She had been having a rough time of it and thought about suicide
sometimes, but suicide was so corny and you had to be careful in
this milieu which was eleventh grade because two of her classmates
had committed suicide the year before and between them they left
twenty-four suicide notes and had become just a joke. They had left
the notes everywhere and they were full of misspellings and
pretensions. Theirs had been a false show. Then this year a girl had
taken an overdose of Tylenol which of course did nothing at all, but
word of it got out and when she came back to school her locker had
been broken into and was full of Tylenol, just jammed with it. Like,
you moron. Under the circumstances, it was amazing that Helen
thought of suicide at all. It was just not cool. You only made a
fool of yourself. And the parents of these people were mocked too.
They were considered to be suicide-enhancing, evil and weak, and
they were ignored and barely tolerated. This was a small town. Helen
didn’t want to make it any harder on her mother than circumstances
already had.
Her mother was dying and she wanted to die at home, which Helen
could understand, she understood it perfectly, she’d say, but
actually she understood it less well than that and it had become
clear it wasn’t even what needed to be understood. Nothing needed to
be understood.
There was a little brass bell on her mother’s bedside table. It was
the same little brass bell that had been placed at Helen’s command
when she had been a little girl, sick with some harmless little
kid’s sickness. She had just to reach out her hand and ring the bell
and her mother would come or even her father. Her mother never used
the bell now and kept it there as sort of a joke, actually. Her
mother was not utterly confined to bed. She moved around a bit at
night and placed herself, or was placed by others, in other rooms
during the day. Occasionally one of the women who had been hired to
care forher during the day would even take her for a drive, out to
see the icicles or go to the bank window. Her mother’s name was
Lenore and sometimes in the night her mother would call out this
name, her own, “Lenore!” in a strong, urgent voice and Helen in her
own room would shudder and cry a little.
This had been going on for a while. In the summer Lenore had been
diagnosed and condemned but she kept bouncing back, as the doctors
put it, until recently. The daisies that bloomed in the fall down by
the storm-split elm had come and gone, even the little kids at
Halloween. Thanksgiving had passed without comment and it would be
Christmas soon. Lenore was ignoring it. The boxes of balls and
lights were in the cellar, buried deep. Helen had made the horrible
mistake of asking her what she wanted for Christmas one nightand
Lenore had said, “Are you stupid?” Then she said, “Oh, I don’t mean
to be so impatient, it’s the medicine, my voice doesn’t even sound
right. Does my voice sound right? Get me something you’ll want
later. A piece of jewelry or something. Do you want the money for
it?” She meant this sincerely.
At the beginning they had talked eagerly like equals. This was more
important than a wedding, this preparation. They even laughed like
girls together remembering things. They remembered when Helen was a
little girl before the divorce and they were all driving somewhere
and Helen’s father was stopped for speeding and Lenore wanted her
picture taken with the policeman and Helen had taken it. “Wasn’t
that mean!” Lenore said to Helen.
When Lenore died, Helen would go down to Florida and live with her
father. “I’ve never had the slightest desire to visit Florida,”
Lenore would say. “You can have it.”
At the beginning, death was giving them the opportunity to be
interesting. This was something special. There was only one crack at
this. But then they lost sight of it somehow. It became a lesser
thing, more terrible. Its meaning crumbled. They began waiting for
it. Terrible, terrible. Lenore had friends but they called now, they
didn’t come over so much. “Don’t come over,” Lenore would tell them,
“it wears me out.” Little things started to go wrong with the house,
leaks and lights. The bulb in the kitchen would flutter when the
water was turned on. Helen grew fat for some reason. The dog, their
dog, began to change. He grew shy. “Do you think he’s acting funny?”
Lenore asked Helen.
She did not tell Helen that the dog had begun to growl at her. It
was a secret growl, he never did it in front of anyone else. He had
taken to carrying one of her slippers around with him. He was almost
never without it. He cherished her slipper.
“Do you remember when I put Grecian Formula on his muzzle because he
turned gray so young?” Lenore said. “He was only about a year old
and began to turn gray? The things I used to do. The way I spent my
time.”
