We may as well begin with the ride home.
It is Christmas night, 1998. The ending of a day that was not
unseasonable, except in its failure to fulfill the sentimental wish
for spur-of-the moment snow. The sky: gray; the air: cold, with a
high of 33 degrees Fahrenheit. Palpable winter but not winter at its
worst. Fewer of the poor than usual died on that day of causes
traceable to the weather. Perhaps the relatively unimpressive
showing of weather-related deaths was due to the relative clemency
of the air, the relative windlessness, the relative benevolence that
could be counted on by the poor to last, perhaps, eight days,
December twenty-fourth through the first of January.
Ten o’clock Christmas night. Four friends drive south on the way
home after a day of celebration. They have had Christmas dinner at
the house of other friends, a weekend and vacation house in the
mountains north of New York. One couple sits in the front of a brown
Honda Accord, the other in the back. They are all in their fifties.
All of their children are on other continents: one in Brazil,
working on an irrigation project; one in Japan, teaching English;
one in Ireland studying the Irish language at Trinity College. They
were determined not to have a melancholy Christmas, and for the most
part they have not.
They leave Maria Meyers off first since she lives in the most
northerly part of the city or, as they would say, the farthest
uptown.
She opens the door of her apartment on the sixth or top floor of a
building on the corner of La Salle Street and Claremont Avenue, a
block west of Broadway, a block south of 125th Street, on the
margins of Harlem, at the tip end of the force field of Columbia
University. Before she takes off her brown boots lined with tan fur,
her green down coat, her rose-colored scarf, her wool beret, also
rose, she sees the red light of her answering machine.
Her heart lifts. She reads the red light as a message from her
daughter, who has not, after all, forgotten to call on Christmas.
She probably thought her mother would be home all day; Christmas has
never been spent anywhere but at home.
In the darkness, seeing with clarity one thing only, the blinking
red light that means her daughter’s voice, Maria knows that when she
flips the light switch she will be illumining a place nothing like
the house she grew up in. Purposely, deliberately unlike. Walls
painted orange-yellow. Woven fabrics from Guatemala, carved wooden
angels-green and pink-from Poland, and from Cambodia a tin demon,
her protector.
She drapes her coat, her hat, her scarf over the chair covered with
a slipcover the color of a green apple. She sits on the footrest in
front of it, on woven triangles of magenta, cobalt, rust. She takes
off her boots, which made her feet so uncomfortably overheated in
the car. She is greedy for the sound of her daughter’s voice, her
greed a tooth that bites down hard. Her stocking feet are slippery
on the pine floor. She’d been more hurt than she wanted to admit
that Pearl hadn’t returned her call, hadn’t made contact before she
left for the countryside. But that was what she wanted, wasn’t it? A
daughter who did not feel obligated, who felt free to pursue her
life, her interests, her pleasures, her adventures. She’d imagined
Pearl sitting in a basement kitchen around a table of students
toasting one another with cheap red wine, filling plate after plate
with spaghetti they had made together. Or maybe it wasn’t spaghetti;
she didn’t know what cheap meal Irish students chose to celebrate
their liberation from the domestic cliche of family Christmas. Pearl
had said she would be with friends. No one’s family? Maria had said.
“I don’t know anyone’s family here,” Pearl had said, and Maria had
thought, Well, that is being young.
But it is not her daughter’s voice she hears on the answering
machine. It is a strange voice, a woman’s voice, a voice with a
southern accent.
“This is the State Department in Washington. We’re looking for Maria
Meyers, the mother of Pearl Meyers. This is an emergency. You can
call toll-free.”
E-M-E-R-G-E-N-C-Y
The word makes Maria believe she has lived her life all wrong. The
familiar walls, the furniture of the apartment are threatening to
her, offer her no comfort.
State Department. The official world. Run by men like her father.
And where is her father now? She wants her father, dead twenty-four
years, dying thousands of miles away from her, estranged. She says
the word: Father. Then tries to unsay it. She tells herself to be
calm. She breathes in and out, the breathing technique she learned
for giving birth. She focuses her dislike on the voice on the
machine-what kind of voice is that for the State Department?-and
the name of the person she is supposed to call: Lynne Craig. Lynne
Craig?
