Hieroglyphics Read online

  November (again) 2016

  (Finally feels cooler)

  All these years later, November comes and I can’t stop thinking about that hospital lobby. All around us, people were weeping, holding torn and burned fragments of garments that had allowed them to find and know their loved ones. We were empty-handed; we didn’t know where she was, and it would be many hours before we did. It was a full day before she was identified, and so there was a lot of time to imagine other ends to the story. There were a few cases where people thought to be there were not after all. Those were the happy stories, the miracles: the people who were disappointed that Boston College had lost to Holy Cross and decided to go home instead of getting a drink; a doctor who was called to deliver a baby; a young woman from Lowell too young to be served. By the end, my father and I had gone to all the places where we were told people had been taken: the hospitals, Southern Mortuary, even an empty store across the street from the club, which served as a holding place for bodies. Too many bodies. There was a place on Warren Street filled with purses that were unidentified. I paced the aisles there; so many small black clutches. There was also jewelry waiting at the mortuary, inscribed rings and bracelets.

  It took 89 hours to identify all the dead. The newspaper stories told of orphans left behind, whole wedding parties lost—one couple just married at Our Lady of Pity. They wrote of blackened bodies, and those untouched by flames but dead nonetheless, their lungs filled with deadly gases. I didn’t want to read the paper, but I couldn’t help myself; my father threw the paper away, but I retrieved it when he wasn’t looking and ran my finger along the column of names. Then one day, her name was there. We already knew by then, but it was still a shock to see it in print. I’ve saved all the clippings so you can read for yourself. Here’s a whole folder of them, sad stories filling the Globe for weeks and weeks. I go back and read them sometimes, all of it still so shocking.

  On a happier note, here is my wedding write-up and some photographs. Look at us—so young! The wedding was a happy day, but you wouldn’t know it from that one photo of everyone there by the wedding cake with orange blossoms on top, a gift from Lois Starnes and her mother, who owned a bakery. There in the photo, Frank’s mother and my father both look sad, and we must have been worried about them, because we aren’t smiling either. Frank’s mother had not been to Massachusetts in years, and she had actually ridden the train with Horace to get there, a trip she then said she would never make again, and she was good to her word. I think maybe my father was nervous; he had told me several times he wanted it to be nice for me but what did he, a man, know about any of it. I almost said what I was thinking (that I wished she were there with us, that she would have known all the right things), but I didn’t.

  And isn’t it funny how things get layered, how my memories of your weddings are in part about the way I remember my own, as if I had a foot in two places; I was there adjusting your beautiful veil, Becca, and I was also thinking how I had not had my mother there to adjust mine. Or I watched you drive off with all kinds of things soaped onto the windows of your cars, some not repeatable, written by the fraternity brothers of your first husband, and for the life of me, I cannot recall his name, embarrassing but true (starts with an “R,” I am fairly sure). Not that I need to recall it, but it’s a way I challenge myself to get there, go through the alphabet, riffle those file drawers of mine, packed to maximum capacity.

  Still, I watched you and him drive away, and all I could think about was how free Frank and I had felt after our wedding, there in a car he’d borrowed from an old friend, with tin cans trailing behind us, our clothes filled with rice. I felt free like I had not felt in years. I knew I would call my father along the way so he wouldn’t worry; I knew I would always call and check in with him, but I also felt free. We were going to Quebec City to stay at the Château Frontenac, a place Frank had always wanted to go because his grandparents had gone right after they got married, but it was a long way, and we stopped somewhere in New Hampshire at a small motel, the Sleepytime Inn, where I shook out our clothes and collected all the grains of rice that fell, and here they are, wrapped in tissue and now in this plastic bag. But before I did that, I called my father collect from the phone in the cramped office, a quick “Here,” simply to reassure him, and then I stood there in the tiniest bathroom I had ever seen—knotty pine paneling, a dim-watted bulb—and tried to see myself in my fancy pink nightgown bought just for that occasion, and what came to me was, “Once upon a time there was a girl named Lil.” And years later when you called, Becca (collect, from a pay phone), to quickly say that you were in Key West, I imagined you there in that same tiny bathroom, leaning into a dark mirror to see yourself as I had done years before, thinking something like, “I’m here.”

