But he did desire an end to it. One day he realized that if he couldn’t do it then I must.
—Iris, why won’t you kill me?
I don’t remember my answer. I do remember glimpsing a ghastly ironic symmetry at work here, that the man who killed my father now asked me to kill
him.
I asked Mildred if he’d asked her the same question.
—He asked me what I thought I was saving him for. I didn’t know what to tell him. What should I have said?
I said I didn’t know what she could have said that wasn’t a platitude or some other kind of lie.
—Should I talk to Dr. Friedrich? said Mildred.
—He won’t help us.
—No.
We came to dread his moments of lucidity because now he was interested in that single topic alone, his inability to die. We decided simply to refuse to discuss it with him. This infuriated him further.
—You think I haven’t done it? I’ve killed my patients!
His tirades could last for minutes. I’d have to leave the room.
—Iris, come back here! Listen to what I’m telling you!
I’d stand in the hallway and count to sixty.
—What are you yelling about? I’d say when I went back into the room.
—What?
But he’d have forgotten. Darkness had descended until the next time. I told Mildred I couldn’t take much more of it.
—You have to, you have no choice. Nor do I, said Mildred.
It was summer but the pleasure I might otherwise have felt in seeing the trees in full leaf and the wild flowers blooming, and the butterflies and the birds, the long warm evenings and the sun sinking behind the mountains as the river caught fire in the last of the day, it was all lost in the shadows of the old man in his fury and despair, when he wasn’t adrift in a terrible gloom of unknowing. I didn’t hate him now. He was Daddy, yes, but not the Daddy that had done me so much harm. He was unable to harm me anymore. But it was like living with death, for nothing issued from Daddy that was any kind of a manifestation of life. I’d be out at the back of the house pinning bed-sheets to the washing line when I heard him.
—Iris! Where are you?
I’d go in to see what he wanted.
—Where have you been? I didn’t know where you were!
I’d sit with him, thinking of the basket of damp bedsheets waiting to go on the line before nightfall.
—Are you free? he said one evening.
We were accustomed now to the vagaries of his crumbling
mind. Sudden statements or questions like this that might be loaded with meaning or mean nothing at all. It was a question he’d asked before.
—Yes, Daddy, I am, I said. Are you free?
—Don’t be so damned stupid.
He thought of the house as a prison and the two of us as his jailers. He no longer got angry about it. It seemed he’d become resigned to his situation.
But as the days passed, a change in the household occurred. The old man’s insistence that he must die had aroused in each of us, separately, a question. It wasn’t an easy thing for us to talk about. We’d underestimated his determination to end his life. Now we began—independently, until the night the question was finally voiced—to entertain doubt. I brought it up first. I expected Mildred to reject the idea at once. I only spoke of it because it had become a habit of our intimacy to say what was on our minds. I wanted Mildred to tell me that what I was thinking was abominable. But Mildred didn’t say that.
—I know, she said. But how?
We sat a long time in silence. The next step in this conversation would have to wait for another night. What mattered was that a possibility had been articulated. We left it alone, not because it shocked or frightened us but because we had to consider it.
We moved around the house thinking thoughts of death. I didn’t know if the old man understood what was happening. If before he’d been unfree, a prisoner in his own house, there now hung over him a sentence of death. I could feel it in every room in the house. I felt it in Iris’s room most of all, that’s where I slept now. It gathered in the corners and hung like a mist beneath the
ceiling. The air was thick with it. At times it was suffocating. It was almost impossible to breathe. It had an effect on Daddy. It made him quieter, also more childlike: The old man’s fire was at last extinguished. There were times we thought he was consciously preparing himself, but this was illusory. Nothing occurred consciously now. He was empty of thought, although Mildred still didn’t believe that.
—He knows what’s going to happen. He’s at peace now.
—How does he know?
—Can’t you feel it?
Sometimes I could. Other times I saw only a demented old man shuffling through the house in his pajamas with his penis hanging out like a piece of old elephant flesh. He hadn’t a thought in his head until he realized he was alone. Then he panicked. I sometimes thought our decision was premature but Mildred never wavered. And as if to confirm that she was right and I was wrong, Daddy again asked the question he’d asked so many times before:
When will you let me die?
