Chapter 1 - The Burial of the Dead

Isabelle and Richard Jordan bury their 18-month old son, Max, who has died in a car accident. The story proceeds to a wake held after the funeral at Isabelle's mother's house.

1

       The stiff, yellow grass under their feet broke as they walked over it.  Isabelle’s knees buckled, as if the ground beneath had given out.  She felt Richard’s arm"interlocked with her own"tense as he tried to keep her upright.  They edged down the hardened, sloped cemetery lawn toward the burial site.  She thought that the air was quite biting for an April afternoon as evidenced by the attendees of the service huddling next to the ones they knew and dressed in long, wool overcoats, decorative scarves, and leather gloves.  The landscape was lined by the skeletal figures of the countryside’s oak and walnut trees, their naked branches clattering in the gusts.  The seemingly dead trees of the countryside gave no shelter from the bleak overcast sky.  Isabelle knew it was cold that day, but she couldn’t feel it.  There was no sensation on her exposed, white face as the wind rolled over the hollowed-out land.  She felt nothing.

            Isabelle took in the familiar panorama: those trees, the untilled fields miles off in the distance, and all the grey stones reminders of the dead long past.  Some of the tombstones were newer than the others.  They had high-quality calligraphy etched upon them, and their edges had yet to be dulled and eroded by the temperamental Western Pennsylvanian climate.  They were testimonials to the craftsmanship of McGuire’s Headstones and Monuments--the town’s most successful business.  People didn’t live in this part of the world anymore; they were only buried here.  The only folks left to dodder in the towns’ streets--with their empty storefront windows--were the generations slowly shifting toward that unavoidable end of life.  The younger generations had all picked up and moved to more prosperous regions of the country, looking for opportunity that was long-gone-by in these parts of rural Appalachia.

Once in the section of the cemetery reserved for her family, Isabelle stepped past her father’s gravesite.  She allowed her head to tilt gently to the side and give a respectful glance of acknowledgement.  Beside him rested Grandma Ellie, whose farm was located just beyond the tree line and down the adjacent knoll.  An image of herself as a girl--hair soaked, cracking fallen walnuts in the mud behind the faded red barn, while adorned in her white Sunday dress with the blue hyacinths festooned on it--flashed upon her.  Grandma Ellie spent many a nights stitching the tears and scrubbing the grass stains from Isabelle’s Sunday dress.  After she would finish, she’d tell Isabelle not to worry, that she’d always be her hyacinth girl.  

Many more of the departed with the O’Connor surname were scattered about the vicinity.  Mistakenly, Isabelle’s eyes flashed over the stone of White Oak Cemetery’s newest occupant with an afflictive Angus Dei carved on its face.  The sound of pebbles popping under the weight of car tires marked the gradual halt of the funeral precession behind them.  The remaining fellow mourners were dressed in a mishmash of fine couture or Sears suits, depending on from which side of the family they represented.  Everyone had made their way to this relatively remote piece of land to pay their respects to the grieving parents.  Richard’s relatives and old college friends came from all over it seemed:  bankers from New York, real estate developers from Dallas, art dealers from Chicago, dignitaries from Washington, and even a diplomat from Marrakesh.  The folks representing Isabelle’s past needed only to travel the twenty miles from Uniontown to arrive at the gates of the cemetery.  They were a motley crew to be sure:  a mini conglomerate of retire mill workers, coal miners, truck drivers, and waitresses.  A few among Richard’s side of the crowd had whispered softly to one another about the inconvenience of having to travel to a place almost two hours from the closest international airport. 

            As they got closer to the two solid white folding chairs, Isabelle took a moment to glance at Richard.  He appeared to be feeling the cold because his lips were pursed and teeth were chattering slightly in his closed mouth.  They stopped at the gravesite, and he turned to look at her.  The expression of stoicism and apparent detachment remained glazed on her face. 

            “Are you all right?” he asked.

            She replied with a timid nod and release of his arm.

            “Sit down,” he said.

            “No.  We should wait for the others,” Isabelle said.

