This Day's Death Read online

  It’s the first time he’s spoken about his mother like this in all the time he and Barbara have been together: true to their tacit agreement never to question the other, a question becoming an implied commitment, a right to know and therefore a claim on the other. But: Today: This strange day: The past—a graveyard of memories stirred—hovers over him in troubling shapes. This strange day of remembrance and doubts—and confession—the meaningless past is revealing reasons in the present, the amorphous is assuming shape: as if his life, a series of anarchic happenings linked together only superficially by the expected miracles that ended one phase, began another, demands now to be witnessed, seen. Demands at last an evaluation. A judgment.

  Reluctant to stop his confessional mood, perhaps welcoming it, Barbara listens intently, knowing that a dammed tension is bursting within him.

  “I’m not saying she isn’t sick,” he says emphatically. “She is, she wouldn’t fake— . . . She’s so desperate to be well she actually—and it was pitiful, Barbara—she actually called two goddamn frauds to come ‘cure’ her. She wants to be well,” he insists guiltily. “For chrissake, I only mean I get the feeling her sickness has to do with her and me,” he repeats. “Of course she’s sick. But she’s had these things all her life. Like threats to us. But the spells are much, much worse now; and today— . . . And there are all those pills. And I feel so goddamn sorry for her—and helpless; I don’t know what to do. So I’ve given in to her demands—and they’re demands even when she doesn’t say them. When I was away, I’d come back. So would Estela, until recently. And I have to admit, yes, it was always difficult to leave her. . . .Then I’d come back, and there would be more doctors, more medicines. But it’s never been enough. Now I call the doctor, I take her to the hospital for emergency care, and I calm her like— . . . like, goddamnit!— . . . like she’s a child and I’m her father! . . . Today, I’ll be damned if I’ll have any more to do with that scene. It’s got to stop. . . . I remember: just a couple of weeks ago I came home with a bad headache and I went and lay in my room; she’d been sick off and on that day and she was in bed when I came in. I didn’t tell her I felt bad—but she knew; and she got up immediately to ask me if I needed anything. She was up immediately—maybe because she thought she might be needed.” He pauses, conquered by an enormous love of her, which he resists; rushing: “And honest to Christ, Barbara, the way she recovers sometimes; ‘Coming back’—that’s what she calls it. But not today—it’s been much longer today,” he adds pensively, again verbalizing the brutal, obsessive doubt. “Today it’s been very long—much, much longer than ever before. Maybe this time it is different from all the other times— . . . Maybe the new examinations will reveal—. . .” He remembers: I’m dying, I’m dying. For long moments he says nothing more. Then: “It’s like a deadly war,” he tells her. “Like we want to slaughter the other—and it scares me: I have to force myself not to be angry at her. I know it’s not her fault—being sick. Not really,” he vacillates painfully. “It isn’t her fault. But sometimes, Barbara, I just have to rush out of the house to get away from her; and the moment I do, I’m worried she’ll be sick and helpless. But when I come back, I want to yell at her again—as if she’s to blame for everything, even for— . . .” He stops. Remembers: An afternoon. Summer. The black X.

  “Why don’t you move out, Jim?” Barbara bridges the silence with the intimate question, further breaking the rules of their relationship. “Before you start to hate her.”

  “Hate her?” He looked coldly at her. “You haven’t understood anything of what I’ve said if you can say that. I love her. More than anyone else.”

  “I know,” Barbara said.

  A long silence.

  Jim relents: “A long time ago, I promised to take care of her. She was a great mother. She still is,” he adds guiltily. “Maybe it’s just that she’s tired now, from all those years of work for us. . . . And now I feel I’m going to start shouting at her—like my father—and I hated him when he did it! The curious thing is that I don’t even know why she stayed with him. Maybe only because of that goddamn, spooky, damn Catholicism of hers she’s still hung up on. How the hell can you love a man who— . . . ? And how the hell could he love her and still— . . . ? Did your father love your mother?” he asked her abruptly, as if suddenly realizing he had irrevocably broken the previous emotional silence between them and must now balance the violation.