She tells herself she has never liked anyone named Lynne. What kind
of name is that for a diplomat? If you were expecting a serious
future for your daughter, would you name her Lynne?
Her daughter’s name has always been something she was proud of. She
always relished people’s surprise when they heard it.
What’s the baby’s name?
Pearl.
A disappointed look. Wanting to say, That’s no name for a baby,
people would say, “Unusual.”
“It’s my mother’s name,” Maria would say.
Then people would say, “Oh, yes, of course.” Forgiving her for
something.
A toll-free number. As if paying the toll would prevent someone’s
making a call to the State Department when they’d been told it was
an emergency. She tries to imagine a person for whom a toll-free
number would, in such circumstances, make a difference. She cannot.
She loses confidence in the ability of someone who would invent such
a procedure to save her child. This frightens her: she cannot trust
the people who are said to be in charge. And, unusually for her,
Maria does not know what to do.
She dials the number. The tone beeps. She tries to imagine the State
Department. She sees official buildings but they could be anywhere,
in any city, at any time since the mid-nineteenth century. She sees
her young self and her friends demonstrating in front of such
buildings in the 1960s. In those dark years, the people in the
buildings had been the enemy. Now they are her only hope. Therefore
they are dear to her. Therefore she hates them. They know something,
possibly unbearable, that she does not know. Something about her
daughter. Something she needs to know.
She gets, on the fifth ring, Lynne Craig.
“Mrs. Meyers-”
“It’s Ms. I’m not married.”
This is the kind of woman Maria is. She has heard the word
emergency, and yet she insists on not being misnamed. She is not
married; she wants to make that clear. No husband for a second
opinion. She is a person who believes it is one of her strengths:
making things clear.
“Yes, well, Ms. Meyers, ma’am, we have a bit of a situation over
there in Dublin. A little bit of an unusual situation that your
daughter’s gotten herself involved in.”
“Is she all right?”
“Well, we hope she will be.”
“What exactly do you mean by that?”
“Well, as I said, your daughter’s gotten herself into a little bit
of an unusual situation. She’s chained herself to the flagpole in
front of the American embassy in Dublin. She says she hasn’t eaten
in six weeks, and she’s refusing food and drink.”
“Why is she doing it?” Maria knows she must try to understand. If
there is a logical progression, it will be comprehensible.
Therefore, some action can be begun.
“Well, at first, Ms. Meyers, because it’s Dublin and because of the
particular situation over there with the Irish politics and all, we
supposed she was involved with the IRA. You know, there’s a group
that’s very opposed to the peace treaty that’s being worked out,
very vocal about their opposition, more than vocal in some cases.
But this doesn’t seem to be the case with your daughter-IRA
involvement, I mean. She wrote a statement that she left on the
ground by where she’s lying. It’s a bit confusing, Ms. Meyers. We
think she’s doing what she’s doing because some young boy died and
she considers herself responsible. And then she’s in favor of the
peace treaty; she says her act is in witness to it. We can’t make
much sense of this, and she won’t talk. Now she’s written a letter
to you and another to a Mr. Kasperman. It says personal and
confidential, but if you were willing we could read it to you now.”
“She’s getting medical help?”
“Yes.”
“In that case, we must respect her wishes. If the letters are
confidential, it means they’re for our eyes only. Mr. Kasperman is
an old friend of the family. Just take the proper medical steps and
wait for me to get there.”
“Yes, ma’am, whatever you say. Does she have any history of mental
instability?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, Ms. Meyers, as this is a kind of unusual situation, we’d have
to ask that kind of question. Any political involvement?”
“As long as I’ve known her she’s been only marginally aware of
politics. She’s interested in language. She’s studying linguistics.
She’s in Ireland to study the Irish language.”
“Yes, ma’am. Well, you see, she has some connections there that are
of some concern. There’s a young man, a kind of involvement, who has
interests, connections, with certain radical groups. But they all
seem to disavow any connection with what your daughter’s doing. They
say it’s just the isolated act of a disturbed individual.”
“My daughter is not disturbed. She’s in danger, and I’d like to know
what you’re doing about it.”
“Well, right at the moment, ma’am, we’re trying to be in dialogue
with her. But she doesn’t seem very receptive. I’ll tell you the
truth, ma’am: she’s very weak, and we’re afraid of injuring her if
she resists when we try to remove the chains by force. She’s chained
her wrists, you see. So we’re sort of hoping she’ll remove the
chains herself.”