We decided to do it late one night at the end of the month. There was no moon. We’d had heavy rainfall earlier in the day. I don’t know why we chose that night, perhaps because it was so dark. But we both realized it was time. We had that kind of understanding now. We were the sisters of mercy now. We gave him a watery whiskey with a sleeping pill crumbled into it. We sat in the kitchen for an hour and drank whiskey ourselves, not so watery either. It was all oddly solemn.
The two women ascended the back stairs. The world was very still. When they got to his bedroom Mildred opened the door and allowed Constance to enter first. She was carrying the pillow. The drapes were closed. The room was full of shadows. The glow from the bulb at the
end of the corridor was all the light they had. The old man’s breathing was slow and heavy. It was punctuated by snorts. Mildred stood by the door as Constance approached the bed. He was sleeping on his back. Spittle glistened in his beard. His mouth was open and his lips were damp.
She put the pillow on the bed. Then she climbed onto the bed. Carefully she straddled him, placing one knee either side of his chest. She turned toward Mildred where she stood in the shadows by the door. Mildred nodded her head. She lifted the pillow—
Then he opened his eyes.
I couldn’t do it.
The next day I had to go into Rhinecliff. On my return I was parking the truck by the barn when Mildred came running down the porch steps and across the driveway.
—What is it? What’s happened?
—I can’t find him!
We went through the house. Every room was empty. Only when we got up into the tower did we see him. From the high window we made out a tall dappled figure in pajama pants moving through the trees far below. He was making for the river. We ran downstairs and out through the back door.
As we scrambled down the hill we heard the Albany train approaching. He was in clear view now, splashing through the sedge, his pajama pants soaked, his long arms and legs pumping. The white head was lifted to the sky and he was shouting. He floundered on, losing his footing and pitching forward, then recovering, moving inexorably toward the shallow bank that ascended to the tracks. He was in bright sunshine now, and beyond him the river glittered like a heaving bed of jewels as
the locomotive came on. The old man’s pace didn’t slow or falter. He wanted only to get to the railroad tracks.
On came the train. It shimmered in the heat. We were moving through the sedge as he clambered up the bank on the far side. We saw him glance over his shoulder. We were screaming at him now and he had to hear us even with the noise of the train but our voices seemed only to quicken his progress toward the tracks. We saw that in the next seconds he and the locomotive would at the same moment arrive at the same place. He didn’t waver, he didn’t flinch. He didn’t know what hit him.
I heard about Morgan Schuyler’s death in the late afternoon and drove up to Ravenswood early the following morning. The front door burst open and Constance ran down the porch steps and flung herself into my arms. For a few seconds she clung to me and I felt through her blouse that her heart was beating very fast. Then she put her lips to my ear and breathed the words,
Thank you.
I remembered her telling me once, a lifetime ago, that she’d only be well again when the old man was dead. We walked across the driveway to the house. Her arm was around my waist and mine around her shoulder. Three months had passed since she’d moved back to Ravenswood and her dream was realized: Daddy was dead.
As soon as we entered the house the shadows descended. How dark it was. The verandahs blocked out much of the daylight and the stained oak paneling absorbed what little else filtered through. Where was Mildred?
We sat in the kitchen. The back door was open and the air was sweet with the scent of fresh-mown grass and trees in blossom. Far below us the Hudson sparkled in the sunlight. The railroad tracks were gleaming. Constance sat facing me, her
hands clasped together. I tried to detect in her some sign of shock but there was none. She did, yes, seem to be at peace but I wasn’t convinced that the old man’s death could have swept away her extensive structure of neurosis so fast, and I watched her carefully. I couldn’t tell if she was acting or not and she clearly didn’t know either.
—How’s Howard? she said.
—He talks about you every day.
She grew more animated.
—Soon he’ll have me every day! Sidney, we can start over, can’t we? When I woke up this morning I felt as though it was the first day of my life.
—You’re not devastated?
—He wanted to die. But now I can live! There’s so much I want to do! We’ll take Howard to Europe. It’ll be educational. We’ll go to all the great museums. We’ll sit in outdoor cafés and see how other people live.
