A Song for Issy Bradley (20 page)

After Issy was born, Claire caught Ian’s eye in the hospital. “No more,” she mouthed and he nodded and said he loved her hugely, more than she could imagine. But love isn’t measured by size or weight; she learned that after Issy was born. Love is measured in ways. It isn’t a case of more and less. It’s this way and that way, gladly and carefully, freely and gratefully. That’s how it was with her last baby: her lovely, make-the-most-of-it child. Each of Issy’s firsts was also a last: a joy and a relief, a beginning and an ending, all of Claire’s own choosing.

I
AN RETURNED A
few hours later with food on a tray. He stood in the doorway and cleared his throat. “Will you get up now?”

She pulled the covers over her head and mumbled, “I don’t think so,” into the duvet.

“Are you going to get up tomorrow?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s wrong, Claire?”

She tugged the covers down a little so she could see him. He’d removed his tie, undone his top button, and his shirt was partially untucked; he looked forsaken, like an unmade bed.

“You didn’t even come down for Family Home Evening. What’s happened today? Has something upset you?”

Of course she was upset, but the upset was sharper than Issy’s returned PE uniform, less fathomable than the prophet’s story, and heavier than the weight she’d felt in her chest when she woke that morning.

“Jacob needs to go to bed.” He stepped into the room and placed the tray on the floor, as if he might tempt her out like an animal. He’d folded a piece of kitchen towel in half to make a napkin and put a rose from one of the sympathy bouquets in a glass of water. He sat down in front of the wardrobe, his knees pointed straight at the ceiling, and his trousers rode up past the tops of his socks.

“I know it’s difficult. But you, you’ve got to—”

“It’s not the kind of sadness that just dries up.”

“I know … but will you get out of bed, please?”

“I don’t want to.”

“I don’t either, in the mornings, it’s … I think one day it won’t be such an effort. I
know
it’s going to get better, it’s just going to take some time.” He stretched his legs out in front of him; his feet almost reached the bed, there were holes in the heels of each of his socks, and she felt glad his mother was on the other side of the Irish Sea. “I’m sorry about the glasses. Do you need a blessing? I’ll phone President Carmichael and ask him to come and assist. I know it’s Monday, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

She couldn’t talk past the sudden lump in her throat. She thought about the little business cards in the pocket of his suit jacket, tracing his Priesthood Line of Authority:
“Ian James Bradley ordained a High Priest by Ronald Bradley, Ronald Bradley ordained a High Priest by James Poulter,”
and on, and on, until it reached Brigham
Young, then Joseph Smith and Peter, James, and John, who came back to Earth in 1829 to restore the priesthood, and finally back to Jesus Christ. Ian had the cards made specially, so the men he ordained could verify the source of their authority to bless and bind on earth and in heaven. All that power, passed down by the laying on of hands like a sacred Midas touch. It
should
work—she’d thought about it a lot since the blessing in the hospital; unworthiness on Ian’s or Issy’s part would affect the outcome of a blessing and invalidate the promises made, but they were both eminently worthy. Lack of faith may also cause failure and her own lack was a fact; from the moment they arrived at the hospital she hadn’t believed in anything except the evidence of her eyes. She wished she could go back in time to sit next to Issy’s bed and say, “I do believe, I do, I do!” like one of Peter Pan’s Lost Boys. But even as the thought took hold, she couldn’t imagine having enough faith to support the magic of healing.

“I don’t want a blessing,” she said. “It won’t help. It won’t work.”

“You don’t mean that.”

She considered telling him that she
did
mean it but pulled the covers back over her head instead.

“I don’t know what else to do to make it better,” he said. And then he got up off the floor and went downstairs to tell Jacob to go up to bed.

C
LAIRE REALIZES SHE
is crying. She used to know when she was about to cry, but it’s not like that anymore. There’s no anticipation, no winding mechanism. She is full of tears and every so often they just slop out. They drip onto her hands and onto the balled-up pieces of Sister Anderson’s letter. It’s only when she gives the pieces a further scrunch that she notices the envelope, propped next to the pile of sympathy cards. Ian has dotted the “i” in her name with a heart like she used to when they first met. She tears it open, embarrassed for him and his stupid, ineffectual optimism. Inside she finds
an article from the online version of
Ensign
magazine that he must have printed off specially. Several sentences have been highlighted.

“Mother, Do Not Mourn,”
she reads. The story is about a bishop’s son who was run over by a freight train.
“The boy’s mother felt no relief from sorrow during the funeral and continued mourning after the burial.”
She reads this sentence several times, partly because Ian has colored it bright yellow but also in an attempt to grasp its significance. Are funerals supposed to relieve sorrow? Is burial meant to signify the end of mourning? Is Ian implying that she is not following the correct pattern of grief? She reads on, warming to the boy’s mother.
“The boy’s mother lay on her bed in a state of mourning.”
This part of the story has also been highlighted, so she reads it again. It’s a realistic detail and it makes her feel slightly more charitable toward Ian, who probably stayed up late, looking for helpful stories in the
Ensign
archive. The feeling doesn’t last long.