“Isn’t it cold there?”
“Yes, ma’am, we have some concerns about that. They seem to be
taking measures; I think some heaters have been set up. But our
greatest concern is that she won’t drink. You know, they can survive
this kind of thing without eating, but the drinking’s crucial. We’re
worried about dehydration. We’ve set up heaters around her so she’s
warm. She can’t stop us doing that.”
“Then get the chains off without hurting her.”
“That seems to be the problem right now. She’s resisting us pretty
strongly there. We’re trying to avoid force. Of course, if she gets
much weaker, she won’t be able to resist.”
Maria doesn’t know what to hope for: that her daughter will weaken
enough so she can’t resist or that she will retain her strength. How
is it possible to wish that your child will weaken? Yet she knows
that is what she must do, if only she knew how to form the wish. She
has never had this experience before; she has always known exactly
what to wish for. She has often believed that her wishes would be
granted or that, if not, she would be able to live with their having
been refused. But now she does not know how she must live. Or how
she would live if anything should happen to her daughter. Her
daughter who is in danger now.
“We were hoping you might have some kind of leverage if you were
on-site.”
“I’ll be on the next plane.”
“I’ve taken the liberty of booking you a seat; I’m afraid there’s
only first class left on the six p.m. flight tomorrow. And I’ve
taken the liberty of booking you a hotel, the Tara Arms. Any cab at
the airport will know it. Of course, you’ll want to stop by the
embassy first. Speak to Miss Caroline Wolf.”
Maria wants to vomit, as if, opening her mouth, the horror of what
she’s heard might spill out as in a medieval allegory: a sinner
spewing out devils, sin.
But she can’t waste time thinking of herself as a figure of
allegory. Her daughter is in danger. Her daughter is doing something
she doesn’t understand. She can’t even form a picture. Why can’t
they remove the chains? Maria is an impatient woman, and not being
able to understand has always made her feel trapped, suffocated. She
wants to claw against this incomprehension. She wants to make Lynne
Craig say something that will allow her to understand. So, although
she doesn’t want to hear her voice anymore, she asks another
question. In case it will unlock something.
“First class?” she says.
“I’m afraid that’s all that’s available. The flight leaves JFK at
six p.m. tomorrow night.”
Tomorrow night. Six p.m. First class. Thousands of dollars. Nineteen
hours.
She packs her bag.
Maria waits until midnight, when it is 6 a.m. in Rome, to call
Joseph Kasperman, her oldest friend. Joseph Kasperman, to whom Pearl
addressed the other letter.
And now I will tell you the story of Joseph and Maria. Your first
thought might be that they are lovers. Having learned they are not,
you might imagine they are blood relations: perhaps brother and
sister. They are neither lovers nor blood relatives, they are
friends. More than friends. Neither has a memory of life without the
other. And what is a life without the memory of a life?
Joseph’s mother was housekeeper to Maria and her father, Maria’s
mother having died before Maria was two years old and Joseph’s
father having abandoned him and his mother before Joseph reached his
first birthday. Two half-orphans, brought up together: a tie not of
blood or sex, a tie of friendship. Friendship from the start of
memory. Joseph cannot forget that he is the son of a servant. Maria
almost never thinks of it.
Maria has a little Italian, enough to ask for Mr. Kasperman in the
hotel Santa Chiara, where she has stayed many times, first with her
father, then with her father and Joseph, then with Joseph and his
wife, Devorah, most recently with Joseph and Pearl. Now Joseph is
there alone. Devorah and her father are dead. She will not allow
herself to think that Pearl might be dying.
Joseph answers the phone, and she tells him what Lynne Craig said.
How she dislikes Lynne Craig, how she dislikes the State Department
and its toll-free number, how she dislikes having to depend on the
State Department for anything. Particularly anything important.
“Why is she doing it?” Joseph asks.
“It’s something about a boy who died, whose death she feels
responsible for. And something about being a witness to the
importance of the peace treaty.”
(Continues…)
Excerpted from Pearl
by Mary Gordon
Copyright © 2005 by Mary Gordon.
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.
Pantheon
Copyright © 2005
Mary Gordon
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-375-42315-X