            She heard him let out a minor sigh through his nostrils as he turned to watch the oncoming line of people.  Up on the drive rested the great charcoal-colored hearse, whose bowels contained the body of the dead child.  The driver, an overweight man with tired eyes and an unshaven look, got out and walked to the back of the car to open the rear door.  The pall bearers, an assemblage of male family members and Richard’s old college roommate, lined themselves behind the hearse, three on each side of the casket, as it rolled out of the car.  Isabelle turned her listless gaze toward the horizon.  She didn’t wish to see the men carrying the casket down to the site.  In fact, she had averted her stare from the awful wooden box for the entirety of the day.  While it rested at the altar of St. Joseph’s and Father Muncy put on his performance, she kept her eyes fixed on the aged limestone floor.  When the pall bearers carried the casket down the aisle of the church and loaded it into the hearse, she was already in the passenger seat of their car with her eyes closed behind large designer sunglasses.  It was ridiculous to think it.  She knew it was, but she thought if she didn’t actually look at the box, she could pretend as if it was someone else’s funeral she was attending and not her own son’s. 

Now that everyone was finally standing appropriately behind the two chairs reserved for Richard and Isabelle, she knew she couldn’t avoid the casket any longer.  It would be there--right there--at arm’s length even.  How discourteous a gesture the whole funeral process was to the grieving, forcing them to acknowledge the harsh reality of saying goodbye.  She heard the men gently place the vessel on top of the mechanical pedestal, which would eventually send the child to the depths.  She watched in the periphery as Father Muncy took his place at the head of the grave, Bible in hand, and prepared to ease the pain with some empty words and sliding of hands in the air.  Isabelle then turned slowly, ran her hand down the backside of her skirt so not to wrinkle it as she sat, and took a seat next to her husband, who was already seated and anxiously waiting for the service to commence.

            “The just man, though he die early, shall be at rest,” Father Muncy said.  “For the age that is honorable comes not with the passing of time, nor can it be measured in terms of years.  Rather, understanding is the hoary crown of men, and an unsullied life, the attainment of old age.”

            She couldn’t hide from it any longer.  There it was in all its terror.  The first sight of the box sent an acute chill rushing through her chest as if being pierced by a blade of ice.  Richard placed his gloved hand atop her bare, reddened one.  With her free left hand, she reached into her pocket and produced a simple olive-wood rosary and let the beads hang loosely by a few fingers.  It dangled there as gusts of wind let it shake carelessly in Isabelle’s delicate fingers.

The priest continued:  “He who lived amongst sinners was transported--snatched away--lest wickedness pervert the mind or deceit beguile the soul.  For the witchery of paltry things obscures what is right and the whirl of desire transforms the innocent mind.  Having become perfect in a short while, he reached the fullness of a short career.”

The words must have touched some in the crowd, who dabbed their eyes with crumpled tissues.  Isabelle, however, was transfixed not by the mutterings of the elderly vicar but by that box.  Inside that box laid her everything.  She had devoted herself to her son for so long, even before his conception.  When Isabelle was just a teenager, she had dreamt of the day she’d hold a child in her arms and call it her own.  While all her other friends were simply interested in the instant gratifications of teenage sexual exploration with the boys, Isabelle was already searching for the perfect husband, the perfect father for her children.  It was to be the completion of her life.  She wanted that safe, everyday existence granted to women from bygone eras:  a wife to a husband and mother to a child.  She had Max later than she’d anticipated on account of Richard’s evolutionary legal career.  But by her thirty-fifth birthday, she was graced with her much-desired child.  Max had such a beautiful face.  Everyone told her so.  And now death had undone all the grace and beauty in her life.  Her grace enclosed conveniently in an ornate diminutive four foot box.  Max’s beauty wickedly transformed into terror was all she had left.

“For his soul was pleasing to the Lord, therefore he sped him out of the midst of wickedness.”  Father Muncy said.  “But the people saw and did not understand, nor did they take this into account.  We must remember that as difficult as it may be to comprehend, the Lord needed young Max as an angel in Heaven, so not to be corrupted as a human on earth.”

A strong gust of wind from the north swept over the people, causing Isabelle to shiver slightly.  The rosary spun and twisted in her limp arm, and she let it slip from her grasp and fall to the hardened ground.  Inconspicuously, she bent to the side to retrieve the fallen relic from the sharp grass and brown dust.  After picking up the rosary, Isabelle squeezed her eyes shut tightly for a brief moment and let them open again to take in her surroundings.  All seemed to move in slow motion.  Father Muncy’s kind mouth opening and closing letting out the lamentations heard by everyone but her.  A catechist no more, Isabelle clenched her fist around the rosary beads until the wooden cross dug into her raw palm.  She realized that she was just a mere observer of the rituals now.  Her gaze slowly fixed back over the distant hilltop toward Ellie’s farm.  From her seated position she could see the slate colored roof of the barn from her childhood.  She watched as a few dots lifted off from the barn’s roof and darted to the east. 

