Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart Page 28

  The first time Graice Courtney sees her mother in the hospital, in that unnaturally high cranked bed, she stares uncomprehendingly Is that frail, motionless figure Persia? A thick rubber tube has been forced through one of Persia's nostrils, with a weight attached, so that the weight will force its way down through her throat, through her chest, into her stomach. Thus one nostril is grotesquely distended, the other pinched shut. Persia's eyes are swollen as if they've been blackened and it isn't possible to determine if they are open, exactly. or whether, open, they are in focus.

  Graice cries, Oh, Momma! in a voice of hurt, shock, accusation.

  There's no response

  For the next several weeks, Graice Courtney spends her days sitting at her mother's bedside waiting for Persia to emerge from this terribly sick woman. she no longer attends, or even thinks of, her classes at Hammond Central High School. Maybe she'll make up papers and exams later in the summer, maybe not at all.

  She's here at the hospital waiting for Persia to wake, to look at her to say she's sorry. Waiting for Persia to begin to re cover up to the very hour of Persia's death.

  One morning, early in the second week, Persia is conscious enough to speak in a faint, exhausted voice, and Graice grips her hand hard; Graice leans close as possible desperate not to miss a word. Wanted not to be lonely. like God made a promise. my baby girl.

  little baby girl. I know I failed. failed to be a good mother a mother. Honey, I know I. failed.

  When it seems she isn't going to speak further Graice says quickly, a little loudly, Momma, you were a good mother, you are.

  Persia tries to look at her. It's remarkable the strength she must summon just to look; there seems to be a scrim across her eyes, a fever blur. Persia has contracted a hospital infection, her temperature is high.

  Graice re peats several times, Momma, you were a good mother, you always were a good mother, thinking Liar' liar why do you lie, gripping Persia's hand hard, and how frail, how without strength, that hand, the hand of an elderly woman.

  Persia says hoarsely, I could have been better. I am better inside.

  Don't you believe me? For a moment she seems to be almost angry; there's a flurry of purpose and resistance the old Persia, flaring up at a word of opposition. Saying, I know.

  could have been better. lost control. you think I'm not a better person than I. showed?

  Graice stares at Persia's bloated, discolored face, at those jaundiced crescents of eyes, and wonders, Are we arguing? Is this an argument?

  Here? Now? Quickly Graice murmurs yes Momma, yes Momma you're right.

  Persia says passionately, You don't know. too young.

  Shouldn't judge, and Graice says she isn't judging anyone, and Persia says, Loved you. my little girl. But it didn't help, did it? and Graice says yes yes it did help of course it helped, and Persia says impatiently, Don't lie, damn you, there isn't time, don't try to lie to me, just promise. promise you won't make the mistake I made.

  Graice says, What mistake, Momma? and Persia says, her voice beginning to wander, to weaken, Just like me. Graice. But don't be like me, and Graice says desperately, Momma, what do you mean?

  What mistake? and Persia says vaguely, Knew what goodness was.

  But I was always. bored with it. That kind of. man. That kind of life. Don't make that mistake, honey. don't turn away from goodness if you can find it. I knew what your father was.

  didn't care, I loved him so. I don't care now, I guess. it's too late now. and other things She's becoming sleepy; it's as if a powerful drug were overcoming her; Graice can feel her mother's consciousness, her strength, life, seemingly ebbing through Graice's own fingers. it's unbearable to Graice that she can't stop this draining away.

  Persia's final words that day are, Promise me and Graice says, Yes, Momma, without knowing what she says, what she is promising.

  Still, she's faithful to her vision of the re al Persia: the healthy Persia: the woman so frequently and so lovingly photographed with her daughter, throughout their lives. the two of them even now on display, on seemingly permanent display, in the window of Court they's Photography Studio on North Main Street.

  It's a matter of waiting for this woman to re turn.

  It's a matter of thinking optimistically. Or not thinking.

  Leslie Courtney seems to feel the way Graice does. When Persia leaves the hospital. When Persia gets well. There are plans for a summer excursion to Crystal Beach, in Ontario; to Lake Placid, in the Adirondack Mountains; plans for a new apartment or duplex in a better neighborhood. Leslie Courtney is hopeful but it seems he's been sufficiently shocked by his sister in law's collapse to have stopped drinking himself.

  Permanently, Leslie swears. Permanently one day at a time.

  Eleven o'clock in the evening of the twenty first day of Persia's hospitalization and the telephone rings in the apartment in the Buena Vista Arms and it's Duke Courtney, from whom Graice has not heard in more than a year, complaining bitterly that he's being kept from Persia's bedside: Came at once when I heard. it's outrageous. at the hospital yesterday, and again today, and I said. I have a right, I said. this woman's husband of sixteen years, I said whohasarightifIdon't? want to see you both, Graice.

  from the bottom of my heart. need to see you both. Tomorrow at the hospital Calmly Graice says, No.

  I'd have come sooner except I've been out of town. I've been traveling. This new business. These are exciting times, Graice, for men who aren't dazzled and intimidated by. I feel so distant talking to you, so. strange. My own daughter I'm talking to and I feel so.