I felt a distinct whisper of foreboding. I was right. She’d assimilated nothing.
—Let’s bury your father first, I said.
This intrusion of brute reality failed to deflate her.
—Yes of course, let’s bury the dead, but let’s celebrate the living too!
Did she seriously imagine I could be drawn into this bizarre mood of exultant affirmation? I’d come to make funeral arrangements. She knew what I was thinking. We’d speak of it in some more sober hour. But she wanted a sign from me now.
—You’re relieved it’s over, I said.
I took her hands in mine. I had to tell her what I felt, or what I feared.
—It’s not just a passing thing, is it? I said. You won’t come crashing back to earth and decide you hate me again?
She gazed at me through a glaze of tears. She pressed a fist to her mouth and shook her head. She came around the table and pulled up a chair next to mine. We sat close together and she was smiling as the tears ran down her face. I wanted her to melt the ice in my heart but it couldn’t be done in an instant. I was too old for that.
Then Mildred came into the kitchen and everything got dark again. Constance rose from her chair to fill the kettle. I stood up and faced Mildred, who stared at me from haunted, startled eyes. She was dressed all in black. She looked as if she hadn’t slept.
—I’m sorry, Mildred.
She nodded. She pushed past me to the sink. If there was coffee to be made then she would make it. Her back was bent now. She’d aged a decade in a night. She was a widow once more. Constance had lost them both, Iris and Daddy, but so had Mildred, and Morgan Schuyler, her true love, the love of her maturity, for whom she’d performed silent service all these years, had died before her eyes. I thought: She won’t last long.
Constance was standing in the doorway looking out toward the mountains with her back to us.
—Come out for a moment, she said.
Mildred was washing out the coffee pot. Humped, intent, her eyes hooded, her hands busy, she absorbed no light and gave none out. I stepped through the back door and Constance turned to me and took my face in her hands. With careful tender delicacy she kissed me on the lips. I tasted a flicker of her wet tongue, quick as a viper. How long since she’d done that? If
she could sustain it, if she could only make me warm with her kisses again, then I’d soon lose the resentment and mistrust all silted up inside me. I wanted nothing more.
—We must look after her, she said.
Once again arrangements had to be made. I was busy on the telephone for most of the afternoon. I spoke to Hugo Friedrich. I’d antagonized him once but it didn’t seem to matter now. He was brusque in his sympathy but he was a practical man. He told me what was going to happen and what I had to do.
That night we all retired early. It had been a long time since Constance and I had shared a bed. I asked her if she’d prefer that I sleep elsewhere.
—Where would you sleep? she said.
There were only two possibilities. Daddy’s room was empty but it seemed faintly indecent to suggest it.
—I could sleep in Iris’s room, I said.
She was turning down the quilt. I stood on the other side of the bed. My suitcase was by the door. She gazed at me. Suddenly she seemed very frightened and very young, and I glimpsed again the fragility I’d seen when we’d first met and fallen in love. How very long ago it all seemed now.
—I’ll sleep here with you, I said.
From opposite sides we entered the bed. We turned aside to switch off our respective bedside lamps. We turned back. We moved toward each other in the darkness. The world was very still, very silent. Such a profound silence, in every sense, whenever I arrived from the city.
—I’m cold, she whispered.
To hold her in my arms, to touch her even through the nightgown, was like an electric shock to my poor dry body, inert
these many months. We kissed, and again I tasted her flickering wet tongue. Then there was some urgency to the proceedings and it all got rather turbulent, and I had no opportunity to reflect on what it meant for us, nor did I think much of it when after a very few breathless moments she whispered her strange request, that I call her by her sister’s name.
Morgan Schuyler was buried next to his wife and daughter later that week. Constance stood at the graveside with a wild rose she’d picked in the garden that morning. Not yet thirty and the only survivor, the last of the line. But I feared the aftermath. I feared that having climbed so fast and so high from the depths in which she’d been sunk there must be a collapse eventually. She’d seen her stepfather die under the wheels of a locomotive. She’d seen his body burst apart like a bag of blood.