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we commit Max’s body to the earth so that his spirit may live forever in the Kingdom of Heaven.  Amen.”

“Amen,” replied the crowd.  Isabelle said nothing.

She sat frozen, except for a slight tremor in her hands--a tremor brought on by the grief that she knew she was feeling.  Regardless of how much she tried to wish away the pain, it remained.  She clenched her fist tightly around the wooden idol still in her hand.  She felt the pain as a pointed edge of the crucifix dug into her soft flesh.  For a moment she had thought she drew blood.  But when she looked cautiously at her palm, she saw that there was none.  No more blood, no more tears.  Only the ravaging sorrow of a love now lost and the too rapidly dissipating memories of her one and only child.  Feeling the pain in her hand, albeit a dull and insignificant pain, brought Isabelle closer to her consciousness.  While she hadn’t felt anything but the type of despair reserved only for the damned these past days, the acute pressure from the olive wood onto her skin reminded her that she still had her senses.  And this was, by no means, a welcomed realization.  She wanted to continue to be a numb as humanly possible.  Yet, she felt the pain her palm.  This was no pain worth mentioning, of course.  Minor.  Any child itself could bare such a brief discomfort.  And so her mind then forced, through the ragweed of miasma and blurred memories, her to compare this current pain to the last great pain she had felt her body endure.  The pain of child birth.

Try as she might her mind wouldn’t permit her from blocking out the avalanche of memories that this seemingly routine evaluation brought crashing down upon her.   Each fragment and image from the night she delivered Max into the world presented itself a cruel sequential fashion.  She remembered sitting down to have a bite to eat at the dining room table, her glossy new parenting periodical in front of her.  Then suddenly--miraculously--there was a tinge of discomfort, followed by the burgeoning pain of the slowly separating uterine muscles.  There was blood then.  Isabelle could see the blood in her memory.  The flinty dahlia that appeared in the sofa cushion as dilation had began was only a two-inch circle, but it was never to be forgotten.  With a rush of overwhelming anticipation and jubilation she walked to the telephone and first rang Richard.  He hadn’t answered.  Straight to voicemail. 

“It’s happening,” she had said.  “This is really happening.  Oh, darling, I am so.” She paused a brief moment to swallow the pain that would have surely crept into her voice.  “I am so excited.  And nervous.  I’ll see you at the hospital.  Please hurry to meet me there.  I love you.”

In the delivery room, as the nurses helped lower her fully fecund body onto the bed, Isabelle felt that the fulfillment of her life was finally here.  The son, the child she had always hoped for so

First head, then arm, then arm again.  And before long, torso and full body slipped from her.  The pain--so excruciating and tearing--now just a rhythmic pulsation where the boy had left her.  She had never felt so clean in all of her life.  She had never felt so delivered herself.  She was delivered from any semblances of wickedness that could ever hope to enter her life, because she now had her child.  The purity of moment stuck her so deeply.  She began to weep, not out of the lingering physical pain, but out of sheer delight and the feeling of deliverance.  Like baptism by fire, Isabelle’s maternal industry has scoured her soul of all sin.  Never before had she felt so singular with God.  He had allowed for the being to be created inside of her by the fusion of her and Richard’s DNA.  For nine months, three days, and seven hours, the life grew within her, and with that life came in an increasing love and abiding faith.  Her life would be ordered, with purpose and beauty.

She looked past her still angled knees toward the hospital staff now meticulously cleansing her newborn.  As one of the nurses stepped slightly to the left, Isabelle caught the first glimpse of Max.  He was flailing and shivering, cold and wet.  She wanted immediately to warm him, to wrap him ever so gently in her motherly embrace and never let go.  The nurses worked hastily, wiping the baby boy dry and checking his vitals.  It all took less than a minute.  The aspiration that Isabelle had harbored for years of one day having a child to call her own was now a reality.  One of the nurses, a petite younger woman, wrapped Max in a blue swaddling cloth with the precision of an assembly line worker and lifted the child gently upward.  The shine from the overhead track lights illuminated the features of the lad for a fleeting moment.  The nurse carefully brought him to Isabelle, who laid in waiting.  When the boy was eventually given over to her, Isabelle’s eyes welled as she looked at him.    