“While the mother lay on the bed, her dead son appeared to her. He told his mother not to cry. He said that he was all right and assured her that his death was an accident. ‘Tell Father that all is well with me, and I want you not to mourn anymore.’ ”

So that’s his point. Nearly three weeks of mourning is enough. Time to move on. She scrunches the paper into a ball. Other people’s stories are suffocating her, she is sick of their assurances, their miraculous interventions and happy endings. She stuffs the balled-up papers in the trash bin and shuffles up the stairs.

The room smells of musky, unwashed woman. She picks a furry white bear out of Issy’s toy box and gets into the bed. She holds the teddy up to her nose and waits. She isn’t expecting much, she’s not a greedy person. All she wants is a small sign, an ounce of reassurance that Issy still exists somewhere outside of memory.

She is still waiting several hours later, and when the front door opens and voices fill the hall, she tugs the covers over her head and goes to sleep.

Ian presses “enter” in the darkness of the twilight house.

He clicks on a couple of pages that seem relevant but they’re written by people whose wives are suffering from depression. He decides to search the
Ensign
archive instead and types “emotional problems.” The first page of results isn’t any help:

He finds what he needs on page 2: “Solving Emotional Problems in the Lord’s Own Way.” He grabs a pencil from the pot next to the computer and makes notes as he reads.

He folds the piece of paper and stuffs it in his trouser pocket as the computer shuts down. The house hums its night noises and he clasps his hands together and says a quick prayer. He listens past the night noises, following the line of his radius from perimeter to center, and there, right in the middle of himself, where things are very quiet, he discovers a verse from Hebrews:
“For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.”

He stands, pushes the chair back quietly, and tiptoes up the stairs and along the landing, feeling his way to the bedroom, which is dimly lit by the streetlight outside. He takes his clothes off, hangs them on the half-open wardrobe door, and stands at the side of the bed for a moment, a ghostly figure in the yellow gloom, covered from neck to knee by Temple garments. The blankets are rumpled and a quick flick of the duvet exposes Jacob, his little body spread wide in the fling of sleep. Ian is suddenly aware of the way his love for his youngest son fills him from his toes all the way to the back of his throat and he knows if he, with all of his imperfections, can love like this, it is impossible to imagine how much Heavenly Father, who is perfect, must love His children.

After he has straightened and tucked the duvet around Jacob, Ian kneels beside the bed. He folds his arms, closes his eyes, and begins his evening prayer. The worn carpet is scratchy against his knees. He shifts and settles, taking care not to rest his whole weight on his heels in order to avoid the pins and needles that frequently accompany long prayers.

“Please bless Claire,” he murmurs. “Bless her with …” He searches for the right word. “Bless her with patience and …”

He pauses as he tries to calculate exactly what it is that Claire needs.

T
HE FIRST MORNING
without her was the worst. Ian waited until seven-thirty before he went into Jacob’s room.

“Are you going to get up?”

She was lying on Issy’s bunk with her head under the covers. He was pretty certain she heard him, but she didn’t respond. He waited, hoping she might say something, give some sort of approximation of the likely duration of her leave, and although he felt like pulling her out of the bed, he didn’t; he’d learned his lesson and he had the pieces of Issy’s glasses wrapped in a handkerchief in his drawer as a reminder of his miscalculation.

There were clean, ironed shirts that first morning because Claire had taken care of them on the weekend, but there was a basket full of dirty washing in the bathroom from the previous day and, because he suspected that Claire was going to ignore it, he delegated the laundry to Zipporah. He supervised the breakfast and hurried everyone up, not even thinking about packed lunches until he popped into the kitchen to snatch his sandwiches off the side where Claire usually left them. The bread box was empty so he grabbed a loaf from the freezer. He slapped jam between pairs of stiff slices and tossed them at the children. Once Alma and Zipporah were on their way, he hustled Jacob into the car and dropped him off at the primary school’s Early Drop-off Club before driving across town to work.

It would have been more convenient for Zipporah and Alma to attend his school but Claire had been keen for that not to happen. “They need to be by themselves sometimes,” she’d said. “We’re always with them, at home, at church. Let them make their own way through high school.” And he’d acquiesced because she didn’t usually express strong feelings and it felt nice to let her have a say.

He was just in time for work. After supervising registration he taught decimal numbers to Year Seven; it was a relaxing start to the day. He’d taught them only twice before Issy died; they weren’t watchful and quiet like the older students, who seemed to be gauging
his sadness and looking for signs of weakness. At lunchtime he braved the waft of coffee in the staff room, a wedge of pass-along cards stuffed in his pocket. He blessed his jam sandwiches and ate them slowly, hoping for a missionary opportunity. Dave Weir sat beside him and tried to sell him a ticket for the raffle at the PE department’s Race Night. Ian handed over the money but refused a ticket. When he tried to articulate his position on gambling, Dave said, “It’s cool—never apologize, never explain.” As he left the staff room Ian put the missionary pass-along cards—“Three Ways to Become a Happier Family,” “Finding Faith in Christ,” and “Truth Restored”—on the windowsill beside the leaflets about student exchanges, dyslexia, and teenage pregnancy. During the afternoon he lost himself in number lines and quadratic equations, and before he knew it, it was time to race to collect Jacob from After-School Club.

Wednesday followed a similar pattern. He learned a thing or two about sandwich preferences and homework supervision and he survived on less sleep than usual because Jacob was up in the night, but he managed, that was the main thing.