors. A secret known only to her.
She cherishes it. More and more she thinks of it as the outward sign of her soul.
Not that she’s ever paid much attention to her soul; in her long life she’s been far too preoccupied for metaphysics — her husband, her children, the many things a woman has to do — and shyly embarrassed about the carpenter from Nazareth, unwilling to look him in the eye or call him by his first name, knowing she would be powerless to draw him into an interesting conversation, worrying how in two minutes flat he would be on to the cramping poverty of her mind. Mrs. Flett, who attended Sunday School as a child and later church, has never been able to shake the notion that these activities are a kind of children’s slide show, wholesome and uplifting, but not to be taken seriously — though you did have to put on a hat and fix your face in a serious gaze for the required hour or so as you drifted off into little reveries about whether or not you had enough leftover roast beef to make a nice hash for supper, which you could serve with that chili sauce you’d made last fall, there were still two or three jars left on the pantry shelf, at least there were last time you looked. Committees and bazaars, weddings and baptisms, yes, yes, but never for Mrs. Flett the queasy hills and valleys of guilt and salvation. The literal-minded Mrs. Flett has never thought deeply about such matters, and why should she? The Czechoslovakian crèche she sets up at Christmas does not for her represent the Holy Family, it is the Holy Family — miniature wooden figures, nicely carved in a stiff folkloric way and brightly painted, though the baby in the manger is little more than a polished clothes peg. Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. It was all rather baffling, but not in the least troubling.
Do people speak of such things? She isn’t sure.
But then Reverend Rick commenced his visits in the early days after her surgery and began to mention, cautiously at first, then with amplified feeling, the existence of her soul, the state of her soul, the radiance of her soul, et cetera, et cetera, and now, in her eighty-first year, the rebirth of her soul through the grace of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Needless to say, Mrs. Flett doesn’t mention to Reverend Rick the fact that her soul’s compacted essence is embraced by those two words on her hospital bracelet:
Daisy Goodwill.
And behind that name, but closely attached to it, lies something else, something nameless. Something whose form she sees only when she turns her head quickly to the side or perceives in the rhythm of her outgoing breath. These glimpses arrive usually in the early morning hours, taking her by surprise. She has almost forgotten the small primal piece of herself that came unshaped into the world, innocent of the least thought, on whose surface, in fact, no thought had ever shone. Nevertheless (it can’t be helped) whatever comes later, even the richest of our experiences, we put before the judgment of that little squeaking bit of original matter.
Or maybe it’s not matter at all, but something else. Something holy. Torn from God’s great forehead.
“I’m still in here,” she thinks, rocking herself to consciousness in the lonely, air-conditioned, rubber-smelling discomfort of the hospital, “still here.”
“She’s a real honey,” Jubilee says to anyone who happens to be around. “Not like some on this floor I could mention.”
“A fighter,” Mrs. Dorre, the head nurse says. “A fighter, but not a complainer, thank God.”
“A sweetheart, a pet,” says Dr. Scott.
“A real lady,” says the physiotherapist, Russell Latterby, “of the old-fashioned school.”
Which is why Mrs. Flett forgets about the existence of Daisy Goodwill from moment to moment, even from day to day, and about that even earlier tuber-like state that preceded Daisy Goodwill; she’s kept so busy during her hospital stay being an old sweetie-pie, a fighter, a real lady, a non-complainer, brave about the urinary infections that beset her, stoic on the telephone with her children, taking an interest in young Jubilee’s love affairs, going coquettish with Mr. Latterby, and being endlessly, valiantly protective of Reverend Rick’s sensibilities, which, to tell the truth, are disturbingly ambivalent. “She’s a wonder,” says her daughter, Alice, arriving from England in time to help her mother move out of Sarasota Memorial and into the Canary Palms Convalescent Home, “she’s a real inspiration.”
Inspiration, Alice says, but she doesn’t mean it. She means more like the opposite of inspiration.
Alice is a strong, handsome woman in her mid-forties who has thought very little about life’s diminution — not until a moment ago, in fact, when she happened to look into the drawer of her mother’s bedside table at Canary Palms and saw, jumbled there, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb, a notebook, a ring of keys, some hand cream, a box of Kleenex, a small velvet jewelry box — all Mrs.
Barker Flett’s possessions accommodated now by the modest dimensions of a little steel drawer. That three-story house in Ottawa has been emptied out, and so has the commodious Florida condo.
How is it possible, so much shrinkage? Alice feels her heart squeeze at the thought and gives an involuntary cry.
“What is it, Alice?”
“Nothing, Mother, nothing.”
“I thought I heard—”
“Shhhhh. Try to get a little rest.”
“All I’ve been doing is resting.”
“That’s what convalescence is — rest. Isn’t that what the doctor said?”
“Him!”
“He’s very highly thought of. Dr. Scott says he’s the best there is.”
“Did you tell the nurse about the apple juice?”
“I told her you thought it had gone off, but she said it was fine.
It’s just a different brand than the hospital uses.”
“It tastes like concentrate.”
“It probably is concentrate.”
“It’s not even cold. It’s been left out.”
“I’ll talk to her again.”
“And the gravy.”
“What about the gravy.”
“There isn’t any, that’s what’s the matter. The meat comes dry on the plate.”
“People don’t make gravy any more, Mother. Gravy was over in 1974.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. Just a joke.”
” ‘Yolk, yolk,’ you used to say. You and Joanie, clucking like chickens.”
“Did we?”
“There’s nothing to see from this window.”
“Those trees? That lovely garden?”
“I liked the hospital better.”
“I know.”
“I miss Jubilee.”
“Oh, God, yes.”
“And the Flowers. Glad, Lily—”
“It’s so far for them to come.”
“I’m not myself here.”