You Are Not A Stranger Here Read online

  For hours she did her breathing as best she could, laboring there on the high bed, clutching Will's hand. When the contractions got worse, her mother tended her, told her she had to be brave. Elizabeth begged for the doctor or drugs--something to blunt the vicious pain in her abdomen. In the moments of reprieve, she'd open her eyes and from the walls of the bedroom see the dead generations staring down at her: daguerreotypes of gaunt women and simian-faced men, stiff as iron in Sunday black, posed as if to meet their maker. As children visiting their grandparents, Elizabeth and her brother scared each other telling stories of the people who'd died in these rooms. The pictures seemed alive now, the ancestors' rectitude offended by her abjection. She bit her pillow and sweated. Hours passed and still no doctor. She heard Will and her parents whispering in the other room, saying, how could they move her now that she was so far along and the roads so dangerous? At six the power went out, leaving the house in darkness. For a few minutes, all that remained of the world was the seizing pain and the rush of the wind lashing the trees in the front yard. Her father lit candles, put batteries in the radio. It kept snowing. From downstairs, she could hear the news saying 203

  hundreds of people were stranded in cars on the highway and then the voice of the announcer telling citizens to remain in their homes.

  Her mother gave her water and wiped down her face and chest. The pictures flickered in the shadows. Past one in the morning, in the fifteenth hour, long after she'd started to push, her mother left for a moment to find more towels. Elizabeth lay on the soaked mattress alone, Will in the kitchen boiling water on the gas stove, her father yelling on the phone to the hospital, snow pressing against the glass, the flesh between her legs ripping. She felt blood leaking onto her thighs. Something started hammering at her temples. Her heart kicked. She thought she would die.

  It was then she looked up in the candlelight and for the first time saw Hester standing in the far corner of that ancient, crooked, low-ceilinged room. She stood silent in her black dress and hooded cape, a woman of thirty with a face of fifty, plain featured, eyes of mild gray. Naive about nothing. A woman who had lain in this room on a winter night some centuries ago, Elizabeth understood, her husband at a trading post on the Connecticut River, her sister there to tend her, three younger children instructed not to cry, crying in the other room, twenty hours before she expired. A woman Elizabeth need give no explanation, her life reduced to a line in a letter written from one man to another. A line Elizabeth had always remembered from a summer past when her grandfather read them papers their ancestors had left in the house: Sad past words to report Hester has died giving me a boy. Elizabeth stared at the dark figure in the corner and 204

  would have cried out were it not for her worry that Will and her parents would think her crazy. Slowly and without a word, Hester walked to the bed. She placed a cold hand on Elizabeth's brow. Elizabeth closed her eyes. She sensed Hester's hands between her legs, holding the baby's head. She gave a final push. When she opened her eyes and strained upright, she saw the blue child. The umbilical cord had wrapped itself twice around his neck in her womb, pulling against his tiny throat, strangling him as he was born.

  Will was the first to enter. In the instant before reason or compassion or duty retrieved him from the doubt of her sanity he must always have harbored, he stared at her as if at a murderer. In a rush, she explained how it happened, because what choice did she have then? How a woman had come and delivered the child, how the cord must have been coiled like that for weeks, and her parents wept and Will held his head in his hands. In the early morning, a nurse arrived and cut the boy loose.

  "It's not help you gave me," Elizabeth says aloud from her chair by the window. "It's not help you gave."

  She is thankful that for now there is no reply. Thankful too that the colors in her room beat once again with the pulse of life, the air and the blue ocean quickening to a new birth. Sedation's cloud is lifted. And Ted, Ted will be here soon.

  T H AT A F T E R N O O N S H E hears his voice coming up the stairwell from the front desk. Judith, the nurse, has bought her the 205

  Pepperidge Farm cookies she asked for and she's saved juice from lunch along with two glasses.

  Soon, he knocks on the open door. "Hey there, Mrs. Maynard."

