The Dying of the Light

  He realized that this was her decision. It was her body, and her reasons lay so deep that he could never reach them, much less change her mind. She was forty-one years old. She could have this child.

  But she lived in a world where propriety was everything, and to step outside the bounds of what was acceptable was death, true death. This is where their sexes divided them. She was caring not just for her place in society but for the history of hundreds of years, for the stern gazes of the portraits that hung everywhere in the house, the governors, the signers of documents, the upright and the righteous of the long line that led to here, to her, to this moment that would remain forever secret. What she was doing was not only her choice but also her duty. That’s why she didn’t cry. That’s why her face took on the waxen look of a death mask.

  Because she must, she had to, in her heart of hearts, want this child, which would at least be born out of love, unlike Ash, who was born of animosity put aside in favor of that same sense of duty. Ash, who was the end of the line, Ash, who had a beautiful seat on the back of a horse, who could take the jumps, who could shoot a turkey from fifty feet with one shot, who could drink massive quantities of bourbon with the men up and down the river who lived in the other great houses, Mount Airy, Blandfield, and never lose his composure, never put a foot wrong or stray from his perfect manners or lose his perfect posture. Ash, who was a homosexual, a fact that, if known, would remove him completely from the society into which he had been born, in which his many virtues would become useless in light of his one singular vice.

  They drove up to the Medical Arts Building on Cary Street. The sun was just rising. They had to wait half an hour before Howland’s office opened. Anxious and sad, they took a walk, watching the city come alive. They were so obvious in the Rolls, that behemoth of a car, and they wanted to put as much distance between themselves and it as they could. Gibby took Diana’s hand in his, and they walked.

  “We’ve never walked on a sidewalk, like normal people,” said Gibby, kissing her gloved hand.

  “It’s nice, isn’t it?”

  “If you were willing to give up Saratoga, and move to Richmond, we could marry and do this every day forever.”

  She stopped on the street and screamed at him. “You don’t understand a thing, do you? Not one damned thing. You don’t understand what it is to live in the house your family has lived in for five generations.”

  He shouted, “Life is not some ossified history lesson. Life is bodies touching, and sweat and blood and hope. And digging in the dirt and, yes, going to the beach in the summer and seeing Niagara Falls and going to Europe and not staying in the Ritz even if you can afford it. There is always hope. Life is change. From the rocks to our bodies to the houses we leave behind. Let it all fall down.”

  “You’re an idiot! You don’t understand anything! That house is considered to be one of the most beautiful houses in the country. People come from all over to see it. We don’t let them in. They wander the grounds, like deer. Important things happened there. The country, the United States of America, was invented in that sitting room. My life’s duty is to take care of it and embellish it as best I can.”

  “Let Ash have it and walk away.”

  “And where would I go?”

  “We go. Where would we go? It’s my child too, you know. Never ever forget that. We could go anywhere. The grandest house in Richmond, if you want. Or New York or London. And there we could raise our child.”

  “There is no child. Not now. Not yet. There is only the tiniest idea of a child, and it’s inside my body, and I want it to come out and that is my decision and you can’t stop me.”

  She started sobbing and collapsed into his arms, almost invisible wrapped in his camel-hair coat. She could not control her tears, and there was no way to make it work, no sense fighting. So they paced, their hearts secret, their voices mute, drawing their coats around them, their sorrow deep and piercing, until it was time to see Howland. When she pulled away, her face was like carved marble.

  The office had just opened, and she was the first patient to enter. She walked up to the receptionist, a crisp woman in a blue suit, and asked to see the doctor. “He’s very busy,” the receptionist said, “chock-full, but I’ll ask him if he’ll fit you in right away before the first appointment, Mrs. Copperton.”

  “Cooke,” said Diana.

  “Oh, you changed it back,” said the receptionist. “Probably for the best. Be right back.” She was gone less than a minute before Dr. Howland’s office opened, and the receptionist motioned her to come in.