After a few moments, Richard entered the room.  He strode hesitantly toward the bed and knelt beside his wife and son.  He glanced momentarily at them before rising again to face the doctor.  When he commiserated with the doctor, who was removing the latex gloves and synthetic mask, Richard’s voice was firm and imbued the general rapport of one professional to another. 

“Is he healthy?” he said.

“Ten fingers, ten toes,” the doctor replied.  “Perfectly healthy.  Congratulations.”

“It didn’t seem to take very long.”

“What do you mean?”

“The labor.  The delivery I mean.  It was only five hours.  I thought I’d be longer.”

“Well, it all depends on the baby and the mother.”  The doctor waved his finger in the direction of Isabelle and Max.  “Those two really wanted to see each other."

People began to disperse slowly.  Richard shook the priest’s hand and gave him a pat on the shoulder.  A few approached Isabelle to convey their condolences in echoing whispers.  She thanked them politely, as all grief-stricken people tend to do, and said she would see them all back at her mother’s house for coffee and the assortment of mundane casseroles in stoneware dishes.

Richard approached her and took her hand into his.  “Ready?”

“I’ll be up in a minute,” she said.

“All right.”  He leaned in and kissed her cheek.

She watched as her husband ascended the embankment toward the cars, shaking some hands along the way, always the politician.  Isabelle turned back toward the casket.  It was the blackest thing she had ever seen.  Above her in the trees, she heard the rustling of feathers.  She looked to see a cadre of blackbirds perched on a thin branch.  They looked like bold letters on a page when contrasted to the sunless and cloud-covered sky.  Isabelle then slowly placed the aged rosary atop the coffin.  For one brief moment she felt as if the blood had drained from her body.  Her life ceased, and she yearned for it.  She wanted death to take her, to commit her to the same hollowed ground next to her boy.  But it wasn’t to be.  She heard Richard call out to her from above, and the voice brought her back to the world of the living.  Internally she rebuked God and wished away every prayer she’d ever remembered in her thirty-six years.  She took a final look at the rosary and said with a cool bitterness: “You can’t have him.  He’s still mine.  He always will be.”  She then turned and walked to join Richard.

#

            Inside Isbelle’s mother’s spacious, but somewhat drab, house, mourners from the services gathered to convey their last respects and indulge in the free meal provided by Isabelle’s mother and aunts.  Not all the well-wishers were in attendance, of course.  In all, about only a quarter of Richard’s side remained.  His old friends and current colleagues all apologized for their rather hasty departures, but explained that they simply had to return to their places of origin to attend to business.  Those representatives of Richard Jordan’s life who had remained were limited to his immediate family, who, understandably, were all distressed over the loss of little Max.  His mother, Ann Jordan, sat placidly in the corner, adorned in her charcoal-colored Vera Wang dress and sipped her vodka martini.  Not far from her was Ann’s husband Henry, trying to indulge in conversation with one of Isabelle’s uncles--the one Richard had always referred to as the rather loud fellow who drives trucks for that bottling company.  Every now and then, Henry Jordan’s eyes would meander toward Isabelle’s younger female cousins, sitting on a sofa in the corner drinking their respective colas and Miller Lites.  But then the nameless truck driver uncle’s voice would rise in emphasis on a certain point he was trying to make, and Henry Jordan would casually return his glance to the man and give a disinterested nod and smirk.

            In the inner dining room, on the modest oak table, was a spread reminiscent of Isabelle’s younger days, when her entire extended family would gather for holidays in this same house and partake in what can only be described as a bounty of genuine home cooking.  Isabelle’s family and acquaintances all spoke rather freely while they piled their Styrofoam plates full of the aliments being offered.  It was still an appropriately somber affair.  The only bursts of laughter came when some unfortunate member of Richard’s clan pointed to a dish and inquired about its contents.

            “What?  Those?  Those are pigs in a blanket,” said a male cousin of Isabelle.  “You never had ‘em?”

            “Uh, no.  I haven’t,” the gentleman expressed peevishly.  “What are they?”