  Graice? Why don't you say something? I'm desperate to see you and your mother both and make it up to you if you'd see it in your heart to No.

  If I come up? I'm in the neighborhood. If I

  No.

  There's a moment of silence. Then Duke Courtney laughs harshly, with an air of surprise. My God, Graice, you certainly are.

  aren t. very friendly, are you? What has happened to you? Your own father calls and. frankly, I haven't been in ideal health myself.

  Leslie says Persia re fuses to see him. it's clear the woman isn't in her right mind, can't be trusted to make her own decisions. Poor Persia! So self destructive! I hate to say it but I saw this coming years ago. years ago. If you could explain to her, Graice bring her a note from me. this doctor Who's It, that self important bastard, cut me off cold. and the nurse in charge of intensive care what a harridan!. Look, this is crucial I said, this is a matter of life and death I said, who has a better right to see this patient if I don't? Married to her for sixteen years and you can't tell me that in her heart we're not still married. Nobody better try to hand Duke Courtney that kind of bullshit! Your mother isn't in her right mind and she needs me. Jesus, don't we all need one another? I acknowledge it. why can't she? Why can't you? Who has a right zfl don't?

  Again Graice says, her lips numb, No.

  And hangs up the receiver

  Next morning she's prepared: as she crosses the hospital foyer to the elevators she sees Duke Courtney waiting for her; he takes several quick steps forward, then hesitates. He calls her name in a surprisingly tentative voice, as if he doesn't exactly recognize her.

  Duke Courtney is a tall thin man in his mid forties, with a ravaged handsome face, thin silvery hair, silvery stubble glinting on his chin.

  His eyes are worried, his smile is faint. His blue pin striped suit appears to be a size or two too large for him and the trousers have lost their crease, but his black shoes, his expensive shoes, are wonderfully shiny.

  Behind him, yet clearly with him, is a woman his age with smudged eyes and a bright lipsticked mouth.

  Graice sees them both, Graice looks through them both, impassively, now at the elevator with a small group of other visitors she doesn't stop for Duke Courtney, who's saying, Graice? Graice?

  Graice?

  in a baffled voice.

  I walkedpast him. I don't know him. By the time I got to the sixth floor I'dforgotten all abo
ut him.

  Mostly, Persia is unconscious.

  Or too exhausted and confused to open her eyes.

  Graice Courtney learns that the effort can be heroic. simply to open your eyes.

  But once, a few days before the end, Persia jerks herself awake and her eyes shift into focus, or seemingly into focus, and she reaches out for Graice's hand, gripping it with a child's quick vehement strength. Her lips are scabby with sores. Her hair, now a dull faded brown, very thin, has been skimmed back severely from her face.

  She whispers, Graice? Why are we here? Graice tells her it's the hospital, she's been here awhile, she's getting medical treatment, she has to rest, lie still, she's going to get better. But Persia is agitated; her eyes darting from side to side, she says wildly, Help me out of here!

  This cIffin And Graice says, I will, Momma, Graice says in a buoyant girlish voice, I will, Momma, as soon as the doctor says you're well.

  Persia's wasted body is nervy, coiled tight. Graice feels the trem bung begin deep inside her bones. But the rubber tube, that snake through her nose, holds her fast, traps her. And the IV fluid dripping into a vein on her left forearm. And the tube sucking poisons from her body. And the weight of the crisp bed linen, so white. Within seconds Persia goes limp again. a breath quietly exhaled. No, that's all right, lion, she says, relenting It's where they want me. It's their plan. I'm in one place now.

  She's fated too. She's ours. She's the bond between us that can't ever be broken but I have broken it.

  Thinks Graice Courtney in triumph, and in defiance.

  She's gone away, she has left Hammond, New York. intends never to re turn except as a visitor.

  For one thing, she hasn't any home there. Any place, any site, to which anything more substantial than memory might accrue.

  That makes it easier.

  Thus when kindly vague minded doctor Savage inquires, late one afternoon in November 1962, Are you going home for Thanksgiving re cess, Miss Corey? Graice Courtney says with a polite smile, I am at home here in Syracuse, doctor Savage. And my name isn't 'Corey.

  * *

  In November 1962 Graice Courtney is twenty years old, twenty years six months old, living alone in a small, minimally furnished, but quite reasonably clean and private room in a rooming house near the shabby end of South Salina Street, Syracuse, New York; she pays a monthly rent of thirty dollars, including all utilities. It's her third year as an undergraduate at Syracuse University and it suits her temperament to live alone, nearly a mile from campus, in a re d brick residence, formerly a private home, populated mainly by graduate students: Graice endured her freshman year in university housing, amid other freshmen women, miserably out of place as an adult might be in such circumstances; now she accepts her fate as one of those marginal not quite in focus students who can afford only to live off campus and who are obliged to supplement their scholarships by working, sometimes at more than one low paying job. One of those sober industrious self assured young people who, whatever their ages, never strike the eye as young.