  “Do you want me to come?” Gibby asked.

  “Absolutely not,” Diana said, and she went into the office.

  “How nice to see you again, Diana,” said the doctor. “Your next appointment isn’t for a few months. So there must be something wrong. What’s up?”

  He was a big man, with big hands, which always made her dread her visits to him, and he was one of those men who, in his late sixties, had stopped trimming his eyebrows, so he had full bushy wings of white hair where his eyebrows should be, above spotless wire-rimmed glasses. She had been afraid of him since her first visit when she was twelve, but he was the gynecologist of choice to all the finest families in Richmond. She found him repellent, and hated for him to get his face close to hers.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “How wonderful! I always love to help bring a new life into this world.”

  “I can’t. I won’t have this baby.”

  Then she panicked, and tears began to course down her cheeks, running her rouge into a mess.

  “Of course you’ll have the baby. You’re just scared.”

  “I’m not scared at all. I’m not having another baby. I have no husband. There is no father.”

  “Of course there’s a father. Marry him.”

  “He’s of no consequence. This is my decision. I won’t have this child.”

  He turned stern and put his face, now hateful, close to hers. “Then why come to me?”

  “I want to get rid of it.” She couldn’t even say the dreaded word. Abortion.

  “You know I won’t do that, both because the law forbids it and because of my own morals.”

  “Then what am I to do?”

  “I pity you, and I respect you. I’ve treated every member of your family since long before you were born. But I cannot, will not, help you. You’re not the first woman to come to me with this . . . problem. And I have done the only thing I can do to help.

  “I will make one call for you. One. Do exactly as I say. Go stand on the steps of the museum. A man will come. His name is Larry. After that, you’re in his hands. You need to have five hundred dollars in cash in your pocket. That’s all.”

  “Thank you.” She fought the tears that hung in the corners of her eyes, and got up to go. As she reached the door, Dr. Howland called after her gently.

  “You understand, to my sorrow, you are no longer my patient. I’m old. I don’t understand these modern morals. I can’t treat you anymore. This secret will go with me to the grave, of that you can be sure. I owe you that.”

  “I understand. Thank you for all you’ve done for me, for the family.”

  “It was my pleasure and my honor. Good day.”

  Gibby was tender as he put on her coat, as he led her to the elevator, his hand under her elbow. He said nothing, just listened closely to her instructions so she wouldn’t have to repeat them. As he drove, she would point to the left or right, to indicate how to get where they were going. And then they arrived at the deserted museum steps. The car slipped quietly into place. Gibby kept the car running, so it stayed warm. Neither spoke. There was an inescapable sense about it all. The sense of an ending.

  28

  THE WIND WAS blowing hard, a cold wind in a big open space. Gibby sat in the car discreetly twenty yards down the street. Diana was grateful she’d chosen to bring the fur, even though she had thought it ostentatious. They sat in front of the museum where she had
spent so many happy hours as a child, her mother’s hand holding hers as she explained the blocks of color and light, pictures of grand and ghostly ladies and strong, ruddy military men, letting her linger over the opulent collection of Fabergé eggs, which needed no explanation. She longed to be that little girl again, start over. When she thought about it, her life had not turned out well. Those enraged years at Farmington, the husband who wore her like a diamond signet ring on his pinkie, fake family crest and all, the son who had literally been lifted out of her arms, just as she was getting to know him, the long years of solitude in which her only purpose seemed to be to watch her parents die, and now this, this unholy mess. She had chosen a lover over her son, and now, no matter how discreet she was, how sensible Gibby was, this would get out, get around, and then the house would fall down, fall down after two hundred years, one of the grandest houses in America.

  Guilt is the thing that eats your heart, and then the rest of you, until the sun of your life is eclipsed and you’re nothing but shade.

  A black Packard pulled up right in front of her. It had some definite age on it. A man got out, and all he said was, “Larry.” Larry also had some mileage. The thinnest of overcoats blew around his shoulders, the collar standing up around his bull head. He hadn’t seen a razor in a week.