            “Pigs in a B-L-A-N-K-E-T,” the cousin said, and those nearby laughed aloud.

 

            Isabelle watched the medley of people, most of whom she knew and loved, intermingle from her stationary position in a rather dated olive-toned sofa.  She sat gripping a glass white wine--her third--in one hand and a handkerchief in the other.  She let her lidless eyes traveled slowly over everybody in the room but nothing really registered internally.  Each face was recognizable.  Some more than others.  Yet she found no comfort in seeing any of these people.  The only comfort came from being near Richard.  Her husband had been so dutiful, so abiding since the accident.  She couldn’t tell if it had changed him, but she thought it surely must have.  How could it have not?  Swells of guilt came to her often, for she wished she could comfort him.  She couldn’t though; she was simply too weak to be a rock for anyone at the time.  Hopefully, she thought, he’d forgive her for not being more attentive to his suffering.  She vowed to one day make it up to him.  But that day would have to wait.

            As the grieving parents’ exhausted bodies rested on the infirm sofa cushions, a body weaved its way through the lingering mourners and made its way toward them.  Father Muncy, with a generous portion of Jameson in his tumbler, shuffled his old, meek self in front of the Jordans.  He took a seat in a steel folding chair brought in from the garage to accommodate the atypical amount of people in the O’Connor home.  Muncy took a polite sip from the whiskey; the ice clanked softly alone the sides of the thick glass.  He dabbed the edge of his mouth with his bent forefinger.  Isabelle watched his movements.  There was a familiarity in them.  This ageless man had been her family’s priest since before she was born.  For her thirty-six years on this earth, the man hadn’t changed.  Still the full head of white hair, the rose in his cheeks, the shimmering green Irish eyes, the slight build, and the voice a product of being the offspring to two itinerants who years ago passed through Ellis Island.  Now a dogged, eighty-something, Muncy still managed to maintain all of those distinguishable features.  The only change is that he moved somewhat slower.  He moved liked a man who had devoted his life to shoveling the words of God to anyone who would listen.  Years of service to an entity not remotely grateful.  Repeating the same sermons, the same languid advice, the same calls for abiding faith.  It was as though each prayer whispered and sermon bellowed had lifted from his mouth toward the skies, only to hit the ceiling and fall heavily onto the man’s shoulders.

            Isabelle had so many memories of this man.  So many recollections of him standing at the altar of the modest stone church in Uniontown for the span of her childhood and adolescent years.  Him up there delivering unto the wayward workers of the western world the standard convalescence of the traditional Roman Catholic mass.  Passing out wafers like shillings to beggars and tossing the blessed water out of numberless vials into the empty air and onto the empty bodies below.  There should have been more complete memories, memories of warmth.  She knew they existed somewhere inside of her.  She knew they were fond memories of her sitting between her father and Grandma Ellie in the hard wooden pews of the old church, swinging her tiny legs back and forth, listening with intent to the words that once had such gravity.  But all that remained now were a heap of broken images--like an unfinished photo album--that revealed only the darker moments of life.  For this was the third time in fifteen years, Isabelle had seen Father Muncy.  Each time was to commemorate the consecration of a loved one to the ground.  First her father, stricken by lung cancer during her final year at Princeton.  Then two years later, Grandma Ellie’s deadened heart finally succumbed to years of attack and disease.  And now, and now, and now Max.  Isabelle no longer saw the jovial Irish vicar of her youth but instead the eternal doorman of a feckless thug, sitting high above all, doling out arbitrary judgments and sentences.

            “Been years since I’ve been inside this house,” Muncy said softly.  He smiled a little and once again glanced over the people in the dining room.  “Things haven’t changed much.  Then again, why should they?  No need, I say.  You find comforts in the familiar, in the home.”

            Isabelle stared intently at the glass of wine that she cupped in both hands.  Richard was leaning himself deep into the sofa, one hand on Isabelle’s back, rubbing robotically in order to soothe.  Muncy sipped the honey-colored whiskey once more and looked at Richard then Isabelle.

            “You find comfort,” he said.  “You find comfort in the things you still have, dear.”  He spoke directly to Isabelle now.  “It doesn’t make sense now.  I know that.  But you remember Job.  Remember him.  And remember that God tested Job.  He took everything that Job held dear in his life.  His livelihood, his health, his children.  On the surface, it seems a cruel joke.  I know it does.  On the surface it seems like God is ruefully toying with us here on earth, but he isn’t.  And you know he isn’t because of Job.”

