Carthage

  She was putting on her coat. She was fumbling to put on her coat.

  Rattling his car keys Zeno said in his kindly-pushy voice, he was driving.

  SEVENTEEN

  The Sister

  April 2012

  I DON’T FEEL YOUNG NOW. I think I am old in my heart.

  THE LETTER I’VE kept. The letter of which no one knows I have kept. Treasured.

  Love you so Juliet. That is the one true thing that I know.

  AND I KNOW: I should forgive her.

  They think that I am overwhelmed with joy as they are. They think that I am a true sister to her. All of the world thinks—The Mayfield sisters, reunited.

  But I don’t forgive her, I think that I hate her.

  The sensation of hatred is raw and new to me, it takes my breath away. How can I forgive her, she has ruined my life and she has ruined Brett Kincaid’s life. For seven years she was the cause of my parents’ suffering, every hour and every minute of their lives poisoned by her absence.

  Her selfishness I despise, the world misinterprets as illness.

  Mental illness, psychological distress, “amnesia” . . .

  My sister is morally defective. She is not a normal person. She was always special, an artiste. We others who were not special and not-artistes were obliged to make excuses for her, to accommodate her, always to forgive her when she was rude, mean-hearted, selfish.

  Your sister is not like other girls Juliet. She will make her own way but with difficulty.

  I am not so certain that I am a Christian any longer. In my heart, I have changed.

  But I have not allowed anyone to know. For Juliet Mayfield is the pretty one of the Mayfield sisters, you don’t expect Juliet to become skeptical, a non-believer like her father.

  You who are non-believers rely upon us, to confirm your sense of superiority. You need to imagine us as unchanged, unchangeable.

  You need to imagine us as ignorant, brain-damaged. You need to imagine us as children.

  But I am not a child now. I am twenty-nine years old.

  Brett Kincaid incarcerated in the Clinton Correctional Facility for Men at Dannemora since April 2006 is thirty-three years old.

  Even if his original sentence for voluntary manslaughter is commuted, he will still be incarcerated for an indeterminate period of time, for in the prison he’d been involved in “incidents.” Even if his sentence is commuted by the governor as Daddy will urge, he has lost seven years of his life he can never reclaim.

  Oh Juliet what a miracle! You and your parents—how astonishing it is, Cressida has returned to you. How happy you must all be!

  So people proclaim. So the world perceives us.

  Yet—what is a miracle? That my sister exiled herself from us for seven years and has now returned to us is not in fact a miracle.

  She has not returned from the dead. Not Cressida!

  It was deliberate on her part, I think. Her revenge, her spite.

  But it is a kind of miracle—my father no longer needs to drink to be happy. And my mother can say in all sincerity My prayers have been answered. I had never given up hope.

  In newspaper photographs and on TV the Mayfields are smiling of course. Even Cressida.

  My public smile is fleeting as a light switched on, off.

  The pretty one—switched on, off.

  DO YOU LOVE ME, do you forgive me. Her eyes beg.

  She knows, her sister does not love her. The old, family-love— the love I felt for Cressida when we were children together—has vanished.

  That she had died, she’d been “murdered”—I felt such horror, pity, love for my sister—years ago.

  But no longer. I don’t forgive her. Even in the hospital at her bedside I’d confessed to God Who understands for He has not given me Jesus’s strength to forgive those who have wronged us.

  Her recovery from pneumonia has been slow. Illness has ravaged her, she no longer looks like a girl but like an adult woman whom sorrow has struck.

  Sorrow, regret. Repentance.

  On the long bus ride north as Cressida said she’d been sick. She hadn’t guessed it would be so serious. A severe case, both lungs infected. In the Carthage hospital she’d come close to dying and how ironic, how bitterly ironic, how sensationally ironic, the tabloids were gathering like vultures for the kill, if the very girl believed to be dead for seven years had, after her “miracle” return to her family, died in a hospital of pneumonia.

  God sees into my heart and knows: I would have prayed for her to die in Florida, before she’d even called me.

  Except: my parents have been transformed. And I would not wish to erase that.