  She walked down the steps, legs wobbling just a little, and got into the car. Larry pulled away. “You got the money?” She handed it over to him.

  “You don’t have to count it.”

  “Wasn’t going to.”

  He took out a scarf and gave it to her. “Tie this tightly around your eyes. It’s silk,” he said, with a touch of braggadocio.

  She carefully folded the scarf, which was silk only in Larry’s dreams, and tied it around her eyes. In the sudden darkness, she no longer had to look at the grease stains and cigarette burns on the car seat, but she smelled it.

  It smelled like fear.

  Not just her fear, which was palpable, but the fear of the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of women who had ridden in the back of this car, blind to everything passing. The fear of women who were too young, or married with lovers on the side, or married with brutal husbands, the fear of all the women who suddenly didn’t know what to do with their bodies, who felt betrayed and in danger, who, for the youngest of them, might never have children again. The fear of the women doomed to living with a secret when their husbands asked how five hundred dollars had disappeared from the bank account. The fear of women who would live with a secret all their lives, who would never be free again, if they lived.

  “What do you do with the bodies?”

  “What bodies?”

  “Well, some must die. It must happen.”

  “Don’t talk.”

  “Do you have a cigarette?”

  “I wouldn’t have figured.”

  “You figured wrong.”

  He pulled a Camel from his coat pocket, lit it and handed it back over the seat. “Now, shut up.”

  She did as she was told, just sat and smoked with her trembling hands, as the big car rolled on, first on smooth streets, then on cobbled streets, until it finally came to a stop.

  “Don’t take off your blindfold until I tell you. There are stairs. Sixteen stairs. I’ll help you.” So greasy Larry helped Diana, whose name he didn’t even know, through the door that he unlocked and then another door, also locked, and up the sixteen stairs, a landing, another locked door, and into a very warm room where he removed the blindfold at last.

  It was an immaculate room that must have once been a kitchen that had been turned into a makeshift operating room. A door opened and a jolly, heavy woman walked in. She was wearing a crisp white dress, rubber-soled shoes and, oddly, a string of large fake pearls. “I’m Miss Louisa,” she said. “How many weeks?”

  “Fourteen, I think. Maybe sixteen.”

  “It makes a difference, you know. Well, we’ll see what we see.”

  Diana faced again that overwhelming feeling that she had committed a crime for which she would be caught but which she couldn’t remember.

  “We don’t have last names here, for obvious reasons. I am a nurse, a registered nurse. I’ve done this hundreds of times. I have not had one calamity.”

  Diana had a fleeting vision of a beautiful girl, hair flying, on horseback, taking the jumps as they came to her, dressed all in white, as she was once, a debutante, but her dream came up short. Whose arm would she take as she walked onto the floor? There was nobody.

  “I can’t have this baby.”

  “Well, then, let’s get started. It’ll only take a few minutes. There will be pain—I’ll try to spare you as much as I can, but I don’t want to lie. I’ll give you a little chloroform, more for panic than for pain. I’m not a butcher. I think women should not be subjected to this medieval torture, but the law is the law, and when we have nowhere else to turn, I’m glad women come to me instead of some butcher who doesn’t know what he’s doing. Oh, the stories I could tell you. You won’t be one of them.”

  In the room was the familiar table, the angled back, the stirrups, the sheet of paper drawn down to cover the whole thing. Diana was told to take off her panties, which she did, and put them in her pocketbook.

  She got on the table, lay back, and put her feet in the stirrups. A gauze pad with chloroform was put against her nose, and everything suddenly became very hazy. She was awake, but dizzy. She felt wonderful, not afraid at all. Then everything went mercifully dark.

  There was silence in the big clean white room when she opened her eyes. Saratoga. She wanted to go home. In just a minute she would rise from the table. Just a minute.

