Every Decoration Day his mother took them to Allegheny Cemetery, where her brother was buried. There, dressed as if for a wake, among dozens of other families remembering loved ones taken too young, Henry and Arlene laid a black wreath with a gold ribbon at his grave, a polished marble obelisk pointing toward heaven. The stone bore his full name, yet was still troubling to Henry. They bowed their heads while his mother silently prayed, and he pictured his uncle lying in state in his grandparents’ parlor. They carried out this ceremony regardless of the weather. When it rained, he stood dry beneath his umbrella, imagining water trickling through the soil and seeping in, leaving dark spots on his uncle’s uniform, wetting his medals.
Henry dreaded going. Facing the grave with his mother’s hand on his shoulder, he thought he should feel more. Though he’d never met him, relatives said he had his uncle’s chin, and sometimes, by himself, looking at the picture on his mother’s dresser or the sketch of Paris on the mantel, he sensed a secret connection between them, but not here. As with the Saturday afternoon funerals at Calvary, he wanted it to be over so he could go home and change into his play clothes.
During these visits, his father was strangely absent, as if he objected to the ritual, though in retrospect Henry could recall no evidence of this, his father being eminently reasonable and overly solicitous of his mother. Most likely he was working, since back then the holiday wasn’t fixed, and by chance might fall in the middle of the week. Henry sympathized, being loath himself to waste a vacation day better spent at Chautauqua.
Every spring the three of them stood tribute, until Arlene decamped for college, leaving Henry to accompany his mother and place the wreath himself. When he came home from the war, he went with her out of habit. By then he had his own dead, and the restful, well-tended cemetery seemed a lie. At the same time, he couldn’t deny her that meager comfort, and so he bowed his head and thought of Sloan and the night awaiting him like the promise of oblivion. Only after he married Emily was he absolved of the task, as if his responsibility was to her now, and the children, yet instead of relief, he thought of his mother buying the wreath, dressing and driving herself to spend those quiet moments alone with Henry Chase. The rest of the year he might lie forgotten, but Memorial Day, rain or shine, as sure as a new crop of miniature flags, she would be there to remember him.
She’d died in 1979. It was hard to believe she’d been gone almost twenty years now. He could still conjure her voice and all her silly sayings. Lead on, MacDuff. “I see,” said the blind man. Ready, Hesy, mi’ lad? He thought that when they got home he should really go visit both of them, his father too.
For Henry, grief, like love, was a private matter. He had no use for parades or speeches or moments of silence. He didn’t need a special occasion to recall the dead. They came to him unbidden—Embree, Jansen and Davis, shot right next to him in the woods outside of Pforzheim. The gunner of the drowned tank, his bloated face wavering inches below the surface like a curious fish. The bodies on the road like so many piles of laundry. As much as he sometimes wished he could, he would never forget any of it. He’d tried.
Now, as then, being at Chautauqua helped, the cottage a retreat from the greater motion of the world. He celebrated the holiday anonymously, like any homeowner, by flying the flag.
Theirs had come from the old Ames on the way to Mayville, closed for decades. Topped with a bronze eagle, propped in a corner of the garage, it wore the manufacturer’s original plastic sheath, fogged with dust and age. As he unfurled it, the sun-faded nylon released the fungal reek of mildew—a chronic problem, with the humidity. He let it air while he hefted the stepladder over to the screen porch and tested the legs for stability. Christmas, as he was stringing the outside lights, the extension ladder had slipped, dumping him in the bushes. He hadn’t been hurt, just some scratches, but ever since then Emily had been nervous about him and heights. In this case he would be all of four feet off the ground, and rather than ask permission, he mounted the ladder and fit the pole in the holder.
The wind lifted the flag, the nylon swishing. He stood back and admired it, identical to their neighbors’ on both sides, remembering his mother and Embree and Henry Chase, fending off the urge to salute, then folded the ladder closed and went to get started on the mailbox.