  Yet, can I speak to her. Can I bear to be in her company.

  We would have been reconciled, I think. Brett and me. My fiancé whom I would have married despite his injuries—the change in him, in his soul—for that had been my vow.

  In sickness and in health till death do you part.

  I’d been strong enough then. I was a young woman—a younger woman—and suffused with the strength of idealism, and first love.

  For months, I’d been driving him to the VA hospital. I’d been taking him to rehab. I’d been helping him with his exercises, talking and laughing with him to raise his spirits. Except that my sister intruded in our lives, I would have married Brett Kincaid.

  Cressida would say, I spared you! I spared you marriage to a man physically and mentally disabled and I would say in her face, I did not ask to be spared.

  SEVEN YEARS I’ve thought of you as dead. As my sister has been dead.

  And now my sister has returned to life so you are returned to life.

  You will be released from prison, my father believes. He will do what he can to help you.

  I can’t see you. I will never see you again.

  Never had the courage to see you. My mother has visited you many times and would have told me of you but I stopped her: No!

  She’d wanted to take me with her, to see you. But I said No!

  Juliet why? Why not? Just once, come with me. Brett would want to see you. He asks after you—your marriage, your children. He is happy for you he says. He is still in love with you he hasn’t needed to say.

  It would mean so much to Brett, to see you.

  (I’D THOUGHT my mother was insane. Her Christian-forgiveness was insane. If Zeno had known how she’d asked me to accompany her to the prison, how she’d entreated me, he would have been appalled, and very angry with her. Your mother isn’t thinking clearly. Your mother has suffered such a profound loss, her judgment has been affected. Don’t listen to her!)

  ONCE I PLEDGED to be your loving wife forever & ever Amen.

  We were not married. We were never married. Yet I pledged to you as you pledged to me as to Jesus our Savior forever & ever Amen.

  That will never change. Though we will not see each other again.

  In my new life I am a happy woman. I am blessed, I have a loving husband and I have beautiful children.

  I am strong, I can forgive her. Zeno says forgive her, she is not to be blamed, legally she is not to be blamed: there is no law she violated by remaining away for seven years.

  And morally? Is she guilty morally?—I asked Zeno.

  And Zeno said carefully, No. She is not guilty morally, or legally.

  And why is she not guilty morally, Zeno?—I asked.

  It was a question coolly poised. It was not a hot-tempered wrathful question. But Zeno stared at me as if he’d never seen the pretty one utter such ugly words.

  Your sister has been sick. We don’t know what she’s gone through. Her health has been damaged. She seems to have lived a desperate life. We can’t judge her. We can only rejoice, she has returned to us.

  But I can judge her. I do judge her. Harshly.

  She has returned to free Brett Kincaid. Years late.

  In time, I hope not more than a few months, Brett might be eligible for parole, or his sentence might be commuted.

  Zeno spoke
thoughtfully stroking his jaws that were now clean-shaven. His hands less shaky, his voice less uncertain since he’d stopped drinking.

  I did not tell him Brett Kincaid was my true love. That will not change though I have changed. I will hate her forever, for ruining my love.

  BRAVELY SHE SAYS, But I want to! I will have to.

  She says, I can’t hide any longer.

  Three days after she was discharged from the hospital my mother and I drive Cressida to Friendship Park.

  That is, I drive. My mother is sitting in the passenger seat and in the rear Cressida sits holding herself stiff and her expression distant and acute as if in the anticipation of pain.

  In the rearview mirror her face hovers like a lapsed moon.

  Her pale skin, her shadowed eyes, her dark curly hair that has thinned with illness—is this my sister? Since her return I’m continually shocked to see her and to see her in such proximity to myself. I thought She is a person to be pitied and so, why can’t I pity her. She has ruined lives but she has not spared herself.

  In the hospital Cressida was slow to recover. She’d been stricken by hospital infections any one of which might have killed her. We were told that she has a damaged liver, and that the damage may be irrevocable; that her white blood count is high, and that she has anemia; there were anomalies in her blood-work initially, that seemed to indicate that Cressida might be HIV-positive, but which had faded with her general recovery.

