Mudwoman (45 page)

Was this—Konrad Neukirchen’s esteemed daughter? The one whose photo used to run in the Carthage paper, on an inside page?

The daughter who’d left Carthage to become a professor? A university president? Who’d broken poor Agatha’s heart, and had not ever once come to visit her in the final year of her life?

And the red setter mongrel trotting with them—ahead, behind, to the left, to the right—describing about the conspicuous couple an invisible and protective figure eight of which, absorbed in their intense conversation, they were totally oblivious.

A
s an athlete she’d thought
If you are going to walk upright at all, you must be straight-backed.

“A
nd then, I’ve often wondered—is a person a kind of superior animal, or a totally distinct being? Of course”—Konrad spoke hurriedly, to make sure that Meredith understood the subtlety of his argument—“I’m familiar with Darwin. All that—‘descent of species.’ ”

“Yes.”

“ ‘Yes’—what?”

“I’m sure that you’re familiar with—‘all that.’ ”

In fact, M.R. very much doubted that her father, for all his cleverness, and the many eclectic books he’d read through his life, was “familiar” with Darwin.

To the extent to which he was, in some residual way, imbued with the beliefs of the Society of Friends—very likely, Konrad wasn’t a Darwinian, even to a rudimentary degree.

She said: “Even Darwin didn’t seem to think that all animals were just—‘animals.’ He may have believed that his own dog possessed some sort of moral core.”

M.R. spoke slowly like one turning a heavy rock in her hands—was it just a heavy rock, or a mineral containing veins of precious ore? Strange and wonderful to her, she was befriending her father who was both the man she believed she knew, and an intriguing stranger.

“Well—of course! Each master has a dog who is ‘moral’ in regard to his master—like a compass with no choice but to point north.”

“Some of my colleagues—at the University—argue that we have no ‘core personalities’ but exist only in contexts.”

“But not so succinctly put, eh? If they are your colleagues—professors.”

“It’s a theory of mind. One theory of mind.”

“And do they believe their theories?”

“Well—I wouldn’t know. Very few of us know what we ‘believe’—our brains are like the depths of the sea, adrift with all sorts of things—organic, inorganic—‘real’—‘not-real.’ ”

And here is the failure of philosophy, M.R. supposed. Words were a crude loose net through which all things—all people—all events—flowed, indefinably.

“I know that I am always who I am—Konrad Neukirchen. I have never not-been Konrad Neukirchen. And I believe that I am a veritable compass of consistency, rationality. Yet—other people!” Konrad stroked at his beard, laughing. “All I can know of other people with certainty is, they are not me.”

“They are not-you—but they might be identical with you, in certain ways.”

“Oh, no—I can’t believe that, really. Humankind is wonderfully fickle, changeable—as I am not.”

“This fickleness has helped us to evolve—to adapt. To survive.”

“But is survival at any cost worth the cost?”

“Daddy, you have to survive, to ask such a question! The minimum of life is life itself.”

She was thinking of the boy who’d tried to hang himself, or had imagined he would hang himself, and die: the verb
die
had had no context for him, he’d misunderstood.

And now he was alive—his body had “survived.”

Sick with guilt she could not bear to think of him.

Nor could she bear to think of her sister Jewell who’d died a horrible death—locked in a refrigerator by their mother, suffocated by degrees. It would not have been a rapid or a merciful death.

Five years old! And the other sister, Jedina, two years younger, tossed away like trash too, and yet—by the purest chance, she had not died.

But only because she’d been rescued—“saved.”

“The world survives,” Konrad was saying, “because there are ‘saviors.’ We can’t save ourselves, but sometimes—we can save others.”

M.R. felt a chill, this was uncanny. As if her (adoptive) father had been reading her mind.

Though more likely, each knew the other’s mind very well. Like these several walks in Carthage—to the Convent Street bridge, and the river; to Friendship Park, and the river; to downtown by way of Spruce Street, and the river; or to downtown by way of Elm Ridge Avenue, the “long way” to the river.

Each walk was a different and distinct walk in the walkers’ minds, and very likely in Solomon’s mind, yet each had the same destination: the river.

For the Black Snake River, traversing the city of Carthage, was the very core of the city, its noisy rampaging soul.