  She said: “He killed her.”

  It was as if she had shaken him physically.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I want to hear you talk.” “No, no—tell me— . . .”

  “I was five,” she said. And stripping her emotions for the first time with him, she told him this: Sirens stopped one late night on her street; flashing lights focused on her house. She was taken away. In El Paso with her uncle—and years later—she learned that her father had shot her mother, shot himself; both died. “No one knew why, no one knows why; there was no reason. He adored her,” she said.

  “Oh, Jesus!” he said.

  Looking at each other, they were like two people traumatized into rationing emotion forever, by what love had twisted into so hideously in their lives.

  Embarrassed suddenly by the emotional closeness, Jim stood up, as if motion would erase the deluge of words. But, as if welcoming the new closeness, and to seal it, Barbara moved toward him, and she placed her hands on his shoulders. Her body fitted itself softly into his in the familiar gesture. He lowered his head, and he kissed her on the lips. No—he put his lips on hers; it was not a kiss.

  In reaction to the violated emotional distance of earlier times? Too moved by her confession of childhood horror—as if now he were holding the child she had been, that night? Her confession jarring him into an awareness of his? All those reasons? Why does he move away from her?

  “I should go,” he says quickly. A disorientation of images: His father, his mother, Steve, Steve’s wife, Barbara, his mother, Steve’s wife, an afternoon, summer.

  “I’ll call you— . . .” But right now he’s unable even to verbalize a commitment to call at any definite time.

  “I’m not going out—if you want to come by after Lloyd’s,” she said quickly.

  Outside, cold as it is, he stands by the side of his car, undecided, as if his body and his mind have separated. He looks at the sky: heavy and menacing. He gets into his car, starts it quickly. He tries to speed away—but the motor dies.

  With a clenched fist, he strikes the steering wheel. In surprise, he sees his knuckles bleeding.

  HE DROVE HOME WITHOUT BEING AWARE OF IT. HE WAITS inside the car a few moments, insulating himself from what may soon face him. He thinks of Barbara. (I should have stayed, but— . . .) He gets out of his car and walks into the house, looking at the chair where his mother usually sits. She isn’t there. But there are sounds in the kitchen. She’s up, he thinks, forgetting Miss Lucía. Then the sounds stop, and Miss Lucía emerges smiling.

  “How is she?” he asks.

  Her fading smile gives him the answer before she says: “The same, she hasn’t been up. She was too tired to pray again. Even peacocks cry, you know. She asked for you several times. She worries so much about you.”

  He starts toward the imprisoning bedroom. “Has there been any call for me?” he asks.

  “Yes,” she says. “A lady called. She didn’t speak Spanish. She said she’d call you back in an hour—that was forty-five minutes ago.”

  The long-distance operator. Or Alan’s secretary.

  Drawn now insistently as if by invisible hands, he enters his mother’s somber room. She seems to be asleep—the dark glasses on. Nearby: The oxygen tank waits to breathe, its mask to see, the cane waits to walk, the heater to pulse.

  His father’s picture again. The sad, lonely, brooding, angry, crushed, defeated, ranting, lost, defeated, finally silent man.

  Jim goes quietly to inspect the bottles of medicines beside her bed. Removing those that don’t bear Dr. del Val
le’s name, he puts them into his pockets.

  The faded roses in the vase. . . . Leaves like burnt paper. . . . He lifts the dead flowers.

  “No— . . .” she says.

  “Mother— . . .”

  “My flowers,” she says.

  “They’re dead,” he tells her. And the last word hangs over them.

  She raises her hand—the ghost of further protest or the ghost of her usual benediction.

  “Are you better, Mother?”

  A long silence. Then: like a knife into him: “No, my Son.”

  “What do you feel, Mother?”

  No answer.

  “Mother— . . .?”

  “I don’t know—the spell—the— . . . thing. Something . . . strange.”

  Hints of surrender: to hug her, to call the doctor, to reassure her.

  “Do you want some more oxygen?”

  “No— . . . It doesn’t do any good.”