But now she did not know what to do with time at all. It seemed more
expectant than ever. One couldn’t satisfy it, one could never do
enough for it.
She was so uneasy.
Lenore had a dream in which she wasn’t dying at all. Someone else
had died. People had told her this over and over again. And now they
were getting tired of reminding her, impatient.
She had a dream of eating bread and dying. Two large loaves. Pounds
of it, still warm from the oven. She ate it all, she was so hungry,
starving! But then she died. It was the bread. It was too hot, was
the explanation. There were people in her room but she was not among
them.
When she woke, she could feel the hot, gummy, almost liquid bread in
her throat, scalding it. She lay in bed on her side, her dark eyes
open. It was four o’clock in the morning. She swung her legs to the
floor. The dog growled at her. He slept in her room with her slipper
but he growled as she made her way past him. Sometimes self-pity
would rise within her and she would stare at the dog, tears in her
eyes, listening to him growl. The more she stared, the more
sustained was his soft growl.
She had a dream about a tattoo. This was a pleasant dream. She was
walking away and she had the most beautiful tattoo covering her
shoulders and back, even the back of her legs. It was unspeakably
fine.
Helen had a dream that her mother wanted a tattoo. She wanted to be
tattooed all over, a full custom bodysuit, but no one would do it.
Helen woke protesting this, grunting and cold. She had kicked off
her blankets. She pulled them up and curled tightly beneath them.
There was a boy at school who had gotten a tattoo and now they
wouldn’t let him play basketball.
In the morning Lenore said, “Would you get a tattoo with me? We
could do this together. I don’t think it’s creepy,” she added. “I
think you’ll be glad later. A pretty one, just small somewhere. What
do you think?” The more she considered it, the more it seemed the
perfect thing to do. What else could be done? She’d already given
Helen her wedding ring.
“I’ll get him to come over here, to the house. I’ll arrange it,”
Lenore said. Helen couldn’t defend herself against this notion. She
still felt sleepy, she was always sleepy. There was something wrong
with her mother’s idea but not much.
But Lenore could not arrange it. When Helen returned from school,
her mother said, “It can’t be done. I’m so upset and I’ve lost
interest so I’ll give you the short version. I called … I must have
made twenty calls. At last I got someone to speak to me. His name
was Smokin’ Joe and he was a hundred miles away but sounded as
though he’d do it. And I asked him if there was any place he didn’t
tattoo, and he said faces, dicks and hands.”
“Mom!” Helen said. Her face reddened.
“And I asked him if there was anyone he wouldn’t tattoo, and he said
drunks and the dying. So that was that.”
“But you didn’t have to tell him. You won’t have to tell him,” Helen
said.
“That’s true,” Lenore said dispiritedly. Then she looked angrily at
Helen. “Are you crazy? Sometimes I think you’re crazy!”
“Mom!” Helen said, crying. “I want you to do what you want.”
“This was my idea, mine!” Lenore said. The dog gave a high nervous
bark. “Oh dear,” Lenore said, “I’m speaking too loudly.” She smiled
at him as if to say how clever both of them were to realize this.
That night Lenore could not sleep. There were no dreams, nothing.
High clouds swept slowly past the window. She got up and went into
the living room, to the desk there. She looked with distaste at all
the objects in this room. There wasn’t one thing here she’d want to
take with her to the grave, not one. The dog had shuffled out of the
bedroom with her and now lay at her feet, a slipper in his mouth, a
red one with a little bow. She wanted to make note of a few things,
clarify some things. She took out a piece of paper. The furnace
turned on and she heard something moving behind the walls. “Enjoy it
while you can,” she said. She sat at the desk, her back very
straight, waiting for something. After a while she looked at the
dog. “Give me that,” she said. “Give me that slipper.” He growled
but did not leave her side. She took a pen and wrote on the paper,
When I go, the dog goes. Promise me this. She left it out for Helen.
Then she thought, That dog is the dumbest one I’ve ever had. I don’t
want him with me. She was amazed she could still think like this.
She tore up the piece of paper. “Lenore!” she cried, and wrung her
hands. She wanted herself. Her mind ran stumbling, panting, through
dark twisted woods.