Today they’d walked to the Convent Street bridge. This was the shortest of the walks. In Konrad’s presence M.R. didn’t feel her usual childish dread of crossing the bridge on the pedestrian walkway—though Konrad strode along so oblivious of trucks passing just a few inches from his elbow, M.R. could hardly relax.

From the bridge, and at shore, men were fishing. Tossing out long, very long lines. Most of the men were dark-skinned, and elderly. It seemed that Konrad knew them—
H’lo Dewitt! Hey there Byron!
—as they knew Konrad—
H’lo Mr. Neu-kitchen!

Courtly Konrad paused to introduce the men to M.R. Mumbled greetings were exchanged. It was revealed—M.R. asked—that the men were fishing for black bass, catfish, and carp. She wondered if the fishermen were men she’d seen fishing on the river many years ago when she’d been a girl.

As soon as they’d passed beyond the last of the fishermen M.R. said, like one throwing herself from a height: “Daddy, did you know my m-mother? Or—anything about my—mother?”

Konrad’s hand stroking his beard froze. Pointedly, he looked away.

“Your mother! Why, Meredith—what do you mean? Agatha is your mother.”

M.R. said, pleading: “Daddy, don’t. Don’t do that. Just tell me the truth, please—I am more than forty years old. I am not a girl to be shielded from the facts of my own life.”

She’d come close to saying,
My own ridiculous life.

Konrad walked on. The fishermen’s path was growing fainter. They’d entered a scrubby no-man’s-land of prickly weeds, flowering thistles and willow-like trees with wood so soft, many of the branches had split. Wielding his cane Konrad was walking away from M.R., even Solomon had to trot to catch up with him.

M.R. saw with dismay that her father’s face was splotched with emotion. He was frowning, resentful. She felt the injustice of his reaction to her—so like Agatha’s!

She wondered, does he feel that he must be as unreasonable as my mother, out of fidelity to her?

Even the most liberal-minded, intelligent, and
rational
of men behaved spitefully, when his authority was challenged.

And Andre, too. Believing himself utterly fair-minded, yet thrown into a rage if his will was opposed.

Konrad whistled and called: “Sol’mon! Hasten! This way.”

For several minutes they walked single-file along the narrow path, in silence. Konrad and his dog-companion ahead, M.R. behind.

Was Konrad not going to say anything more?

Did Konrad intend to leave her in a state of anxious anticipation?

She thought, wounded
I will leave him, tonight. The hell with them both!

She thought
I was never their God-damned “Merry.” What did they want of me!

It had been their plan to walk to a street that ran parallel with Convent Street and then turn around and come back. It had been their plan to ascend to the street to make a small purchase at a hardware store—M.R. had offered to screw in, more firmly, several kitchen and bathroom fixtures that had become loose—but Konrad seemed to have forgotten.

With a sudden bright-false smile turning to her, to say:

“Well, Meredith! It’s a lovely surprise that you’ve come to visit us. I mean—me. Your visits are rare, and precious. And how long do you propose to stay?”

The casualness of this inquiry was staggering to M.R. Was Konrad suggesting that she leave, soon?

Hesitantly she said, “I—I’m not sure. I haven’t been—altogether well. . . .” Her voice trailed off. The straight-backed daughter, taken by surprise.

Of course, Konrad knew that she hadn’t been “well.” It was a pleading sort of redundancy, to tell him this.

“I was thinking—I mean, I hadn’t exactly been thinking—my future is uncertain—and my present is not”—M.R. laughed, this was so stumblingly and so pathetically put, for a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard—“is not a model of certainty, either. And so I’ve wondered—if I could stay with you for a—a while.”

“Of course. You need hardly to ask, Meredith.”

Konrad spoke quickly, in a lowered voice. As if his daughter’s pleading had shamed him.

She said, flailing about: “I can help you—I mean, I can pay my share, or—whatever. I can help you financially, Daddy. If you need help.”

Now, had she insulted him? Konrad was staring at a point just past her head, blinking rapidly.

It was a problematic issue: did Konrad need money? The brick house wasn’t nearly so shabby as some in the neighborhood but the shingled roof needed repair, the front and back steps needed repair, though Konrad claimed to enjoy vacuuming, the rooms were in need of a thorough cleaning, washing, scrubbing; organdy curtains Agatha had sewn thirty years before were still hanging, limp with dust, faded to a bleary no-color, in the living room. Very likely, however, this was a consequence of Konrad’s bachelor indifference, not his financial situation.