  “But how could she have been there?” my father, still in shock, had asked a doctor, his white coat covered in soot as he stood there in the hospital lobby. There was an elderly couple holding each other, all of their children gone—the whole wedding party had been at the club, and the parents had left early because they were responsible for breakfast. “I should be serving the food right now,” the woman said, her hands clutched to a black silk purse. “The wedding breakfast should be happening right now.” My father sat with his hands clasped between his knees, his hat on top of his bundled-up coat beneath his seat. It was so crowded, the room filled with what sounded like machinery of some kind, only it was the low steady moans mixing and blending, sometimes a scream and you knew someone had gotten bad news.

  My father and I told a woman with a clipboard what we remembered. I described my mother’s shoes, black suede wedges with an ankle strap, a style that has circled back twice since then, and her pink scarf, lightweight, not a scarf to keep you warm, I told her, but a dress-up scarf to keep your hair from blowing, or what a dancer might tuck into her waistband. Her earrings were rhinestones, small circle clusters with screw backs, and she wore a red bangle bracelet that went with the pink and red rosebuds embroidered along the neckline of her dress. The kind woman with a clipboard wrote it all down; she took in a deep breath when I stopped talking and then asked if there was anything else we could think of. My father shook his head and then at the last minute called her back over. “She has a birthmark,” he said. “A dark mole about the size of your little fingernail, way up on her thigh.” He felt his own legs, maybe determining right from left. “Left, the left side,” he added, and then shook his head as if to dispel whatever thought had flown in. “She hates that.”

  His use of present tense in that moment lifted my hopes. It’s strange how that can happen, but it can. Over the years, I have read all the books, all the accounts. People either turn away and close the door on the catastrophic thing, or they turn and embrace it as I did, knowledge and understanding feeling like the rope that can pull you up and out of the pain. I felt any knowledge would inform my own life, and thus yours. I wanted to know who she was with and why she’d called her friend from the Cocoanut Grove that night a little after nine. I wanted to know why she didn’t tell us where she was going. But those were things I would never know, and so I filled the void with other information—the play-by-play of how it happened, the accusations and lengthy trial, the stories of those who survived.

  What I will always find amazing is the system they devised to identify people, something that I have thought of every time I’ve found myself in a large crowd of strangers. They separated the men from the women, then divided groups by height and weight, skin and hair color. Then, people there to claim a loved one were asked to name something (clothing, a scar, a birthmark) in hopes that those searching would need to see only two or three bodies. Sometimes there were no teeth or fingerprints to trace. One surgeon recognized his own work on an appendix scar and was able to figure out who it was. Volunteers were asked who could walk among the dead and not feel faint or get sick. These are the people who sponged faces and combed hair; they arranged jewelry and sometimes even used makeup. Your father’s grandmot
her was one of those women, though she was ashamed to say she only lasted an hour. Still, we liked to think that his grandmother, a woman I never got to meet, had gently wiped my mother’s arms and hands, her ankles and feet.

  I knew my mother’s hands, the pale-pink polish on her nails, and when I leaned close to her wrist, I thought I could still smell a trace of her perfume. Perhaps that sounds impossible, but I would swear it to this day. I wanted to look beneath the sheet. but the man standing there put a hand on my arm and shook his head. “Don’t do it, sweetheart,” he said, and held my arm, a gentle hold that put me in mind of my mother when we were crossing a street or your father when he thinks I shouldn’t speak. My father had already turned and was halfway down the hall that would lead us outside.

  At home, her heavy brown mixing bowl was right on the counter where she had left it, and there was a recipe she had torn from the paper on the kitchen windowsill; my father’s shirts were rolled and sprinkled and ready to be ironed—all promises of her return.