            Muncy waited for a response, but Isabelle remained staid.  He went on.  “I am sure right now you think that you have sinned against God, just as Job’s friends all believed he had.  How else could you deserve something so terrible?  Both of you.  But you haven’t.  You know this.  Remember what Job said, ‘I am full of confusion; therefore see thou mine affliction.’  But God’s will is neither arbitrary nor is it aimed toward the innocent.  Bu it is His will nonetheless.  And we mustn’t question it.  And we never denounce Him for having it.  We can never know the burdens God carries.  We can never know because we are all mortal beings here on earth.  Only our souls get to live on in Heaven with God and the other angels.  Take solace is this, you two.  Max’s soul is with God and the angels now.  And believe me, as if I were Job himself delivering to message, there is a good reason behind all of this.”

            Isabelle felt Muncy place his wrinkled hand on her knee.  It was chilled from holding the glass with its blend of melting ice and amber liquor.  It was only then that she looked at him.  She looked deep into his emerald eyes and saw the glint.  She turned her head slightly to one side, her face emotionless.  She tried to decipher what was beyond that glint.  The only explanation she could find was not that the glint came from knowing or being one with God but rather an afternoon’s worth of nipping away at a bottle and decades’ worth of mastering the art of the sell.  Muncy’s stare, his gaping smile, his ruffled brows, they meant nothing, they were nothing.  Isabelle repositioned herself so that his hand fell from her knee.  She cleared her throat and swallowed.

            “I’m sorry, Father,” she said with no inflection.  “Were you speaking just now?” 

            With that she downed the last of the wine in the glass.  She looked once more at the old priest and couldn’t help but let out a muffled sound of laughter.  She shook her head in mild disbelief and lifted herself from the sofa.  Richard motioned as if to help her, but she swatted his hand gently away.  With her empty glass in hand, she walked briskly toward out of the inner den through the living and dining rooms and into the kitchen.  The kitchen was void of activity for the moment.  She marched toward the counter and popped the cork off the top of a half-gone bottle of sauvignon blanc.  She poured most of what was left in the bottle high into her glass.  She drank carelessly, letting droplets fall from the glass as she tilted it away from her face. 

            “Damn,” she said as she wiped the drops off the front of her dress. 

            She finished the rest of the wine, both the glass and the bottle.  Just then, her mother entered the kitchen, carrying plates dotted with remnants of picked at food and crumple napkins.  Isabelle stood with her back to her mother, still facing the dated brown cabinetry.  She heard her mother place the dirtied dishes in the sink beside her.  The sound jolted her a bit, but she remained motionless.  Then Isabelle felt her mother’s hand on her shoulder.  Isabelle feigned a slight smile of recognition.

            “How’re you holding up?” her mother said.

            Isabelle just nodded. 

            “Ha, Richard sure does have some interesting friends,” her mother said.  “Funny the people you meet in his line of work, dealing with all those government folks.”

            “It was good of them to come,” Isabelle said.

            “Of course.”

            Her mother had started running the water rather aimlessly over top the dishes in the sink, as Isabelle stood in the same place against the counter.  She heard the clanging of flatware on ceramic and the scrubbing of a moist sponge over greasy blots of leftover casseroles.  Isabelle’s eyes glided over to the sink.  She watched her mother hastily go about the domestic duty of cleaning up.  She did this with such an exquisite precision, running the sponge under the water, applying just enough pressure as it touched a dish to release a few suds of antiseptic detergent.  Her mother’s hands, with skin like worn cotton, spun themselves around the circular edges of wine glasses, coffee mugs, bowls, and plates.  She’d give them a rhythmic run under the steaming stream of water and drop them carefully into the rack next to the sink. 

            “Mom, just leave them,” Isabelle said.  “We can use the dishwasher.”

            Her mother chuckled slightly, “And waste electricity?  Nonsense.  Besides, there’s liable to be too many to fit in there.  Your father always wanted one of those things for me.  I told him it was an extravagance.  A woman shouldn’t need a machine to do something she can do herself.  It just breeds laziness.  I just want to get these few.  Stay ahead of the curve.  Aunt Maggie and the girls will help with the rest later.”