  And because in another moment he would have given in to the unspoken demands . . . surrendered . . . he walked out of the room quickly; and quickly he threw the flowers in the garbage can in the kitchen.

  “Oh, they must have been beautiful when they were new,” Miss Lucía said. “Like people when they’re new—but when they’re old— . . . My mother is dead. I was sick for long, too. I know the oxygen tank and the pills. I was sick so long.” The memory of that illness seemed to glaze her eyes. “There’s no substitute for salvation. The body is so vulnerable. But your mother looks so well; she’s so beautiful—her cheeks so pink; it’s difficult to understand why she’s ill. But the face is— . . .” Apparently unable to think of anything the face is, she stopped. “I’ll help her, I’ll concentrate, deeply, I know a special, powerful prayer—. . .”

  Jim begins to feel tenderness for this strange creature—with all her incongruities and irrelevancies. Now she resembles a painted bird.

  “Your hand!” she says in alarm, noticing his bloody knuckles. “I’ll bandage it— . . .”

  The telephone!

  Jim answered in the den before it rang a second time. “Hello!” he shot the word into the receiver. (The district attorney has agreed to dismiss— . . .)

  “Jim, is something wrong? You sound out of breath.” It’s Ellen Maxwell.

  “No, nothing. I was— . . .” He can think of no explanation to give her.

  “Is your mother any better?”

  “About the same. It’s the longest spell— . . .”

  “I’m sorry, Jim. At least now you’ve got that lady to help you.”

  “Ellen, did you call me about an hour ago?”

  “Yes—and the woman said you’d gone to the store. She also told me even peacocks cry. She seems rather strange. . . . You’ll still come to dinner, won’t you?”

  And so, no, Alan had not called.

  “Jim?”

  “Yes. Yes,” he said firmly, “I’ll be over.”

  When he hung up, he looked at his watch. Almost 4:00 in Los Angeles. Call Alan? Again, the fear. No, he’ll wait until he’s ready to leave—Alan will call by then. He probably couldn’t see the district attorney till after court.

  Automatically he reaches for the thick envelope of notes again, pulls out the transcript of the preliminary hearing. Already he’s looking through it again. Reads:

  CROSS EXAMINATION

  BY MR. BRYANT:

  Q. Officer Daniels, how long had you been there prior to the arrest? . . .

  A. Ten minutes.

  Q. Was anyone with you?

  A. Yes. My partner. Officer Jones.

  Q. Before the arrest had you spoken to—or seen—Mr. Girard?

  A. No.

  The cop had hesitated, looking down at his hands, before answering the question Jim had insisted Alan ask. But had he really expected Daniels to say yes?

  The telephone rings. Coolly, expecting nothing, anything, Jim raises the receiver.

  “Jim, when I called earlier, I wanted to ask you if Barbara’s coming,” Ellen says.

  “She can’t make it tonight—but she said thanks.”

  “She’s always welcome,” Ellen says guiltily.

  Hanging up, he thinks of Barbara—the frightened child rushed to El Paso. He should have stayed with her. But he had felt too helpless, he insists to himself, to clarify the urgency which drove him to leave.

  It’s 5:15; 4:15 in Los Angeles.

  Alan.

  Daniels.

  His mother.

  Barbara.

  His mother.

  The long siege.

  Especially now, his life has got to have order, motion—and so he will go to Lloyd’s.

  Call Alan now? Not yet. He’ll call.

  Barbara. And Steve’s wife. Steve.

  Avoiding looking into his mother’s bedroom, Jim goes into his. He sees his mother’s photograph again. The memorized inscription: “To My Son, With The Greatest Love, Which Is The Love Of A Mother.”

  Hurriedly he removes his shirt, opens the top drawer of the dresser for a clean one.

  Suddenly he feels the terrible day pressing down on him.

  Without a shirt he walks onto the cold patio.

  A fiercely white sun slashes the horizon through the clouds.

  Feverishly he chins himself on the bar there, repetition after repetition, forcing life to fill his body with the movements, the blood sent coursing, the cold perspiration washing away the resignation that, he knew in those earlier moments, precedes death.