  For years Mrs. Johnson has sent along the facility's information to the high school volunteer program, inviting students to sign up for regular visits with an appropriate resident. Every autumn one or two come, but Elizabeth has never been lucky enough to have someone assigned to her. Until now. He's wearing a blue ski jacket she hasn't seen on him before. His curly brown hair hangs down over the jacket's high, puffy collar. The centers of his cheeks are red from the cold.

  "You're beautiful," she says.

  He glances back along the corridor, then down at the floor. "That's cool," he mutters.

  "I got us come cookies. Would you like one?"

  He steps into the room, shrugging off his knapsack. She holds the plate up and he takes three Milanos.

  "Wow," he says, "you got a lot of my pictures up here. Did you have all these up last week?"

  "I took down some of their dreadful watercolors so I have more room now. I like the portraits. They're very good."

  "How was your week?" he asks.

  Weirdly, the little brochure Ted got when he signed up for the volunteer program said this was the sort of question you weren't supposed to ask the residents, because usually their weeks did not vary and it was best to focus on positive things. Ted has decided this is a crock of shit and figures this woman has lived through a week as sure as anyone else. 206

  "Oh, it was just riveting, " Elizabeth says with a big smile.

  "Gladys Stein nearly expired in the midst of a bridge tournament. She was upset with Dickie Minter telling stories about Mussolini."

  He's learned it's okay to laugh at this stuff even if he doesn't get it.

  "And the food?" he asks.

  "Factory fresh."

  They chuckle together, friends enjoying their joke.

  "I kinda had this idea," Ted says. "I was thinking instead of me drawing today, we could go for a drive. Would you be into that?"

  Since her parents died, Elizabeth's old friend Ginny is the only one who takes her out, down to Plymouth Harbor or for a walk on Duxbury Beach, no more than twice a year.

  "That would be wonderful," she says.

  Donning the fur coat and hat her grandmother gave her as a wedding present, she leads Ted down to Mrs. Johnson's office. There are only voluntary residents at Plymouth Brewster; it is no mental hospital with locked wards, but a place where people come to live structured lives. Elizabeth has never been much trouble to anyone at the facility. As long as they are back before dinner, Mrs. Johnson says, it would be fine.

  " I U S E D T O drive a station wagon like this," she remarks as they pull onto a highway she has not seen before. "Has this road been here a long time?"

  "I guess like, yeah, since before I was born."

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  Elizabeth laughs. "Ginny doesn't want to upset me, you see. They tell her familiarity is a good thing, so she takes me on the old roads. It would make sense if I were senile, I suppose, but really it is quite interesting to see this road."

  Soon they will pave it all, every marsh and fen. The animals will die and we will die with them. How much must be destroyed before people are satisfied?

  She is quite an environmentalist for a seventeenth-century woman, Elizabeth thinks, but a hypocrite too, she tries telling herself: remember the diseases you brought, dear, remember the dead natives.

  You think you haven't profited from that? Hester stabs back.

  "I was thinking maybe you could help me out with something," Ted says. Elizabeth looks across the seat at him. His hair is a mess. He hunches forward over the steering wheel, racked with a worry she finds adorable. She is here in the car with him. No slowing paste in the brain. Seconds come one after the other.

  "By all means," she says.
"What can I do?"

  "Well see, there's this person--she's a girl. She goes to my school. And somebody told me it was her birthday soon . . ."

  "You want to buy her something."

  "Yeah," Ted says, relieved. "Yeah, exactly. But what?"

  "I'm charmed that you would ask my advice," she says. They pull off the first exit and into the parking lot of a giant mall, another place not ten miles from the Plymouth Brewster Elizabeth has never seen.

  "We will find you the perfect gift," she says, stepping 208

  from the car. "My mother was a great shopper. We would take the train down to New York and spend the afternoon picking out dresses at Bergdorf's and then we'd have tea at the Plaza and stay the night there and examine shoes in the morning."

  She barely recognizes the playful tone she hears in her voice.

  "I know a good piece of merchandise when I see it."

  "Cool."

  Elizabeth is able to dispense with the entirety of a store named T. J. Maxx in under five minutes. "Not us," she says, gliding into the sunlit atrium, amazed at how easy it is to be here among people.

  "What's her name?"

  "Lauren. But she's not exactly, at the moment, you know, like my girlfriend."