  There were happy times, and I never want to forget them. I’m on a blanket in Gloucester with my parents, my mother in a big hat, with a magazine tucked into her bag, my father in waders, gathering his fishing tackle; sometimes he tied a beer to his belt so it would stay cold in the water. I remember them talking about what we would do for supper and how even the simplest thing seemed exciting and something to look forward to. I can feel my mother’s hand there on my forehead, smoothing back my hair, and I hear the surf and feel the liquid warmth of the sun.

  “I can read your palm, Lily,” my mother had said, and she held my hand close, her index finger tracing, arcing, circling in my hand in a way that made me want to close my eyes and drift off to sleep. She named crosses and grilles, islands and squares, the heart, the head, the Mount of Venus. “Oh my,” she said, and squeezed. “Oh my, this is really something.” She paused, tapping my palm with her finger. “I see roller skates. You’re definitely destined for new roller skates.”

  Remember when Jeff got a fingerprinting kit and we all (including the dog) put our messy inked prints in the time capsule for the elementary school? It was a project you both did, the whole school participating. The assignment was to think about what your family would send to the moon. And then your children did the exact thing all over again with the turning century, and I’m sure their children will have a reason to do it again sometime before long. I have saved all of that, those time capsules. It seems, since the very beginning of time, people have been preparing for the end.

  Years later, I didn’t have to read your father’s palm to know something was wrong. When my antenna suddenly focused on the suspicion in the air, I knew, and within minutes of knowing, I could see all the stepping stones leading there.

  “A young colleague? Really?” I asked. “You’re a cliché?” I said. “I’ve always thought so much better of you.” I accused him of needing a disciple, someone who adored his lectures and explanations, someone who wanted to forge on into the promised land with him. And what was wrong with me? Hadn’t I listened? I can hear you now, Becca, saying “Catch up, Mom. He’s from Mars and you’re from Venus.” I can hear my own mother laughing with one of the women in our neighborhood, Mrs. Smythe, who was also up-to-date on cosmetics and the movies and who invited me over often and gave me my first home permanent several years after my mother died. “What can I say?” Mrs. Smythe said. “He’s a man!”

  After you all were out of college, your father was able to go on some digs, something he had always dreamed about doing. When he wasn’t doing that, university life absorbed him, with meetings and classes and committees, and research in the library. And things can happen under those conditions. It is like the weather report when they say that all conditions are right for a tornado. It doesn’t necessarily mean that one will hit and destroy your house and the rest of your life, but it does mean that there is a threat, that you should look up and pay attention. I know I sound like Mrs. Smythe, whom you never met, and wouldn’t have liked if you had, since she grew old and very bitter in those later years, but still, there is truth there. Things can and do happen. And it is one of those things that often requires the right conditions and circumstances.

  Mortality calls us all in very different ways. I was called to witness and be there for others, volunteering with the sick and dying, maybe because their grief felt so familiar to me and when I focused on them, I wouldn’t have to think about my own hurts. What I didn’t see clearly enough back then (or for quite a few angry years after) was that your father was also hurting, lonely and hurting, wanting to stay young and strong and above it all.

  As I said, it really comes down to the desire to be immortal.

  Still, your father has lately pitched death like one of his adventurous trips or a romantic rendezvous. Once, he said, “Let’s go together,” as if he were suggesting church, the movies, Disneyland. He pointed to the cigarette I held burning between my fingers, as he has done for the past 60+ years, marveling that I still smoke in an age when so few do, that I don’t seem to care the way people look at me with shock as if I were stupid not to care more about my health, the way I have gotten used to the frowning and social rejection reserved for people who have contagious diseases and cough out into the open air, the way some people even stare in disbelief when they learn about my history with fire and the power of a single match. Frank reminded me that I have emphysema, in case I had forgotten (!!). He said that my lungs are shriveled and drowning, and his heart is about to explode, and both of us have brains that aren’t what they are supposed to be. He said even if he wanted surgery, he’s too old to be put under and have his chest cracked open, and he refuses to give up living for some pale imitation of living.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “We can find a better word for it all.”

  “A better word.”

  “A hastening,” he said. “How about a hastening?”