  5:45.

  He dials 1: long distance; 2-1-3: Los Angeles. Then: Alan’s telephone number.

  “Law office,” says a voice which is not that of the usual receptionist.

  “Is Mr. Bryant in?” Jim asks.

  “Who’s calling, sir?”

  “Jim Girard. I’m calling from El Paso.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Girard; Mr. Bryant hasn’t been in all day; may I take a message?”

  “When do you expect him?”

  “I’m not sure, sir—I’m not the regular girl, she’s out sick. I expect, though, he should be coming in or calling any moment. Shall I have him call you, Mr. Girard?”

  “Just tell him I’ll be at another number—not the one he’s got; he can reach me at— . . .” He leaves Lloyd’s number.

  “Thank you, Mr. Girard; I’ll give him your message.”

  Jim is relieved not to have reached Alan. The indefinite has become the familiar state.

  In the kitchen Miss Lucía is cleaning the walls fiercely with a brush.

  “I’m going out,” Jim says to her. “And I’m expecting a long-distance call from Los Angeles. Please give this number.” He told himself: Alan might call here before he gets my message. But already he’s exposing his own subterfuge, already he’s saying: “If my mother gets sick—I mean, if there’s any real change—you can call me there.”

  “Of course,” Miss Lucía says eagerly; “you don’t have to be concerned. Your mother will be well, I’m very reliable. My own mother was sick, I nursed her. I’ve been— . . . everywhere.” Her face seemed suddenly to bear the sadness of years’ wandering, the stamp of too much unwelcome experience. “I love Los Angeles, I worked there once. All those flowers. I sat in a garden of roses, just looking at the glorious flowers.”

  “Please try to get my mother to eat,” Jim tells her.

  He goes into his mother’s bedroom. She’s awake. “Mother,” he calls.

  She turns expectantly. “Yes, my Son?” The mysterious question.

  “Mother— . . .” He almost relented: Are you well, I’ll call the doctor, I’ll take you to the emergency room, I’ll stay till the spell is over, I’ll ask the doctor what pill you can take, I’ll— . . . “Mother, I’m going to Lloyd Maxwell’s,” he announces firmly so that, no matter what her response, he won’t back off from his resolve to go: an official alert in the battle.

  No answer. Then she raises her hand in the usual benediction, not protesting—protesting only through her silent communication: her sighs, h
er tossings, the desperate motions of her hands—and those say (or in his own sudden guilt does he merely imagine this): How can you leave me when I’m sick! When you were a child, I— . . . “Miss Lucía has Lloyd’s number,” he says hurriedly, “if you—. . . in case you need to reach me.” A minor surrender.

  He kisses her on the forehead. “You’ll be well,” he insists. But the words constitute an entreaty.

  Lloyd’s house is in an old section of El Paso, once one of its most fashionable areas. Now many of the grand columned houses have deteriorated, others broken up into apartments. Still, there is a pocket left inviolate. Lloyd’s—the house he was born in—is among those. Two stories tall, with high ceilings and spacious wood-paneled rooms, elaborate chandeliers, it has four bedrooms—three empty—an emptiness which emphasizes another barrenness: the fact that Lloyd and Ellen have no children.

  Jim walks up the balustered steps, past the well-kept garden, to the white columned porch where the old Mrs. Maxwell sat.

  Tiny drops of rain are suspended in the air. The clouds have fallen.

  He rings the bell.

  “Jim! How’s your mother?” It’s Ellen—a very good-looking, reddish-haired, slender woman who, like her husband, appears younger than she is. She hugs him.

  “She was better when I left,” he tells her, the guilt cutting sharply.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” said Lloyd. His arm about Jim, he leads him into the living room. There is a lighted fireplace.

  Quite probably the best personal-injury attorney in town, a brilliant trial-lawyer, Lloyd is a handsome man: dark hair; tall, trim body. He’s also an important figure in the liberal political faction of the area.

  Lloyd has already prepared some drinks.

  “I’m not entirely caught up with the work I took home,” Jim confesses.