Читать книгу Legacy of Shadows - Lillian Moats - Страница 9

Lincolnshire, England. November, 1904

The doctor’s verdict has just been nailed outside our door: WHOOPING COUGH. I press my face against the glass to wail in silence. How can my child who, only twelve days past, conjured a menagerie in my lap, who roared and trumpeted, snarled and purred, nuzzled to be petted—how can she now lie torpid in her bed, in terror of the next spasm?

I rush back to her side. Oh, Anna, I am no child! Am I not twenty-two—old enough to mother you—old enough to save you? Have I grown up only to grow powerless? Her disbelieving eyes engage mine with a plea. They cannot comprehend I haven’t the magic to transform her.

Dear God, could such a creature who, just twelve days past, ruled a wild kingdom from my lap, be vanquished at two-and-a-half?

II

Once Anna’s eyes drew mine like magnets. Now they repel my gaze. I cannot look in them without blaming myself. Instead it is her hand on the rippled sheet, spread-fingered—like a little starfish—that attracts my soul.

Being a mother is all water and tides tonight. Each recurrent wave of her coughing engulfs us both. Yet it recedes only to drag her farther out to sea. I take her starfish-hand and hold it on my belly. I WANT TO GO WITH YOU, ANNA! If only the sphere under your hand were the moon; then the tide would pull you toward me.

But within this globe of my belly, your unborn sister or brother turns in its own salt-sea. And I must remain steadfast on this shore, torn in two.

Lincolnshire. February, 1905

The midwife says, “Quiet y’self, Mum—or you’ll exhaust y’self before it’s done.”

I defiantly shake my head to signal, “Hush! I’ll do this the only way I know.” I cannot break rhythm without listing and fainting in the saddle. Father! If you were alive, you would understand—better than any midwife—that, giving birth, I am both wild horse and rider.

I train my eye hard upon the spire at chase’s end and strain to clear hooves over fences and ditches. Every hurdle towers too high, stretches too wide as I approach. But I can refuse no obstacle. I set my jaw and ride, ride to the spire.

Didn’t you tell me, Father, it breaks a horse’s spirit to rein it in too hard at race’s end? Even with a new life cradled in my arms, I gallop on, gripping the pillow between my knees. The contractions slow. I want to post homeward, gazing into the face of the tiny girl-child at my breast. But with the steeple behind me, I have lost all focus on my goal.

What materializes are the faces of the spectators, the devotees of the chase—my husband, the midwife, my sister. And though I look within myself to find you, there’s no face so vivid as yours, Father.

What is your stern expression—a warning? I hear the other voices in one concordant hum, “The baby looks like Anna,” they are saying, “exactly like Anna.”

My heart clenches. The victory turns. Didn’t you teach me to be loyal above all else, Father? I look down at this infant Lisbet, so ardent at my breast. Oh, Anna, she will never replace you!

Lincolnshire. January, 1907

Your third winter’s come, Lisbet, and I can no longer contain you within the manger of my arms. I have become the shepherdess charged with your deliverance beyond the age when Anna died.

Poor lamb! I’m always at your back, tapping my shepherd’s staff to the left, to the right of you to keep you true along this narrow pass of winter. You know nothing of seasons. You would spring and slide from this sheer slope—if it weren’t for my crook at your neck and my stick clicking at your heels, driving you forward. You stop to bleat your tears, start to scramble backward to me.

I cannot let you, Lisbet. Every step for me is too painful to repeat. When you have survived this passage, will I allow myself to love you better?

I only know you’re still retracing Anna’s path, and that the day your footsteps take you beyond the end of hers is both the day I long for—and the one I dread.

Lincolnshire. February, 1910

“Please, Dear, it’s been so long,” you beg me. “Come watch me skate—you and the children.” I swaddle little Martin until I fear he cannot breathe; and all the hazardous way to the lake, Love, I cling to you and Lisbet.

I know that as winter days go, this one glistens. I know that the sun ignites flares on the blades of your skates, that the sky is cerulean, that silver dust sprays from the prow of your feet as you stop to gaze at your son on my shoulder. I know that your figures are flawless, that you leap and land with weightless grace.

But you see that I see almost none of this. In these years since Anna died, your vantage point and mine have become misaligned. My sights have dropped to a hair’s-breadth above the ground. I gauge the ice to be only a fine cold line between exhilaration and peril. I hover over its surface, magnifying fissures in its cross-hatched crust, detecting beneath it black water that waits.