  (HIV-positive! Her family was stunned. Had Cressida become infected somehow?—what could her life have been, for those seven years?)

  It’s a mildly warm sun-spotted afternoon in late April. Gaudy reflections like broken glass in the Nautauga River, wind-gusts in the softwood trees at the shore that are just coming into bud. In Friendship Park on the steps of the grand old Victorian gazebo there is a young woman in a dazzling-white gown being photographed—that is, a young bride and her bridegroom are being photographed. The bride is wearing a long gown, long sleeves, a veil and a train trailing down the gazebo steps, endearingly foolish. The bride’s hair is a pale pearly-blond and braided; her lacy veil ripples from her head in the wind. Staring at this vision I’m not aware that my foot is lightening on the gas pedal until Arlette interrupts my reverie: Oh yes: aren’t they beautiful.

  It’s as if Arlette has more to say. Oh yes: aren’t they brave, to risk so much.

  MY BRIDAL GOWN. So beautiful in design but it was never sewed. So lovely, ivory lace, ivory silk, sheer lace back, pleated bodice and flared skirt never sewed.

  My veil, my “train.”

  (So foolish the bridal train, trailing along the ground, on dirty steps. What possible purpose, beautiful and costly dazzling-white silk so quickly soiled.)

  The bridal design held us captive. My dear mother, and me.

  And so, when I was married to my husband it seemed to me a second marriage.

  The first, that had never occurred yet holds me captive. The second, which did occur but does not prevail in my memory.

  We were not a “bride” and a “bridegroom”—we did not wear the traditional attire of the wedding couple—nor were we married with any conspicuous celebration. Rather, the marriage was solemnized—(is that the word? It comes to my mind as appropriate)—by an Albany judge, a friend of the Stedman family.

  We weren’t wearing bride-and-groom attire. For it was midday, a weekday. For the setting was my husband’s friend’s office lined with law books and journals floor to ceiling. For very few people outside our families were invited to the genial but brisk civil ceremony.

  I wore a dusky-cream-colored woolen suit with a pleated skirt which Arlette had acquired for me at a markdown price of eighty-five dollars—a “pre-owned” Versace. (After we’d purchased the suit we discovered a faint stain on the sleeve—but so faint, no one would ever notice, Arlette was sure.) David wore a dark pinstripe suit, white silk shirt and cuff links.

  This was my wish. A “small private” wedding. As it came to be David’s wish also when he understood more clearly the circumstances of his fiancée’s life.

  For always I’d dreaded the vigilant “news media” learning of my new life, my marriage and my husband; as I would dread their learning of my children’s birth, in time.

  Always I dreaded the tabloid media most of all, heartless and pitiless and shrewd with the instincts of predator birds that will gather above their prey hovering in the air beating great black-feathered wings impatient to feed.

  Out of nowhere the predator-birds gather. As it’s said fruitflies are hatched out of microscopic eggs laid in the very skins and rinds of fruit, that makes it seem as if fruits themselves generate the tiny flies.

  Before David there had been other men—not many, but a few—who’d been drawn to me, I think, for my “tabloid notoriety”—though this wasn’t evident until I’d seen them for a while. But David Stedman never asked. If he knew about Cressida, and Corporal Brett Kincaid, which I have to assume he did, he never asked; until one evening I told him.

  And he’d taken my hand, and kissed it. David is not an impulsive man and I know that Daddy doesn’t feel comfortable in his presence because David doesn’t laugh easily at Zeno Mayfield’s jokes; but David is a sincere man, a faithful man, who had no need to assure me, as he did that evening, that he would love and protect me from all harm—I can’t undo the past. So we will look to our future together.

  Do I love my husband yes very much, I love my husband and our two young children more than my life!

  How then can I hate her, how purely hate my sister, who made my life possible with David and with our children—this is my future.

  How then can I not forgive this person who’d acted blindly and unknowing of the hurt she afflicted upon others as upon herself.