            Isabelle shook her head.  Modern convenience bred laziness.  Always the motto of the O’Connor clan.  She supposed that if it wouldn’t have been construed as completely insane that her mother would still opt for horse-drawn carriage in lieu of her ’93 Chevy Impala.  The thought made a bittersweet smirk form on Isabelle’s lips but only for a brief moment.

            “So much food here,” her mother said.  “Shouldn’t let it go to waste, I know, but I was thinking that sometime this week we should all take a night to have dinner at the Inn.  The whole family, I mean.”

            Isabelle turned and faced her mother’s profile.  “Actually, Richard and I won’t be staying long.”

            The words caused her mother to stop scrubbing the dishes for a second.  Isabelle could see a look of displeasure"something saddening"in the half of her mother’s face that she could see.  The scrubbing restarted. 

            “Oh?” her mother said.

            “It’s just that, well, we can’t be away for long,” Isabelle said.

            With that, her mother stopped cleaning completely.  She turned to face her daughter.  The two women, so similar in appearance, separated by twenty-five years of life.  Her mother yanked a dishtowel from the handle of the oven door and began drying her hands on it.  The look of sadness was now replaced with impatience and a knowing judgment.

            “You mean Richard can’t be away for long?” she asked.

            “Mom,” Isabelle said.

            Slowly shaking her head, the look now of pity for her daughter on her face, her mother said:  “Isabelle, neither one of you should be rushing back into anything right now, least of all work.”

            “It’s more than work, Mom.  We have a lot of things to tend to as far as the house goes.”

            “You need to tend to yourselves.  I just"I don’t understand it.”

            “Mom.”

            “You two work yourself to the bone outside of the house to the point where you forget about what’s really important.  You forget that family is important.  Not those, those people in there,” her mother waved her hand dismissingly toward the doorway to the dining room.  “All those clients and business associates and colleagues.  They aren’t your family, Isabelle.  When you lose someone you have to lean on family"on us.  Not retreat back to the nothingness down there in Washington.”

            “Mom.”  Isabelle’s voice was getting louder.

            “Look, sweetheart, I know what you’re going through.  I lost your father, Grandma Ellie.  I know what you’re feeling right now.”

            “No you don’t,” Isabelle exclaimed.  Silence enveloped the kitchen.  Even the noise from the other rooms seemed to dissipate somewhat, as the people heard Isabelle’s elevated voice.  Realizing this, Isabelle hushed herself but moved closer to her mother’s face.  She looked at her with a quiet intensity.

            “You don’t know what I am feeling,” Isabelle said.  “You’ll never know!  Daddy was sick for years before he died.  We all knew it was coming.  We would’ve known it was coming even if the diagnosis had never been made.  All the coughing and wheezing from years in the mines.  We knew it was coming.  And Grandma Ellie?  Christ, mom.  She was eighty years old.  Of course she was going to die someday.  Right?  But this…this.  No one saw this coming.  No one.  It’s the worst goddamn feeling it the world.  Having something so pure and perfect and thinking that there would always be more of it"more days at the park, more dinners, more birthdays, Halloween costumes, school plays, more dances, more laughter, more…more everything.  And now…nothing.  Again, nothing.  My son is dead.  So don’t tell me how I should deal with this because you can’t begin to know how I am feeling, Mom.  Don’t even try.”

            Isabelle felt her body tensed up.  Her fists were clenched, the thumbs rubbing methodically against the sides of her closed finger.  She watched as tears began to well in her mother’s blue eyes.  They were Isabelle’s eyes.  They were Max’s eyes.  The blue transferred down from generation to generation linking all that has long since passed to what was still supposed to be.  Isabelle let out a deep sigh.  She ran her hand over her forehead and let it sit there for a moment.  She tapped her foot in one place for a second.  She saw out of the corner of her eye, her mother reaching slowly for Isabelle’s arm.  But instead of permitting the gesture of compassion from her mother, Isabelle simply shook her head and marched out of the kitchen.         

          

Reviews

[Allie]

Wow, this was truly wonderful read. You have a clear grasp of character and plot development which makes this an intense journey through these character's lives and the pain they've had to endure. You've clearly and efficiently illustrated the break down of the mother through the interactions of the characters that are trying to support her. Very well done :)