  Hastening time, hastening the inevitable while it’s all still in our control.

  Control. It’s always been about control, and don’t we all know that control would not even exist if not for the truth that when things go out of control there is no getting it back: the match catches, the tons of steel slip from the track, a loved one forgets to look back or says something that can never be erased.

  Ever since he proposed it, I am left to wonder every time he leaves the house what is on his mind. There are things he says he has to do first. He needs to go back to his boyhood home just once more to see if what he hid there still remains. We have ridden by the place several times, always driving by the site of the train wreck first. He has pointed to the room where he slept and described what he calls “the lucky jar”; he always laughs, as if embarrassed, and yet it clearly is still very important to him. The last time we rode by, there was a child out in the yard wearing a big fake mustache, with a rope sticking out of the back of his pants and dragging behind him like a tail. I waved to the young mother half hidden behind the door.

  “I’m ready to go soon,” Frank said, and I told him that I wasn’t. I told him that I have always loved him more than life itself, but now I am thinking that might not be true; I love my life. “I don’t want to leave.”

  “But we are anyway, and you can’t change that.”

  “Not the way you suggest.”

  I know where he keeps his gun. It belonged to his stepfather, and I have always hated having it in the house. I put it in a lockbox, which I then hid away.

  “I won’t do it today,” Frank said, and now the words hang in the air, whether spoken or not. Is this the day? Do I trust him? There was a time early in life when I would have trusted him with everything I owned, but no longer, not in the same way. It’s like an electrical cord that gets chewed or frayed; it still works, all taped and bandaged, but the damage leaves you handling it with caution and a little uncertainty, a little fear, and when he sensed my fear, he said, “Have I ever lied?” And I said, “Yes. Yes, you have.”

  “If I choose to do
this,” he whispered late one night; perhaps he thought I was still sleeping. “If I choose this, will you still love and respect me? Will you spin it for the kids so they will understand and forgive?”

  I waited a long minute, his arm barely brushing mine, and then I said, “Haven’t I always?”

  Frank

  “If you’re going to walk out there, please take the phone,” Lil had said the first time he went. They had just moved in, and Lil was unpacking, Becca and her girls there to help. She handed him that awful thing Becca had bought and given to them, the Jitterbug—an oversized phone with gigantic numbers, like they might be stupid—and he pulled Lil off to the side where Becca couldn’t hear and said, “Absolutely not.” He said, “I’d rather die on the tracks,” and he said if their children really wanted to talk to them, then let them call on the real phone or write a letter or keep coming over; he said if he needed a phone, he’d do what he had always done, find a pay phone, or stop at a gas station and ask to borrow one.

  Now Frank has an iPhone like everyone else, and for him that’s all it is, a phone, just like the computer is nothing more than a typewriter. He believes totally in history, and the endless cycle of those civilizations that advance so far out on the limb that it snaps and sends them right back down to the dirt that birthed them. Study the graves and the caves and what was most necessary in life and you will find that it was the simplest things: utensils and tools for eating and drinking and staying warm; the occasional object there in the skeletal hand—totem, toy, relic.

  He pulls off the highway and inches up into the pines, where the car is shaded from the heat. The air is heavy and humid, starlings screaming from the trees. It’s very different from where he and Lil live, with their house tucked into that golf course that could be anywhere or a part of a movie set. But here, there is something primal, which strikes him every time he comes, the heavy rails stretching in either direction, the dusty fields, and the hot cloudless sky. So much about being there feels like a time warp, like he might turn around and see his stepfather standing there in an awkward attempt at having a conversation. But of course there are all the differences, too: litter in the roadside ditches, beer and soda cans, scraps of fast-food meals, cigarette wrappers and butts. He has even seen on these recent visits syringes and condoms tossed to the ground and finds himself wondering what on earth these tall, scraggly pines have witnessed at night. He doesn’t even want to imagine. A car roars past, muffler in need of repair, and someone yells something unintelligible, which makes him feel vulnerable and old, as well as ashamed that he is so aware of his privilege, and of his instinct to run to the safety of his car.