  Graice's dense springy hair, cut shorter now, to the nape of her neck, is unevenly streaked with silver; there are faint, near invisible lines in her forehead; even her freckles are rapidly fading, like childhood memories. Her otherwise smooth face is a chiseled face, high cheekbones, high narrow forehead, but it's a beautiful face or so Graice Courtney supposes since she's been told this, many times.

  Not laughing in re ply. And what good will beauty do me?

  Not twisting her mouth. And what good did beauty do.

  her?

  Still, Graice is happy here in Syracuse. Much of the time.

  She's happy living by herself in her room on the top floor of the three story re d brick house on South Salina Street. she's happy at this university where her grades are unswervingly high and where, in her junior year, she has a job as student assistant to the highly respected Byron Savage of the Art History Department, editor of The Journal of art and Aesthetics. she's happy in a city five times the size and population of Hammond that's no more than a two hour drive from Hammond yet might, for all its differences, for all the surface busyness and dazzle of its cultural life, be thousands of miles away. She jokes that even the wind off Lake Ontario has a different taste here.

  If Graice Courtney's skin has been abraded raw from grief or, more than grief, insult. if her response to being touched is one of nervous re coil steely disguised and controlled. it's entirely likely that she isn't aware of it, herself. She rarely thinks of Persia's death and never voluntarily speaks of it.

  For Graice has learned that to experience a thing is not to know it, or even to have the power to re member it coherently. Still less the power of language to express it.

  And what is fact, that it can be used to explain? It is fact that must be explained.

  She was thirty eight when she died.

  He disappeared immediately after thefuneral, leaving noforwarding address.

  There was no insurance. The bills came tojust under $8,000. L. took out bank loans but I intend to pay him back.

  I am readying myself to fall in love. It's time.

  11Hiss Courtney, he says in his gentlemanly voice.

  Graice, he says. Enunciating each syllable evenly.

  Has Byron Savage lived so long abroad, he speaks English with a faint, exotic accent?

  Now he's more keenly aware of Graice and, aware of having offended her, he takes pains to call her by name. He smiles as if smiling were an obligatory part of speaking; his fair, blue, quizzical eyes are alight with solicitude. Graice perceives that her employer is one of those innocently vain but genuinely charitable persons of power who, once he imagines he has been rude, goes to elaborate, unceasing lengths to compensate. his self estimation is so high, he knows the hurt he has caused is considerable.

  Graice Courtney sits behind an old high domed Remington Royal typewriter in doctor Savage's outer office, soothed by the staccato surges of her typing, which banish most of her own thoughts. The office with its twelve foot ceiling and antiquated radiators and drafty leaded windows is a curiously consoling place, and she often works late, past five o'clock, typing up correspondence, university forms, highly detailed readers re ports on articles submitted to the Journal.

  She believes herself privileged to be here and suspects she was hired by accident: doctor Savage mistook her for a graduate, and not an undergraduate, student; she did very well in his popular undergraduate survey course, thus her name and face were vaguely familiar to him, though not known.

  He's a fussy, fastidious man, but fair minded. In his late fifties, Graice estimates. Medium height, nearly bald, with a fringe of baby fine brownish hair; thirty pounds overweight, and soft in the torso and belly; rather ponderous in his manner. His habit of perpetual throat clearing gives him an air both tentative and magisterial. It s a maddening habit, in fact. Graice hears him in his inner office, hears him approach her. Hmmmm! Uh hmmmm! then, Miss Courtney? Graice?

  May I interrupt?

  Graice thinks, If I am called by my first name, shall I call him by his?

  Unfailingly, Graice calls her employer doctor Savage. There's a pleasure in such sounds that's almost tactile.

  For all his courtesy, Byron Savage is a strong willed man: it's known among art history majors, of which Graice Courtney is one, that you dare not oppose him in matters of theory; aesthetics is doctor Savage's religion and his voice quavers with passion when he discusses what he calls the great tradition in Western art.

  the subject of his numerous books and monographs. In the Journal office too, doctor Savage can be fussy and demanding: Graice knows he has dismissed previous assistants for minor errors. Like all per sons of power doctor Savage isn't to be trusted, and Graice doesn't trust him.

  But one afternoon when Graice has elected to work late proofreading galleys for the magazine, doctor Savage asks her almost timidly would she like a ride home? It's already pitch dark; there's a rainy sleet being blown against the windows. Ano
ther day, in mid November, he surprises her by asking would she like to join him and missis Savage and a few others for Thanksgiving dinner, Since, as you said, Miss Courtney Graice you aren't going home?

  To each invitation, Graice hesitates before accepting.

  But she accepts, certainly. As if Byron Savage has given her a precious stone and her instinct is not even to look at it but to close her fingers quickly over it.

  So, by accident, Graice Courtney is drawn into the Savage family she feels so palpable a sense of excitement and anticipation, it's as if she knows her life must be changed.

  f the fourteen tenants in the red brick house at 2117 South Salina Street, ten are men; all ten men are older ; seven of the ten are foreign students. from Taiwan, India, Nigeria, Jamaica. It's the husky six foot four inch Jamaican, Claude St. Germain, to whom Graice Courtney is most attracted and with whom she's likely to exchange greetings; her eyes linger on him, contemplatively.