When Helen got up she would ask her to make some toast. Toast would
taste good. Helen would press the Good Morning letters on the bread.
It was a gadget, like a cookie cutter. When the bread was toasted,
the words were pressed down into it and you dribbled honey into
them.
In the morning Helen did this carefully, as she always had. They sat
together at the kitchen table and ate the toast. Sleet struck the
windows. Helen looked at her toast dreamily, the golden letters
against the almost black. They both liked their toast almost black.
Lenore felt peaceful. She even felt a little better. But it was a
cruelty to feel a little better, a cruelty to Helen.
“Turn on the radio,” Lenore said, “and find out if they’re going to
cancel school.” If Helen stayed home today she would talk to her.
Important things would be said. Things that would still matter years
and years from now.
Callers on a talk show were speaking about wolves. “There should be
wolf control,” someone said, “not wolf worship.”
“Oh, I hate these people,” Helen said.
“Are you a wolf worshipper?” her mother asked. “Watch out.”
“I believe they have the right to live too,” Helen said fervently.
Then she was sorry. Everything she said was wrong. She moved the
dial on the radio. School would not be canceled. They never canceled
it.
“There’s a stain on that blouse,” her mother said. “Why do your
clothes always look so dingy? You should buy some new clothes.”
“I don’t want any new clothes,” Helen said.
“You can’t wear mine, that’s not the way to think. I’ve got to get
rid of them. Maybe that’s what I’ll do today. I’ll go through them
with Jean. It’s Jean who comes today, isn’t it?”
“I don’t want your clothes!”
“Why not? Not even the sweaters?”
Helen’s mouth trembled.
“Oh, what are we going to do!” Lenore said. She clawed at her
cheeks. The dog barked.
“Mom, Mom,” Helen said.
“We’ve got to talk, I want to talk,” Lenore said. What would happen
to Helen, her little girl …
Helen saw the stain her mother had noticed on the blouse. Where had
it come from? It had just appeared. She would change if she had
time.
“When I die, I’m going to forget you,” Lenore began. This was so
obvious, this wasn’t what she meant. “The dead just forget you. The
most important things, all the loving things, everything we …” She
closed her eyes, then opened them with effort. “I want to put on
some lipstick today,” she said. “If I don’t, tell me when you come
home.”
Helen left just in time to catch the bus. Some of her classmates
stood by the curb, hooded, hunched. It was bitter out.
In the house, Lenore looked at the dog. There were only so many dogs
in a person’s life and this was the last one in hers. She’d like to
kick him. But he had changed when she’d gotten sick, he hadn’t been
like this before. He was bewildered. He didn’t like
it-death-either. She felt sorry for him. She went back into her
bedroom and he followed her with the slipper.
At nine, the first in a number of nurse’s aides and companions
arrived. By three it was growing dark again. Helen returned before
four.
“The dog needs a walk,” her mother said.
“It’s so icy out, Mom, he’ll cut the pads of his feet.”
“He needs to go out!” her mother screamed. She wore a little
lipstick and sat in a chair wringing her hands.
Helen found the leash and coaxed the dog to the door. He looked out
uneasily into the wet cold blackness. They moved out into it a few
yards to a bush he had killed long before and he dribbled a few
drops of urine onto it. They walked a little farther, across the
dully shining yard toward the street. It was still, windless. The
air made a hissing sound. “Come on,” Helen said, “don’t you want to
do something?” The dog walked stoically along. Helen’s eyes began to
water with the cold. Her mother had said, “I want Verdi played at
the service, Scriabin, no hymns.” Helen had sent away for some
recordings. How else could it be accomplished, the Verdi, the
Scriabin … Once she had called her father and said, “What should we
do for Mom?”
“Where have you been!” her mother said when they got back. “My God,
I thought you’d been hit by a truck.”
They ate supper, macaroni and cheese, something one of the women had
prepared. Lenore ate without speaking and then looked at the empty
plate.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from Honored Guest
by Joy Williams
Copyright © 2004 by Joy Williams.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Knopf
Copyright © 2004
Joy Williams
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-679-44647-8