  "Ah-hah, I see. Yes. This information is helpful. Here we are, good old Lord & Taylor, I think this will do nicely."

  "Oh, yeah, and her family--they're rich. But what's cool is she didn't take a car from her parents, even though her stupid brother drives an SUV."

  "And does she live in a grand house?"

  "Yeah, it's pretty big. Down at the end of Winthrop Street, kinda near your old place. I've only driven by it a couple times."

  They arrive at accessories, Elizabeth fighting nervous excitement, recalling suddenly that the Lesters gave her a leather wallet for her wedding, embossed with her new initials. The Lesters, who came all the way from San Francisco and sat in the third row at Saint Andrew's Church, and danced at the club after dinner: the men in black tie or offi209 cer's dress, the women in chiffon or silk, glittering beneath the chandeliers, champagne on the porch, the sloping landscape of the golf course visible in the summer evening light, all of it just a bit more than her father could afford but what he and everyone wanted.

  "A wallet perhaps?" she asks. "Cordovan with a silver clasp?"

  "It looks kinda like my mother's wallet. I mean, she's got a cool wallet and all, but--"

  "Of course, you're right, we need something . . . contemporary."

  "Do you think it's stupid to buy her something? I mean, she hasn't even gone out with me."

  They pause briefly in luggage.

  "What is it about her, Ted, what captivates you?"

  "Well, she's only been at school since the beginning of the semester, so she has friends but not really a clique yet. And she's like an alterna-chick, you know, with her nose pierced, but real small, just a little stud, really tasteful, and her hair's short and she wears great clothes, I guess like Euro indy-pop clothes. But that's only part of it. I guess I just want to figure out what's in her head, you know. Something about her makes me want to figure that out."

  Hester disapproves mightily of the cosmetics department. Strumpets hawking vanity: this is what we have become. A month of humiliation wouldn't cleanse the body spiritual.

  "Days of humiliation went out a long time ago, deary,"

  Elizabeth mutters, "and besides, they suffer too," she reminds her old companion, sensing the fatigue in the smiles of 210

  the brightly clad women behind the shimmering counters. And shimmer they do, so fiercely Elizabeth wishes she had brought her sunglasses: the way the light hits the polished steel and glass, the glare of the tall orange display of a football player and bride, the picture of an ocean coming at her from the left, the saleswoman's plucked eyebrow rising.

  "Something for the holiday?"

  Elizabeth breathes.

  "Ted," she says, suddenly imploring the lights to dim,

  "why don't you explain to this nice lady."

  His cheeks flush red. "Well, ah, actually Lauren doesn't wear makeup."

  Hester has noticed a large sign on the counter announcing a Thanksgiving Day sale for something called Egoiste perfume. Above the picture of the man's naked torso there is a turkey in one corner and the cartoon of a pilgrim in the other.

  "Don't be silly," Elizabeth says, "it's just a bit of kitsch."

  "But I thought you said we'd get her something good,"

  Ted says.

  "Oh," Elizabeth replies, grabbing the nearest bar of lipstick, handing it to Ted. "How pretty that is, don't you think? I think it's pretty."

  "Ma'am, what are you doing?" the saleswoman asks.

  "Nothing, nothing, it's just that some people don't like this--" She has the sign now and is digging her fingers at the frame, trying to get at the poster, the sound of her fingernails extremely loud, the air all around beginning to hum.

  "Lady--you can't do that."

  "Stop shouting," she says.

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  "Mrs. Maynard," Ted says. "That's the store's display, maybe we should leave it there."

  "I know, Ted, I'm sorry, I agree, it's just that it's a piece of trash and it offends people and it needs to be gotten rid of, even though we all know Thanksgiving is a nineteenth-century invention, so why she should object"--Elizabeth has it now and begins ripping--"I don't know, I guess the whole ego thing, just too much of it--"

  "I'm calling security," the cosmetics lady announces in a voice octaves lower than a moment before.