Since her arrival several days before, M.R. had purchased groceries, household supplies. She’d gone shopping at a new mall—a quite adequate mall, with a Shop-Rite and a Home Depot—while Konrad had occupied himself at the Carthage Vets Co-op where, it seemed, he was director “by default”—the “qualified” director, the one who’d managed to channel a fraction of the co-op’s meager funds into his own bank account, had had to resign hurriedly.

Konrad laughed, regaining his composure: “Oh, my dear—I’m very well off! I thought you must know. Our Carthage city government is so steeped in corruption, it’s a tradition in Beechum County—our government workers have an excellent pension fund, even better than custodians and sanitation workers. Much better than public school teachers and officials, too! And I have Social Security, of course. Agatha never had cause to worry about the financial state of our household, not for a moment, and you have no need, either. I am quite prosperous in my retirement, my dear.”

M.R. knew, Konrad made out checks to the Veterans Co-op, to the local no-kill animal shelter from which he’d adopted Solomon, and one or two other non-profits including something called “Rotunda”—she’d seen the check lying on a kitchen counter before Konrad had mailed it.

“What is ‘Rotunda,’ Daddy? I’m just curious.”

“Rotunda! You will see, Friday night, if you are still here. Summertime concerts in Friendship Park, in the ‘rotunda.’ I only give them about one hundred dollars a summer, the concerts are free and sometimes not bad.”

As if a dangerous path had been avoided they returned home by way of the parallel street—Hill Street—another, slightly newer bridge.

“ ‘I
loaf and invite my soul.’ ”

“
You
do? Really?”

“Daddy, it’s a line from a poem—Whitman.”

“Is it?”

“Daddy, you’ve quoted it yourself.”

“I did? Well, that was clever of me.”

S
till she was sleeping through the night. Sleep like the most exquisite blanketing of snow—powder-snow, feather-snow, Milky Way stardust-snow. Sleep that was soundless, speechless. Sleep of the kind she’d so envied in her astronomer-lover, the few times they had slept together through a night.

Even when he’d been stirred and disturbed by dreams, Andre never waked.

And in the morning, Andre never remembered.

Ten hours or more, she slept. Especially if rain drummed against the roof and the windows—the most blissful sleep. Sometimes it was the red-setter “rescue dog” who nudged the door of her bedroom open, trotting to her as she slept her heavy stuporous sleep and touching his chill damp nose against her face to wake her, concerned that she might not be able to wake otherwise.

“How lazy I’m becoming! I scarcely know myself.”

For it was so, like one in an oarless and rudderless boat borne by a gentle current downstream, M.R. had entered a new region of the soul, scarcely contiguous with her old life, where her heartbeat seemed slower, and more measured; where she found herself, for minutes at a time, gazing into space—unlike her astronomer-lover who was searching restlessly for something in the Universe, M.R. had no object for scrutiny; where she could remain seated for minutes at a time without being active, and without even thinking much except in the most immediately expedient of ways: which vegetables—eggplant, broccoli, zucchini—to prepare for dinner while Konrad grilled hamburgers on the rear, brick terrace; whether to take Konrad’s car to the garage for the soon-due state inspection, or assume that Konrad would do this himself, eventually; what to take as an appropriate gift—(“Wine is out of the question, don’t even ask”)—when she and Konrad went to visit one of Konrad’s several widow-friends who’d invited them to dinner.

M.R. had learned that her bachelor-father was a very popular man in Carthage. From his years at the county courthouse he’d made seemingly hundreds of friends, there were neighbors eager to invite him to outdoor barbecues, there was a small persistent band of Agatha’s women-friends eager to feed him, clean house for him, enlist him as an escort—(“Marry me! That’s what they all want, poor girls. But Agatha would be so terribly hurt”). And there was the Carthage Vets Co-op where he was rapidly becoming an essential figure, instead of a once-weekly volunteer who picked up curbside donations in his car to bring to the co-op store, or sorted and labeled, in the company of other retirees of whom most were widows of Vietnam vets, every sort of article of clothing, household items and plain junk. And there was—this, M.R. was particularly surprised to discover, for Konrad hadn’t mentioned it previously—his trips to the Herkimer VA Hospital where he was a volunteer-helper as well.