11 P.M., DECEMBER 21, 2011
A thundering cracking sound comes from outside, and Vale goes to the window to look out. A large branch has fallen two feet from the house, missing it, miraculously. Vale turns and walks into the living room to check on Hazel.
There’s a new stillness to the room. Sheets tangled around Hazel’s legs, eyes closed, dry lips parted, lantern light flickering across her brow.
“Hazel,” Vale whispers, going to her. She reaches for Hazel’s hand and wrist.
No pulse.
She puts her hand to Hazel’s chest: no breath.
“She’s gone,” Vale calls into the kitchen, an ache shooting through her chest and legs.
Vale’s never held a dead hand before. She’s never held Hazel’s hand before. Sunspots. Long bones. Thick veins, the warm blood stilled. “Hazel,” Vale whispers, her breath lodged.
Maggots. Bees. Carrion crows.
Night swimming.
DEB AND DANNY COME RUNNING FROM THE KITCHEN. “Oh,” Deb whispers, putting her hand on Hazel’s chest. Danny stands close behind her, places his hand on Hazel’s leg.
“We should sing, no?” Deb says after a few minutes, tears streaming silently down her cheeks, and Vale and Danny nod, and so she starts singing the words to the Nina Simone song still ringing in their heads. “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free.” It seems absurdly fitting. Vale and Danny join in. When they don’t know the words, they hum.
Vale’s voice keeps breaking up—she finds it hard to breathe—their voices accompanied by the incessant peppering of ice on the glass windowpanes, the occasional crash of a branch falling.
With every one: mothers in El Salvador, mothers in Iraq, mothers in Syria and Somalia. The finality of every single death unbearable, Vale thinks, stroking Hazel’s still hand.
“I’m here with you, Hazel,” she whispers.
And she is: here. She’s been without roots for so long. But she’s here. Now.
While so much in the world goes wrong, and so many good things rise, too: Occupy, poetry, hospice. Good deeds, large and small. Counterpoints of magnanimity and altruism.
Vale puts her head against Hazel’s bony chest.
The house is silent except for the refrigerator rattling in the next room.
“I’m here,” she says. Cheek on Hazel’s pale cotton nightdress.
VALE STANDS, GOES TO THE DOOR, PUTS ON HER HAT AND boots and coat.
She picks up the deer vertebra and slips it into her pocket. Grabs the white Reebok sneaker from the kitchen table and tucks it under her arm.
Outside, the trees are coated in a near inch of quivering ice. There is no light—star or moon—just a faint wash from candle and lantern drifting out the windows.
Vale scrambles down the driveway. She can hear branches cracking from the woods; the rain and sleet and ice drip under the collar of her coat. Her feet slip out from under her, and she lands on her ass, uprights herself, slides the rest of the way down on her feet.
At the bottom of the driveway, at the bridge crossing Silver Creek, Vale stops. She walks into the center of it, pulls the bone out of her pocket and holds it above the stream of still-open water.
She stands there for a long time, feeling the rain freeze to her cheeks, the rain freeze to her eyelashes, mingling with the tears that stream down her cheeks, a line from No Word for Time ringing in her head: “When you have learned about love, you have learned about God.”
Vale raises the bone above her shoulder.
“You’re free, Bonnie!” she yells into the wind and rain. The branches around her bend, shudder, arc, crack. Vale tosses the bone into the swirling water. It spins for a moment, caught in an eddy, then disappears downstream.
“Baby girl,” Bonnie says, climbing out of the water, collapsing onto the sandy riverbank next to Vale on that day the photo was taken. “This is too good, honey-cakes! This river. This sunlight. You by my side? Too goddamn good.” Closing her eyes. A smile across her lips. Touching Vale’s toes with her own.
Vale reaches into her coat and pulls out Bonnie’s shoe. She brings it to her face. Puts her cheek against the cracked leather. Lifts it above her head and launches it with her best pitcher’s arm into the dark water. “I’ve missed you,” Vale says, watching the shoe disappear slowly, white thing bobbing on white crescent waves.
Vale pulls her arms to her chest, feels the water thunder past below her feet.
She would like to go to Neko, let down her hair, undress him, find their song, streaking. She would like to walk upcreek and find Marie, learn everything that was forgotten. To face the future, Vale thinks, turning in a slow circle, closing her eyes, heavy sheets of ice falling on the water, on the trees, on Vale, one must look both forward and back. The past and the future existing at once in the cup of her wet and shaking hand.
And then there’s a sound from the trees uphill near the swamp. An owl, barred—who cooks for you?—and Vale opens her eyes, laughs. “Fucking of course, Bonnie,” she says, standing still, looking into those upstream woods. “An owl: the death of something old, the start of something new.”
Bonnie puts her wet cheek against Vale’s dry one, grins. Whispers in Vale’s ear, sand on her lips: “The mother is the love factory.”
Vale tips Lena’s hat toward the woods and the birds that dwell there. “Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!” she calls out, joining in, a near howl, her body exhausted.
Love songs, Vale thinks. Amid the squall they are seeking one another. Deb, Danny, Neko, Vale—seeking one another. Vale turns toward the house and the people in it—these night creatures she’s been given. She holds her arms out wide in both directions, her body freezing, a block of ice, her lips and jacket and cheeks coated in it. Seeking one another. Amid these great and wilding storms that are our own. And in the dawn? Vale moves her arms up and down slowly, near wings. Luz. The thing that comes with every morning.