  "Come on," Ted says, taking Elizabeth's arm even as her hands tear the glossy paper into ever smaller pieces. He's afraid she'll start crying like she did the day a few weeks back when he showed her the picture he'd drawn of her. He gets them quickly out of the store and onto the escalator. She's finished ripping, no more poster left. She stares forward now in what appears to be dread. He's still got the lipstick in his hand but figures it doesn't have a detector strip so pockets it as they head for the exit to the parking lot.

  Crossing to the car, Mrs. Maynard still resting her hand on his arm, he thinks of his mother, who sits alone upstairs all afternoon, all morning too, coming down only for dinner, barely saying a word, her face almost dead, and how his father and brother say nothing. None of them ever talk about her when they go to the movies on the weekends, or when the relatives come and she stays in her room, or when Ted has a play at school and all week she says tomorrow, I'll come tomorrow, and on Saturday night can't look him in the eye to say she won't make it. At first, Ted didn't want to come to Plymouth 212

  Brewster as a volunteer. Enough already with the fucking mentally ill, for Christ's sake, enough, but something made him come, and then Mrs. Maynard, when she asked him to draw, and he got to sit there and draw and have her ask him questions about the books he was reading and what he wanted to do, and how his car sounded in the winter, and what oil he used, and how much he'd weighed when he was born, just to sit there and be asked a hundred stupid questions while he drew pictures: it was all somehow worth it.

  "I'm sorry," Elizabeth calls out in a high-pitched voice as they get in the car.

  "Don't worry," he insists, clenching the steering wheel.

  "Don't worry."

  Mrs. Johnson sees them from her office as they enter the lobby. "Oh dear," she says. "What happened?"

  "Nothing," Ted replies. "We went to a store, that's all. Mrs. Maynard, she decided she wanted to leave--nothing's the matter."

  "Elizabeth?" the director asks. "Are you all right?"

  She nods. "You must be tired," she says, turning to Ted.

  "You should go home and sleep."

  "Sure," he says.

  "Yes," Mrs. Johnson agrees, taking Elizabeth's arm, "it's time for your nap."

  " D U U U D E , " S T E V I E P I P E R calls out that night, "check this out." The bottom of a plastic gallon milk container has been cut off with a bread knife, a foil screen placed over its mouth, 213

  th
e Davidsons' kitchen sink filled to the brim, the bottomless container lowered into the water, the pot lit on the screen, Stevie now slowly raising the handle, the motion drawing smoke down into the milk jug, which comes to hold an immense, dense cloud of marijuana. Stevie removes the foil, Ted puts his lips over the jug's mouth, following it suddenly downward as Stevie plunges the handle into the water, the air pressure forcing the huge mass of smoke straight into Ted's lungs, sending him reeling backward from the sink, against the corner of the granite countertop, into Heather Trackler, his feet catching on a half-full double bowl of cat food and milk, sending him onto the black-and-white tile, smoke billowing from his mouth, his butt hitting the strip heater with a harsh metallic crunch.

  "Domestic FUCKING bliss!" Stevie cries, throwing his arms in the air as though he's just crossed the finishing line of some Olympic event conducted entirely in his own head. He begins rejigging the hydraulic mechanism for another round.

  "Oh my God, you guys," Heather says, wiping Sprite off her cashmere sweater. "People live here."

  "You know what?" Stevie says. "I bet they fucking do."

  Ted nods apologetically, his mind beginning to sail. Lauren walks into the kitchen. He looks up at her from the floor, his hand splayed in a pool of milk, cat food all around him. He raises his hand to wave, feeling liquid drip down his arm.

  "Looks like you're having fun," she says.

  He experiences an overwhelming sense of gratitude that she is still wearing the orange cardigan.

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  "Duude. You gotta get up outta that food over there, man, don't let it waylay you, don't get detained by it."

  With Stevie's encouragement, Ted rises and suddenly he and Lauren are face-to-face, as if conversation were now supposed to ensue. Stevie gazes at the two of them and with the wily eye of a stoner clocks their little tension. "So do you--," he begins, but unable to manage, dissolves into a fit of laughter. They watch him because he is something to watch that is not each other. "So do you come here often?" he finally gets out, folding over in hysterics, slapping the counter, weeping.