  Miss Louisa came back in, all smiles. After she’d removed the chloroform mask, she took Diana’s hand, stayed with her and held her hand until Diana stopped trembling with the pain. Diana’s breathing, still a rough rasp, calmed, and the whole room came back into focus, every sound, the ravishing heat.

  “You’ll need a napkin. You’re bleeding quite heavily. That will stop in a few hours. It may start and stop for a few days. Don’t panic. You are not going to die. Just rest for a few minutes, and then Larry will take you back to where he found you. It was a total success. Quick and simple.”

  “Was it a boy or . . . ?”

  “There’s no way to know. At fourteen weeks, it’s hardly a speck. No way to know the sex.”

  “Poor little thing.”

  “If you start hemorrhaging badly, go to the ER. I’m not perfect, and sometimes accidents happen. Then you’ll have to have a full D and C, or even a hysterectomy. I don’t think it’ll happen. I just wanted you to be aware. Still feel dizzy?”

  “No.”

  “You can have another baby. That’s a good thing.”

  “Is it?”

  “Larry!”

  He came into the room, still in his greasy overcoat, holding the fake silk blindfold. Diana felt this ridiculous urge to say thank you, but she didn’t. Even still, she knew that she was one of the lucky ones, at least so far. There had been no coat hangers or forceps or cold steel instruments that bore no resemblance to anything medical. There had been no paregoric or throwing herself down stairs or any of the other voodoo treatments that poor women had to go through.

  There had been a real nurse in a string of pearls, a clean white room, and greasy Larry, who suddenly seemed like her best friend, just as Miss Louisa seemed like her kindly, secretive aunt. She wanted to kiss her on the cheek as she left, but she realized how grossly inappropriate that would be—this woman who had just taken a fetus—so she just put on her coat, and let Larry tie the blindfold and help her down the stairs.

  It took much less time to get back to the museum, where Gibby was sitting on the hood, rolling and unrolling a pair of pigskin driving gloves, smoking. He opened his arms, thought better of it, and said, “Front or back?” to which she indicated back, which they had strewn with down pillows.

  “I’m still bleeding,” she said, which Gibby heard with blind curiosity. He had no
idea what had just happened. He thought it no more than a teeth cleaning, until he saw her face, and then the weight of her grief punched him in the stomach and he couldn’t breathe for a minute.

  “Are you . . .”

  “Yes, all right, yes. Just take me home,” and, as he started to close the door, she said, weeping, “I hate myself. I hate you,” and Gibby just collapsed, head and shoulders bowed, then raised his head to bring in great gasps of air, as though he had run a mile at top speed, and they both started crying.

  “Just take me home. One day, not even very long from now, this will just be an awful thing that happened on a bright fall day in Richmond. Someday, I’ll look you in the eyes. But not today. Just drive home. Get me to Saratoga.”

  For the next three hours they drove in silence. When they got there, Ash didn’t come to greet them, thank God. Gone for a walk, perhaps. Shooting ducks and drinking bourbon.

  As the car drove into the driveway, only Priscilla came out of the house. She opened the back door of the car and took Diana’s extended hand.

  “Priscilla. Priscilla, my dear. Just get me upstairs and into my own bed. Tell Clarence to do nothing. Gibby will clean up this mess back here. It’s . . .” She looked at his tragic face. “It’s the least he can do.”

  She got out of the car, wobbled, and almost fell. Before Gibby could catch her, Priscilla was there.

  “Baby, what did they do to you?” as she swept her in her arms and picked her up off the ground.

  “Just get me in my bed. Use the back stairs.” She wanted to avoid Rose and her chatter about paint chips and wallpaper samples, the workers with their light dusting of plaster. And into the darkness she went. She didn’t reappear for three days, by which time she was completely and utterly her old self. So it would seem. She carried within her, in her heart, and would until the day she died, her little bean, and the blood may have stopped, but the pain would never go away. She would carry it deep inside her as long as she lived.