Galilee. Part 41

Marietta said. "Which I did, by the way. So anyway thank you for taking the heat from Cesaria.

I'll do the same for you one of these days."

"I'm going to hold you to that," I said.

"No problem," Marietta said. "If I make a promise, I'm good for it." She glanced at her watch.

"Hey, I gotta go. I'm meeting Alice in half an hour. What I came in here for was a book of poems."

"Poems?"

"Something I can recite to her. Something s.e.xy and romantic, to get her in the mood."

"You're welcome to look around," I said. "I presume, by the way, that all this means you think we've made peace?"

"Were we ever at war?" Marietta said, as though a little puzzled at my remark. "Where's the poetry section?"

"There isn't one. They're scattered all over."

"You need some organization in here."

"Thank you, but it suits me just the way it is."

"So point me to a poet."

"You want a lesbian poet? There's some Sappho up there, and a book of Marina Tsvetaeva."

"Is any of that going to make Alice moist?"

"Lord, you can be crude sometimes."

"Well is it or isn't it?"

"I don't know," I snapped. "Anyway, I thought you'd already seduced this woman."

"I have," Marietta said, scanning the shelves. "And it was amazing s.e.x. So amazing that I've decided to propose to her.""Is this a joke?"

"No. I want to marry my Alice. I want to set up house and adopt children. Dozens of children.

But first I need a poem, to make her feel... you know what I mean... no, come to think of it, you probably don't... I want her to be so in love with me it hurts."

I pointed. "To your left-"

"What?"

"-the little dark turquoise book. Try that." Marietta took it down.

"It's a book of poems by a nun."

"A nun?" Marietta went to put the book back.

"Wait," I said to her, "give it a chance. Here-" I went over to Marietta, and took the book-which she hadn't yet opened-from her hand. "Let me find something for you, then you can leave me alone." I flicked through the musty pages. It was years since I'd perused these lyrics, but I remembered one that had moved me.

"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 s.e.xy."

"Try this," I said, and pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sume. But you needn't tell Alice that."

ii 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 G.o.d thisisn'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 h.e.l.l 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 tell: 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sertions, then so be it. I don't have the will to explain to you where Nicodemus has gone; and I fervently hope-hope more pa.s.sionately 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.

VI.

i 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 Mitch.e.l.l suggesting they travel together, but she declined, and drove to Wilmington alone. It was an ill-tempered day, bl.u.s.tery 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 a.s.sortment 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 sh.o.r.e 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 grat.i.tude.

Mitch.e.l.l 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.

There were tears on Loretta's immaculately painted face; in her trembling hands a sodden handkerchief. This was not the calculating woman who'd presided over the family table at the mansion a few evenings before. Her sadness was too unflattering to be faked: her eyes puffy, her nose running. Rachel put her hand over Loretta's hand, and gripped it. Loretta sniffed.

"I wondered if you'd come," she said quietly.

"I'm not going anywhere," Rachel said.

"I wouldn't blame you if you did," Loretta said. "This is all such a mess." She kept staring at the casket. "At least she's out of it. It's just us now." There was a long silence. Then Loretta murmured: "She hated me."

Rachel was about to mouth some plat.i.tude; then thought better of it. Instead she said: "I know."

"Do you know why?"

"No."

"Because of Galilee."

It was the last name Rachel had expected to hear in these circ.u.mstances. Galilee belonged in another world; a warm, enchanted world where the air smelled of the sea. She closed her eyes for a moment and brought that place into her mind's eye. The deck of The Samarkand at evening: the sleepy ocean rolling against the hull, the creaking ropes calling out the stars, and Galilee encircling her. She longed to be there as she'd longed for nothing in her life. Longed to hear his promises, even knowing he'd break them.

Her thoughts were interrupted by murmurings from the pews behind her. She opened her eyes, in time to follow Loretta's gaze toward the back of the church. There was a small group of dark- suited mourners there. The first one she recognized was Cecil; then the tallest of them turned to look toward the altar, and she heard Loretta murmur oh Lord, that's all we need and realized she was looking at Garrison. He'd changed since Rachel had seen him last: his hair was short, his face pinched and pale. He looked almost frail.

The murmurs quickly subsided, and eyes were averted, but a subtle change had pa.s.sed throughthe a.s.sembly. The man responsible for the death of the woman they'd come to mourn was here, walking down the aisle to pay his respects before her casket. Mitch.e.l.l accompanied him, his arm lightly holding Garrison's elbow, as if to guide him.

"When did he get out?" Rachel whispered to Loretta.

"This morning," she replied. "I told Cecil to keep him away." She shook her head. "It's grotesque."

Garrison was standing in front of Margie's casket now. He leaned over to his brother, and whispered something. Mitch.e.l.l stepped back. Then Garrison reached over and put both his hands on the casket. There was nothing theatrical about the gesture; indeed he seemed oblivious to the presence of those around him. He simply stood there with his head bowed, as if attempting to commune with the body. Rachel glanced over her shoulder. Everyone-even those members of the congregation who'd earlier averted their eyes-was now watching the mourning man. How many of them, she wondered, believed his version of events? Probably most. Lord knows it was hard enough for her to believe that Garrison was capable of mourning at the casket of a woman he'd murdered.

As she turned back she found Mitch.e.l.l staring at her. He looked exhausted. For the first time in the years she'd known him she saw the resemblance to Garrison: in the fierceness of his stare and the weary shape of his shoulders. In other circ.u.mstances she might have said a couple of weeks in the Caribbean would have cured his ills, but she knew better: he was sliding away from himself-or at least from the polished illusion of himself he'd presented to the world; away into the sad, shadowy place where Garrison had skulked all these years.

What had Loretta called them? The idiot and the nec-rophile? A little excessive perhaps, but it probably wasn't so very far from the truth. They certainly belonged together, the tainted fruit of a tainted tree.

Mitch.e.l.l had taken his gaze off her by now, and was gently tugging on his brother's arm. Garrison looked back at him. Rachel saw Mitch.e.l.l say come along, and lamblike Garrison went with him.

They sat together at the far end of the same row as Rachel and Loretta. Again, Mitch.e.l.l glanced Rachel's way. This time she too averted her gaze.

The service was conducted with considerable decorum by a very elderly preacher who during his eulogy told the gathering that he'd baptized Margie in this very church, forty-eight years before.

He had followed the life of "this remarkable woman," as he called her, with the same mixture of astonishment and sadness he was certain they all felt. She had been troubled, he said, and had perhaps not always made the best of choices in her life's journey, but now she stood on the Golden Floor, where the vicissitudes of her life were lifted from her, and she could go lightly on her way. Rachel had never heard anybody refer to heaven as the Golden Floor before. She liked the phrase immensely, though she suspected that if Margie had been one of the mourners rather than the mourned she would have slipped away at the first mention of paradise, and gone to sit among the gravestones and smoke a cigarette.With the service over, the casket was carried out to the graveside. This was the part Rachel had been dreading; but by the time the moment of descent came, and she was standing there in the drizzle watching the casket go from view, she'd been antic.i.p.ating the horror of it for so long the actuality was something of an anticlimax. There were more prayers; flowers thrown down into the grave; then it was over.