  IN YOUR LETTER which I was not supposed to open unless you did not return from Iraq you’d said the children I would have with another man, a husband, would also be your children.

  If you’d died in Iraq. If you’d died of your wounds. If you’d never returned to marry me.

  So it sometimes seems, the babies I’d had with David Stedman are in some ways your babies too.

  Before you went away for the second time, and were so damaged. Before your soul was damaged. When we were together weeping together that we would be apart for so long and our plans uncertain yet we lay together in such happiness it was a kind of innocence and I thought If I become pregnant now, we will know that our love is blessed.

  And your words echoed my thoughts, that I had not uttered aloud—It’s like something was decided tonight isn’t it. Oh God.

  Together in such happiness as if a pure radiant flame burned about our bed blinding us as it warmed us and protected us from all others.

  “THIS IS BEAUTIFUL. What a beautiful day.”

  We drove to Friendship Park. Cressida’s first day in the sun. Eagerly and avidly she was looking about. This was a familiar landscape, we’d been taken to Friendship Park for picnics and outings through our childhood, but now, to Cressida, things seemed to look different. And Arlette was pointing out changes to her—a refurbished band stand, an expanded playground.

  Cressida’s eyes are newly sensitive to light, she was wearing a pair of my sunglasses. And on her head a colorful scarf, one of Mom’s pre-wig scarves, that confers upon the wearer an air of both festivity and convalescence.

  We’d told Cressida about the memorial hiking trail named for her. We’d warned her about the bench with the plaque—CRESSIDA MAYFIELD 1986–2005. She stared at the plaque. She ran her fingers over the plaque.

  “You did this for me, Mom? It’s very beautiful.”

  “It wasn’t just me. Others donated. And Zeno and Juliet helped—of course.”

  Was this true? I doubt that Zeno was involved, he’d been pained by so much attention focused on our private loss. And I know that I was involved only minimally, for the same reason.

  The mother’s grieving was public, she’d wanted so badly to preserve her lost daughter in
the memories of others; she’d wanted to make of the daughter’s disappearance a communal Carthage memory—she’d told us of how other mothers, who’d lost daughters or sons, had embraced her, wept with her.

  As if there is a river of grief. And we all must wade into it, and be carried by its current, in time.

  “I’m a ghost, I guess. Returning.”

  Cressida’s voice was a hoarse whisper. The pneumonia had left her vocal cords raw.

  Arlette said, “The plaque will be removed, soon! The park authority has promised.”

  “Does everyone hate me here in Carthage? I know that I would hate myself in their place.”

  “Cressie, no! It isn’t like that at all. Everyone understands you’ve been sick.”

  Arlette sat on the bench, in a patch of sunshine. She signaled for Cressida and me to join her and so I did, but Cressida remained standing.

  Cressida was wearing a pair of lightweight khaki pants, and a pullover sweater; she was still very thin, and her skin had a sickly pallor, but she was regaining her old energy, in intermittent surges.

  On the third finger of her left hand she is wearing a star-shaped ring—a silver ring, I think—not beautiful. The ring is much too large for her thin finger so she has wrapped string around it crudely and it is her habit to nervously turn the ring, round and round her finger turning the ring, unconsciously, maddeningly—I feel a sisterly impatience, wanting to slap lightly at her hand, to stop her.

  As when we were young girls together Cressida had the most maddening habits—tapping her foot, wriggling her foot, shifting her weight in her chair at dinner with a loud rude sigh; scratching her scalp, scratching her face, her armpits, God knows where all else, oblivious of others as a little monkey. Did my parents believe “Cressie” was cute?

  Her sarcasm, her habit of interrupting others—particularly her older sister—did they think this was charming? The meanness with which she treated her few girlfriends—the supercilious way in which she spoke of “popular” classmates and many of her teachers—did they think this was admirable? The only time in my life I can recall that I shocked my mother was when I’d told her in a weak mood that I was worried about having babies, worried that I carried a family gene of some kind for “autism” or “borderline personality”—whatever it was that defined Cressida, I could not bear to pass on to a child. And Arlette had stared at me in utter incomprehension.