The squeals of toddlers shatter my trance. Their parents don’t even wrap them against the gouging wind. I want to tell every mother and father what I learned from Anna: Life teeters on an edge as fine as the blade of a skate. Be dutiful to your children. Keep them warm.

I temper my words. But I’m shunned for even the most delicate warning. The optimism of others terrifies me. Is it I, alone, who knows death is just a cold breath away?

I try to meet your eyes as you soar sunward. But you see me shut mine before I have to quake at the scrape of your landing, on the egg shell of the lake.

En Route from New York to Toronto. November, 1913

Steam swirls around the wheels, suspending our train in cloud, as we four hobble with our baggage along the platform. In eagerness for our new life, Lisbet has been coupled to me for months, like the tender-car behind its engine—fueling my dreams, keeping the fires of hope brightly stoked.

It is only November. Can it be Christmas morning? What New World elf has placed on every seat a bar of chocolate, wrapped in paper foil? We want to hoard our presents. But our hunger overrides our sentiment, and soon the gifts are only remembrance on our tongues.

Our Christmas story twists. The conductor comes to claim his due for every missing treat. Wise to the ruse, the other passengers snicker at our innocence.

My husband scrambles for our coins, so carefully allotted for meals between here and Toronto. Frail dreams dissolve like the steam clouds streaming past the window panes.

I nod at her drawing tablet, and Lisbet takes her cue to sketch the passing scenery. First one passenger, and then another jostles down the aisle and stops—astonished by her proficiency. I smile with pleasure, raising my eyes to the Americans for the first time.

Lisbet lifts her chin like mine, but goes too far, tossing her curls and flashing a look of self-satisfaction in my direction. This sort of attention must not be allowed to turn her head.

I vow that when we reach Toronto I will first unpack my copy book. My daughter needs to replicate the very page that was prescribed for me: “Who shall stand in His holy place? He who hath clean hands, and a pure heart, who hath not lifted up his soul to vanity.”

For her own good, I disengage from my tender, yet curb her with my eyes. “Do not flash that look at me,” they tell her. “Do not fancy yourself the most special child. Never forget there was one who came before you.”

Toronto. March, 1919

I wake to find you bent over our bed, Love. I press your long fingers against my brow to trap their coolness, but their welcome chill warms on my hot temples. I push your hand away.

Every cough—no every breath—imbeds its blade more deeply in my chest. Did Anna feel these daggers when she died? You recollect a different sound—the yelp of her whooping cough. But when the razor cuts, I cannot tell if I am she or I.

I want to gather our children in my arms. No. I want to extend my arms’ length and press our offspring to the farthest corners of this house to keep them safe. To think I’ve feared, in turn, each one would leave me—must I be the one to abandon them?

QUARANTINED. This morning, when the signs were pounded on our doors, I felt the nails, like irony, pierce my chest. It’s a cruel prescription—that insures I won’t infect the outside world, yet leaves the ones I long most to protect, entrapped with my contagion.

II

Days pass. Outside, the neighbor children press their faces to the glass, only to scatter at our slightest stir. But it is I who hover long outside each aperture, pressing my face against the truth, peering inward at myself, at you and Martin, at Lisbet tending little Andrew and Ruth.

How many years, Love, has this house been stamped with my infection? I’m not referring to germs, for once, nor my influenza, nor the pneumonia to which it’s turned.

I’m speaking of my obsession, my contagious fearfulness since Anna died. I can detect its shadow—but too late, I think—darkest at Lisbet’s window, yet discernible through every chink.

III

My lungs are gorging with fluid, the doctor said. He doesn’t know the kind. He cannot guess the years of swallowed sorrow you couldn’t bear to see me shed. Even the coroner won’t know it: death will be mine by drowning—my lungs only the last to be deluged in dammed up tears.

IV

After all the years of fearful caution, the sharpest pang of irony is this: I have, at last, no trepidation left of this disease—not for myself, not for you and the children. Time sorts our fates. It’s too late for you to fall to this epidemic … too late for me to stand again.

Our bridal bed’s become the one for birthing and dying. Oh, Love, after Anna, you should never have pressed me to conceive again.

If only, years ago, I could have thrown the sluice gates open … let my tears stream from every pore, cascade in rivulets down the bed-skirt to the floor, surge across a sodden rug, swell to the wainscoting, shatter the window panes, burst the doors, break our clandestine quarantine—that I might have infected everyone with just a tincture of my caution … and thereby spared those I’ve loved most, the paralyzing dose.